To Love a Traitor excerpt by JL Merrow

According to JL Merrow in To Love a Traitor, wounds of the heart take the longest to heal.

When solicitor’s clerk George Johnson moves into a rented London room in the winter of 1920, it’s with a secret goal: to find out if his fellow lodger, Matthew Connaught, is the wartime traitor who cost George’s adored older brother his life.

Yet as he gets to know Matthew—an irrepressibly cheerful ad man whose missing arm hasn’t dimmed his smile—George begins to lose sight of his mission.

As Matthew’s advances become ever harder to resist, George tries to convince himself his brother’s death was just the luck of the draw, and to forget he’s hiding a secret of his own - his true identity - and an act of conscience that shamed his family.

But as their mutual attraction grows, so does George’s desperation to know the truth about what happened that day in Ypres. If only to prove Matthew innocent - even if it means losing the man he’s come to love.

[Warning: Contains larks in the snow, stiff upper lips, shadows of the Great War, and one man working undercover while another tries to lure him under the covers. LOL]

    To Love a Traitor

    SamhainNow (September 15, 2015)

ISBN:  9781619229921

Excerpt:

December, 1920; two young men with rooms in the same lodging-house

Later that week the weather was still bitterly cold. Nevertheless, George found himself staying up late with his books, reading up on tort by candlelight with a blanket wrapped around him for warmth. It was extraordinary how fascinating the English legal system could be, built as it was in the main upon individual cases.

But even George’s interest in larrikins (who or whatever they might be) throwing squibs into crowds couldn’t sustain him long past midnight, given that he’d been up at six that morning and would have to do the same on the morrow. Yawning, he closed his books and shed his clothes, shivering as the chilly air struck his bare flesh. As he hastily pulled on his pyjamas, he was startled to hear someone speaking. The words were indistinct, but George was almost certain they came from Matthew’s room. Quietly opening the door, he could see no one there, which rather settled the matter—unless they were on the street? A quick glance out of the window confirmed that the street was empty, all good citizens presently tucked up in their beds, and the bad ones gone for richer pickings than could be had in Allen Street. But who on earth could Matthew be talking to at this time of night?

Perhaps he always talked in his sleep, and George had simply never been awake to hear him before? Listening with guilty avidity, George realised it sounded as though Matthew were distressed. A nightmare, then, poor fellow. George had had his share of those.

He was certain Matthew wouldn’t thank him for poking his nose in—he’d probably be mortified to know that his night-time woes were audible to others. Having snuffed his candle and climbed into bed, George stuck his head under his pillow and tried to ignore the noises from next door—but a vigorous thump on the wall right by his ear, followed by the unmistakeable sound of a sob was too much for him to endure. Matthew might hate him for it, but George just couldn’t leave the man in such distress. Flinging off the blankets, he pulled on his dressing gown and padded to Matthew’s door in his slippers.

Uncertain whether to knock, George stood on the landing for a moment, irresolute. A further cry from within prompted him to pull himself together and open the door.

He hadn’t thought to re-light his candle, but like his own, Matthew’s room looked out on the front of the house, and a faint glow from the streetlamps filtered through the curtains. It was enough to make out Matthew’s form, writhing in the bedclothes which had wrapped themselves around him like a shroud. “Matthew,” George whispered, laying a hand on his shoulder. Matthew started violently. “It’s all right,” George reassured him. “It’s just a dream.”

George started to unwind the sheets from the sweating form. It seemed to help—as Matthew’s limbs were freed, the thrashing eased. “Hush,” George kept repeating. “It’s all right. Just a bad dream.”

“George?” Matthew’s voice was hoarse. “George, what are you doing here?”

“I heard you cry out. I think you had a nightmare.”

“God, George… I was back there in the dugout, when that wretched shell landed and it collapsed… Oh Lord—you don’t want to hear about this. I’m sorry, George. Just being a bit of an idiot. Sorry to have woken you.”

“You didn’t wake me—I’ve only just finished studying. Now, will you be all right, or would you like me to stay for a while?”

“I… Would you mind, awfully, staying for just a little while? I’m being a wretched nuisance, I know.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” George said a little more sharply than he meant to. “And is there anything else you need?” he asked in a softer tone.

“Do you think you could light the candle? It’s on the bedside table, and the matches are in the drawer.”

Feeling more than seeing his way, George managed to locate the matches and lit one with a blinding flare that left him blinking for a moment before he could find the candle. Once lit, the candle showed him Matthew’s pale face, his hair plastered to his forehead in little curls. He was sitting up, his right pyjama sleeve flopping forlornly where he hadn’t bothered to pin it up. George’s chest felt curiously tight at the sight of him. “It must be a wretched place to go back to in your dreams,” he said.

“Do you know, it’s the only time I remember anything about it at all? In my dreams. If it even is a memory and not something my beastly mind has cooked up all by itself.”

“Does it happen often?” George asked before he could stop himself.

“Lord, no. Hardly at all, these days. I must have had too much cheese for supper or something,” Matthew said with a ghost of a grin. “Or possibly Sherlock Holmes is a little too racy for bedtime reading for one of my advanced years.”

“Advanced years?” George asked in a light tone. “You can’t be older than twenty-five.”

“I can, you know. I’m twenty-five and six—no, seven months, now.” Matthew’s smile seemed much more genuine, and his colour was returning.

George felt horribly torn and confused. It was such an intimate situation—he in his dressing gown, and Matthew in bed not six inches away from him. George knew he should be thinking of a way to use the situation to his advantage, to find out more about Matthew’s time in the trenches, but all he felt was a fierce yearning to close the gap between them, to hold his friend tight—and did he only imagine that Matthew’s lips had parted, his eyes half-closed, ready to welcome his embrace…?

He couldn’t do it. If he was mistaken, then the best that could happen would be Matthew never speaking to him again. He’d have failed utterly in his task—and in any case, it would be the act of a scoundrel to take such a step whilst concealing so much from Matthew. But if he told the truth—the whole truth, so help him God—it would be the end of everything. A wave of grief washing over him for what he could never have, George stood. “Well, you’ll be all right now, won’t you? I’d best get to bed—work in the morning, you know how it is.”

He didn’t look behind him as he left the room. If Matthew was watching him go with an air of disappointment, it would do him no good to see it—and if he had only imagined that Matthew returned his feelings, he was too much of a coward to want to know.

*   *   *

 JL Merrow is that rare beast, an English person who refuses to drink tea.  She read Natural Sciences at Cambridge, where she learned many things, chief amongst which was that she never wanted to see the inside of a lab ever again.  Her one regret is that she never mastered the ability of punting one-handed whilst holding a glass of champagne.

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Children of Noah excerpt by Neil S Plakcy

In this the second excerpt from Neil S Plakcy’s Children of Noah, Kimo’s partner Mike Riccardi is investigating an arson in Kahuku, at the northern tip of O’ahu, and he spots some racially-charged graffiti on the premises. He’s called Kimo and Ray to check it out.  (See also excerpt for August 17, 2015)

Children of Noah
MLR Press (August 17, 2015)
ISBN: 978-1-60820-9910 (print)
           MLR1-02015-0437 (ebook)

Excerpt:

The wind picked up as Ray and I drove along the tree-lined Likelike Highway, which went through the center of the island. The tops of the Ko’olaus were shrouded in mist and I was glad we had the hot coffee to counter the chilly damp.

The divided highway followed the contours of the Ko’olau mountains, and verdant slopes and craggy cliffs loomed beside us. It was a wilder part of O’ahu, and it was almost like going back in time. People lived up there in the mountains, off the grid, but they had modern conveniences like solar panels and water purifiers. And some of them were growing pakalolo and manufacturing ice, which were distinctly modern problems.

As we approached the Wilson tunnel under the mountains, I noticed some graffiti scrawled on rocks beside the road, and recognized one tag, the letters FTP, with an X over the stem of the T, a reference to an LA-based gang call the Fruit Town Pirus. Beside it was a scrawl of the Nazi swastika.

I knew that some of the mainland gangs were trying to make inroads in Hawaii, but that was the first physical evidence I’d seen. And the fact that someone had painted a swastika nearby wasn’t a good indicator of racial harmony.

When we came out of the tunnel we drove right into a downpour, and I had to slow down and turn my wipers on high because of the slick roadway and the slow-moving tourists. We rounded a bend and head of us on the right the town of Kaneohe nestled against a cove along the Pacific shore. No gleaming glass high-rises like downtown Honolulu; just a spread of houses and low buildings, with only occasional buildings of more than four or five stories.

We passed a standard suburban sprawl of houses and fast-food chains as well as the Honolulu Church of Light, the Iglesia Ni Cristo, the St. Anthony Retreat, and the Central Samoan Assembly of God, testimony to the religious diversity of the island.

The sun came out as we passed the signs for Brigham Young University and the Mormon temple. Early Mormon missionaries had come to Hawaii in the early 1900s to begin converting the locals. We passed a couple of different with chain link fencing around them, and signs for several different churches that sounded fundamentalist, but beyond that, I was disappointed to see that Laie was as mixed as the rest of the island, though I did notice a higher proportion of the kind of white, clean-cut people I associated with those Mormon missionaries on bicycles.

Further evidence of the religious character of the area was that local supermarkets wouldn’t sell alcohol on Sunday in deference to Mormon beliefs. Like Kaneohe, the streets were lined with single-story bungalows and small stores. I kept an eye out for graffiti but didn’t see much more than the occasional scrawl.

Kahuku was at the very tip of the island, in an area that tourists don’t generally frequent; the big waves of the North Shore crash around the other side of Kahuku Point, and usually the farthest that visitors get on the Windward Shore was the Islands of History theme park in Laie, where I’d gone many times as a kid.

You could drive for miles up the twisting Kamehameha Highway, paralleling the coast, and see spectacular cliffs and water views, and not much else. It was near the northernmost point on the island, Kahuku Point; in Hawaiian, ka huku means ‘the projection.’

It was nearly ten o’clock by the time we approached the day care center. There was only one fire engine remaining, though the police still had the street blocked and were directing traffic away.

I parked behind Mike’s truck with its distinctive flames painted down the side, and Ray and I flashed our IDs to the uniform keeping people away from the site.

From the charred foundation that remained, we could see that the day care center was a free-standing building, probably once a single-family house. There wasn’t much around it – no immediate neighbors, and a screen of trees around the back and sides.

The scene reminded me of damage I’d seen after Hurricane Iniki devastated Kauai just before I left for college, the way you could look right into someone’s home or office and witness the devastation first-hand. In this case, I could see a cluster of half-burned tables and chairs piled in the center of the front room. The front wall of a bathroom was gone, but the toilet and sink looked untouched.

We stopped in the parking lot, a few feet from the front wall, and looked around. Two of the four walls remained intact – the rear and the right side – and part of the roof. An interior wall that looked like it separated an office from the main area had been reduced to a tangle of half-melted studs; behind it was a desk and a file cabinet and the rear wall of the building. Children’s drawings had been posted there, brown edges curling around colorful scrawls of houses and flowers.

The front door was long gone, but just inside was a misshapen coat rack with a single sweater hanging on it, miraculously untouched. Below it were a pair of pink rubber Crocs in an impossibly tiny size—one of them intact down to the tiny charms in the holes, the other a melted lump.

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Aviophobia (Flight HA1710) excerpt by Serena Yates

Aviophobia
Publisher: Diversity Novels ( July 17, 2017)

ISBN: 9781909630

In Serena Yates’ Aviophobia (Flight HA1710), Richard Abbott finally overcomes his debilitating fear of flying, boards Flight HA1710 bound for Chicago, and when it crashes, discovers that aviophobia isn’t the worst of it...

All his life Richard has been afraid of flying. He has no idea what caused it, but nothing and no one will convince him to get on a plane of any size. His job as a member of a major bank’s IT department in London does not require him to fly—until he gets promoted. If he wants to keep his job, he has no choice but to deal with his worst nightmare.

Camden Marsh is a certified life coach who enjoys helping people redefine their priorities and their life. He is on his way to Chicago to attend an international conference for coaches and trainers when he begins a discussion with the extremely nervous man sitting next to him.

They have barely begun to explore their mutual interest when Flight HA1710 crashes and everything comes to a screeching stop. 

Excerpt - Chapter 1:

“Certainly, sir. I’ll be there in five minutes.” Richard Abbott replaced the receiver on his desk phone with slightly shaky hands. Shit! His boss’s boss never called anyone to his tenth-floor office unless it was extremely bad news like a critical comment about a project, an official reprimand, or possibly getting fired. Each scenario in Richard’s head was worse than the last, and he clenched his teeth with the effort to stop himself from screaming in frustrated anger. What had he done wrong now? Why could nothing ever go his way?

Richard might not be exposed to the frontline of global economic combat like his colleagues in trading or investment banking, but even working in IT for a major international bank like KR Aventus PLC held certain risks. After all he and his coworkers in network security were responsible for the speed and impenetrability of Aventus’s proprietary computer network. If anything went wrong with the trading software, it was a real issue, since the loss of even half a second of functionality due to some glitch or bug could cost the bank millions. Getting hacked by a competitor, some criminal, or a terrorist would be even worse and didn’t bear thinking about.
Receiving a call to see the big boss? Bad news any way Richard looked at it.

He mentally ran over a list of the projects he’d completed in the last few days trying to find any mistakes he might have made as he rose from his chair, grabbed a notebook, and made his way to the bank of elevators at the center of the office building. The few colleagues who noticed him walk past gave him curious glances, but nobody made a comment. Worker bees were not encouraged to engage in “unnecessary social exchanges,” and with more people than jobs in the current economy, nobody wanted to stand out as breaking even an unwritten rule.

The elevator ride from the seventh to the tenth floor didn’t take much time. When Richard exited on the executive level with its plush carpets, expensive artwork on the walls, and well-dressed personal assistants, he had not made any progress toward identifying what could possibly be wrong with his work. He refused to consider any other reason for upper management getting involved in his life. By the time he made it to the VP’s office, his palms were sweaty and he had to force himself to breathe slowly.

“There you are.” Melissa was one of the friendliest personal assistants in the building, and her smile calmed Richard down a little. She pointed at the heavy wooden door to her left. “Mr. Harrington is ready for you, so you can go right in.”

“Thank you.” Richard did his best to return her smile, took a deep breath for courage, and knocked on the door. Once a barked “Enter” sounded, he turned the doorknob and walked into the lion’s den.

Peter Harrington—VP Technology and Innovation, Europe—didn’t look dangerous at first glance. Of average height, he preferred dark suits and conservative ties in line with official bankers’ uniform. He was only a few years older than Richard but far more politically astute. He’d been sent to London from Aventus’s head office in Chicago, and as a consequence his actual position was less important than the fact that he was one of the up-and-coming managers being groomed for a main board position. The real problem was that Mr. Harrington had only a passing acquaintance with anything resembling IT—he was a manager, an administrator, above all else. He excelled at risk assessment and the art of managing his own career. Richard could only hope whatever he wanted to discuss was not too technical; Peter Harrington hated to feel stupid, and anything “too techie” fell in that category.

“Glad to see you’re on time.” Peter nodded briefly and pointed at the visitor’s chair in front of his imposing mahogany desk. “Please take a seat.”

“Thank you.” Richard sat, forcing himself not to fidget.

“You know I’m not a man of many words.” Peter’s grin looked artificial, not reaching his eyes. Richard suspected Peter regarded it as a “tool” some management course or HR guideline had taught him to use to make employees feel at ease. “So I’ll come right to the point.”

Richard swallowed and nodded. He still had no idea what this was all about, and he felt more nervous by the second.

“We like your work. All your evaluations since you joined us three years ago have been stellar, and your performance on the recently completed design stages of Project Maroon has caught Chicago’s attention.” Peter even managed a real smile this time.

What the hell? Someone in head office noticed me? That can’t be good. All Richard was able to drag up was a timid smile in return, a little unsure what this effusive praise was leading up to and more worried than ever.

“Let me be the first to congratulate you.” Peter rose and held out his hand across the appropriately busy-looking desk. “Effective immediately, you are promoted to team leader level with a focus on implementing Maroon globally.”

“I-I…. Promoted?” Richard shook Peter’s hand on autopilot while his mind went a hundred miles an hour trying to comprehend what this meant for him. More money—check. Focus on his work rather than being a jack-of-all-trades—check. International responsibility—oh shit!

“Well done.” Peter retracted his hand and sat on his executive throne. “The kickoff meeting is in two weeks, at head office of course, and representatives from all the major offices will attend. You have plenty of time to prepare, and I expect nothing less than a perfect result. I know you can do it.”

Richard opened his mouth to reply, but what was he going to say? This was a brilliant opportunity. He knew Project Maroon inside out, and he’d wanted to be involved in the implementation phase of a major project as long as he could remember. There was only one problem. Chicago meant air travel—and probably not just for the kickoff meeting. And if there was one thing Richard hated…. The mere thought of getting on an airplane made him shudder. He’d only ever told one person about his biggest fear. At the end of his degree course, his best friend from uni, Theo Rayder, had suggested they take a holiday on a tropical island to celebrate. Richard had been forced to admit the truth to get Theo to give up, but had sworn him to secrecy. So far Richard had managed to avoid any and all air travel.

There was a name for his condition.

Aviophobia.

He could easily avoid flying for pleasure—as if!—since there were plenty of nice holiday spots in Britain. And with no need to fly for job-related reasons, his “condition” hadn’t seemed like a problem he needed to worry about. But now? What the hell was he going to do? Jeopardize his career by admitting he had a mental condition most people either didn’t know existed or would laugh about? Aside from not wanting to admit he was a coward in front of his colleagues, any sort of weakness like that would disqualify him from further advancement with his employer. Not officially, of course, they were too clever for that. But there were ways of getting rid of “unwanted” employees….

“Richard?” Peter was frowning at him.

“Yes.” Richard forced the abject terror he could feel rising into a back corner of his mind for now. “Thank you. I’ll get right on it.”

“That’s the spirit.” Peter cast a longing glance at the papers on his desk.

Richard knew a dismissal when he saw one and rose.

“I look forward to your first status report. Be sure to tell your boss to let me have a copy. I’m taking a personal interest in this one.” Peter nodded briskly.

“I’ll remember that.” Richard refused to let more panic into his thoughts. He could have a meltdown later. To have a VP interested in his work added another level of stress to an already horrible situation. “Thank you again.”

Before Peter could say anything else, Richard raced out of his office, barely nodded at Melissa on his way to the elevators, and entered the next available car. He kept telling himself to keep calm, but it was an uphill struggle. He sagged against the wall as the elevator’s doors swished shut and closed his eyes. He needed to find a solution to his problem, and fast. Rather than admit defeat and look for a different job, maybe he’d better man up and follow Theo’s advice.

It was time to get help.


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