Sometimes the treasure is not worth the hunt . . . .
When a little boy goes missing on a large Maine island, the community is horrified especially almost-lovers Rosie Jones and Sergeant Seamus Kelley. The duo’s dealt with two gruesome serial killers during their short time together and are finally ready to focus on their romance despite their past history of murders and torment.
Things seem like they’ve gone terribly wrong. Again. Rosie wakes up in the middle of the woods. Is she sleepwalking or is something more sinister going on?
What at first seems like a fun treasure hunt soon turns into something much more terrifying . . . and they learn that things are not yet safe on their island or in their world. If they want to keep more people from going missing, Rosie and Seamus have to crack the puzzle before it’s too late.
So yeah . . .
I have a new book coming out in the beginning of October! It’s the fourth book in the Bar Harbor Rose series and . . . well . . .
Rosie has been getting in trouble again.
And I’m super excited about it and hope you’ll check it out!
Here’s what people are saying about the series
THE PLACES WE HIDE combines the best of two worlds: Carrie Jones and suspense. The characters are fun, the storyline is interesting and it kept me engaged til the end. It’s rare that I don’t guess who did it, so I appreciate that wasn’t the case here. Highly recommended. – moi
Thoroughly enjoyed this mystery with plenty of twists and a strong sense of atmosphere. Would love to read another mystery starring Rosie! – 417writer
This is a great tale of suspense set in Downeast Maine. It’s full of great characters that you’ll wish you had as your own friends – mix in the excitement and nervousness of new love and perhaps a killer on the loose and it makes for a super read! – Laurie E. Flood
I’d intended to draw reading “Places We Hide” out because Carrie Jones is always a fantastic read, but sadly, I could not put this one down. Well-written, engrossing story line, and the characters are immediately relatable. Carrie Jones has a talent for really drawing you into her universe and by the end of the book, you can’t help but care about her characters even after the story is over. I’m hoping we’ll get to hear more about Rosie, Seamus, and the rest of their crew in the future. – countessdekay
And here’s an excerpt! I hope you’ll check it out!
As with all my work, this novel’s story and characters are fictitious. Certain long-standing institutions, towns, states, species, agencies, and public offices are mentioned, but the characters involved are wholly imaginary.
Chapter One
A bonding experience, Seamus calls it, the fun of going on a treasure hunt created from a small book that you can download off the internet.
The whole island has been buzzing about it honestly: the possibility of finding a tiny treasure going off eight pages of pdf-clues that legitimately make absolutely no sense. Illogical rhymes, random words, and a couple of drawings on one page with arrows connecting different parts of images.
Seamus, Lilly, and I are scouring the foundation of the old Dorr mansion up in Cromwell Cove, also known as Compass Harbor. People around here seem to use the words and labels interchangeably, so I’m not sure what is the proper proper noun for this little peninsula run by Acadia National Park where there are trails and an ancient foundation and floor of one of the old summer mansions of one of the park’s founders.
George Dorr has another title, Father of Acadia National Park, and he’s one of the reasons the park actually exists.
As I stick my hand into a hole in the brick foundation of his home, I wonder if I would have another title if I was famous and if it would be Reporter Who Attracts Danger.
“Mommy! Find any treasure?” Lilly yells over. She’s covered in dirt. Mud has soaked through her leggings. She wipes her fingers on her face and scampers over to me, holding out her hand. “I found the most perfect stone ever!”
“Wow.” I stand up from my squat and admire the tiny pebble in her palm. “Look at how smooth it is.”
“I think it’s a beach stone.” She turns from me and yells to giant man we love. “Seamus! Is this a beach stone?”
Seamus strides over. There’s no dirt on him anywhere somehow. His dark gray fleece is immaculate. His jeans don’t even have a wayward pine needle stuck to the denim.
When I think about the bad men of my past—and the bad women—I always wonder if there was some sort of hint or clue that I initially missed about them, a warning or inkling that should have tipped me off that they were capable of massive evil and hurt. Do I gloss over the signs?
Seamus is good, I remind myself. People can be good.
“It’s a beautiful stone. It’s lucky.” Seamus taps Lilly on the end of her nose with his giant finger and she giggles. “Just like you.” He redirects his gaze to me. “My two beautiful, lucky ladies. Actually, no–I’m the lucky one.”
“Yeah, you’re messing up your compliment, silly.” Lilly arches one of her eyebrows, a new trick that she’s mastered and doing constantly. She wipes her messy hand across her cheek, smudging even more dirt on her skin and in her other hand she keeps the stone. Her palm is flat and the stone stays in the center, almost like an offering to the sky or the trees or the world.
“You can keep it,” I whisper.
“That’s breaking rules! You can’t take anything from the park.” Lilly’s eyebrow falls down.
“Yes,” I say, “but this is a special stone. A fairy stone. They brought it here for you as a gift.”
An eyebrow raises, but her voice quivers and suddenly she’s so young again, a girl without all the evil in her life, no killers, no bad dads, no broken moms, just her and her goodness. “Really?”
“Really.” Seamus closes her fingers around her fist. “I promise I won’t arrest you. The fairies wouldn’t take too kindly to that.” He pauses and winks at me over Lilly’s head. “Your mom wouldn’t take too kindly to that either.”
I snag Lilly in a big hug, “Nope. Nope. No arresting my baby girl, Sergeant.”
“Never.” He winks. “Unless she does something horribly illegal like snagging the last samosa and not sharing.”
“What? Me never.”
“You just did it with a corndog.”
“You ate five of them!”
“I’m a big man. It takes a lot of corndogs to fuel me.”
I let go of both of them. “Wait. You fed her corndogs?”
Seamus pivots Lilly around so her back is to him and she’s facing me. She’s smiling in a huge way that takes up her whole adorable face. His hands stay on her shoulders.
“She fed them to me,” he says. “Tell her, Lilly. How you insisted. How you told me that you’d never let me marry your mom if I did not give you the scrumptious, decadent sausage on a stick.”
“Breaded and fried,” Lilly adds. “So bad for us.”
“A fine, gourmet highlight of American cuisine,” Seamus adds. He gives her a fake false shake and continues in a ridiculously over-the-top imploring tone, “Tell her, please! Admit to this treacherous act of gluttony.”
Lilly does a thumb point backwards. “Totally him.”
“I am betrayed!” Seamus says reeling backwards dramatically, arms flailing and plopping on one of the different brick walls that made up the foundation of the estate. “All is lost!”
“You are such a dork,” Lilly says, hands on her hips as she stares at him. She turns back to me. “Mommy, you are marrying a dork.”
“I know,” I tell her, reaching a hand out to Seamus to help him up. It’s my good arm. The one that hasn’t been shot and doesn’t ever ache or remind me of bad things. “That means your bonus dad is going to be a dork too.”
She does the eyebrow wave and spirals off. “I’m going to go check this wall over here!”
Seamus pulls me down to his level on the mossy brick floor. For a few moments we just sit there, happy beneath the sunrays coming through the canopy of oak and ash leaves. I try not to think about ticks and spiders and about how we’ll have to change clothes when we get back home and inspect each other for ticks, try not to think about how too many corndogs could hurt Seamus’s cholesterol levels and heart health. I think the rule is something like every hotdog you eat takes thirty-five minutes off your life expectancy. How much would corndogs take?
“You’re worrying again, aren’t you?” he asks as he tucks me into his side.
I lean my head against the front of his shoulder. “Maybe.”
“About what?”
“Unseen threats. Mainly ticks and cholesterol.”
He pulls away a bit. “You aren’t going to lose us, honey.”
“But I’ve come so close to—”
“And we’re still here.”
“True.” I let his words comfort me for a minute and we yell back when Lilly yells about things like how she’s totally going to find the treasure or says ‘ick’ really loudly. It’s all lovely and calm and it does—it feels safe.
After a minute and out of nowhere, Seamus starts talking about George Dorr again.
“The thing people don’t know is that Dorr died without any personal fortune left and nearly blind,” he tells me. “He spent almost all his money making sure that this park was preserved. He kept buying more and more land, adding it to the park.”
“That’s sort of sad,” I say.
“I think he was okay with it. He got his wish. He made an entire park, preserved all this land.” He pauses. His hand strokes the top of my arm and the good kind of goosebumps rush through me. “Do you know that he swam in the water every single day of the year to prove to Congress that it was not too cold in Maine to have a national park?”
“I did! Lilly wrote a paper on that!”
“A paper?”
“It was more of a project,” I admit. “Because you know—grade school.”
He laughs. “Well, did you know that he didn’t really swim every day? Instead, sometimes in winter, he just dipped in his toe. So he just told them ‘I go in the water every single day of the year.’”
“That’s sneaky!”
“So sneaky,” he admits. “But that’s part of what life is, right? Reality is manipulated. We believe what we want to believe.”
He takes a moment and grabs my hand in his. This is when I know Seamus is being all serious. It usually terrifies me. But I swallow down anything I want to say and try not to imagine worst case scenarios like his divorce didn’t actually go through, he’s fallen in love with the gross firefighter who always talks about being naked; he’s leaving me; he has a terminal disease; he’s decided I’m not worth it.
There are so many possibilities . . . horrible possibilities.
“Baby?” His voice is a strong whisper. “What are you thinking?”
“Nothing. What were you going to say?”
“You’re a horrible liar.”
“I know.”
He smiles. “It’s a good trait.”
“Harrumph.” My harrumph sounds like my long-dead nana, all frustrated and annoyed even though I’m not. I’m just feeling too studied, too known.
And then to make it even worse he says, “I know you’re having nightmares. I know you’re still scared.”
“I’m working through it.”
“You don’t have to expect the worst all the time, Rosie. You can depend on people. Michelle, me, Gunner, Hannah, Summer. We have your back, you know?” He pauses. “You can quit your job at the paper. I know you hate it.”
“I like it.”
“You’re lying again.”
“I kind of like it?” I offer. “I like learning new things and meeting new people. I just don’t like taking pictures of accidents and stuff. And I don’t like that people think I’m biased because of you and because I dispatched.”
“People will always think things. You can’t care about that. You just have to be you.” He pulls me into a hug even though I’m dirty and he’s not very pro-dirt. “That’s not what I wanted to say. I just want to say that Gunner thinks you might need to get a little help with the nightmares.”
“Therapy.” I sigh. “I’ve gone to therapy.”
“Medication?”
“I am fully functional!” I object, pulling away, but managing to resist the urge to stomp off. “My brain is just working through things.”
“I’d lift an eyebrow at you if I was capable.”
I grab onto his belt loop and pull myself back towards him, trying to be sexy. “I think you’re capable of a lot of things, Sgt. Kelley.”
He kisses the top of my head and murmurs, “Just you wait and see.”
Want to read more? Just want to support a random author? Here’s the link to the ebook and you’ll be able to order paperback and hard cover too.