Welcome to my tour stop for The Cypress Trap by J.C. Gatlin. This is an adult suspense/thriller novel. The tour runs October 12-23 with reviews, interviews, guest posts and excerpts. Check out the tour page for the full schedule.
About the Book:When Rayanne commandeers her husband’s weekend fishing trip, she knows it’ll take work to adjust Owen’s attitude. She has no choice. Since the tragedy, they lost so much. They need to reconnect. Without her knowledge, Owen texts his best buddy, Daryl, to join the getaway. The three of them aren’t alone in the backwoods of Georgia, though. Owen took something that didn’t belong to him. Something that changed their lives. And now the owner wants it back. By any means -- including a posse led by a killer dog. At first, Rayanne is clueless about the item and its value. One thing becomes crystal clear: If it’s not returned, they might not make it home alive.
About the Author:
JC Gatlin lives in Tampa, Florida. In addition to regular fishing trips, he wrote a monthly column for New Tampa Style Magazine, then began penning several mystery/suspense stories. He also maintains a blog about the art of spinning a nail-biting, edge-of-your-seat mystery yarn.
Coming from a large family with five brothers, JC grew up in Grapevine -- a small Texas town just outside of Dallas. He moved to Tampa in 1999, and most of his stories feature the rich landscapes of Texas and Florida as backdrop.
Excerpt
Rayanne
heard the kids’ voices, and she looked again at the old cars in the
bottom of the ditch. The first thing that came to mind was
rattlesnakes. But she knew she couldn’t think of that right now.
She
got up and headed for the rusted jeep. The hood was gone and it
looked like a corpse left to rot in the sun. She glanced at the other
cars. There was a hatchback with no doors. A pickup was off to one
side, on blocks. The wheels had been removed and the driver’s side
door thrown open and left to hang. There was a yellow Volkswagen
Beetle half buried in the dirt.
Brown
and yellow weeds sprouted up between the wrecks, but the ground was
hard and Rayanne knew she had no choice. She raced past the rusting
jeep, watching where she stepped.
She
moved to the shell of a Volkswagen Beetle. It had two doors. She
forced the passenger side open and looked into the dank interior. The
overhead lining draped down like a misty shroud. Weeds had grown
through the undercarriage and overtaken the floorboards. But two
front seats and a long backseat remained. It could be a hiding place,
she thought, and squeezed herself into the backseat. She cowered as
low as she could.
She
held her breath and prayed there was nothing living inside.
She
shut her eyes and listened. The teens’ voices grew louder. They
sounded like they were coming down into the hollow and she could hear
Scut—or was it Roddy—say something about the cars. He sounded
excited.
Dru
was farther away. Rayanne could hear her calling the dog. Perhaps she
didn’t want to walk down into the dump. It didn’t matter. Rayanne
knew Scut and Roddy already had.
Their
voices echoed, slipping between the cars. One of them said something
about the pile of tires and the other laughed. She could hear them
moving about, throwing rocks on metal remains, until they stopped
right in front of the Volkswagen.
Rayanne
stopped breathing.
“She’s
hide’n here somewhere,” Scut was saying. He threw another rock
and it hit the bumper. The sound reverberated through the Volkswagen,
and Rayanne shivered.
“Naaaah,”
Roddy said. It sounded like he was walking away. “I don’t think
so. She’s a woman. She ain’t gonna come down here.”
“We’re
not leav’n till we search every car.” Scut sounded like he was
stepping away too. She could hear him throwing rocks at other cars
now.
Rude
Roddy was saying something when one of them screamed. For a second
Rayanne thought Dru had made her way down into the dump. She was
surprised to learn it was Scut.
“There’s
a rattler! There’s a rattler!” Scut’s high-pitched wail echoed
through the hollow, and she heard what sounded like some kind of
skirmish. Perhaps an avalanche of gravel rolled down the slopes of
the hollow, like marbles beneath their feet.
“I
hate snakes! I hate ’em!” Scut’s voice rapidly moved away, and
it sounded as far as Dru’s now. The girl asked them what was wrong.
They
had to have climbed out of the hollow, Rayanne thought. She opened
her eyes. She wanted to poke her head up, but didn’t dare.
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Ends Oct. 28th
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