Shattered (The Rescuers, 1, Band 1501) - Softcover

Buch 1 von 2: The Rescuers

Sharpe, Alice

 
9780373697687: Shattered (The Rescuers, 1, Band 1501)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0373697686 ISBN 13: 9780373697687
Verlag: Harlequin Intrigue, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

ALL HE'D WANTED WAS A REUNION WITH A FRIEND. WHAT HE GOT WAS A NATIONWIDE CONSPIRACY AND A JOB PROTECTING ONE GORGEOUS STRANGER. 

Deputy sheriff Nate Matthews doesn't know what to think when he arrives in Nevada and discovers his friend murdered. He is sure about the beautiful woman pointing a rifle at him. Sarah Donovan is a liar, she may have murdered her father…and she stirs something inside him he can't possibly explain. 

But before they can solve one murder, Nate and Sarah find themselves dodging bullets. Being on the run brings new emotions into focus. After a night of passion in a snowbound cabin, they start closing in on the truth—someone means to strike terror in America's heart….

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

I was born in Sacramento, California where I launched my writing career by “publishing” a family newspaper. Circulation was dismal. After school, I married the love of my life. We spent years juggling children and pets while living on sailboats. All the while, I read like a crazy woman (devoured Agatha Christie) and wrote stories of my own, eventually selling to magazines and then book publishers. Now, 45 novels later, I’m concentrating on romantic suspense where my true interest lies.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

After giving the congested waiting area a once-over, Nate Matthews approached the flight center of the tiny Shatter-horn, Nevada, airport with his customary long stride. After hours behind the wheel, it felt good to finally move around. A woman standing behind the counter cast him an anxious smile as she looked up from her computer. He guessed the lousy February weather was playing havoc with things like schedules.

"I'm running a little late," he explained, "and I'm supposed to meet some friends here but I don't see them. Can you tell me if they've arrived?"

"In this weather? I doubt it," she said. "No private planes have landed for at least an hour. Let's take a look. What's their name?"

"Jessica and Alex Foster from Blunt Falls, Montana. He's flying his own singleengine Cessna."

She checked the computer screen, then thumbed through a sheaf of papers, leaving for a moment to talk to a man sitting at a desk behind a glass partition. When she returned, she was shaking her head. "There's a record of Mr. Foster filing his flight plan, but none of him landing here. Looks like you arrived first. Really, though, I'm not sure I'd expect him tonight. The weather is deteriorating quickly, especially at higher elevations."

Nate leaned against the counter for a second. The drive had not been without mishap; in fact, he'd barely survived a blown-out tire and the near collision that followed it. And then he'd found the spare was flat, too. Arranging a tow truck to haul him back to Vegas to get the tire fixed had eaten up time. Alex and Jessica should have landed way ahead of the storm.

The man behind him cleared his throat impatiently and Nate moved away from the counter. Finding a quiet corner, he called Alex's house just in case something had come up at the last moment. Jessica answered the phone.

"Hey," he said after identifying himself. "Is everything there okay?"

"Sure," she said, but her voice sounded stressed. "Is Alex with you?"

"No, that's why I'm calling. Did he leave on time?"

"Yes. He should have been there by now."

"I thought you were coming, too."

"I didn't feel well," she said after a brief hesitation.

He took a deep breath. "I don't mean to alarm you, but I hear there's a storm in the mountains."

"Maybe he had to land somewhere else," she said.

"Maybe. Wouldn't he call you?"

"Not necessarily." There was the edge again. "Anyway, if anything can go wrong with phone service or the radio, you can bet it will. All his equipment is ancient."

Nate stared at the snow falling outside the window. "I'll alert them here. I think you should do the same on your end, just to be safe."

"I will," she said. "But he'll show up. He always does. What would the Blunt Falls police department do without him?"

"Yeah," Nate said, certain now that something was going on with Jessica. His immediate concern, however, was Alex, though he didn't have the slightest idea what he could do about it.

He and Alex had made plans to meet at the airport and then hook up with a third man, a guy by the name of Mike Donovan. They'd only met Mike once, but it had been on a Labor Day afternoon none of the men would ever forget. Alex had told him that this time Jessica was coming along for the ride and maybe a side trip down to Reno.

Nate asked the airport to notify the right people about Alex's flight, tried Mike's cell phone and walked back to his truck through growing snow flurries. Chances were good Mike was sitting at the mall, too distracted to even hear his phone.

He'd been that way lately, posting long emails full of conspiracy theories. Being a deputy in a small town in Arizona, Nate was no stranger to people losing their grip on reality. He just hoped Mike wasn't suffering some sort of post-traumatic stress disorder. Nate himself had struggled coming to grips with what he'd experienced that late summer day, and he'd been in law enforcement his entire adult life. Mike had spent his career either working on the family horse ranch or selling appliances in town.

Even driving up to the cluster of pale stone buildings that constituted the Shatterhorn Mall brought back a hundred unbearable memories for Nate. Last time he'd been here, he and Alex had been returning from an Alaskan fishing trip. When Nate's flight was delayed, the two men had hiked down the road a bit, winding up at this mall, where they found dinner in the food court.

Just an idle diversion to eat up some time on a Labor Day weekend when the place was crammed with kids buying back-to-school clothes. Nate's plan had been to return to the airport in a couple of hours and continue on to Reno and, from there, home. Meanwhile, Alex would fly the Cessna, which he'd left at the airfield ten days before, back to Montana.

Things hadn't exactly turned out as planned.

Today, entering the mall through the doors closest to the food court put a knot in Nate's stomach that twisted tighter with each footstep. It wasn't a big mall by urban standards, but for a small town, it was busy. That was probably why the carnage that had occurred here had upset the nation; this wasn't the kind of town that was supposed to suffer random shootings and mangled teenagers.

Then again, what town was?

The food court was a grand name for ten or eleven fast-food outlets grouped around a few dozen tables. The clientele seemed oblivious to the devastation that had once littered the space. The shattered windows had all been replaced, the bullet holes mended, torn flesh healed or buried… Life went on.

For a moment, Nate stood there, buffeted by the acoustics created by the dome overhead, scanning faces for Mike's, then he turned to leave. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of a familiar face, but it wasn't Mike's.

Jason Netters stood fifteen feet away, very close to the cookie kiosk that came complete with a boatload of tortured memories. Nate had herded a group of kids to the shelter of that kiosk and told them to stay put while he went to help another child. The kids had panicked and left the shelter. The two girls hadn't made it far before being shot and killed, just like two other kids a short distance away.

Jason had survived.

The boy was compact in size but muscular like a wrestler. He had straw-colored hair and green eyes. He must have felt Nate looking at him. Their gazes met and it was as if the past five and a half months had never happened.

The knot grew so tight it was hard to breathe, but Nate took a step forward, unexpectedly moved to see the boy again.

Jason looked away almost at once. Within seconds, he'd disappeared, swallowed up by the crowd, and gone in less time than it took to say it. But the look on his face before he turned unsettled Nate in a way nothing else had.

The boy didn't want to see him. No way. Not one bit.

Nate understood in a moment of clarity that this was the real reason he'd come back here. Not because he believed Mike had earth-shattering news but because this place had cost him a whole lot that September day. He'd walked in one man and left as another, something his fiancée had been quick to point out right before she left for good.

It was come here and face his demons or change careers, because you couldn't be a decent officer when you woke up in a dead sweat every night. His boss was pressing him to run for sheriff in the coming election, said he'd win in a landslide because of the positive...

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Verlag
Harlequin Intrigue
Erscheinungsdatum
2014
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0373697686
ISBN 13 
9780373697687
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
224
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
HarperCollins Publishers Ireland
enquiries@harpercollins.ie

Mayor Street Upper 39/40
Dublin
D01 C9W8
Irland

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Verlag: Harlequin Intrigue Larger Print, 2014
Softcover