Unholy Bargain
by Travis Hallden Holt
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GENRE: Supernatural Thriller
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BLURB:
Deputy
Sheriff Nate Barrington is riding the crest of a new relationship. Kaitlyn
Spencer is beautiful, altruistic, enlightened—everything he's not. She teaches
classes in New Age philosophy at her growing school. Nate doesn't share her
spirituality, but the physical passion hasn't subsided enough for him to care.
Nate's nirvana quickly
unravels when Kaitlyn's life is threatened on two separate occasions. With no
apparent motive or any evidence suggesting collusion, the police are stumped.
Even more troubling to Nate, Kaitlyn is convinced she is the target of unseen
forces. Namely, a spirit assassin.
A hardheaded
pragmatist, Nate isn't prone to believe that spirits can possess people. As far
as he's concerned, Kaitlyn's claims of perpetrators possessed by a spirit
assassin are on par with comic book stories and have nothing to do with
reality, and her esoteric, New Age mumbo jumbo begins to drive a wedge into
their relationship. And why Kaitlyn? What secret is she hiding?
But when strikes
continue from random, unwittingly manipulated people who haven't the remotest
connection to Kaitlyn, Nate is forced to rethink his paradigm. Can an
uncompromising realist broaden his mind in time to defend his girlfriend from a
virtually invisible enemy?
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Excerpt
Three:
Back when Nate was a freshly scrubbed rookie, his
grandmother had been victim to one of the most brutal and senseless murders in
Florida history. The perpetrator was a baby-faced, fifteen-year-old boy who had
lived in her aging yet quiet neighborhood.
By all appearances, he looked the most unlikely of killers,
like a boy who should be bagging groceries or stumbling through school hallways
hunched over by an overstuffed book bag. But that is not what made the case
unique. The boy had no priors. No run-ins with Nate's grandmother, or anyone in
his family for that matter. He wasn’t on drugs or in a gang. There was no
motive for the boy to snarl at her, let alone murder her, yet forty-eight times
he had plunged a knife into her chest.
The case wasn’t tried. The boy and his attorney had
negotiated a plea. Before the boy made his one-way trip to the “big house,” an
assistant state’s attorney had mentioned to Nate in passing that during a
pre-trial hearing the little shit had the gall to claim he had been possessed
by an evil spirit during the commission of the crime. The ASA said it was
probably a scare tactic for a run at an insanity plea if the State had insisted
pursuing the death penalty. It may have worked. The State decided to forego the
psychological evaluations, expert testimonies, the media—the whole damn
circus—and most of all the expense of a lengthy trial. Premeditation wasn’t
easy to prove beyond reasonable doubt anyway, even if evidence was stacked in
the State’s favor.
Nate had dreamed of watching the kid fry in the electric
chair, the same chair that sent Ted Bundy to his grave. Not only had the
son-of-a-bitch robbed him of his grandmother, he had ripped from Nate and his
family their last vestige of real justice.
It was late afternoon, and the daily thunderstorms had
rolled in and bellowed their oration to the Earth. The breeze grew into
swirling winds, and Spanish moss danced like frantic marionettes beside waving
palm fronds. Nate drove east on the Bee Line Expressway, slowing to a crawl
when choked by airport and commuter traffic. His scalp and face stung like
day-old sunburn, and below his skin, at the core of his skull, a dull ache had
synched to his heartbeat.
Nate called the warden in charge of the state prison in
Orange County. A secretary answered. “I’m sorry, sir, but he’s busy right now.
Can I take a message?”
“No,” Nate said. “No message. Tell him it’s Sergeant Nate
Barrington and it’s urgent.”
“He’s in a meeting. If you’ll just leave your number I—”
“Interrupt his meeting. Trust me; it’ll be worse if you
don’t.”
“Can you at least tell me what this is about?”
“No, it’s personal.”
She sighed, started to say something, then exhaled deeply.
“All right.”
A minute passed. Two minutes.
“This had better be important,” said a voice, gruff and
annoyed.
“I need to interview one of your inmates.”
“Christ! This isn’t a good time. I’m in the middle of
things.”
“Your convenience isn’t my concern.”
“Some other time.”
“I’ll be there in thirty minutes.” Nate disconnected the
call before the warden could respond.
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AUTHOR Bio and Links:
Travis Hallden
Holt is a former U.S. Navy surface warfare officer and veteran of the Persian
Gulf War. He's worked the past
twenty-two years in the corrections side of law enforcement, first in the
prison system, then in the streets as a probation officer. He spent four years
supervising felons in a south Atlanta neighborhood ranked the ninth most
dangerous neighborhood in America, where one in every twelve residents becomes
a victim of crime each year.
For years, his
interests were in weaponry (both small arms and large scale), warfare tactics,
hand-to-hand combat, criminal justice and unsolved crimes. But life has a way
of molding perspectives, and Travis came to realize the physical world known to
the five senses didn't have all the answers. It scratched the surface, at best. Accordingly, Travis's interests shifted to
supernatural phenomenon, spirituality, the mysteries of life, the invisible
world beyond our five senses and the forces that lie therein. He's still a
peace officer, but one who mingles with psychics, mystics, mediums, energy
healers, shamans, gurus, artists and denizens of the "underground."
Travis is the
author of Unholy Bargain, a supernatural thriller published by Double Dragon
Publishing. He resides in Atlanta, GA.\
My Review:
This is very busy book. Lots going on. You won't get bored I promise. I am not going to say a whole lot about the story, mainly because I don't want to give any of it away. A lot of the time when you read the book cover it gives you all of the highlights and really the story is so broken down for you already, there isn't much point in reading the book. Well not with this one. The synopsis does give you a overall of the book, but the book has a lot more going on it then described on the outside of it.
If you enjoy paranormal, thriller, mystery, a touch of romance this book is for you. I liked that there was a touch of romance in this book, it really made the book. Nothing better then a man trying to protect his Damsel in Distress so to speak.
The pace of this book is so fast and intense it will almost leave you breathless. I loved how well the book flowed and could not put it down. Every time I thought I would get to a stopping point something else would start and I had to set there a bit longer.
I loved the imagination Mr Holt has. To put this story together and make it sound believable. I will be looking for more books by Mr. Holt. I very much enjoyed this book.
I was given this book in exchange for my honest opinion.
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GIVEAWAY INFORMATION
Travis
Hallden Holt will be awarding a $15 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn winner via
rafflecopter during the tour, and a $15 Amazon/BN GC to a randomly drawn host.
Additionally, Goddess Fish Productions will be awarding a $5 Amazon GC to a
randomly drawn host.
