Danger in Plain Sight is out!

Danger in Plain Sight, book 3 in my Amish Suspense series from HQN Books, is out this week. Here's a taste of it to whet your appetite:


DANGER IN PLAIN SIGHT
By Marta Perry

Prologue

Amish buggies weren’t built for speed. If the men were following her, she couldn’t outrun them.

Esther Zook shivered in the December cold, turning her head to peer behind her, her view cut off by the brim of her bonnet.

Nothing. The township road lay dark and empty behind the buggy...as dark as every farmhouse she’d passed, surrounded by their blankets of snow. Country people went to bed early in the winter, especially the Amish, without electric lights and televisions to keep them awake.

Libby Morgan would be awake, though. If she could get to Libby, everything would be all right. Libby would know what to do.

If only she’d told Libby more in her letters...but Esther hadn’t known, then, just how frightening this was.

The Amish didn’t go to the law. They settled matters among themselves. But the Amish of Spring Township had never dealt with a problem like this before.
Esther had shrunk from putting her suspicions down in black and white, thinking that when Libby returned it would be time enough to seek her advice. But now suspicion had turned to certainty, and she feared she had delayed too long. If they were following her--

Even as she thought it, she heard the roar of an engine behind her. Panic sent her heart racing, she tried to think, tried to pray, but it was too late—too late. The roar turned to a scream, to s crash which deafened her, to total blackness.


Chapter One

It was nice to see someone else’s love life turning out well, especially when her own was such a train wreck, Libby Morgan decided. Now that her big brother Trey was married, Mom could turn her obvious desire for grandchildren to Trey and Jessica and stop asking her only daughter if she’d met anyone special yet.

Libby put down the bridesmaid’s bouquet she’d been clutching for what seemed like hours and picked up her camera instead. She’d discovered long ago that the camera could be useful camouflage. It would help her get through the rest of the wedding reception without, she hoped, too much conversation with people who’d known her from childhood and seemed compelled to try and find out how her life was going.

Then, once the flurry of wedding-related activities were over, she’d be free to dig into the other reason she’d come home to Spring Township, deep in Pennsylvania’s Amish country.

Something is terribly wrong. Esther’s last letter had sounded almost frightened, and Esther Zook, teacher at the local Amish one-room school, didn’t frighten easily. You know the Amish don’t go to the law, but I fear this is one time when we should. I must talk to you as soon as you get home. You know the Englisch world. You’ll be able to tell me if I’m right about this.

Libby snapped off a few shots, more to keep the camera in front of her face than anything else. She hadn’t reached Pennsylvania from San Francisco as early as she’d intended, partly because of the weather, but mainly because of the upset at the newspaper that had led to a final showdown with her boss...final in more ways than one.

Well, maybe she could set up in business as a wedding photographer. She framed Trey and Jessica in the pine-wreathed archway of the Springville Inn’s ballroom, seeming oblivious of everything but each other, and snapped several quick shots.

“No doubt about how those two feel.”

That particular deep male voice, coming from close behind her, made her hands jerk so that she undoubtedly got a great picture of the parquet floor. She turned, arranging a smile on her face. She’d had plenty of practice since fate, in the form of the bride, had paired her with Police Chief Adam Byler for the wedding.

“There isn’t, is there? This is one relationship that’s destined to last.”

As opposed to ours, which lasted for about a minute and a half. That being the case, why did she persist in comparing every man she met to Adam Byler?