About the Book
Title: The Marshal
Publisher: Harlequin Intrigue
Release Date: January 1, 2015
Genre: Romantic Suspense
Book
Summary:
His painful past is their present danger.
The last thing US Marshal Brent Thompson needs is distraction from his
work. But distraction—in the form of a sexy Chicago investigator—is exactly
what he gets. Jenna Hayward is as alluring as she is determined, driven to help
apprehend the murderer who killed Brent's mother twenty-three years ago. With a
shared mission—and a steadily rising attraction that jeopardizes Brent's
resolve to stay unattached—the pair must work together to get answers…before
the murderer makes them his next victims.
* * *
About the Author
USA Today bestselling author Adrienne Giordano writes romantic suspense and mystery. She is a Jersey
girl at heart, but now lives in the Midwest with her workaholic husband, sports
obsessed son and Buddy the Wheaten Terrorist (Terrier). She is a co-founder of
Romance University blog and Lady Jane's Salon-Naperville, a reading series
dedicated to romantic fiction.
* * *
Chapter One from The Marshal
This was a
switch.
Deputy U.S.
marshal Brent Thompson stood in a Chicago hotel ballroom among a throng of
impeccably dressed political big shots that, for once, he didn’t have to
protect.
Tonight, he
was a guest.
Whether that
made him happy or not was anyone’s guess. But he’d stay another hour for Judge
Kline, a woman he’d spent two years watching over after her husband and
children were murdered by some nut who’d been on the losing end of a ruling.
Judge Kline had ordered him to pay a $1,200 fine and somehow he was mad enough
to wipe out her entire family, leaving her to deal with guilt and rage and
heartache.
Crazy.
Sometimes—sometimes? Really?—Brent
didn’t understand people. Or maybe it was their motivations he didn’t
understand, but the human race baffled him.
Tonight
Judge Kline, who’d refused to allow her life to collapse under grief, was
smiling. A welcome sight since her eighty-five-year-old mother had decided to
throw one hell of a shindig for the judge’s sixtieth birthday.
“Brent?”
Brent turned
and found the ever-polished Gerald Hennings, Chicago’s highest-profile defense
attorney, weaving through the crowd. Accompanying him was a petite blonde in a
floor-length bright blue gown. She had to be over fifty, but may have had a
little work done to preserve her extraordinary looks. Her perfect cheekbones,
the big blue eyes and sculpted nose were duplicates of the ones Brent
recognized from Hennings’s daughter, Penny. Didn’t take a genius to figure out
this woman was Mrs. Hennings. Brent held his hand out. “Mr. Hennings. Nice to
see you.”
Five months
earlier, Brent had been assigned to protect Penny Hennings after yet another
nut—plenty of nuts in his world—had attempted to kill her on the steps of a
federal courthouse. Penny had nearly put Brent into a psych ward with her
relentless mouthiness and aggressive attitude, but he’d formed a bond with her.
A kinship. And, much like Judge Kline, they’d remained friends after his
assignment had ended. For whatever reason, emotionally speaking, he couldn’t
let either one of them go. The fact that they’d all experienced tragedy might
be the common denominator, but he chose not to think too hard about it. What
was the point? None of them would ever fully recover from their individual
experiences. All they could do was move on.
Hennings
turned to the woman at his side. “I don’t think you’ve met my wife, Pamela.
Pam, this is Marshal Brent Thompson. He was the marshal.”
She smiled
and—yep—he was looking at Penny in twenty-five years.
“I know,”
Mrs. Hennings said. She stepped forward and gripped both of his arms. “Thank
you.”
The gesture,
so direct and heartfelt, caught him sideways and he stiffened. Freak that he
was he’d never gotten comfortable with strange women touching him. Most guys
would love it. Brent? He liked his space being his.
But he stood
there, allowing Penny’s mother to thank him in probably the only way she knew
how. He could go on about how he’d just been doing his job, which was all true,
but even he understood that he’d worked a little harder for Penny. She reminded
him too much of his younger sister, Camille, and he hadn’t been able to help
himself. “You’re welcome. Your daughter has become a good friend. And if I ever
need legal advice, I know who to call.”
Mrs.
Hennings laughed.
Mr. Hennings
swooped his finger in the air. “You’re not working tonight?”
“No, sir.
Judge Kline is a friend.”
“How nice,”
Mrs. Hennings said.
“Yes, ma’am.
I worked with her for two years. She would always tell me if my tie didn’t
match. That happened a lot.”
“As the
mother of two sons, I’m sure your mother appreciates that.”
Mother.
Mr. Hennings
cleared his throat and, in Brent’s mind, the room fell silent. He glanced
around, looking for…what? Confirmation that the room at large wasn’t listening
to his conversation?
Maybe.
All around
people gabbed and mingled and pretty much ignored Brent. Imagined it.
He exhaled and once again the orchestra music—something classical—replaced the
fog in his brain.
He’d fielded
comments about his mother almost his entire life. It should have been easier by
now.
Except for
the nagging.
Twenty-three
years of gut-twisting, anger-fueled obsession that kept him prisoner. “My
mother died when I was seven, ma’am.”
Social pro
that she must have been, considering her husband’s wizardry with the press,
Mrs. Hennings barely reacted. “I’m so sorry.” She turned to Gerald, shooting
him the stink-eye. “I didn’t know.”
Moments like
these, a guy had to step up and help his brother-in-arms. “No need to
apologize. I think about her every day.” And knowing how this conversation
would go, the curiosity that came with why and how such a young woman had died,
Brent let it fly. “She was murdered.”
Social pro
or not, Mrs. Hennings gasped. “How horrible.”
Brent sipped
his club soda, gave the room another glance and came back to Mrs. Hennings. “My
sister and I adjusted. We have a supportive family.”
“I hope they
caught the person who did this.”
“No ma’am.
It’s still an open case.”
A case that
lived and breathed with him and had driven him into law enforcement. If the
Carlisle sheriff’s office couldn’t find his mother’s killer, he’d do it himself.
“Are the
police still looking into it?”
Brent
shrugged. “If they get a tip or some new information. I work it on my downtime,
but downtime is short.”
Mrs.
Hennings, obviously still embarrassed by bringing up the subject of his dead
mother, turned to her husband. “Can’t one of your investigators help? You do
all sorts of pro bono work for clients. Why not this?”
“Pam, those
are cases where we’re defending people. This is different.”
Brent held
up his hand As much as he’d like help, he didn’t want a domestic war started
over it. “Mrs. Hennings, it’s okay. But thank you.”
Still, down
deep, Brent wanted to find the person who’d wrecked his family and had saddled
him with a level of responsibility—and guilt—no seven-year-old should have
known. Every day, the questions haunted him. Could he have helped her? Should
he have done something when he first heard noise? Was he a crummy investigator
because all these years later he still couldn’t give his mother justice?
At this
point, if he couldn’t find this monster on his own, he’d take whatever help
available. Ego aside, justice for his mother was what mattered.
Mrs.
Hennings kept her gaze on her husband. “You were just complaining that Jenna is
bored with her current assignments. After what Brent did for Penny, give Jenna
his mother’s case to investigate. It’ll challenge her and keep her out of your
hair. Where’s the problem?”
Hennings
pressed his lips together and a minuscule, seriously minuscule, part of Brent
pitied the man. If he didn’t agree with his wife, his life would be a pile of
manure.
Mrs.
Hennings shot her husband a meat cleaver of a look, then turned back to Brent.
“My husband will call you about this tomorrow. How’s that?”
With limited
options, and being more than a little afraid to argue because, hey, he was no
dummy either, he grinned at Mr. Hennings. “That’d be great. Thank you.”
*
Jenna slid onto one of the worn black vinyl bar stools at
Freddie’s Tap House, a mostly empty shot-and-a-beer joint on the North Side of
Chicago.
How the
place stayed in business, she had no idea. On this Wednesday night the sports
bar down the block was packed, while the only people patronizing Freddie’s were
an elderly man sitting at the bar and a couple huddled at a table in the back.
The bartender
glanced down the bar at her and wandered over. “Evening. Get you something?”
You sure can.
“Whatever’s
on tap. Thanks.”
He nodded
and scooped a glass from behind the bar, pouring a draft as he eyed her black
blazer and the plunging neckline on her cashmere sweater. “Haven’t seen you in
here before. New in town?”
As much as
she’d tried to dress down with jeans, she hadn’t been able to resist the
sweater. When dealing with men, a little help from her feminine wiles—also
known as her boobs—never hurt. “Nope. New in here though.”
“You look
more Tiffany’s than Freddie’s.”
Already
Jenna liked him. “Are you Freddie?”
“Junior.”
“Sorry?”
“Freddie
Junior. My dad is Freddie. I took over when he retired.”
He slid the
beer in front of Jenna. Once more she looked around, took in the polished, worn
wood of the bar, the six tables along the wall and the line of empty bar
stools.
“Slow
night,” Freddie said.
Lucky me. She opened
her purse, pulled out a fifty and set it on the bar. Next came the photo taken
the week prior by a patron in this very bar. He glanced down at the fifty, then
at the photo.
“I’m not a
cop,” Jenna said. “I’m an investigator working for a law firm.”
“Okay.”
She pointed
at the photo of two men with a woman in the background. Jenna needed to find
that woman. “Have you seen her in here?”
He picked up
the photo and studied it. “Yeah. Couple of times. When a woman like that walks
into a beer joint, there’s generally a reason. Kinda like you.”
Figuring it
was time to put her cleavage to work, Jenna inched forward, gave him a view of
the girls beneath that V-neck and smiled. Most women would love the idea that a
fifteen-pound weight gain had gone straight to their chest. Jenna supposed it
hadn’t hurt her ability to claw information from men—and maybe she used it to
her advantage. But she also wanted to be recognized for extracting the
information and not for the way she’d done it.
Did that
even make sense? She wasn’t sure anymore. All she knew was her need for
positive reinforcement had led her to using her looks to achieve her goals.
That meant wearing clingy, revealing clothing. Such a cliché. But the thing
about clichés was they worked.
“Any idea
what her reason for being here was?”
Freddie took
the boob-bait and leaned in. “No. Both times she met someone. Why?”
All Jenna
could hope was he’d gotten the woman’s name. “My client is being held on a
robbery charge. He says he was in here the night of the robbery and he met this
woman. Her name is Robin.”
“Where’d you
get the picture?”
“Friends of
my client.”
He dropped
the picture on the bar and tapped it. “Birthday party, right?”
“Yes. My
client and six of his friends. Any idea where I can find her?”
“Nah.”
“Did she pay
by credit card?”
If she paid
by credit card, there would be a record of the transaction, and Jenna would dig
into the Hennings & Solomon coffers and pay Freddie a highly negotiated sum
for a look at his credit card receipts. From there, she’d get a name and two
calls later would have an address for Robin-the-mystery-woman.
“Cash.”
Shoot.
Freddie may
have been lying. Jenna studied him, took in his direct gaze. Not lying. At
least she didn’t think so. Again with the wavering? Didn’t she have a good
sense about these things? Yes, she did. For that reason she’d go with the
theory that Freddie seemed to be a small-business owner who wanted to stay out
of trouble while trying to make a living. She dug her card and a pen out of her
purse, wrote her cell number on the card and placed it next to the fifty on the
bar.
“How about I
leave you my card? If she comes in again and you call me, there’s a hundred
bucks in it for you.”
Freddie
glanced at the card. After a moment, he half shrugged. “Sure. If I see her.”
Jenna took
one last sip of her beer, slid off the stool and hitched her purse onto her
shoulder. “Thanks.” She nodded toward the fifty. “Keep the change.”
* * *
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I haven't read any of Adrienne's books, yet.
ReplyDeleteI haven't read Adrienne's books, but this sounds like an exciting read.
ReplyDelete