Missing (26 page)

     And it was where Sarah’s scent suddenly vanished.

     Duke was devastated. One minute he was zeroing in on the woman he’d been tracking for two days. He was getting close, and was looking forward to the praise he’d receive from half a dozen people once he accomplished his mission.

     He especially loved being rubbed behind his ample ears.

     But now, the scent was gone. Simply gone. And he couldn’t understand where it went.

     He paced up and down the section of roadway, desperately trying to find it again.

     Ben, the handler, took him to the other side of the road, where the brush would be better at catching the scent of a woman as she went through it.

     Nothing.

     Bryan asked, “What the hell just happened?”

     The handler scratched his head and said, “This is where she left the ground.”

     Bryan looked to Captain Martin for more of an explanation, but the captain had a “deer in the headlights” look of bewilderment on his face.

     Ben explained.

     “She’s no longer on foot. Right here, on this spot, she either got onto a horse or some type of vehicle. She’s gone.”

     Bryan’s jaw dropped.

     He was incensed. He wanted to punch something or somebody, out of sheer frustration.

     For the first time in his life, he felt almost completely helpless.

     The search was over.

     His wife had vanished.

     Into thin air.

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Thank you for reading

FINAL DAWN Book 6: Missing

Please enjoy this preview of

FINAL DAWN Book 7: The Search

FINAL DAWN, Book 7: The Search will be available worldwide in August, 2015

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     Bryan was losing the battle. He’d never taken Karate, or Judo, or any of those other cool things kids take when they’re young. He’d been too busy playing little league baseball and Pop Warner football to learn how to defend himself against a much larger aggressor.

     But Bryan had one thing on his side. In the battle of right or wrong, he had justice on his side.

     And in the America where Bryan grew up, justice always prevailed.

     Always. Without exception.

     No matter how much bigger and badder the evil guy was.

     Bryan had succeeded in kicking the knife out of the big man’s hand. In doing so, he sliced open his ankle. And his blood was flying everywhere as the two tussled on the ground.

     But Bryan wasn’t the only one losing blood. The big man was bleeding profusely from a nose that was probably broken.

     At least Bryan hoped it was. He’d certainly hit him hard enough to break it.

     The two continued to exchange blows. Bryan knew to stay close to the man, and to take his swings only when he could score a clean hit. If he’d backed away and let the man take a good swing, the strength of the punch might have knocked him out cold.

     If he took a sloppy punch and missed, the man would have an opening to retaliate.

     Bryan stole a glance at Sarah, still bruised and bloodied and cowering in the corner.

     And he grew enraged.

     He remembered from the school yard fights he had as a boy that the best way to defeat a larger opponent was to hit him hard and often. And not to give him time to recover.

     The rage fed him as he swung again and again, landed punch after punch, so fast that the big man staggered back.

     A good right hook to the chin sent him reeling and his knees started to buckle.

     A kick to the side of the head sent him to the floor.

     But Bryan didn’t stop there. He was suddenly filled with an overpowering need for vengeance.

     For what the man had done to Sarah.

     Bryan straddled him and continued to pound the man’s face and head, long after he was unconscious.

     Again and again and again he punched, until his own knuckles were bloody and raw.

     Finally he stopped and turned to see Sarah running across the room toward him.

     At last, she was free.

     But something was terribly wrong.

     There was fire in her eyes.

     She started pummeling Bryan with her own tiny fists, one right after another against his chest.

     He didn’t understand. Not at all.

     He succeeded in catching her hands and held them both tightly by the wrists.

     “Sarah, honey, what are you doing?”

     She screamed like a banshee.

     “Why? Why are you doing this?”

     “Doing what? Sarah, what’s the matter?”

     “Who are you and why are you trying to kill my husband?”

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If you enjoyed

FINAL DAWN, Book 6: Missing

You might also enjoy

RED: The Adventure Begins

RED: The Adventure Begins, will be available worldwide in June, 2015.

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     Red had a worried look on her face.

     And Red never worried about anything.

     “Dad, I don’t like this. This isn’t just a typical blackout. This is something worse. Much worse.”

     “Now, honey, don’t jump to conclusions. It’s only been a little more than a day. We’ve had blackouts that lasted longer than this before.

     “Look at it like an unearned vacation. We didn’t ask for it, but it’s here. Let’s take a day off and go fishing. Heck, we can’t do anything here anyway.”

     But Red was adamant.

     “No, Dad. You aren’t listening. Haven’t you noticed we haven’t had any traffic since the power went out? I mean,
none.
In a day and a half we haven’t had a single car roll into town. You know why? Because the cars are all dead, that’s why.

     “Bonnie and I rode up to the highway this morning. I wanted to see if I could find which transformer blew, and whether they had a crew out there replacing it.

     “What I found instead were abandoned cars, as far as the eye could see, in either direction. Many of them had their hoods up, like their owners had been trying to get them running again.

     “There are people up on the highway just wandering around, not knowing what to do. People sleeping in their cars. People in shock.

     “Dad, what in the world could possibly cause all the cars to stop working at precisely the same time all the power went out?”

     Her father’s face suddenly turned ashen.

     He stumbled over his words.

     “A nuclear blast at high altitude could have caused it. But only a few countries have the capability of doing that. And they have no reason to. It would harm them as much as us.

     “There’s only one other thing I know of that could cause such chaos.”

     He didn’t want to go on.

     But she needed to know.

     “One of the things pilots study is the affect the other planets and sun can have on our own planet. How their gravitational pulls can affect our compasses and such.

      “There’s a phenomenon that can occur during a massive solar storm. If the storm is large enough, it can send electromagnetic pulses toward the earth. Those pulses can short out anything that runs on electrical power.”

     “Dad, please tell me it’s just temporary. That things will start working again once the solar storm has passed.”

     “No, honey. I’m sorry. If that’s what’s caused this, then it’s permanent.”

     He held her close before finishing.

     “And we’re all doomed.”

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Please enjoy this preview of

              ALONE

ALONE is available now on Amazon.com and through Barnes and Noble Booksellers

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     Dave and Sarah Anna Speer had been preparing for Armageddon for years. They thought they’d covered all the bases, and had planned for everything.

     It never occurred to them that the single thing they had no control over was the timing.

     Sarah was on an airplane with her young daughters when solar storms bombarded the earth with electromagnetic pulses. Everything powered by electricity or batteries was instantly shorted out and would never work again.

     Dave was suddenly alone.

     He was also unsure whether his family was dead or alive. He assumed that the airplane stopped working and plunged from the sky. But it was scheduled to land in Kansas City at almost the exact time everything stopped working.

     Had they landed in time? Was it possible they survived?

     This is the story of a man facing Armageddon alone. It chronicles the things he does to survive in a newly vicious world.

     It also includes Dave’s desperate and poignant diary entries to his wife. Just in case she did survive, and somehow makes it back to him to find he didn’t make it himself.

     From the author of last year’s best sellers “Final Dawn” and “Countdown to Armageddon” comes a new tale of one man’s journey through hell… alone.

Chapter 1:

     Dave couldn’t get the tune out of his head. He’d heard it all morning long, off and on, playing quietly in the back of his skull. And it was driving him crazy.

     Oh, it wasn’t unpleasant. It was a happy little ditty. At least it sounded that way. It sounded more like sunshine and smiles, rather than rainclouds and foreboding.

     Finally, he’d had enough.

     “Okay, let’s play a game,” he announced while looking in the rearview mirror at Lindsey and Beth.

     “I’ll hum you a tune, and the first one to guess the tune gets a candy bar when we get to the airport.”

     Sarah looked at him from the passenger seat. With
that
look.

     “Excuse me, mister? You’re going to get the girls all hyped up on sugar just before I take them on a four hour plane ride?”

     “Not both of them, honey. Just the one who guesses the name of the song.”

     “Uh… no. If that song is still bugging you, just hum it. If any one of us guesses it, you can buy each of us a cinnabon.”

     The girls laughed. Beth gave Lindsey a high five. Lindsey said, “All right! Go, Mom!”

     Dave coughed. At first he had no words.

     Then he found some, and stated the obvious.

     “Why is it okay to get all three of you hyped up on sugar but not okay to do it to just one of you?”

     “Because you know I have a thing for cinnabons. And I’m the mom. So that makes me the boss.”

     Lindsey broke out in uncontrollable laughter from the back seat, and Beth said, “Ooooohhh, Dad, you just got
owned.
”

     “I don’t know if it’s worth it. I mean, those things aren’t cheap, you know.”

     “Oh, we know, don’t we girls?”

     Two heads nodded up and down behind her.

     “But, Dave, they are soooo worth the price. And I’ll give you a bite. And think how sweet I’ll taste when you kiss me goodbye.”

     Beth made a gagging sound.

     “Besides, if you want us to help you with that song, you have to pay the piper. It’s only fair. And if you don’t, it’ll continue to drive you crazy for days. Maybe even the whole week we’re gone. And we’d feel so bad for you if that happened.”

     “Yeah, you’re just oozing with sympathy for my plight.”

     Sarah smiled and blew him a kiss. She was even more gorgeous now than the day they’d met thirteen years before. It suddenly dawned on him that he was an incredibly lucky man, to have such a beautiful wife and family. And that the price of three cinnabons wasn’t that great, in the grand scheme of things.