Dana Mentink - Shock Wave

TRAPPED…WITH A KILLER?

When an earthquake rips through San Francisco, the last person journalist Sage Harrington expects to run into is ex-soldier Trey Black. After what they survived in Afghanistan, she doesn’t know if she can face him again. But now they’re trapped in the bowels of a ramshackle opera house on a mission to find Sage’s missing cousin. And they may not be the only ones. Someone is desperate to keep them from discovering the truth. With time running out and devastation and danger all around, Sage and Trey must put their trust in each other to make it out alive.

Stormswept: Finding true love in the midst of nature’s fury

“You need to get out of here.”

“Is that an order, Captain?”

“A strong suggestion.”

“And if I don’t comply?”

“Then I will help you to do that.” Trey’s eyes glittered in the darkness.

“You’re not army anymore.”

“No, ma’am. Just a carpenter, but I will see you to the exit, one way or another.”

“If I don’t cooperate, what do you intend to do about it?” Sage fired off the challenge, her gut tightening at the look that rose in his face.

He stood, feet slightly apart, hands loose at his sides. “Sage, you need to leave this theater for your own safety. If I have to carry you out kicking and screaming, I am prepared for that contingency.”

She heard the hardened resolution in his voice. Dimples and charming drawl aside, she knew he would not hesitate, and she was no match for his size and strength. She would lose this battle.

But not the war.

DANA MENTINK

lives in California, where the weather is golden and the cheese is divine. Her family includes two girls (affectionately nicknamed Yogi and Boo Boo). Papa Bear works for the fire department; he met Dana doing a dinner theater production of The Velveteen Rabbit. Ironically, their parts were husband and wife.

Dana is a 2009 American Christian Fiction Writers Book of the Year finalist for romantic suspense and an award winner in the Pacific Northwest Writers Literary Contest. Her novel Betrayal in the Badlands won a 2010 RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice Award. She has enjoyed writing a mystery series for Barbour Books and more than ten novels to date for the Love Inspired Suspense line.

She spent her college years competing in speech and debate tournaments all around the country. Besides writing, she busies herself teaching elementary school and reviewing books for her blog. Mostly, she loves to be home with her family, including a dog with social-anxiety problems, a chubby box turtle and a quirky parakeet.

Dana loves to hear from her readers via her website at www.danamentink.com.

Shock Wave

Dana Mentink

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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The Lord is King. Let the nations tremble!

He sits on this throne between the cherubim.

Let the whole earth quake!

—Psalms 99:1

To those emergency workers worldwide who are the hands and feet of God in times of disaster.

Contents

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

DEAR READER

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

EXCERPT

ONE

The floor lurched under Trey Black’s feet. Wooden planks, crippled by age and neglect, groaned like arthritic joints forced into movement. He waited one second, two.

Another quick jolt and the old Imperial Opera House stilled again.

The second jerk took him momentarily back to another place, to Afghanistan, to the smell of sun-scorched earth and gun oil, sweat and the tangible scent of fear.

He stood motionless between a row of chairs looking toward the stage, eyes scanning the ghostly fly tower with its combination of counterweights and pulleys, the rusty overhead lighting, the dusty floorboards, worn and marred. It hadn’t been his imagination—a few of the fly tower ropes still quivered from the sudden movement.

His mind knew he was not in Afghanistan anymore, but his body had not learned the lesson. He rubbed the back of his neck and ran a palm over his hair, the wild thatch of it still an odd contrast to the buzz cut he’d had until he’d left the army behind a month ago.

It was not enemy fire.

Not the impact from a mortar volley.

The truth materialized.

Earthquake.

Small, probably not more than a 2.5, one of a number of quakes that had rumbled through the city in the past twenty-four hours. He’d heard some scientist on a morning talk show explaining that the miniquakes were the earth’s way of releasing tension gradually as the tectonic plates ground together. Yet another scientist suggested the shakers could be warnings that the “big one” was coming.

Earthquakes were like people, he figured. Sometimes you couldn’t tell if they were friendlies or enemies until it was too late. He shook away the thoughts and called softly into the darkness.

“Wally?” His voice echoed, bouncing in and out of the dark stalls, the mazelike warren of dressing rooms, rehearsal areas and the cavernous empty stage. It was a terrible place for a dog, but Trey had agreed to come check on the little critter when he was done for the evening as a favor to the caretaker. “Wally?” he said again, louder.

He caught the faintest sound, the barest squeak of a floorboard from the royal box, the ornate enclosure at the middle of the lowest tier of seating and the spot with the best sight lines to the stage. Long ago it would have been the place reserved for royalty or VIPs out for a night at the Imperial. Now, on a Sunday night, decades after the theater offered up its last real opera, it was tomblike.

He listened, body taut. The sound didn’t come from the rascally dog. He wasn’t sure how he knew, but he did.

Nor did he understand why he took cover behind the proscenium and began a surreptitious creep toward the noise.

No reason to suspect it was anything dangerous.

This was San Francisco, not a war zone, and he was in an empty opera house. More likely his unease was paranoia borne of long months dodging sniper bullets or worrying that a careless moment on his part would result in death.

Like the journalist embedded with their unit.

The memory bit at him before he could steel his mind against it.

He recalled the look on Sage Harrington’s face when she saw her colleague hit by sniper fire. Her camera fell to the ground and those eyes, those ice-blue eyes, locked on his, soldering the two of them together in her white-hot grief. She blamed him, it was clearly written on her face.

Blamed him, when they never should have been there in the first place. He felt the burn of anger at Sage for her reckless behavior, and himself, for the stubborn way his heart still kicked up at the thought of her.

Snap out of it, Trey. Sage has to live with her decisions and you’ve got to live with yours.