Christmas Diamond, a Novella: Inspired by The Jewel series and the Virtues and Valor series

by Hallee Bridgeman

  "Are you out of your mind?" She opened her mouth to argue with him, but he cut her off. "That's easily four or five blocks. Downtown. On a Friday night."

  "It's not like the streets were deserted or anything."

  "What possessed you to walk?"

  She bared her teeth. "It might have something to do with the fact that my car wouldn't start."

  "Why didn't you call someone?"

  She'd had enough. She was really sorry that she'd whacked him with her umbrella, but the truth was she really couldn't stand the man and never had been able to stomach him. "I've been an adult for a long time, Derrick, and I don't answer to anyone, most especially you. If you'll excuse me, I've had a really long day and I'm going to bed."

  "Sarah …"

  She stood. "No. I'm done. Good night."

  As she brushed by him, his hand came out of nowhere and grabbed her arm. She froze, stared down at him, waiting. "I apologize," he offered with his most velvet voice.

  "I'm not going to fall for the smooth charm, Derrick. Now let me go. I'm tired."

  His jaw clenched as he released her. When he heard the click of her bedroom door shutting, he ripped the ice pack off his back and threw it across the room. He turned and carefully leaned back until his back touched the chair. Then he closed his eyes and sighed.

  Six years later. Six years and he was still completely in love with her.

  He'd hoped it had been a crush, kind of like what he had for Robin, even a touch for Maxine. The sisters had charmed him the second he laid eyes on them, and he loved them for their beauty and their love of life. Except it was more, much more, with Sarah.

  And she couldn't stand him.

  She would never look at him and see anything but the teenager in the ripped leather jacket with the I-dare-you scowl. He'd changed, though, in every way he possibly could. He had cleaned his clothes, cleaned his act, found Christ, and followed God. Like his water baptism cleansed his soul and made him a new person, he shed his past and created a new person. It didn't matter. She still looked down her perky little befreckled nose at him.

  He rubbed his face with his hands and surged to his feet. He thought about her traipsing through the heart of the city alone at this hour with only a purse and an umbrella and thought about all of the terrible things that could have been waiting for her during that five block walk. He whispered a prayer of thanksgiving for God's protection over her in those early morning hours, and retired to his own bedroom, sorry that their reunion had not gone well at all.

  Any secret, unacknowledged hope he had of winning her over with a smoothly executed reunion meeting was now gone forever.

  SONG OF SUSPENSE SERIES

  The Song of Suspense Series…

  A MELODY FOR JAMES

  MELODY Mason and James Montgomery lead separate lives of discord until an unexpected meeting brings them to a sinister realization. Unbeknownst to them, dark forces have directed their lives from the shadows, orchestrating movements that keep them in disharmony. Fire, loss, and bloodshed can't shake their faith in God to see them through as they face a percussive climax that will leave lives forever changed.

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  AN ARIA FOR NICK

  ARIA remembers her first kiss and the handsome boy who passionately delivered it before heading off to combat, but the news of his death is only a footnote in a long war until she learns she was his beneficiary. His parting gift allows her to pursue a lifelong dream and become a world class pianist.

  Years later, Aria inadvertently uncovers a sinister plot that threatens the very foundations of a nation. Now, stalked by assassins and on the run, her only hope of survival is in trusting her very life to a man who has been dead for years.

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  A CAROL FOR KENT

  BOBBY Kent's name is synonymous with modern Country Music and he is no stranger to running from over zealous fans and paparazzo. But he has no real idea how to protect his daughter and Carol, the mother of his only child, from a viscous and ruthless serial killer bent on their destruction.

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  A HARMONY FOR STEVEN

  CONTEMPORARY Christian singing legend, Harmony, seeks solitude after winning her umpteenth award. She finds herself in the midst of the kind of spiritual crisis that only prayer and fasting can cure. Steven, the world renown satanic acid rock icon who has a reputation for trashing women as well as hotel rooms, stumbles into her private retreat on the very edge of death.

  In ministering to Steven, Harmony finds that the Holy Spirit is ministering to her aching soul. The two leave the wilderness sharing a special bond and their hearts are changed forever.

  They expect rejection back in their professional worlds. What neither of them could foresee is the chain of ominous events that threaten their very lives.

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  EXCERPT: A MELODY FOR JAMES

  A Melody for James was voted the July Clash of the Titles WINNER, voted The Book Club Network's August 2013 Fiction Book of the Month and nominated as the 2013 Fiction Book of the Year. If you missed A Melody for James, buy it now in Paperback or eBook wherever fine books are sold.

  PLEASE enjoy this special excerpt from the upcoming full length Christian suspense novel, A Melody for James, Part One of the Song of Suspense Series.

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  ANGELA Montgomery nearly missed it. She had lost herself in memories of her recent birthday celebration marking the passing of her 30th year on earth. Her husband, James, her junior by 2 short years, had gone all out. Being "much" younger, he had decorated the entire house with black balloons and held a surprise "wake" for the passing of her late youth. Daydreaming and lost in feelings of love and adoration for her beloved groom, Angela nearly failed to recognize the moment when it happened.

  When her consciousness shifted from her reverie back to the present, for several breaths she simply stared at the smart board in front of her and ran through the calculations again. Then she tried to ignore the little shivers of nervous excitement that danced up her spine.

  "Heeyyyyy …" Donald Andrews clicked a few keys on the laptop in front of him, magnifying the image on the smart board screen so that it covered the entire wall. "Did we just …"

  Angela rose, her legs feeling uncharacteristically stiff, and walked forward while staring at the screen. "You know what, I'm cautiously going to say yes. Yes, we did."

  Alvin Berry let out a loud, "Whoop!" He removed the ever present knit cap from the top of his head and tossed it into the air. The group collectively looked at each other and grinned. Years of work, and the breakthrough sat right there on that smart board, staring back at them.

  "We should celebrate," Lorie Frazier announced. She pulled her glasses from her nose and casually tossed them onto the stack of papers in front of her. "We need to celebrate, then we need to call a press conference. But only after we get to the patent office."

  Angela looked back at the screen. "We have to be sure."

  "We're sure," Alvin said. "Look at that beauty. It is so simple yet so elegant."

  "Call James," Lorie said. "Tell him to make us a reservation in the most ridiculously expensive restaurant Atlanta has to offer. Tell him we're going to celebrate."

  Despite her naturally conservative nature, Angela started to let the feeling of giddy excitement take over. She laughed and hugged Don as she pulled her cell phone from her pocket.

  Her husband would probably jump up and down or do a little dance of celebration. She felt like she might just as easily be making a call to announce that she was expecting their first child instead of the conclusion of this long project.

  For five years, she and this amazing team of engineers had worked to perfect this revolutionary data storage solution. For five years, usually working six days a week, usually not less than twelve hours a day, they'd toiled in this basement lab in her inherited home. While she'd hoped and prayed for all that time, now that the reality of what they'd accomplished actually shone back at her from that beautiful smart sc
reen, she realized she hadn't ever really been certain they'd succeed.

  But they had.

  She got James' voice mail. "Darling," she purred, knowing he'd hear the smile in her voice, "We did it. We're done. I cannot wait to show you. Come home. Come see. We need to celebrate."

  As soon as Angela hung up, she gave Lorie a hug and said, "I vote for cheesecake."

  "Copious amounts," the nearsighted genius agreed. "Oh! With strawberries! And really good coffee."

  Angela felt her heart skip when the red security light started flashing. Her eyebrows crowded together in confusion. Why was the intruder alarm going off now?

  Angela had inherited the farmhouse from her late uncle at the age of 17 and lived there throughout her lengthy matriculation at Georgia Tech. For a brief time when this venture was just beginning, she and her brand new husband, James, as well as their business partner and his best friend, Kurt, had all lived there under the same roof.

  During the initial months and years, Kurt and James had renovated the basement entirely; installing a T1, a two post rack of networking gear, a four post rack of high performance servers; and most importantly, a state-of-the-art security system, designed and built by her brilliant husband himself. For the last five years, they had hardened the basement into a panic room with steel reinforced doors, magnetic locks, and pinhole security cameras. It took two-factor authentication to even get into the room.

  When the magnitude of the fact that the security alarm was still sounding sunk in, Angela whirled around until her eyes met with Don. When she spoke, she hated the shrill edge of panic she detected in her voice. "Back it up to the Snap."

  His fingers clicked on the keys with the speed of machine gun fire as spoke. "There's no time. We didn't do an incremental yesterday because the waffle was running a defrag."

  "Right. Execute a differential and encrypt it." She waited a few heartbeats while Don's fingers played out a staccato percussion on his laptop.

  With confusion clouding his eyes, he looked up and announced, "Our hard line is down."

  Alvin pressed a series of keys on his computer and several small screens appeared on the smart board, all showing different angles of her home. Men in masks moved through the empty house with military precision, high powered and very deadly looking carbine rifles tucked tightly into their shoulders at the ready. They stared around every corner through the sights on the short rifles.

  Lorie gasped and said, "What is going on? Who are they?"

  Fear and panic tried to take over. Her stomach turned into ice and Angela felt like her breathing wasn't productive, like she could never get a deep enough breath. Focus, she said to herself. You will have time to be scared when it's over.

  "Can you remember how we got here since the last backup?" Angela asked Alvin, her hand pointing in his direction like a knife blade. If she'd ever met anyone whose memory rivaled her husband's, it was Alvin.

  His voice sounded flat, emotionless. "Yes. Of course I can."

  She watched a crouched figure outside the entrance to the lab tape two liter plastic bottles filled with water to the hinges of the security door. The security that James and Kurt had installed was tight, state-of-the-art even, and the door was sealed. But no seal in 100 miles would withstand the blast of a shaped charge pushing water ahead of a supersonic shock wave. It would slice through the steel door faster than the world's most powerful cutting torch.

  Whomever these people were, they had known the defenses they would have to overcome. They were prepared. They had planned. They had obviously even rehearsed as was apparent in their staged and perfectly timed precision movements. And the most dangerous thing Angela and her team had for protection once that door came down were a few custom computer viruses.

  She'd known the risks. The success of their project was potentially worth upward of a hundred billion dollars in the first year alone, and that was on the conservative side. The long term applications of the soon to be patented technology could not even be calculated. The reason they worked out of her home instead of in some downtown lab was for the secrecy of the project, a vain hope of security by obscurity.

  They'd taken additional precautions which Angela belatedly realized she had characterized as "paranoid." A commercial exothermic incendiary device much like a military grade thermite grenade perched atop each server array that would, when detonated, melt their way through the machines at over 4 thousand degrees Fahrenheit, effectively destroying everything in a completely unrecoverable fashion. They would burn 3 times hotter than molten lava and the crew would have to be careful not to look at them since the radiant energy was bright enough to blind them without a welding visor.

  "Then destroy it. Destroy it all."

  Lorie's finger hovered over a steel pin. "You're sure?"

  The explosion above them shook the room. Alvin rushed to the inner door and made sure the panic room door remained bolted on all four corners. Angela closed the lid on her laptop and slid it into the 2 inch air gap between network switches. Then she draped her hand on Lorie's shoulder and whispered, "Do it."

  She closed her eyes and started to pray as the room around her grew suddenly very hot and smoke started billowing up to the ceiling. "Lord Jesus, if I live through this, let me remain in Your will. But if I come home to you, sweet Jesus, please watch over my husband. Let him feel your comforting love and let him find the destiny you have in mind for him."

  Smoke alarms went off and the lights flickered. Then she felt herself being picked up and thrown aside, riding on the wave of a perfectly timed blast. As she flew backward from the shock of the multiple explosions blowing open her steel door she prayed even harder — she prayed for courage, for protection, for strength.

  As she landed and fell against the tower of computer drives, she watched the thermite spill and splatter like lava, setting the entire area on fire. Her last thought was of pain as a spray of burning powder fell on her chest.

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  EXCERPT: AN ARIA FOR NICK

  An Aria for Nick was voted The Book Club Network's November 2013 Fiction Book of the Month and nominated as the 2013 Fiction Book of the Year. If you missed An Aria for Nick, buy it now in Paperback or eBook wherever fine books are sold.

  PLEASE enjoy this special excerpt from the upcoming full length Christian suspense novel, An Aria for Nick, Part Two of the Song of Suspense Series.

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  ARIA Suarez stood on the corner of the patio at the coffee shop on Macadam Avenue observing the man wearing the dark blue shirt who occupied the corner table of the outdoor cafe. Sunlight glinted on his brown hair, revealing highlighted streaks that nearly glowed, lending his visage a halo-like appearance. He'd flirted with the waitress each time she'd come by, and had even grinned at a small child making a mess at a nearby table. He looked harmless enough, though she couldn't completely make out his face behind the sunglasses he wore and the Monday edition of the Portland Tribune he continuously ducked behind.

  She clenched the purse strap in her hand a little tighter. She kept a sharp eye toward the crowd, scanning faces for anyone who looked either familiar or out of place. Finally, she mustered the courage to step forward.

  Aria hesitantly began her approach, unsure of how this might work and trying very hard not to reveal even a hint of uncertainty. Then she remembered that she also didn't want to attract any undue attention to herself by appearing uncomfortable or out of place in any way, and she smoothed her stride.

  When she reached his table, she stood still and waited for him to look up from his newspaper. When he failed to do so, she cleared her throat. When that didn't work, she said, "Excuse me."

  He shifted the newspaper downward enough to peer over the top of it in her direction, staring at her through the dark lenses of his sunglasses, but she still couldn't see his eyes. All she could see was her own reflection in the tinted lenses. "Are you waiting for me?"

  The man glanced downward, very purposefully and very carefully folding the newspaper
which he set on the table at right angles to his silverware directly next to his cup. That accomplished, he gestured with his left hand in the direction of the chair across from him, silently inviting her to join him without raising his eyes. As she perched herself on the wrought iron chair, she thought to herself that this man looked familiar.

  All those weeks when she had felt such apprehension, glancing over her shoulder in foreboding, she had checked all the shadows and every corner, certain someone was always following her. Had her trepidation been well-founded after all? Had this man been following her? Had she seen him somewhere before? Or was her nervousness and disquiet simply getting the best of her? Did this man just have one of those faces that you felt sure you recognized?

  Aria started to feel some very deep, very real anxiety and did her best to quell it. She waited for him to speak, assuming if everything was on the up-and-up that he had done this kind of thing before, and would take the lead to get them to the next level, whatever that was.

  The waitress came back to the table to refill the man's lemonade and Aria ordered a cup of decaf with cream, no sugar, then folded her hands and waited. The man across from her sat up a bit straighter then took a deep breath and finally spoke.

  "Hello, Aria." His voice flowed over her like a warm baritone blanket. It was deep and comforting and frighteningly familiar. He removed his sunglasses. Ice blue eyes, almost silver in color, calmly met her glance. Already tense muscles contracted in her stomach and around her heart, stealing the breath from her body and sending a surge of adrenaline that made her palms sweat even though her fingers felt ice cold. Her throat let out a startled gasp as recognition dawned.