A sentient scrum of Guinness burps and cauliflower ears...

A reading from the book of Sam.

It’s miserable here. The weekend is upon us, and it's cold, bleak, and rainy where I am. So, I’m sending you a weekend read. A chapter from For Her Eyes Only, in which my kickass heroine, well, kicks some. I hope it amuses you as much as it did me when I wrote it.

If you are an Amazon atheist, I’ve now got the pre-order ready to go everywhere online, which is why you’re getting this extra mail out.

All three books are available for pre-order here.

And the individual titles remain on the Beast of Bezos:

Universal link: The Girl Who Came in from the Cold.

Universal link: For Her Eyes Only.

But you can get a taste of For Her Eyes Only, below.

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Samantha McAvoy locked the door behind her without looking back. Not because she was stoic, or hardened, or incapable of sentiment. But because there was nothing to look back at.

The flat in Shoreditch had good bones; open plan, high ceilings, a wall of windows with huge steel-framed glass panes that caught the morning sun like the perfect apartments you saw in glossy architectural magazine stories. Perfect and empty. Unlike the spreads in Vogue Living, there was no art on her walls, no rugs on the polished concrete floor, no evidence that anyone had lived here longer than a weekend.

The kitchen counter was spotless. The fridge contained long-life protein shakes and old soy sauce. The books, stacked military-straight, were mostly functional: fieldcraft manuals, linguistic reference texts, and a couple of spy novels she enjoyed laughing at on the rare occasions she was home for more than a few days.

One framed photograph, still wrapped in its cardboard corners, was propped against the wall with the image facing inward as if whatever it depicted couldn’t bear to face the room. Samantha couldn’t recall the image, and it annoyed her that she couldn’t, so she vowed not to hang the piece until that memory shook itself free.

The goldfish was gone. Well, not gone, exactly. It was next door with Mr. Schwartz, who liked to play jazz records loud enough to irritate the retired orthodontist on the floor below. Schwartz had started “watching” the fish, which he had named Henry, every time Samantha got pulled out for a job. Somewhere between Bangkok and Montenegro, the arrangement became permanent. She hadn’t been back to claim Henry in six months.

No pets. No plants. No laundry left drying. No one to call. Nothing to forget.

She slung her duffel bag over one shoulder, checked that at least one of her passports was in the side pocket, and pulled the door shut behind her with a quiet, final click.

Forty minutes later, she boarded the train north without speaking to a single soul. Just the way she liked it.

* * *

The rain hit like a punch as soon as she stepped off the platform. Cold, driven, and coming in sideways. Welcome to Scotland. Samantha pulled up the collar of her waxed jacket and made her way toward the village, boots slapping through puddles. The sky above the bay was the colour of scrap iron, and the sea churned like it was trying to throw something back.

She liked that. The fierceness of it.

Wee Jasper clung to the edge of the land, obviously knowing it didn’t belong there and caring less than one-tenth of one per cent of fuck-all about it. She walked past stone cottages with steep slate roofs, a tiny grocer, a fish and chip shop that looked closed even when it wasn’t, and a scattering of hand-painted signs welcoming visitors to the annual rugby tournament.

Her booking had been for a guesthouse called The Willow Rest, an aggressively twee name she’d tolerated only because it was the most remote location on the Agency’s approved list.

She hadn’t expected a welcome party, but she had expected a room. Not the shrug she got at the front desk, and a “Sorry, love, booked out. The Southwick rugby lads brought a few extra girlfriends.”

Samantha blinked. “I had a confirmation number.”

“Aye,” the woman replied, unconcerned. “We gave your room to one of the flankers. Big lad. Needs a firm mattress.”

As if that explained it.

There was a pause in which a very particular neural network in Samantha’s brain advised tactical withdrawal and controlled breathing.

So, she left. Breathing.

And she walked.

She kept walking until she stumbled upon the one building in the village that appeared to radiate light and noise and possibly even a promise of welcome, a pub called The Laird’s Left Boot.

She pushed open the door, blinking against the warm rush of air, and was immediately swallowed by the scent of smoke, sweat, wet wool and leather. The place was heaving with hundreds of red-cheeked, neckless men who’d formed a single, giant organism: a sentient scrum of Guinness burps and cauliflower ears. Girls peeked out from under their meaty arms. Every table was full. The bar was deep in shouting oafs.

She claimed the only empty stool in the corner and ordered a double whisky.

The bartender didn’t ask her name.

She tossed it back in one go and motioned for a second.

Plan B, she told herself.

Find the biggest caveman with the kindest eyes and pray he wasn’t the sort whose idea of foreplay involved a headlock and a conversation about his most recent shoulder reconstruction. Get him drunk, or drunker, take him back to his room, do whatever needed doing; it would only take a few minutes, and then she could sleep through until tomorrow and catch the first train back to the real world. She could be in London by lunchtime, go dark, and tell Walter she’d spent the whole week reading poetry by the loch and doing her griefwork like a good girl.

Samantha sipped her second whisky and scanned the room with a sniper’s eye.

“Not. Promising,” she muttered.

It was even worse than she’d thought.

They were all sporting the same three haircuts and lost in a deep fog of sexual confusion, Jägerbombs and performative stupidity. She would be a minute finding one who didn’t have the conversational range of a wheelie bin.

Samantha McAvoy shook her head.

What does that even matter, Smack? Just get it done.

And then the door opened, and a golden retriever walked in, grinning from one floppy ear to another. Behind him: a tall, rain-slicked man with too much hair, zero confidence, and a face like a librarian. A sexy librarian, she thought, smirking. But from Canada. He’d apologise for everything.

She took another slow sip of her second whisky, tongue pressed to the roof of her mouth to delay the swallow. It gave her an excuse to stare over the rim of the shot glass.

The man behind the dog was trying to be invisible, making him more noticeable to her trained eye. He moved like someone used to being quiet in loud rooms. Bookish. Long limbs, good shoulders, though. Even under all that rain gear, she could tell he had a couple of solid boulders up there. His hair was a tad too long and scruffily curled at the edges, as if he’d tried to cut it himself and then decided halfway through that it didn’t matter. His jeans were dark and soaked through up to the knees. His boots, proper hiking boots too, not runners or cross trainers, were old but well-cared-for.

He looked like he’d made a huge mistake walking in here, and he knew it.

The dog, however, carried enough confidence for both of them. She could tell it was a regular and was thrilled to find the place full of drunken idiots who’d be sure to give it a tummy rub and about a hundred secret second dinners.

The librarian scanned the room the way lost men do when they realise they’re in the wrong place and there’s no easy way out, not when you’re being pushed even deeper into the mess by the old prick behind you, a clenched fist in human form if ever she’d seen one.

Then, the librarian’s eyes found her.

Samantha had trained for eye contact. She knew how to hold it and make a man feel six inches shorter or taller with a single blink. But he didn’t leer or smirk. He didn’t even smile.

He apologised.

Not just with the words, she had no trouble lip-reading—I’m sorry—but with an all too perceptible wince and the tiniest head tilt, like Sorry, I didn’t mean to see you there. I’ll look away now.

And she had no idea why, but she liked that.

She liked people who looked away from her.

And then some asshole kicked the dog.

Samantha didn’t think. She moved.

The second the boot connected with the dog’s ribs, her mind went perfectly still. There was no red mist, no flood of adrenaline. Just the old silence, so familiar and cold.

She was already off the stool when the stiff arm hit the librarian upside the head.

She closed the distance in a blur of fluid motion, her coat flaring like a giant bat wing. She didn’t shout. She gave no warning as she launched herself at the attackers. There were two of them. The kicker and a puncher. She took them out in order, sweeping the leg of the former and intercepting the arm of the second man. His fist was already locked and loaded, but it was cocked so far back that he’d unbalanced himself. Her arm snaked around his before it could begin the return journey towards the man who’d simply said, “I’m sorry.”

She was inside his decision loop before he knew she was there. She took the rest of his balance and, with it, his strength.

Years of training and experience burned like white phosphorus at the tip of her nerve endings, demanding she execute her attack with full force and extreme prejudice. But in the strobing sequence of still images burned into the back of her eyeballs, the dog yelping with surprise, the bomb going off in Damascus, the librarian mouthing ‘I’m sorry’, she found just enough wiggle room and moral purchase to stop herself before she did something that put this idiot into traction.

Instead, she redirected the punch downwards, off-angle, with all the energy dissipating.

The man stumbled backward, confused.

Then she slipped behind him, grabbed his shoulder, took his balance again, and guided him to the ground. A bit like you’d lower a crate labelled fragile that you didn’t much care about.

The pub went silent as if someone had pulled the plug from the night.

The other players turned, half-drunk and half-puffed with the collective confusion of men about to realise they were two seconds behind something they couldn’t fix.

She didn’t give them time.

“You,” she said, voice cold and sharp as cracked ice. Her gaze locked on the one who kicked the dog. “Apologise.”

The man stared. Big. Bald. Red with too much beer and poor decisions. He opened his mouth.

She tilted her head.

He closed it again.

“I said, apologise. To the dog.”

She heard people whispering.

“American. She’s American.”

She ignored them. Beside her, the dog tilted his head in perfect synchronicity with hers.

“I… I didn’t mean…” the man mumbled.

“That sounds more like an excuse than an apology,” she said.

Their eyes locked, and a second later, he apologised.

She turned back to the librarian. He was still half-stunned, blinking behind the raindrops clinging to his lashes. The old boy behind him was glaring at the two men on the floor. He had murder in his eyes.

“Y’all right?” she asked the librarian.

He nodded, lips parted, eyes wide. And then, absurdly, he said, “I’m sorry.”

Samantha McAvoy smiled, just the tiniest twitch of her mouth.

“Yeah, I got that,” she said.