Reader,
I’m so delighted to share with you the final installment of my Code: Warrior SEALs series. I have really enjoyed returning to my writing roots and creating stories for a team of smoking-hot Navy SEALs and the smart, sexy women who love them.
This series has been especially meaningful to me because writing it spanned my fight with and ultimate conquering of cancer. In a way, the bad guys my SEALs defeated became symbolic to me of my own health struggles and victory in the end.
Writing this series has served as a rich reminder to me that we all have our own uphill battles to face in life, and that reading books is a vital escape from those. I would like to think romance novels also remind us that, at the end of the day, love can overcome every obstacle placed before it.
From the bottom of my heart, I hope this book gives you a needed escape from whatever challenges you face in your life, and I hope it helps you remember love is, indeed, the most powerful force in the universe. Love conquers all. For real.
All my best and happy reading!
Warmly,
Cindy
Contents
Deserted alley in the middle of the night when all sensible people were in bed? Check.
Famously haunted and badly lit location? Check.
Ground fog swirling thickly enough to create a spooky-as-heck mood and obscure everything? Check.
Either she was ready to start shooting the next episode of the popular television show America’s Ghosts, or she was about to commit a homicide.
Of course, if the show’s host didn’t quit trying to tell her how to do her job filming him, there might just be a murder out here tonight.
Carrie Price stared through the viewfinder of her digital movie camera at her boss and renowned ghost hunter, Gary Hubbard. For tonight’s episode he’d picked Pirate’s Alley in New Orleans. The tourists and foot traffic were long gone, leaving just their footsteps to echo weirdly off the brick walls and their grotesquely elongated shadows to freak her out a little bit.
Bounded on one side by St. Anthony’s Garden behind a tall, wrought-iron fence and on the other side by darkened shops with tightly closed wooden doors, the narrow alley was only lit by widely spaced cast-iron streetlamps, forming blue haloes of light in drifts of ground fog. The old bricks glistened with moisture and a damp chill hung in the air. She wouldn’t have to apply any filters at all in post-production to achieve the show’s signature gothic vibe.
Gary walked backward down the alley, narrating a story about the possibly haunted buildings now standing on the site of the Calabozo, a prison that once housed pirate Jean Lafitte and much of his crew. Then Gary spun a tale of a lost pirate treasure rumored to be hidden somewhere in New Orleans, known only to the city’s ghosts. This season he’d branched out from strictly ghost hunting to include a treasure hunt in the show, a blatant publicity stunt to get America’s Ghosts renewed for another season. It had been a good move. His ratings had gone through the roof as he churned out a plot line of convincing ghosts to lead him to a mythical treasure hoard.
She let Gary back away from her far enough that he became little more than a silhouette within the mysterious fog, his melodic baritone voice a disembodied entity floating out of the mists of time. She should get a freaking Emmy for this camera work!
Just
