Nowhere to Run

Nowhere to Run
Valerie Hansen

RUN AND DON'T STOP! Those were her former boyfriend's last words. Before the thugs he associated with murdered him in cold blood. Now they're after Marie Parnell. She flees with her five-year-old daughter–until car trouble strands her in Serenity, Arkansas. The handsome mechanic who promises to get her back on the road is suspicious–and purposely slow.With nowhere to turn and nowhere left to run, Marie tells Seth Whitfield everything. About her past, about finding faith, about how safe she feels with him. He vows to protect her and her child. But Seth isn't exactly who he says he is….

“I thought there might be something you wanted to tell me. Like why you’re so scared and what you’re running away from.”

Seth laid his hand gently over hers. “Maybe I can help you.”

Marie shook her head. “Just fix my car so Patty and I can get out of this town,” she said with a quiver in her voice. “Believe me, you don’t want to get involved.”

“I’m already involved,” Seth countered. “Let me help.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. But I can’t help unless you let me in on your secrets.”

“Either you read a lot of mystery novels or you’ve had personal experience with this kind of thing.”

When he didn’t answer, Marie studied his face. She didn’t want to place anyone else in jeopardy, but she desperately needed an ally.

“All right,” she finally said. “But the less you know, the better off you’ll be….”

VALERIE HANSEN

was thirty when she awoke to the presence of the Lord in her life and turned to Jesus. In the years that followed she worked with young children, both in church and secular environments. She also raised a family of her own and played foster mother to a wide assortment of furred and feathered critters.

Married to her high school sweetheart since age seventeen, she now lives in an old farmhouse she and her husband renovated with their own hands. She loves to hike the wooded hills behind the house and reflect on the marvelous turn her life has taken. Not only is she privileged to reside among the loving, accepting folks in the breathtakingly beautiful Ozark mountains of Arkansas, she also gets to share her personal faith by telling the stories of her heart for Steeple Hill Books.

Life doesn’t get much better than that!

Valerie Hansen

Nowhere to Run

The Lord holds victory in store for the upright, he is a shield to those whose walk is blameless, for he guards the course of the just and protects the way of his faithful ones.

—Proverbs 2:7-8

This book is dedicated to computer gurus and dear

friends, Judy and Larry Vierstra, and to others in their

family who also advised me regarding the Internet.

Left to my own devices, I’d still be writing with a

pencil and using two tin cans with a string stretched

between them to communicate!

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

EPILOGUE

QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

ONE

It took a lot to frighten Marie Parnell—unless the perceived danger affected her five-year-old daughter, Patty. That changed everything.

Trembling, she peered out the front window of her Baton Rouge apartment to see who was pounding on the door and shouting her name. It hadn’t been her imagination. Roy Jenkins was back. Her nightmares had come to life.

Marie froze, her brown eyes wide. She could hardly breathe. The tone of Roy’s voice had risen until he’d started to sound more afraid than irate. That was puzzling. It wasn’t like him to show weakness. Not at all.

She chanced another quick peek out the window, hoping and praying he was alone. The last thing she wanted was to expose Patty to the low-life types who had always been Roy’s cohorts.

Keeping her voice as calm as she could, she answered him through the closed door. “Go away.”