Blurb
When Nick O'Flaherty arrives at the scene of a double homicide to find he has a witness to the crime, he thinks it’s his lucky day. But when he realizes his witness is suffering from amnesia and can’t even remember his own name, Nick wishes he’d gone with his gut and put in for vacation time.Then Nick’s boyfriend and former Recon teammate, Kelly Abbott, joins him in Boston, and Nick finds his hands a little too full as the case and his personal life collide. The witness he’s dubbed “JD” is being tailed by Julian Cross, a retired CIA hitman. To complicate matters further, JD forms an attachment to Nick that Nick struggles not to respond to as they search for the key to JD’s identity.
Trying to determine whether JD is friend or foe as they investigate the crime puts them on the trail of a much older mystery. When multiple attempts are made on their lives, Nick is forced to turn to old enemies and new allies to solve a centuries-old crime before he and Kelly get added to the history books.
You can order Cross & Crown directly from Riptide.
Cut Scene
Nick was silent as he looked out on the moonlit
fields. They were peaceful now, but it seemed there were echoes of gunfire and
cannon blasting, bayonets clashing, men and horses screaming in fear and pain.
“It doesn’t really matter why, or how history writes
it down,” Nick said. “The only thing that matters is that every man out there
believed in what he was doing. He was standing on this ground, willing to take
a bullet fired by his brother, to protect something he thought was worth dying
for. That country. That king. That ideal. That land back home. That flag. That
man leading him. That man standing beside him.” Nick’s voice filled with
emotion and he lowered his head. “The burden of death and bravery in places
like this is heavy. I’ve always been able to feel it. Someone should feel it.”
Even if Kelly hadn’t already felt the power of
this place, it came through clearly in Nick’s voice. It was holy ground, in its
own way, bearing the gravity of the past up in what were now wild green
pastures dotted with stone and tourists. The agony of it. The struggle. And Nick
believed the same as those men, felt it down to his bones. Call it patriotism.
Heroism. Integrity. Honor. That indefinable something that had driven so many
men to die for something they felt more important than life also lived inside Nick.
It had lived inside their team. And if what he believed in was threatened, he’d
do the same as they had done; die defending it.
Kelly’s chest constricted as he looked at Nick’s
profile in the moonlight. He had never believed that men like this still
existed, not until he’d met Sidewinder.
Nick’s breath billowed in front of him in the
cold. His eyes were taking in the battlefield, seeing things Kelly couldn’t
see, remembering things Kelly had lived with him. Kelly swallowed hard and set
one hand lightly on Nick’s shoulder. He couldn’t think of anything to say, so
he didn’t speak at all.
I'm not entirely sure this would be my cup of tea, but the blurb seems really intriguing!
ReplyDeleteI'm intrigued too. Thanks for stopping by, Franny.
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