Gabriella Cross, Tome 1: A Cross To Bear

Chapter 1

Gabriella Cross stared at the blinking bar on her laptop and bit her thumbnail in thought. It was terrible. Who would want to read this crap?

She glanced at her wineglass. It was empty. With a sigh, she got up from the desk and went to the kitchen to pour herself another drink.

She returned to the computer and put on some calming music. It only annoyed her. She turned it off and clicked out of Gabby Gabby—her unpublished blog.

Derek was supposed to be done at the prison at nine, but he had texted that he was working overtime—he even added a smiley face and mentioned going to the mall to buy something nice at Victoria’s Secret.

Yay, what a guy.

He was full of shit; she just knew it. She opened up the tab to a phone-tracking website and typed in her info. When the screen came up, she snapped the laptop shut, not wanting to know. If the blip on the screen was showing over the area of the prison, she would feel like shit. If it wasn’t, she would feel worse.

He had said it was over with Jolene, but then again, he had said a lot of things. And Gabby had learned that she couldn’t tell when he was lying. She had learned that the hard way.

Gabby finally gave in. She opened her laptop and looked at the GPS tracker. It took her a minute to recognize what she was seeing. She and Derek lived a half hour south of Chicago in what the ’burbians called the boonies. The prison Derek worked at was a half hour west of their town. But the blip on the radar put him about fifteen minutes east in a small town called Coster.