Pretty Little Horses

Private investigator Abby Maxon already had her hands full this Christmas before an old college friend begs her to find a missing teenage girl. Newly-divorced, Abby wants time to spend with her fifteen-year-old daughter so they can forge new holiday traditions, just the two of them. But a girl her daughter's age is missing, pretty Rachel Ellison, who was playing a flirtatious game of "let's pretend" over the internet with a married man. A man who swears he did nothing wrong other than fall in love.

Is Abby's client the innocent victim he claims to be, or is he a dangerous internet predator? What happened to Rachel Ellison? Did she run away, or was she abducted? Abby's only clue is the missing figurine of a horse taken from the girl's bedroom.

The case strikes home when Abby's daughter asks permission to go visit a friend. A boy she's never spoken to. A boy she met on the internet.

"The appearance of a new Annie Reed story is a treat. Try one and you'll be hooked." -- Dave Hendrickson, author of CRACKING THE ICE, forthcoming from WestSide Press

"Annie Reed draws a pitch-perfect portrait of the Nevada desert and peoples it with folks so real I want to drive out by Vegas and try to find the Forty Winks Motel and check up on how everyone's doing. Its quiet voice and fast pace weave together to make any reader care." -- Cindie Geddes, Editor, Lucky Bat Books.

"A friend recommended the works of Annie Reed. I was not disappointed. In fact, if her other shorts are as good as this one, I plan to read many more." -- Carol Davis Luce, author of NIGHT GAME (reviewing CHANGELING)

Author Annie Reed is a prolific, award-winning writer whose stories have been published in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine as well as in numerous science fiction and fantasy anthologies.