ESCAPING REALITY is book one in The Secret Life of Amy
Bensen series and it is now ON SALE for just $1.99 (reg. $7.99)
Get your copy of this sexy, thrilling mystery at the
following retailers:
About the
series: At the young age of eighteen, tragedy and a dark secret force Lara to
flee all she has known and loved to start a new life. Now years later, with a
new identity as Amy, she’s finally dared to believe she is forgotten—even if
she cannot forget. But just when she lets her guard down, the ghosts of her
past are quick to punish her, forcing her back on the run.
Amy…
My name is all that is written on the
plain white envelope taped to the mirror.
I step out of the stall inside the
bathroom of Manhattan’s Metropolitan Museum, and the laughter and joy of the
evening’s charity event I’ve been enjoying fades away. Fear and dread slam into
me, shooting adrenaline through my body. No.
No. No. This cannot be happening and yet it is. It is, and I know what it
means. Suddenly, the room begins to shift and everything goes gray. I fight the
flashback I haven’t had in years, but I am already right there in it, in the
middle of a nightmare. The scent of smoke burns my nose. The sound of
blistering screams shreds my nerves. There is pain and heartache, and the loss
of all I once had and will never know again. Fighting a certain meltdown, I
swallow hard and shove away the gut-wrenching memories. I can’t let this
happen. Not here, not in a public place. Not when I’m quite certain danger is
knocking on my door.
On wobbly knees and four-inch black
strappy heels that had made me feel sexy only minutes before and clumsy now, I
step forward and press my palms to the counter. I can’t seem to make myself
reach for the envelope and my gaze goes to my image in the mirror, to my long
white-blond hair I’ve worn draped around my shoulders tonight rather than tied
at my nape, and done so as a proud reflection of the heritage of my Swedish
mother I’m tired of denying. Gone too are the dark-rimmed glasses I’ve often
used to hide the pale blue eyes both of my parents had shared, making it too
easy for me to see the empty shell of a person I’ve become. If this is what I
am at twenty-four years old, what I will be like at thirty-four?
Voices sound outside the doorway and I
yank the envelope from the mirror and rush into the stall, sealing myself
inside. Still chatting, two females enter the bathroom, and I tune out their
gossip about some man they’d admired at the party. I suddenly need to confirm
my fate. Leaning against the wall, I open the sealed envelope to remove a plain
white note card and a key drops to the floor that looks like it goes to a
locker. Cursing my shaking hand, I bend down and scoop it up. For a moment, I
can’t seem to stand up. I want to be strong. I have to be strong. I shove to my feet and blink away the burning
sensation in my eyes to read the few short sentences typed on the card.
I’ve
found you and so can they. Go to JFK Airport directly. Do not go home. Do not
linger. Locker 111 will have everything you need.
My heart thunders in my chest as I take
in the signature that is nothing more than a triangle with some writing inside
of it. It’s the tattoo that had been worn on the arm of the stranger who I’d
met only once before. He’d saved my life and helped me restart my life, and
he’d made sure I knew that symbol meant that I am in danger and I have to run.
I squeeze my eyes shut, fighting a wave
of emotions. Once again, my life is about to be turned upside down. Once again
I will lose everything, and while everything is so much less than before, it’s
all I have. I crumble the note in my hand, desperate to make it, and this hell
that is my reality, go away. After six years of hiding, I’d dared to believe I
could find “normal”, but that was a mistake. Deep down, I’ve known that since
two months ago when I’d left my job at the central library as a research
assistant, to work at the museum. Being here is treading water too close to the
bridge.
I straighten and listen as the women’s
voices fade before the room goes silent. Anger erupts inside me at the idea
that my life is about to be stolen from me again and I tear the note in tiny
pieces, flush them down the toilet and shove the envelope into the trash. I
want to throw away the key too, but some part of me won’t let that happen.
Probably the smart, unemotional part of me that I hate right now.
Unzipping the small black purse I have
strapped across my chest and over my pale blue blazer, that despite my tight
budget, I’d splurged on for this new job, I drop the key inside, sealing it
away. I’m going to finish my party. Maybe I’m going to finish my life right
here in New York City. The note didn’t say I’d been found. It only warned I
could be found. I don’t want to run again. I don’t. I need time to think, to
process, and that is going to have to wait until after the party.
Decision made, I exit the stall, cutting
my eyes away from the mirror and heading for the door. I do not want anyone to
see me right now when I have no idea who me is or will be tomorrow. In a zone,
that numb place I’ve used as a survival tool almost as many times as I’ve tried
to find the meaning of that symbol on the note, I follow the soft hum of
orchestra music from well-placed speakers, entering a room with a high oval
ceiling decorated with magnificent artwork. I tell myself to get lost in the
crush of patrons in business attire, while waiters toting trays offer champagne
and finger foods, but I don’t. I simply stand there, mourning the new life I’ve
just begun, and I know is now gone. My “zone” has failed me.
“Where have you been?”
The question comes as Chloe Monroe, the
only person I’ve let myself consider a friend in years, steps in front of me, a
frown on her heart-shaped face. From her dark brown curls bouncing around her
shoulders to her outgoing personality and fun, flirty attitude, she is my polar
opposite and I love that about her. She is everything I am not and hoped I
would become. Now I will lose her. Now I will lose me again.
“Well,” she prods when I don’t reply
quickly enough, shoving her hands onto her hips, “where have you been?”
“Bathroom,” I say. “There was a line.” I
sound awkward. I feel awkward. I hate how easily the lie comes to me, how it
defines me. A lie is all that I am.
Chloe’s brow puckers. “Hmmm. There wasn’t
one when I was there. I guess I got lucky.” She waves off the thought. “Sabrina
is freaking out over some donation paperwork she can’t find and says she needs
you. I thought you were doing research When did you start handling donor
paperwork?”
“Last week, when she got overwhelmed,” I
say, and perk up at the idea that my new boss needs me. I don’t need to leave.
I need to be needed even if it’s just
for tonight. “Where is she?”
“By the front desk.” She laces her arm
through mine. “And I’m tagging along with you. I have a sixty-year-old admirer
who’s bordering on stalker. I need to hide before he hunts me down.”
She tugs me forward, and I let her, too
distracted by her words to stop her. She’s worried about being hunted but I am the one being hunted. I thought I
wasn’t anymore. I thought I was safe, but I am never safe, and neither is
anyone around me. I’ve lived that first hand. I felt that heartache of loss,
and while being alone sucks, losing someone you care about is far worse.
My selfishness overwhelms me and I stop
dead in my tracks to pull Chloe around to face me. “Tell Sabrina I’m grabbing
the forms and will be right there.”
“Oh. Yes okay.” Chloe lets go of my arm,
and for a moment I fight the urge to hug her, but that would make her seem
important to me, and someone could be watching. I turn away from her and rush
for a door, and I feel sick to my stomach knowing that I will never see her
again.
I finally exit the side of the building
into the muggy August evening, and head for a line of cabs, but I do not rush
or look around me. I’ve learned ways to avoid attention, and going to work for
a place that has a direct link to the world I’d left behind hadn’t been one of
them. It had simply been a luxury I’m now paying for.
“JFK Airport,” I pant as I slide into the
back of a cab, and rub the back of my neck at a familiar prickling sensation. A
feeling I’d had often my first year on my own, when I’d been certain danger
waited for me around every corner. Hunted.
I’m being hunted. All the denial I own won’t change my reality.
* * * * *
The ride to the airport is thirty minutes
and it takes me another fifteen to find locker 111 once I’m inside the
building. I pull it open and there is a carry-on-sized roller suitcase and a
smaller brown leather shoulder bag with a large yellow envelope sticking up
from inside the open zipper. I have no desire to be watched while I explore
what’s been left for me. I remove the locker’s contents, and follow the sign
that indicates a bathroom.
Once again in a stall, I pull down the
baby changer and check the contents of the envelope on top. There is file
folder, a bank card, a cell phone, a passport, a notecard, and another small
sealed envelope. I reach for the note first.
There is
cash in the bank account and the code is 1850. I’ll add more as you need it and
until you get fully settled. You’ll find a new social security card, driver’s
license, and passport as well. You have a complete history to memorize and a
résumé and job history that will check out if looked into. Throw out your cell
phone. The new one is registered under your new name and address. There’s a
plane ticket and the keys to an apartment along with a location. Toss all
identification and don’t use your bank account or credit cards. Be smart. Don’t
link yourself to your past. Stay away from museums this time.
A new name. That’s what stands out to me.
I’m getting another new name. No. No.
No. My heart races at the idea. I don’t want another new name. Even more than I
don’t want to be back on the run, I don’t
want another new name. I feel like a girl having her hair chopped off. I’m
losing part of myself. After living a lie for years, I’m losing the only part
of my fake identity I’d ever really accepted as me.
I grab the passport and flip it open and
my hand trembles at the sight of a photo that is a present-day me. How did this
stranger I met only one time in my life get a picture of me this recent? It
doesn’t matter I’d once considered him my Guardian Angel. I’m freaked out by
this. Has he been watching me all this time? I shiver at the idea, and my only
comfort is my new name. I’m now Amy Bensen rather than Amy Reynolds. I’m still
Amy. It is the one piece of good news in all of this and I cling to it, using
it to stave off the meltdown I feel coming. I just have to hold it together
until I get on the plane. Then I can sink into my seat and think myself into my
“zone” that I can’t seem to fully find.
Flipping open the folder, I find an
airline ticket. I’m going to Denver and I leave in an hour. I’ve never been
anywhere but Texas and New York. All I know about Denver is it’s big, cold, and
the next place I will pretend is home when I have no home. The thought makes my
chest pinch, but fear of what might await me if I don’t run pushes me past it.
I turn off my cell phone so it won’t ping
and stuff it, with everything but my new ID and plane ticket, back into the
envelope. I have my own money in the bank and I’m not about to get rid of my
identification and access to that resource. Besides, the idea of using a bank
card that allows me to be tracked bothers me. I’ll be visiting the bank
tomorrow and removing any cash I can get my hands on. When I’d been eighteen,
naive and alone, I’d blindly trusted a stranger I’d called my Guardian Angel. I
might have to trust him now too, but it won’t be blindly.
Making my way to check in, I fumble
through using the ticket machine and my new identification and then track a
path to security. A few minutes later, I’m on the other side of the metal
detectors and I stop at a store to buy random things I might need. All is going
well until I arrive at the ticket counter.
“I’m so sorry, Ms. Bensen,” the
forty-something woman begins. “We had an administrative error and seats were
double-booked. We—”
“I have to be on this flight,” I say in a
hissed whispered with my heart in my throat. “I have to be on this flight.”
“I can get you a voucher and the first
flight tomorrow.”
“No. No. Tonight. Give someone a bigger
voucher to get me a seat.”
“I—”
“Talk to a supervisor,” I insist, because
while avoiding attention means I am not a pushy person, and despite my initial
denial of my circumstances that might suggest otherwise, I have no death wish.
I am alive and plan to stay that way.
She purses her lips and looks like she
might argue, but finally she turns away and makes a path toward a man in
uniform. Their heads dip low and he glances at me before the woman returns. “We
have you on standby and we’ll try to get you on.”
“How likely is it you’ll get me on?”
“We’re going to try.”
“Try how hard?”
Her lips purse again. “Very.”
I let out a sigh of relief. “Thank you.
And I’m sorry. I have a…crisis of sorts. I really have to get to my
destination.” There is a thread of desperation to my voice I do not contain
well.
Her expression softens and I know she
heard it. “I understand and I am sorry
this happened,” she assures me. “We are trying to make this right and so you
don’t panic please know that we have to get everyone boarded before we make any
passenger changes. You’ll likely be the last on the plane.”
“Thanks,” I say, feeling awkward. “I’ll
just go sit.” Definitely flustered, I turn away from the counter. Ignoring the
few vacant seats, I head to the window and settle my bags on the floor beside
me. Leaning against the steel handrail on the glass, I position myself to see
everyone around me to be sure I’m prepared for any problem before it’s on me.
And that’s when the room falls away, when my gaze collides withhis.
He is sitting in a seat that faces me,
one row between us, his features handsomely carved, his dark hair a thick,
rumpled finger temptation. He’s dressed in faded jeans and a dark blue t-shirt,
but he could just as easily be wearing a finely fitted suit and tie. He is
older than me, maybe thirty, but there is a worldliness, a sense of control and
confidence, about him that reaches beyond years. He is money, power, and sex,
and while I cannot make out the color of his eyes, I don’t need to. All that
matters is that he is one hundred percent focused on me, and me on him. A
moment ago I was alone in a crowd and suddenly, I’m with him. As if the space
between us is nothing. I tell myself to look away, that everyone is a potential
threat, but I just…can’t.
His eyes narrow the tiniest bit, and then
his lips curve ever so slightly and I am certain I see satisfaction slide over
his face. He knows I cannot look away. I’ve become his newest conquest, of
which I am certain he has many, and I’ve embarrassingly done so without one
single moan of pleasure in the process.
“Inviting our first-class guests to board
now,” a female voice says over the intercom.
I blink and my new, hmmm, whatever he is,
pushes to his feet and slides a duffle onto his shoulder. His eyes hold mine, a
hint of something in them I can’t quite make out. Challenge, I think.
Challenge? What kind of challenge? I don’t have time to figure it out. He turns
away, and just like that I’m alone again.
SERIES READING ORDER & SALE LINKS
Escaping Reality #1
Infinite Possibilities #2 (Available
NOW!)
PRE-ORDER BOOKS 3 & 4 NOW!
Forsaken #3 (8/18/15)
Unbroken #4 (9/7/15)
Watch the video on casting for the INSIDE TV Show HERE
Since beginning her publishing career in 2007, Lisa has published more than 40 books translated around the world. Booklist says that Jones suspense truly sizzles with an energy similar to FBI tales with a paranormal twist by Julie Garwood or Suzanne Brockmann.
Prior to publishing, Lisa owned multi-state staffing agency that was recognized many times by The Austin Business Journal and also praised by Dallas Women Magazine. In 1998 LRJ was listed as the #7 growing women owned business in Entrepreneur Magazine.
Lisa loves to hear from her readers. You can reach her at on her website and she is active on twitter and facebook daily.
