The Celibate Choice by Jane Jago is out today!

A thriller with a paradox at its heart. Behind the quiet eyes of a code-cracking geek who builds cryptic crosswords lives a modern celibate with the nerveless calm of a contract killer…

A lifetime of careful anonymity had served me well until the morning I awoke to find two men in my bedroom. One of them had a hand over my mouth, which was what woke me up, and the other was standing looking down at me.
“If my colleague takes his hand away from your mouth will you scream?”
I managed to shake my head and the hand was removed. I said nothing.
“Nothing to say?”
The man whose hand had been clamped across my mouth sounded sardonically amused. I shook my head again.
The other man, the one who looked like the romantic ideal of a Viking, and who I instinctively knew was the senior thug, raised an eyebrow. His associate subsided. The Viking prince looked at me.
“They say you are very good at puzzles.”
I nodded and dredged up a pleasingly firm voice. “I am.”
“Do I take that to mean you are going to be sensible?”
“Can you define sensible for me?”
He smiled as if my question pleased him. “Sensible means looking at a tablet. Closely. We believe it holds some secrets but nobody can find them.”
I looked at his hard, handsome face and knew I should just shut up and do as I was told. But I’ve never been sensible, and, somewhat surprisingly, I wasn’t truly afraid.
“What happens to the owner of the tablet when I find whatever is hidden?”
“Nothing.”
I must have looked as sceptical as I felt because his ice blue eyes went flatly unfriendly.
“I don’t lie.”
“Maybe you don’t. But you do appear in people’s bedrooms at three o’clock in the morning. Uninvited.” I lifted a shoulder.
His face warmed by a couple of degrees. “You have a point. So. Okay. Full disclosure. The tablet belonged to a person who got themself killed. Messily. And nobody has any idea why, or by whom. The electronics are our only hope. The police have both phone and laptop, but they missed the tablet when they searched. We’re thinking it must be important because it was carefully hidden. But nobody can figure out how.”
It didn’t seem an unreasonable request so I pulled the duvet across my chest and sat up.
“Okay. I’ll look. But I need to get dressed first.”
“Fair enough.”
But neither man moved.
“I’m not proposing to dress with an audience. At least turn your backs.”

The Celibate Choice is the latest book from multi-genre author Jane Jago and it is out today!