Exclusive Extra: Advance Excerpt From A MADNESS OF SUNSHINE
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Advance Excerpt from A Madness of Sunshine
by Nalini Singh
The sun’s rays broke completely through the last of the mist as they rose into the air. Will glimpsed a small and curvy woman with blonde-streaked brown hair on the verandah of the estate house, her elegantly boned face lifted to watch the chopper and her hands gripping the railing. She was wearing a red negligee and, despite their distance from the house, the wind from the chopper blades pasted the silk and lace of it against her body, outlining a shape that had driven many a man to his knees.
Then the chopper was up and at an angle that made it impossible to see Keira May any longer. Dismissing Daniel’s wife and Nikau’s obsession, Will raised the binoculars to his eyes and began to scan the landscape. It looked even more unforgiving from up here. Serrated black rocks that thrust up from the sand in huge broken shards, foaming water that took no prisoners, and a wilderness so tangled and thick that it was difficult to see beneath the canopy.
Daniel went down low without prompting, low enough to give Will the best possible chance of spotting a woman lying injured below. The one thing in their favor was Miriama’s bright choice of running gear.
“Did you try on the other side of the whirlpool?”
Will didn’t look away from the trees below, intent on spotting even a hint of hot pink or orange. “What’s on the other side of the whirlpool?”
“A kind of cave formed by the way the rocks fell there,” the other man said, his voice echoing through the headphones. “We used to hang out in it as teenagers—it’s safe at low tide.”
Daniel angled the chopper back over a particularly dense patch of trees so Will could take a second look. “There’s a running trail right above the cave that hardly anyone uses. It was totally overgrown the last time I overflew it, but Miriama likes to run and she’s good at it. Maybe she went there—it’s definitely a more challenging track.”
Will calculated how long Miriama would’ve had to run to get to that spot, knew it was far too long, but they had to check every possible option. Could be she’d been enjoying the run so much she’d gone far beyond her normal distance. “Let’s go.”
From above, the whirlpool looked like the mouth of hell, spilling and crashing and so dark that it felt as if its depths went on forever. Bones cold with the knowledge that if Miriama had fallen anywhere near the dangerous spot, she was gone, Will continued to scan through the binoculars.
But if he hadn’t known to look for the rock formation that formed a cave, he’d have missed it, it was so well camouflaged to match the neighboring rocks. A second later, he realized Daniel wasn’t the only one who’d thought of the spot. A male body stood in front of the stone archway, one hand on the rock.
Nikau.
Though he looked up at the sound of the chopper, Nikau didn’t wave. Instead, he ducked under the stone to disappear inside. “We should focus on the cliffs above,” Will said to Daniel. “Nikau can check out the cave.”
Fine lines bracketing his mouth, Daniel didn’t argue for once. They skimmed along the top edge of the cliffs back to the other side of the whirlpool and, while most of it was tangled growth that hadn’t been disturbed for years, Will did spot what might’ve been a disturbance in one small section. Using his phone, he asked one of the nearby searchers to have a look.
“Definite signs someone stood or walked through here,” the man confirmed. “But it’s not churned up like if Miriama went over the edge.” A small pause. “Almost as if a pig hunter maybe walked out of the trees behind me and came to stand here, look at the view.”
“Okay, leave it as it is,” Will said. “I want to have a look myself.”
Hanging up, Will considered the cave again and frowned. That cave was exactly the kind of secretive and private spot teenagers loved. It should’ve passed from teenage group to teenage group in a town like this, but for whatever reason, it had been abandoned. Forgotten.
It made him wonder what secrets lay within, what secrets tied Daniel to Nikau, Nikau to Anahera.
© Copyright 2019 by Nalini Singh
Preorder: A Madness of Sunshine
USA/Canada (December 3rd, 2019)
Ebook: Apple Books, Kindle, KindlaCa, Kobo, NOOK
Hardcover: Amazon, Amazon.ca, B&N, BookDepo, BAM, Chapters, IndBnd, Penguin, Powells
Audiobook : Amazon, Audible, iTunes -link to follow
International (December 5, 2019)
Ebook: Apple Books, GooglePlay, KindleAu, KindleNZ, KindleUK, Kobo
Print: Amazon.uk, A&R, BookDepo, BkTpa, FshPnd, MtyApe, Waterstones
Audio: Amazon.uk, Audible.uk, iTunes - link to follow
