Blurb: Chicago Cop Simon Grant and Sanctuary operative Cain Brodie, have
to be the heroes of their own stories, just to stay alive.
Everyone wants Chicago cop, Simon Grant, dead. Armed with an address, he is on
the run and heading for Sanctuary, only to end up at the wrong end of a gun. Is
it possible the tall amber-eyed man holding the gun is actually going to be
able to help him?
Cain Brodie is in charge of Sanctuary’s new Chicago office, C-Tower. His well
organised administration day takes an unexpected turn when he has a man wanted
for murder right in his gun sights. Thrust into a situation he has no control
over suddenly he needs to be the one in control.
Accidental or not, Simon and Cain have to be the heroes of their own stories,
just to stay alive.
Sanctuary
Series:
Buy Links~ http://rjscottauthor.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/accidental-hero-sanctuary-8.html
Excerpt:
Chapter 1
Everyone wants us dead.
Cops. The entire Drugs & Gangs team. Varga. Any of them, all of them, they
all want us gone.
Simon Grant crab-walked backward, reaching
the wall and curling his knees up so that he was as far away from the body as
possible. Blood pooled in a macabre circle of scarlet, spreading almost to his
feet. What was left of Jamie Harrington’s face was toward him, and Simon
couldn’t look. He closed his eyes tight, aware the sight of broken skin and
shattered bone would never leave his memory.
I’m telling you, we should talk to
someone outside the precinct.
The last words Jamie had said just a day
before. Mere hours before Simon had found this tableau of blood and gore, laid
out before him.
A noise had him plastering himself against
the wall, belatedly realizing it was he himself who had made the sound, halfway
between a groan and a keen of denial. Horror had nausea rising and he tried to
breathe to calm his gorge, but all he could smell was cordite and blood.
“I should have—” not said a fucking thing
to anyone. Simon finished the harsh words that had begun out loud and ended
inside, where he knew he would keep them forever.
He pushed his hand through his hair,
anchoring his fingers in the length of it, blood smearing his skin. Then he
crawled over, the wetness of blood soaking his pants, and felt for a pulse.
Jamie had half his face missing, his dark
hair and skull matted, and one of his eyes blasted away… no face.
He’s gone, and I checked for a fucking
pulse.
Simon froze in place. A gun lay in the
blood, obscenely black against the red, just inches from Jamie’s outstretched
hand as if he’d been reaching for it, looking up at his attacker and hoping to
hell he reached the police-issue gun before he was killed. Why had it been
left?
For fuck’s sake, think. Analyze the
situation.
Was Simon supposed to pick it up, put his
prints all over it? Was the killer watching, waiting for him to fuck up,
waiting for him to be blamed for the death of his partner?
He had to box away the horror, push aside
the shock and grief, and think.
He counted down from five and considered
what next. The apartment was on the second floor. Whoever did this could be
waiting or coming for him next; there was a gun in the blood, and Jamie was
dead. What if it wasn’t Jamie’s gun? Simon looked around the otherwise spotless
room, grabbed the nearest bag he could see—a brown grocery bag—upending it. The
apples and cans inside spilled into the scarlet on the wooden floor. Had Jamie
been out shopping? Did his murderer follow him home?
Just to one side, a bouquet of red roses
lay half in and half out of the pool of blood. The white paper they were
wrapped in had darkened in places; petals lay on the ground, weighed down by
blood.
Simon used the grocery bag to pick up the
gun. Long strings of sticky scarlet linked the gun to the floor for a moment
and Simon pushed back sickness again. He’d seen death before, but never one
that hit so close to home.
He turned his head to get some fresh air
from the open window. The sound of sirens closing in was enough to have him
leaving the apartment, turning left instead of right, moving to the back of the
building and the way he knew he would be able to get out. Going up instead of
down, he made it to the roof in record time, only a little winded. The gun was
in the bag, pushed firmly into a pocket of his jacket.
He stepped back right near the edge and
centered himself. Counting in his head again, he sprinted toward the next
building and jumped the six-foot gap, landing and rolling onto solid roofing on
the other side. He fell heavily on the gun, shoving it into his ribs, but he’d
made it across and that was no mean feat.
The exit plan had been formed amid teasing
and laughter over beers at Jamie’s last get-together for colleagues, on that
clear Chicago night.
“You’ll never make it across,” Jamie had
said on a belch. “Your short ass and stubby legs will have you tumbling into
the alley. You’ll end up in a dumpster, and don’t think anyone’ll come get your
stinking body.”
Simon had shoved him. “Five ten is not
short, asshole.”
I can’t think of Jamie now. I made it
over.
He looked around for somewhere to hide the
gun. No way was he getting caught with it. He shoved it into the air intake,
pushed it a long way back to a small shelf area. Done.
Why am I even keeping it?
“Because there may be other prints, or a
trace, or something,” he answered his own question. “If it isn’t Jamie’s gun,
we might be able to….”
To what? Why did you take it? Are you
stupid? You took evidence?
With stealth he made his way across the
roof and to the stairs, taking them three at a time and landing lightly on the
first floor. From there he took a joining walkway to yet another apartment
block and finally left that by using the fire escape, stopping only to scrub
his face to clear away any blood. Finally he joined the crowds walking the
sidewalk with purpose. They parted before him, some acknowledging him with
nods, others bypassing him, and some shooting him guilty looks. A couple cursed
him as he walked against the flow, but no one stopped him. No one shot at him, no
one shouted. There was no recognition of who he was inside the uniform.
He was just another Chicago cop on the
beat. Nothing to stand out. As long as he walked steadily and with resolution
and didn’t break out into a panicked run, no one would look twice past the
badge.
At soon as he could, he stepped into
business premises—a coffee shop. He went straight to the bathroom, washed his
face and his hands properly, then looked critically at his uniform. There was
blood there—Jamie’s blood—but the dark blue of the uniform was enough to cover
it. He pulled out his cell and stared at it for the longest time. It was
nothing special, but it had all his numbers in there. Including Elliot’s. It
also had a GPS chip that could be traced. No way was he calling anyone or
reaching out.
He fingered the card in his pocket.
“Here, if you need anything…”
Elliot had told both him and Jamie.
Promised them a place where they could get help. Even at that moment Simon had
placed his faith squarely in the cops he served with, Jamie as well.
“This is bigger than just you two,” Elliot
told them.
About
RJ
RJ Scott has been writing since age six,
when she was made to stay in at lunchtime for an infraction involving cookies.
She was told to write a story and two sides of paper about a trapped princess
later, a lover of writing was born.
As an avid reader herself, she can be found
reading anything from thrillers to sci-fi to horror. However, her first real
true love will always be the world of romance where she takes cowboys,
bodyguards, firemen and billionaires (to name a few) and writes dramatic and
romantic stories of love and passion between these men.
With over seventy titles to her name and
counting, she is the author of the award winning book, The Christmas Throwaway.
She is also known for the Texas series charting the lives of Riley and Jack,
and the Sanctuary series following the work of the Sanctuary Foundation and the
people it protects.
Her goal is to write stories with a heart
of romance, a troubled road to reach happiness, and most importantly, that hint
of a happily ever after.
Giveaway:
Win
a $15 Giftcard from Amazon or ARe, plus 2 further prizes of an ebook from RJ’s
catalogue. Competition closes 4th December – midnight GMT.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Stay tuned for Review~ Tuesday~ 24 November~
2015 ©Evelise Archer All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or have been used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental. No portion of this work may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the author.
