Amazon are running a promotion on my ebook from 24th May to 30th May with a 34% reduction in price down to £1.99. Click on Amazon for details.

To coincide with this campaign, I am sharing another extract from the crime drama. To set the scene, Rachel and Bill Brown are holidaying in South East Asia and having unwittingly & unknowingly crossed a major crime syndicate, they innocently accept an offer from their hotel of a free lift to Siem Reap Airport………..

When an airport sign was ignored and Bill questioned why, the driver advised that it was “Shortcut”.

They carried on for a few kilometres further, before coming off road and down a dirt track. The passengers were now puzzled and worried, looking at each other with perplexed frowns.

“What is this shortcut?” demanded Bill.

The driver and his front seat passenger said nothing as Bill and Rachel shouted at them to stop the car, before coming to an abrupt halt.

“What the hell is going on?” implored Bill concernedly.

Rachel and Bill looked at each other panic-stricken. What was going on indeed? Their doors had been locked for good measure. They assumed that they were about to be robbed, but matters were soon to take a far worse turn than that.

Bill grabbed the shoulder of the driver, but soon backed off when he turned around with a handgun pointing straight at him.

“Just stay quiet and calm. Nobody hurt. Do as I say.”

“But what’s going on? Why have you brought us here? Why the guns?” pleaded Rachel.

“I SAY QUIET!”

The second man then also produced a gun and pointed it at Rachel, who instinctively put her hands up.

“Don’t shoot. We will stay quiet,” she reasoned, her voice quivering with terror.

The front seat occupant then got out of the vehicle and opened Bill’s door to tie his hands and ankles together.

Bill wanted to fight back, but the urge to do so was quelled by Rachel’s presence and of course the gun that the aggressive driver waved in their direction at that moment. He could not risk leaving her at the mercy of the two thugs if something untoward happened to him.

It was Rachel’s turn next and, in the event, she resisted more than Bill did, until such time as Bill pleaded for her to submit for their own good.

Once secure, it was time for them also to be roughly gagged and hooded. In what was their darkest ever hour, their only small comfort was that they were in it together. They shuffled together so that they could at least press their bodies against one another and sense each other’s breathing.

Setting off again, their captors lit joints and listened to American rock turned up full blast. Every now and again they laughed like hyenas as the hapless couple cringed and cowered in the back, not daring to even whisper through their gags.

Bill and Rachel were petrified and mystified in equal measure. What kind of nightmare awaited them?

Click on Amazon to purchase.