But Walter isn’t safe, not at Chase’s residence or anywhere else. His too-frequent forays into the city—against Brian Schrade’s advice—make him a target, and his strong attraction to Chase Gordon is setting him up for some serious heartbreak. When Chase goes to Honduras to investigate the state of his family’s failing fortunes, he adds another trouble to the long list: he’s been set up for kidnapping.
It all started with a bottle of mustard.
He’d wanted some mustard for a sandwich he was making in the kitchen of his tiny apartment at three minutes past midnight on a rainy Wednesday night. The rain in Manhattan wasn’t like rain anywhere else: it was sideways, driven by a ferocious wind and striking the skin like daggers. The only place open was a grungy, rundown little store on the corner of West 86th and Broadway. People—tourists, especially, and others new to the city—went there because hey, it’s right there on Broadway, gotta be classy, and people like Walter went because it was close to where he lived, just off Broadway, which wasn’t classy either, even though everybody thought so.
The store was open practically twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, run by two Iranian brothers whose only conversation consisted of nods and grunts. The interior was maybe six by nine feet, with minimal lighting and a trap door leading into the basement, where the brothers stored crates of canned food, candy bars, and a limited amount of fresh produce.
“You got any mustard?” Walter asked, stepping out of the rain and pulling the door closed behind him. “Doesn’t matter what brand.” One of the brothers found it, took it off the shelf, and handed it to Walter, who stood there reading the label. He had no idea what he was looking for. Mustard was mustard, wasn’t it?
Walter was reaching for his wallet when the door burst open violently, swinging hard on its hinges. Two men in ski masks grabbed the man behind the cash register and hauled him over the counter. One held him while the other quickly and efficiently shot him twice in the head.
The second man turned, saw Walter, and brought the gun up to fire. There was a short popping sound, like firecrackers, and the bottle of mustard exploded in Walter’s hand.
Get out, he thought. I gotta get out. They shot me in the mustard. The gunmen were between him and the door. At this close range, they couldn’t miss and they would almost certainly shoot him, shoot him till he was as dead as the store clerk, lying on his face with half his head blown away. Behind him, the trapdoor to the basement yawned open. Walter made a split-second decision and dove in, slamming the trapdoor behind him and slapping the lock closed. Padlock on the inside of a trapdoor, who the hell does that? Overhead, he could hear the two men walking back and forth, and someone tried the trapdoor, yanking hard. That lock can’t possibly hold. It’ll never hold. I’m a dead man.
The basement was roomier than he’d originally thought, and divided into several sections for storage. At the far end of the space was a narrow door leading God knows where, but Walter didn’t have a whole lot of choice. He slipped inside, closed the door behind him, and saw a short flight of stairs going up to a second door. He went through that and found himself in the space behind the building, hemmed in on all sides by dangling fire escapes. There was a locked gate at one end, taller than Walter, and the other was blocked by a dumpster. Walter chose the dumpster. He clambered over it, panting and sweating, and took off at a dead run, pounding blindly through the pouring rain until he was—finally—standing in the lobby of his building.
His hand shook as he opened his apartment door and slammed it shut behind him and fumbled with the locks. He went around and pulled all the blinds down, then crawled on his hands and knees to the kitchen. The phone on the countertop…. He yanked it toward him by the cord, dumping the receiver into his lap. He dialed frantically and waited in an agony of suspense until—
“This is Newman.”
Walter sagged with relief. “Billy, I’m—these two guys—I went to get mustard.” Until now he hadn’t noticed the jagged cut in the center of his palm, raw flesh showing underneath a slow trickle of blood. Until now, it hadn’t even hurt. Adrenaline, Walter supposed. Most likely adrenaline was what had propelled him through the trap door and into the basement.
“Whoa, slow down. What the hell are you talking about?”
Walter told him. “They saw me, Billy. They saw my face.”
“Were they were wearing ski masks?” Billy asked. “If they had their faces covered, it doesn’t matter. It’s not like you can identify them in a lineup.” He yawned. “Do you know it’s after midnight? Where are you, anyway?”
“Home,” Walter said. On the kitchen floor, scared spitless, waiting for them to come and get me.
“Don’t worry,” Billy said. “They’re not interested in you.”
“You sound awfully sure.”
“You didn’t see their faces,” Billy repeated. How does he know? “They’ll never know you were there unless somebody blabs. Kinda hard to do, since you don’t know who they are.” He paused, like he was trying to figure something out. “There were two of them?”
“Two.” Walter was shaking hard enough to make his teeth chatter. “One was tall, kind of lanky, long arms and legs. He didn’t say anything. The other one was shorter, kind of stocky.”
“But you didn’t see their faces.”
Walter tried to draw a deep breath, but his chest felt like it was encased in iron bands. “I didn’t see their faces.”
“That’s good,” Billy said. “These guys don’t like it when somebody gets in the way of their wetwork.”
Walter spent the night lying curled against the cupboards in the kitchen, cradling a baseball bat. In the morning he called the police. Two disinterested detectives spent twenty minutes asking him for a description of the shooters, then sighed and closed their notebooks.
J.S. Cook was born in a tiny fishing village on the seacoast of Newfoundland. Her love of writing manifested itself early when her mother, impressed with the quality of a school assignment she’d written, sent it to the editor of the local paper – who published it. Since then she has written novels, short stories, novellas, plays, radio scripts and some really, really bad poetry. She has worked as a housekeeper, nanny, secretary, publisher, parliamentary editor and a university lecturer, although this last convinced her never to step foot inside a classroom again. She holds a B.A. (Honors) and an M.A. in English Language and Literature, and a B.Ed in post-secondary education. She loves walking and once spent six hours walking the streets of Dublin, Ireland. She maintains she wasn’t lost, just “looking around”. She makes her home in St. John’s, Newfoundland, with her husband of 27 years and her spoiled rotten ‘dogter’, Lola, who always gets her own way.
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J.S brought along a wonderful giveaway
She is offering two backlist copies to two Lucky winners
Enter the rafflecopter to have a go at it 🙂
Good Luck!
I loved dyour other books and am sure I will love this one as well.
Congrats on the new book release! It sounds like an interesting read. I’ve added it on to my wishlist.
Wow! That sounds like an exciting read 🙂
I enjoyed the excerpt!
congrats JS…counds great
Great excerpt! Congratulations on the release and looking forward to reading it!
This sounds like a very interesting book. I loved the excerpt and the blurb.
Can’t wait to read this one. Great blurb.
I like the sound of this story. Congratulations on the release.
Thanks for this post.