Running on Empty

Del Mangini is a lonely, down-on-her-luck young woman who can barely afford her next meal. When a private investigator blindsides her with the revelation that she was adopted and has a birth mother named Natalie he is looking for, she doesn’t know whether to believe him. How could her parents, who died heroes when she was a teenager, have kept this vital piece of her identity from her?

Then eight-year-old Callie shows up on Del’s doorstep with her dog claiming to be her half sister. She can’t bring herself to turn the girl away, yet how can she possibly provide for a kid when she’s already three months behind on her rent?

Del and Callie soon find themselves living out of a car in the small town of Elk Valley, Colorado. Who can they trust, and why is someone following them? The only person who might have answers is the one woman they can’t find—their mother. But secrets, lies, and a political machine could destroy them before they learn the truth about their mother’s past and their own future.

A story of family and resilience, past secrets and present mysteries, written with a sure hand by C. J. Darlington. It will hook you from the start.
—JAMES SCOTT BELL, bestselling thriller author and writing coach