Stutter Creek is a story about love lost and found. Or maybe found again would be a better description. Factor in a serial killer, a huge guard dog, and a needy child, and you have most of the story. In the following excerpt, you will meet Turk, the dog. Oh, you'll meet John, his owner, too. John, a recently retired private bodyguard, is actually the "old flame" for whom Beth was searching.
Ahh, don't you just love a man who loves his dog?
Excerpt from Stutter Creek:
The last time, when the government liaison had said it was time to vacate, John and his crew had made a last minute sweep through the complex to make sure everyone was out. That’s when a stray bullet came through the window and took out most of Turk’s right shoulder.
Turk was always with them, he took his job as protector very seriously. Just like any good law enforcement K-9, he had been trained to take down suspects, and search through buildings.
There were a few differences between Turk and regular German police dogs, however. For starters, his breed originated in Turkey. They were originally bred for guarding livestock and they loved their jobs. In fact, if they didn’t have something to guard, they could become aggressive and hard to handle.
But that wasn’t the only difference between Anatolian Shepherds and most other guard dogs. Size was their most defining feature. That’s what made them so intimidating. Standing nearly thirty inches at the shoulder, Turk weighed just shy of one hundred fifty pounds. His short, thick fur was the color of buckskin, his ears and muzzle were black, and his lively brown eyes bespoke an intelligence far superior to that of the average dog, police or otherwise. When happy or standing at attention, his long fuzzy tail curled over his back like a question mark, as if to say, “Okay, I’m ready. What next?” Turk was always game for anything. If unregistered dogs had middle names, Courage would have been his.
Back in Kazakhstan, in the chaos of the battle that had sprung up outside the office complex, the smart thing would have been to leave the injured dog and run for the chopper. Smart, however, didn’t factor in the pleading brown eyes that fastened on John’s as the dog began dragging itself toward the landing pad. Turk knew the drill, when the shooting starts, it’s time to bug out, just like they’d done so many times before.
With only a split second to decide, John had scooped up the bloody mass of bone and fur on the run. He’d then grabbed a coworker’s hand and would have pulled him from the open chopper door if he hadn’t helped to hoist the big Shepherd inside first. John jumped in when the bird was already two or three feet off the ground. Fortunately, there was a private doctor at the company headquarters who owed John a huge favor—John had been his bodyguard on several occasions. He took care of the wound and made sure the dog was comfortable on the company’s private jet. Then he gave John a giant-size bottle of canine antibiotics and wished him luck.
Now (at home in New Mexico), John let Turk down gently, making sure not to jar the still-stiff shoulder. It would probably always require cortisone shots to keep from freezing up; but John thought it was a small price to pay for such a remarkably close call.
Stutter Creek
Ann Swann
5 Prince Publishing
She went looking for an old flame
and found a serial killer instead.
Following her
father’s death and the collapse of her marriage, Beth retreats to the family
cabin at Stutter Creek where she stumbles across the path of a serial killer
and winds up fighting to stay alive.
Book 2 ~ Lilac Lane
~ coming in July! Watch for excerpt next week.
$2.99
Buy in Print $11.95
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