Chapter 1
It Runs in the Family Sneak Peek
Chapter One
It all started when I saw myself dead.
It was a muggy March night, though most nights in Texas are muggy.
The A/C at the Stop-n-Go was on the fritz.
Not that the owner, Jimmy, let us set it below seventy-five degrees.
He claimed the doors were open as much as they were closed, so there was no point in cooling the outside.
My great-granny used the same phrase before she died from a burst blood vessel in her head ten years ago—ironically, about an hour after shouting the exact thing at my cousin Billy.
I worked as a cashier on the midnight shift because Jimmy paid me two dollars more an hour than the day and evening shift workers.
Most people didn’t want the graveyard shift, but I didn’t mind.
The store sat on a state highway about halfway between Dallas and Waco.
Weeknights were usually slow, except when the Japanese auto parts plant let out at eleven.
A good portion of the guys would swing in for cigarettes, a snack, and some beer to take home and unwind after a long, hot night in the plant.
I worked alone—the way I preferred it—but I was efficient, so the guys never seemed to mind waiting for me to ring them up.
The rush had ended about an hour earlier, and the only other person around was Digger, the town drunk, sitting on the curb eating his late dinner.
It wasn’t unusual for him to hang around while I worked.
I snuck him bottles of water and sandwiches that would’ve been thrown out the next day.
Most of the town made fun of him, but he was relatively harmless.
He just needed a break.
I never felt unsafe working nights. Sure, we were on a state highway, but most people were just minding their business, stopping in on their way to somewhere more exciting than Chaffney, Texas—which, honestly, was just about anywhere else in the world.
Most of my visitors were truckers who’d stop to pee and grab a monster-sized coffee or some caffeinated drink.
I liked the truckers. Quite a few were regulars who came by a few times a week.
But that night, around one-thirty, a guy walked through the doors with a demeanor that set me on edge.
He looked dangerous and not in a he’s a hot bad boy and I haven’t been laid in three months kind of way. More like he’s going to rob me and shoot me in the head on the way out.
I’d never seen him before, which wasn’t unusual, given the previously mentioned state highway. I was used to the random tough guy walking in—I could handle them—but this guy was different. It was like the air in the place grew colder when he stepped inside. Stale. Suffocating.
Like he was the spawn of Satan.
I flashed him a tight smile as he crossed the threshold and checked me out—quick up and down—with eyes so cold my hair stood on end.
For the first time since I’d started this job three years ago, I was scared.
He looked to be in his mid-thirties, wearing jeans and a silky black shirt.
His hair and scrawny mustache were dark brown, nearly black.
His cheekbones were angular and his chin pointed.
But his eyes were darker—almost black—adding to the dangerous aura.
He was tan, and the crow’s-feet around his eyes and his large biceps suggested he got it from working outside…
but who knew doing what. Wrangling cattle seemed unlikely.
He didn’t have the bow-legged swagger of a cowboy, and I’d yet to meet a cowboy who’d wear a silk shirt.
He headed to the drink coolers along the back wall.
I kept an eye on him as I pulled out my cell phone and glanced down long enough to punch in my code. A quick check confirmed he was studying the beer selection, his back still to me.
Keeping my phone below the counter, I opened my contacts and pulled up my cousin Garrett—who happened to be a sheriff’s deputy.
Then I realized that was a stupid idea. Out of all the cousins, Garrett was the most responsible.
He’d be in bed—sleeping, not screwing—this late on a weeknight, and he lived across town. He’d never get here in time to help me.
I set the phone down and ran my finger under the counter, reassuring myself the panic button I’d never pushed—and had nearly forgotten about—was still there.
The guy opened a cooler, grabbed a six-pack of Corona, then headed to the front, absently snatching a bag of Doritos from a rack as he passed. His gaze stayed locked on me, like he was taking in my features, as he set his items on the counter.
Funny, since I was studying him, too, trying to commit his face to memory in case he actually robbed me and I lived through it. Only I hoped I wasn’t being as obvious as he was.
I scanned the beer, then the chips, my back tight as I waited for him to pull out a gun.
Instead, he pulled out a wallet.
When the total appeared on the screen, he placed a twenty-dollar bill on the counter.
“Keep the change,” he said with a sleazy grin. “You remind me of someone.” He picked up his items and headed for the door.
And then my head began to tingle.
I inwardly groaned. Talk about shit timing. But there was no stopping an episode once it started.
My vision grew fuzzy, and I was plunged into a dark room full of chaos.
There was lots of shouting. My cousin Selena stood there, right beside the person whose eyes I was seeing through.
And actual me was there too—because that was how my visions worked.
I saw the future through the eyes of someone in close proximity.
Selena was begging. “Please don’t kill her!”
The body I was in laughed, a deep, ugly masculine sound, then lifted a gun, aimed at Vision Me’s head, and pulled the trigger.
A hole appeared in my forehead, and I slumped to the ground in a heap.
Selena screamed at the top of her lungs.
The man I was seeing through walked over and kicked my body, probably to confirm I was dead, but the blank, lifeless stare of my eyes was confirmation enough.
And then I was back in the Stop-n-Go, the doorbell dinging as the man walked out with his purchases. And I, just like always, blurted out what I’d just seen.
“You murdered me.”
Thank God he’d walked out before I said it, but I was no less shaken.
I rarely saw visions of myself, and I’d never seen anything really bad happen to me.
Sure, when I was a kid and couldn’t control them, I’d get the occasional falling out of a tree and breaking my arm kind of thing through my cousins, but that was years ago.
I hadn’t had a surprise vision in a couple of years.
Not since I’d learned that forcing them, pushing myself into them on purpose, kept them under control.
And not since my cousins realized they could use my gift to their advantage.
No one else in my family had visions. My mother said they came from the father I never knew—a married man she’d had a brief but very sexually charged relationship with.
(Gross.) When she got pregnant with me, she’d hoped to get him to commit, but he moved on to his next conquest. Her words, not mine.
I suspected he’d stuck around long enough to realize her brand of crazy was too much to handle and bailed for someone safer.
Nothing worse than a married man hooking up with an unhinged woman.
My mother seemed capable of cooking the family pet.
My hands were shaking and my legs had turned to jelly, but I forced myself to breathe.
The vision of my murder hadn’t happened here at the Stop-n-Go, so it was doubtful that guy would come back and shoot me now.
And my visions weren’t foregone conclusions.
This wasn’t some manifest-destiny crap. I could change them.
Then I realized who was in the vision with me.
Selena.
I grabbed my phone and dialed her number. Selena was one of my wilder cousins, the kind who flitted from guy to guy like it was her job—which, you could argue, it was, since they usually supported her. Last I’d heard, she was currently unemployed and living with her sister, Rita.
Selena’s phone went to voicemail, so I FaceTimed her.
Still no answer.
It was nearly two in the morning, and I knew this could wait until a decent hour, but I was too shaken to deal with this on my own, so I called Rita.
It took her a few rings before she answered, panicked. “Iris? What’s wrong?”
I hesitated, knowing how crazy this would sound, but also knowing Rita would take me seriously. “I had a vision of Selena.”
There was a moment of silence before she said in a flat tone, “You woke me up to tell me you saw a vision of Selena?” Another pause, then her voice rose.
“Are you fucking kidding me right now? Do you know what time it is? Fuck that, because babies don’t tell time.
Do you know how little sleep I’ve had since Baby JJ was born? I need every minute I can get, Iris.”
“I was in the vision too, Rita.”
“Well, that changes everything,” she said, dripping sarcasm.
Despite her attitude, she’d freak out if I told her I’d seen my own murder. She was just majorly sleep-deprived. Her two-month-old baby had colic and didn’t believe in sleep. “I’m sorry I woke you. Really. But I need to talk to Selena. It’s important.”
“What? Did she win the Powerball?”
“Something like that.”
“I thought you refused to do that anymore,” Rita said, and I caught a hint of jealousy.
It was true. When I was around sixteen, our cousin Billy, who was twenty-four at the time, would write down combinations of lotto numbers and force me to see if he won the Powerball.
I only made it to four winning numbers before I collapsed with a massive migraine that put me in bed for two days.
He made me do it again with the same results.
After that, I refused, even when he held my head underwater in Aunt Doreen’s above-ground pool and nearly drowned me before Garrett intervened.
“Because I’m not doin’ that anymore,” I said. “Do you know where she is?”
“She ain’t here, that’s for damn sure. She met some new guy and took off. I was about to kick her no-good, slobby-ass out anyway. That girl’s like a Category Five hurricane.”
“Do you know who she went with?”
Rita let out a bitter laugh. “Girl, there ain’t no tellin’.”
“If you see her, will you tell her I need to talk to her ASAP?”
“Sure thing,” Rita said, and yawned hard enough I could hear it. “But hell might freeze over before I see her again. We didn’t part on good terms.”
That was an exaggeration. The first part, not the second. Rita would see Selena at our next Sunday family dinner. Our granny made attendance mandatory.
“I’m sorry I woke you,” I said. “How about tomorrow I come take the baby for the afternoon so you can get some sleep? To make up for waking you.”
“You’d do that?” Rita’s voice cracked. “Don’t be promising me sleep and then snatch it away.”
“Which cousin are you talkin’ to, Rita?” I said dryly. In the cousin dependability ranking, I was number two, right after Garrett. One of the reasons she’d asked if I was okay when she picked up. “Let me get a few hours of sleep, and then I’ll pick him up early afternoon.”
“God bless you, Iris.”
“See you later.”
I hung up and tapped my finger on my phone, forcing myself to look at this logically.
Would it be the worst thing if I didn’t find Selena?
I was murdered in my vision when I was with her.
If I avoided her, then logically, I wouldn’t be murdered.
But that was selfishness talking. Selena was either in or about to put herself in a dangerous situation, and I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to her.
Selena and I weren’t close now, but we had been when we were kids.
She was only a few months older than me, and she’d been my refuge when my mom brought home drunks and drug addicts on a regular basis.
We lived next door to each other, and I’d slip out of my bedroom window and into hers, crawling under her covers while she wrapped her arms around me and promised everything would be okay. That I was safe.
But something happened to Selena our senior year of high school.
I’d always suspected she’d been sexually assaulted, even if she wouldn’t admit it.
She changed. The happy-go-lucky, confident girl I loved disappeared.
For a while she became a shell of herself, and when she finally emerged, she was harder, coarser.
She liked to think she used men, but from where I stood, it was mutual.
She had a type most of us didn’t approve of—rough, irresponsible, aimless—but unlike the other people in our family who gave a shit, I never gave her a hard time about it.
I only hoped, she’d eventually find a good guy who would see the girl I still saw underneath her brittle exterior. The girl I hoped would break free.
Selena was in trouble, and I was going to save her.
Just like she’d saved me.
It Runs in the Family
Coming September 2026!