Darkwater Echoes (PSI Sentinels: Darkwater Guardians)
Blackwater Sound – Key Largo, Florida
Echoes across a dark body of water. Echoes from the past. Echoes haunting the future.
FBI Agent Trent Sawyer is supposed to be cooling his heels after an unsanctioned operation. A case, both personal and dangerous, that ripped away his psychic ability and left him unsure of his place on the covert PSI Task Force. When the boat he’s on is hijacked, he chafes at orders to rely on the reluctant assistance of tiki-bar owner, Jillian Rose.
Trust is hard won in Jillian’s world. The last thing she needs is a stranger underfoot, a man with secrets darker than the Sound on a pitch black night. A man with the ability to crack her carefully constructed shell, a man she’s having a hard time resisting.
Amidst exploding boats, bar fights, dead bodies, and chases across Blackwater Sound, unwanted attraction sizzles between Trent and Jillian. Can they navigate the murky waters of murder and international deception to expose the dark water’s secrets before those secrets claim them both?
Read an excerpt:
Footsteps pounded across the deck above. Trent Sawyer, awake at the first thud, rolled from his berth and snatched his gun from under his pillow.
Barefoot and wearing only a black pair of shorts, he ignored the dull throb in his head to shove his senses outward in an attempt to psychically test the boundaries of the boat. Of the structure. Of the space within.
Pain stabbed from inside his skull. Black dots swirled at the perimeter of his sight.
Fuck.
His free hand braced on the wall, he sucked in several quick breaths.
No damn answers. No extra info. Nothing but a mental brick wall an inch in front of his face.
He flicked a glance at the ceiling.
That thud hadn’t been his imagination.
Psychic senses be damned, he wasn’t alone on this boat.
His jaw tight, he moved silently across the dark cabin to the door. He waited several heartbeats before letting the motion of a small wave hitting the side of the sailboat cover the sound of him opening the door a small fraction.
Light from the upper galley spilled through the crack and into his room.
Voices carried down to him, voices that shouldn’t have been there – much less arguing over who was going to start the effing boat’s engines.
His boss’ boat. Neither of those rough voices belonged to the man.
Whoever those bastards on deck were, they weren’t stealing this boat. Not on Trent’s first night. He hadn’t been on the boat – or in Key Largo – more than a couple hours.
Not going to happen.
With his gun leading, and his body crouched low, he slipped into the narrow hallway. At the base of the stairwell he slid one bare foot onto the bottom stair, flinched at the soft groan of weathered wood then shifted his weight to ease his other foot up another step.
Then another.
On a deep exhale of breath, he lifted his head above the solid railing. Two men, one a blond giant and the other a squat redhead, both burly and wide through the shoulders, stood across the galley with their backs to him. Their voices lower than earlier, they seemed to be arguing over a sheaf of papers they had spread over the Captain’s table.
Now’s as good a time as any.
Trent straightened. He aimed his gun at Blondie’s head. “What the hell are you doing on my damn boat?”
Both men whipped around, their faces slack with shock.
A small amount of satisfaction welled in Trent’s gut.
Mongrels, both of them.
Their eyes brightened and their mouths widened into comical grins. They started forward.
“What the –?” Pain, sharp and sudden, splintered Trent’s thoughts.
His world went black.