by Diane Capri
She could be in Jacksonville right now. With Claire. Listening to Dominique Wren’s lovely voice. What the hell were you thinking, Jordan Fox?
Jordan ate silently, barely tasting the meal, and listened while the others planned tomorrow’s work. After dinner, she went to her room where she lay down on the hard narrow bed with the scratchy blanket and rough sheets that chaffed her skin. Exhaustion swallowed her into an oblivion tormented by bouncing airplanes, tontons, burning tires, and an attractive Haitian doctor wearing a sport coat.
At last, a thug with deep scars on both cheeks chased her until penetrating shrieks jerked her from nightmares to consciousness.
She sat straight up, breathless, heart pounding.
She ejected from the strange bed, panting, eyes wild.
Her head whipsawed and she turned to scan every inch of the room.
Piercing screeches bombarded again and again.
* * *
Keep Reading! Jordan’s thrilling adventures continue in
FALSE TRUTH 5-7
A Jordan Fox Mystery
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Excerpt from
CHAPTER 1
Sabatier, Haiti
Piercing shrieks pulled Jordan from deep unconsciousness and jerked her to the middle of the floor. Frightened. Disoriented. Thick-headed. Her body was clammy and her heart pounded like a sprinter. She could barely catch her breath.
After three terrifying seconds she grasped that the piercing screams and shrieks were not invading her bedroom.
The real fight was outside.
Her arms crossed her chest and one hand grabbed each shoulder. She stepped closer to the window and peered through the screen into the hazy dawn. Instead of murderous, machete-wielding Haitian killers called Tonton Moun Nui, she saw raucous hens and roosters attacking each other while they clucked and crowed as if they were at war. Something had happened out there to set them off. But what?
Jordan’s jumbled dreams remained vividly alive, though. The Tonton Moun Nui leader’s face, branded by deep scars on both cheeks and filled with rage, still terrified her. In real life, she’d seen him only once, yesterday at the Sabatier airstrip. Once was more than enough.
She sat heavily on the bed and blinked until her eyes stayed open and her heartbeat eventually returned to normal.
“Time to join the here and now,” she said, simply to hear a human voice, which didn’t help to dispel her unease. She knew three voices that would make her feel better. But her mother died five years ago and her dad and best friend were unreachable.
She fumbled her phone off the bedside table anyway. As expected. No signal. In this rural Haitian village, she’d be offline until she made it back to Florida, probably.
“He’ll be fine. He’s not home alone. People are with him.” Jordan actually believed this. Mostly.
But what about Claire? She wasn’t fine. Not even close. She’d been frantic yesterday. Claire said her boyfriend Salvador was “gone,” but she couldn’t have meant Sal had literally disappeared. Could she?
Sal had planned a business trip, Claire said on Saturday, when they attended the Plant University soccer game. Surely, that’s where he was. “But why would Claire have been so upset about a business trip?”
Jordan groaned. Her brain was still roiling and too foggy to unravel Claire. The war of the screaming fowl continued outside her window, which made it impossible to hear herself think, anyway.
“Hang tight until I get back,” she whispered to the two people she cared about the most in the world. She squared her shoulders and put some heft into her tone. “Talking your feelings aloud is a bad habit, Jordan. Knock it off. You were over-tired and you had nightmares. That’s all. Time to get to work.”
She had a lot to accomplish here in Haiti if she was going to win the cutthroat competition for her dream job back home. And a very short time frame to make it all happen. Keeping busy would distract her from whatever was going on there, too.
She’d pitched three good stories to her boss to justify this Haiti trip. She hadn’t been here ten minutes when one of the projects got shot down. Purely bad luck, Dr. Peter Wren was at the airstrip yesterday when Jordan arrived in Sabatier. He said his daughter would not be allowed to compete in the Instant Pop Star contest. Jordan had intended to feature Dominique and to shoot video while she was in Haiti for support.
“So what are you going to do? You promised Richard a story.” Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jordan showered and dressed in the mint green medical scrubs she’d been assigned to wear, pulled her hair back as instructed, and reached the dining hall fifteen minutes later. The six members of the medical missionary team were already seated.
On each of the three dining tables, the kitchen helpers had laid out bowls of freshly-cut pineapple and bananas. Jordan saw coffee, a pitcher of freshly squeezed orange juice, a pitcher of milk, a tray of toasted white bread and a basket of homemade rolls. She found a seat near Dr. Chelsey Ross, the medical missionary team leader and the only person Jordan really knew here.
“Everything is so…fresh.” Jordan’s mouthful of pineapple fairly burst with flavor. The juice ran down her chin. She swiped it with a napkin. “This might be the best pineapple I’ve ever eaten.”
The orange juice she sipped next was bursting with flavor too, but not in the delicious way Jordan expected. She wrinkled her nose and sipped the tart nectar sparingly.
Dr. Ross chuckled at Jordan’s reaction. “It may not have the added sugar you’re used to, but it’s the freshest O.J. you’ll ever drink.”
“I just not what I was expecting.” Jordan felt her face burn hot. “I haven’t traveled much.”
“You sure plunged in head first. This place is about as far from a pampered United States lifestyle as you can get.” As he’d done on the Cessna flight yesterday when she thought she might pass out, Dr. Eric Lee came to her rescue and turned the conversation in a different direction. “The chief cook here was trained to prepare American Style meals for missionaries like us. If it weren’t for her training, you’d be eating goat meat.”
Jordan’s empty stomach clenched. “How will we know we aren’t being served goat meat?”
“Faith.” Dr. Lee grinned. “And we pay well. Our cook wants to do a good job.”
Jordan saw no scrambled eggs, bacon, or cereal. “What do you mean she cooks American Style?”
“You’ll notice the American Style more at other meals. Mashed potatoes, spaghetti, and they make a mean thin crust pizza. Dough made from scratch? You can smell that crust baking from a mile away. You’ll see them kneading it throughout the day.” Dr. Lee didn’t smile before he added, “And, you know, no mud or leaves or mush on the menu.”
Jordan scooped up more pineapple and sopped the juice with the heavenly rolls. Must be made from scratch, like the pizza dough. “The cook is amazing. I’m glad we pay well. I heard the average income here is only two U.S. dollars a day.”
“The teams contribute money to pay the staff. We give the cook twenty bucks a day. Plus the cook’s two kitchen helpers. We pay them ten dollars a day each.” Dr. Ross added another piece of toasted bread to her plate. “They earn it. Kneading dough, chasing chickens through the courtyard, killing them, plucking their feathers, and feeding all of us would be too much work for one person.”
Jordan sipped black coffee from a heavy ceramic mug and tried not to think about eating the very chickens she’d seen at war in the courtyard earlier. She focused on the food and coffee, which were helping her feel more like herself. “So working in the kitchen for the American missionaries? That’s gotta be one of the best jobs in town, right? Besides the part about catching and killing chickens.”
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For a complete list of Diane Capri Books visit:
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The Heir Hunter Series:
Blood Trails
The Jess Kimball Thrillers:
Fatal Game
Fatal Edge
Fatal Fall
Fatal Error
Fatal Demand
Fatal Distraction
Fatal Enemy
The Hunt for Jack Reacher Series:
Deep Cover Jack
Jack and Joe
Jack in the Green
Get Back Jack
Don’t Know Jack
Jack in a Box
Jack and Kill
The Hunt for Justice Series:
True Justice (Judge Willa Carson)
Fair Justice (Judge Willa Carson)
False Justice (Judge Willa Carson)
Cold Justice (Judge Willa Carson)
Wasted Justice (Judge Willa Carson)
Secret Justice (Judge Willa Carson)
Twisted Justice (Judge Willa Carson)
Due Justice (Judge Willa Carson)
Mistaken Justice
Raw Justice
Dear Reader,
Welcome to the continuing Jordan Fox Mysteries, starring tenacious multimedia journalist Jordan Fox. An ambitious newcomer with a difficult past, we’re thrilled that readers have fallen in love our feisty new heroine!
I’m also excited to continue working with my colleague, Beth Dexter. Beth brings realism to Jordan Fox the way only an insider can because she’s a journalist who worked as a producer in a TV newsroom. Like Jordan, Beth began her TV career after college, at age 22. If you want to know what being on the inside of the news is really like, look no further!
We’re joining Jordan Fox almost in real time. We’re living her career and the developing stories she’s reporting, right along with her. Jordan is an MMJ (Multimedia Journalist) in one of the largest media markets in the country and very quickly finds that journalists don’t simply report the news—sometimes, they’re right in the middle of it all!
The series of Jordan Fox Mysteries intertwines with my other work, but is designed to be read independently. Jordan lives and works in Tampa and her adventures are loaded with Florida atmosphere. You’ll also find some of the characters from my other books that you already love—such as Judge Willa Carson and Attorney Jenny Lane. You can join in the discussion via Facebook here: http://www.facebook.com/bethdexterbooks. For a complete listing of all Diane Capri books look here: http://dianecapri.com/books/
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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Diane Capri is a New York Times, USA Today, and worldwide bestselling author. She’s a recovering lawyer and snowbird who divides her time between Florida and Michigan. An active member of Mystery Writers of America, Author’s Guild, International Thriller Writers, Alliance of Independent Authors, and Sisters in Crime, she loves to hear from readers and is hard at work on her next novel.
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Beth Dexter is a New Adult author. She is a seventh generation Floridian who took a detour to North Carolina to receive her B.A. in English at Davidson College. She went on to pursue a career in journalism, working as a TV News Producer. She loves photography, traveling, swimming, and her family.
Please connect with Beth online:
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