Book Title: Vengeance (A Valentine Shepherd Novel)
Author: Shana Figueroa
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Release Date: September 6, 2016
Publisher: Forever & Forever Yours | Grand Publishing
Hosted by: Book Enthusiast Promotions
Not every Valentine is a saint . . .
Corruption. Greed. Illicit sex. Murder. Private investigator Valentine Shepherd thinks she's seen it all, and her strange ability to glimpse the future gives her an edge no one else in the world has. But when her fiancé is killed trying to exonerate his client, billionaire Max Carressa, Val makes it her personal mission to bring the people responsible to justice, no matter the cost. Convinced the two men are linked by more than attorney-client privilege, she enlists Max's help in her investigation and gets more than she bargained for . . .
On the run, Val and Max must uncover who wants them dead and why. The answer leads them to a conspiracy that has Val herself at its center. She doesn't understand how or why, but time is running out to expose the truth and escape the danger she knows is coming . . .
Val sprinted down the narrow passage, crashing through mud puddles and leaping over bags of trash that littered her escape route. She followed the alley when it turned right, scanning her path for any opening into the street that might save her life. Before she found a way out, the alley dead-ended at a tarp-covered chain-link fence with barbed wire on top and a padlock trapping her inside.
“No!” Val yanked on the padlock. It didn’t budge. She tried the only door in the alley, a metal behemoth flush with the brick—locked. “Goddammit, no!” She kicked the door, and it barely moved.
Val pulled out her pistol and pressed herself into the corner of the alley’s dead end. She’d been in firefights before while in the military, though not against American citizens, and not alone. She didn’t stand much of a chance against two armed cops when she had nowhere to hide and no cover for support. In all her visions she’d never seen her own death. There was no reason this couldn’t be it.
But she’d be damned if she was going down without a fight. Val planted her feet on the wet pavement, gun trained at the alleyway’s bend, ready to shoot the first thing that entered her line of sight. The rain picked up, an icy October shower that matted her hair to her face and would have chilled her to the bone if not for the wild adrenaline racing through her veins. For what seemed like an eternity she listened to the approaching footsteps and stood her ground, waiting to die.
Then she heard it—a chain rattling. Val ripped her gaze away from where her killers were due to arrive any second to see a set of bolt cutters slip through the fence and snap the padlock off. The chain slinked to the ground, and someone pulled the gate open.
One of her pursuers had somehow doubled back, and now they surrounded her.
Val spun around to face her flanker, finger on the trigger to let loose a hail of bullets into Sten or his friend’s smug face. She gasped and just barely stopped herself from firing as she registered Max Carressa standing in front of her, holding the bolt cutters and recoiling from her gun. She hardly recognized him in jeans and a black motorcycle jacket, a baseball cap deflecting the rain out of his startled face, though his gorgeous eyes were a dead giveaway.
“What the hell?” she said.
Max grabbed her arm. “Come on!” He glanced behind her, where Chet’s murderers thundered up, just around the corner. “Do you wanna die here or not?”
Shana Figueroa is a published author who specializes in romance and humor, with occasional sojourns into horror, sci-fi, and literary fiction.
She lives in Massachusetts with her husband, two young daughters, and two old pugs. She enjoys reading, writing (obviously), martial arts, video games, and SCIENCE---it's poetry in motion! By day, she serves her country in the US Air Force as an aerospace engineer. By night, she hunkers down in a corner and cranks out the crazy stories lurking in her head.
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