Genre: Fiction Thriller
If your family is a target, you have to be a weapon.
When a simple home invasion turns out to be not so simple, Ron
Granger must put aside his quiet rural life and return to the Central
Intelligence Agency to take on international arms dealers.
Aided by his beautiful wife, Valerie, and resourceful teen daughter,
Leecy, Ron must quickly decide who to believe among the calculating
opportunists, shrewd criminals, and power-hungry rival agencies racing
to possess the technological breakthrough that will change the face of
modern warfare forever. But when Leecy is kidnapped, Ron and Val must
choose between the mission and a rescue.
Facing an impossible decision, with time quickly running out, Ron only knows one thing:
When you can’t trust anyone else, trust your family.
The sudden explosion of breaking glass and splintering wood
reverberated inside the house like a clap of thunder. I was awake
instantly, and the rush of adrenaline coursing through my veins
propelled me out of the bed and into action.
“Valerie!” I yelled at my wife, who was already leaping out of the
other side of the bed. “That should have set off the alarm.” She was
rounding the end of our bed just as I flipped on the overhead lights and
opened the door of our room. There was someone in the hallway, but the
beam from a high-‐powered LED flashlight blinded my eyes before I could
look away.
I heard a voice.
“Back the fuck up! Keep your hands where I can see them.”
I felt the round end of a small pistol barrel poke me in the chest
before I could blink my eyes and begin to see the revolver in one hand,
the flashlight in the other.
“Both of you back up, hands in the air, and stay right where you are.”
I raised my hands and backed up until I bumped against my bedside
table. Then the guy swung the pistol and hit me in the face hard enough
to get my attention, but not enough to hurt me.
He aimed his gun at Valerie again. “Not another step.”
My vision had recovered so I could see the intruder was wearing a
black ski mask, t-‐shirt, jeans and boots. He was about five feet,
seven inches, and thin, about 160 pounds, so I had a distinct size
advantage, being six feet and 200 pounds.
But he had the gun, a revolver of some kind. That was actually
another plus for me since the hammer wasn’t cocked. Getting it ready to
fire would take all the time I needed.
He started moving the gun in my direction again when I heard the scream.
“Daddy!”
It was Leecy.
“Valerie, there must be another one of them.”
I grabbed the man’s left wrist with such force the flashlight dropped
to the floor and spun away. I knocked aside his right wrist with my
left hand as he cocked the gun and fired, sending a bullet into the wall
over my left shoulder. Letting go of his left wrist, I turned into him
with my back, grabbed his weapon with both hands, and ripped it from his
grip. I made a back left-‐handed throw with the gun to Valerie, who
was leaping toward the door to Leecy’s bedroom. She caught the gun in
the air as I landed a back left elbow to the intruder’s head, followed
by a crushing right cross to his jaw, knocking him unconscious. I left
the intruder falling to the floor and raced down the hall.
“Stop right there, lady,” I heard.
“Let her go,” she replied, very calmly and softly, “and I won’t kill you.”
I reached the end of the hall just as two shots slammed into the
front door behind Valerie. I ducked back inside the cover of the
hallway, but Valerie didn’t move and she didn’t return fire.
“Put the gun down and send my partner out here right now,” I heard the man say, “or this will get messy.”
I walked into the foyer with my hands raised in a sign of submission,
but now he had two potential problems, and they weren’t in the same
place.
“Your partner is incapacitated,” Val continued quietly, “and if you don’t drop your weapon, you’ll be dead.”
“I’ll shoot her if you don’t put your hands up and send your man to bring my partner to me right now,” he countered.
Streams of moonlight filtered through the dark room from the
shattered doors the two men had broken through, but I could see the man
hiding behind Leecy holding a gun to her head.
“Last chance to leave here alive.”
He’d backed up as far as he could go, pulling Leecy with him to make his escape.
Valerie fired.
The bullet struck him in the center of his forehead, making a small
black hole and propelling him up and back. The look on his face was that
of a man realizing his mistake.
Leecy raced away from the dead man as Val dropped the weapon and
stood next to me. The entire incident was over in minutes, but it didn’t
feel that way to me. I was drained. I was sweating profusely and my
hands were shaking. Maybe it was my age; at forty-‐six, I
wasn’t as young a man as when I started in this business, even though
I didn’t think of myself as an old man. But that wasn’t all of it. Now
that I had a wife and daughter, I had something to lose.
I hugged Val and Leecy. I held my wife and felt her calming presence
wash over me. As we both embraced our child, I thanked whatever gods
there might be that my two girls were safe.
“What the heck just happened?” Leecy asked from the safety of the hug we hadher sandwiched in.
“Home invasion,” Valerie answered, “we need to call Lester and get him out here.”
“I’ll phone the station from the bedroom,” I said, “and check on the guy back nthere while I’m at it.”
“Yeah, okay, so you say it’s a home invasion,” Leecy went on, “but don’t most invaders steal your
stuff and not try to kidnap you?”
I was back in our bedroom, stepping over the limp body of the first guy, but could still hear Leecy’s voice.
“And Mom….you…uh…just killed someone.” “I know, dear, but…”
“Dead.”
“It was a lucky shot.”
“Lucky shot?” Leecy wasn’t satisfied, obviously. “That’s not my point.”
I was so relieved we were all okay that it hadn’t occurred to me that
Leecy’s questions would have to be answered. And not just to her
satisfaction: we’d have to answer similar questions by the police, and
if this incident were classified as more than just a home invasion, we’d
be in danger of generating a lot of unwanted attention.
I dialed our local police station and was relieved to hear the woman’s voice on the other end.
“Elizabeth. This is Ron Granger.”
“Hi, Ron. Why are you calling the police station at five minutes after four in the morning? Is everyone all right?”
Buy Link: Amazon
John J. Davis is the author of the Granger
Spy Novel series, including Blood Line and the soon to be published
sequel, Bloody Truth, available Spring 2015.
Davis grew up in the Southeastern US and after university traveled
extensively in North America during his career as a regional sales rep
and independent broker for leaders in the transportation, shipping and
pharma industries. His years sitting in lobbies and airports honed his
skill for human observation and fed his talent for writing fast-‐paced,
character-‐driven stories.
His inspiration for the Granger family-‐of-‐spies comes from the
people he has known and his family roots in the Carolinas—the
extraordinarily strong and gentle women and men, whose lives are defined
by the love, trust and respect for family. Currently at work on the
third Granger Spy Novel and a screenplay, Davis lives near Atlanta with
his wife, daughter and two dogs.
Author Links: Site Twitter Facebook Goodreads
John is giving away a signed print copy of Blood Line during his tour.
For a chance to win please fill out the rafflecopter below.
Maureen O’Leary Wanket is a writer and teacher living in Sacramento, California with her husband and two daughters. How To Be Manly is inspired by the humor and courage of the students she’s met in her classrooms over the past twenty years. She loves high school football, but only when she happens to teach at least half of the players on the field.
Her short stories have appeared in Esopus, Xenith, Fiction at Work, Blood and Thunder, Musings on the Art of Medicine and Prick of the Spindle.
Maureen writes articles about issues in education for local and national publications. She also muses about inspirations for a writer’s life in Friday Free Topic at http://maureenoleary.wordpress.com.
How To Be Manly is her first novel.
Find Maureen on: Twitter | Blog | Goodreads
