Dear Readers, Writers, and Precious Patrons,
Today All Authors is pleased to feature Susanne Matthews, author of Secrets and Lies.
Blurb:
DEA agent, Emily Shepherd, is after the Chef, a crystal meth
cook, who sets up labs for the Mexican cartel and walks away—the same man
responsible for the deaths of her husband and unborn child. Her search leads
her to Braden, Iowa, a small town just right for the Chef’s specialty. But
identifying her quarry won’t be easy when she’s up against a woman who sees her
as a threat, a male chauvinistic deputy sheriff, and an attractive school
principal who might just be at the center of it all.
Jackson Harris has sworn off women. Life is satisfactory, if
lonely, until he meets a hazel-eyed damsel in distress who gets under his skin,
and triggers that protective instinct of his. There's a killer in town, one who
may or may not be a notorious drug lord. Finding him, and keeping his town, his
students, and Emily safe, may be harder than he thinks.
Love is breaking out in Braden, Iowa. Follow all the romance
with this collection of stories. Secrets
and Lies is part of the Hearts of
Braden Series, a multi-author series. Secrets
and Lies stands alone for your reading enjoyment, but the story doesn't
need to end there.
Excerpt
from Secrets and Lies:
“Why the hell didn’t you tell me the truth, Kyle? I had a
right to know.”
Emily Jacobson Shepherd sat in one of the hard chairs across
from Kyle Kavanagh’s desk, fervently wishing she’d opted to stand, although by
now that would probably be torture, too. She’d run the gamut of emotions these
past eighteen months, but nothing matched her current fury.
“Damn it, Emily. I didn’t know for sure until they recovered
the bodies in Mexico. We thought he’d died in that blast, too,” he said running
his hand through his sparse ginger hair. “Information to the contrary started
trickling in about a year ago, but it was just speculation. Even my source
inside the cartel wasn’t positive. Since I wasn’t sure you’d ever be able to
come back, let alone want to do so, I figured letting you think he was dead
would help you heal and move on.”
The Chef was alive! She tried to get her head around Kyle’s
revelation and was still too stunned to fully appreciate all that those four
little words implied. The bastard wasn’t one of the unidentified corpses they’d
found in the warehouse. Kyle had suspected the truth for almost a year, and yet
he’d let her go on believing her enemy was gone. Knowing that monster was still
out there, praying on the innocent and luckless, would’ve helped her get back
on her feet sooner. Instead, she’d wallowed in months of self-pity, regretting
the losses she’d suffered, and feeling cheated because her nemesis would never
pay for the crimes he’d committed. Death in that explosion would’ve been the
easy way out for him. She wanted him to suffer, like she had, like she did now.
“You don’t have the right to decide what I need or don’t
need. It was my life he ruined.”
The Chef had forfeited his men the way a chess player
sacrificed his pawns. Those poor buggers probably hadn’t realized they were the
equivalent of the guys in the red shirts on Star
Trek. Alex had loved the sci-fi series and always joked that the extras in
the red shirts should get danger pay since they were sure to die within the
first few minutes of the episode—that was unless of course they were engineers.
Like the Enterprise’s Montgomery Scott, the Chef always managed to make it out
in one piece. Despite his age and educational background, Alex had been
superstitious and had refused to wear red shirts, citing the precedent, and yet
wearing a blue shirt hadn’t saved him or the other men who’d walked into the
trap with him. By some miracle, she’d survived, but look at the price she’d
paid. This was her chance to get even, to get the justice she wanted for the
man she’d loved. Who was she kidding? She wanted revenge, plain and simple, but
Kyle was vacillating, and she didn’t like it one damn bit. He owed her.
“This is my case, has always been my case, and now that I’m
back, I should be the one to follow through on it.”
She was so angry with the agent-in-charge of the El Paso
Division of the DEA that she was shaking, and gripped her hands together to
hide it. How dare he presume she could ever go on not knowing the truth? A slip
of the tongue from a visiting agent and friend had changed everything and given
her a reason to live again. Badgering her doctor, she’d convinced him to let
her return to full duties. The days and nights of feeling sorry for herself
were over. Her life had purpose again, and that goal was to put the Chef out of
business once and for all.
“Despite what you’ve heard, we don’t know exactly where he
is, but we know where he’s been. We’ve got someone on the inside now, and our
informant says he’s on the move. I’ll see what I can do about getting you
reassigned to the case, but Emily, it isn’t up to me alone. The brass has to
sign off on this, and given the situation, I’m not sure they will.”
“Then you need to convince them I’m the best person for the
job. I’m not an idiot, Kyle,” she said, frustration giving her voice an
unnecessary edge. “I’m a frigging bionic woman now. People with artificial
limbs like mine return to their regular jobs every day. Soldiers go back into
the field, and it’s time I did, too. It’s taken me more than a year to accept
what happened to me, and I’ll be damned if I let it steal any more of my life.
I’m either a DEA agent returned to full duty or I’m not, and you’ll have my
resignation on your desk as fast as I can print and sign it, but let me assure
you, I will find him even if I have
to do it on my own and spend every last cent I have tracking him down.”
About the author:
Susanne Matthews lives in Eastern Ontario, Canada with her husband. She has three grown children and five grandchildren. Of French-Canadian descent, Susanne is an avid reader of all types of books, but with a penchant for happily ever after romances regardless of what it takes to get there. A retired educator, she spends her time writing and creating adventures for her readers, whether in a contemporary, historical, sci-fi, paranormal, or suspense setting. She loves the ins and outs of complex romances, and the journey it takes to get from the first word to the last period of a novel. As she writes, her characters take on a life of their own, and she shares their fears and agonies on the road to self-discovery and love.
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