Shut Your Eyes And You'll Be Fine

by Diana Deverell

About the Author: Diana was born in Oregon when it was not a trendy place. She fled at age eighteen and earned her living as a long-haul trucker, beef farmer, youth worker, beer taster, and hot/cold war diplomat. Those adventures took place in 48 states, two Canadian provinces, El Salvador, and Poland. Once she’d gathered enough novel material, she moved to Denmark to write fulltime. She is best known for her legal thrillers which are set in Spokane and her spy thrillers which are not.

Excerpt

Frantic barking yanked me from sleep at two o’clock in the morning on the last day of January.

Sitting up, I shoved blonde hair off my forehead and yanked at the hem of my skimpy red cotton nightie. I was five-feet-nine and I didn’t want to meet trouble with a bare ass.

The Air Force sergeant I dated when he was in-country had given me the nightie for Christmas.

Rudolph leered from my chest and the script below asked, “Want to play any reindeer games?”

The only nightie I owned, I wore it when I slept alone.

I was in Central America and the equator was only a thousand miles south of me. The temperature was a balmy seventy-two degrees.

I’d turned the metal handle in my floor-to-ceiling bedroom window to tilt the horizontal slats open.

The German shepherd’s howls came through loud and clear.

The dog was part of the rental package for the three-story house. While I slept, she patrolled the walled-and-gated grounds.

Yesterday was Super Bowl Sunday. I’d spent the afternoon at the home of the embassy’s rowdy assistant defense attaché. We drank local pilsner and listened to a shortwave broadcast of the game.

The Redskins beat the Dolphins and claimed the 1982 championship. We cracked more brews in celebration and belted out repeat choruses of Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns, and Money.”

I’d been wasted when I got home and I’d slept soundly.

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