by James, Ed
As Senator Christopher Holliday walks through the halls of the US Federal Building in Seattle, his phone beeps with an alert. Frustrated by the interruption, he takes a quick glance and is horrified by the image on the screen – his two children, Brandon and Avery, unconscious. The message simply reads: Meet me or they die.
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The race is on to find the children and leading the investigation is Special Agent Max Carter from the FBI’s Child Abduction Rapid Deployment team. He will stop at nothing to find children stolen from their families – after all, he was once one of those taken children, so he knows exactly what’s at stake.
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Rushing to the Senator’s home in Washington State, Carter faces a wall of police cruisers and blacked-out SUVs. Megan Holliday, the senator’s wife, was ambushed by a man with a gun as she returned home from taking her kids out for ice cream. Bound and drugged, the attacker left her unconscious on the doorstep before messaging her husband.
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When Senator Holliday flees the federal building, but fails to show up at home, Carter grows suspicious. The busy politician has vanished without telling anyone what he’s up to. If Carter knows one thing, it’s that Holliday has something to hide. And he just became Carter’s prime suspect.
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Acknowledgments
First, thanks to Allan Guthrie for being my perfect agent, for tolerating my impatience during the submission process, for getting two book deals for me out of it, and for persuading me the book really didn’t need those parallel universes after all. Ahem.
Thanks to Helen Jenner at Bookouture for buying these books. I’ve loved working with you, particularly the aggressive editing (as requested!) and helping define, develop, and name Max Carter. I’m really excited to see where we take him next!
Also, thanks to the rest of the team at Bookouture, particularly Alexandra Holmes, Noelle Holten and Kim Nash. Apologies for missing anyone—I’m terrible at this—but I appreciate all your hard work to get my book out there in the hands of readers.
Thanks to my author friends in the crime-writing community. To Mark Edwards, for a character name, a great friendship and for putting up with me in Seattle (and for helping us not get killed in Oregon). And to Colin Scott, you’re one of the best, and I raise several glasses to you!
Thanks to James Mackay for ruining my New Year plans with a ton of procedural notes that derailed the plot and made me have to fix it all. I raise a glass of hoppy IPA!
And finally, to Kitty for continuing to put up with me and my nonsense on a daily basis. You’re the best and you know it.
We – both author and publisher – hope you enjoyed this book. We believe that you can become a reader at any time in your life, but we’d love your help to give the next generation a head start.
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Did you know that 9% of children don’t have a book of their own in their home, rising to 13% in disadvantaged families*? We’d like to try to change that by asking you to consider the role you could play in helping to build readers of the future.
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We’d love you to get involved by sharing, borrowing, reading, buying or talking about a book with a child in your life and spreading the love of reading. We want to make sure the next generation continues to have access to books, wherever they come from.
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Click HERE for a list of brilliant books to share with a child – as voted by Goodreads readers.
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Thank you.
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*As reported by the National Literacy Trust
Published by Bookouture in 2020
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An imprint of Storyfire Ltd.
Carmelite House
50 Victoria Embankment
London EC4Y 0DZ
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www.bookouture.com
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Copyright © Ed James, 2020
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Ed James has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work.
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All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers.
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eBook ISBN: 978-1-83888-165-8
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events other than those clearly in the public domain, are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.