Teaser Chapter

Don’t miss the next Victoria Emerson thriller by John Gilstrap

BLUE FIRE

Coming soon from Kensington Publishing Corp.

Keep reading to enjoy an exciting excerpt . . .

CHAPTER ONE

Hell Day

Victoria Emerson heard the urgency in the tone before she understood the words. She pivoted toward the back door as she rose from the table that she’d transformed into a makeshift desk in what used to be a diner called Maggie’s Place. Since the days immediately following the war, Maggie’s had served as an ersatz city hall. Victoria’s knees scooted her chair across the wooden floor as she stood.

“What on earth is that?” asked Ellie Stewart. They’d been meeting about the status of the clothing bank, now that the air had begun to smell like winter.

“Whatever it is, it sounds important.” Victoria opened the door.

A horse approached at a full gallop. Its rider—her fourteen-year-old son, Luke—hung tight to the saddle horn with his left hand, while he slapped the reins with his right. Never having set a horse until a few weeks ago, he’d taken to it well, but he was pushing the beast way too hard on the asphalt roadway.

“Blue fire!” he yelled. “Coming down the river! Blue fire! Coming down the river!”

Victoria’s heart doubled its rate.

“Is he shouting blue fire?” Ellie asked, standing. Everyone understood blue fire to be the code phrase for the highest level of alert. It meant imminent danger from deadly forces, whether man-made or from natural causes.

Victoria didn’t answer. Instead, she reached back inside the door and grabbed the M4 rifle that was never more than a few feet away from her. It was a sad fact about feral, terrified humans that violence came more instinctively than kindness. That was a lesson hard learned in the first days after Hell Day—after the war.

Slinging the rifle over her shoulder, she adjusted the pistol that always rested on her hip to make room for the stock, and stepped the rest of the way outside. She waved, trying to get Luke’s attention, but he was focused on spreading the word of imminent peril. She shivered against the chill of the autumn air and jogged around the side of the building toward the intersection of Mountain Road and Kanawha Road, the spot that had evolved, by silent consensus, to be the social and governmental center here in Ortho, West Virginia.