Excerpt from Long Road to Mercy

January is National Slavery and Human Trafficking Awareness Month. Check out my last blog for more information and some books to read on the topic.

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme. Read the rules and more teasers at The Purple Booker. Anyone can play along.

I am currently reading The Long Road to Mercy by David Baldacci. Baldacci always writes great police procedurals and thrillers, and so far, The Long Road to Mercy does not disappoint. Atlee Pine, an identical twin who lost her sister in an abduction as a small girl, grows up to become a body builder and FBI agent and in this first book in the series, is investigating the disappearance of a tourist from the Grand Canyon. Of course, he was not actually a tourist, and pursuing the investigation after she’s been told to back off could mean the end of her career.

The moment, an eternity in the making, had finally come.

Atlee Pine leaned forward, her lips an inch from the thick glass. 

“Where’s my sister?”

David Baldacci, Long Road to Mercy

Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. Catch a tiger by its toe.

It’s seared into Atlee Pine’s memory: the kidnapper’s chilling rhyme as he chose between six-year-old Atlee and her twin sister, Mercy. Mercy was taken. Atlee was spared.

She never saw Mercy again.

Three decades after that terrifying night, Atlee Pine works for the FBI. She’s the lone agent assigned to the Shattered Rock, Arizona resident agency, which is responsible for protecting the Grand Canyon.

So when one of the Grand Canyon’s mules is found stabbed to death at the bottom of the canyon-and its rider missing-Pine is called in to investigate. It soon seems clear the lost tourist had something more clandestine than sightseeing in mind. But just as Pine begins to put together clues pointing to a terrifying plot, she’s abruptly called off the case.

If she disobeys direct orders by continuing to search for the missing man, it will mean the end of her career. But unless Pine keeps working the case and discovers the truth, it could spell the very end of democracy in America as we know it…