We’re just a few days away from the release of Winds of Change, and so I’m back with another Sample Sunday! This is a little teaser for Chapter 1 of the novel. If you’re the sort of person who likes to wait until all the volumes in a series are released before you start reading…well, this isn’t the final book in the series, but it does wrap up Jake and Addie’s story. 🙂 Any other books in the series will stand alone in terms of the romance between the two main characters, although, like most of my series, it always helps to start at the beginning so you get the most out of the interpersonal relationships and back stories of the various characters. Winds of Change will be out on Wednesday, July 15, but you can pre-order it now (the links are located below the excerpt).
Adara Grant lay on the bed in the suite that had been prepared for her, the monitors at her bedside showing the slow, strong beat of her heart, her steady respiration, blood pressure holding at an optimal one-twenty over eighty. Randall Lenz sat at her bedside, watching her, even though he knew it would be several more hours before the drug released its hold on her and she swam back up to consciousness.
He’d expected to feel triumphant at the realization that she was finally here, that her amazing talents would soon be put through a battery of tests to determine their limits and strengths. All the other participants in the program had gone through similar testing, although those tests had each been tailored for their individual talents.
In that moment, however, he felt more exhausted than anything else. Too much running from place to place, he supposed; too many time zones and not enough sleep.
And perhaps the after-effects of the lightning bolt he suspected she’d zapped him with nearly two weeks earlier. Although he still didn’t know for sure what had really happened to him, whatever it was, it had definitely caused some lasting damage. No, his headaches weren’t quite as bad as they’d once been, and he hadn’t experienced any further nosebleeds after the first one, but Lenz guessed his body still hadn’t completely recovered from the shock — no pun intended — it had experienced.
What would Adara do when she awoke? Would she know immediately what had happened, and attempt to use her powers to defend herself?
Very possibly, but the effects of such an attack probably wouldn’t be what she’d intended. There were no windows in the rooms where she would be living at the secret government facility just outside Alexandria, no way for the weather to affect him or anyone else inside what was, to all intents and purposes, an underground bunker. The suite had been furnished to look like a well-appointed vacation condo…except for a complete lack of windows, along with state-of-the-art biometric locks on the doors. Those locks wouldn’t open for anyone except Lenz himself and a few others, like Dr. Richards and her team, and those whose job it was to bring the subjects their meals and make sure they weren’t lacking for anything.
Well, anything except their freedom.
At any rate, it would be difficult to use lightning as a weapon when there weren’t any windows to give it access, and where the facility’s electrical system had been shielded to protect it from any unusual surges.
That thought comforted him somewhat, as did his memory of the raid on Adara’s rented home in Riverton, Wyoming. Really, the operation had been pretty much textbook. Just the slightest bit of a surprise when he and Ives and Tolliver discovered that her house was being guarded by three tough-looking Native American men, but they’d been able to regroup and re-strategize, and the guards had been dispatched easily enough. Quite possibly they were good to have around during a barroom brawl, but they were no match for a group that included a former Air Force pilot, an ex-SEAL, and an agent who’d trained in hand-to-hand combat for more than fifteen years.
The street where Adara’s house in Riverton was located was a quiet one, and no one had taken any notice of Lenz’s group driving her away in a dark SUV. The men they’d knocked out would wake in the morning with a set of nasty headaches, but they would be fine in a day or two. And because he and his commandos had made sure to wear masks during the raid, there was no way those guards could identify their attackers. No one should have any idea who had taken Adara Grant, or why.
Except possibly the mysterious Jake, the man who’d come to her rescue in Kanab. Lenz still couldn’t quite figure out what the connection was between the two of them.
But he had Adara now, and soon enough, she would tell him what he needed to know, including who Jake really was, and why he’d been able to find her in Kanab. Once he was in possession of those particular facts, Lenz had a feeling a great many things would be explained.
He couldn’t wait for her to wake up.
Pre-order Winds of Change at your favorite online bookstore:
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