Perfect Strangers (Bound by Honor, 1)
by Kerri M. Patterson
Blurb:
Chloe
Burgesse is crushed after being left at the altar. She thought her life was
complicated before embarking on her should-have-been honeymoon—alone. She had
no idea how much worse it could get when a Special Forces soldier takes a leap
onto her car. She didn’t see the Pandora's box she'd opened for herself by
offering aid. She didn’t see the attraction to Jericho coming, nor did she
intend to fall in love with a perfect stranger.
Master
Sergeant Jericho Eden is in Brazil doing reconnaissance work on a
suspected terrorist compound when his team becomes scattered. On his way to his
execution, a woman unwittingly offers aid. Together they are thrust into a
world of duplicity and danger. Nothing new for Jericho, but Chloe's only chance
of survival relies on his instincts, skill, and discipline—something he is
having a hard time getting a grip on with his new distraction.
~ Chapter
One ~
Approximately
1300 hours, Friday
Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil
"Hey, watch out!" Chloe Burgesse shouted at the paint-chipped and
dented used-to-be gold sedan as the car slipped in front of her from out of
nowhere, tires screeching and squealing. Chloe's back came off the seat as she
braked, too. The driver ahead succeeded in gaining only a few feet before a
tight throng began to spill into the streets between the cars, halting traffic.
She let out a long sigh. Geez, some people
should learn to drive. However, in this country she could consider herself lucky not to have been run over by
now. Chloe snorted, watching the passers-by, and gripped the wheel a little
tighter. A flicker of annoyance raced through her as she noticed the odd
absence on her ring finger where a four-carat ring used to encircle, no diamond there now to turn between her fingers as
her grip increased.
She honked again, this time with a
pinch more aggravation. Pedestrians were the only things here
that seemed to slow traffic at all. She glanced down on the map across her
knees once more as the shoppers milled between the cars, tracing the road with
her finger.
Chloe thumped the map, seeing the
road she needed to be on several blocks over, and smacked
the map down into the passenger seat—the apparently outdated map she had picked up at her travel brochure acclaimed, five-star,
yet nonetheless dirty, hotel. Chloe pushed her sunglasses back up the bridge of
her nose and sighed, teeth tightly clamped together.
This day marked the seventh—and
last, thank God—day of what should have been her honeymoon in what she thought would be paradise. Wrong. Not that any of the should-have-beens mattered. The not-honeymoon vacation matched the
complete aura of her life right now.
She had never wanted to leave a
place more. Even the reminder of what awaited her at home didn’t deter her want
for normalcy.
Betrayed and left at the altar,
she'd found out a little too late her groom wouldn’t make their
ceremony—because he'd already married another woman a week before. And what
hurt the most, this hadn't
been an
I-lost-control-and-accidentially-married-a-stripper-in-Vegas-during-my-bachelor-party
kind of thing. The happy new couple had known one another for several months,
and all the while he had pretended to be loyal to Chloe.
She had seen the warning signs, but
had chosen to ignore the red flags without a single question.
Still, she didn't understand his
tactless retraction from their relationship.
After the botched ceremony had been
cleaned up and her unused gown stuffed somewhere out of sight—she suspected for
her mother's fear she might shred it, too—her youngest sister had suggested she
take the “honeymoon” alone.
Chloe could still hear her sister,
kneeling down beside where she had sat huddled in a chair, grieving and
bemoaning her life. Hey, her sister
had said. The
trip is paid for, so why not? Take some time to recuperate, let off steam, and
perhaps have a fling with a hot Brazilian. What happens in Brazil, stays in Brazil, the quirky
nineteen-year-old pest had suggested.
None of which had happened.
Chloe had picked up the already
packed suitcase without another thought and let her sister whiz her to the
airport where she clambered onto the plane at the last second and took full
advantage of the in-flight drink menu.
At the time, she had only wanted a
distraction to make her forget, to be somewhere far, far away from her sucky life. Somewhere she couldn’t bump into him.
So much
for getting away. Her mind hadn’t allowed her.
The entire seven days in Rio had been spent in reflection
and beating herself up over the
entire relationship. On top of that, she had gotten food poisoning. Gotten sunburned. Slipped on a freshly mopped (or
slopped) floor and ended up with a sore tailbone and ruined white capris. Now she'd managed to get lost on the edge of the city as she
headed for the airport in her rental.
Chloe lay on the horn as the jackass
in the sedan swerved and then braked hard in front of her. She came very close
to driving her car right up his ass.
"For
the love of Pete!" Chloe euphemistically cursed, pounding the
steering wheel, sending three clearly perturbed short honks to the other driver. "Only a few more miles," she
yelled, then huffed. "Maybe. And
if I don't wreck the car that would be awesome. Thanks!"
The vehicle shot to the far right,
off the road, sending up a cloud of dust as the driver veered around a jeep
ahead. The jeep wisely turned into a drive, but this left Chloe following the
raging driver again.
She clenched her teeth and groaned
as she came back into a residential neighborhood. The street narrowed snugly
between buildings, and her speed slowed drastically for the sake of more
pedestrians. Steadily, she watched the driver ahead. His impatience was evident
in the way he swerved left to right in a constant zigzag.
"It's not like your going to
pass anyone here," she mumbled, momentarily throwing her hands in the air
over the steering wheel, then smacking her palms back on and gripping hard. She
sighed deeply and fell back against her seat to rub at her forehead.
A headache was beginning to
strengthen, tightening like a band around her skull.
Chloe counted the rows of clothing
fluttering on lines above, connecting from building to building in the
impoverished neighborhood. At last, the line of cars exited the one street onto
a busier thoroughfare. She made a point to get around the angry driver, casting
a sharp glare out her window as she accelerated past.
Chloe blew out a breath, relaxing,
but suddenly her shriek-growl filled the compact car as the driver yet again
swerved back into her lane, tightly. All lanes seemed to freeze simultaneously,
and much honking chorused objectionably to the halt. Her car, unluckily, ended
the procession, the jam far enough ahead she couldn’t see what had happened.
Great. Chloe
slammed back in her seat, this time with much more gusto, and checked her
watch. She still had two hours, fortunately, but after a miserable week, she
itched to be on the plane headed home to Charlotte,
back home to her mom and her two unruly sisters.
An odd movement in the car ahead
caught her eye then.
Chloe blinked, squinting as she saw
the movement again. "What in the…" Chloe scrunched her nose as she
peered closely over her steering wheel, gripping the worn leather tightly. Had
the back-end of the car … bounced?
Her eyes flared.
The trunk did it again!
She gasped as a boot-print imbedded
the trunk lid of the gold sedan, from the inside out. Chloe sat rigidly. Her
eyes widened even more as another dent obtruded up from the top of the trunk.
Her spine stiffened, and she jolted
back into the seat, riveted to the tail end of the car. Her hand fluttered to
her open mouth. She lost her breath at the sharp realization.
"Oh-my-God," she breathed
in a rush. The irate driver had a person in his
trunk!
The cars began to move again, though
slowly. Chloe inched along in fascination, picking up pace but making sure to
stay three car-lengths behind the erratic driver. She really couldn’t afford to
pay for her rental on top of the weighing debt from a wedding that didn’t
happen, although the insurance on file for her rental was under her ex's name.
If anything happened, she would undoubtedly be stuck with that expense, too,
since she had fudged the paperwork at the rental agency.
Technically, she was still on his insurance, but didn’t want to have to deal with him
to clear anything else up.
They had said all that needed saying
on their should-have-been wedding day.
Chloe continued to watch the trunk
for any signs of movement.
Swallowing hard, she admitted she really
wasn’t sure what to do. Did she dare get involved in a criminal case in a
foreign country when she was due to leave within a couple hours? Or let someone
else on the busy thoroughfare call in on the deviant driving the gold sedan.
She looked around. There were plenty of other passersby. They would surely
notice, too.
Chloe scoffed to herself as she
realized she didn’t even know any emergency numbers in Brazil, then cringed.
Naive, wasn’t that what he had called her the last time they spoke, in the gigantic argument
over the phone, which had reverberated throughout the entire church?
The trunk bounced ahead of her,
nearly bumping the road.
She pursed her lips and fixated her
stare and mind on the footprint. Judging by the size, that surely wasn’t a child
in the trunk. Her worry edged a bit, though her brow remained furrowed. The
trunk bounced several more times, more heavily than before, nearly contacting
with pavement.
Chloe chewed her lip, worrying and
pondering over what she should do.
She had sworn off being kind and
generous, accused of being too nice by her ex. He had accused her of a healthy
number of faults, which had all stabbed too deeply. She'd never thought a
person could be too good. Apparently that was the taboo
thing to be and not what a man wanted anymore—not what he had wanted.
She sucked in a little sob at the
same time as her eyes flared wide. Chloe slammed her brakes as the car's trunk
flew upwards. She screamed when a man's face, bloodied and haggard, came into
view. Their stares clashed for a brief second as he struggled free of bindings
around his shoulders and sat up, catching the trunk lid from flopping closed
again.
Chloe screamed louder.
Though she had watched all along,
somehow she had not expected quite the sight
before her.
Wide-eyed and still screaming, both
Chloe's hands flew to cover her mouth. A wisp of a second elapsed before she
jumped to grab the wheel and regain control, her rental coming close to the
other vehicle as her tires squealed.
Hesitation flickered in the briefest
instant.
This poor
man, he'd been tied up and looked to have been tortured. Chloe peered
around him into the trunk, expecting the worst.
Shit, shit,
shit. Her silent
mantra began.
Guilt instantly swallowed her for
not immediately trying to signal someone for help, too caught up in her own
dilemma.
Too caught up trying to be someone
she wasn't.
But how
could I help him? Chloe
wondered, watching the man search the surrounding road, blood crusted on the
side of his face. Other cars whizzed past, honking, staring, laughing and
pointing, but no one stopping to do anything.
A noise of disgust escaped her.
Did they think this was joke? A stunt?
Chloe glanced around, too, but saw
no movie cameras.
Something snapped in her then. She
was sick of the world and sick of the uncaring assholes in it. Humans lived to
hurt one another and nothing else.
They might not want to be kind, but
damn it, she was a kind person.
A seedling of doubt sprouted.
She might be caring, but she was not
of hero material by any stretch of the mind. She would stop and help an old
lady if she spilled her purse, but this…. Helping this man was out of her
league for kindness.
Chloe's shoulders slumped, watching
the lid to the trunk as it flopped above the man's arm where he kept it from
hitting him on the head. He seemed unsure.Trapped. He struggled
to pull himself free of ropes around his legs.
She didn’t know what came over her
then, because normally she tended to stay within the beloved “box”, never
daring a thought of trespassing those boundaries,
but obviously that wasn’t working well for her anymore. Chloe clenched her jaw.
Her ex had claimed she was too
predictable, too boring.
A little pang began to ache in her
heart, but Chloe chased the memory away with a snort.
Ha!
She could be unpredictable and still
be caring.
She sped up, bumping the other car
with a slight sense of glee, and beckoned the man to take the leap onto the
hood of her car. He looked at her strangely through the windshield, panicked
almost. His look made her wonder if he would take the offered help.
She watched as he kicked ropes from
his feet, and a tangled net of bindings flew from the trunk as he tossed them.
The gold sedan swerved, now well aware its prisoner had freed himself.
Chloe bumped the gold sedan again,
harder this time as the driver attempted an all out stop. Just as the other car
swerved to the side, the man from the trunk leapt out, catching onto the top of
her hood, near the wipers. He grunted at his landing, slipping across the hood,
his long legs going over the side. In the last instant, as she thought he would
surely slip to the pavement and be hit by an oncoming car, he pulled himself
back up.
Chloe tapped her brakes. The
stranger growled as he tried to hold on and cast her
a look of annoyance through the glass as his body slid up the
windshield from her sudden halt.
She swerved again, hitting the gas.
The bumpers caught between her car and the gold sedan, sending them in a
spiral, and the other car crashed headlong into a ditch and the trunk snapped
shut.
As Chloe sped by, feeling triumphant
and rushed with adrenalin, she saw the other car's engine steaming. She hoped
she hadn't killed the person, no matter how bad they were. Terrified, she kept
going, though in the wrong direction of traffic. Many honks sounded around them
as cars swerved out of her way. Chloe gassed the car, breaking intermittently
as car after car sent her swerving, too.
"Drive," the tortured
stranger shouted. "Don't stop." He grunted. Blood smeared against the
windshield and light green paint of the hood as he pulled himself toward the
passenger side of her car. Chloe met his incensed stare, nodding wildly and
tried not to hit her brakes again. She reached over to roll down the window,
keeping one hand on the wheel.
Somewhere deep, deep inside she
began to wonder if she had gone completely crazy.
Chloe squeaked out a tiny shriek as
the man threw his long legs around and slipped inside, effectively filling the
small car with his dominating size. He gave her a strange look, as though he
thought her insane, too.
Chloe swallowed her tongue and
gawked, her stare quickly falling down him. Her
foot unconsciously pressing a little harder on the gas-pedal.
His tan t-shirt had open slashes in
several places, bloody gashes revealed underneath. Tan pants showed proof he
had been through little less than hell. Her gaze halted on the empty gun
holster strapped around his thigh.
What in the
heck had happened to this man?
Her gaze flickered back up his body,
and she stopped to wonder at the smudged—was that paint on his
face?—blotches of black and green, too.
Chloe swerved again as another
passing car caught her attention. She quickly looked between the stranger and
the road.
There was a bleeding, very large man
in her car.
She swallowed.
What had she done?
She meant to ask, Was he was all right? Should she
take him to a hospital? Where was the hospital? What happened? but none of that came out.
Chloe shook her head, gaping. She
was without a doubt shell-shocked, and now that he was inside her car, Chloe
was not entirely sure she had intended to let him inside—it had just happened.
"Set your cruise control. Give
me the wheel." His voice was deep and rough.
Reality pounded away at her,
adrenaline thumping in her veins.
Chloe stifled a cry as his long
tanned fingers slipped around the wheel beside her own. Still glancing between
the passenger side and the road, she groped to release her seatbelt, and then
attempted what he said by fumbling for the little switch on the end of the
signal control, first sending her turn signal blinking left, and then right.
Chloe flushed, and glancing down, she tried again. Her wipers swiped across the
windshield, and she cursed, giving up and tearing her focus away from the
stranger and road long enough to do what he'd asked. She set the cruise
control.
He gave her a half-smile.
"Great, you’re doing fine." His voice was so deep and smooth and calm
she almost believed him. "Now, I want you to crawl into the backseat and
keep your head down."
"What!" Chloe's voice
trembled. She looked at him as though he were insane for the suggestion. She
gave a little whimper as she looked at the tight space between him and the
console.
He didn’t so much as glance at her
as he steered from the passenger seat. "Just do it."
Shakily, she managed, lifting
herself from the seat and trying not to make contact with the stranger as she
slipped over the console. Her knees and butt dipped to the floorboard, and she
pulled her legs through the gap, then inched onto the seat and buckled herself
in.
The man commandeering her rental
pulled himself into the driver's seat after her and adjusted for his height,
muttering curses as the driver’s seat slammed back to accommodate his legs.
Their car shot forward and turned right.
"Who are you?" Chloe asked
as she ducked into her lap and splayed her hands against the back of her
midnight hair. "Please, oh please, tell me you're not a terrorist or in a
cartel." She panicked, fear bringing sobs. She squeezed her eyes, berating
herself for the burst of impulsiveness.
The car rocked as he swerved for a
pedestrian. Chloe's head shot up in alarm. A stack of papers knocked from the
hands of the person on the street fluttered behind them.
She tried to scream, opened her
mouth, but nothing came out, and so she quickly dropped her head back to her
lap and silently prayed she wouldn’t get killed.
"My name is Jericho Eden."
He paused to glance back at her. "And no, I am not a terrorist—unless of
course you're a terrorist, then you might consider me such … You're not a
terrorist, are you?" He cut another quick glance into the backseat, in
attempt to ease her fear, and grinned despite the blood caked on the side of
his face and in his hair, evident bruising swelled along a strong,
darkly-bristled jaw.
Chloe shook her head dumbly, peeping
up from her knees. "Me? No."
"Good, Chloe. Things might have
gotten really awkward between us had you said yes."
She paused, then came to edge around the seat precariously.
"How do you know my name?"
"It's on your bag," he
said, turning off the road they had been on, onto the tight street she had
traveled some twenty minutes earlier.
They sped along, the people there
scattering out of their path. Chloe peeked from over the console. He turned the
car back in the exact direction she had come and then off the road the jeep had
taken earlier when the sedan sped off the road.
As their car bounced over the
unpaved area, Chloe cut her eyes to her bag beside her in the backseat. Of course, she
mentally grumbled.
"Don't worry. I promise I won't
hurt you." Chloe's attention flinched back to him. Their eyes caught in
the rear-view mirror. "I'm one of the good guys," he said.
She swallowed hard, but didn’t drop
her gaze. "Then how did you end up in someone's trunk and looking like
that?" she asked, her tone rattled. She flicked her gaze over his torn and
bloodied clothing, his bruises and cuts.
The stranger winced as a grim
expression crossed over him. His stare returned to the road ahead, a darkness
filling his gaze.
Copyright © 2013 Kerri M. Patterson
Kerri will choose one commenter to receive a free eCopy of Perfect Strangers! Leave a comment or question below. Be sure to include your email address.
I'm loving this book so far.
ReplyDeletepetite_laydi19@yahoo.com
Great writing, great start. Flows well, just the right amount of scattered back story without killing the action and completely believable reasoning behind Chloe's descision to help the guy. I'm intrigued.
ReplyDeleteredmadusa@gmail.com
Thank you for the post. I can't wait to read all the new First Chapters. lisagk(at)yahoo
ReplyDeleteGreat opening- you had me hooked-I loved the part where Chloe takes action and encourages the beaten bloodied stranger to jump onto the hood of her car- very bold and exciting first Chpt.
ReplyDeleteThis book is on my wishlist and after reading the first chapter I can't wait to read the book!
ReplyDeleteangiek@cfu.net
My daughter picked a number for me and Lisa is the lucky winner of the free copy. Thank you all who took time to read the first chapter.
ReplyDeletexoxo Kerri Patterson