Jan and Ward have been hiding from the government they once worked for. When a friend calls for help, they have to choose between doing nothing or standing in the face of danger once again. In order to bring down a human trafficking ring, Jan gets smuggled in as one of the women they plan to sell. Facing the grueling trek across the border of Mexico to the United States, she then must help discover a way to bring down the entire operation. Ward calls his friend Eddy to help with the operation from the purchasing side; a side not so far from Eddy’s past. If they aren’t careful, all of them could die, or worse.
Excerpt
Oh dear Lord, let this be the right decision, Maria fidgeted with her rosary beads. She prayed often and believed He heard, but right now she was terrified. She was totally out of her element.
As this young woman sat alone on the bench in a small border town in Mexico she had an old, small, multicolored bag and her long black hair was pulled back into a loose ponytail. Waiting on the bench at the bus station she contemplated what she was about to do. She was going to Phoenix. She had nothing left here for her. While scrubbing floors, the woman she had worked with showed her a letter from her bother. In his letter he had told her to go to Nogales and to wait at the bus station there, a coyote would find her. She would need to bring about two thousand dollars. Her brother had sent her the money, a little bit at a time. His sister wasn’t interested in crossing to the US and had used the money for other things. Her feeling about the trip was that it would be too dangerous.
She had never seen so many different types of people in her life before. Maybe if she had made it into college, maybe if her family hadn’t been murdered. Life was supposed to be much better, maybe she would find it in the States, according to that letter. It had been a hard decision, one she might regret, but after the decision was made there was no looking back. Now here she sat in the bus station with what could be thousands of people around her all looking for the same thing or plotting to take what they had left. Letting the rosary beads slip through her fingers she kept looking over the area.
From behind her a strange man threw his leg over the bench making her jump and then followed through with his other leg, stepping the rest of the way over. Making himself more than comfortable by sidling up close beside her, made her a little more than uncomfortable. Dressed in a fairly new leather jacket, dark glasses and a baseball cap turned backwards to hide all but a bit of his black hair did nothing to hide his slimy character. He was only about five feet ten inches tall, and he weighed in at about one hundred eighty or ninety pounds. She wasn’t physically scared of him, but she wasn’t positive about his intentions either.
“Where’re you headed?” she sat eyes straight ahead, not sure whether or not to answer his question. “Wherever you’re going, I can get you there. What’s your name?”
“Maria, and I want to go to the States,” he didn’t look like any official she had seen.
“The States right,” he leaned close enough for her to feel his breath on her cheek and smell the peppers he had eaten.
“Yes,” she wanted to leave, run, he made her skin crawl.
“Five hundred dollars will get you across the border safe and sound,” Maria fiddled with her bag. She had been told it would cost her nearly two thousand dollars and here was someone that would take her for five hundred. Doubt started to grow and show on her face, and she wasn’t gullible. She looked at him again, “No catches, I just want you to get there. I can find you a job and then I get the first two months pay. Most of the time I make more money that way.”
Even though she still had doubt niggling at the corners of her mind she couldn’t help but think that she may need the money she had for other things. His offer of finding her a job could be useful since she would be an undocumented worker.
“Okay,” she replied tentatively as he smiled and grabbed her bag. He stood up and turned before she had a chance to change her mind.
“Follow me,” and he walked off with her bag not even glancing back at her. Maria got up and followed him, not sure of what was coming next, and she was too afraid to ask.
1
She sat on a rocky outcrop out in the mist of the ocean waves and waited. Maybe that wasn’t the right word. It was the third day that week she had sat in the same place, at the same time, and was unable to meditate. Her ability to meditate had once saved her. The warmth of the sun on her face, the mist from the waves that cooled her and the steady beat of the waves on the rocks should have seduced her into a deep meditative state, but she felt nothing.
This had become her favorite spot over the last six months, but not anymore, and it was way past frustrating. She looked for a loose rock or shell to throw. Not seeing anything, she realized that she must have pitched them all off earlier this week. Turning, she looked back up the cliff and into the windows of the apartment that she shared with Ward. Low and behold there he was, on the balcony, and she realized that the source of her current problems originated with him. He didn’t look down as Jan stared up at him, and he didn’t smile. She couldn’t quite read his mind, but she was sure he was reading hers. His range was greater.
‘Damn you,’ she thought as she unfolded her legs and slid down into the cool waves. Determinedly, she walked back through the surf, the waves pushing her back to shore. Jan marched towards the steps. It had been more than five months now since they had been on an assignment, any assignment. In fact, the last assignment they had worked on had freed her from the department that Ward had left over two years before. Leaving the department wasn’t the plan, but as the events unfolded she saw an unfavorable pattern playing out before her.
It was that bureaucracy she learned she couldn’t live with any more. Ward, her husband and true champion, had been caught in the department’s web. Even though he had warned her, she allowed herself to become entangled in it as well. They both ended up leaving the department for the same reasons. She was no longer a mindless peon following orders ready to believe what they told her. The last assignment had almost cost both of them their lives.
The Paranormal Enforcement Department, or ‘PED’ for short, had identified and cultivated them both as mind readers in college. It had started out as an experiment by the CIA in the sixties, long before they were commissioned. Although all experiments had supposedly been stopped for lack of results, they hadn’t. The PED had gone underground and taken on a life of its own. They were sure the department would go on for a long time.
The sad thing was that by joining the PED, they literally had given up their life, all aspects of it. Agents inside the department were removed from regular society, forever belonging to the department. After unofficially leaving, Jan and Ward could never go back to who they were, or live normally without the department looking at them like human guinea pigs. Until six months ago, Ward had been the only agent to live outside of their control. Instead, Ward and Jan had chosen to live life as hunted people. Their only crime was in wanting a life.
Now, fully recovered from the injuries that assignment had brought both of them, Jan knew she was ready, itching, to get back to work, and back into life. Although Ward had not talked about it to her, she knew that he had turned down three assignments over the last few months. Once Ward had left the department, he had set up shop for himself. Picking his assignments based on need and not always on payment. Sometimes they paid him; sometimes the results were pay enough. What she found out was that most of the time he took no pay.
Somewhere out there, there were three people that wouldn’t get his help because he had said no, because of her. The people he chose to help sometimes existed only on the edge of society, with no other advocate to come to their aide; he was their last hope, their only hope. This was the part of the career change that intrigued Jan and finally drew her in.
She walked up the beach deep in thought. Jan knew that Ward had received another request three days ago. She wasn’t sure, but from what she had picked incidentally from his thoughts, she knew the request had come from Eddy and he hadn’t replied. Putting all the pieces together, it was no wonder that she could no longer meditate, and she wondered if he could.
Each time Jan had tried all she could see were faceless people still looking for someone to help, and what had they been doing the last few months? They sat here, hidden, doing nothing, safe from the world. Jan’s thoughts twisted around to Ward, and what she hadn’t been able to read. Was he afraid to lose her? Six months ago he almost had. What he needed to remember was that she had almost lost him as well. And how many other times had she nearly lost him without even knowing it? The thoughts darted through her mind, as she got closer to the cement stairs that wound their way up the cliff’s side to their patio. What Jan needed to explain to Ward, was that he was at risk of losing her again, but this time from stifling her. She needed to do what she did best, and so did he.
Focused and intent on what she was about to do, she had almost gotten back to the steps when she heard Ward move through the foliage. Stopping, she read his mind, ‘Running,’ and knew what was coming next. Jan looked at the gap in the brush just as Ward walked through. Ward was about six feet tall, toned, proportionally perfect, and nicely muscled. Jan never got tired of looking at him, he was easy on the eyes, and with the time they had spent in Mexico, at their beach hideaway, he had become evenly bronzed as well. It wasn’t his body she was tired of skirmishing with it was his mind.
He walked over to her and gently kissed her on the cheek. He knew there was a problem, and when she didn’t reciprocate he read just enough of her thoughts to see what was coming next. He also read enough to avoid it.
‘Ready to go for a run?’ He silently asked as he completely avoided the issue. He had read that she had not meditated for the past week and the reasons why she suspected she hadn’t. He had also not meditated for the last week, and his conscious was also bothering him, for the very same reasons. He had read everything in her mind and she didn’t know how close she really was to the truth. Soon she would though. Ward knew he couldn’t stray from his plan, no matter how much he wanted to. He had to be sure, very sure, before they took the next step. Ward left the subject alone for long enough, afraid that he would have to deal with the consequences of his actions, his conscious, as well as hers. It hadn’t been the right time until now.
“Okay,” and that was all Jan had to say. They went off down the beach at a steady pace for about ten minutes. The talent Jan and Ward shared, one that had been developed, used and abused by the government, was strangely not in use.
Jan and Ward had been empathetically sensitive all their lives. The government had harvested them, as well as others, in college to train them to become exceptional mind readers. Some had made it, others had not. Jan and Ward were now sure that the ones who had not made it into the department might have been the lucky ones.
Professional Reviews
Ghostwriter Reviews - Hidden Promises
Hidden Promises takes the mind into the world and life of underground vigilantes. Jan and Ward, two PED (Paranormal Enforcement Department) agents decide to take the risk of leaving the agency unofficially and find themselves in unfamiliar territory. They entered the PED under the assumption of research and study, but years later, they realized that their life wasn't theirs any longer. The PED forbade them to become romantically involved, therefore Jan and Ward were forced to live a dangerous and mysterious life as husband and wife. They had became so used to taking orders and carrying out assignments governed by top notch agents, and now, their new life from the agency provided them with life-changing decisions to make. After leaving the agency, their responsibilities to the people who needed them most, remained a part of who they were. In addition to having a special talent for mind reading, that the agency cultivated, they possessed the skills to camouflage their true identity to close down an organization that sold women who attempted to cross the borders of Mexico, as slave laborers.
This book is very edgy. It kept me wanting to go to the end just to learn the outcome. I was able to picture each image in my mind, and felt as though I was a spectator watching everything unfold. I thought it would be so wonderful if I were able to read minds. I enjoyed this book.
