Triple Cross excerpt

This is an action/adventure/romantic thriller. Below is an excerpt from chapter 1 the book, available on Amazon for Kindle.

Sunday, October 11th -

Jason “JD” Ross stepped off the plane in Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. It had been surreal. Wearing his Dress Greens, when the plane pulled up to the gate, the flight crew invited him to walk to the front of the aircraft before the seatbelt light went off, so he would be first off the plane.

He exited the jetway into the concourse choked with people of every description. Stepping into the main hallway of Concourse C, he turned and started walking toward the hub where he would take the escalator down to the tram toward baggage claim.

After riding the underground tram, he got to the top of the escalator heading toward baggage and ticketing. He flashed back to that moment almost eleven years ago when his parents had dropped their eighteen-year-old son off at this airport for him to go to basic training. He saw it all in his mind’s eye, then it was gone.

And then he thought of when “she” dropped him off in almost the exact same spot two and a half years later when he had to return to duty after burying his parents.

Was that really over eight years ago? It felt like forever, and like it was just yesterday, he thought to himself.

Christi.

He’d thought he wanted to marry her then. He’d asked. She’d told him “not yet.” That was the last time he saw her. Eight years, eight months, nineteen days. Her long, auburn hair waved in the breeze. Her bright green eyes glinted, like she knew a joke nobody else was in on. She was one of the most beautiful girls he’d ever seen. Tall, slender and the way she wrinkled her nose when she laughed. He thought again about her eyes. They danced when she looked at him and made his heart race. She had been “the one” he’d thought, when he was under her spell.

But she disappeared after that.

He’d been back home several times. She was gone. Her family was gone. None of his friends knew anything. None of her friends knew anything. It was like she never existed. He’d even gone to Russia to search for her. Christina Tatyna Nova.

The crowd jostled around him as he slowed to a crawl, lost in the past. A man bumped into him, shocking him back into the present. He turned and looked for carousel E. He quickly spotted it, then he saw his luggage coming around.

JD moved up to grab his bags, two big duffles. He carried them away from the crush of passengers looking for their own bags, hoisted one to his shoulder and carried the other with his left hand.

“I should have shipped at least one of these,” he said out loud, although really just for his own benefit.

“Need help, soldier?” he heard over his shoulder.

JD froze, then slowly turned to face the familiar voice, flooded with equal parts of excitement, hope and dread.

Words stuck in his throat as he looked down into her bright green eyes.

“Christi.”

“Jason,” she said. She was one of only three people that ever called him Jason. His mother was gone. The others were Christi and Ellen. Everyone else called him JD.

Before he could react, her arms were draped around him, one wrapped behind his neck, and the other pulling him closer to her, wrapped around his back. As he looked into her eyes, he could feel her spell take hold.

“Where…” he began to stammer, but she shushed him and silenced him with a soft, passionate kiss.

“I’ve missed you, Jason” she said breathlessly as their lips parted.

“Nobody knew I was coming home today. How did you know I was here? And what happened? You disappeared. I looked for you,” he said quietly, while examining her lips with his eyes.

“We’ll have time for all that later. For now, let’s get you home. And then we can get a nice dinner and talk. Ok?”

Despite her slender build, she easily swung a duffle bag up to her shoulder. She’d always surprised him with her strength. She didn’t look like a woman that could swing a fifty-pound pack onto her back and walk away like it was nothing, but that was just what she was doing.

“Are you coming?” she said as she turned and smiled at him over her shoulder.

He jogged a few steps to catch up with her as she deftly moved through the crowd and out the doors leading to the pickup area. It was a cool, reasonably dry day in Atlanta, being mid-October, not the usual hot and humid return he’d experienced.

He was right behind her as she dropped the bag at the back of a black, stretch Lincoln Town Car. The driver had hurried around and was loading the first bag into the trunk.

“Please, Sergeant Ross, let me get that,” he said as he pulled the bag off JD’s shoulder and easily deposited it into the trunk next to the other one. Then, before JD could think about it, the driver was holding the door for Christi to climb into the back of the stretch limo as he followed.

“Wow. Quite the show,” he said to her with a smile. “But I still don’t know how you knew when I would be here. And where have you been?” he said as she slipped closer on the seat.

Before he could push her for the answers to those, and many other questions he had for her, she quieted him with finger on his lips, followed by a kiss. And another. And another.

***

The limo pulled up in front of his home in Suwanee, a quiet suburb north of Atlanta, that had been his parents’. He’d inherited the house when they were killed in the auto accident and had intended to sell it, but he hadn’t. His best friend, Wayne, was a real estate agent and dealt with most of the maintenance for the last eight years.

“I hope you don’t mind. I talked Wayne into giving me a key so I could clean up and get everything ready for you,” she said as she opened the door for him.

They stepped through the front door into the foyer as the driver, Max, brought JD’s bags in behind them.

“Miss Nova, shall I take these to the master suite?” he asked.

“No, Max,” she replied, “they are fine right there.” She knew that Jason was a very private person, and she didn’t think he would want a stranger walking around the house, and certainly not this stranger. “I think that’s all for now. I’ll give you a call if we need anything.”

The driver excused himself and went back to the car. A moment later, the limo was backing from the driveway.

“Not a rental?” JD asked.

“No, he’s from my dad’s company,” she said with a slightly sheepish grin. She wanted to change the subject. She hated lying to him, and while it was technically correct, it was very misleading. “So, what do you think you want for dinner? I was thinking about Carlo’s. Is it still around?”

“Yes, but I have so many questions, Christi. We really need to talk.” He was fighting the hold she had over him, but as much as he had thought he’d moved on, he knew that part of him hadn’t.

“I know, Jason. And we will. But I’m starved. Can we talk over dinner?” she said as she pulled him close to her again.

JD vaguely knew she was avoiding his questions, and it bothered him, but he was still so shell-shocked to see her that he was off-balance.

“And I have one other little surprise. Hurry up and get dressed so we can go,” she said as she slipped out of the old bedroom that he’d grown up in.

A few minutes later JD came down the stairs to find Christi sitting on the sofa. She stood to greet him, wearing a pleated dark gray skirt, a black tank top with a light grey sweater over it and a pair of low-heeled pumps. Her hair was loose around her shoulders, and he couldn’t help but flashback again to the last time he’d seen her.

She was dropping him off at the airport and she was dressed in exactly the same outfit. The night before that, he’d proposed. She’d turned him down, with tears in her eyes. “Not yet,” she said, crying, then kissed him with more passion than he’d ever felt. It was later, after they’d made love, that she started crying again and told him that she wanted to marry him more than anything… but couldn’t… at least she couldn’t right then.

“Are you ready?” she asked, her smile beaming at him, breaking him out of the past.

“Do you have a car? I didn’t even think about that.”

“I have a Jeep, but let’s take your car. It’s in the garage.”

He turned and went through the kitchen, heading for the garage, intensely curious. He’d asked Wayne to sell his car a couple of years ago. Before that, Wayne’s little sister, Ellen, had been driving it while he was away, but she had finished college, gotten a job in Michigan, and hadn’t needed it anymore. That had been two years ago.

When he opened the door to the garage, he saw a car that looked almost exactly like his old silver Camaro, the one he’d owned in high school. It was a very rare 1990 Camaro Z-28 with the 1LE package that had originally been meant for Showroom Stock racing. The car he’d owned had been raced by a local driver for several years before being retired. He’d done his best to restore the car to original condition, with a few upgrades, but it had still been a little rough when he last saw it. Not like this. This car was perfect.

“It’s the same car,” Christi said as she stood behind him and wrapped her arms around his stomach and kissed his neck. “I found out a family acquaintance picked it up from Wayne, and I was able to get it. It’s been restored and had all of the things you used to talk about done to it.”

“I don’t know what to say,” JD sputtered as he turned to kiss her. “Thank you. This had to have taken weeks… if not longer. How does it drive?”

“I haven’t driven it. It came out of the shop yesterday and they just dropped it off. Take me for a ride?” she said, broadly grinning.

He led her down the stairs to the floor of the garage, and around to the passenger door. He held the door for her as she slipped into the seat, then he rushed around and dropped into the driver’s seat. He keyed the engine to life.

As he backed out of the garage, he could feel the tuned small-block engine thrumming against the clutch. It was immediately obvious that the car had a lot more power than when he’d last driven it. They turned to head to the restaurant as Christi thumbed the garage door controller and dropped it back into the console.

The staccato idle gave way to a deep, muffled roar when JD eased into the gas. As he shifted up through the gears on Buford Highway, he could feel the raw power. The car ached for more and he wanted to really lean into the throttle and give the car what it wanted. He also didn’t want a ticket on his first day home, so he restrained himself.

Time went by in a flash for JD, and soon they rolled up to the small Italian restaurant on the Square, Carlo’s. He quickly found a parking spot and walked around to open her door. Christi took his arm as they walked the short distance to the door.

“A week ago, I couldn’t have imagined this was where I’d be right now. So much has changed, and I don’t know what to think,” he told her. A week before, he didn’t think he would be going home. And even when he was on his way, he never expected to see Christi. He assumed he’d never see her again.

------------------------------

Available on Amazon for Kindle.