Im excited to be on the blog tour for After He’s Gone by Jane Isaac today and to have a fantastic extract to share with you. Huge thanks to Jane for giving me an extract to post when I’ll children and sleep deprivation meant I wasn’t able to read the book in time. I’ve been hearing lots of great things about this book though and look forward to reading it in the near future.
After He’s Gone is available in ebook now at the fab price of £1.99. You can purchase your copy here.
Before I share my extract with you here is a little bit about the book.
Book Synopsis:
You think you know him. Until he’s dead.
When Cameron Swift is gunned down outside his family home, DC Beth Chamberlain is appointed Family Liaison Officer: a dual role that requires her to support the family, and also investigate them.
As the case unfolds and the body count climbs, Beth discovers that nothing is quite as it appears and everyone, it seems, has secrets.
Even the dead…
Prologue Extract:
The moments before death were not at all how she imagined them to be. No images, carved from the recesses of her memory, flashed before her. No celebrated successes or missed opportunities. Instead, an overwhelming fear beat a tune beneath her skin, faster and faster, picking up momentum, immobilising her organs, one by one.
Were they out there? She risked a fleeting glance at the window. She couldn’t see them, hadn’t heard the soft thrum of their engines in the distance, felt their clandestine footfalls as they crept around the perimeter of the house. But there were children inside, they would be discreet.
She willed them to be out there. Trussed up in bullet-proof vests. Semi-automatics clutched to their chests. Hell, they should have evacuated the neighbouring houses by now. Cordoned off the whole estate.
‘Eeny, meeny, miny, mo.’
She turned back to the room, just in time to stare down the barrel of the Glock. And froze.
A tremor ran through the sofa as a knee juddered a staccato beat beside her.
Their captor repeated the rhyme, moving the gun down the line, from child to adult, child to adult. A cat playing with his prey. A pernicious smile tickling his lips.
Please be out there. Eventually they’d make some contact, attempt to negotiate a deal. Wouldn’t they?
The knocking knee squirmed beside her, sending a trail of urine down its calf. She swallowed, the heat of the bodies squeezed beside her on the sofa failing to suppress the chill of raw ice in her chest. Two adults, two children. To kill an adult was gruesome enough. But a child? That was pure unadulterated evil.
The urine crept forwards, a languid line on the polished flooring.
Wasn’t this where self-preservation was supposed to kick in? That animal instinct, sewn into living genes from the dawn of time. They’d tried screaming, reasoning, pleading, even begging. To no avail. The face opposite was calm and still. And now the fight was fading from her bones, numbing the fear biting at every sensory receptor.
The breeze picked up, a sudden gust whistling through the trees out front. The sound cut her breaths. Even if the surrounding pavements weren’t deserted, the house was set so far back from the road that nobody would have heard their screams, their pleading. This wasn’t the movies. No one was out there. There would be no heroic rescue.
The safety catch on the Glock snapped as it was released. Her stomach curdled as she watched the face of death stretch and curve. Listened to the words drip from his mouth, ‘Right. Let’s begin, shall we?’
About The Author:
Over The Rainbow Blog 