Excerpt of The Lost Pulse by J.K. Kelly

“I was here with Tommy a very long time ago,” he said, “right after you were diagnosed, and you pushed us off to Naples for our top secret training.”

She kept walking, gently waving off the street vendors that kept offering her deals on leather bags, wooden bowls, and imported bracelets. “JJ, how come you never brought me back a cheap wooden bowl?” He laughed.

They kept walking but were growing impatient with the vendors. The day was coming to an end and hawkers were pestering as many tourists as possible trying to get that last euro before the police would chase them from the bridge one last time before nightfall.

“JJ, right after I went back to Jerusalem I spent an entire day in prayer walking among the olive trees at Gethsemane. I spent a third of the time pissed off that you didn’t save my brother. I spent another third thanking Christ for saving me.” The couple stopped to watch as two vendors were arguing with two women who wanted to be left alone. Michelle turned to JJ. “Then I spent the last part of the day, until they finally chased me out of there, praying that all of my sins be forgiven and that I could understand what you did – what you didn’t do – and that I could forgive you.”

Distracted by the argument that was growing louder and drawing a crowd, JJ grew impatient. Was Michelle reconsidering? What did all of it mean? The statue of Michael the Archangel, the fact that in a city of more than three million citizens and tourists, she stumbled across him, what did it all mean?

He turned to ask but what he saw surprised the war-hardened U.S. Marine. Without inching, Michelle stepped into the middle of the argument and asked the vendors, in Italian, to back down. Jackson knew she could handle herself. Both he and Tommy, along with Christy White and others, had taught her self-defense and offensive maneuvers. Regardless, it was two on one, and Jackson would have none of that.

Before he had the chance to intervene in any way, Michelle went into action. She grabbed the red leather bag one of the vendors had been pushing on the tourists and threw it over the wall into the river below. JJ wasn’t as fluent in Italian as Michelle but he recognized internationally infamous vulgarity and in an instant, this American firecracker exploded and threw the vendor up onto the wall, said some- thing inaudible to the crowd, and pushed him over.

While some of the bystanders screamed others let out a cheer as others laughed. Michelle knew JJ was there but she also knew better than to turn her back on the remaining vendor. Something shiny was now in his hand and before JJ got to it Michelle had struck the man’s forearm with hers, forcing the knife from his grasp. In a fluid movement, she helped the man over the wall and into the water with his friend.