Neva Oakley’s family funeral home is being driven into bankruptcy by a ruthless entrepreneur with seemingly unlimited funds. To make matters worse, her mother is succumbing to over-prescribed opioids. Neva’s hard-won ten-year recovery from the inexplicable suicide of her first love is finally complete. She has found new love in tall, blond architect, Davis Pratt, who doggedly searches for the younger brother who disappeared many years ago.
When Neva investigates a fire in her father’s cemetery, she unintentionally witnesses a murder by ruthless human traffickers and brings herself to their attention. She manages to escape their first attempt at abduction, but her look-alike cousin, Rozanna Clark, is not as lucky.
Together, she and Davis search for Rozanna, and soon find themselves on a path that promises to unravel the mysteries surrounding both their lives.
Excerpt
Her headlights touched the tall monuments looming to her left. The back wheels broke loose, threw the car into a sideways slide directly at the steep slope.
Old car had no airbags.
If they slid off that grade, they would likely die.
Her mother’s face, the one she wore before depression stole her life, rose in Neva’s mind. Deep blue eyes filled with love.
The outside back wheel caught against the low curb, slid shrieking for a long moment before it flung the car forward. Neva wrestled the wheel, tried to stay on the road, but it was a bumper-car steering wheel with no control.
The front tires hit the low curb on the other side.
The Mustang went airborne.
Neva’s stomach rocketed with it, then fell as the car thudded down with a jar that ran from her tailbone to the top of her head. It was now a four-thousand-pound sled careening across her father’s expensive sod, ripping it, shredding it, sucking the remnants into the tire grooves, eradicating any traction they might have gained.
A family plot rushed toward them, its towering spire a solid five thousand pounds of stop-you-in-a-heartbeat concrete surrounded by another low curb. The front tires caught, slung the car sideways, again screamed as they tore along the asphalt.
Neva jerked the wheel.
The car whirled like a carnival ride.
Trees, monuments and dark sky blurred past them. Neva’s gaze fastened on the rapidly approaching ten-ton angel, circa 1801. Balanced precariously on one slender foot in the middle of its pediment, the angel would topple with one solid blow.
She gave into instinct, wrenched the wheel to the right with all her strength. They would fare better in a roll than beneath the angel’s weight. The ’Stang rose onto two wheels, hovered, dropped to the ground with another heavy jolt and stopped.
With her gaze tight on the angel’s face, Neva watched it dissolve into relief, then settle back into the concrete mask it had worn for more than two centuries.
Odd what terror could do to a person.
She turned to find Moya’s dark eyes so wide the whites showed. “Oh, dear God, Neva, don’t ever do that again.”
“Right,” Neva said. Her voice shook like a woman’s three times her age. “Never again.”
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About the Author
She won the Daphne Du Maurier Award of Excellence for Paranormal in 2018 for her Blessed Curse. She is an entertaining and interesting speaker, and an enthusiastic and knowledgeable panelist who enjoys public speaking.
She lives in Rural Hill, Tennessee, just east of Nashville with her husband, classical composer and conductor, David Sartor and two Maine Coon cats. Nancy has three published novels: Bones Along the Hill, Christmas Across Time, and Blessed Curse.
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