Excerpt - Veil of Deception by Michael Davis and Candace Morehouse

BLURB

There’s something suspicious going on at Spenser Lake. People are disappearing and their bodies are never found. The fear and uncertainty of who will be next is affecting every resident of the tranquil community, but especially Kurt Hawkins. Two years after his wife goes missing, there are no clues, only the nightmares of what happened in her last moments. The constant guilt that somehow he was responsible precludes any thought of a normal life until he meets Danielle Gillette, a reclusive author with a rather large skeleton in her own closet. When the secret is finally revealed, they both discover that sometimes the truth cuts deeper than a lie.

EXCERPT 1

He walked past the lat machine to the open doorway and scanned the empty hallway beyond. Muffled sounds, like distorted voices, emanated from the end of the corridor. He inched along the wall, pausing at each step, until he recognized the noise as a television blaring in the distant room. His shoulder brushed a framed poem on the wall. It jarred loose and leapt for the solid oak floor, but his skillful fingers darted out and intercepted the unintended alarm before it could signal his approach. He examined the cross-stitched writing, To my Beloved Wife, Crystal, and grinned. He placed the frame on the floor against the wall and continued his journey quietly, deliberately, toward his objective ten feet away. Finally, he peered cautiously through the crack provided by the partially opened door, but quickly pulled back when he saw a shapely female tying the reflective laces on a pair of pink tennis shoes. He watched her pull long, silky, blonde hair back into a ponytail, then start a series of stretching exercises while she paid partial attention to the local news report on the wide screen television.
The mysterious disappearance of twenty-one-year-old Amber Campbell from the Brandon College campus four months ago still baffles the Piedmont County Sheriff’s Department. Yesterday, I interviewed Sheriff Lundgren regarding leads as to the whereabouts of Ms. Campbell.
“Sheriff, is there anything you can share about this case with our viewers?”
“Nothing substantive. We’ve investigated dozens of phone calls and potential sightings, but they all resulted in dead ends.”
“Can you speculate on the cause of her disappearance or give us some idea as to what might have happened?”
“Nothing solid. It’s possible Ms. Campbell was suffering from some emotional stress, perhaps the tension of her heavy course load, a fight with her boyfriend – who knows. We’ve seen it before where a young girl runs offs and reappears months later in some other state.”
“Is that what you think happened: that she ran away?”
“We just don’t know at this time.”
“What about her boyfriend, is he a suspect?”
“We’re not ruling anything out at the moment.”
“No leads, only dead ends; just more sad words for the waiting parents of a beautiful young girl with a promising future. This is Jamie Davis, local reporter for WSDY, channel 12.”
His eyes locked on the swaying motion of her rear taunting him to reach out and stroke those feminine curves. Then something penetrated his nose. Even from this distance, he sensed a sweet fragrance; a faint blend of tangerine and lime: her shampoo.
The lure of her tiny waist and firm buttocks contorting with each bending motion worked their magic. He could no longer deny his thoughts, or his fantasies. She would resist at first, wrestle against his superior strength. Finally she would accept his offering and they would merge as one. The vision of her smooth, shaved legs entangled around his waist flooded his brain along with the sensation of her muscles tightening while she squeezed and surged in rhythm with each thrust, further, deeper. The thought of it was too much.
He wanted her. No, he needed her. Beneath him. He needed to take her completely and resolve the urge racing through his loins. The buzzing in his ears and the blood throbbing in his temples drummed out all reason.
Without a sound, he edged forward. As she started to turn, he reached out and locked her tightly around the waist from behind, his massive arms gripping like a vise. She gasped and tried to escape, but it was useless. His warm hand slid down inside the elastic band of her jogging shorts, and the sensation of her cool, smooth flesh drove more blood straight into his groin.