Today we have Book Pushers favorite Shannon Stacey here to give us an excerpt from her newest release, No Place to Run.
He came to in a cell, struggling to focus on the big man on the other side of the bars. He was older than Prescott and stood at parade rest, watching him.
Jack tried to will moisture into his mouth and then licked his lips while half rolling off the cot onto his feet. “Isabelle?”
“She’s in an interrogation room. Under guard.”
“Was it a Nagant?”
The man snorted. “You’re a stubborn son of a bitch.”
“Get me the captain. The guy who recognized the shell casing. I need to talk to him.”
“That’s me. Captain Wells. And I can’t say for sure, but I believe the shell casing came from a Nagant M1895.”
“Oh fuck.” It was too much, and he had to sit on the edge of the cot before he fell on his ass. “I need to get out of here. I need to—”
“You need to explain to me what’s going on.”
“He’s an assassin. A killer for hire. And he’s never failed, so if he’s contracted to take you out, you’re as good as dead.”
The captain was silent for a long moment, and then he shook his head. “Being familiar with the gun, I’ve heard of him, but he’s just an urban legend.”
Jack looked into Wells’s eyes, unflinching. “He’s not an urban legend. He’s real. He’s in your city. And he’s here to kill Isabelle Arceneau.”
Just saying the words out loud made his gut churn. Despite being on the most-wanted lists of every major law enforcement agency in the world, the man didn’t even have a name. There wasn’t so much as a half-ass pencil sketch of him shoved in a manila folder.
The only evidence of his existence was a long list of names of people who took a 7.62 mm Nagant round to the center of the forehead.
“Why?”
Jack shook his head, trying to focus on the captain. “Why what?”
“Why is an urban legend trying to kill Isabelle Arceneau in my city?”
“I don’t know yet, but I’ll figure it out.” He wasn’t going to let her name be added to the list of victims. “Let me out so I can start making calls.”
“I know who you are. I know who you work for. But I also know you’re not getting out of this cell until I’m damn good and ready to let you out.”
“I’m sorry,” Jack told him. “I know it looked like I was going for your guy, but I just needed an answer.”
“This isn’t just a job for you.”
It wasn’t a question. “Isabelle and I have a history. I promised I’d keep her safe.”
Wells gave him a hard look. “Prescott explained what happened, and we’re inclined to write this off as a misunderstanding, especially since your employer’s done a few favors for the city now and then. But understand right now that we’ll do what we can for you, but you are not in charge here.”
“I understand.” He’d say whatever he had to in order to get out of this cell and back to Isabelle.
Everything was different now. Somebody taking a shot at her on the street was bad. A killer who never failed to take out his target was so much worse.
And now it was Jack’s mission to make sure Isabelle was the assassin’s first failure. Mystery or not, the man was flesh and blood, and that meant he could be stopped. It was up to him to do the stopping.
No Place to Hide Synopsis
Jack Donovan went through hell and back to save Isabelle once. Now she’s back in his life, hunted by an assassin so elusive some claim he’s only an urban legend. More than just a gun for hire, the killer is driven by a pathological need to take down his targets and, when Isabelle escapes the bullet meant for her, Jack knows he’ll strike again. The only way to keep her alive is to keep her close, and Jack’s about to learn what hell really is.
In the year since Jack rescued her from a guerrilla compound and then walked away, Isabelle Arceneau has begun to put her life back on track. Now somebody wants her dead and Jack is once again her only hope for survival. As the Devlin Group races to uncover the killer’s identity and Jack and Isabelle go on the run in a desperate bid to keep her alive, she knows she can trust him with her life, but never again with her heart.
For release on August 20, 2014
About Shannon
New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Shannon Stacey is the author of over two dozen romance novels and novellas, including her popular Kowalski series. She has been nominated for an RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Award twice, and was named to a Publishers Weekly Top 10: Romance list in 2013. Shannon lives in New Hampshire with her husband and two sons.
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