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Splendid Isolation
Old spies make dangerous hostages.
A prisoner at the tender mercies of the British Secret Intelligence Services, Manuel has to believe that trading freedom for protection was his only hope of avoiding payback for his crimes. Yet his checkered past is neither forgiven nor forgotten. Every day, Manuel is tasked with providing his handlers new intelligence about the bloodthirsty power players he once served. And if he refuses, there are consequences.
In charge of Manuel’s debriefing is Cole, a high-ranking Section officer whose history is intimately intertwined with Manuel’s misdeeds. He has made it his mission to unearth Manuel’s secrets, however long that takes. He will break Manuel because it is necessary. Avenging a broken heart has nothing to do with it.
But time is not on their side. When Manuel’s former employer targets the safe house where he is imprisoned, his usefulness as an asset is called into question. As old passions awaken, both Cole and Manuel discover that letting go of the past may not be as easy as they’d hoped.
The Truth about the Liar
When hunter becomes hunted, the lines between enemy and friend are easily blurred.
A hit man with a price on his head, Arthur’s days are numbered. He should be in MI6 custody, paying penance for shooting one of their agents and killing three others. He should be at the mercy of his South American employers, who paid him handsomely to liquidate a former associate only to be rewarded with failure.
He certainly shouldn’t be alive, in the care of a nefarious figure that even the SIS is wary of crossing.
En route to meet his unlikely benefactor in Egypt, Arthur is placed into the care of mysterious, subtly menacing Klaus. A man with a near-perfect reputation for delivering scalps, Klaus is not likely to facilitate Arthur’s escape. But Arthur knows how to handle tall, dark, unnervingly handsome threats. It shouldn’t take much to win Klaus over—even if it means that Arthur must plan his next move on his knees.
General Release Date: 12th January 2016
Excerpt from Splendid Isolation
Nothing could beat the view—fog over the channel, tufts of scraggly dogwood lustrous with dew in the middle distance. A few early-riser seagulls drifting along on a squall in the dishwater gray sky.
Even with the electric fence tucked neatly into the tall hedgerow, it was a breathtaking sight.
Manuel wrestled the covers off his legs and propped himself up against the headboard as quietly as he could. If his minders realized he was awake, the day would start that much sooner. He wanted to cling to these precious moments of solitude when no demands were made on him, no questions barked in his ear.
He rubbed an absent hand into the meat of his thigh. Atrophy was part and parcel of his present circumstances. Perhaps today they would deign to allow him a run around the grounds. Or, if not that, then a slow, shambling walk. They could tag along, shadowing his steps like bodyguards. At least one of his handlers looked like he’d benefit from a little exercise.
Below, window shutters crept open with a telltale squeak. Silas, waking up.
Manuel closed his eyes and embraced the quiet sound. Down the hall, the woman who never talked would be mouthing her prayers, her lips moving furtively over Our Father as though she feared being told to stop.
Their strange, secluded prison was made up of people far more dangerous than Manuel. Yet the steel cuffs around his wrists and ankles were reserved for him and him alone. He knew this because the first week of his time at the Cottage, Silas had ventured into his room in the night.
The security breach had caused quite the commotion among their minders. Sternly worded lectures were audible through plaster late into the day. No one saw fit to inform Manuel of any measures taken to ensure Silas would not be visiting him again. He was almost disappointed when his nutjob cellie failed to slip through their handlers’ hands for a second time.
Nefarious intentions on his part were unlikely. There were days that Silas barely remembered his own name. He certainly didn’t seem to know who Manuel was.
Most didn’t. Manuel had worked years to preserve his anonymity.
One skinny white boy and it all amounted to nothing.
He flexed a foot in the restraints, jangling the ankle cuff. Come on. I’m ready. He didn’t have long to wait.
The knock on the door meant that it was Arthur pulling the early shift.
“I’m up,” Manuel called out. The walls were thin here and the plumbing clanged like beaten drums.
Falling asleep was a far more difficult task than waking.
Arthur greeted him with a placid smile. “Good morning, Mr. Sosa. Sleep well?”
He had a strong West Country accent, thick enough that Manuel occasionally found himself imitating it without meaning to. He knew that Arthur spent the nights when he was on duty paging through vintage car magazines. His father owned a Model 48, an old junker they were both striving to put to rights on the weekend—apparently without much success.
“Like a babe,” he lied. It wasn’t so much that no one cared to hear him blather on about his nightmares. If anything, they cared too much.
“Hip’s still bothering you?” Arthur asked, noticing his wince. “Doc’s coming in today. Maybe he’ll give you something…”
“Maybe.”
Arthur was a young man with a lifetime of surprises ahead of him. At his age, he still put faith in higher authority.
Manuel decided against dispelling that illusion. He swung his feet over the edge of the mattress once free, savoring the sensation of muscles stretching, his soles bare on the hardwood boards.
It was doubtful that Arthur, a lowly gofer in the agency’s sprawling operation, understood why he needed to be fettered in sleep. To his credit, he didn’t ask.
Manuel stared at his back as Arthur peeled back the gauzy curtains and let in the sun.
It wouldn’t take much to break his neck, steal his keys and hightail it out of this godforsaken place. Arthur wouldn’t even hear him coming. He wasn’t armed.
Youth, while occasionally a challenge, wouldn’t be enough to save him.
Excerpt from The Truth about the Liar
“Or”—Jules ventured baldly—“I could just kill him.”
The note of optimism in her voice echoed loudly and clearly through the loft. Perhaps this time, her loyal service would be rewarded with that long awaited, cathartic gunshot.
Arthur flexed his aching hands, metal cuffs clinking uselessly against his thighs. Is this really necessary? He’d feigned disappointment when Jules tied him down again this morning, but he couldn’t blame her. He had tried to escape again last night.
And two days ago.
He simply couldn’t seem to behave himself.
That Jules’ patience had run out was obvious. Theirs was an old enmity, chiseled through long days in isolation, only each other’s unwelcome company to banish the silence.
It was little wonder that Jules had begun to think a dead charge was preferable to a living one.
Whatever answer she received from the voice on the other end of the call thinned her lips. She turned to the window, giving Arthur her skinny back, and the wide bell curve of her hips. Jules was neither tall nor broad. With her shaved head and fine wrists, she looked as if she would have been more at home in a yoga studio, telling her pupils when to breathe in and when to breathe out. If at all.
She should have been an easy opponent to take on, but Arthur still nursed a shattered, useless hand and a knee that was barely strong enough to hold his own weight. Perks of being shot. He resented his infirmity nearly as much as he’d resented relying on Jules these past four months. He felt like a pig being fed and cared for so he could be turned into pork.
At least that would have made sense. After all, he’d shot an MI6 asset. Deliberately. He had, as far as anyone knew, attempted to murder one of Jules’ friends. Twice.
And he had failed.
Arthur knew what came next.
Sooner or later, there would be retribution, whether from Jules and friends, MI6 or his former employers. No one liked loose ends left dangling in the wind, privy to too much information, steeped in too many behind-the-scenes scandals.
There was no way of fixing a gun with a crooked barrel, yet here he was—stuck in limbo, tied to a chair. A prisoner.
Again.
“The leg’s mostly healed, but I don’t know if—”
The voice on the other end of the line piped up again. Arthur strained to make out the inflection, perhaps even the gender of the speaker, but he couldn’t distinguish more than a low-level hum in the silence of the warehouse.
He’d heard of Robin, of course. Rumor had it he was supposed to be some sort of spy-turned-mercenary, turned unlikely ray of hope for their entire lawless breed.
Arthur pictured a six foot tall wrestler with tattoos climbing the sides of his neck and a latticework of scars crisscrossing his shoulder blades. Someone like that made sense, but knowing the types MI6 recruited, it didn’t seem likely.
Still, Robin, whoever he was, must have been scary to convince people like Jules to come around to his worldview.
Peaceful coexistence. Arthur tasted ash in his mouth at the comical idea.
“That’s one long trip,” Jules muttered, voice barely louder than a whisper. “No, I know, but… You think he’s willing?” The thwarted hope she’d offered earlier had become wary hesitation.
Arthur perked up as she spun to face him, his smile dialed all the way up to you can’t hurt me. His senses pricked, just in case Jules decided to go off-script after all. It certainly wouldn’t be difficult. They both knew how to frame someone for murder, how to stage a suicide. And she wouldn’t even have to work hard to persuade Uncle—whoever Robin was, he hadn’t made the trip to look Arthur in the eye yet. He’d never know if suicide was actually murder.
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