Witness Protection Program was my second Rebel Ink Press title and it remains one of my most popular to date. So for Father's Day, I thought I'd share the first chapter and if you like, the links to buy follow the excerpt. I think it's a fast-paced, exciting contemporary read with some homey appeal but you can see what you think!
Blurb:
When
a routine trip to the local discount store turns
in to a gunfight,
Kendra Driscoll must face the fact that her witness protection cover is
blown and she's in federal custody until further arrangements can be made.
Tucked away in a safe house in southern Arkansas, Kendra reverts to being
Deborah Kincaid, for now.
When Timothy Campbell dodges bullets and throws Kendra Driscoll into his
van, he knows better than to mix business with pleasure. Witnesses are
off limits. Period. So why is it then that Cam finds himself impossibly
drawn to the woman he's charged to protect?
As Kendra gets to know Cam, she realizes he isn't as unyielding as he looks.
Underneath his gruff exterior, Deborah finds a kind, sensitive man and
soon, she realizes she's falling in love. And when events turn ugly and
Cam suffers a life-threatening injury, it's up to Deborah to face her
enemies and deal with the danger for the last time.
Kendra Driscoll must face the fact that her witness protection cover is
blown and she's in federal custody until further arrangements can be made.
Tucked away in a safe house in southern Arkansas, Kendra reverts to being
Deborah Kincaid, for now.
When Timothy Campbell dodges bullets and throws Kendra Driscoll into his
van, he knows better than to mix business with pleasure. Witnesses are
off limits. Period. So why is it then that Cam finds himself impossibly
drawn to the woman he's charged to protect?
As Kendra gets to know Cam, she realizes he isn't as unyielding as he looks.
Underneath his gruff exterior, Deborah finds a kind, sensitive man and
soon, she realizes she's falling in love. And when events turn ugly and
Cam suffers a life-threatening injury, it's up to Deborah to face her
enemies and deal with the danger for the last time.
Chapter One
If the
first shot hadn't whistled over her head before shattering most of the olive
oil bottles on an end of aisle display, Kendra might've thought it was nothing
but firecrackers thrown by some teen playing a prank. By the time the second report echoed through
the grocery department of the discount store, she hugged the floor, sprawled
across the light beige tiles behind the produce bin of potatoes. Although she hadn't been around firearms in
several years, she recognized the sound of an automatic weapon in hands that
knew how to make it walk and talk.
Earlier still, she drew memories from a childhood spent shooting clays
and hunting. Her daddy taught her to
shoot with the boys and she'd excelled.
She knew too well the damage a bullet could inflict and crawled a few
more feet to put an open freezer case between her and the unseen shooter.
Each time
the gun fired a chorus of shrieks and screams echoed in her ears, shriller than
the retort. Somewhere she could hear a
baby crying and an older woman’s voice praying, thick with fear as she said ‘Our
Father.’ Kendra heard a few muffled
curses but she thought prayers were far more appropriate given the
situation. She prayed too, silently, as
she peered around the end of the freezer, which she recalled were nicknamed
“coffin cases.” That now seemed eerie and prophetic.
A rank
stench of gunpowder flared her nostrils and she smelled the metallic,
unmistakable smell of blood. Moans from
somewhere up near the front entrance indicated there were wounded, if not dead,
and as she hunkered down, praying for deliverance, more gunfire blasted. Shots pinged off metal and thwacked into
shelved goods with an ugly sound. More
glass broke and Kendra heard someone cry out with a muffled sound that boded
ill.
From where
she lay, she saw a Nike encased foot bent at an odd angle and with her head
still low to the floor, she watched a spreading line of blood. She didn't want to know where it originated
or from whom so she retreated, too upset to shed a tear and much too scared to
make any noise.
She couldn't
catch a glimpse of the gunman or determine if there was one or more. Kendra wriggled backwards, like a snake,
moving along the base of the freezer case with the idea she might reach a
different position with a better view.
Halfway there, her leg caught on something and she jerked, trying to
free it but she couldn't budge. Just as
she turned to look for the problem, a large hand, encased in a black leather
glove, clamped down over her mouth.
“Don’t
scream,” a male voice whispered in her ear.
Whoever he might be, he was behind her and she couldn't see him at
all. However, he smelled of Irish
Spring soap and peppermints. “Take my
hand.”
She tried
to ask why but with his hand blocking her mouth, she couldn't speak so she
shook her head to refuse. He snatched
her left hand with his free one and jerked hard enough she had to move with him
or be drug behind. He took his hand off
her mouth but she didn't dare make a sound or speak. In a crouched position, he maneuvered her
past three more open freezer cases and then went wide to the left through a
door that led back into the storerooms.
Once that door swung closed behind them, he stood upright and faced her.
He loomed tall above her, six feet or better,
lean and lithe. His blue jeans fit his
chiseled body like an outer skin and his plaid flannel shirt looked cozy. On his hip, a Smith and Wesson .40 caliber
pistol fit into a nylon holster attached to his wide leather belt. His black eyes bored into hers, vital and
filled with strength. The solemn
expression on his face seemed carved from solid granite. He looked capable and very dangerous. In fact, he reminded Kendra of a leopard she
watched once at the zoo, graceful and somehow beautiful yet deadly.
Out in the store somewhere, more gunfire
roared and screams followed but he didn't flinch or react. She cringed with
each blast, fighting the desire to drop to the floor. If he hadn’t held her in his grasp, she’d
dropped, too. His height and lethal
manner intimidated her but not enough that she didn't attempt to break free.
“Let me
go!” She twisted her hand, struggling to work loose.
He snorted
and gripped harder.
“Relax. I'll get you out of here safe and sound. Just stay calm and be quiet.”
Her anger
kindled, his bossy ways made her old-fashioned mad and without thought, she
spoke, her voice louder than it should be.
“I’m not
going with you. I won't be a hostage,”
Kendra told him, her voice high-pitched and nasal. “Leave me alone and go turn yourself into the
authorities!”
He laughed
aloud as he reached into his front jeans pocket pulling out something he thrust
in her direction; a gold badge formed with an outer circle around a
five-pointed star. “United States Marshall” was etched around the rim.
“Maybe I
should've introduced myself,” he said with what might've been a smile on a less
serious face. “I’m Timothy Campbell,
United States Marshall.”
The reality sank in with speed. He wasn't one of the shooters but a law
enforcement officer and Kendra wondered why he wasn’t out there, taking down
the suspect and saving lives in plural instead of just saving her own. Questions flooded her brain so fast she
didn’t know where to begin or what to ask.
He must've read the curiosity in her eyes because he pulled her forward toward
a back exit off the storeroom.
“Ask me
whatever you want later,” Timothy Campbell said. “Right now, we need to
move. Let’s go.”
He towed her outside with speed and into a
waiting black Humvee where he opened the rear passenger door, shoved her inside
and followed her onto the seat. Before
Kendra could assimilate anything more, the vehicle pulled out and reached the
busy highway within seconds. With the
discount store fast vanishing behind them, she realized her car remained in the
parking lot but at least her purse still dangled from her shoulder. Numerous emergency vehicles raced past them
headed for the scene. She counted three
ambulances, two fire trucks, multiple squad cars and more.
“Wait!” she
said, fumbling for the seat belts. “Where are we going? I need to cover this
breaking story. Shouldn’t you be back
there, helping people or something?”
He turned
to her, his face still impassive.
“We're
going somewhere safe and the only place I need to be is here with you.”
Anger
flared, stronger than fear. Her routine
grocery-shopping trip halted with violence forced her to take cover, and now Kendra
found herself in the back of an SUV hurling down the highway at breakneck
speed. She'd rather be anywhere else,
even still crouched behind the freezer case in fact. Where she should be was outside the store
with a press pass and a microphone in her hand.
“I don’t
want to be here,” Kendra snapped. “Take
me back to the store, please. I'm the
news director for the local radio station.
I need to cover this story.”
The
Marshall shook his head.
“No you don’t. Do you know why the shooter was at that
location?”
She had no
clue.
“Let me
guess. Did they overcharge him? Not have
what he wanted in stock? Or was it just the first place he found where he could
go postal?”
Her
sarcastic tone failed to get a rise but his reply struck her like a slap across
the face.
“He wanted you, Deborah. You’re the target.”
She caught
her breath and held it, fear snaking through her body like live
electricity. Her first response to
hearing her name, the name her mother picked out for her twenty-seven years
earlier, was to run. If she could've
leaped from the fast moving vehicle, she’d done it but since she couldn't, she
tried to bluff it out instead.
“Who’s
Deborah? My name is Kendra Lou Driskell.”
He focused his full-strength stare on her and
made eye contact.
“That might
get you brownie points but it won’t cut ice with me. If you say it to the wrong individual, you
might end up in the county morgue. You
and I both know you're Deborah Kay Kincaid and that you’ve been in the federal
witness protection program for two and a half years.”
His harsh
tone cut through her feeble bravado like a steak knife through a tender T-bone
steak. His voice had a no-nonsense
quality that refuted any possible argument but she heard a kindness beneath the
gruff words that steadied her long enough she was able to sit back and exhale.
“How do you
know they were after me?” Kendra asked, wondering if she could just be Deborah
again since her cover was now transparent.
“You're
watched, of course. We had a tip that proved to be correct,” his voice remained
even. “Everyone in the program is
monitored. Didn’t you realize that?”
“No, I didn't.”
A chill
crept up her spine as comprehension that someone kept track of her every day,
maybe each hour sank in, and her notion of hard-won privacy was just an
illusion. So was any real safety, she
mused, if someone tracked her to Bargain Mart and started shooting. She wasn’t safe. Worse yet, she never had
been.
He sighed,
“Don’t they brief you any better than that? Did you think Max was your sole
contact?”
She had. The
older agent who posed as her uncle Max became like real family to her and
living her brand new life, she never thought the old one would come to haunt
her, let alone touch her.
“Yeah, I
did. That’s what they told me when I got
my new identity. Does Max know what
happened or that you’re taking me against my will?”
“You ask
too many questions but I’m a nice guy so I’ll answer them, one at a time. Whoever told you such information didn’t know
what they were talking about in the least.
Max knows what went down at the discount store. He also knew we were tracking a lead that put
a hit man on the scene to take you out.”
Poor Max,
she thought, summoning an image of the older gentleman with his suspenders,
rimless spectacles, and classic music collection. Although she called him “uncle,” he was more
like a grandfather and she guessed he’d worry.
“I need to
call him and let him know I’m all right,” Kendra said, digging into her purse
for her cell phone.
“Deborah, it's been handled,” US Marshall Campbell said as his large hands removed the phone from her small one. “Max is relocating himself and you'll be doing the same, soon.”
“Deborah, it's been handled,” US Marshall Campbell said as his large hands removed the phone from her small one. “Max is relocating himself and you'll be doing the same, soon.”
She thought of the life she'd built piece by
piece out of nothing. She came to this
small town tucked into the foothills of the Ozark Mountains with a manufactured
background and got a job at the local radio station. That tiny apartment she rented on the second
floor of an old house became her haven.
Her plants bloomed there and the greenery made it seem as homey as her
grandmother’s kitchen. In the
windowsill, African violets blossomed year round and she grew herbs in a tiny
dish garden she used as seasoning when she cooked. She created a cozy zone with cheap pillows
from Bargain Mart, rummage sale knick-knacks, doilies that she crocheted
herself, and an old patchwork quilt she bought at Tina’s Treasures
downtown. Her collection of used furniture was vintage
but not antique. That apartment became
her home, an almost real one and she thrived there. Now the stranger who whisked her away from a
deadly shooting spree told her she was about to be uprooted again. Everything in Kendra rebelled against that
and she told him so.
“I don’t
want to go anywhere else! I’ve built a life here in Hickory and I like it.”
His eyes
met hers, dark and unfathomable, but he nodded as if he understood.
“I'm sorry
about that but it’ll happen Deborah. Do you prefer Debby, Deb, or Deborah? We'll
be spending a lot of time together so I might as well get it right.”
Thirty
months passed since anyone called her Deborah or Debby and the names sounded
strange in her ears.
“I like
Kendra.”
Kendra was
smart, a perceptive woman who knew her own mind and didn’t let a man into her
life to destroy it. She seldom dated
and wasn't in any relationship because that got too complicated. Kendra went to church without fail each Sunday
morning, not because it was part of her cover but because she liked it. Kendra, she thought, was probably a better
person than Deborah once was. And she was wiser.
“Your time
as Kendra is over. If you don’t tell me
what you like, I’ll just call you Deb because it’s short and simple.”
Nick called her that for the same reason.
With as
much dignity as she could summon, Kendra finally spoke up. “In that case, I’d
rather you called me Deborah. What would
you like me to call you, Tim, Timmy or Timothy?”
For the
first time since he grabbed her, he smiled. A genuine grin lit his face like
sunshine streaming through storm clouds, stripping away at least ten years.
“Neither. My friends call me Cam and you can, too.”
“Cam,” She tried it out, liking the sound of it,
short and to the point. It suited him,
she thought. “I’m pleased to make your acquaintance. Now that we're friends, tell me where you’re
taking me against my will.”
His grin broadened despite her sarcasm.
“We’re
going to a safe house until things settled down and we decide if you remain in
danger or not.”
“Where's
this house?”
Cam shook
his head. “I can’t give you the
location. Try to trust me. I'm one of the good guys, remember.”
She wanted to believe him but she wasn't sure
if she could. Trusting a man came hard
after what happened with Nick and all that followed. As she struggled with the heap of newfound
knowledge thrust at her she wasn’t sure if she could. As she tried she said a brief, private
farewell to Kendra, to the feisty, capable woman she wanted to be and slipped
back into Deborah’s skin.
“I'll try,”
Deborah said. “That’s all I can promise.
I'll try.”
Cam turned
his head toward her and nodded.
“That’s
good enough for now.”
Deborah
stared out the tinted windows of the SUV watching the countryside fly past as
her thoughts soared with the same speed.
After building a life here, her possessions were now cut down to the
clothes on her back and her purse, nothing more. Her small network of friends vanished with
the miles and Max, the only family she had for the last two years, was suddenly
out of her life. She'd never see him
again, she thought, and with that tears sprang to her eyes. Her own family might as well be dead; she
could never see or interact with them again.
As Kendra she was often tempted to try but today’s unexpected turn of
events underlined why she'd been wise to leave them alone.
One
question mattered enough to risk Cam's ire to ask it.
“Who's
after me?”
Cam turned
his head to stare at her, a worry line dividing his forehead into two neat
halves.
“Are you
trying to tell me you don’t have any idea?”
He sounded
like he thought pursuit by killers, hired or not, was just a day in the life of
Kendra Driskell.
“I don’t.”
Cam
snorted. “Surely Nick Bianco’s
girlfriend knows better than that.”
He said the
name and she froze, her mind filled with images of Nick.
He snorted
again. “Yeah, I thought so.”
Deborah
found her voice. “It’s not like that. It
isn’t what you think. It never was.”
Cam’s black
eyes smoldered like two jet stones as he stared back at her.
“Isn’t Mr.
Bianco the reason you ended up in the program?”
She couldn't
lie. “Well, yes but – “
“But?” He
sounded skeptical, almost angry.
“It’s a long
story but I was never really his girlfriend,” Deborah said, searching for the
proper words that would help her explain.
His
eyebrows, lighter than his eyes, rose at the words and his lips tightened.
“Deb, let’s
get a few things straight. My current
assignment is to protect you and we'll be spending a lot of time together, like
it or not. I can’t help you or keep you
safe if you won’t be straight with me.
I'm the one person you can’t lie to.”
Cam used
the short form of her name to needle her and it worked. Anger rose in her like yeast increased bread
dough.
“I’m not
lying,” Deborah said, scooting so she could face him. “You don’t understand and you won’t give me a
chance to explain. None of your people
ever did. They all judged me and looked
at me as if I'm some kind of loose woman but I'm not. I never was.”
He folded
his arms across his chest looking very formidable, more like an Old Testament
prophet without the beard. His piercing
gaze made her feel like she was about seven years old and in the principal’s
office, seconds from a scolding and a sound spanking.
“You know,
I actually want to believe you,” Cam said in a voice as stern as his face. “You have this air of innocence and I find it
hard to imagine you with a hardened criminal like Nick but I’ve read the case
file. Everything in it indicates you
were as close as any woman could get to Mr. Bianco.”
Deborah
wanted to cry. This was the very attitude
she encountered more than two years ago when every federal prosecutor and judge
treated her like a hostile witness when all she wanted to do was tell the
truth, nothing more. She came forward
willing to provide facts and details because it was the right thing to do but
when the trial ended, her reputation was ruined and her life as she knew it
over. Let there be a way to get back my life and restore my reputation, she
thought. Even her own family treated her as if she sinned and she wondered, as
she did often, if they even thought about her anymore.
“Then the
file is wrong,” Deborah finally said with a calmness she truly lacked.
Cam quirked
one eyebrow her direction and looked her over with disdain.
“Is it?” He
didn't sound very sure. “Well, you’ll have plenty of time to convince me at the
safe house. You won’t like what I need
to do now.”
Deborah
bristled.
“And what
would that be? Are you going to handcuff
me?”
“That’s a
good guess and close,” Cam said as an evil grin flirted with his lips. “I have
to blindfold you so you can’t reveal the location of the safe house.”
“No.” The word pushed past her lips before she
could even think about it. “You can’t do that.”
He pulled
out a blindfold. “I’m sorry but I have
to.”
“I haven’t
been paying any attention to where we are at or where we’re going,” Deborah
protested. “I won’t reveal the
location.”
“Good. But just in case, let me put this in place.”
His hands
were deft for such a large man as he tied the blindfold over her eyes with
swift skill. Panic hit as soon as
everything went black but as soon as she realized she could breathe, she
calmed, irate but resigned, to temporary blindness.
Unable to see, Deborah’s thoughts turned
toward prayer and an attempt to remain focused. As such, she recited every
Psalm she knew from memory, silent but steadfast. The age-old familiar words helped ease her
angst and leached some of the horror from the morning’s events. Although she couldn't forget the gunfire
ripping through Bargain Mart, the blood, or that foot lying so still, she
reached deep within to find fortitude and the strength to face whatever came
next.
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