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Book Tour: Twisted by Andrea Kane

Check out this sneak peak into Andrea Kane’s latest romantic thriller, Twisted. 

TWISTED
By Andrea Kane

CHAPTER 1

Date: 19 March
Time: 2100 hours
Objective: Athena
Status: Alpha

She was a true warrior.
Subduing her had required all my skill and training.  Even the weapon hadn’t been enough to make her submit.  Not like the others.  Not until she’d felt the prick of the blade, sensed drops of her own blood trickling down her neck.  At that point she’d quivered, then gone still.  She was too smart not to.  She wanted to fight.  I could see it in her eyes.  But she didn’t.  In the end, I’d won.  I injected her with the Nembutal, and in five minutes her eyes went dull and her body went limp.
I had her.
Her warm, drugged body slumped against my shoulder.  It felt good.  My timing and execution had been perfect.  It was Spring break.  She wouldn’t be missed for days.
By then it would be too late.

John Jay College of Criminal Justice
New York City
March 20th, 4 PM

The auditorium crackled with anticipation.
It was the final seminar of the two-day “Crimes Against Women: How Not to Become Another Statistic” conference.  The panel of experts included Jimmy O’Donnelly, an NYPD detective from the Special Victims Unit; Sharon McNally, a psychologist who specialized in counseling victims of violent crimes; Dr. Charles Hewitt, a professor of statistics and mathematics right here at John Jay; Dr. Lillian Doyle, also a John Jay professor but in the sociology department; Lawrence Clark, a retired Supervisory Special Agent from the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime’s Behavioral Analysis Unit.
And Sloane Burbank, the final name on this impressive list of experts.
All of them had spoken.  Now it was her turn.
The moderator ran through the highlights of Sloane’s bio.  Former FBI Special Agent.  Recruited by the Bureau for the Honors Internship Program the summer after her junior year in college.  Graduated from Penn State with a BS in Crime, Law & Justice, and a fluency in a host of foreign languages, including Spanish, Italian, Greek, Arabic, Mandarin and Farsi.  Went on to NYU Law School, followed by a year in the Manhattan DA’s office before joining the FBI full-time.  Trained by the Critical Incident Response Group’s Crisis Negotiating Unit as a hostage negotiator.  Currently, an independent consultant who worked with law enforcement, corporations, and educational institutions, training them in crisis management and resolution.  Also a certified Krav Maga instructor.  And all at thirty years old.
With an admiring nod in her direction, the moderator stepped away from the mike and turned the room over to Sloane.
Amid enthusiastic applause, Sloane rose from behind the speaker table, thinking for the dozenth time how good she sounded on paper.  And she was good-- just not as good as she’d been a year ago.  Then again, perception outweighed reality.  She was the only one who’d know the difference.
Exuding her usual energy and self-assurance, Sloane unbuttoned her blazer and tossed it over the back of her chair.  She wasn’t surprised by the skepticism she saw on some of the faces in the audience.  Their reaction was nothing new.  And it was something she’d used to her advantage more times than not.
Let’s face it.  Despite her impressive resume, she was a fine-boned woman with a delicate frame and the fresh-scrubbed features of a college student.  That made people doubt her abilities-- enough so that many of them wrote her off.
Let them.  It gave her the advantage.  And having the advantage gave her power.
As Sloane knew, power came in many forms.
She pulled on her protective gloves and walked to the front of the room, dead center, with the aisle stretching before her, and the two sections of the auditorium split on either side of her like the parted waters of the Red Sea.
“So far tonight, you’ve heard about coping with the aftermath of a physical attack, ways to avoid one, and some profiles of typical victims and assailants,” she began.  “Every bit of what you learned is true.  But there’s another truth.  We can’t always control the circumstances in which we find ourselves.  So what happens when you wind up in a parking lot alone at night, your car is ten rows back, and a creepy guy who’s built like a Hummer is lying in wait?”
She held out her gloved hands, palms up, to show she was unarmed, then pointed at her pocket-less and holster-less black turtleneck and slacks.  “I’m dressed just like you would be.  No weapon.  No handy object to act as one.  And no purse, although if I had one, I wouldn’t have time to grab for my cell phone or, even better, for a can of pepper spray.  That’s why I learned Krav Maga.”
A spark of interest flickered in the audience’s eyes-- even those who’d been Doubting Thomases.
“Brief background,” she began.  “Krav Maga is a whole different breed of self-defense.  Its roots trace back to Czechoslovakia during the rise of Nazi terrorism.  It was founded by Imi Lichtenfeld, who refined his street fighting skills protecting his and other Jewish families from attack.  Lichtenfeld later immigrated to Israel, further developed those techniques, and then taught them as Chief Instructor for the Israeli Defense Forces.  In Hebrew, Krav Maga means `contact combat’-- training designed for the unpredictable nature of street fighting.  There are no rules.  No trophies for good form.  Only survival.”
As Sloane spoke, a brawny man wearing a ski mask crept out from behind the curtains at the front of the room, visible to the audience, but not to Sloane.
There was a collective gasp as he whipped a knife out of his pocket and charged forward, leaving Sloane no time to prepare and the audience no time to react.
Grabbing Sloane’s left shoulder, he pressed the knife to her back.  “Get in my car,” he ordered in a gravelly voice.
It was like someone flipped a switch.
Sloane whipped around in a quick body turn.  Her left forearm shot forward, locking against his right wrist to deflect the knife attack, and propelling her into the offensive strike of delivering a forward horizontal punch to his throat with her right elbow.  As he gasped for air and recoiled from the simulated blow to his throat, her left hand snapped up, pinching his knife-wielding arm in a vice-grip between her upper arm, forearm, and chest.  The nutcracking pressure caused the knife to fall from his hand.
Threat obliterated.
Sloane then trapped his head with her right forearm, grabbed his shoulder with her left hand, and yanked his upper torso down, jerking her knee upward in a lighting strike to his groin.
She stifled a smile as she felt him inadvertently tense and arch away from her, even as he responded on cue, doubling up and crying out as if he’d been castrated.  She finished him off with a downward elbow strike to the back of his neck, then pushed him away as he collapsed on the floor, writhing in mock agony.
It was all over in ten seconds.
“I’m crushed by your lack of faith,” Sloane murmured as she helped him up, applause filling the auditorium.  “I barely tapped your windpipe.  Did you really think I’d kick your balls through your nose?”
“Never crossed my mind.” His reply was drowned out by the applause.  “I know you’re a pro.  Pure reflex on my part.”
“I’ll try not to take it personally.” Sobering, Sloane turned to address the room.  “That was just one example of using Krav Maga in self-defense,” she explained.  “There are dozens of moves, for whatever threatening situation you may find yourself in.  Read the tip sheet I passed out.  In it you’ll find contact information on local Krav Maga programs.  I can’t stress training enough.  It’s empowering, it’s practical, and it works.” She turned to her attacker, gesturing for him to remove his ski mask.  “How about a round of applause for John Jay’s own Dr. Elliot Lyman.  He was a great demo partner and a good sport.”
More applause, as Elliot complied.
“Even if you are a chicken,” Sloane added under her breath.
“I’m a computer science professor,” he reminded her.  “A nerd who plays with algorithms.  Not a kick-ass FBI agent like you.”
“Ex FBI agent,” she reminded him.
“For now.  That’ll change.”
“Maybe.  Maybe not.  We’ll see.” Sloane’s jaw tightened in a way that declared the subject closed.
She finished her presentation, answered a slew of questions, and then chatted with her co-presenters for a while after the seminar broke up.  She knew the John Jay faculty participants from previous workshops they’d given here, and from her occasional visits to Elliot.  They’d known each other since high school, stayed in touch afterwards, and resumed their friendship when Sloane left the Bureau and moved back east.
An hour later, she was heading for her car, reflecting on the disparate opinions voiced by law enforcement professionals and academicians.  Watching silver-haired Lillian Doyle explain the roots of violence in modern day civilization to Jimmy O’Donnelly, a retired NYPD detective who’d seen every heinous form of violence imaginable, was like watching two people talking two different languages.  The louder they spoke, the less they understood each other.
Still, the eclectic composite of the panel was good for the attendees.  They’d gotten a varied perspective on the subject of crimes against women.  It was also good for the speakers.  Neither Jimmy O’Donnelly nor Larry Clark was the type to retire.  As for the professors, they revelled in the debates.  Especially Lillian Doyle who, according to Elliot, needed the mental distraction.  Her cancer was no longer in remission, and this semester had been a tough one on her.
Sloane herself enjoyed doing these workshops.  They were good for her in more ways than one.
She turned up the collar of her coat as a stiff breeze blasted across her face, reminding her that winter wasn’t quite over.  A throbbing pain shot through her palm and she winced, belatedly realizing she should have put on her street gloves before venturing outside.  Her occupational therapist would be royally pissed if she knew.  Well, no point in fishing for them now.  She was practically at her car.
A few minutes later, she hopped into her Subaru Outback.  It took her extra time to turn the key in the ignition, and she gritted her teeth against the discomfort.
The engine had just turned over when her cell phone rang.
The caller ID read “private”.  Not unusual.  Most of her clients chose to protect their privacy.
“Sloane Burbank,” she said into the mouthpiece.
“Sloane?” a women’s tentative voice replied.  “This is Hope Truman.  Penny’s mother.  I don’t know if you remember me.”
“Mrs. Truman-- hello-- of course I remember you.” Sloane’s brows arched in surprise.  It had been a dozen years since she’d spoken to the Trumans, although she and Penny had been inseparable friends in elementary and middle school.  Even afterwards, when Penny had gone on to attend a private high school, they’d still gotten together for shop-till-you-drop days and sleep-overs.  Then social lives, college applications, and life had kicked in, and they’d eventually grown apart and ultimately lost touch.  But the memories of their antics, their secret codes, and shared adolescence were the kind that lasted forever, like cherished diaries.
“How are you?” Sloane asked.  “And how’s Penny?  Last I heard she was working her way up the editorial ladder at Harper’s Bazaar.”
“Then you don’t know.”
“Know what?”
“That’s why I’m calling.” Mrs. Truman took a deep breath.  “Penny disappeared almost a year ago.”
Sloane’s spine straightened.  “When you say disappeared...”
“I mean vanished into thin air.  Without a trace.  And without a word to Ronald and me.  No contact whatsoever.”
“No contact from Penny-- or from anyone?” Sloane’s trained mind kicked into gear.  The Trumans were wealthy and high-visibility.  Ronald Truman was a renowned cardiologist at Mount Sinai.  He was always making medical headlines.  And recently his self-help books on keeping your heart healthy had topped the bestseller lists.
Making the Trumans ideal candidates for extortion.
“No contact from anyone,” Mrs. Truman was answering.
“You never received a ransom call or note?”
“Never.  And God knows, we waited.  Trust me, Sloane, we went through every channel and considered every option.  Including the unthinkable-- that it was a kidnapping gone wrong.  But Penny’s body was never found.” A shaky sigh.  “I’m aware of how slim the odds are.  It’s been eleven months.  But she’s my daughter.  I can’t let it go.”
“I understand.”
Sloane knew a lot more about the odds than Mrs. Truman did.  And what she knew made her sick.
“I just read the newspaper article about you and the conference you’re speaking at,” Mrs. Truman continued.  “I had no idea you were an FBI agent, or that you’d left to apply your skills as a private consultant.  When I saw those words-- it was the first glimmer of hope I’ve felt in months.  We’ve exhausted all avenues.  I remember what close friends you and Penny were.  You were inseparable for years.  I’m asking you-- no, I’m begging you-- before you leave Manhattan, would you stop by my apartment?  I realize I’m asking a great deal, and with absolutely no notice.  I’m willing to pay anything you ask-- double or triple your normal rates.  I’ll have my driver pick you up at the campus and drop you off there afterwards.  Whatever it takes to...”
“That’s not necessary,” Sloane interrupted.  There were a hundred questions running through her mind.  But this situation had to be probed in person.  “Penny was a big part of my life.  If there’s anything I can do, I’ll do it.  The conference just ended.  I’m in the parking lot with my motor running.  I’ll swing by now, before I head home.”
“God bless you.” There were tears of gratitude in the older woman’s voice.
“What’s your address?”
“One twenty-five East 78th, between Park and Lex.  Apartment 640.”
“I’m on my way.”

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