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I made a note on my pad. “How do you know this?”
“It was in this morning’s TMZ online news. Don’t you keep up with this stuff? What am I paying you for?”
“I’ll check it out,” I said mentally rolling my eyes. “We’re getting close on the settlement, though. Think about the last offer. Fifteen million for ten months is nothing to scoff at. We don’t want to go to trial.”
“Twenty-four million. And not a dime less.” Blaine left my office in the huff that she’d walked in with.
I’d need all day to get the Chanel perfume smell out of the office.
The best-selling
Rachel Scott
suspense series featuring…
Amber Knowles, a beautiful high school senior and Florida governor John Knowles’s daughter, has everything going for her until she disappears during a cruise to the Bahamas. After an extensive search of the ship
SeaStar
, it’s clear that Amber has vanished without a trace. When Governor Knowles receives the distressing news, he asks for Rachel Scott’s help.The teenager’s disappearance represents every parent’s worst fear, and Rachel, founder of Florida Omni Search, knows only too well what losing a daughter feels like. Her three-year-old, Mallory, went missing five years ago. As she works with FBI special agent, Drake Reynolds, Rachel discovers an organized crime ring linked to the cruise line. The last person known to see Amber aboard the ship was an incognito DEA agent, who also has vanished. Where is he? And where is Amber? Finally, where is Mallory? Traci Hohenstein’s
Asylum
Harbor
draws inspiration from the disappearance of Natalee Holloway in 2005 and delves deeply into the mysteries and suspense of missing-person investigations and organized crime detection. The first in a series,
Asylum
Harbor
introduces Rachel Scott and her team and compels readers to follow Florida Omni Search and all their investigations.
Lt. Samantha (Sam) Collins, a firefighter, vanishes after a warehouse fire the week before she was to testify at her estranged husband’s trial for drug charges. The only clue to her disappearance is a firefighter helmet that was left behind at the scene.
Rachel Scott founded Florida Omni Search after her own daughter disappeared when she was four. She has worked with law enforcement agencies all over the United States in locating missing people. Sam’s mother calls Rachel for assistance in locating her daughter. However, the search for Sam takes her on a journey that she never expected. As she digs deeper into Sam’s past, she finds out more about the marijuana operation her husband Ken, a former police officer, was involved with.
In her desperate, terrifying search for Sam, Rachel also discovers clues about her own missing daughter, Mallory. Will she locate Samantha in time and also find out what happened to her own daughter?
To
contact
the author, please visit her blog at
http://msthriller.wordpress.com
or write her an email to
[email protected]
.
BONUS EXCERPT from
Sibel Hodge
Why is it that you spend most of your young adult life trying not to get pregnant, and yet when you actually want to get pregnant, you can’t? How annoying is that? Not to mention frustrating, depressing, soul-destroying, and numerous other feelings that I’ve experienced at one time or another in the last two years. I know I’m in danger of losing myself in a never-ending round of fertility treatment, wishing this time it’s going to magically work. No, that’s wrong. I’ve lost myself already. I’ve become a neurotic nutcase who’s bored with life, boring, unsociable, and turning into a frump. What happened to the happy, carefree woman I used to be? The woman who used to enjoy life, have a laugh, appreciate her lot, and drink one too many bottles of wine at the weekends? Obsessed. Yes, that’s what I am, but it’s not my fault. It’s this feeling that I can’t explain. This desperate need inside me to have a baby. This urge that has completely turned my brain to single-train thoughts: Baby, baby, baby.
And as the years have gone on, I’m morphing into the ghost of myself. Someone who can’t enjoy life because I’m too busy worrying and wondering when and if it’s going to happen for me. I don’t even recognize myself most of the time anymore. I’m constantly wishing for the end of my cycle to hurry up and arrive to see if I’ve hit the jackpot this time, and when it doesn’t work, I’m constantly wishing for the middle of my cycle so I can ovulate and try again. I’m unable to feel whole and complete unless I have a son or daughter to hold.
So this year I have to take drastic action before I get sucked into a giant abyss of despair and can never get back. I’m going to give it six more months of trying, and if I still can’t get pregnant…well, that’s it. I’m giving up. This is the last year I’m going through it. I’ve absolutely, definitely, positively made my mind up. I know I said that the last time, and the time before that, oh, and the time before that, but I really mean it this time.
Really.
Maybe really.
Nope. Really and truly, this year is going to be my year to give up trying for a baby.
I’m sick of people looking up my lady garden, prodding me, poking me. Doctors and nurses at the Assisted Conception Unit and friends looking at me with sympathy. I’m also sick of the following:
1) Having no spontaneous sex. It’s not the same when you have to have precision-timed nookie. I’m also having to give precision-timed wanks to Karl in aid of sperm tests.
2) Leaving my legs hanging in the air after sex for ten minutes – although have been known to do it for up to forty as there are varying opinions on the length of time necessary.
3) Being obsessed about babies all the time.
4) Not having time for Karl and me anymore as always obsessing about babies. I’m worried we’re drifting apart.
5) Being hormonal and moody from all the fertility drugs, and sometimes wanting to kill perfectly innocent people for no reason.
6) Balling my eyes out every time I have my period (and countless other times, too).
7) Eating healthy organic food and giving up alcohol and smoking.
8) Constantly texting tarot card hotlines to find out if and when I will get pregnant (my mobile phone bill is the same as a small country’s debt!).
9) Trying every alternative fertility treatment under the sun.
10) Isn’t that enough reasons?
I always said I’d never write down my infertility journey, but I’ve changed my mind now. Actually, it was Poppy, who I met online at the Fertility Friends website, who suggested it. We’ve got to know each other pretty well through emails and phone calls in the last two years. How can I describe Poppy? Hmm…if I’d met her in any normal circumstances she wouldn’t have been my type of friend. She’s a floaty, New Age, holistic type, who says she can see auras, and talks about cosmic energy, Karma, and projecting positive thoughts to the Universe. Now, normally I’d burst into uncontrollable laughter if someone told me I had to imagine a bright white light of happiness radiating through my body to my ovaries, but I’ve done some pretty bizarre things in my quest to get pregnant, so maybe it’s time I started listening to her and took her advice. What the hell, why not? What have I got to lose? I mean, the drugs and IVF don’t seem to be working, so if I can finally have my little bundle of joy by chanting a few words and hugging a tree, why not give it a go? Although Karl will probably freak and think I’ve lost my mind completely after all the “ridiculous ideas” (as he calls them) I’ve come up with so far. I’ve gone from being someone totally unsuperstitious to someone who looks for signs everywhere. And I mean everywhere. Not to mention the fertility symbols and spells.
Anyway, Poppy told me that writing my story down is the first step to cosmic enlightenment (not entirely sure what that is, but it sounds nice). She explained that if I keep this journal, I’ll be letting the Universe know exactly what I want and she (or he, not entirely what sex the Universe represents, although I think it’s a she and will name her Zelda, which is a Universe-ish kind of name) will help me get rid of any negative energies surrounding me, unblock my chakras (whatever they are), and help me let go of my grief about being unable to get pregnant. OK, in a tiny little way it makes sense, but, of course, I can’t tell that to Karl. He doesn’t understand. And I can’t help thinking that if all this stuff she talks about could really work, then why isn’t she pregnant yet, either?
But I’m game, and this is the last sliver of hope I can cling to. So on the first day of a brand new year, which Poppy said is the perfect time for cosmic alignment, you, my little pink diary with the silver clasp, will be my new friend. And if you can find time to poke the Universe and get her to grant my wish, then I’ll be eternally grateful. Because if I can’t get pregnant this time, I’ll need to do something radical to fill this gaping hole in my life, and I’m scared of what that radical thing might be.
It all started when I turned thirty-three. I woke up one Sunday morning and I could’ve sworn I heard a clock ticking. I prised open one sleepy eyelid, stuck together with caked mascara that I’d forgotten to take off again after another mad party. Maybe it was my head banging with a humongous hangover that was making the noise. I turned towards my husband Karl, snoring softly beside me with his mouth open, and groaned. Oops, big mistake! My head felt like someone was repeatedly hitting it with a sledgehammer. Probably not a good idea to actually move. Maybe I should just stay in bed all day. Yep, good idea.
Except the bloody ticking wouldn’t shut up.
I knew it couldn’t be the alarm clock on my bedside table because that had run out of batteries months ago. And it couldn’t have been Karl’s because he had a digital clock next to the bed. So what was it?
God, how much had I drunk last night? Was I hallucinating sounds? Whoa, I really needed to slow down on the wine next time.
I rolled out of bed, clutching my head in my hands, and wandered downstairs into the kitchen that overlooked the garden. Pouring a hefty glass of water to combat brain dehydration, I glugged it down in one as I stared through hangover-induced blurry eyes at an oak tree outside.
What was that out there?
Instantly alert, my monster headache disappeared. I narrowed my eyes at a peculiar site in the garden. It was…what the hell was it? No, it couldn’t be.
I unlocked the back door and tentatively crept towards the vision.
As I got closer, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
It was a baby! Complete with a pink baby grow and a pink dummy, sucking on it with glee as it stared up at me with chubby cheeks and huge blue eyes.
What had I been drinking last night? Has someone spiked my drink at Amelia’s party?
What kind of person could abandon a baby in someone’s garden? This was unbelievable!
‘You poor thing.’ I reached out to pick it up and bring it inside the house and it disappeared.
Pfffft! Just like that. Vanished.
Karl found me two hours later, sitting at the farmhouse kitchen table, still in my fluffy pink pyjamas and giant slippers that looked like cows’ faces, staring blankly at the garden.
‘God, what a great night!’ He kissed the top of my head and yawned. ‘Want a coffee? I feel like I’ve swallowed a Brillo Pad.’
‘Huh?’ I said, not really hearing was he was saying.
‘Coffee? Want one?’ He rummaged around in the cupboards, pulling out mugs and a French press.