Trust No One: Two Bada$$ Women Taking on the Bad Guys
Diana’s note: This is a repost. Since GoDaddy discontinued my old blog, I am reposting a few blog posts I want readers to be able to access. Thank you.
Betrayed. Unfortunately, many of us know the pain and humiliation of having been betrayed. How stupid we feel. How hurt. Sometimes extremely intelligent and/or educated people are suckered. Even highly-trained, lethal-skilled people can find themselves betrayed.
MJ Thornberg learns that lesson the hard way in my romantic suspense novel, TRUST NO ONE, book 1 in the Vista Security series. To all appearances Vista Security is successful security firm, but in reality it is a front for a secretive organization that gets the dirty work off limits to the CIA and other U.S. security agencies. MJ, taken in and raised by the founder of Vista Security when her parents were killed in a car crash, has been trained as an operative from the time when most girls are having boy crushes and sleepovers.
This makes her accomplished and deadly, and something that I hope romantic suspense readers like to read these days: a real kick-butt heroine. Her nemesis is the woman who was raised as a sibling, although they are not blood-related. When Tasha goes on an unsanctioned killing spree, MJ is forced to go after her.
And in the course confronts many twisted-truths and complicated lies. More betrayal.
Together, the two women go through grueling, dangerous experiences in their quest for justice, yet each new deception they uncover puts the reality they’ve always known at risk.
To set up the following excerpt: In their quest for truth, MJ and Tasha pose as nurses to gain entrance to a retired senator’s house, a man who was a part of the criminals who destroyed their lives. Instead of injecting him with his medicine, Tasha has a syringe full of sodium pentothal stuck in his neck. The senator, confident of his bodyguards’ ability to save him taunts the two women.
***
“Money. The root of all good,” the senator chuckled, obviously warming to his subject.
“I think your saying is skewed,” Tasha said.
At last MJ found enough air to form words. “People. Died. To make you money.” Her parents. Tasha and Niko’s parents. Who else?
The old man had the nerve to laugh out loud. “What a ninny,” he said between cackles. “People die all the time. Money’s as good of a reason as any.”
MJ had an overwhelming need to whirl and use her gun to blow away the disgusting old man. She fought the rage-driven urge boiling through her. Understood better Tasha’s quest for revenge.
“One more question then we’ll be on our way,” Tasha said as pleasantly as if she were on a social call, her acting skills coming in handy again.
The senator kept on laughing. “Not going to kill me, too?”
“It’d be a waste of my time, honey. I read your chart. You’re on the way to dead anyway.”
“So they tell me. Ain’t dead yet, though.”
“Who told you about us?” Tasha continued.
Instead of hearing an answer, several things happened at once. MJ, unable to see beyond her peripheral vision, heard Tasha mumble “shit.” Wannabe rock star gunman across from MJ took a more aggressive stance, and even without a clear sight of vision, she knew the momentum had changed. Somehow another factor had been introduced.
The thought flashed through her mind to shoot the man in front of her, but the adoption loomed over her head. If she killed the wannabe, in a prominent and wealthy ex-senator’s house, it would be hard to cover up. There was probably a tape of them driving up to the house. Disguise or not, it wasn’t a risk she wanted to take.
All these things flitted through her mind in a nanosecond.
In that short amount of time, Tasha sounded as if she was getting the bad end of whatever had happened.
MJ lowered the barrel of her P220 and pulled the trigger. Wannabe rock star dude jumped. Score one for her. She’d shot between his legs, deliberately missing to give her an element of surprise. At the split second his attention was off her, she kicked his gun out of his hand. Instead of retreating, he countered by landing a kick in her solar plexus before she could aim again. She went flying backward, her breath trapped painfully in her lungs. Her shot landed somewhere in the ceiling. She expected to hear someone at the door soon, who could ignore gun shots?
When she could catch her breath again, she caught a glimpse of a second man lying on his belly, his hands firmly gripping Tasha’s ankle. He must’ve crawled out from under the bed. At that moment he jerked, and Tasha fell. Her head collided with the nightstand before she landed on the floor, unconscious.
The senator pulled the needle from his neck before clutching his chest.
MJ lay on her back, stunned, breathless, but recovering fast. She brought her weapon around, but rock star shirt man had recovered his.
Stand off again.
He growled a warning. “I don’t have orders to kill you yet, but I won’t miss when I shoot.” He aimed at her leg. “Hard to walk with a broken leg.” Hesitation cost her, and he knew it, if not the reason.
Operatives with a family couldn’t do this job.
***
If you want to learn more about how real-life betrayal inspired this story, please check out my personal blog post.
