Yesterday my bestselling technothriller THE RIVER went on a 3-day FREE promotion, which is over at midnight April 25. This novel recently made Amazon's Top 100 Bestselling Kindle ebooks list and outsold many works by some of my favorite authors.
The South Nahanni River has a history of mysterious deaths, disappearances and headless corpses, but it may also hold the key to humanity’s survival―or its destruction.
Seven years ago, Del Hawthorne’s father and three of his friends disappeared near the Nahanni River and were presumed dead. When one of the missing men stumbles onto the University grounds, alive but barely recognizable and aging before her eyes, Del is shocked. Especially when the man tells her something inconceivable. Her father is still alive!
Gathering a group of volunteers, Del travels to the Nahanni River to rescue her father. There, she finds a secret underground river that plunges her into a technologically advanced world of nanobots and painful serums. Del uncovers a conspiracy of unimaginable horror, a plot that threatens to destroy us all. Will humanity be sacrificed for the taste of eternal life?
Here's an excerpt...
PART ONE
Undercurrents
I want to know the
thoughts of God;
The rest are details.
~ Albert Einstein
One
She always leads with her heart,” a voice croaked.
Startled by
the interruption, Professor
Del Hawthorne lifted her head and
gasped, shocked.
What the―?
A man stood
in the doorway to her classroom, panting for breath. He was in his late
seventies and wore a grimy suede jacket over a once-pristine white dress shirt.
The shirt was torn and stained with what looked suspiciously like dried blood.
The man’s tailored black pants were ripped from the knees down.
He stumbled
inside and slammed the door.
Del threw a warning look at Peter Cavanaugh,
her young anthropology protégé. Rising slowly from her desk, she faced the old
man.
“Can I help
you, sir?”
His stringy
gray hair covered part of his face and was in desperate need of a shampoo and
cut. His mottled, creviced skin reminded her of weathered cedar bark. But it
was the man’s glazed yet vaguely familiar eyes that made her heart skip a beat.
Did she know
him?
“Sir?”
The man’s
eyes flashed dangerously. “She always leads with her heart!”
Del gulped in a breath.
It wasn’t
every day that she heard her father’s favorite saying―especially when it wasn’t
her father saying it. Instead, the words were coming from a man who looked like
he had escaped from the psych ward.
How the hell did he make it past security?
She looked
at her watch. Damn!
After six o’clock, security was reduced to
two men on the Anthropology wing. And they were probably on rounds or at the
snack machine.
She glanced
at Peter.
The young
man was terrified. He stood motionless at the far end of the room, his head
drooping against his chest.
“Campus
security will be here soon,” he said quietly.
The man
turned half-closed eyes toward Peter. “Who’s
that?”
Del took a hesitant step forward. She rested her hands at the edge of
her desk, careful not to draw the man’s attention.
Where’s the damn button?
Security had
installed silent alarm buttons underneath the lip of every faculty member’s
desk. Times had changed. Schools, colleges and universities had become common
targets of deranged psychopaths hell-bent on murder.
She pushed
the button and drew in a breath, praying desperately that it wasn’t the case
today. “Security will be here any minute.”
The old
man’s head whipped around, his eyes pleading. “Don’t you recognize me?”
“Should I?”
Whatever
reaction she was expecting to see, didn’t prepare her for the one she got.
Instead of answering her question, the man slumped to the floor, babbling
incoherently. His right hand reached shakily into the folds of the jacket.
She stabbed repeatedly
at the alarm button.
Where the hell is security?
Terrified, she
saw the man pull something bulky from his jacket.
A gun?
Suddenly,
two armed security guards rushed into the room.
Then all
hell broke loose.
One minute, she
was standing behind her desk. The next, she was on the floor―with Peter Cavanaugh
on top of her.
She waited,
holding her breath, expecting shots of gunfire. But there were none. Instead,
she heard scuffling sounds and a few grunts.
Finally, one
of the guards called out. “We got him, Professor.”
She heaved a
sigh of relief.
“You okay?” Peter asked, his boy-next-door face bare inches from
hers.
She groaned.
“Uh, Mr. Cavanaugh? Security has him under control,
so you can get off me now. You’re crushing me.”
Peter turned a delicious shade of lobster red.
“Didn’t want
you to get shot,” he mumbled, helping her to her feet.
She brushed
herself off, then glanced toward the door.
The guards dragged
the intruder out into the hall.
That’s when she
heard the man shout, “Delly! It’s me!”
Only one
person in the world had ever called her ‘Delly’.
“Wait!”
She ran toward
the old man.
“I’ve seen
it,” he hissed, his eyes wild. “I’ve seen the future…not human…monsters!”
“Professor Schroeder?”
she whispered. “Is that you?”
The old
man’s gaze locked on her. “You have to stop the Director, Delly!”
A shiver
raced up her spine. “Director of what? Professor, we thought you were dead.
You, my dad, the other men…”
Schroeder
leaned closer, tears welling in his eyes. “They’re going to kill your father,
Delly.”
“He-he’s
alive?”
“For now.
The little bastards have him. You have to destroy the cell. I know how to get
in. To the secret river. I know how to get in…and out.”
“Professor Hawthorne,”
one of the guards said. “We have to take him downstairs.”
Halfway down
the hall, Schroeder’s head whipped around.
“Follow your
heart, Delly. And remember…only one!”
The guards half-dragged
him into the elevator.
“Professor Schroeder!”
she yelled. “What are you talking about?”
His dull
brown eyes flared like a trapped fox, wild and feral.
“It’s all in
the book. Destroy the cell, Delly. Find the river and stop the Director before
he destroys humanity.”
The elevator
doors hissed shut.
Del leaned against the wall outside her classroom. Her legs ached and
vibrated. When her vision wavered, she closed her eyes and welcomed the
darkness.
They’re going to kill him, Delly.
Was her
father really alive?
Someone called
her name. Peter.
He stood
beside her, clutching something to his chest. Whatever it was, he gripped it as
though he were holding the treasures of the Egyptian Pharaohs.
“He dropped
this,” he said, handing her a book. “It’s what the old guy was reaching for.
You gonna be alright, Professor?”
She nodded.
“See you tomorrow, Peter.”
Del returned to her empty classroom, firmly closing and locking the
door behind her. She made it across the room before her legs gave out. Dropping
into a chair, she took a few deep breaths, then she picked up the leather-bound
book that Peter had given her.
The cover
was stained, partially missing. There was nothing on it except for an embossed
symbol that was hard to make out.
Perhaps a cross.
She traced
what was left of it with one finger.
Professor Schroeder, what happened to you?
Arnold
Schroeder was a renowned genius in anthropology. Whenever he had visited Del’s father, which was
often, he would take Del
under his wing and teach her something new. He was the reason she was teaching
anthropology at the University
of British Columbia. Schroeder
had been her idol.
Other than Dad, of course.
Del carefully opened the journal, her fingertips barely grazing it.
She flipped the pages, reading sentences here and there, trying to make sense
of Schroeder’s notes. Most of the entries in the journal appeared to be written
in some kind of code and they were next to impossible to decipher. She was
about to put the book down when a name jumped from the page.
Dr. Lawrence V. Hawthorne.
Just below
her father’s name, a date was scribbled.
January 2001.
Her hand
began to shake.
2001?
She yanked
open a drawer and rifled through it.
Finally, she
found what she was looking for―a photograph taken seven years ago. Back in
1998. In it, her father and Professor
Schroeder stood side by side
wearing jeans, t-shirts and silly fishing hats. They had infectious grins on
their faces, probably laughing at some private joke. The photo had been taken
the day that her father, Schroeder and two associates had left for ‘the adventure of a lifetime’.
In the
summer of ‘98, a new intern at Bio-Tec
Canada, the
company Del’s
father worked for, suggested a summer rafting excursion down the Nahanni River in the Northwest Territories. The intern seduced
him with native legends about veins of undiscovered gold, and headless
skeletons and corpses lining the banks of the river. Her father became consumed
by the idea of exploring one of Canada’s
most spectacular sights, and he convinced Schroeder and his boss to accompany
them.
The four men
went missing three days later.
A search
party was sent down the Nahanni, and the investigators discovered a headless
skeleton a few miles downriver from Virginia
Falls. Most of the flesh
had been consumed by wild animals and the bones were badly decayed, but a
forensics expert was able to identify the body.
It was Neil Parnitski,
CEO of Bio-Tec Canada.
There was no
sign of Del’s
father…or the other men.
A week later,
the search party found a bloody shirt on the shore and scalp tissue embedded
into a rock. DNA tests showed that most of the blood matched her father’s, while
the scalp tissue was Schroeder’s. The investigators also said that based on the
amount of blood found at the scene, even a doctor couldn’t have survived
without medical attention. Six months later, the investigation was closed, the
missing men presumed dead.
Del stroked the photograph of her father.
He’s a dead man.
Schroeder’s
words echoed in her mind, and she was unable to shake the doomed sensation that
crept under her skin and invaded every pore.
She stared
out the window into the darkening night sky, remembering the day her mother had
told her that her father was presumed dead, months after his disappearance. She
recalled the funeral a week later, and remembered standing in the pouring rain at
the edge of the gaping hole as an empty casket was lowered into the muddy ground.
The funeral had been three days before her twenty-fifth birthday―a birthday
that came and went without any fanfare.
Del never celebrated her birthday anymore. Too many memories.
Now, staring
at her father’s picture, the overwhelming grief she had felt seven years ago
came back with a vengeance.
They’re going to kill him, Delly.
It was past eight o’clock when Del reached her small house in Port Coquitlam. Parking her
car under the carport, she grabbed her briefcase and went inside.
“Honey, I’m
ho-ome!”
An
overweight, one-eared, brown-tinged Siamese darted toward her and anxiously
rubbed up against her leg, mewing mournfully at the same time.
“Oh, Kayber!
You act like I never feed you.”
She had
found the cat in her backyard five months ago. He was bruised and scratched,
his right ear hanging by a piece of skin. He looked like he had been in a
barroom brawl―and lost. She had adopted him on the spot.
Although,
she often wondered if it weren’t the other way around.
Tossing her
briefcase on the couch, she returned to the kitchen, poured some cat kibble
into a dish and set it on the floor. Then she sat on the couch, picking at a
bowl of leftover macaroni casserole and sipping vanilla tea.
Her gaze drifted
over the photographs on the mantle of the brick fireplace and dozens of
memories raced through her mind. Memories of good times, happy times. Times
when her father was alive―before he disappeared and left a dark void in her
life.
She slid the
bowl of half-eaten casserole onto the coffee table and pulled the journal from
her briefcase. She leafed through the book, stopping when she came to a page
filled with unfamiliar words, abbreviations, numbers and symbols.
NB…resistant to…≠
DC #02541-87654-18 prov. base….BSC &
syn. CSF in
V. saline…gn.
She found
several references to her father but couldn’t make out the content. A few pages
in, the journal lapsed into page after page of numerical code. An hour went by
and she was only one-third into it when she found an odd entry.
Bio-T Can…key!
She hissed
in a breath.
Bio-Tec Canada?
Her father
had worked for Bio-Tec. Why was that in Schroeder’s notes? Other than her
father, Neil
Parnitski and the intern,
Schroeder had never had any contact with anyone else at Bio-Tec. He was an
anthropologist. Bio-Tec was a research company exploring biotechnology.
Del was baffled.
She pushed
the journal aside and flicked the remote control in the direction of the CD
player. As Alexia Melnychuk’s smooth voice filled the room, Del stretched out on the couch and closed
her eyes.
Kayber,
having wolfed down his food, immediately took this as an invitation and jumped
up on her stomach. All twenty-two pounds of him.
“What is it
with males jumping on top of me today?”
As she
thought of Peter
Cavanaugh with his Tobey
Maguire-like face, a smile formed on her lips. Peter
was in his first year of studies, but he had missed too many classes due to an
ailing grandmother, which resulted in an ‘incomplete’
on the regular one-year course. That was why he was taking her summer class.
Ten years
younger, he was an embarrassingly shy kid, a bit of a loner―except when he was
around Del. He
had a severe crush on her. She knew it. Hell, everyone knew it. Half the
faculty thought she was sleeping with him. But she wasn’t. She wasn’t a cougar. She didn’t go after younger men.
Unlike her mother.
Del unceremoniously pushed Kayber aside, then reached for the phone
and dialed her mother’s number. After several rings, someone picked up.
“Yeah?
Wh-who’s this?”
Ken, her mother’s newest conquest and third husband, had been
drinking again.
That’s what you get when you marry a nightclub owner.
“Is my
mother there?”
“What ya want
her for?”
“Just put
her on, Ken.”
She listened
while her mother’s husband stumbled through the house. He swore loudly after he
dropped the phone. She swore too as the sound reverberated into her ear.
“Hello?”
Jesus! What’s taking him so long? Did he pass out?
She waited,
listening to faint shuffling sounds. She was about to hang up when her mother’s
cool voice greeted her.
“Maureen Walton
speaking.”
“Hi, it’s
me.”
“Who?”
“It’s
Delila, Mother.”
God forbid if you forget to introduce yourself!
She couldn’t
believe that her mother was still playing that
game. The woman lived for formality. Proper manners and etiquette, shaking
hands, addressing elders by their surnames and owning a house that was treated
like a show home. It was all part of her mother’s attempt to become the next Miss Manners.
Or, God forbid, Martha
Stewart.
“Delila, I
haven’t heard from you in weeks. Why haven’t you come to visit us?”
Del cringed, remembering the last time she had visited. The time Ken tried to cop a feel when she passed him in the
hall.
“I’ve been
busy.”
“Too busy to
visit your own mother?”
Great! Here it comes.
“When you
were sick with the flu, was I too
busy to bring you some magazines?”
Her mother’s
voice was tinged with disapproval.
“And when
you went away with Tyler
or whatever his name is, was I too busy
to feed that filthy animal?”
Del held the receiver away from her ear and threw Kayber a rueful
look. “She’s never going to forgive you for peeing in her shoes.”
She gave her
mother a few minutes to vent, then drew the phone back to her ear.
What could
she possibly say that would shut the woman up?
“Dad’s alive.”
A sharp gasp
on the other end was followed by silence.
“Well, that
worked,” she said dryly to Kayber who was busy grooming himself.
She pressed
her ear against the receiver.
Dead air.
“Are you
there, Mother?”
“Of course,
Delila. Now what’s this nonsense about your father?”
“I had a
visitor today. Professor
Schroeder.”
“Arnold?
But that’s not possible, dear. They found a piece of his head.”
“His scalp.”
“What?”
Del gritted her teeth. “They found a piece of his scalp, Mother. And a bit of hair. That’s
all.”
“Well, whatever.
He was dead and buried along with Neil,
Vern and your father six years ago.”
Del resisted the urge to correct her again. It had been seven years.
“Vern?”
“Yes, dear.
The young man, your father’s assistant or whatever he was. At least I think his
name was Vern. Or maybe it was Victor…”
Her mother’s
voice dwindled away, lost in thought.
“Professor Schroeder
says that Dad is alive. He gave me a journal. It has some strange notes in it,
Dad’s name―”
“Arnold
always was a bit of an odd duck, Delila. I wouldn’t take too much that man said
seriously. God only knows where he’s been.”
“I’m going to
bring him back, Mother.”
There was a
pause on the other end.
“Arnold?”
“No. I’m
going after Dad.”
“You can’t
be serious, Delila. He’s dead!”
“I am serious. I’m bringing Dad home.”
She hung up,
feeling both relieved and irritated.
Why was her
mother so heartless? Her parents had been married nearly thirty years. Didn’t
that count for anything? Didn’t the woman care that her husband might still be
alive? Or was it that her mother didn’t want her perfect little life to come
crashing down?
Del scowled.
She was the
first to admit she certainly wasn’t an expert on relationships. Look how long
it took her to realize that TJ was screwing around on her. He had moved into
her house and her heart.
Then he
betrayed both.
She would
never forget the day she came home early, barely able to walk and yearning for
her bed―only to find that it was otherwise occupied.
Her
neighbor, Julie
Adams, had always been asking
whether the rumors about a black man’s libido and the size of a specific part
of his anatomy were true. Now Julie
knew.
Del had kicked TJ out on his ass that same day.
She shrugged
off the dark mood that threatened to engulf her and gave Kayber a quick pat on
the head. With the journal and briefcase in her hands, she walked to the large
second bedroom that doubled as an office. She flicked on the lamp and was immediately
greeted by a pile of final summer exams that screamed to be marked.
Turning a
deaf ear, she nudged them aside, opened her briefcase and pulled out an empty
notebook. She wrote a reminder at the top of the first page.
Find out where Schroeder is. Go see him!
Then she
began to translate Schroeder’s journal.
An hour
later, she gave up trying to make sense of the scribbled notes and strange
numerical code. When she finally crawled into bed after marking the exams, it
was after midnight.
She lay in
the dark, the flicker of shadows moving through her room. She pictured her
father as she remembered him. Tall, with golden brown hair and rich brown eyes.
He was always happy, always smiling.
She closed
her eyes, her lashes damp with unshed tears.
I’m coming for you, Dad...
THE RIVER, an international bestselling technothriller by Cheryl Kaye Tardif
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