Kindle Edition
Amazon
Category:
Action/Thriller
Publisher: Savvy Scribe Press
ISBN-10: 1484884590
Type: Fiction
Pages: 326
Copyright: March 9, 2014
ISBN-13: 9781484884591
Price: $3.99 (eBook)
"The role of religion in tragic circumstances is given a well-crafted twist in this intriguing thriller." ~ ForeWord Clarion Reviews ~
"In Sufficient Ransom, a fast-paced novel of kidnapping, religion, and drugs, Sylvia Sarno reveals the lengths to which a mother is willing to go in order to find her child." ~ ForeWord Clarion Reviews ~
Ever wonder what it feels like to have it all—family, career, health, money—and not be happy?
Ann Olson takes her life for granted until her young son, Travis, disappears from the backyard one evening. Searching for her son, Ann throws caution to the wind. Soon, she finds herself enmeshed in the seedy world of Mexican drug dealers who operate just across the border in Tijuana. Does Ann, an atheist, embrace Christianity despite her husband warning that her pastor friend is more interested in converting her than in finding Travis? Does she make it out of the drug tunnel alive, or is her rashness her downfall? And is Travis’s disappearance related to that of other recently missing children in San Diego? A story of a mother’s love, courage in the face of evil, and her unexpected journey of self-discovery along the way.
Excerpt
Chapter 1
Ann Olson and her six-year-old son were alone in the house. It was already dark.
“Mom, can you read the story again? Please. I have to make sure the bird finds his mother.”
Ann scooped up the book and placed it on the shelf next to Travis’s bed. Tucking the blue striped quilt around her only child she said, “I’ve read it three times. It’s time to go to sleep, sweetie.” She kissed her son’s freckled nose and stood up. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Mom?”
She knelt and caressed his soft brown hair. “What, honey?”
He pulled the blanket to his neck. “I’m scared of the dark.”
Ann bent over and kissed her son’s forehead, her voice extra soothing to mask her own anxiety. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. There’s no one here to hurt you.”
He didn’t look convinced.
“As you go to sleep, try to think of happy things like Legoland and the zoo. Think of the little animals we saw at the tide pools today. The crabs and those fuzzy sea creatures. What are they called?”
Travis’s eyes lit up. “The enemies!”
Laughing, she corrected him. “Anemones, you silly.”
Travis’s face grew serious. “Mom, I’m still scared.”
She stroked his head, smiling to herself. Her son’s bedtime stalling tactics were getting more sophisticated. “I’ll keep your light on,” she said, as she stood up. “And the hall light too. If you need me in the night, come get me, okay? For now, you need to go to sleep.”
“When will Dad be home?”
Her husband, Richard, was on yet another business trip—one of many every year—more than she cared to count. He had cancelled his last trip to Hong Kong in order to work out a plan with their lawyer to fight the charges Child Protective Services had filed against them. When Ann begged her husband to cancel this trip too, he said that if this new biotech start-up he had bet his career on was to survive, he had to go.
Ann tucked her son’s beloved rabbit by his arm. “Your father will be home in six days, honey. It’s late, Travis. You need to go to sleep.”
“I miss Dad.”
The very real possibility that her child could be taken from her and put into foster care, all because a misguided CPS agent got it into her head that Ann was a danger to her son, made Ann sick with apprehension. “I miss Dad, too.”
The truth was she was upset with her husband for leaving her and Travis to face CPS alone. In her saner moments Ann realized she was being unreasonable. Richard had major responsibilities. Defending his decision to go on this trip, he had echoed their lawyer’s assurance that CPS didn’t have a case. Well Ann knew that. Still, she couldn’t help feeling that her husband had let her down.
The doorbell rang.
Her body tensed. She wasn’t expecting anyone.
Travis’s eyes froze. “Who is it, Mom?”
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