Witness Betrayed by Linda Ladd Book Tour and Giveaway :)
Witness Betrayed
A Will Novak Novel
#3
by
Linda Ladd
Genre: Mystery/Thriller
Pub
Date: 10/2/18
No
Friends
Mardi
Gras whips New Orleans’ French Quarter into a whirlpool of excess,
color, booze, noise, motion. So the woman in the sights of Will
Novak’s binoculars stands out. She’s bruised, barefoot, wearing a
man’s raincoat. And she’s looking right at him.
No
Faith
In
a moment she’s fleeing into the crowd, but Novak knows she’s not
gone for good. When she comes back, it’s with a gun to his head—and
a story about crony politics, a crooked judge, a kidnapped
whistleblower, and children in deadly danger. Novak can’t let this
one slide.
No
Fury
Through
the grit of Houston’s underbelly to the grime below Beverly Hills’
glamor, a trickle of rot connects the powerful to the desperate and
corrupts the men and women who are supposed to stand against it.
Deceit is everywhere. If he’s going to do right, Novak is going to
have to do it alone . . .
Chapter 1
Below Will Novak’s balcony, the final
day of Mardi Gras was in full swing. Crowds walked along the narrow
width of Bourbon Street, laughing and talking and enjoying the famous
New Orleans celebration. The French Quarter was alive with excitement
and good cheer, which put police on alert for inevitable drunken
altercations. That’s why Novak was watching. From where he sat in a
chair drawn close to the wrought-iron rail, he could see several
drunks stumbling around inside the crowd and others who looked well
on their way to inebriation. His apartment was at the top end of
Bourbon Street, so the riotous mass moved down the street in one
direction like ants headed to a piece of pecan pie. Across the
street, a jazz band was playing, filling the late night with the
sounds of saxophone, piano, and bass fiddle. Novak enjoyed the music, thinking the
band was pretty good, as he swept his binoculars over the boisterous
crowd as it moved along the ancient street with its old-fashioned
lampposts and multitude of bars and novelty shops. The New Orleans
Police Department had hired him on a temporary basis to spot probable
troublemakers and report their locations to street cops. He’d been
at it for a long time. Glancing at his watch, he found it was almost
midnight. Eventually all the fun going on now would wane and the
people would gradually disperse, but not yet. Maybe in another hour
or two. He hoped so. He was dead tired. Late February in south Louisiana was
sometimes chilly; he had put on a leather jacket because of the nip
in the air. The cold was not bothering anybody else, who kept warm by
drinking beer and the sheer exhilaration of the moment.
Unfortunately, nobody was calling it a night yet. Pushing, shoving,
and hair-trigger, testosterone-fueled fistfights had been a regular
occurrence all week long. At such occasions, Novak always watched
first for the glint of steel. Knives were easily hidden under coats.
This late hour was when either guns or knives were apt to be whipped
out and innocent passersby hurt. Novak wasn’t the only observer on
the street. There were many others just like him with bird’s-eye
views of the action. He leaned back in his chair and adjusted his
earpiece and microphone headset. Loud shouts caught his attention, and
he swung the glasses to a commotion starting up right across the
street. A young woman stood high on a second-floor balcony opposite
him. She looked as if she was smashed but didn’t know it yet. She
was having a good old time, giggling and waving at the men below her
on the street. A crowd had already gathered, mainly because she kept
pulling up her sweatshirt and showing her bare breasts. The guys
below hooted and clapped and sent forth all manner of encouragement.
She obliged their fervor by whipping the sweatshirt off over her head
and shimmying for anybody inclined to take a look. Skin shows were not unusual during
Mardi Gras week. The guy standing on the balcony with her didn’t
appear to mind much, flinging off his own shirt in a show of support.
His hairy chest didn’t garner as much interest. Both leaned over
the railing, blowing kisses and tossing strings of colorful beads to
their drunken admirers, which immediately caused fights for
possession. People were just damn stupid sometimes, but no real harm
was done with something like that. He called in the incident. A
two-team unit was dispatched to break up the crowd below, and then
they’d have to climb the narrow interior stairs to the woman’s
apartment and order her to cover herself or go to jail. They had
already warned the same woman earlier that evening. They might arrest
her this time. Novak didn’t care much, one way or the other. He
riveted his attention back on the street. Many people carried red
Solo cups so they could guzzle beer while they walked. Mardi Gras had
always been a big drunken party and a giant headache for the NOPD.
Tonight was no exception. Novak was working solo. He hadn’t
been on a gig by himself in a while, not since he’d signed up with
Claire Morgan’s private investigation firm. His partner was
unavailable, off to Italy with her husband, Nicholas Black. They had
been tied up in Rome for days now, fighting Italian government red
tape as they tried to adopt a ten-year-old boy named Rico. His
parents had been murdered during a particularly bad case that Novak
had been involved in, and since it had wrapped up, Claire and Black
had given the kid a good home. They wanted him to stay there. They were due back soon, though, and
Novak was glad. He missed Claire. She was quite a woman, all things
considered: tall, natural blond, athletic, good-looking, and sexy
without knowing it. More important, she was a damn good detective and
a damn good friend. He could count on her when things got sticky.
Compared to most of their cases, tonight’s gig was a breeze.
Sitting in his own apartment watching people having fun was something
he didn’t usually mind.
Say Your Goodbyes
A
Will Novak Novel #2
SAY
YOU’RE DREAMING
When a scream wakes Will Novak in the middle of the night, at first he puts it down to the nightmares. He's alone on a sailboat in the Caribbean, miles from land. And his demons never leave him.
SAY YOUR PRAYERS
The screams are real, though, coming from another boat just a rifle’s night scope away. It only takes seconds for Novak to witness one murder and stop another. But with the killer on the run and a beautiful stranger dripping on his deck, Novak has gotten himself into a new kind of deep water.
BUT DON’T SAY YOUR NAME
The young woman he saved says she doesn't know who she is. But someone does, and they're burning fuel and cash to chase Novak and his new acquaintance from one island to the next, across dangerous seas and right into the wilds of the Yucatan jungle. If either of them is going to live, Novak is going to need answers, fast—and he's guessing he won't like what he finds out . . .
When a scream wakes Will Novak in the middle of the night, at first he puts it down to the nightmares. He's alone on a sailboat in the Caribbean, miles from land. And his demons never leave him.
SAY YOUR PRAYERS
The screams are real, though, coming from another boat just a rifle’s night scope away. It only takes seconds for Novak to witness one murder and stop another. But with the killer on the run and a beautiful stranger dripping on his deck, Novak has gotten himself into a new kind of deep water.
BUT DON’T SAY YOUR NAME
The young woman he saved says she doesn't know who she is. But someone does, and they're burning fuel and cash to chase Novak and his new acquaintance from one island to the next, across dangerous seas and right into the wilds of the Yucatan jungle. If either of them is going to live, Novak is going to need answers, fast—and he's guessing he won't like what he finds out . . .
Novak
stretched back out on the padded bench under the dark blue awning.
Behind his boat, a billion stars spread out in a spangled canopy,
vast and glittering, but also cold and distant and unfathomable. He
stared up at the heavens, always awestruck by the clear, impossibly
vivid spectacle of the universe when so far out at sea. In the west,
a falling star streaked for several seconds and burned itself out.
Sometimes Novak felt like that meteorite, like he was burning out.
Sometimes he just wanted to burn out, end his mental suffering, end
the memories of a life that had been so good, so perfect, but was now
dead and gone forever . . . Novak
cursed his maudlin thoughts and stood up. He leaned down and pulled a
cold beer out of the ice. He’d been sailing due south, away from
his home deep inside the bayous of Louisiana. Wanting solitude.
Wanting to mourn for all he’d lost. He thrust one hand into the
cooler and brought up ice to rub over his sunburned face. Then he
just froze, with the ice still held against his skin. A woman had
just screamed. He’d heard her clearly—far away from the boat, but
resonating in the silence around him. Frowning, he put down the beer
and peered out over the water. Then she cried out again. A long,
hysterical scream. Novak
held on to the gunwale and steadied himself. Those screams were not
figments of his imagination. No way. Another scream came. Novak
strained his eyes, searching the inky black night. He still saw
nothing, just endless, restless water. He rubbed his eyes and scanned
every direction. He wished he hadn’t drunk so much. He felt a
little sick. A full moon was climbing up the sky, easing through the
myriad of bright stars and out from a thick cloud bank. Moments
later, a glittering trail of white moonlight stretched across the
sea. That pale lunar gleam was all he could see. The sky and ocean
melded into black nothingness on the horizon. Then he caught sight of
a light. Maybe a hundred yards off his port bow. Just a momentary
flash. A boat’s spotlight, maybe. Novak
grabbed a rifle out of the rack beside the helm, the Colt AR 7.62
NATO. He’d had the gun for years. It felt good when he wrapped his
fingers around it. He brought the high-powered scope up to his eye,
blinked away some of his grogginess, and adjusted the knob. The dull
green night vision screen reacted and slowly pulled the
distant lights in close. A large motor yacht was out there. It wasn’t
running, just floating in the darkness. Predominantly white. One
stripe down the side. Sleek, modern, expensive. A honey of a boat,
all right, and big, probably sixty, seventy feet, at least. Dim
lights glowed softly along the main deck, probably from the
staterooms and lounge, illuminating the waterline and the silhouette
of the vessel. It looked as if it was anchored, maybe, the captain
taking advantage of the coral reef. No screams now. Just quiet. Novak
moved his crosshairs slowly up the length of the boat, up to the bow,
where he spotted another light shining in a large plateglass window.
He twisted an adjustment and picked up a couple of dark figures
moving around in the bow. One was small; looked like a woman or
child. Probably a woman. She was hightailing it back toward
the stern, moving at a full run. He could pick up shouting now. This
time it sounded like male voices. Loud. Angry. Sounded like they were
speaking in Spanish. Novak was fluent in Spanish, but he was still
too far away to hear what they were yelling. Then Novak saw a man
chasing the woman. He was small, too, didn’t
look
much taller than she did, but he had a gun in his hand and he was
almost on her. She screamed shrilly when he grabbed her from the
back. She was in big trouble. Another
guy darted out of nowhere, taller, bigger, and thrust the struggling
woman behind him, trying to shield her from the little guy. They
were all arguing and shouting at each other. Then the little guy
raised his arm and fired the handgun at the tall man. Shot him right
in the face. Point-blank. That’s when the woman went crazy,
screaming her head off, her shrieks echoing out over the water to
Novak. After that, she put up one hell of a fight with the killer,
kicking and
scratching and trying to wrestle his gun away. While Novak watched,
she twisted loose and made another mad dash down the gangway toward
the stern. Novak
shifted his scope down to the waterline and picked up a small Zodiac
inflatable boat bobbing at starboard stern. All he could see was the
end of it, the rest hidden behind the boat. That’s where she was
heading, all right, but she only made it a couple of yards. The
little guy grabbed the back of her shirt, swung her bodily around to
face him, and then slammed his pistol butt hard against her forehead.
She went down like a felled tree. Her assailant went down after her. To
Novak, cowards like that guy on that boat were the scum of the earth.
Misogynists and bullies and abusers irked the hell out of him. He did
not like men who shot unarmed victims in the face for trying to
shield a woman, either. Both things he had just witnessed were big
triggers for Novak. To him, that kind of behavior labeled them as
black hats destined to be put down, and without a doubt. He liked to
take them down hard and make it as final as he could. End them. So he
calmly and methodically lined up the crosshairs on the little man who
was having fun bludgeoning the scared lady. The bully had already
jerked the woman back up to her feet. He
hit her again, with his fist this time, so hard in the right temple
that she went back hard, slammed up against the port rail, and went
backwards over the side. The guy followed her movements, leaning
against the gunwale above where she was floundering in the choppy
swells. When he started taking potshots down at her, Novak shifted
his finger to the trigger. Enough’s enough, tough guy. Slowly
building anger was coursing through Novak’s bloodstream and had
been since the first time that guy had hit the woman. Maybe her
attacker was a hijacker and was forcibly commandeering the luxury
yacht, most likely to sell it on the marine black market. Bulletin
alerts from the Coast Guard had been coming in daily about
modern-day
pirate bands operating in the Gulf and off the Mexican coast. They
targeted small and undefended pleasure vessels. He had been on the
lookout for them himself. Almost wished they would attack so he could
put them down. He was heavily armed and knew how to use weapons. He
was going to use one now. He
sat down, held his rifle nice and steady, the barrel propped atop the
canopy rigging, gauged the rocking of his hull and the force of the
breeze, and set his aim. Slowly, carefully, no hurry, he sighted on
the killer and squeezed the trigger. The bullet burst out into the
darkness, followed seconds later by a deafening retort that echoed
thunderously out across the water. If the killer had not chosen that
exact moment to move left, he would have died where he stood, a
bullet in his head. But he had moved, bending forward to take another
shot down at the girl in the water. The slug might have nicked him;
Novak wasn’t sure. The guy had disappeared behind the rail and
stayed down. So Novak waited for him to stand up again, his finger on
the trigger, ready to fire—his version of whack-a-mole. Novak
expected the guy to return fire, be it haphazardly out into the
blackness around him, shooting aimlessly at an unspecified target in
an unspecified area. No way could he see Novak. No way could he know
who was firing at him, or why. Patiently, left eye shut, right eye
fastened on the scope, Novak waited for him to pop up again. But
nothing happened. Maybe the guy was smarter than Novak thought. Within
moments, a faint whine started up in the distance. Sounded like the
man was in the Zodiac. If so, he had wasted no time and crawled back
there in a big hurry. Not so stupid after all. He knew when to run.
Novak kept the scope focused on the part of the Zodiac that he could
see, but he couldn’t get off a shot before the guy pulled it
back behind the stern. Then Novak heard it roar to full life, and it
was retreating at full speed in the opposite direction. The guy
didn’t know his enemy, couldn’t ascertain how many there were or
what kind of weaponry they had. He had made the right decision. Under
those circumstances, Novak might have retreated. But that didn’t
mean the little killer wouldn’t come back, loaded for bear, and
with equally deadly reinforcements.
Novak
edged the scope back down to the waves around where the girl had gone
into the drink. He couldn’t see her anymore, just dark, restless
water, spotted with whitecaps as the wind picked up. The guy had just
left a seriously injured woman out there to drown. She might be dead
already, probably too weak to stay afloat. At best, she was
unconscious, or soon to be. Whoever the hell the shooter had been, he
was a cold-blooded bastard. Novak wished he’d gotten him with that
bullet. Novak
stood up, keeping the rifle gripped tightly in his right fist as he
took the helm at stern. If she was still alive, he had to fish her
out. In any case, he needed to retrieve her body and take it in to
the nearest authorities. She was somebody’s wife or mother or
daughter.
So
he weighed anchor, fired up the powerful engines, and steered the
Sweet Sarah directly
at the abandoned yacht. He increased his speed across the deep but
kept his eyes glued on the dim light thrown off by the receding
Zodiac, now far away to the west. Once he was sure the guy was not
circling back, he estimated where the girl had taken the plunge.
Wasn’t easy, not in the dark, not on choppy seas. Not out in the
middle of nowhere at midnight. He didn’t have much time to find
her, either, before she sank to the bottom and became shark bait. Once
he got closer, the boat’s name became legible, painted across the
stern escutcheon in big black letters: Orion’s
Trident. Cancun,
Mexico. He motored to the port side of the vessel where
she’d gone overboard. He cut the engines. He grabbed the laser
spotlight and swept it back and forth across the water’s surface.
The killer’s boat was now just a speck of light, heading away as
fast as he could make it go. He wasn’t coming back. Not now, in any
case. It
took Novak several more minutes to find the girl—way too long, he
feared, but then a big wave crested over her, and he caught sight of
her head bobbing in the water. Looked like she might still be alive. Yes,
weak as hell, but now she was flailing her arms, trying to keep her
face above water. Maybe twenty yards out from him. He focused the
spotlight on her. Blood was all over her face. The head injuries were
bad—he could tell that from where he stood. She wasn’t going to
last much longer. He brought the Sweet
Sarah up as close to her as he safely could, cut the
engines, and then tossed out a roped life buoy. She just bobbed up
and down and seemed oblivious to it. “Pull
it down over your head!” he shouted to her, his voice reverberating
out over the water. He was pretty sure he was going to have to go in
and get her. He kicked off his canvas boat shoes, but then, somehow,
she seemed to come out of her stupor enough to grab the life ring.
She clung to it with both arms for dear life. Relieved, Novak slowly
started towing her in, hand over hand on the rope, careful not to
jerk it out of her grasp. She was too weak to hold on much longer. When
he got her up against the hull, he dropped to his stomach and reached
down as far as he could. He managed to grab her shirt, then got up on
his knees and hauled her bodily up out of the water and onto his
deck. She was conscious, but barely. She was groaning and strangling
and coughing and choking. Novak laid her out flat on her back and
knelt down beside her. She was bleeding heavily. He
found two deep gouges, one at the top of her forehead, the other on
her right temple. Her nose was bleeding, too, and the blood kept
running down into her mouth and causing her to choke. She
kept gasping for air and groaning, but that lasted only seconds
before her eyes rolled back into her head, and she was out for the
count. Novak
quickly turned her onto her side so she could breathe better. He put
his mouth down close to her ear. “I’m not gonna hurt you. I’m
trying to help you. Can you hear me? You’re safe now. He’s gone.” She
must have heard his voice because her eyelids fluttered slightly in
response. Then they closed again, and she didn’t move.
Bad Road to Nowhere
A
Will Novak Novel #1
BAD
MEMORIES
Not many people know their way through the bayous well enough to find Will Novak’s crumbling mansion outside New Orleans. Not that Novak wants to talk to anyone. He keeps his guns close and his guard always up.
BAD SISTER
Mariah Murray is one selfish, reckless, manipulative woman, the kind Novak would never want to get tangled up with. But he can’t say no to his dead’s wife sister.
BAD VIBES
When Mariah tells him she wants to rescue a childhood friend, another Aussie girl gone conveniently missing in north Georgia, Novak can’t turn her down. She’s hiding something. But the pretty little town she’s targeted screams trouble, too. Novak knows there’s a trap waiting. But until he springs it, there’s no telling who to trust . . .
Not many people know their way through the bayous well enough to find Will Novak’s crumbling mansion outside New Orleans. Not that Novak wants to talk to anyone. He keeps his guns close and his guard always up.
BAD SISTER
Mariah Murray is one selfish, reckless, manipulative woman, the kind Novak would never want to get tangled up with. But he can’t say no to his dead’s wife sister.
BAD VIBES
When Mariah tells him she wants to rescue a childhood friend, another Aussie girl gone conveniently missing in north Georgia, Novak can’t turn her down. She’s hiding something. But the pretty little town she’s targeted screams trouble, too. Novak knows there’s a trap waiting. But until he springs it, there’s no telling who to trust . . .
Once
Novak was satisfied with his efforts, he hoisted himself back up and
straddled the rail. He raised his face, shut his eyes, and felt the
fire of the sun burn hot into his bare skin. He was already sunburned
from his time out on the drink, his skin burnished a deep, warm
bronze. After a few minutes, he shifted his gaze down onto the
slow, rippling bayou current. It was good to be back home, good to be
sober, good to be able to think clearly. He had wrestled his demons
back under control, at least for the moment. He left his perch,
stooped down, and pulled a cold bottle of Dixie beer from the cooler.
He twisted off the cap and took a deep draft, thirsty and tired from
a full day of hard physical labor. That’s when he first heard the
sound of a vehicle, coming closer, turning off the old bayou road and
heading down through the swampy woods to his place.
Grimacing,
annoyed as hell, not pleased about uninvited guests showing up, he
lowered the beer bottle, shielded his eyes with his forearm, and
peered up the long grassy field that stretched between the bayou and
the ancient plantation house he’d inherited from his mother on the
day he was born. He had not been expecting company today.
Or any other day. He did not like company. He did not like people
coming around his place, and that was putting it mildly. He was a
serious loner. He liked to be invisible. Anonymous. He liked his
privacy. And he was willing to protect it.
The
sun broiled down, the temperature probably close to ninety, humidity
hugging the bayou like a wool blanket, thick and wet and heavy. Drops
of perspiration rolled down his forehead and burned into his eyes.
Novak grabbed a towel and mopped the sweat off his face and chest.
Then he took another long drink of the icy beer. But he kept his
attention focused on the spot where his road emerged from the dense
grove of giant live oaks and cypress trees and magnolias.
The
sugar plantation was ancient and now defunct, but it was a huge
property, none of which had ever been sold out of his family. It took
a lot of his effort to keep the place even in modest repair. The
mansion on the knoll above him had stood in the same spot for over
two hundred years. And it looked like it, too, with most of the white
paint peeled off and weathered to gray years ago.
Once
upon a time, his wealthy Creole ancestors, the St. Pierre family, had
sold their sugar at top price and flourished for a century and a half
on the bayou plantation they’d named Bonne Terre. They had been
quite the elite in Napoleonic New Orleans, he had been told. They
still were quite the elite, but mostly in France now. The magnificence
with which they’d endowed the place was long gone and the house in
need of serious renovation. Someday, maybe. Right now, he preferred
to live on his boat where it was cooler and more to his liking. Minutes
passed, and then the car appeared and proceeded slowly around the
circular driveway leading to his front gallery. It was a late model
Taurus, apple-red and shiny clean and glinting like a fine ruby under
the blinding sunlight. Probably a New Orleans rental. He’d never
seen the car before. That meant a stranger, which in Novak’s
experience usually meant trouble. Few visitors found their way this
far down into the bayou. Ever. That’s why he lived there. Claire
Morgan was the exception and one of the few people who knew where he
lived, but he trusted her. She was a former homicide detective who’d
hired him on as a partner in her new private investigation agency.
But it wasn’t Claire who’d come to call today. She was still on
her honeymoon with Nicholas Black, out in the Hawaiian Islands,
living it up on some big estate on the island of Kauai. They’d been
gone around eight weeks now, and that had given Novak plenty of time
to do his own thing. Especially after what had happened on their
wedding day. The three of them and a couple of other guys had gotten
into a particularly hellish mess and had been lucky to make it out
alive. Novak’s shoulder wound had healed up well enough, but all of
them deserved some R & R. Other than Claire, though, only a
handful of people knew where to find him. He didn’t give out his
address, and that had served him well. Novak
wiped his sweaty palms on his faded khaki shorts and kept his gaze
focused on the Taurus. Behind him, the bayou drifted along in its
slow, swirling currents, rippling and splashing south toward the Gulf
of Mexico. As soon as the car left his field of vision, he headed
down the hatch steps into the dim, cool quarters belowdecks. At
the bottom, he stretched up and reached back into the highest shelf.
He pulled out his .45 caliber service weapon. A nice little Kimber
1911. Fully loaded and ready to go. The heft of it felt damn good.
Back where it belonged. He checked the mag, racked a round into the
chamber, and then wedged the gun down inside his back waistband.
He grabbed a clean white T-shirt and pulled it over his head as he
climbed back up to the stern deck. Picking up a pair of high-powered
binoculars, he scanned the back gallery of his house and the wide
grassy yard surrounding it. Nothing
moved. He walked down the gangplank and stepped off into the shade
thrown by the covered dock. He moved past the boatlift berths but he
kept his attention riveted up on the house. The long fields he’d
mowed the day before stretched about a hundred yards up from the
bayou. The big mansion sat at the far edge, shaded by a dozen
ancient live oaks, all draped almost to the ground with long and
wispy tendrils of the gray Spanish moss so prevalent in the bayou. The
wide gallery encircled the first floor, on all four sides, twelve
feet wide, with a twelve-feet-high ceiling. No wind now, all vestiges
of the breeze gone, everything still, everything quiet. He could see
the east side of the house. It was deserted. The guy in the car could
be anywhere by now. He could be anybody. He could be good. He could
be bad. He could be there to kill Novak. That was the most likely
scenario. Novak sure as hell had plenty of enemies who wanted him
dead, all over the world. Right up the highway in New Orleans, in
fact. Whoever was in that Taurus, whatever they wanted, Novak wanted
them inside his gun sights first before they spotted him. Taking
off toward the house, he jogged down the bank and up onto a narrow
dirt path hidden by a long fencerow. Then he headed up the gradual
rise, staying well behind the fence covered with climbing ivy and
flowering azalea bushes. He kept his weapon out in front using both
hands, finger alongside the trigger. Guys who were after him usually
just wanted to put a bullet in Novak’s skull. Some had even tried
their luck, but nobody had tried it on his home turf. He didn’t
like that. Wasn’t too savvy on their part, either. When he reached
the backyard, he pulled up under the branches of a huge mimosa tree.
He crouched down there and waited, listening. No
thud of running feet. No whispered orders to spread out and find him.
No nothing, except some stupid bird chirping its head off somewhere
high above him. He searched the trees and found a mockingbird sitting
on the carved balustrade on the second-floor gallery. Novak
waited a couple more minutes. Then he ran lightly across the grass
and took the wide back steps three at a time. He crossed the gallery
quickly and pressed his back against the wall. He listened again and
heard nothing, so he inched his way around the corner onto the west
gallery and then up the side of the house to the front corner.
That’s when he heard the loud clang of his century-old iron door
knocker. He froze in his tracks. Directly
in front of him, a long white wicker swing swayed in a sudden gust of
wind. He darted a quick look around the corner of the house. Three
yards down the gallery from him, a woman stood at his front door, her
right side turned to him. She was alone. She was unarmed, considering
how skin-tight her skimpy outfit molded to
her slim body. While he watched, she lifted the heavy door knocker
and let it clang down again. Hard. Impatient. Annoyed. She was tall,
maybe five feet eight or nine inches. Long black hair curled down
around her shoulders. She was slender and her body was fit, all shown
to advantage in her tight white Daisy Dukes and a blackand- white
chevron crop top. She turned slightly, and Novak glimpsed her
impressively toned and suntanned midriff and the lower curve of her
breasts. She was not wearing a bra, and her legs were naked, too, shapely
and also darkly tanned. White sandals with silver buckles. She looked
sexy as hell but harmless. On
the other hand, Novak had known a woman or two who’d also looked
sexy and harmless, but who had assassinated more men than Novak had
ever thought about gunning down. Keeping his weapon down alongside
his right thigh but ready, he stepped out where she could see him but
also where he’d have a good shot at her, if all was not as it
seemed. The woman apparently had a highly cultivated sense of
awareness because she immediately spun toward him. That’s
when Novak’s knees almost buckled. He went weak all over, his
muscles just going slack. His heart faltered mid-beat. He stared at
her, so completely stunned he could not move or speak. Then
his dead wife, the only woman he had ever loved, his beautiful Sarah,
smiled at him and said in her familiar Australian accent, “How
ya goin’, Will. Long time no see.”
Linda
Ladd is the bestselling author of over a dozen novels,
including the Claire Morgan thrillers. She makes her home in
Missouri, where she lives with her husband and old beagle named
Banjo. She loves traveling and spending time with her two adult
children,two grandsons, and granddaughter. In addition to writing,
Linda enjoys target shooting and is a good markswoman with a Glock 19
similar to her fictional detectives. She loves to read good books,
play tennis and board games, and watch fast-paced action movies. She
is currently at work on her next novel.
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