She Was a Friend of Mine

It starts in the trunk.

Bleeding. Half-conscious.

Wondering how the hell she got here.

Scheyenne “Shi” Iverson wakes up bound in the trunk of a car, her body wrecked and her mind fractured. She doesn’t yet know who did this to her—only that the life she had before is gone.

Not long ago, Shi had a family.

A home.

A future that made sense.

Now they’re dead.

As she struggles to piece herself back together, grief gives way to questions the Bay Area doesn’t want answered. From East Palo Alto to Oakland, fragments of truth begin to surface—and one realization becomes impossible to ignore: her family wasn’t caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were executed. And whoever ordered it has enough power to make the truth disappear.

With law enforcement offering little more than silence and half-answers, Shi is left with one constant: her best friend, Vicky. Together, they face a choice that will define everything that follows—walk away and survive, or start asking questions that could get them killed.

What begins as grief hardens into resolve.

Shi doesn’t yet know who she’s hunting, or how deep the violence runs—but she knows she can’t go back to the person she was before the trunk, before the bodies, before the truth.

She Was a Friend of Mine is a gritty, emotionally driven Bay Area crime novel about loss, loyalty, and the moment survival gives way to intent. It is the explosive opening chapter of a larger saga, following a young woman whose search for answers pulls her into a world she was never meant to survive.