Escape!: A Romantic-Suspense-Thriller

When a threatened architect needs solid help, his strongest ally is a feisty female.

The author’s original intent for Escape! was a fast-paced romantic thriller suitable for escaping boredom on a coast-to-coast flight. While watching the vast landscape rolling under the wings, journalist David Emil Henderson visualized a hot fugitive couple running from cold contract killers, eluding pursuit by the FBI and every other police agency along a 2000-mile journey from Lake Michigan to the Pacific Ocean.

Among the plot’s surprises was one for the author — the unexpected emergence of the assertive and spicy Elissa Bennett Pope as the story’s brightest star.

Elissa was the child of Latin-immigrant parents in Chicago’s wealthiest suburb. Groomed from puberty to become a debutante and wife of a Lake Forest millionaire, she landed a beast who assaulted her over his own failures. Her urge for freedom led to a bitter divorce, with barely enough funds to establish Elissa as a real estate broker, property manager, and (for sanity sake) a summer stock theatrical performer.

Heat soars when California architect Grey Harper arrives in posh Lake Forest to convert an adjacent army base into a $60 million housing development, and Elissa’s agency locates a suitable cottage for him to rent for the duration. While they are meeting in that cottage, a strange intruder sets in motion Elissa’s most hectic escape ever — running with Harper for their lives to a stunning climax at his spectacular cliff-top refuge in colorful Carmel-by-the-Sea, California.

Throughout the death race, Elissa is never quite sure whether Harper is actually a brilliant and sane architect (with a California tan, water-blue eyes surrounded by crinkles whenever he smiles, a masculine voice and a wry sense of humor) — or an eccentric widower with a dark past, who is accused by the FBI of murdering his Chicago client to cover up a major scandal.

Elissa’s survival is at stake in either case, and she must rely upon her own wits, her hard-earned cash, and her raw courage, every minute of every day — and night!