Title: Shattered Silence by Marta Perry
Echo Falls Series Book Three
Publisher: HQN Books
Genre: Contemporary, Amish, Romance, Mystery, Suspense
Length: 384 pages
Summary:
A woman on the run seeks sanctuary in a peaceful Pennsylvania Dutch community—and finds a protector in the most unlikely of men…
One moment Rachel Hartline is secure in her career and community. The next, she’s in the wrong place at the wrong time—watching her ex-husband commit a crime that puts her in unfathomable danger. Fear and hurt send her home to an Amish farm and the family she’s always trusted. But a private investigator is close behind—and he may be a threat to her in more ways than one…
Cold, calculating Clint Mordan isn’t convinced Rachel is as innocent in her ex-husband’s schemes as she claims, but when her ex’s enemies target Rachel, Clint is driven to keep her safe. Maybe the terror in her beautiful eyes and the target on her back aren’t an act. But as his feelings toward her deepen, Clint realizes he’s the only one who can keep Rachel alive in a game where only the killer knows the stakes.
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Excerpt #5
Returning to the living room, he nodded at her. “It’s all clear. You can come in now.” He studied her face as she did, watching for anything out of the ordinary. But all he saw was stunned bewilderment.
“The intruder jimmied the back door. Easy enough to do. Why don’t you have deadbolts on these doors?” He felt a spurt of irritation. Why did people neglect the most elementary precautions? She was an attractive young woman living alone, and she seemed oblivious of the simplest safety precautions.
Rachel moved slowly to the middle of the room, lifting her hands in a helpless gesture and seeming to ignore his question. “Why would anyone do this? Ican’t imagine there’s much here that would interest a thief.”
Did she honestly not see the connection with her husband? Ex-husband, he corrected himself.
“An ordinary thief would go straight for the electronics,” he pointed out. “They don’t seem to have been touched.”
She picked up a ripped needlepoint cushion and hugged it against her, staring at the drawers pulled out of a lamp table, their contents strewn on the floor. “You think someone was looking for something.” She said it as a statement of fact, not an accusation.
He had the feeling this violation of her home had knocked the stuffing out of Rachel, as well as her cushions. “What else? Someone is searching for whatever it was your husband has. Or for what he knows, but I’m guessing a specific object, judging by the search. Something small.”
“Why here?” It was almost a cry. “I’d expect them to search Paul’s apartment. He hasn’t lived here in over a year.”
“They probably did that first.” He made a mental note to check if Logan hadn’t done it already. “They didn’t find whatever it was, so they tried here. And you know what they’re looking for, don’t you?”
Rachel seemed to try, and then fail, to summon up some indignation. “You know I was at the office yesterday, don’t you?”
“We learned from the night watchman. And the security cameras. You must have realized we would.”
She nodded. “Charlie. I talked with him for a bit.”
Her reaction brought him back to being perplexed by her, and he didn’t like it. He wanted to put her in a simple category—innocent bystander or criminally involved, one or the other. But she didn’t fit.
“Why didn’t you tell me this afternoon? You must have known we’d find out. It makes you look guilty.”
Now she was back to looking at him with dislike. “I wasn’t too concerned with what impression I was making on you. I felt I should talk to someone from Attwood’s first. And I still haven’t had time to do that with you trailing me around.”
“Sure you weren’t waiting to hear what your husband wanted you to do?”
Her rounded jaw suddenly looked remarkably firm again. “Ex-husband. And if I wanted to talk to him, it was to find out what he knew about this.”
“Didn’t he tell you when you saw him at the offices yesterday?” That was a shot in the dark, but he suspected it was true. That would explain a lot.
“No.” She pressed her lips together on the word.
At least she wasn’t denying that she’d seen him. That was progress, he supposed, but not enough.
“Why were you there?” He shot the question, hoping to get an honest response, or at least some hint that she was lying.
But Rachel looked more confused than anything else. She shook her head as if trying to clear it, and the long braid swayed against her back. For an instant he imagined that blond hair loose and curling down her back instead of confined in a braid, inviting a touch.
He pulled his mind back to the business at hand. “Well?”
Author Bio
Marta Perry realized she wanted to be a writer at age eight, when she read her first Nancy Drew novel. A lifetime spent in rural Pennsylvania and her own Pennsylvania Dutch roots led Marta to the books she writes now about the Amish. When she’s not writing, Marta is active in the life of her church and enjoys traveling and spending time with her three children and six beautiful grandchildren.
Author Links: Website * Facebook * Goodreads
Giveaway
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