P N Mack Listen on Pocket FM

EARSHOT

If he can hear you, he can kill you.

A sniper kills Detective Matt Kane's wife while she is on the phone with him. Now the killer the press calls the Listener is on Matt's line. A crime thriller in audio, where every sound matters.

Listen on Pocket FM Hear the first call

A series by P N Mack

EARSHOT cover: a detective reads his phone in a dark office while a woman stands behind him and the shadow of a man in headphones looms on the wall.
Now on Pocket FM

Move. Scroll. Tap. He hears it.Relax, this page can't use your mic. He can.

Episode 1 · 10:47 p.m.

Her last call.

Matt is at his desk downtown. His wife, Bec, calls from their kitchen. She has a feeling that something is wrong. He tells her to go to bed.

He hears every word she says. So does someone else.

Bec
Home
  1. My phone buzzes across a stack of case files. Ten forty-seven at night.
  2. The floor is so quiet that I can hear the lights hum.
  3. I pick up. It's Bec. Her voice is tight and small.
  4. BecMatt. Are you okay?
  5. I lean back. The chair creaks. My thumb finds the old steel watch she gave me.
  6. Matt“I'm fine,” I tell her. “Why?”
  7. She hesitates.
  8. BecI don't know. I just had a feeling.
  9. I can see her in our kitchen, her gray cardigan on the back of a chair. If I were home, her fingers would be on my wrist by now.
  10. She's a hospice nurse. She reads a pulse the way I read a voice.
  11. She takes a breath.
  12. BecAre you safe?
  13. I know that voice.
  14. Before I worked murders, I talked people off ledges for a living. I heard that voice on a hundred calls.
  15. Keep them talking, and they live. They teach you that on day one.
  16. I keep my voice light and tell her,
  17. MattSix hours of case files, Bec. The only thing in danger here is my eyesight. You're the one home alone with a seven-year-old.
  18. She almost laughs. Almost. Then she says,
  19. BecTeo's asleep.
  20. Matt“Then you're fine,” I tell her. “Go to bed.”
  21. She doesn't answer.
  22. Behind her, I hear our kitchen. The fridge hums. The house ticks.
  23. Somewhere, a door clicks shut.
  24. Ordinary sounds. I tell myself that nothing is wrong.
  25. Bec says the same thing at every bedside. Nobody should die with something unsaid.
  26. Then she drops her voice, close to the phone.
  27. BecMatt.
  28. She waits until I'm really listening. Then she says it.
  29. BecI love you.
  30. I take a breath to say it back.
  31. Glass shatters.
  32. The phone clatters on tile.
  33. Then, a heartbeat late, a crack rolls in from far away.
  34. I know that gap. Rifle. Long range.
  35. I'm on my feet. My chair slams the wall behind me.
  36. I shout into the phone.
  37. MattRebecca!
  38. Nothing comes back.
  39. I shout again.
  40. MattRebecca, talk to me!
  41. The line stays open. Through it, our fridge still hums. Like nothing happened.
  42. And under the hum, close to the phone, so faint I almost miss it:
  43. breathing.
  44. I talk low and fast.
  45. MattBec? Bec? I hear you. Stay with me.
  46. The breathing doesn't answer.
  47. I grab my radio.
  48. Matt“Kane, Robbery-Homicide,” I tell dispatch. “Shots fired at my residence. My wife is down. My son is in the house.”
Hear what happens next
Bec
Incoming call

Sound on · 3:10 from Episode 1

The series

A sniper who listens before he kills.

LAPD Detective Matt Kane used to talk people off ledges for a living. He can make anyone talk, except his own family.

Then a sniper kills his wife, Rebecca, in the middle of a phone call with him. The department calls her a random victim. Matt blames Roman Vail, the billionaire whose son he sent to prison for life.

Taken off the case, Matt hunts the killer in secret, with his badge on the line, a daughter who chases the Listener on her own true-crime podcast, and a son who has not said one word since that night.

And the Listener is not finished with Matt. He calls. He plays things back. Every sound leads somewhere darker.

Genre
Crime thriller
Setting
Los Angeles
Format
Audio series
Listen on
Pocket FM
The detective

Matt Kane

A former crisis negotiator in LAPD Homicide. He counts everything: seconds, feet, days. He wears the old steel watch his wife gave him.

Keep them talking, and they live.
The killer

The Listener

A sniper who gets into your phone and your home, and listens for days. He waits for the moment that hurts the most. Then he fires.

Nobody ever listens back.
The billionaire

Roman Vail

His security empire guards the most powerful people in Los Angeles. No phone. No watch. He waits in silence until you talk.

Every man has a price.
P N Mack: the husband-and-wife writing team, together on a rain-wet city street at dusk under neon signs.
P N Mack

About the authors

Two writers. One ear for danger.

P N Mack is a husband-and-wife writing team. We write fast, twisty crime thrillers where every sound matters.

EARSHOT is written for the ear. There is no page to flip back to, so every scene has to land in the dark. You know who is speaking before they speak. You know where you are from the first sound. And every episode ends on a moment you can't walk away from.

We plan like the Listener does: patiently, with every detail in place long before anything happens. Then we make you wait for it.

Creators of EARSHOT

Put your headphones on.

EARSHOT is on Pocket FM now. Start with Episode 1, and keep your phone where you can hear it.

Listen to EARSHOT on Pocket FM