"Chills and thrills mark the pages of NIGHTFALL. Fans of sci-fi romances will"
Reviewed by Darlene Kendall
Posted May 4, 2011
Romance Paranormal
Never in her wildest dreams would Jenna Barclay have
believed anyone would want to kidnap her, but John Mason
does and takes her to a cabin in the woods. Mason promised
Jenna's father he would protect her from a world gone
bad. The world as they knew it no longer exists,
technology is gone and this new world is filled with hungry
mutant dogs that attack and eat humans. After the frenzy
there are more of them alive and maybe a handful of humans
left. Jenna grew up with a father who prophesied how bad
times would become and only magic would be their saving
grace. She thought he was just rambling but after
witnessing just how bad things are, Jenna accepts that
survival is paramount. When Jenna opens the door for other
humans, Mason realizes that he is now responsible for more
than the two of them. Between what he considers his duty
to the others there is also his growing feelings for Jenna
preying on his concentration which is fractured enough to
put them all at risk. Chills and thrills mark the pages of
NIGHTFALL. Fans of sci-fi romances will love the storyline
as well as the multifaceted characters in this book, it
grabs you from page one and keeps you hooked until the last
page is turned. You will smile at some of the
characters antics and at other times your blood
pressure will rise from the sensuality between the hero and
heroine. Ms. Connor's vivid view of the horrible
destruction of our world by these mutants and how the
remaining humans grow and learn how to survive and to love
is brilliant.
SUMMARY
Their instincts will save them.
Their passion will transform them.
Growing up with an unstable, often absent father who
preached about the end of the world, Jenna never thought, in
her wildest nightmares, that his predictions would come
true. Or that he would have a plan in place to save her–one
that includes the strong, stoic man who kidnaps and takes
her to a remote cabin in the Pacific Northwest.
The mysterious ex-Marine named Mason owes a life-debt to
Jenna’s father. Skilled and steadfast, he’s ready for the
Change, but Jenna proves tough to convince. Until the power
grid collapses and the mutant dogs attack–vicious things
that reek of nature gone wrong.
When five strangers appear, desperate to escape the
bloodthirsty packs, Jenna defies her protector and rescues
them. As technology fails and the old world falls away,
Jenna changes too, forever altered by supernatural forces.
To fight for their future, she and Mason must learn to trust
their instinctive passion–a flame that will see them through
the bitter winter, the endless nights, and the violence of a
new Dark Age.
Excerpt“Don’t move.”
The hot rush of breath against the nape of her neck made
Jenna juggle her keys and then drop them. She had pepper
spray on the key ring, received as a gag gift, but at
hearing that raw, gravelly voice, she lost all control of
higher motor functions. A shiver jumped up her spine.
Something prodded her back. A gun? Jenna didn’t even
shift.
Her reply came out in a nervous squeak. “Are you mugging
me? I don’t have much cash on hand.”
Liar.
Her dad had always insisted she keep at least five
hundred in the house in case of emergencies. He hadn’t liked
banks, lines of credit, or the federal government. But he’d
also said there would come a time when skills would become
the real commerce, and that the entire world monetary system
would fail. Of course, trouble clung to her father like
ticks on a hound, so she didn’t agree with his philosophies.
He’d gone around quoting obscure prophecy and claiming
insight into great doings to come, and she wanted
nothing to do with any of his crazy friends. She’d seen what
that life had done to her mother.
Hence the move to quiet, dull, out-of-the-way Culver.
Sure, she’d heard the talk of trouble on the East
Coast–blackouts and riots–but the city wouldn’t be NYC if
there wasn’t something crazy happening. It was like LA in
that regard. At one point, there had been so many fires,
mudslides, and earthquakes that fringe factions claimed
California was about to slide into the sea. There was no
more substance to these East Coast rumors. It was just
normal crime. But muggings didn’t happen in Culver. Maybe this
guy was an escaped con from the correctional facility in
Northbend. It wasn’t unheard of for them to break out and
live rough until they emerged in dire need of food and
supplies. Her breath puffed out in a smoky devil’s sigh.
Cold. It was so cold. He’d need winter gear too. If she gave
him what he wanted, he might go away. She hoped.
Because of her dad, Jenna nursed a secret soft spot for
outlaws and renegades, but that didn’t ease the fear in her
stomach.
She tried to stay calm. “I have things inside you can
use. Soup, an insulated sleeping bag, pretty much everything
you need to rough it. You don’t have to steal from me. I’ll
give you the stuff. No strings.”
Silence.
Please don’t let him take my credit cards. Those take
forever to replace.
But maybe she should be worried about something else.
Something worse. Jenna couldn’t even make herself shape the
words mentally. Things like that never happened in Culver.
She should’ve been safe walking down the driveway to get her
mail. Her mind had been on heading into town and joining Deb
and Mara at The Louie: beer, laughs, friends–not defending
against armed psychos. It was their weekly girls’ night,
where they drank too much, laughed a lot, danced with
strange men, and generally cut loose after a week in the
cubicles.
“Are you Jenna Barclay?” he asked. Her heart thudded in her ears. She wondered if she ought
to lie. Would that make it worse? Fear tasted sharp on her
tongue. She wouldn’t give a desperate man a reason to hurt
her. Sometimes they didn’t need a reason, but she’d play it
smart. And she’d walk away from this.
“Yes,” she managed to say. “I’m Jenna. What do you want?”
Instead of answering that question, he returned to one
she’d posed before. “No, this isn’t a mugging.”
“Then what is it?” Surely they weren’t conversing while
he held a gun on her. She thought she felt the barrels
through the thick down of her jacket and refused to think
about bullets tearing through her flesh, blood-spattered
feathers wafting up.
No running, no sudden moves. She’d be all right. She just
had to make him think of her as a person. Not an object he
could take into the forest and have fun with.
“It’s a kidnapping,” he said, and stuffed a cloth in her
mouth.
He moved too quickly for thought–even faster than the
panic that followed his words. Jenna heard a ripping noise
before he sealed a strip of duct tape over her mouth. When
he slung her over his shoulder, her stomach slammed against
his back. The wind knocked right out of her, and she had the
irrational thought that he smelled like the forest–a tangy
sharp whisper of pine, cut with fresh air and moss.
Hauling her as if she weighed nothing, he squatted,
snatched her keys, and then sprinted up the drive toward her
garage. He levered it up one-handed and taped her ankles.
Her wrists came next, and that was when the fear sunk all
the way in.
He wasn’t kidding. Jenna thrashed and fought. If she let him take her away
from here, she’d never see home again. She didn’t care about
the threat of a bullet any longer. A quick death would be
better than whatever he had in mind. Tears seared the
corners of her eyes and felt hotter because her skin had
chilled in the late autumn air.
But he handled her struggles with impersonal proficiency.
She managed to elbow him in the sternum, and he didn’t even
grunt. Iron man. Unmoved. Maybe begging would work.
Nobody will pay the ransom, she tried to say, but
it came out more like, “Mmdy wuh puh,” before she gave up.
Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God–
Nightmare. It had to be. She’d wake up soon.
Terror flared like a struck match as he popped the trunk
of her car. He deposited her inside with curious care. Once
he closed the metal top, it would be like a tomb.
No. Please, please, please.
With the setting sun behind him in a nimbus of fire, he
looked like a dark god, broad shoulders and features blurred
by her tears. But Jenna saw one thing clearly. He wasn’t
wearing a mask, and that meant he wasn’t ever letting her
go.
The trunk slammed and took all the light with it. Minutes turned into hours, and hours into eternity. After
she’d died at least a million times in her mind, in almost
as many different ways, the car slowed and stopped. She
listened to the engine ticking over.
A key clicked in the lock. Jenna expected her captor to
yank her roughly out of the trunk, so she braced. But he
might not need an excuse to hurt her. To her surprise, he
drew her up with the care one would use with a sleeping
child. His gentle hands belied the tape across her mouth and
her bound limbs.
Wordlessly, he set her on her feet. As her blinking eyes
adjusted to the rich twilight, she saw there was no reason
he’d fear she might run. In addition to the hobbles on her
ankles, they stood in the middle of a deep forest. They
might still be in Oregon–she’d lost track of time while he
drove–but in a remote region she’d never seen.
A reassuring bulge in her left pocket meant that her cell
phone had made it out of the trunk with her. She just needed
to bide her time and humor him until she could text someone
for help. If cop shows were to be believed, they could track
her phone and find her that way.
I just have to stay calm, make him think I’m buying
whatever he’s selling long enough to get a minute
alone.
She stood quietly, awaiting instructions. Crazies liked
feeling in control, didn’t they? She wouldn’t give him any
reason to search her–or worse. Giving him a quick once-over,
she reassessed what she’d hoped back in her driveway. He
didn’t need winter gear. A knit cap stretched over his
skull, and he wore dark, heavy-gauge Carhartt jeans and a
woodland camouflage jacket that looked military. He slung a
serious semi-automatic sniper rifle across his
back, and the gun he’d poked into her back must be the 9mm
in his hip holster.
Fighting him was completely out of the question. A
one-man army. Oh, shit. “I’m sorry it had to be like that,” the man said, his
voice rough. “But we had to get away from the city. You
wouldn’t believe me without proof.”
Believe what?
Jenna stared at him in silence. How was she supposed to
answer through the duct tape anyway? Not that there was any
point. It was a stretch to call a burg like Culver a city,
which proved he was mad as a hatter. A frisson ran through
her as the sun filtered out of the dense foliage entirely,
drenching the world in shadow. Nightfall had never been so
sinister.
“Anyway, we should get inside. We can talk in the cabin.
It’s freezing out here, and I promised your dad I’d keep you
safe.”
Now that was just pure bull. Mitch Barclay had been dead
for over three years, and even before that, he’d never been
particularly interested in her well-being–except when it
suited him. Over the years, he’d faded in and out of her
life like a ghost, and each time he seemed a little more
disconnected with reality. His last visit had been so
strange that she hadn’t wanted to see him again. He’d come
just to stare at her, it seemed, like he could x-ray the
inside of her head.
The man knelt and peeled the tape from around her ankles.
She wanted to run, but taking off ill-prepared in the cold
might be stupider than staying put. Besides, her feet had
gone completely numb. Blood rushed back in splinters of
pain.
Distracting herself, Jenna tried to memorize the
dwelling’s exterior. Maybe she could put some detail in her
text message. They stood in a clearing ringed by heavy
trees. The split-log cabin looked like someone’s hunting
retreat, rustic but not shabby or ill-maintained.
When the man straightened, he was bigger than she’d
realized, perhaps as much as a foot taller than her own
five-foot-six. His swarthy skin bespoke some mixed ancestry,
and he was built like a Mack truck. Solid muscle. Quite
simply, she could hit him with a brick and he wouldn’t even
notice.
She’d have to outsmart him. With a gesture, he indicated she should precede him. It
wasn’t good manners as much as him keeping an eye on her.
She stumbled a little, her legs still stiff and tingling. To
her surprise, he steadied her with a hand on her back. She
flinched and pulled away, but a small part of her was
thankful that she hadn’t fallen. Keep my balance. Stay
calm.
Jenna crossed the small porch, her shoes clunking heavily
against the plank wooden floor. Dread churned up her nausea
when reached the door. He leaned past her and opened
it–again, probably not a courtesy, but in recognizing the
limitations of her bound hands. The inside of the cabin
matched the exterior: woven rugs, hand-carved furniture with
homey sewn cushions, and a big stone fireplace. Avocado
appliances decked out an antiquated kitchenette, and a
ladder led up to what might be a loft.
“Go in,” he said. “I need to take care of some things.
Then I’ll cut you loose, so you can ask all the questions I
see burning in your eyes.”
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