**Bargain Book With 4.5 stars on 32 Reviews! KND Brand New Thriller of The Week – JUMP by Stephen R. Stober – Now Just 99 Cents on Kindle**

September 13, 2013September 13, 2013 by Kindle Nation

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And for the next week all of these great reading choices are brought to you by our brand new Thriller of the Week, by Stephen R. Stober’s JUMP. Please check it out!

JUMP

by Stephen R. Stober

4.5 stars – 32 Reviews

Kindle Price: 99 cents

Text-to-Speech: Enabled

Don’t have a Kindle? Get yours here.

Here’s the set-up:

Jeremy Roberts is suddenly a stranger in his own body with no memory of his life. When he discovers he’s entangled in an unsolved tragedy, he must mount a high-stakes investigation to rescue someone he can’t remember.

Jeremy Roberts’ life is reset one morning in Boston’s Quincy Market when an inexplicable event leaves him a stranger in his own body. He quickly relearns his name and his place in the world, but can’t explain the heavy feeling of grief that pervades every moment of his day.

Hiding his complete lack of memory about his life, he sets to work finding the source of his emotional anguish. Uncovering files from his own computer, he learns that a terrible tragedy has befallen his family and its mystery remains unsolved.

Calling on a crack private investigator and a computer security expert, Jeremy delves deep into the case. After piecing together a startling theory, he plunges into a daring plan to rescue a woman he can’t remember… before it is too late.

JUMP is an edge-of-your seat thriller that will have you hooked until the very last page.

Reviews

“Fabulous … This book will kidnap your eyeballs until you have nothing left to read.”

“Loved it loved it loved it … a great ride with a fabulous conclusion. Now where is the f_____ing sequel?”

“This book is outstanding.” “JUMP’s Jeremy Roberts is the new superhero for this age… for all the ages.”

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Lunch Time Reading! KND Thriller of The Week Free Excerpt Featuring Ed Baldwin’s The Devil On Chardonnay

September 9, 2013 by Kindle Nation

On Friday we announced that Ed Baldwin’s The Devil On Chardonnay is our Thriller of the Week and the sponsor of thousands of great bargains in the thriller, mystery, and suspense categories: over 200 free titles, over 600 quality 99-centers, and thousands more that you can read for free through the Kindle Lending Library if you have Amazon Prime!

Now we’re back to offer our weekly free Thriller excerpt:

The Devil On Chardonnay (Boyd Chailland)

by Ed Baldwin

4.8 stars – 5 Reviews

Kindle Price: 99 cents

Or currently FREE for Amazon Prime Members Via the Kindle Lending Library

Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled

Don’t have a Kindle? Get yours here.

Here’s the set-up:

The second thriller in the Boyd Chailland series.

Boyd Chailland evolved after his adventure in The Other Pilot. He took a beating in that tale, and he’s wary. Yet, he needs action; more action than just flying high performance fighters and training to be in the first wave in the next war. When General Ferguson shows up at Boyd’s wing commander’s office with a Top Secret assignment, he takes it without asking what it is. It’s an international thrill ride of bad actors and close calls.

Some people died on an isolated island in the Indian Ocean after developing a secret vaccine for the world’s most deadly virus; Ebola. Boyd is the team leader to find out who and why. What a team it is; Colonel Joe Smith, shy army pathologist and world expert on Ebola, Raybon Clive and Davann Goodman, disabled vets flying smuggled booze into Muslim Mombasa in an old seaplane, Pamela Prescott, lawyer and FBI agent with a drinking problem, and MacDonnald Wilde, paroled felon and con man.

The trail of death, betrayal, and bad intentions leads from jihadists in Africa to diamond brokers in Europe, to bankers in South Carolina, and finally to the century old sailing yacht Chardonnay and her owner, the notorious European merchant banker Michelle Meilland. Supported by Strategic Command’s Proliferation Security Initiative command center at Ft. Belvoir in suburban Washington, DC, Boyd is backed up by the authority and resources of the entire U.S. government, yet that’s not enough and when the chips are down, it’s just Boyd Chailland. The plot accelerates across the Atlantic in hurricane season as the forces of evil stay one jump ahead of America’s slow moving response to an action packed climax in the Azores.

This story has many heroes and villains; all well meaning, all flawed. But, there’s only one devil on Chardonnay.

Don’t miss the first book in the Boyd Chailland series, The Other Pilot.

And here, for your reading pleasure, is our free excerpt:

CHAPTER ONE

Democratic Republic of the Congo

Blood was everywhere. It oozed from cuts and dripped from noses, and even fell like tears from saddened eyes. The shiny black skin of these farmers, recently prosperous and now mostly dead, was blazoned with blotches and tiny red spots.

Fifteen years of working with laboratory animals at the Pasteur Institute in Paris had not prepared Jacques for the emotional impact of applying a tourniquet to the arm of a pregnant woman as she begged for water, drawing tube after tube of blood until the vein collapsed and then moving on to the next hut, leaving her to die.

Sweat ran down his sides and he fought for breath through the filter of the biological-hazard suit he wore. He’d worn these suits before, but it had never felt this close. He carefully put the filled vacuum tubes into compartments in a Styrofoam container, making sure no blood touched the outside of the tubes. He would be the one who would handle them later, without the suit.

“Jacques! Allons!”

Jacques turned toward the muffled call. Willi, his assistant, stood with his bloody hands held out awkwardly at his sides, his half-filled box at his feet.

“Non!” Jacques yelled through the suit. He pointed at the box and then the next hut.

Willi stood for a moment, then pulled the box into the dark interior of a plywood shack.

Waiting in the hotel in Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of the Congo, for nearly two years had not been easy. Jacques had recruited Willi more for companionship than technical help. The big German’s easy smile and long-winded stories in the bar had helped pass the time as the streets were taken over by roaming bandits periodically making travel outside the hotel unsafe. The hotel housed a pleasant enough international community of mining and oil-field engineers, diamond buyers, embassy personnel, aid workers and advisers.

Ironically, it was one of the country’s incessant civil wars that allowed Jacques to finally beat the World Health Organization to an outbreak of a rare filovirus. Rwandan soldiers had again entered the republic from the east, this time to challenge the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR), a Hutu army bent on repeating the Rwandan massacre of the Tutsi, and had gotten into it with the Congolese Army; a three-way fight that lit up the eastern third of the country. Chaos reigned, and most of the international organizations stopped all travel to wait it out. Rumor on the streets in Kinshasa told of an outbreak of hemorrhagic fever on the Lulua River downstream from Kananga in the Kasai Occidental district, midway between the capital and combat in the east. Jacques and Willi chartered a plane and flew to Kananga.

“Batarde!” Willi yelled as he crashed backwards through the wall of a hut, pulled by a naked man with blood streaming from his mouth and nose clinging to his waist. Willi beat at the man’s head and arms until his hold loosened and he fell away.

“Okay,” Jacques said, shaking his head and motioning for Willi to follow him. He carried his second box toward a waiting pickup.

Willi quickly followed and, now a paragon of efficiency, loaded all the boxes into the bed of the battered Toyota.

A wedding feast had brought Ebola out of the forest. Not content with chicken or pig, the villagers had wanted something special: monkey. The hunters shot a big male, and the skinning and gutting had been a communal affair. The illness spread so quickly that the first villagers to die were left unburied, rotting in the sun.

Jacques’ truck bounced along a rutted trail through the jungle for a mile before breaking out into a clearing where loggers had cut gigantic, centuries-old iroko trees for export as African teak. Other trees had been cut up for charcoal, leaving an atrium in the forest.

Hauling the teak out of the jungle to the sawmill at Kananga required the loggers to build a better road than the rutted one Jacques had just driven, so the going from here back to a waiting plane would be easier.

Jacques and Willi jumped out of the truck and retrieved their boxes, loading them into a crate taken from the back of a Land Rover parked next to one of the huge stumps. Stepping away, they opened their biohazard suits, being careful not to touch the outside surface with their exposed limbs.

“My suit tore when I fell through that building,” Willi said in French, holding up his left arm while standing in the legs of the suit.

“The skin is not broken,” Jacques said reassuringly as he looked at the bare arm. He stepped out of his suit and tossed it into the back of the Toyota.

“That was horrible back there,” Willi said as he pulled his left leg out of the suit and bent over to remove the right leg. “Why would anyone want the Ebola virus? It is the devil himself.”

Jacques quickly pulled a small automatic pistol from the pocket of his bush pants and brought it close to Willi’s head. The slight crack of the report was scarcely noticeable in the vastness of the forest.

Willi crumpled to the ground, blood flowing from a small hole behind his ear.

Jacques grabbed Willi’s shoulders and dragged him to the side of the Toyota, propping him against the rear wheel. He crouched behind the truck and pointed the pistol at the gas tank beneath it. He fired one shot, then stood and sealed the crate holding the vials of blood and dragged it to the Rover. With some difficulty, he loaded it into the back. He started the Rover and left it running with the front door open while he rummaged around in a satchel in the back seat and pulled out a hand grenade. He walked casually back to the Toyota, tossing the grenade from hand to hand like a juggler.

Using a handkerchief to prevent his fingers from being soiled, Jacques opened Willi’s mouth and inserted the grenade. Blood was still trickling from the bullet hole in the dying man’s head, running in dark rivulets down his neck to soak into his shirt, wet from shoulder to waist.

“Goodbye, Willi,” Jacques said and sat back on his heels for a moment, looking into the lifeless eyes staring out of half-open lids. He fought back the tightness in his throat. Then he pulled the pin on the grenade and sprang up, covering the hundred feet to the Rover with the speed of a track star.

When the grenade exploded, obliterating Willi’s head and igniting the gasoline vapor, Jacques’ Rover was fishtailing down the logging road headed for Kananga.

It wasn’t the 50,000 Euros, Willi’s share of the payment for Ebola, it was his unreliability that caused Jacques to decide to eliminate him. The episode in the village was just the beginning. The hard part of the bargain lay ahead. The deal was to capture Ebola, replicate and purify it, and leave no trail.

CHAPTER TWO

Poinsett Bombing Range

The flash was obscured by the roof of the Chevy van, and smoke flew out of both windows.

“Shack,” the range officer said immediately.

Boyd Chailland looked back over his left shoulder to see his practice bomb hit and grunted against five G’s as his F-16 Falcon pulled out of its dive. He snapped a left turn and throttled back, level at 2,000 feet.

“Anyone want to press?” he asked over the radio.

As usual there was a dollar riding on each event in the dive bombing mission: low level, high level, and pops. One bomb per pass, two passes per event, three events: three bucks. Like dollar Nassau in golf. A press means double or nothing on the last hole, or in this case, bomb.

“Negative,” his wingman said, followed by two clicks of static as the other two pilots keyed their microphones but said nothing.

Leading a four-ship flight on the Poinsett Range near Sumter in South Carolina, Boyd flicked the second turn in the square they flew around the impact zone and saw the new lieutenant miss his first pop by a hundred yards. After the third turn, Boyd pushed the throttle forward into afterburner and pulled back on the stick, feeling the G’s pushing him into the seat as the Falcon shot upward. He glanced into the impact area and located the target; the flat black van was still smoking from his last direct hit. Still headed west, he glanced at the altimeter and at 5,000 feet squared the wings east and west and pulled the nose over, pointing now to the south and the target.

“Biker 1 in hot,” he said over the radio, announcing his intention to the range officer to drop a bomb on this pass. Upside down and craning his neck backward, Boyd again located the van. He pulled the nose beyond horizontal into a 60 degree dive at the edge of the trees a half-mile north of the truck and rotated his Falcon so that he was upright as he began his dive.

Now looking through his heads-up display, he could see the van, an attitude indicator superimposed on the crosshairs of the targeting device, and a “pipper” indicating the spot where the computer had calculated the bomb would land if it were dropped now. Moving his aircraft, he brought the “pipper” below and slightly to the right of the van, now growing in the viewfinder, and used the attitude indicator to make sure his wings were square to the target so when he pulled out he’d go up and not sideways. When he was 500 feet above the drop point, he moved the aircraft so the “pipper’ was on the van. He could see the holes from previous hits.

Practice bombs, about the size of a man’s arm and made of cast iron, weigh about 25 pounds. They contain a detonator and a small amount of black powder produce a flash and some smoke when they hit so the range officer can score the drop.

At 1,500 feet, Boyd pressed the green button on the stick in his right hand and pulled the nose up. He grunted as he strained against the G-force and rotated the wings counterclockwise so he could look over his shoulder and see his bomb hit.

“Shack,” the range officer said again.

With four shacks out of six drops, Boyd had won this wager going away. He pulled back on the throttle to slow down as he headed east and watched his wingman at the top of his pop maneuver. The wingman corrected a shallow dive as he descended, dropped his bomb and pulled up.

“Twenty-four,” the range officer called out a moment later.

Boyd looked up and behind his wingman to see the lieutenant at the top of his pop maneuver, struggling to get his aircraft pointed south while bringing his nose through horizontal to a dive. He was halfway to the drop altitude before he thought to bring his wings around so he could pull out after he dropped. He dropped below the thousand-foot minimum altitude, and the bomb disappeared into the trees, 200 yards from the impact zone.

“Foul!” The range officer said ominously.

Boyd made a mental note to take the kid out in the D model the next week and teach him to drop bombs before he hurt someone. The poor performance of the new pilot had taken some of the fun out of the mission. He was already thinking of a way to skip out after the debrief so he wouldn’t have to listen to the kid make excuses for missing the whole damn drop zone with his final bomb.

It had been fun rat-racing single file down the Wateree River to the Congaree River just above the treetops, zipping across Lake Marion and east to the Santee River and then out over the Atlantic. They’d entered the Military Operations Area and gone supersonic just for grins before climbing to 30,000 feet and doing rejoins and formation flying. Boyd would rather have done air combat maneuvers, but the two new pilots needed some basic work before going up against a captain with 2,000 hours flying, including six years in the F-16. After expending most of their fuel and with their 12 minutes of range time only 20 minutes away, Boyd had waggled his wings to signal “rejoin.” He headed west, throttling back to save fuel.

It was time to head home, debrief and hit the club on a Friday night. In his younger days that would have been the highlight of the week; drinking and raising hell with the other fighter jocks. Now, that wasn’t enough. Boyd wanted something else to happen later, something dark. Something he didn’t understand.

“Biker 1 to Shaw approach control,” Boyd said, initiating the sequence to get his formation permission to land at Shaw Air Force Base, just 10 miles away between Sumter and Columbia, South Carolina. He felt more excitement now than he had during the dive bombing. He was sure now he would slip away from the festivities at the club.

For the past couple of months, he’d thrown himself into running and working out, with free-weight sessions lasting an hour most nights. He’d concentrated on a rotation of presses and curls, exhausting each muscle group to avoid looking into places within himself that he didn’t like to see. It wasn’t just the woman in Colorado. He missed her, but he missed something else more.

Landing within a minute of the estimated landing time filed in his mission plan, Boyd turned off the firing mechanism beneath his ejection seat and opened the canopy as he turned off the runway. Steering with his feet he placed both elbows on the sides of the aircraft and pulled into the slot indicated by the ground crew, who would inspect the aircraft for damage and armed bombs that hadn’t dropped. They put chocks under the wheels and a safety tag on the 20 mm cannon. He opened his visor and dropped one side of his oxygen mask as he looked over at the three other aircraft pulling into position beside him.

The shimmering heat of a South Carolina July afternoon added to the heat from the four jet engines, and the feeling of sweat evaporating from his damp flight suit reminded Boyd he must be thirsty. He pulled his water flask out of the G-suit pocket on his left calf and had a long drink.

The cool water reminded him of a warm night in Texas the summer before. He remembered drinking out of a gallon jug like a parched desert traveler and looking into the laughing green eyes of a pretty girl with long hair. Under the endless, starry Texas sky, they’d planned the adventure that changed their lives. After water had slaked his body’s thirst, the inner man had demanded beer, and they had finished a six-pack of ice cold, silvery cans.

Boyd wondered whether a couple of longnecks would bring back that feeling.

“No,” he said aloud and sighed. Longnecks would not bring back that feeling. He turned to look down at the other aircraft, watching to see that the tires were properly chocked and that the crews were looking for damage, making sure the guns were safe and hitting each checkpoint. He looked back over his shoulder to see whether the next flight was on time and ready to assume the positions his flight occupied.

*******

“Shit hot, Boyd. Shit hot.” The squadron commander slapped Boyd on the shoulder as he stepped behind the bar in the pilot’s lounge in their squadron building to grab a cold beer, the day’s bomb scores in hand.

Boyd smiled, tipped his beer bottle and took a sip. He turned in the swivel seat at the end of the bar and scanned the room, watching the dozen guys excitedly reliving their day. He tried to look like he was caught up in the camaraderie. As soon as others began to head over to the Officer’s Lounge at the all-ranks club, Boyd left.

CHAPTER THREE

Bone’s Club

Bone’s Club was back in the bottomland, 200 yards from the gravel road and two miles from the highway bridge crossing the Great Pee Dee River. Spanish moss hung from a live oak whose branches shaded the parking lot from the sun during the day and a lone mercury vapor light at night. Behind the club, the Great Pee Dee slid past silent and dark. Cypress trees marched out from the shore, thinning as the river grew deeper.

Moths circled the light and spiraled down to the gravel to recover and try again. The club was made of concrete blocks with tiny windows up high; an ancient window air conditioner rattled against the heat and humidity. The door was open. The rich baritone voice of an old country and Western favorite spilled out into the night.

Boyd cut the engine of his pickup, newer but otherwise identical to the half-dozen others already in the lot. He wore running shoes, jeans and a black T-shirt. As he crossed the gravel to the door, he felt alive and engaged. The feeling wasn’t there yet, but it was close.

Standing in the door, eyes adjusting to the light, he saw the room as the people in the room saw him. Tall, broad-shouldered and lean, he’d been there before, just looking, scouting it out. It was perfect. He crossed the room, passing the pool table where the big guy, Crank, stood with a cue, poised for a shot but staring at Boyd.

“Bud longneck,” Boyd said as he sat at the bar and turned to see Crank take his shot. Bone opened the bottle and set it on the counter. His dress shirt seemed out of place with the clientele and with his own greasy black hair and long sideburns. The khaki work pants were clean, pressed and held up by a tooled black leather belt. He wore Wellington boots. He took Boyd’s money and returned with change from the mechanical cash register with the ornate metalwork of a bygone day.

Crank was clearly proud of his break. He looked at Boyd and smirked, then walked around the table for his next shot, stretching the front of his huge bib overalls with his considerable girth. Like statues, the others sat, leaned or stood, watching Boyd. The next shot went in, and Crank flashed Boyd a grin, his teeth were punctuated by bits of tobacco from the wad of chew under his lower lip. He spit into a coffee can under the table and took a third shot; stretching the length of the table, he revealed a thinning, dirty-blond crown. Boyd took a long sip of beer and turned to make small talk with Bone.

When he felt the brush from behind, he knew it was time. Boyd stiffened and saw Bone move away. This was a club for regulars. Strangers were an event, and the highway being two miles away wasn’t an accident. Boyd understood Bone’s formal attire now. It was sort of official, like a referee. It was designed to keep things from getting out of hand. Someone could get killed.

“Oh. Sorry,” Bobby said, acting surprised.

They weren’t going to start with the big guy. Bobby was a bit under six feet and chunky. Of the six guys there, he looked to be the fourth-toughest. They were going to give someone else a chance to kick some ass before the big guy stepped in to finish it.

Boyd stood. They all stood. He stepped away from the bar, not wanting to get pinned there. Crank grinned, obviously feeling as good as Boyd felt.

Bobby telegraphed the punch a millennium before he threw it. First, he squeezed up his face in a grimace, then shifted his weight to his right foot and feinted with his left hand while drawing back his right. When he shifted to the left foot the punch came straight in. Boyd’s head retreated ahead of it, allowing it to just graze his jaw. He took two steps back to be in the center of the room.

Bobby was right with him, off-balance but coming with the right again, thinking Boyd was in full retreat. Boyd slipped to his right, and the punch bounced off the side of his head. The left was right behind it and hit Boyd square on the forehead.

Something clicked. The feeling was there. With the punch, the adrenaline kicked in at last. The rush was better than a climax. Bobby’s momentum carried him into Boyd and he grabbed for a bear hug. Boyd pushed him back and, when Bobby flailed a windmill right, Boyd flicked a left jab into his fat, wild-eyed face. The solid contact with bone felt wonderful. The right cross smashed Bobby’s cheekbone and he went down on his butt, dazed.

“Pickin’ on Bobby!” someone shouted.

The next two came at once. He slipped a right under another windmill punch and dropped the smaller one, but the other landed a solid punch that spun Boyd’s head around and staggered him back. He grabbed the guy by the shirt and pulled him close, enduring some body punches and savoring the free-flowing high. Pushing forward to the center of the room, he trapped the man’s hands between their bodies and pounded his face with a half-dozen fast jabs from close range, turning it into a pulpy mess. He dropped him and stood alone. Crank still had the pool cue as he strode across the space between them, tobacco-stained teeth bared in a gleeful, childlike grin.

*******

The pressure on his chest was not painful, just there. Then there was the beep-beep of a Road Runner cartoon, punctuated by whistles and insane laughter, followed by a wet kiss, sloppy, all over his face, and warm. It smelled like bacon.

The headache came when he opened his eyes. Sitting on his chest were two children. The 3-year-old, nude, flicked the channel changer between two cartoons while his 2-year-old brother, in a wet diaper, ate a piece of bacon and wrestled for control of the changer. The dog, a hound mix, licked Boyd’s face while Boyd lay on a black Naugahyde couch beneath the front picture window of a 14-foot-wide mobile home. Seeing his pants on the floor by the television, Boyd raised up to see blood on his boxer shorts, his only remaining garment.

“Oh. You’re alive,” a female voice came from behind him. He turned to see a woman in a faded cotton nightgown frying bacon in the kitchen. She was in her mid-to-late 20s, and her breasts jiggled freely as she scraped the frying pan to remove the bacon. Her long hair, shoulder length the night before, was tied in a simple knot behind her head. He remembered her as the waitress at the bar at the hotel in Sumter. He’d pulled those pink panties down sometime in a vague, misty past.

“When did I … uh,” he said, thickly. His mouth tasted worse than the dog’s.

“Oh, you showed up about 12. You came in here with a busted lip and a powerful need.” She laughed and shook her head, breaking an egg into the bacon grease.

She looked fresh and happy. Obviously not affected by whatever had made Boyd so ill, she moved quickly and efficiently around the kitchen.

“Did we, uh …”

“We sure did, baby,” she said with a smile, turning to face him. “You were great, till you got into that moonshine jar Billy Ray left over there. You better stick to fightin’ and lovin’ and leave the drinkin’ to Billy Ray.”

“Who’s Billy Ray?”

“My husband. Ex-husband, really. The divorce is final sometime next month. He lives with his mother. You like your eggs runny?”

An officer and a gentleman, he thought, as he surveyed the scene he had created. An open door across the living room showed a king-size bed with rumpled sheets. His jaw was simply sore, but his right hand was swollen and purple behind the little finger. The nude boy walked down the hall to the bedrooms in the back. The other one dug into a plate of grits and sugar with a side of bacon his mother had just placed on the floor in front of him. The dog looked alert for an opening on the bacon.

“This is Billy Ray’s weekend with the kids. I need to take them over to his mother’s before 9. Then we can get back to business.”

“Why 9?” he asked, just to say something. He didn’t feel like what she was planning.

“That’s when he usually comes to get ’em. Last thing I need is to have you and Billy Ray trying to see who can throw who out that picture window first.”

She laughed again and looked at him, shaking her head in disbelief. “Don’t know why I always get the ones with demons.”

A South Carolina Saturday morning, he thought, looking for his socks, feeling miserable and ashamed.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Mission

“Chailland! Wing Commander wants you in his office right now,” the squadron operations officer said, hanging up the desk phone in the office he shared with Boyd. Boyd was just coming out of the men’s room where he’d been running cold water on his hand, hoping to minimize the swelling.

“What’d I do now?” Boyd asked, trying to sound cheerful, but feeling no pleasure in the nagging worry that Crank might still be comatose.

When Boyd walked into the wing commander’s office, the secretary smiled and motioned him toward the open door. He crossed the expanse of carpet smartly and was about to snap to attention and report when the brigadier general stood and spoke first.

“Come in, Boyd. Have a seat.” He motioned toward a chair to the side and sat back in his chair, looking across the shining, nearly empty desktop.

Boyd took the seat and looked down at the general’s desk to see his own personnel file there, open to his photo. The general, taller than Boyd but much thinner, was dressed in a flight suit, the stars on his shoulders clearly setting him apart from the average jock. He was relaxed, calm, almost mellow. He looked back down at the record he’d been reading.

“I was awakened at 5 this morning by a call that a major general was inbound from Andrews and due to land at 0800. Not having heard about the visit beforehand, I assumed I was to be fired and replaced.” He smiled and leaned back in his chair, enjoying his tale. “Then, about 7, he radioed the command post that his visit was classified and he wanted no DV greeting, just a crew bus to bring him here for a meeting with me at 8:30, and with you at 9.” Brigadier General Charles “Dunk” Wells looked at Boyd, waiting for a response.

“General Ferguson?” Boyd asked, knowing it could be no one else.

“Old friends? From another base perhaps?” Wells wanted to know who this guy was.

“No, sir,” Boyd said, straight-faced. He couldn’t tell, and he didn’t want to make his boss mad.

“Well, I thought this might be something interesting, so I had Ginny pull your personnel file. You are an extraordinary fellow. I hadn’t heard that before. You have an Air Force Cross, awarded last year. The citation says it was for valor of the highest order during peacetime, and the aircraft and location are classified.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ve never seen that before. I’ve seen classified locations, never a classified aircraft. Your flight record shows only T-37, T-38 and F-16. Did you fly anything else?”

“Yes, sir.” In his mind Boyd remembered the jolt and fire as the cannon shells hit the engine of the restored P-51 Mustang, and then the silence as he pushed the nose into a dive and, dead stick, began to gain on the attacker who’d assumed he was dead.

“I won’t ask. It must be some story. Apparently they want you to do it again, whatever it was. The general is waiting in the office across the hall. He said he wanted a few minutes with you and then lunch. He’s due to leave at 1400.”

The feeling was back. Ferguson was an admirer, but no friend. Boyd had a deal with Ferguson: Keep his mouth shut about what he knew and what he’d done the summer before, in exchange for a full three-year tour flying Falcons at Shaw followed by an assignment to Fighter Weapons School as faculty. He didn’t want or need anything funny with the promotions board, though they’d offered that. They had a fast track outlined that would have him with stars before he was 40, but Boyd had turned them down because it was mostly schools and Pentagon assignments. Boyd wanted to fly. He’d not expected to ever see Ferguson again.

“Yes, sir,” Boyd said, standing, then smiled at the general and added, “As soon as they say it’s OK, I’ll be glad to tell you all about it.” He knew they never would and that the details of one of the century’s most unusual adventures would be known only to him and a few other participants. He also knew that day in Texas had spawned the demon that had made him go to Bone’s Place.

He crossed the hall and opened the door.

“Boyd. Good to see you.”

Ferguson, dressed in a flight suit with two stars on the epaulets, told the lie with a warm sincere smile. He rose from the couch in the vice commander’s office and shook Boyd’s hand. In his other hand was a manila envelope filled with papers. Boyd closed the door behind him, trying to hide the wince of pain from the general’s firm grip on his recent boxer’s fracture.

“You’ve probably figured out that I’m here to offer you a job. It’s a temporary duty assignment, actually, for 180 days. Afterward, you’ll come back here and finish out your tour as we agreed.”

“I thought this secret, behind-closed-doors stuff was over,” Boyd said, sitting without being asked.

“The government is being run in accordance with the Constitution, if that’s what you’re asking about. As far as this assignment is concerned, we need somebody who can think on his feet. Someone who can take care of himself, keep quiet, and – ”

“ – who doesn’t have a family.” Boyd finished the sentence, cutting off the general who seemed about to make a speech.

“Yeah. That’s part of it, too. This is an uncertain world we live in.”

“I’ll take it.” Boyd said, feeling alive at the prospect of action.

“I thought you would. Your orders are already here.”

“What if I’d declined?”

Ferguson smiled knowingly and said, “Boyd, you’re a shooter, a born shooter. You need to be out in front. Out where the action starts. We planners and schemers need guys like you when the balloon goes up.”

“Is the balloon going up?”

“No. This is not a war. This is something else.”

Ferguson moved behind the vice commander’s desk and emptied the manila envelope, motioning for Boyd to follow and take the seat at the side. “I’ve got a new job. I’m the director of the Counter-Proliferation Task Force. We deal with weapons of mass destruction.”

“Nukes?”

“Nukes, chemical, biological. Whenever one of the intelligence-gathering agencies comes across someone trying to buy, build or deploy such a weapon, they turn the case over to us. We’ve got the experts, and we’re empowered to act, if necessary.”

“Act?”

“It’s a task force; elements of all the services, the complete range of capabilities, from intelligence-gathering to deployment to kinetic response.”

“And I’m in the kinetic-response end of it?” Boyd asked, knowing it would be something else.

Ferguson chuckled. “Well, you sure brought the kinetic response last time, and at a time and a place nobody could have foreseen it would be needed. Like then, we don’t know what we’ve got here, so we’re going to put a shooter in charge from the get-go.”

“Prudent.”

“In January, the World Health Organization called us with the report of an outbreak of a rare disease that’s so dangerous our bio-warfare people don’t even like to talk about it,” Ferguson said as he dumped the contents of the manila envelope onto the desk. He picked up several 8X10 glossy photographs. “This guy, in the top picture there, died of it in less than three days.”

“Humph. I don’t want to go there.”

“No.” Ferguson said, leaning over and pulling reading glasses out of his flight suit pocket. “Look at the next picture.”

“Same guy, from a different angle,” Boyd said, seeing a nude black man with blotches and spots all over him and blood dripping from his nose and mouth. Then he added, “Still dead.”

“See that trickle of blood from his arm, the place where they take blood in a lab? Then, see the footprint there? Looks like a moon boot? The WHO guys said someone in protective gear left 20 people dead in this village in the Democratic Republic of the Congo after drawing a lot of blood. See these other pictures?”

Ferguson took the other photographs and spread them on the desk, pointing out more moon-boot prints and other bodies.

“So?” “Boyd asked, stumped as to why they would want him for something like this.

“No one needs that virus for worthy purposes. Having it is like having a dozen nuclear weapons. Our bio people tell us there’s no way to even transport it safely, much less work with it in anything but the most sophisticated Level 4 containment lab. Someone is playing with Pandora’s Box.”

“Tell me where they are, and I’ll drop a Mark 82 into their jock strap,” Boyd said, leaning back, no longer looking at the gruesome pictures. He chuckled at the thought of a five hundred pound bomb in some guy’s jockstrap.

Ferguson didn’t laugh.

“Day before yesterday, someone sent a distress signal from a previously uninhabited island in the Seychelles. It said, ‘We are dying of a filovirus infection. Quarantine this place. We have made a terrible mistake.’ The Seychelles sent a patrol plane. Both of the buildings on the island were in flames, there were no signs of life.”

Boyd looked darkly at Ferguson, beginning to see what his role might be.

“You’ll be completely protected in a biohazard suit,” the general said. “They say it’s cumbersome, but not really uncomfortable. The rest of the team, for now, is an Army pathologist, one of the world’s experts, but we don’t know what he might find, or find and not recognize. We need somebody there who can, well, do something if it’s needed.”

“Why not send a Navy ship?”

“It’s the middle of the Indian Ocean, and the ships we have there are busy chasing pirates off Somalia.”

Boyd searched Ferguson’s face intently. He was being strung along here.

Ferguson looked up and caught Boyd’s gaze. “Uh, and they don’t want that on one of their ships.”

“Same with the Air Force I’ll bet.”

“Yes.”

“So, two expendables go to this place and look around.”

“Pretty much, yes. Gather some samples. Do autopsies if there are any bodies.”

“That would be the Army guy’s role.”

“Yes.”

“Then what?”

Ferguson paused, looked away, taking his time in answering. “We want you to go to Diego Garcia for a few weeks, uh …”

Long pause.

“It’s a … a kind of a hospital.”

“Quarantine?”

“Yes,” Ferguson said quickly, seemingly relieved not to have had to say that.

“If the Navy doesn’t want ‘that’ on one of their ships, and the Air Force doesn’t want ‘that’ on one of their planes, how do I get from the middle of the Indian Ocean to Diego Garcia?”

“We’re working on a contract flight.”

“Yes, we seem to contract out the real shit jobs. Does the contractor know ‘that’ is going to be on his aircraft?”

“Ah, that would be your job, to explain all that, and to plan the mission.”

Boyd laughed, his head dropped back and he looked up at the ceiling, shoulders shaking. He was oblivious to the stern look he was getting from Ferguson. The laugh went on for three or four breaths before he stopped, still smiling, and looked again at Ferguson.

“I’ll bet I wasn’t the first guy to get a chance to go on this adventure.”

“It just came up yesterday. You’re the first.”

“OK. So, I go to the Seychelles, babysit an Army pathologist looking for bodies, pack ’em up in bags or something, then fly to Diego, hope I don’t get sick, and then what?”

“Take what you find and figure out who’s trying to do what. You’ll be in charge of the team. Contact me for whatever you need, but operate independently.”

“When do I leave?”

“Fourteen hundred. I’ll fly you back to D.C. in my C-21. We have you on a flight to Mombasa in the morning.”

“Oh, and what is this thing I’m looking for?”

“Ebola.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Packing up

Eight Ball emerged from beneath the porch as Boyd pulled up in a cloud of dust and jumped out of the truck. The big black Lab’s tail hit the wooden steps solidly three times as he stood expectantly, waiting for Boyd to offer his hand.

“Goin’ on a trip, big guy. Clyde Carlisle is gonna drop by every couple days. He may move in next week if he can dump his lease. I told him about the covey we’ve been watching behind the bean field.” Boyd talked as he would to a roommate. He knelt, rubbed the big Lab’s ears. He was sure Eight Ball understood. Boyd climbed the steps and opened the rusted screen door, sorting the keys on his ring and finding the house key.

“You’re gonna like Clyde,” Boyd said, Eight Ball following as he rushed into the bedroom and pulled out his desert camo travel bag. “He’s the guy we went fishing with over on Lake Marion. You saw a duck and jumped out. Nearly swamped us. Gonna have to learn not to do that, or we won’t get invited back.” He packed quickly and light.

The landlord had apologized for the bare wooden floor of the old house and had offered to put down some tile or carpet if Boyd would pay another 10 bucks a month in rent. The gray, worn wood reminded Boyd of a little house from long ago, and he’d elected to buy some throw rugs.

A car drove up in front. Eight Ball ran to the door, tail wagging in anticipation of meeting yet another new friend. Clyde Carlisle, dressed in a flight suit with bronze oak leaves on the epaulets, bounded up the steps.

“Secret mission! Damn, Boyd, you get all the luck,” Clyde said as Boyd opened the screen. He knelt and rubbed the dog’s ears, then entered the house and began looking around. “This’ll work great. I think I can get moved in right away.”

“Let me show you where that covey is,” Boyd said, packed already and dropping his bag at the door. He walked back into the kitchen and pointed out the window. “They’re usually around that brush pile on the other side of those beans back there. Eight Ball knows how to find ’em. We’ve been keeping our distance. They’ve still got chicks now.”

“I’ll give ’em some space.”

“Food’s in there,” Boyd said, pointing to the dog food in the pantry. They settled the rent and utilities in the time it took Boyd to walk through the front room and down the steps with his bag. He paused at the truck to rub Eight Ball’s ears again, waved at Clyde and left.

******

Boyd parked his truck in the lot across the street from the squadron building, lugged his bag through the double doors to the desk where the flights were posted and gave the keys to the airman behind the desk.

“Major Carlisle will come by sometime this afternoon to pick up the truck. My locker key is on there, too. I’m leaving my helmet and G-suit. Keep those dirtbags out of there,” he said with a nod toward his friends. Several of the other pilots had gathered, knowing he was leaving and curious about where to.

“Can’t be much of a TDY if you won’t need your gear,” said the lieutenant, who’d now have to learn the pop maneuver from someone else.

“We’ll see,” Boyd said, shaking hands all around and heading out the doors in the back leading to the flight line. He could see the general’s C-21 parked out among the F-16s. He waved jauntily, entirely consistent with his mood as he carried his one bag out to the plane.

The unknown was a challenge he was willing to take. The last time he’d solved a mystery, it was out of honor to a fallen flier. He’d been unwilling to drop the trail until he knew where it led. Today, he was going to do it to feed something started then, something that was no longer satisfied with supersonic aircraft and practicing for war. There must be others like him, needing to be out on the edge of their own strength, stamina and guile. Most would draw their pay from terrorist, underworld or hostile government sources. This thought gave him a pleasant anticipatory buzz. When the ass kicking started, there’d be no reason to hold back.

Continued….

Click on the title below to download the entire book and keep reading

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The Devil On Chardonnay (Boyd Chailland)

by Ed Baldwin

4.8 stars – 5 Reviews

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Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled

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Here’s the set-up:

The second thriller in the Boyd Chailland series.

This story has many heroes and villains; all well meaning, all flawed. But, there’s only one devil on Chardonnay.

Don’t miss the first book in the Boyd Chailland series, The Other Pilot.

5-Star Amazon Reviews

“… If you love airplanes, ships, medical thrillers or just a good story that has scary plausibility, this book is for you.”

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About The Author

Ed Baldwin writes adventure stories. He has lived in every southern state except Mississippi, and he spent the night in jail there once. That was the origin of his first novel, “Bookman,” which is about a door to door salesman traveling the Mid-South during the turbulent 1960’s.

Ed was a small town family doctor and flight surgeon in the Colorado Air National Guard when he was recalled to active duty for the first Persian Gulf War in 1991. Already a published author, he spent the next 19 years seeking assignments and experiences he could use to write adventure fiction. By the time he retired in 2009 Ed had served air crew duty over every continent except Antarctica and in nearly every Air Force aircraft. His assignments included the Pentagon, Space Command, Strategic Command, and the Air Force Flight Test Center, and his security clearance had letters after Top Secret.

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Ed will be traveling in Central Asia to gather additional material for the third novel in the Boyd Chailland series, “The Mingrelian.” Armenia and the Republic of Georgia are the exotic locations for this scariest of all the Chailland stories. Watch for it in early 2014.

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September 2, 2013 by Kindle Nation

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Isabel’s Run (Danny Logan Mystery #3)

by M.D. Grayson

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When danger comes lurking in the night, most people run home and hide—safe behind a locked door. For others, though, running home isn’t the answer. For these unlucky ones, when the front door closes and locks at night—the horror’s not locked outside. It’s locked inside.

Isabel Delgado knows all about horror. For nearly five years, her step-father subjects her to the kind of abuse and depravation that no child should ever have to endure. But Isabel survives. Her spirit is strong and she never gives up hope. On the morning of her 16th birthday, Isabel takes a stand. She wakes early, gathers her things in a school backpack, and with a last look behind, she runs. But Isabel’s not prepared for what she finds.

In the third Danny Logan mystery novel, Seattle author M.D. Grayson brings Danny Logan and the entire team at Logan PI–”Toni” Blair, Kenny Hale, and “Doc” Kiahtel—back for their most exciting and most important adventure yet. Their mission—find Isabel and rescue her from the street gangs and the seething cauldron of teen-age prostitution and human trafficking.

And here, for your reading pleasure, is our free excerpt:

Prologue

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

4:45 p.m.

ISABEL DELGADO WAS in trouble. She sneaked a glance out of the corner of her eye as the uniformed security guard approached. She was seated on an iron bench outside the Terraces food court, pretending to be absorbed in a directory brochure of the Alderwood Mall in Lynnwood, Washington. The guard drew closer. Not again, Isabel thought. She fought to remain calm. She’d already been run off earlier in the day by a different guard when she’d been unable to come up with a quick answer as to why she was hanging around in the same area all morning long. That guard threatened to call the police and have her arrested for loitering if he saw her again. Isabel had left in a hurry. She’d completely circled the mall, figuring that the guard wouldn’t wait that long to catch her again. But in the end she had nowhere to go, so now, three hours later, she was back, and another guard was approaching.

Isabel had no desire to push her luck, but she was out of ideas, and she was out of prospects. She’d tried to lay low since the earlier episode while she waited for something to happen, and she’d been pretty successful—no one had even talked to her except for a cute girl with red hair a couple of hours ago who’d said that she, too, was running. But then the girl suddenly left ten minutes later, and Isabel was alone again. Since then: nobody. Which was fine with her. She knew she needed to do something—but she didn’t want to make a mistake. Above all, she didn’t want to be sent back home—couldn’t be sent back home. She’d decided that if she were arrested, she’d lie about who she was so that they couldn’t send her back. Meanwhile, she waited—waited for something to happen.

She used her peripheral vision and concentrated on the new guard. He was younger. If he stopped, maybe he’d be nicer. From twenty-five feet away, she could hear his footsteps as he approached, keys jangling quietly at his side. He whistled softly to himself, the same quiet, absent-minded way her father used to whistle when he came up the walkway to the house at the end of the day. Suddenly, the guard’s radio crackled and came to life, causing him to stop before he reached her. Isabel was startled, but she caught herself—she didn’t look up.

The guard listened and then keyed his microphone. “Unit Two, roger,” he said. “I’ll be there in five.” At least his voice sounded kind.

He resumed his approach. Isabel suppressed a shudder as the man paused when he reached her. She felt him looking at her. Steady, now. She looked up. The guard was tall and nice looking. Isabel thought he had kind eyes.

The guard looked at her for a moment. Finally, he smiled. “Hey there. What’s going on?”

Isabel fought back the urge to panic. She was a quick learner and, after the last encounter, she’d prepared a story. “I’m waiting for my mom.” She trembled inside but she worked hard to keep her voice even as she used the words she’d rehearsed in her mind. “She’s picking me up.”

“That right?” The guard considered this. “If she’s picking you up, how come you’re not waiting down at the benches by the curb?” He paused and looked at her. “Say,” he added. “Aren’t you the girl who we ran off earlier this morning?”

Isabel tensed up and started to panic. She hadn’t expected that particular follow-up question, and she was unprepared. She felt a quick surge of adrenaline. All she could manage for an answer was a quick shake of her head.

The guard studied her for a second—an eternity for Isabel. He pursed his lips, saying nothing, as if weighing whether or not to buy her story. Then, apparently coming to a decision, he reached for his radio. Just as he was about to key his microphone, though, he was interrupted.

“There you are!” Isabel jumped. She turned and saw an attractive young woman in her early twenties walking up the sidewalk, talking to her. Isabel had no idea who she was.

“I got mixed up,” the woman said, smiling brightly as she reached the two. “I thought we were supposed to meet at the front of the mall.” She turned to the guard, who’d frozen for a moment. “It’s okay, officer. She’s with me.” She turned back to Isabel, “C’mon, sweetie. Let’s go inside and grab a drink before we take off.”

Isabel looked at the woman for a moment. She was dressed in a loose, shimmering green knit sweater over a white blouse. She wore tight black slacks and black shoes with heels so tall that Isabel wondered how she could stand up. Her dark brown hair cascaded over her shoulders in loose curls. Even her perfume smelled wonderful. She was one of the most beautiful women Isabel had ever seen. The woman made a small, urgent gesture with her head as if to say “C’mon.”

Isabel felt the guard staring at her, so she made up her mind quickly. “Sure,” she said, standing. “Let’s go.”

The woman smiled and took Isabel’s arm. Together, they left the guard standing on the sidewalk, watching them. They turned and walked through the double doors into the food court. Once inside, the woman said, “C’mon. Let’s sit over here for a minute and talk.” She led Isabel to a nearby table.

The food court at the mall is a large open area of dining tables surrounded by restaurants. There were few shoppers there—the lunchtime crowd had left, and the evening shoppers had yet to arrive. The smells of the food from the different shops instantly reminded Isabel that she was hungry.

“Whew, that was a close one, huh?” the woman said as she scanned the area around their table. She turned back to face Isabel. “I’m Crystal. What’s your name?”

“Isabel.” To say that Isabel was confused would be a big understatement.

Crystal looked around again and then back at Isabel. “I couldn’t help but overhear you talking to the guard, Isabel. It sounded like you might need rescuing. Are you really waiting for your mom?”

Isabel shuttered. “Yes,” she lied. She didn’t know this woman. “She’s coming to pick me up.”

Crystal smiled. “Good.” She studied Isabel intently for several seconds. “Have you been waiting long?”

Isabel couldn’t very well tell Crystal the real story—that she’d spent last night under the cedar tree by the trash bins, remaining out of sight of the roving security guards. Yet, despite her need to be guarded, she thought there was something about this woman that offered an invitation—a glimmer of hope. Something in her eyes and her tone of voice made Isabel think that Crystal might be someone who could help her. She certainly didn’t want to relive the frightening experience of spending the night under the cedar tree again.

Isabel nodded. “A little while.”

Crystal nodded slowly. “Can I buy you a Coke or something? While you wait?”

Isabel figured in the worst case, at least she’d be safe from the security guards for a while. “Okay,” she said. Crystal bought them a couple of drinks from one of the vendors and returned to their table.

The two chatted about nothing in particular—food choices, the way this or that person was dressed, movies. After a few minutes had passed, though, Crystal’s tone suddenly changed, and she became serious. “Can I ask you a real question, Isabel?” she said.

“Yeah.”

Crystal continued to study her. “You’re not really waiting for your mom, are you.”

Isabel tensed up. Crystal had phrased it in the form of a statement, not a question. “Yes, I am,” she protested. “Why do you say that?”

Crystal shrugged. Her eyes bored into Isabel. “Because we’ve been sitting here for oh—twenty minutes or so, and you haven’t looked back at the door even once the whole time. You forgot your story.”

Oh, hell. Isabel was mortified to realize that Crystal was right. She’d been so relieved to have someone to talk to that she’d completely forgotten she’d said she was waiting to be picked up. She tensed up and then started to push away from the table.

“It’s alright,” Crystal said, reaching across and putting her hand on Isabel’s arm. “No need to leave. Don’t worry about it. I’m not the police or security or anything like that.”

Isabel stayed seated but kept her chair pushed back.

Crystal looked at Isabel intently for several moments. “You’re running, aren’t you, sweetheart?”

Isabel fought hard, but in the end, the weight of the last few days got to her, and she couldn’t keep tears from forming in her eyes. She hesitated, and then she nodded.

Crystal produced a tissue and handed it to Isabel. Isabel wiped her eyes and said, “Thanks.”

“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, you know—running,” Crystal said. “Sometimes, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do, know what I mean?”

Isabel nodded.

“Did someone hurt you?”

Isabel studied the table without answering.

Crystal looked at Isabel. It was silent for a minute, and then she said, “I was just like you, you know.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I ran. I had to leave—probably about your age. What are you sixteen? Seventeen?”

“Sixteen,” Isabel said. “Yesterday was my birthday.”

Crystal smiled brightly. “Happy birthday!” Then, just as quick, her smile vanished. “Did you leave on your birthday?”

Isabel nodded, tears starting again.

“That’s dope. That takes guts,” Crystal said. “You should be proud.”

Isabel stared at her, then she looked down. “I had to leave,” she said quietly.

Crystal leaned forward. “Isabel,” she said, “look at me.”

Isabel looked up.

“It’s like I said—I know what you mean. I had two stepbrothers who took turns raping me for six years starting when I was ten years old,” Crystal said. “When you say ‘I had to leave,’ I know exactly what you mean. I had to leave, too.”

Isabel stared at her. “Really?”

“Really. I couldn’t stay another day.” Crystal rolled up the sleeve on her left arm and revealed a series of scars. “See these? I used to cut myself to make the pain go away.” Isabel cringed at the thought. Crystal noticed. “You don’t cut yourself, do you?”

Isabel shook her head. “No.”

“Good girl. A lot of girls do, you know. But it doesn’t work. The little pain’s supposed to make the big pain go away. But it only works for a little while. Then you find out that the big pain’s still there. And to top it off, you’re left with these fucking scars.” She rolled her sleeve back down. She looked at Isabel. “I understand where you’re coming from, Isabel. I was right where you were five years ago.”

It was quiet for a few moments. Then Isabel said, “It’s my stepfather.”

Crystal nodded.

“For more than four years now.”

“Bastard. I’m so sorry, sweetie.”

Isabel nodded.

“I hate how these fuckers think they can do this to us and get away with it.”

Isabel nodded. “You really went through the same thing?” She could hardly believe that this beautiful woman had once experienced a horror similar to her own.

Crystal nodded. “Really. I showed you the scars, didn’t I?” She paused. “At least the scars that show. Most of ’em don’t, you know.”

Isabel looked at her for a second and then said, “What about now? What do you do now?”

Crystal smiled and flipped her long hair back over her shoulder. “I got lucky,” she said. “I met a really great guy. Now, I work with him in his company; we do entertainment scheduling.”

“You are lucky. You’re really beautiful.”

Crystal smiled. “Thank you. But you should know—you’re as pretty as I am, sweetie. Maybe even prettier.”

“Me?” Isabel said. She found this hard to believe.

Crystal laughed as she pretended to look around; then she returned her focus to Isabel. “Who else is here, girl? Yeah, you. A little makeup, some nice clothes,” she waved her hand at Isabel, “you’d have guys falling all over you. And I mean good guys. Guys who have lots of money and who’ll treat you right.” Crystal seemed absolutely bubbly.

Isabel rolled her eyes. Given her situation at home, she didn’t think about boys very often. This was more than she could even imagine.

“Isabel,” Crystal said, leaning forward again and speaking softly. “Listen to me. You seem like a sweet girl. And I know where you’re coming from because I was in the exact same boat.”

Isabel nodded.

Crystal continued. “Donnie—he’s my boyfriend—Donnie and I have a spare bedroom. If you want, I can ask him if it’d be okay if you stay with us for a little while—until you’re on your feet, I mean. You’d have a safe place to stay, plenty to eat. I’ll even take you shopping for some nice clothes.”

Isabel hesitated. “Why would you do that?” she asked. It had been a long time since anyone other than her friend Kelli had been nice to her. She couldn’t help being suspicious.

Crystal smiled. “Because I guess I see a little bit of me in you, that’s why. And I sure wish someone would have helped me out when I was in your situation.”

This resonated with Isabel. Things were moving fast, but at least they seemed to be moving in the right direction. Still, she hadn’t planned things out this far, and she was struggling to keep up.

“By the way,” Crystal said, “if you left yesterday, where’d you stay last night?”

Isabel looked down. “Under a tree,” she said.

“Oh, sweetie,” Crystal said, smiling, “you gotta stay with us. You don’t want to do that again, do you?”

That reminder, plus the realization that she had no other real options, pushed Isabel over the edge. “I don’t suppose it would hurt to stay with you guys for a while,” she said. “I don’t have any money to pay you, though.”

Crystal smiled. “I didn’t ask you for any money, did I?”

Isabel shook her head.

Crystal reached for her purse. “Let me call Donnie and ask him, alright?”

Isabel nodded. “Okay. Thanks.”

* * * *

Twenty minutes later, Isabel and Crystal stood at the curb near the valet parking stand. Isabel wore her backpack and carried her purse. Soon, a white BMW 750i pulled up. All of the windows were darkened, so it was impossible to see inside. “Here he is,” Crystal said.

Isabel didn’t know much about cars, but she recognized the BMW logo and was impressed. The car was very shiny—even the wheels were sparkling chrome. The driver parked the car alongside the curb and got out. He was a tall, very good-looking, young black man with his hair cut short. He wore black slacks and a tight-fitting, short-sleeved black Under Armour shirt, covered with a loose-fitting burgundy linen jacket. A large, expensive-looking gold watch was just visible on his left wrist, peeking out from under the sleeve of his jacket.

As the driver walked around the front of the car to the curb, the passenger door opened, and another young man stepped out. He was shorter—average height and his skin was paler than the driver’s.. His hair was straightened, gelled, and brushed back. He, too, was nicely dressed—a sharp young man. Both men made an impression on Isabel. They were as good-looking in their own right as Crystal was in hers. To Isabel, they all looked like wealthy fashion models.

“Hey, baby,” the driver said as he walked up to Crystal and hugged her. “You all done?”

“Think so,” Crystal said.

“Good,” the man said. “We are, too.” After a few moments, he glanced over at Isabel. He let Crystal go and said, “Is this your friend?”

“Uh-huh,” Crystal said. “Donnie Martin—this is Isabel—” she turned and looked at Isabel, “—Isabel, I don’t know your last name.”

“Delgado,” Isabel said.

“Isabel Delgado,” Crystal said.

Donnie walked over to her. He towered above her by more than a foot. “Isabel,” he said, reaching for her small hand. “What a beautiful name.” His voice was smooth and deep.

Isabel blushed. “Thanks,” she said. “It’s good to meet you.”

“The pleasure is all mine,” Donnie said. His smile revealed a gleaming set of perfectly capped white teeth. He nodded toward the other man. “This ugly dude over here is my homeboy DeMichael. His friends—we—all call him Mikey.”

DeMichael stepped over and shook Isabel’s hand. Isabel thought his hands were very soft—softer even than hers. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Isabel,” he said. “Does everyone call you Isabel, or do you have a nickname? Something like Belle or Bella—like that girl in Twilight?”

Isabel blushed slightly. “Some of my friends call me Izzy,” she said.

“Izzy,” he said. “That’s even better. I like that. If you’re straight with it, I’m gonna call you Izzy.”

Isabel smiled. “Okay,” she said, nodding.

DeMichael gazed admiringly at Isabel’s hair. “Girl, you have beautiful hair,” he said. “Long and thick and pure black.” He paused and then added, “Like mine!”

Crystal laughed. “Yeah, you wish. Except Izzy doesn’t have to spend a hundred dollars and two hours getting hers straightened every two weeks.”

DeMichael reached for Isabel’s hair then stopped. “Do you mind?” he asked.

“No,” Isabel said.

DeMichael ran his hand slowly through Isabel’s hair. “That’s dope,” he said, seemingly in awe. “And you don’t have to do anything to get this?”

“No,” Isabel said. “That’s just how it is.”

“Damn,” he said.

“Imagine if we hooked her up with Janeka,” Crystal said. “She can throw some conditioner on that, and Isabel’s hair will shine like a black diamond.”

“Say, look,” Donnie interrupted from the sidewalk at the front of the car. “Y’all can share hair-styling secrets later. Right now, I need to talk to Isabel for a second, and then we got to scoot.” He turned to Isabel. “Crystal tells me you having some problems on the home front.”

Isabel looked him in the eye. “I don’t have a home,” she said. “Not anymore.”

“That’s what I’m talkin’ about,” Donnie said. “Bottom line—you’re temporarily out on the streets. Right?”

“I guess.”

Donnie smiled. “Don’t have to be that way, baby—this is your lucky day. Crystal told you we got a spare bedroom.”

Isabel nodded.

“Good. You’re welcome to come stay with us for a while. Till you get yourself established. That sound okay?”

“It does,” Isabel said. “Thank you.”

Donnie smiled again. “Good. We gonna do some great things.” He looked at her backpack. “That all your stuff?”

Isabel nodded. “That’s it.”

“Y’all travelin’ light.”

“I know.”

He shrugged. “That’ll change. Crystal’ll probably hook you up with some of her stuff for now. Use it as an excuse to go shoppin’.”

“Hell with that,” Crystal said. “I don’t need no excuse. Me and my homey Izzy—we’re going shoppin’ anyway. Tomorrow. Right, Iz?”

Isabel hesitated, then started to speak, but Crystal interrupted her. “I know,” she said. “You don’t have any money for shopping.” She smiled. “Good thing for you, I do. You can owe me. We’re going to get you all done up. Your hair, too. You’ll be so dope, people’ll have to wear sunglasses around you just to knock back the shine!”

Isabel smiled as DeMichael opened the back door.

“I’m riding shotgun,” Crystal suddenly called out.

DeMichael looked at Isabel. “Guess that means me and you in the back. After you, my dear,” he said gallantly. Isabel crawled into the back seat. She could hardly believe her luck. Less than twenty-four hours ago, she’d been shivering the night away hiding under a cedar tree to avoid the guards and to keep from getting rained on. An hour ago, she’d been sitting on a bench with no idea how to proceed. Now, she was sitting in a BMW, surrounded by nice people who wanted to help her out. She smiled as the car pulled away from the curb.

PART 1

Chapter 1

“CEASE FIRE! CEASE fire!” The Range Safety Officer’s voice thundered down the line just as the last shooter fired his final round of the stage. The electronic noise-canceling features in my headset were designed to muffle the sharp reports of gunshots while still allowing voice commands to come through loud and clear—not that Gunny Doug Owens needed any help getting his point across. Twenty-one years in the Marine Corps prior to joining the Seattle Police Department as head firearms instructor gave him a “command voice” that left no confusion, no ambiguity as to the meaning of his message. Like many of the tough old sergeants I’d known in the army, Gunny Owens didn’t so much speak when he was on the range; he barked. It reminded me of basic training at Fort Benning.

I lowered my Les Baer Thunder Ranch Model 1911 .45-caliber semiauto to a forty-five degree angle, finger indexed along the barrel. Keeping it pointed downrange, I turned my head quickly in each direction, automatically scanning the area around me for new threats, just as Gunny barked out, “Weapons to low ready!”

He followed this up a second later with, “Unload and make safe!” The slide on my weapon had automatically locked open when I’d fired the last round. I pressed the magazine release button, and the empty magazine dropped out and fell to the ground.

“After inspection by a Range Safety Officer, holster your safe weapon.”

The RSO on my side of the line worked his way from shooter to shooter, checking their weapons as he went and tapping them on the shoulders when he was satisfied their weapons were completely empty, signifying it was okay to holster their weapon. I waited my turn as the gentle breeze cleared the smoke from the range.

When Gunny saw that the assistant RSOs on either side of the line had completed their inspections, he barked out “Line clear on the left?” The assistant RSO on my side of the line held up his hand in acknowledgment. “Line clear on the right?” The officer on the opposite end of the line did the same.

“Good,” Gunny said. “Ladies and gentlemen, the line is clear! You may remove your hearing protection. Retrieve your magazines, and let’s check targets.”

It was a beautiful morning on June 5, 2012. The temperature was in the high sixties, and the sky was partly cloudy. My partner, Antoinette “Toni” Blair, and I had just fired the last sequence in the Washington State Basic Law Enforcement Firearm Training course at the Seattle Police Athletic Association range in Tukwila, just south of Seattle. This is the same test issued to retired law enforcement officers annually and, other than Toni and me, the thirteen guys on the line were all retired police officers. Thanks to the Law Enforcement Officers Safety Act that Congress passed in 2004, successfully passing this test gave these retired officers the right to carry concealed weapons almost anywhere in the nation. Can you say instant extended police force? At no additional cost? Clearly, this was one of Congress’s smarter moves, if you ask me. Of course, Toni and I were not law enforcement officers, so passing the test wouldn’t give us the same privileges. But the practice kept us sharp, and it helped keep our insurance premiums low. And if, God forbid, we ever had to shoot anyone, regular documented training would probably help us legally. We were fortunate that my friends at Seattle PD allowed us to train with them and use the range.

I reached down and picked up my empty magazine, dusted it off, and put it in my pocket. Toni was two shooters to my left; I saw her do the same thing. At twenty-seven years old, she’d just had a birthday two weeks ago. She was dressed in camouflage-print fatigue-style pants that had no business looking as good as they did on her, green tactical boots, and a beige long-sleeved T-shirt that had an American flag and Made in the U.S.A. printed on it in big, bold red letters across the chest—just in case you were having trouble noticing the way she filled out the shirt (which, I suppose, would have been pretty good proof that you were legally blind). The other guys didn’t know it, but I knew that the long sleeves covered a full-sleeve tattoo on her left arm and a delicate little Celtic-weave tat on her right. Her thick, dark hair was covered with a backward-facing baseball cap, itself covered with her ear-protection headset. She wore yellow-tinted shooter’s glasses. She looked like a Victoria’s Secret model at a gun show—she was distracting as hell, and I was glad there was space between us. When we straightened up, she caught me looking and she smiled.

Oops. This wasn’t one of her “I love you” smiles or even one of her playful ones, for that matter. We’ve been friends for a long time—I’ve known her for more than five years. I’ve seen her use about twenty different smiles—she’s got one for every occasion. I know most of them pretty well, but as for this one, her meaning was quite clear. She was giving me the nasty, evil little grin that usually comes when we’re locked in competition. We both hate to lose, and shooting qualifications bring out our competitive natures. She looked pretty smug—must have fired another clean stage. I turned away and started walking downrange to inspect my target.

“Holy crap, Nichols!” Gunny yelled as he inspected the first shooter’s target. “You do know you’re supposed to be shooting target number one, right? You fired five rounds, but I only see three damn holes!” He turned and looked at the next target on the line. “You got any extra holes on your target?” he said to that target’s shooter. “Nope?” He turned back to the first unlucky guy. “Nichols, you had two rounds off the whole damn target! That’s pathetic. Ten points each—it’s going to cost you a twenty-point penalty.” He shook his head with disgust. “What’s worse, if this were real life, that means you’d be the proud owner of two .40-caliber projectiles flying through the air at 1,100 feet per second looking for something solid to hit besides their intended target.” He looked at the sheepish shooter. “You understand that’s bad, right?”

The man nodded. “Sorry, Gunny.”

“Yeah, you are,” Gunny nodded in agreement. “Looks like we’ll be seeing you back here this afternoon.”

Gunny moved down the line, examining each shooter’s target. His comments were usually short and to the point. “You pushed this one,” or “You flinched before you pulled the trigger here, see? Caused you to jerk low left.” The shooters—all experienced police officers with years and years of training—listened carefully. Gunny Owens was held in universal high esteem. He’d forgotten more about shooting than most of us would ever know.

He reached Toni’s target and stared at it for a second. “Holy hell, she’s doing it again!” he called out. The other shooters turned to look at Toni’s target. “This young lady,” he said, “—a civilian, I might add—qualifies on this very course every ninety days without fail. And I have never—I repeat never—seen her put a round outside the ten ring. Look at this shooting here. Y’all should do so well. Excellent! Well done, young lady.” Toni smiled demurely. “A solid 250,” Gunny said. “Perfect score.”

Gunny continued down the line until he reached my target. He examined it carefully, counting the number of holes. When he was finished, he turned to me. “Staff Sergeant Logan, did you yank one off the target?” Gunny liked to call me by my former military rank.

“Hell no, Gunny,” I said. “Look here.” I pointed to one of the bullet holes in the center of the target that was a bit more oblong than the others.

Gunny leaned forward and inspected the hole. “Oh, yeah,” he said, smiling. “I see. Same damn hole.” He stood up. “Folks, listen up! Another perfect score from the other civilian in the group.” He paused for a moment, and then he continued. “Although technically, I ain’t sure you can call him a civilian—he’s former U.S. Army 101st Airborne. It don’t happen often, but from time to time, the army turns out a damn fine shooter. Right, son?” That was about as high a compliment as an army grunt’s likely to get out of a marine (MARINE: “Muscle are Required—Intelligence Not Essential”).

“Hooah, Gunny!” I yelled out. You better believe it.

“Damn right,” he said, nodding his head sharply. He turned and continued his inspection.

After he finished with the last shooter, he returned to the center of the line. “Gentlemen, and Ms. Blair,” he said, “Y’all gather round.” When we’d formed in a group around him, he said, “One of y’all’s coming back this afternoon.” He turned to the offender. “That’s you, Nichols. I want you to practice with Officer Mendez here,” he pointed at one of his assistant RSOs, “right after lunch: 1300 hours. If you’re ready, you’ll get another shot at qualifying at 1400. We’ll see if you can keep all your rounds on your own target this time.” He looked at the rest of us. “As for the rest of you—you’ve all officially qualified. Congratulations.” The men nodded their heads quietly. They’d done this before and most were good—if not very good—shooters.

“Before you leave, though, we do have a dilemma,” Gunny continued. “We have a tie for top honors—two perfect scores.” Here we go, I thought. Same as last time. “And as some of you may know, I don’t like to end things with a tie. No closure that way. So what say we have ourselves a quick little tiebreaker shoot-out?”

“Yeah!” the men agreed enthusiastically.

“Good. Randy—do me a favor and throw a couple of clean targets on lanes three and four, would you? The rest of you, follow me.”

Gunny walked us back past the fifteen-yard marker where we’d fired the last sequence. He kept walking, past the twenty-five yard marker until he reached a marker that said thirty-five yards. “We’ll do it from here,” he said. “Make it interesting. A little over one hundred feet—a real test. Ms. Blair—you’re on number three. Staff Sergeant Logan—you’re on lane four. Everybody else: behind the line.” I looked downrange at the small targets. One hundred feet is a long pistol shot if you have something solid to brace against. Without a brace, it was really long.

He waited until the targets were set and everybody was behind us. “Okay, you two,” he said. “I want you to load one round—and one round only—into a magazine. This will be a one shot, do-or-die competition. We’ll run you through one at a time. Who wants to go first?”

“I will,” Toni said quickly. I looked at her, and we locked eyes. She no doubt was trying to psych me out. Good luck with that.

“Ladies first, then,” Gunny said. “Oh, I forgot. We’ll use the electronic timer. You’ll start from the low ready position, two hand grip—or one hand if you want. Your choice of stances. When the timer beeps, you’re to raise your weapon and fire. You’ll have two seconds to get your shot off before the timer beeps again. If you go over, the timer will tell us, and you’ll be DQ’d. So don’t go over time.”

Two seconds! Two seconds was very fast from thirty-five yards. I glanced at Toni. If she was concerned, she didn’t show it. She was already concentrating on the target.

“You two ready?” We nodded.

“Okay, everyone. Hearing protection on!” Gunny reverted to command voice.

“Shooter number one, at this time, load and make ready!” Toni slapped a magazine into her Glock 23 and cycled the slide.

“Shooter, assume a low ready position!”

Toni crouched down, her weapon held before her pointed toward the ground at a forty-five degree angle.

“Shooter, watch your target!”

BEEP! The electronic timer sounded. Toni instantly raised her weapon, sighted, and one second later, fired. BOOM!, followed nearly instantly by BEEP! as the timer sounded again. Toni had beaten the clock by a fraction of a second.

Everyone looked downrange and strained to see the bullet hole in the target. “One point eight seven seconds, and she’s in the bottle,” Gunny called out, “chin level, just a hair right of center. Seven points. That’s fine shooting from thirty-five yards, young lady. Especially in under two seconds.” The “bottle” is the broad, bottle-shaped area of the target that includes the upper torso and the neck up to the center of the head. Toni’s shot was very nearly right on the centerline in the “neck” of the bottle, but it fell midway between the four-inch diameter “ten” ring centered around the top of the target’s nose and the six-inch diameter “ten” ring centered around the target’s heart—in other words, just under the chin. It was an outstanding shot, but looking at Toni, I could tell right away she was not happy. She felt me staring, turned to me, and stuck her tongue out.

“The bad guy is definitely down,” Gunny said. “Probably for good, I’d say. But—with a score of seven,” he smiled with a nasty grin, “the door got left open for the staff sergeant just a hair. Ms. Blair, go ahead and unload and make safe.” Toni released her empty magazine and held her pistol up for inspection by one of the assistant RSOs. He patted her on the shoulder, and she holstered her weapon. The RSO turned to Gunny and raised his hand.

“The line is clear,” Gunny said. “Let’s see if shooter number two can take advantage.”

As I stepped up to the line, Toni said, “Check your fly, dude.” I smiled. Psych!

I was in a tough spot. This was going to be a difficult shot. I like to win as much as she does. Lord knows she would’ve liked nothing better than to beat me on the firing range. In four years, it had never happened before. If she won one, she’d be delighted. This could be a good thing. Maybe it was her time. Thinking about it made me consider maybe giving her one—pulling the shot on purpose. But if I did that, I still needed to make it close. She knows I’m a good shot, and if she suspected I’d thrown the round, she’d have my ass. I made my decision.

“Shooter number two, load and make ready!” I slapped the magazine with the single round into my sidearm, released the slide, and lowered the weapon to the low ready position.

“Shooter, watch your target!” I crouched and tightened my grip.

BEEP! All at once, the outside world seemed to recede. Everything switched to slow motion and all my training kicked in. As my arms came up to target, my right thumb pushed the safety lever to the off position. During the same motion, I took one deep breath, then held it. My arms steadied on the target. My eyes instantly found the front sight, and the front sight centered on the target’s head. With all my concentration, I focused on the front sight. Steady. Squeeze. BOOM! The round fired. BEEP! The timer sounded. I didn’t need to look.

* * * *

We said our good-byes to Gunny Owens at 11:00 and jumped in my red Jeep for the drive back to our office. Our company is Logan Private Investigations—or Logan PI, as we like to call it. We have a small office on Westlake Avenue on Lake Union, right in the middle of Seattle, less than a mile from I-5. Unfortunately, the south end of Lake Union where we’re located was currently wrecked by construction. Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen had decided to single-handedly rebuild Seattle, and he was starting with the South Lake Union area. As a result, traffic was stop-and-go. Actually, more stop than go—it was going to take a while. I hit the play button on the MP3 player, and the sound of a very sweet piano started to flow from the speakers.

Toni listened carefully when the singer started. “Is that—is that Brandi Carlile?” she asked.

“Yep.”

“I’ve never heard this before.”

“I know. That’s because it’s brand-new. It’s called Bear Creek. Just released today. This song is called ‘That Wasn’t Me.’”

She listened for a minute, tapping her foot to the beat. Then she said, “Awesome. I love it. She sounds like Adele.”

I considered this. “Yeah a little, maybe. On this song, anyway. Maybe a bit more country.”

We listened to the new music for a minute while we waited for the traffic to move. Toni’s cell phone rang, and I turned the music down.

“Okay,” she said into the phone. “Tell her to wait. We’re down by the park—only about a half mile away. As soon as traffic moves, we’ll be there.”

She hung up and turned to me. “That was Kenny. He says Kelli’s at the office.”

Kelli—Racquel Genevieve Blair—is Toni’s eighteen-year-old little sister. I hadn’t seen Kelli in a couple of months, although we’d been planning to go to her high school graduation the following week.

“He say what she wants?” I asked.

“She wants to talk. To you and me both.”

Curious.

* * * *

Twenty-five minutes later, we walked into our office. No one was in the lobby, so we made our way toward the back, where we heard laughter coming from the office of Kenny Hale—our technology guru. I followed Toni into Kenny’s office. He was at his desk with Kelli sitting across from him.

“Hey, guys,” Kenny said when we entered.

“’Sup?” I said, looking from Kenny to Kelli. “Hey, Kelli.”

Kelli and Toni look the same but different. Bear with me—I haven’t lost my mind here. Toni’s tall—a solid five foot eight. Kelli’s a touch shorter—maybe five seven or so. Both girls have striking figures—something they inherited from their mom, I suppose (although I’m not sure I’m supposed to have noticed that). Both have thick, dark hair, although Kelli’s is long with no bangs and more of a brunette color, while Toni’s is more mid-length with long bangs and almost black. The biggest, most noticeable difference, though, is not their height or their hair, but their eyes. Toni’s eyes are a brilliant blue—the color of the Hope Diamond. Kelli’s are a deep emerald green. Both are beautiful. So, like I said—the girls look the same but definitely different.

“Hi, Danny,” she said. She turned to Toni. “Hey, sis.”

Toni walked over to Kelli. “Hi, sweetie,” she said, leaning forward and hugging her sister. She straightened up and eyed Kenny warily. “I see you’ve met Kenny.” Kelli probably missed the look. I didn’t.

“Yeah,” she said. “We’ve just been talking.”

Kenny’s a young guy—he just turned twenty-six a couple of months ago. He’s maybe five eight and a buck fifty soaking wet. He’s got an unruly mop of dark hair that he pushes over to one side. In fact, he looks just like what he is—the quintessential computer geek. When it comes to anything to do with computers, Kenny’s the real deal. He’s got aptitude and native talent that’s off the charts. He grew up with computers in ground zero of the computer world: Redmond, Washington. I’m not certain, but I’d be willing to bet his first toy was a laptop. Knowing Kenny, he probably took it apart, tricked it out some way, and then put it back together. He’s got to be one of the most brilliant PC dudes in the Pacific Northwest. His consulting services are in high demand—I’m sure he makes at least as much moonlighting for the big tech companies around here as he does from his Logan PI paycheck. Still, lucky for us, he likes the excitement of detective work. I say “lucky for us” because computer skills are a near prerequisite for PI firms these days.

Despite the fact that he’s no physical specimen, Kenny is surprisingly successful with the ladies. I have a theory about this. I think that like a lot of nerdy guys, he was probably teased in high school by the jocks and shunned by their pretty cheerleader girlfriends. Back then, geeks were people to be, if not outright, scorned, at least avoided. Now, seven or eight years down the road, presto-chango! Role reversal! Now the smart-guy propeller-heads like Kenny have all the money and run around in their Porsche Cayenne Turbos. Now it’s their turn to date the pretty girls while the majority of high school jocks (meaning all those who didn’t get Division I scholarships) work low-paying, manual labor jobs (if they can still find them). Kenny was simply playing his new role for all he was worth. It’s just a theory. Anyway, I like him. He’s a good guy with a good heart.

Toni feels the same way, but to her, Kenny’s a target she can’t resist for some good-natured teasing. She teases him about his hair, his height, his weight, even his girlfriends. And he gives as good as he gets. He teases her about her hair, her height, her tattoos, and—until recently—her lack of boyfriends. Normally, there’s a good-natured banter between the two of them. Today, though, Toni’s little sister was here to talk about something, and no doubt, Toni wondered if Kenny had tried to put some kind of move on Kelli while they’d been waiting for us. I doubted this—Kenny goes out with younger women to be sure, but even Kenny has a lower age limit, which seems to be twenty-one or so. But what the hell. Toni’s the big sister, and it’s her job to be protective—thus, the stink eye. It continued, even as I led Kelli out of Kenny’s office to our conference room.

Kenny noticed. “What?” he mouthed silently, holding up his hands.

Toni glared at him for a second, then she turned and followed us. Message sent.

* * * *

“So,” I said, when we entered the conference room. “Long time no see, Kelli. I haven’t seen you since your birthday.”

“I know,” she said. She looked at Toni then back at me. “You guys had just started going out. I’m so happy for both of you.”

Toni smiled. “Thanks, sis. We’re happy, too.”

“And now it’s time for graduation,” I said. “You all ready to go?”

“Sure am,” she said.

“You feel happy or sad?” I asked.

“Happy. Definitely happy.”

I smiled. “That’s good. What’re you going to do?”

“I’m going to U-Dub,” she said. “I start in the fall. I’ve already been admitted.”

“Cool!” I said. “Outstanding! Do you know what you want to study yet?”

“Yep. I’m thinking LSJ—same as you guys.” The University of Washington offers a four-year bachelor’s degree in something they call Law, Societies, and Justice. Basically, it’s a fancy name for a criminal justice degree. Toni and I met in early 2007 when we were seniors in the LSJ program. I was still in the army, finishing my last year as a CID special agent. It’s a good education if you want to make law enforcement your career.

“LSJ—that’s cool,” I said. “Are you thinking about police work?”

“Pre-law,” Kelli said. “I want to be a DA.”

I smiled. “Excellent. Somebody to put the bad guys away. You’ll make a great DA. Runs in your family, I think.”

Toni smiled.

“Yeah, I think so, too,” Kelli said.

“Well, that’s good,” I said. I leaned back in my chair. “So what brings you here today?”

Her mood sobered quickly. Where she’d been happy and smiling a moment before, she suddenly turned somber.

“I have a friend,” she said. “I think she’s in trouble.”

Toni eyed her suspiciously, not certain if Kelli was referring to herself when she said “a friend” and, if she was, trying to determine what she meant by “in trouble.” Pregnant maybe? Big sister switching back into protective mode, I suppose.

“What kind of trouble,” Toni said.

“I think my friend Isabel’s been kidnapped,” Kelli said.

Whoa! That came out of left field! Toni and I both looked at Kelli as we scrambled to catch up mentally. “What do you mean, you think she’s been kidnapped?” Toni said.

“Hold up for a second,” I said, raising my hand. “Don’t answer that just yet.” Both girls looked at me. “Since the conversation’s headed this direction, let me grab a couple of notepads, so we can take notes and do this the right way.”

Toni looked at me for a second, and then she said, “Good idea.”

I took a couple of steno pads from the credenza behind the conference room table. While I was up, I grabbed three bottles of water.

“Kelli, why don’t you start from the very beginning,” I said as I sat back down. “Go slow. Give us plenty of details. Everything you can remember.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Start by giving us Isabel’s personal data. What’s her full name?” I asked.

“Isabel Delgado.”

“Do you know if she has a middle name?”

“I don’t know.”

“Address?”

“She lives at 4268 192nd Street in Lynnwood.”

“Just around the corner from us?” Toni asked. Toni grew up in a home on 189th Street in Lynnwood—the same home where Kelli still lived with their mother.

“Yeah,” Kelli said. “

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M.D. Grayson is the author of the Danny Logan mystery series including Angel Dance, No Way to Die, and Isabel’s Run. He lives on an island near Seattle with his wife Michelle and their three German shepherds.
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Prologue

PULLING MY GOGGLES up, I stopped and blinked, looking out into the night with my own unaided eyes. The night was pitch black and soundless, and my mind suddenly felt disconnected. Alone, staring into the void, I became a tiny dot of existence floating by itself in the universe. At first the feeling was terrifying, my mind reeling, but it quickly became comforting.

Maybe this is what death is like? Alone, peaceful, floating, floating, no fear—

Clipping the night-vision goggles back into place, ghostly green flakes of snow appeared falling gently around me.

My hunger pangs had been intense that morning, almost driving me to the point of going outside during the day. Chuck had held me back, talked to me, calmed me down. It wasn’t for me, I’d argued with him, it was for Luke, for Lauren, for Ellarose, for any reason that would allow me, like an addict, to get my fix.

I laughed.

I’m addicted to food.

The falling snowflakes were hypnotic. Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath.

What is real? What is reality anyway?

I felt like I was hallucinating, my mind never quite able to take a firm track before skidding off. Get a grip. Luke is counting on you. Lauren is counting on you.

Opening my eyes, I willed myself into the here and now and tapped the phone in my pocket to bring up the augmented-reality display. A field of red dots spread out into the distance, and, taking another deep breath, I began carefully putting one foot in front of the other, continuing on my way across Twenty-Fourth, pushing myself toward a cluster of dots on Sixth Avenue.

November 25

Chelsea, New York City

“WE LIVE IN amazing times!”

I carefully studied the piece of charred flesh that I held up in front of me.

“Amazingly dangerous times,” laughed Chuck, my next-door neighbor and best friend, taking a swig from his beer. “Nice work. That’s probably still frozen on the inside.”

Shaking my head, I put the burnt sausage down at the edge of the grill.

It was an unusually warm week for Thanksgiving, so I’d decided to throw a last-minute barbecue party on the rooftop terrace of our converted warehouse complex. Most of our neighbors were still here for the holiday, so my two-year-old son, Luke, and I had spent the morning going door-to-door, inviting them all up for our grill-out.

“Don’t insult my cooking, and don’t get started on all that.”

It was a spectacular end of the day, with the setting sun shining warmly. From our seven-story perch, beautiful late-autumn views of red and gold trees stretched up and down the Hudson, backed by street noise and city skyline. New York still held a vibrancy that excited me, even after two years of living there. I looked around at the crowd of our neighbors. We’d gathered a group of thirty people for our little party, and I was secretly proud so many had come.

“So you don’t think it’s possible a solar flare could wreck the world?” said Chuck, raising his eyebrows.

His Southern twang made even disasters sound like song lyrics, and kicking back on a sun lounger in ripped jeans and a Ramones T-shirt, he looked like a rock star. His hazel eyes twinkled playfully from beneath a mop of unkempt blond hair, and two-day-old stubble completed the look.

“That’s exactly what I don’t want you to get started on.”

“I’m just saying—”

“What you’re saying always points to disaster.” I rolled my eyes. “We’ve just lived through one of the most amazing transitions in human history.”

Poking the sausages on the grill, I generated a new round of searing flames that leapt up.

Tony, one of our doormen, was standing next to me, still dressed in his work clothes and tie, but at least with his suit jacket off. Heavyset, with dark Italian features, he was as Brooklyn as the Dodgers of old, and his accent never let you forget it. Tony was the kind of guy that grew on you immediately, always ready to help, and never without a smile and a joke to go along with it.

Luke loved him too. From the moment he could walk, every time we went downstairs, Luke would go rocketing out of the elevator as soon as it pinged to ground level and run to the front desk to greet Tony with squeals of glee. The feelings were mutual.

Looking up from my sausages, I directly addressed Chuck. “Over a billion people have been born in the past decade—that’s like a new New York City each month for the last ten years—the fastest population growth that has ever been, or ever will be.”

I waved my tongs around impressively in the air to make my point.

“Sure there’ve been a few wars here and there, but nothing major. I think that says something about the human race.” I paused for effect. “We’re maturing.”

“That billion new people are still mostly sucking baby formula,” Chuck pointed out. “Wait fifteen years until they all want cars and washing machines. Then we’ll see how mature we are.”

“World poverty in real-dollar, per-capita terms is half what it was forty years ago—”

“And yet one in six Americans goes hungry, and the majority are malnourished,” interrupted Chuck.

“And for the first time in human history, just a year or two ago,” I continued, “most humans live in cities rather than the countryside.”

“You say that like it’s a good thing.”

Tony looked at me and Chuck and shook his head, taking a swig of his beer and smiling. This was a well-worn sparring match he’d watched many times before.

“It is a good thing,” I pointed out. “Urban environments are way more energy efficient than rural ones.”

“Except urban is not an environment,” argued Chuck. “The environment is an environment. You talk as if cities were these self-supporting bubbles, and they’re not. They’re entirely dependent on the natural world around them.”

I pointed my tongs at him. “That same world we’re saving by living together in cities.”

Returning my attention to the barbecue, I saw that the fat dripping off the sausages had ignited into flames again and was searing my chicken breasts.

“I’m just saying that when it all comes undone—”

“When a terrorist launches a nuke over the US? An EMP pulse?” I asked as I rearranged my meats. “Or a weaponized superbug let loose in the wild?”

“Any of those,” nodded Chuck.

“You know what you should be worried about?”

“What?”

I didn’t need to give him anything new to be obsessed with, but I couldn’t help myself. I’d just finished reading an article about it.

“Cyberattack.”

Looking over his shoulder, I could see that my wife’s parents had arrived, and my stomach knotted up. What I wouldn’t have given to have a simple relationship with my in-laws, but then again, that was a boat most people were rowing with me.

“Ever heard of something called Night Dragon?” I asked.

Chuck and Tony shrugged.

“A few years back they started finding foreign computer code embedded in power plant control systems all over the country,” I explained. “They traced command and control back to office buildings in China. This stuff was specifically designed to knock out the US energy grid.”

Chuck looked at me, unimpressed. “So? What happened?”

“Nothing happened, yet, but your attitude is the problem. It’s everyone’s attitude. If Chinese nationals were running around the country attaching packs of C-4 explosives to transmission towers, the public would be crying bloody murder and declaring war.”

“Used to be that they dropped bombs to knock out factories, but now just click a mouse?”

“Exactly.”

“See?” said Chuck, smiling. “There’s a prepper in you after all.”

I laughed. “Answer me this—who’s in charge of the internet, this thing that our lives depend on?”

“I don’t know, the government?”

“The answer is that nobody is in charge of it. Everyone runs it, but nobody’s in charge.”

Chuck laughed. “Now that sounds like a recipe for disaster.”

“You guys are freaking me out,” said Tony, finally finding some space to add something. “Can’t we talk about baseball for once? And maybe you’d better let me take over the grilling?” The flames on the grill roared up again, and he recoiled in mock fear. “You got more important stuff to do, no?”

“And we’d like to eat some food that’s not burnt to a crisp,” added Chuck with a smile.

“Yeah, sure,” I replied without enthusiasm, nodding and handing the tongs over to Tony. I was hiding at the grill, trying to delay the inevitable. Glancing over my shoulder I could see my wife, Lauren, looking my way. She laughed as she talked to someone, brushing back her long, auburn hair with a sweep of one hand.

With high cheekbones and flashing green eyes, Lauren captured attention whenever she entered a room. She had the refined, strong features of her family, a sharp nose and chin that accentuated her slim figure. Even after being with her for five years, just looking at her from across a patio could still take my breath away—I still couldn’t believe that she chose me.

Taking a deep breath, I straightened up my shoulders.

“I leave the grill in your care,” I said to nobody in particular. They were already back to discussing Cybergeddon.

Taking a swig from my beer, I put it down on the table next to the grill and turned to walk over to Lauren. She was standing at the opposite corner of the large deck on top of our building, chatting with her parents and a few of our other neighbors. I’d insisted on hosting her mother and father for Thanksgiving this year, but was already regretting it.

Her family was old-money Bostonian, dyed-in-the-tweed Brahmins, and while early on I’d done my best to earn their good humor, lately I’d given up and settled into a grudging understanding that I’d never be good enough. But it didn’t mean I wasn’t polite.

“Mr. Seymour,” I called out, outstretching my hand, “thank you so much for coming.”

Dressed in a square-shouldered tweed jacket accented with a navy handkerchief, blue oxford shirt, and a brown paisley tie, Mr. Seymour looked up from talking with Lauren, and smiled a tight-lipped smile. I immediately felt self-conscious in my jeans and T-shirt. Covering the last few paces, I reached out to grip his hand and pumped it firmly.

“And, Mrs. Seymour, as lovely as ever,” I added, turning toward my wife’s mother. She was sitting uncomfortably on a wooden bench beside her husband and daughter, dressed in a brown suit with a matching oversized hat and a thick strand of pearls around her neck. Clutching her purse tightly in her lap, she leaned forward as if to get up.

“No, no, please, don’t.” I leaned down to peck her on the cheek. She smiled and sat back down on the edge of the bench. “Thank you for coming to spend Thanksgiving with us.”

“So you’ll think about it?” Mr. Seymour said loudly to Lauren. You could almost make out the layers of ancestry in his voice, thick with both privilege and responsibility, and today, perhaps a little condescension. He was making sure I could hear what he said.

“Yes, Dad,” Lauren whispered, stealing a glance my way and looking down. “I will.”

I didn’t take the bait and ignored it.

“Have you been introduced to the Borodins?”

I motioned toward the elderly Russian couple that were sitting at the table beside them. Aleksandr, the husband, was already asleep in a lounger, snoring quietly away beside his wife, Irena, who was busy on her knitting.

The Borodins lived right next door to us. I’d sometimes spend hours listening to Mrs. Borodin’s stories of the war. They’d survived the siege of Leningrad, the modern St. Petersburg, and I found it fascinating how she could have lived through something so horrific yet be so positive and gentle with the world. She cooked amazing borscht, too.

“Lauren introduced us. A pleasure,” mumbled Mr. Seymour, smiling Mrs. Borodin’s way. She looked up and smiled back, and then returned to her pair of half-knitted socks.

“So,” I said, spreading my arms, “have you guys seen Luke yet?”

“No, he’s downstairs with Ellarose and the sitter at Chuck and Susie’s place,” replied Lauren. “We haven’t had a chance to go and see him yet.”

“But we’ve already been invited to the Met,” said Mrs. Seymour brightly, perking up. “Dress rehearsal tickets for the new Aida performance.”

“Oh yeah?”

I looked at Lauren and then turned toward Richard, another of our neighbors, who was definitely not on my favorites list.

“Thanks, Dick.”

Square-jawed and handsome, he’d been some kind of football star in his Yale days. His wife, Sarah, was a tiny thing, and she sat behind him like a hand-shy puppy. She quickly pulled the cuffs of her sweater down to cover her bare arms when I glanced at her.

“I know the Seymours love the opera,” explained Richard in his thick-money accent, like a Manhattan stock broker describing an investment option. Where the Seymours were Old Boston, Richard’s family was Old New York. “We have the ‘friends and family’ seating at the Met. I only have four tickets, and Sarah didn’t want to go”—his wife shrugged weakly behind him—“and I didn’t mean to presume, but I didn’t think it was your kind of thing, old boy. I thought I could take Lauren and the Seymours, a little Thanksgiving treat?”

While Mr. Seymour’s accent sounded genuine, Richard’s faux-British-prep-school affectation grated on my ears.

“I guess.”

What the hell is he up to?

Awkward pause.

“We need to get going if we’re going to make it,” added Richard, raising his eyebrows. “It’s an early rehearsal.”

“But we were just about to start serving,” I said, pointing back toward the checker-clothed tables set with bowls of potato salad and paper plates. Tony smiled and waved at me with the tongs while he piled burnt sausage and chicken atop a serving tray.

“That’s all right, we’ll stop for something,” said Mr. Seymour, again with his tight-lipped smile. “Richard was just telling us about a wonderful new bistro on the Upper East Side.”

“It was just an idea,” added Lauren uncomfortably. “We were talking and Richard mentioned it.”

I took a deep breath, balling my hands into fists, but caught myself and sighed. My hands relaxed. Family was family, and I wanted Lauren to be happy. Maybe this would help. I rubbed one eye and exhaled slowly.

“That’s actually a great idea.” I looked toward my wife with a genuine smile and felt her relax. “I’ll take care of Luke, so don’t hurry back. Enjoy yourselves.”

“Are you sure?” asked Lauren.

An inch of gratitude propped our relationship back up.

“I’m sure. I’ll just grab a few beers with the boys.” On reflection, this was sounding like a better and better idea. “You best get going. Maybe we can meet for a nightcap?”

“It’s settled then?” said Mr. Seymour.

Within a few minutes they were gone and I was back with the guys, piling my plate with sausages and rooting around in the cooler for a beer.

I slumped down in a chair.

Chuck looked at me with a forkful of potato salad halfway into his mouth. “That’s what you get for marrying a girl with a name like Lauren Seymour.”

I laughed and cracked my beer open. “So what’s the word regarding this mess between China and India over those dams in the Himalayas?”

November 27

THE FAMILY VISIT didn’t go well.

Thanksgiving dinner started the disaster rolling, first because we ordered a precooked turkey from Chelsea Market—“Oh my, you don’t cook your own turkey?”—and then the awkward dinner seating around our kitchen countertop—“When are you buying a bigger apartment?”—with the finale of me not being able to watch the Steelers game—“That’s fine, if Michael wants to watch football, we’ll just make our way back to the hotel.”

Richard had gracefully invited us down the hall for after-dinner drinks, to their palatial three-story apartment that faced the Manhattan skyline, where we were served hand and foot by his wife, Sarah—“Of course we cooked our own turkey. Didn’t you?”

The conversation had quickly centered on connections between the old New York and Boston family lines: “Fascinating, isn’t it? Richard, you must be almost a third cousin to our Lauren,” quickly followed by, “Mike, do you know any of your own family history?”

I did, and it involved steel working and nightclubs, so I said I didn’t.

Mr. Seymour finished off the evening with an interrogation of Lauren about her new job prospects, which were nonexistent. Richard was helpful with many suggestions about introductions he could make for her. They’d politely asked me how my business was going, followed by proclamations that the internet was just too complicated to even talk about, and then: “Now, Richard, how is your family investment trust being managed?”

To be fair, Lauren did defend me, and everything remained civilized.

I spent most of the time chauffeuring them around to meet their friends at places like the Metropolitan Club, the Core Club, and of course, the Harvard Club. The Seymours had the distinction of having at least one member of each generation of their family attend Harvard since its foundation, and at the namesake club they were treated like visiting royalty.

Richard had even graciously invited us to the Yale Club for a drink on Friday night. I nearly throttled him. Mercifully, it was just a two-day visit, and finally we had the weekend to ourselves.

It was early Saturday morning, and I was sitting at our granite kitchen countertop feeding Luke, with him in his highchair and me balancing on a barstool while I watched the morning news on CNN. I was cutting apples and peaches up into little chunks and leaving them in front of him on a plate. In the height of merriment he was picking each piece up, smiling a toothy, gummy grin at me, and then either eating the fruit or squealing and throwing it on the floor for Gorby, the Borodins’ rescue dog mongrel.

It was a game that just didn’t get old. Gorby spent nearly as much time in our apartment as he did at home with Irena, and watching Luke throw food down to him, it wasn’t hard to understand why. I wanted our own dog, but Lauren was against it. Too much hair, she said.

Banging his fists on the tray, Luke squeaked, “Da!” his universal word for anything involving me, and then outstretched his small hand—more apple please.

I shook my head, laughing, and reached over to begin cutting up some more fruit.

Luke was just two years old, but he had the heft of a three-year-old, something he probably got from his dad, I thought with a smile. Wisps of golden-blond hair floated about his chubby cheeks that always glowed warmly. His face was permanently stuck in a mischievous grin, showing a mouthful of white button teeth, as if he was about to do something he knew he wasn’t supposed to—which was almost always the case.

Lauren appeared out of our bedroom, her eyes still half-closed from sleep.

“I don’t feel well,” she said unsteadily and then stumbled into our small bathroom, the only other closed room in our less-than-thousand-square-foot, loft-style apartment. I heard her coughing loudly and then the sound of the shower turning on.

“Coffee’s on,” I muttered, thinking, she didn’t drink that much last night, while I watched some enraged Chinese students in the city of Taiyuan burning American flags. I’d never heard of Taiyuan, so while I dropped some more fruit chunks in front of Luke with one hand, I queried my tablet with the other.

Wikipedia: Taiyun (Chinese: pinyin: Tàiyuán) is the capital and largest city of Shanxi province in North China. At the 2010 census, it had a population of 4,201,591.

Wow.

That was bigger than Los Angeles, America’s second largest city, and Taiyun was China’s twentieth. With a few more keystrokes I discovered that China had over 160 cities with populations over a million, where the United States had exactly nine.

I looked up from my tablet at the news. The image on the TV had switched to an aerial view of a strange-looking aircraft carrier. An anchor on CNN described the scene, “Here we see China’s first, and so far only, aircraft carrier, the Liaoning, ringed by a pack of angry-looking Lanzhou-class destroyers as they face off with the USS George Washington just outside the Straits of Luzon in the South China Sea.”

“Sorry about my parents, honey,” whispered Lauren as she snuck up behind me, mopping her hair with a towel and dressed in a white terry cloth bathrobe. “Remember, it was your idea.”

She leaned down and cuddled Luke, kissing him while he smiled and squeaked his pleasure at such attention, and then she wrapped her arms around me tightly and kissed my neck.

I smiled and nuzzled her back, enjoying the affection after a tense couple of days.

“I know.”

A US naval officer had appeared on CNN. “Not five years ago Japan was telling us to get our boys out of Okinawa, but now they’re begging for help again. Japs have a fleet of their own aircraft carriers coming down here, why on Earth—”

“I love you, baby.” Lauren had slipped one of her hands under my T-shirt and was stroking my chest.

“I love you too.”

“Have you thought more about going to Hawaii for Christmas?”

“—and Bangladesh will be hit hard if China diverts the Brahmaputra. They need friends now more than ever, but I never imagined the Seventh Fleet parking itself in Chittagong—”

I sighed and pulled away from her.

“You know I’m not comfortable having your family pay.”

“So then let me pay.”

“With money that comes from your father.”

“Only because I’m not working because I quit my job to have Luke,” she said loudly. It was a sore point.

We’d completely pulled away from each other, and she turned to grab a cup from the cupboard and filled it with coffee. Black. No sugar this morning. She leaned against the stove and cupped her hands around the hot coffee, hunching inwards and away from me.

“—starting cyclic ops around the clock, constant launch and recovery missions from the three American aircraft carriers now stationed in—”

“It’s not just the money. I’m not comfortable spending Christmas there with your mother and father, and we did Thanksgiving with them.”

She ignored me. “I’d just finished articling at Latham and passing the bar”—she was speaking more to herself than to me—“and now everyone is downsizing. I threw the opportunity away.”

“You didn’t throw it away, honey,” I said softly, looking at Luke. “We’re all suffering. This new downturn is hard on everyone.”

In the silence between us, the CNN anchor started on a new topic. “Reports today of US government websites being hacked and defaced. With Chinese and American naval forces squaring off, tensions of conflict heighten. We go now to our correspondent at Fort Meade Cyber Command headquarters—”

“What about going to Pittsburgh? See my family?”

“—the Chinese are claiming the defacement of US government websites is the work of private citizen hacktivists, and most of the activity seems to be originating from Russian sources—”

“Seriously? You won’t take a free trip to Hawaii and you want me to go to Pittsburgh?” Now she looked angry. “Your brothers are both convicted criminals. I’m not sure I want to expose Luke to that kind of environment.”

I shrugged. “Come on, they were teenagers when that happened. We talked about this.”

She said nothing.

“Didn’t one of your cousins get arrested last summer?” I said defensively.

“Arrested,” she replied, shaking her head, “but not convicted. There is a difference.”

I paused and stared into her eyes. “Not all of us are so lucky to have an uncle who’s in Congress.”

Luke was watching the two of us.

“So,” I asked, my voice rising, “what was it your father wanted you to think about?”

I already knew it was some new offer to entice her back to Boston.

“What do you mean?”

“Really?”

She sighed and looked down into her coffee. “A partner-track position at Ropes and Gray.”

“I didn’t know you applied.”

“I didn’t—”

“I’m not moving to Boston, Lauren. I thought the whole idea of us coming here was for you to start your own life.”

“It was.”

“I thought we were trying for another one, a little brother or sister for Luke? Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“More what you wanted.”

I looked at her in disbelief, my vision of our future together unraveling in just one sentence. But there had been more than one uncomfortable sentence lately. My stomach knotted.

“I’m going to be thirty this year,” she added. “Opportunities like this don’t come often. It could be my last chance to have a career.”

Silence while we stared at each other.

“I’m going to the interview.”

“That’s all the discussion?” My heart began to race. “Why? What’s going on?”

“I just told you why.”

We stared at each other in a mutually accusatory silence. Luke began to fuss in his chair.

Lauren sighed, her shoulders sagging. “I don’t know, okay? I feel lost. I don’t want to talk about it right now.”

I relaxed, and my pulse began to slow a little.

Lauren looked at me. “I’m going for brunch with Richard to talk about some ideas he had for me.”

My pulse raced again, my cheeks flushing.

“I think he beats Sarah.”

Her eyes flashed angrily. “Why would you say something like that?”

“Did you see her arms at the barbecue? She was covering up. I saw bruises.”

Shaking her head, she snorted, “You’re being jealous. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“What should I be jealous of?” I shot back angrily.

Luke began to cry.

“I’m going to get dressed,” she said dismissively, shaking her head. “Don’t ask stupid questions. You know what I mean.”

Ignoring me, she leaned down and kissed Luke, whispering that she was sorry, she didn’t mean to yell, and that she loved him. Once she’d calmed Luke down, she gave me an evil look and stalked off into the bedroom, closing the door heavily behind her.

Sighing, I turned toward Luke and picked him up. I eased his head onto my shoulder and began to pat his back softly.

“Why did she marry me, huh, Luke?” I whispered under my breath.

I answered my own question.

“Ah, yes, well, we’ve got you, don’t we, big bruiser?”

With two or three sniffling sighs, I felt his little body relax into me. “Come on. Let’s take you over to see Ellarose and Auntie Susie.”

Continued….

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Continued….

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Prologue

November 25

November 27

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