Toxic Illusions

This is an Apple Books audiobook narrated by a digital voice based on a human narrator.

They say trouble comes in threes, and Lauran Lancaster is inclined to agree.

She nearly lost her career to a devastating car wreck seven years ago. She did lose her two‑timing husband to the same. And now she's almost lost her beloved Drakón of Thraki to a thief bold enough to desecrate her home and leave her neighbor murdered. The pattern is impossible to ignore. Staring at her bare face in the bathroom mirror, Lauran decides the first two losses she can live with. The third ends now.

It's time to call in the big guns—Lancaster style.
Time to dial the private number tucked inside the thick blue file on her bedside table.

Frazer MacKechnie first appeared in her life as the tousle‑haired stranger trying to buy the Drakón for enough money to cross both her eyes. He walked out without a second glance when she refused to sell. He may have tried to purchase it, but to her knowledge, he never tried to steal it. There's a difference.

And MacKechnie has the skills she needs. Before becoming a private investigator, he spent years dismantling corporate espionage schemes—and the Fortune 500 references in her file prove he was very, very good at it. When she calls with a business proposition, she's surprised he tentatively accepts, despite insisting he no longer does that kind of work.

He even agrees to stay in her home.

It's practical. Her thief comes and goes at will—shouldn't the man hired to stop him do the same? Besides, having him under her roof lets her keep an eye on him.

If he's up to no good, she'll know.