“And he’ll rise to the occasion.” She thought about that. “You know, it’s really because he doesn’t want to let you down. Has nothing to do with clearance rates or looking good.”
He said nothing, so she asked, “And Ray? What’s his motivation?”
“Ray doesn’t need any motivation. He does what he does out of love. For the team, to get bad guys off the street. Most of all, for the victims.”
Ray? Always ready with a jibe or devil’s advocate argument? “I can’t see him as any kind of crusader for justice.”
“Ask his two ex-wives or the kids he never gets to see. Why do you think he refuses to take the sergeant’s exam? Because it would mean time off the street and behind a desk.”
“And me?” she asked as they reached the door leading to the parking lot. “Where do I fit in?”
“You? You’re the rebel, the pesky little sister who never stops asking questions or finding new ways to think and do things.” He grinned as he held the door for her. “A lot like how I was when I was young and naive.”
She laughed at that—Luka was only ten years older than her and most of the brass still thought of him as a rebel. A rebel who got the job done and brought the department good publicity, so they mostly left him to his own devices. “Guess I could have worse role models.”
Neither of them said it, but she knew they were both thinking it: role models like her family.
“Maybe it’s because I never married or had kids,” Luka said, “but it always seemed to me that we may be born into one family, but what counts is the family we choose when we grow older. Who we love, who we’re loyal to, who we’d lay our lives on the line for.”
“And who’d lay their lives on the line for us,” she said in a low voice.
“Exactly.” They reached the car and he threw her the keys. “Welcome to the family, Harper. You drive.”
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Books by CJ Lyons
Jericho and Wright Thrillers
The Next Widow
The Drowned Woman
Save Her Child
Fatal Insomnia Medical Thrillers
Farewell to Dreams
A Raging Dawn
The Sleepless Stars
Lucy Guardino Thrillers
Snake Skin
Blood Stained
Kill Zone
After Shock
Hard Fall
Last Light
Devil Smoke
Open Grave
Gone Dark
Bitter Truth
Angels of Mercy Medical Suspense
Lifelines
Catalyst
Trauma
Isolation
AVAILABLE IN AUDIO
Jericho and Wright Thrillers
The Next Widow (Available in the UK and the US)
The Drowned Woman (Available in the UK and the US)
A Letter from CJ
Thank you for choosing to read Save Her Child. If you did enjoy it, and want to keep up to date with the latest Jericho and Wright thrillers, just sign up at the following link. Your email address will never be shared and you can unsubscribe at any time.
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People often ask why I set my stories in the mountains of the rust belt of Pennsylvania. Not only did I grow up there—and most of my family still lives in a small city very like my fictional Cambria City—but during my career as a physician caring for children and their families, transporting patients in medevac helicopters, as well as assisting police and prosecutors, I’ve learned that these tiny “forgotten” corners of the country are a microcosm reflecting the world at large.
These are areas surrounded by wilderness where you can literally get away with murder. But, like larger urban centers, there are also families in crisis, leading to a population of “throwaway” children who find new, more dangerous “families” with the predators on the streets who convince them that they love them like no one else can. The disparity between the “haves” and “have nots” grows with each passing year and yet the families who have deep roots in the history of these small, forgotten mountain towns with their exhausted coal mines and shuttered steel mills, they refuse to leave, unable to turn their backs on their ancestors and traditions even as they fear for the next generation’s legacy.
Rust-belt cities like Cambria City make for great storytelling, because they reflect so many of our own real-life stories. Stories of courage and honor and sacrifice and most of all, stories of communities building hope for the future.
These ordinary, average working people trying to make it through a day as best they can… they truly put the “heart” in my thrillers, more so than any serial killer or cunning criminal I could invent. I hope their stories have provided much more than a mystery to puzzle through or spine-tingling suspense to steal your breath; I hope that their stories offer solace in rough times along with a glimpse of a universal truth that I witnessed with every shift in the ER: heroes are born every day.
Which is why I believe we’re never alone when lost in a good story.
Thank you for getting lost in one of mine!
I hope you loved Save Her Child and if you did, I would be very grateful if you could write a review. I’d love to hear what you think, and it makes such a difference helping new readers to discover one of my books for the first time.
I love hearing from my readers—you can get in touch on my Facebook page, through Goodreads or my website.
Thanks,
CJ
www.cjlyons.net
The Next Widow
Jericho and Wright Book 1
In the distance Leah heard sirens. She ignored them. Right now, her daughter needed her and Emily was just out of reach, curled up under the bed, her eyes closed, desperately shaking. Leah did the only thing any mother would do. She crawled through the blood to get to her daughter.
When Detective Luka Jericho is
