BOOK SYNOPSIS
When art law attorney Abigail Clarke is mistaken for the murdered twin sister she never knew existed, will she be able to outwit a man determined to kill every member of her treacherous family. Thirty years ago, during a thunderstorm, on an isolated street in South Boston, an unidentified two-year-old girl was discovered , abandoned , shot, barely clinging to life. After a thorough investigation, the case was eventually designated to the cold case files until Abigail Clarke, now an astraphobic art law attorney, is mistaken for the murdered twin sister she never knew existed.
What the FBI Art Crime Division cannot determine is if Abigail is an innocent bystander or a co-conspirator in her sister’s art fraud crimes.
Compelled to uncover all her family’s secrets , nothing prepares Abigail for the disastrous meeting with her murderous brother and crime boss father. Her life is irreversibly changed the more she becomes mired in her family’s treachery. She soon finds herself drawn into a game of cat and mouse by the vengeful killer who methodically plans to execute every member of her family, holding each one of them ultimately responsible for the murder of his own family thirty years ago.
As white bursts of lightning one after another cut through the darkness like flashes of a camera, she was the first to notice the two men lurking behind a dumpster. Although she could not make out their faces, she instinctively knew they were part of the group there for the exchange of the paintings for the guns. However, the fact they were lurking behind a dumpster signaled this exchange was about to go very wrong.
“Behind the dumpster!” She yelled as thunder crashed and boomed overhead. Could Thomas hear her?
The flash of muzzle fire directed toward her answered her question. Someone heard her, and that was their response, gunfire. It seemed as if everything slowed down into a haze of slow motion. Clasping the child, Bridget screamed in terror. Thomas froze. Patrick , working on adrenaline and instinct, yanked his gun from his waistband and killed the man directly in front of him. Before the two men could discharge their weapons again, once in his sight, he emptied his weapon into their bodies.
“Close the lid on the guns , man, and let’s leg it before reinforcements come,” Patrick said, grabbing Thomas’s arm. “Thomas, do you hear me?”
“I hear you,” Thomas stammered and slammed the lid shut.
As he balanced the crate on his shoulder, it was only then he noticed Bridget crumpled to the ground, bending over the child. “Bridget, are you… are you hurt, woman?”
The wail that left her lips would remain burned in Thomas’s mind forever. “Thomas, she’s shot. My baby girl is shot. Look at her. She is… gushing blood. I think she’s dead.”
“Get out of the way,” Patrick ordered, as he shoved her aside. Feeling the child’s neck for a pulse, he reported there was none. Yes, he reported, the child was dead. “We have to get out of here. The police will be here any minute. Come, we can’t miss that boat. Do you hear me? Leave her.”
“No. I will not leave her here alone on the street,” Bridget screamed as Patrick yanked her to her feet.
The child was now nothing more than an anchor weighing them down. They later would discover that on this very day, St Patrick’s Day, 1990, they caught a break that people often prayed for. As they made their way out of the alley , a massive contingent of the Boston police were already responding to a robbery at a world-renowned museum on the opposite side of town. This bolt of luck gave them the smallest window of opportunity to escape undetected, but if they did not seize it, they surely would be captured.
“We have to go. The police will be here in a flash. She is dead. There’s nothing more you can do,”he said as lightning cracked, and torrents of rain fell on them.
“Wait,”Bridget said, gasping for air. She removed a child’s Bible from her purse and, on the second page, inscribed the words Slan Saoirse. Patrick grabbed the book from her, placed it in the child’s hands, and was back on his feet, ready to move.
“Come, we have to go. I hear sirens and we can’t be caught here,”he said, lifting the crate back onto his shoulder.
As the scream of the sirens got closer, Bridget implored, “Thomas, we can’t leave her here.”
“You can and you will,”Patrick demanded. “I’ll shoot you both dead on this spot if you are not leaving with me. Dead men tell no tales. Now move or I’ll drop you next to her.”
Without a second thought, Thomas was on his feet and the other crate of guns on his shoulder. Bridget adjusted the rolled paintings under her arm, and as they raced down the street, they barely missed the police racing toward them.
As the rain fell around the child, maybe her mother instinctively heard her, maybe she didn’t. But God certainly heard her cry in the weakest of voices for her mother, who was now long gone.
AUTHOR BIO
Kathleen McGillick is an attorney by education and writes mainly suspense and thriller novels.
She earned a B.S.N. from the University of Miami, and an M.S. from Adelphi University, after which she practiced nursing for seventeen years. In 1994, while working as a Registered Nurse, she earned a Juris Doctorate from the John Marshall School of Law in Atlanta, Georgia. Her solo law practice in which she specialized in Family Law for twenty-seven years, centered on meeting the needs of women and children.
While practicing law, she turned to novel writing and has self-published ten novels that have recurring themes of legal intrigue and stolen art. As an avid international traveler, she incorporates many of the places she has traveled into the settings of her books. For the last fifteen years, she has immersed herself in the study of art history and the intrigue of crimes related to fakes and forgeries which she weaves into her character-driven complex plots.
Born and raised in New York, she now resides in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia. Kathleen is a grandmother of two teenage grandchildren and a mother to four fur babies.
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UK - https://www.amazon.co.uk/STRANGERS-REVENGE-K-J-McGillick-ebook/dp/B09PRSJZNJ
US - https://www.amazon.com/STRANGERS-REVENGE-K-J-McGillick-ebook/dp/B09PRSJZNJ
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