Finding Ruby Draker by Marianne Scott - #BlogTour #Extract

 

I am delighted to be able to bring you an extract from Finding Ruby Draker by Marianne Scott, as part of the blog tour.

The Blurb

Kathleen Jones has lived a protected and typical suburban life, nothing unexpected in her carefully controlled and planned existence. She’s about to complete her college degree and is ready to start a successful career but after completing her last exam she comes home to find her world has been turned upside down. Her home has been torched and her parents and little brother killed. If that’s not bad enough, she is kidnapped and drugged unconscious by strangers posing as police officers. When she awakes she discovers that everything has changed – her face, her name, and everything she believed to be true. But things get worse. Hardly recovered from surgery, she is whisked away under the cover of darkness as more men storm the clinic with guns. It seems that the men who abducted her are not her greatest threat. Now on a private charter on its way to Nice, France, her abductors are calling her Ruby – Ruby Draker! 

Extract

It all ended with a fire that took away my parents, my little brother, and everything I was or ever knew. That part of me is gone, but now and then I’m haunted by brief incomplete memories that fade away as quickly as they appeared.

The day was otherwise unexceptional except for the fact that I was very happy knowing that I was going to have my last final exam ever that morning. My internship would start in the fall and I was looking forward to this next phase of my life.

Earlier that morning, I did some times tables with my brother before he went off to school, then cleaned my room, promised my mom I’d pick up her stuff at Rite Aid, and started out toward the city. I had Pink blasting on the car radio and I was amped and ready to conquer Soc. Neuroscience at 11 a.m. Wouldn’t you know it, when I got to the room and saw that they’d switched the time to 2 p.m. due to ‘last minute problems with the lighting’ according to the sign posted on the door, I just kept cool. I went and got my mom’s things and made it back with lots of time to double-check my notes.

Finally, when my exam was done, I burst from the building onto Broadway into the warm spring air. It had gone well; I was sure I’d aced it. I could have cared less if there was traffic, or if Brittany still hadn’t called about shopping tomorrow, or if the stoned wierdo weaving through the lanes of cars, dancing with his eyes closed to the honking horns, was holding things up. I was going to celebrate with my family.