I’m excited to share an excerpt from Every Flower of the Field, book #2 in the Two Sparrows for a Penny romantic suspense series from award-winning author, Sara Davison. I read book one, Every Star in the Sky (link to my review) and loved it so I jumped at the chance to introduce my readers to this fabulous author.
Before you leave, don’t forget to visit the Giveaway section. Sara is graciously offering a print copy of Every Flower of the Field to one lucky Romancing History reader.
About the Book
Safe is the most dangerous feeling of all.
For as long as she can remember, Rose Galway has been a captive, controlled by one man or another. To her, though, God is the one holding the keys, refusing to set her free despite the desperate pleas she has sent heavenward.
Detective Laken Jones has known hardship too, including the daily trauma of racism. Still, nothing he has gone through compares to what Rose has endured. He wants nothing more than for her to experience hope and healing and maybe even happiness in her life.
But first he has to find her.
Laken is willing to risk everything to set Rose free. And to help her find her way to God. Even if that means letting go of her—and the future he envisions for the two of them—forever.
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Excerpt from Every Flower of the Field
In Every Flower of the Field, Rose Galway has been held prisoner since being grabbed on the street eight years earlier. Detective Laken Jones has received a tip that someone was banging on the window of a house. Something tells him this could be Rose, the woman he has long been searching for…
Laken hefted the ladder a little more securely in his hand and then started along a pathway between the walls surrounding the adjacent properties. When he found a spot out of reach of the streetlights, he stopped and propped the ladder against the bricks. Here’s where it got dicey. No doubt the ladder would creak as he ascended. And when he did reach the top, he’d have to pull it up and lower it down the other side, which would make noise that would be impossible to mask. Of course, any movement could set off security cameras which, even if the property was abandoned, would likely be monitored remotely. Someone might be watching him even now.
God, shroud me in darkness.
Laken slid his shoe onto the bottom rung, inhaled a slow, deep breath, and then started up. After an agonizing couple of minutes, he reached the rung third from the top, high enough that he could peer over the wall. When he did, he glimpsed a thin beam of light from a tiny window on the main floor of the massive, L-shaped stone bungalow, in the center of the building as though it was a hallway, not a bedroom.
Laken climbed another step and then managed to fling his leg over the top. Thankfully, the wall was a good foot and a half thick, deep enough that he was able to pull himself onto it and lie on his belly. After a quick scan of the property, trees and bushes dark silhouettes in the dim moonlight, he leaned down and slowly, slowly pulled the ladder up rung by rung. His position was precarious, but he managed to keep his balance by digging the toe of his sneaker against the inside of the wall. A cloud drifted in front of the quarter moon, obscuring even that wan light. Although it made his mission that much more treacherous, Laken was thankful for the answer to prayer. He hauled on the ladder again, stopping periodically and straining into the thick blackness, but other than the occasional soft thudding from the window—which seemed to be happening with less frequency—no sound or movement broke the early-morning hush.
Finally, Laken was able to tip the ladder over the wall and lower it carefully to the ground. He nearly tumbled off his perch right before the rubber-tipped legs hit the ground, but he smacked an open hand on the outside of the wall to steady himself. Carefully, he swung onto the rungs and descended to the ground.
The cloud that had drifted across the face of the moon slid by it, and a thin beam of light fell over the house. Laken stared at the three windows lining this end of the building, likely bedrooms at the front and back separated by the hallway where the light glimmered. He hadn’t heard the tapping in a minute or two, and he needed Rose to start hitting the glass again so he’d know which one was hers. His forehead wrinkled. Siding had been placed across the bottom half or two-thirds of the glass in the two bedrooms, reducing the windows to small, horizontal slits set up higher in the wall than a person could reach. Or escape out of.
The excitement he’d been tamping down broke through its constraints and coursed through him. The windows in Brady’s other house, the one where Tala had been imprisoned, had been the same—custom designed to turn the place into a prison.
No one appeared to be around. Worth taking the risk to climb up and peer through the glass, anyway. He reached for the ladder, but his fingers froze on a ridged metal rung when a flashing red light beneath the deck-like front porch captured his attention. Every bit of excitement seeped out of his body, replaced by a cold gust of apprehension. Laken abandoned the ladder and picked his way over tree roots to the wide, wooden steps. When he was close enough, he crouched and grabbed the phone out of his inside jacket pocket. After turning on the flashlight, he focused the beam under the stairs for a few seconds. Then, with a heavy exhalation of breath, he tapped a number into the phone. Time to call for back-up.
And the bomb squad.
While Rose once had a faith, she struggles now to trust in a God who would allow such evil and suffering in the world. Will she ever be able to believe Laken’s assertion that, even in the dark pit where she was held for years, she was never alone?
Other Books in the Two Sparrows for a Penny Series
She is willing to testify against her trafficker.
If she can stay alive that long.
“You’re safe here, Starr.”
How many times has Detective Cole Blacksky said that to her since helping her escape the life she’d been forced into eight years earlier?
Starr desperately wants to believe him, but she knows Brady Erickson, her former captor, too well. Although Cole has promised her protective custody on his family’s remote ranch, no place on earth is safe enough. Brady will stop at nothing to permanently silence her before she ever reaches the witness stand.
And he is powerful enough to do it.
If Starr wants to help the other women, she has no choice but to put herself in God’s hands. And Cole’s. But the longer she and Cole stay hidden, the more her life is at risk.
And her heart.
TW: human trafficking, some violence, sexual intimacy inferred (clean and closed door)
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About the Author
Sara Davison is the author of four romantic suspense series—The Seven Trilogy, The Night Guardians, The Rose Tattoo Trilogy, and two sparrows for a penny, as well as the standalone, The Watcher. A finalist for more than a dozen national writing awards, she is a Word, Cascade, and two-time Carol Award winner. She resides in Ontario with her husband, Michael, and their three mostly grown kids. Like every good Canadian, she loves coffee, hockey, poutine, and apologizing for no particular reason. Get to know Sara better at www.saradavison.org or @sarajdavison.
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Giveaway*
Sara mentioned in her bio that she loves poutine. I had to look this one up! According to Wikipedia, poutine is “a dish of french fries and cheese curds topped with a brown gravy.” Not to yuck someone else’s yum, but I have few reservations about french fries and gravy, but if I was visiting Canada, I’d definitely give it a go. To be entered in the drawing for a print copy of Every Flower of the Field, let us know if you’ve had poutine and whether or not you’d eat it again.