TUESDAY INTROS/TEASERS: DEAD WITNESS — MAY 1

Welcome to another Tuesday celebrating bookish events, from Tuesday/First Chapter/Intros, hosted by Bibliophile by the Sea; and Teaser Tuesdays hosted by Should Be Reading.

Just grab your book and share the opening lines; then find another excerpt that “teases” the reader.

Today I’m excerpting from Dead Witness, by Joylene Nowell Butler.

Blurb:  Valerie McCormick is a wife and mother from small town Canada. While visiting Seattle, she becomes the only witness to the brutal seaside murder of two FBI agents. When she flees to the nearest police station to report the crime, she becomes caught up in a web of international intrigue and danger. Suddenly, she and her family are in the sights of ruthless criminals bent on preventing her from testifying against the murderer. Even with FBI protection, Valerie is not safe. Whisked away from her family and all that is familiar to her, Valerie fights back against the well-intentioned FBI to ultimately take control over her life with every ounce of fury a mother can possess.

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Intro./First Chapter:

Camera in hand, Valerie McCormick stepped from the bus into intense daylight.  She put on her sunglasses and crossed the grass to the edge of the hill.  Seattle’s skyline loomed in the distance like a giant sandcastle.  Closer in, waves rocked elegant yachts, sailboats, and cruisers docked at brown-scrubbed wharves, jutting along the waterfront.  Fifty feet below her, a chain-linked fence enclosed acres of quiet warehouses, buildings, and small sheds in both directions.  Inside the gate was the marina office.

Glancing over her shoulder to the air-conditioned bus disappearing into traffic, Valerie took off her windbreaker, zipped up the pocket with her wallet in it, and tied the jacket around her waist.  The driver had warned if she missed the bus at the stop across the street at ten-to-three, fifteen minutes from now, she’d have to wait an hour for the next one.  No problem.  She’d find the boat, snap several photographs—there was only one on this roll of film of her standing in front of the hotel—and be back at the bus stop in plenty of time.

***

Teaser:  She heard a pop and felt a bullet zing past her head.

She ran, ran as hard as she could, passing the next vacant building, cornering left.  Open water.  A dead end. (1%)

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What’s the verdict?  Would you keep reading?  And does the teaser pique your interest?

Come on by and share your own tidbits today.