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    Jake's Shining Moment, A Jake Stone Thriller (Book 13): The Jake Stone Thrillers, #13
    Jake's Shining Moment, A Jake Stone Thriller (Book 13): The Jake Stone Thrillers, #13
    Jake's Shining Moment, A Jake Stone Thriller (Book 13): The Jake Stone Thrillers, #13
    Ebook189 pages1 hour

    Jake's Shining Moment, A Jake Stone Thriller (Book 13): The Jake Stone Thrillers, #13

    By T.L. Peters

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    About this ebook

    Sidetracked from their planned expedition to Mount Ararat in Turkey to uncover the remnants of Noah's famous Ark, Snowflake and Jake must confront a gang of villains intent on causing a global gender role reversal that could threaten the foundations of civilization. After Snowflake is captured in a cunning ambush, Jake is forced to lead an assault on the enemy's remote mountain compound at the head of a rag-tag crew of feisty and athletic women.

    "Jake is at his best in this wild and action-packed tale." Theodora

    "Jake is all man in this little adventure--or should I say 'all woman' as he rivals even the great and fabled Snowflake in tenacity and grit. Very entertaining!!" Damsel

    Note to Readers: Some of the characters and story lines in this book are taken from the Dirk Cobb thrillers, beginning with volume one, Crack Up, and the Blake Rock novel, Hot and Tough. As with all the Jake Stone books, however, this story can easily be read as a stand-alone novel.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherT.L. Peters
    Release dateJul 17, 2012
    ISBN9781476354606
    Jake's Shining Moment, A Jake Stone Thriller (Book 13): The Jake Stone Thrillers, #13
    Author

    T.L. Peters

    "There's no question that Peters is a master wordsmith." Gerry B's Book Reviews About the author: T.L. Peters is an ex-lawyer who enjoys playing the violin and giving his dog long walks in the woods. In between, he writes novels.

    Read more from T.L. Peters

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      Book preview

      Jake's Shining Moment, A Jake Stone Thriller (Book 13) - T.L. Peters

      Jake’s Shining Moment, A Jake Stone Thriller (Book 13)

      By T.L. Peters

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2012, T.L. Peters

      License Notes

      This e book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

      Note to Readers: Some of the characters and story lines in this book are taken from the Dirk Cobb thrillers, beginning with volume one, Crack Up, and the Blake Rock novel, Hot and Tough. As with all the Jake Stone thrillers, however, this story can easily be read as a stand alone novel.

      To read more about the author and his other books, go to http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/tlpeters.

      Chapter 1

      Jake gets flipped again.

      Jake Stone was lounging by the Olympic size pool that he and his wife of many years, Snowflake, had recently installed behind their rustic home deep in the woodsy mountains of Western Pennsylvania. Snowflake had just emerged from the near side of the pool, having completed her early morning warm up of a hundred laps at full sprint speed. It was just one of the many diverse ways Snowflake had been able to keep her still alluring body in top condition. Jake's efforts at physical fitness had proven somewhat less impressive. He had a bit of a paunch and at mealtimes even found himself loosening his belt an inch or so in order to be able to finish dessert without undue gastric discomfort. His legs had gotten over the years somewhat fleshy and stiff, and his love handles had developed into something more resembling love levers.

      Snowflake was not happy that her mate seemed to be on the verge of full scale deterioration and had tried to goad him into more robust physical activity. But Jake had recently developed a number of ruses to help ease the strain of his wife's high pressure tactics of persuasion, the most notable being feigning sickness or injury. He had once even ridden an ambulance to the nearest hospital some two hundred miles away on the pretense that he was suffering a mild heart attack, which turned out to be nothing but a medium case of indigestion.

      Snowflake, for as ferocious and dominant a spouse as had likely ever walked the face of the earth, could nevertheless understand the causes behind her husband's indolent ways. First of all, he was a man and thus genetically prone and environmentally conditioned to laziness and all other manner of disreputable behavior. Second, he was an aging male, having just celebrated his fifty sixth birthday, which made all his bad tendencies all that much worse. And third, a fact for which Snowflake blamed herself, there really hadn't been much going on at the Stone household for over a year—no death defying adventures, no earth shattering calamities, no lethal battles against hundreds of highly trained warriors, nothing really but getting up in the morning and going to bed at night with very little of substance in between.

      The last time Snowflake and her brood had been called into action, it was to rescue Dirk Cobb—the ex-lawyer turned son-in-law when Snowflake's daughter Fierce for some odd reason that Snowflake could still not fathom fell in love with the shabby lug—from abduction at the hands of a gang of violent hookers. After the rescue, the hookers reformed themselves and even spent a few months at the Stone's elaborately outfitted compound and gym honing their fighting skills and sharpening their physiques. But they had eventually drifted away to other pursuits, leaving no one to occupy the vast rural acreage but Jake and Snowflake, holed up in their rustic mansion, Fierce and Dirk, for which Snowflake had built a small but cozy home on the other side of the nearby lake, and their frisky Golden Retriever, Samson.

      With such mellow and harmonious surroundings, it was easy to see how the Stones had fallen into such a leisurely and undemanding lifestyle. But Snowflake was bored and had begun feverishly looking around for some action. She was a bit surprised that the action hadn't found her, either through some government official desperate to solve a messy problem at the far reaches of the globe, or in the person of one of their many enemies seeking revenge for earlier defeats. But, as Jake had often reminded her, their relations with the government had markedly soured after Snowflake had many times conspicuously upstaged some of the government's best agents. Jake was also quick to point out that most, if not all, of their enemies were long dead, having been dispatched to eternity by one of Snowflake's deadly right hooks or bone-shattering roundhouse kicks.

      But Snowflake would not be dissuaded. She would not go easily into her golden years. She needed something to get her emotional juices flowing again and give her a reason to challenge her body to new heights of athletic and pugilistic attainments. Recently she had stumbled onto something that had piqued her interest, and this morning after her swim she had decided to discuss the matter with Jake.

      Discuss was perhaps not the most apt description of Snowflake's manner of presenting her plans to her beleaguered husband. Dictate was probably more like it. But Snowflake liked to keep up the appearance of a reasonably well functioning traditional marriage between her and Jake, if for little else but to adhere to various Biblical admonitions that the man was the head of the household, and so she had decided to discuss her new idea with him in as congenial a fashion as his vagrant mind and lackadaisical character would permit.

      Of course, before she could hope to engage his wandering and unreliable psyche in any serious conversation, she would need to soften him up a bit, which she did with her normal gusto. As Jake was reaching for his morning glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, Snowflake did some squeezing of her own. She grabbed his wrist in her big husky hand, yanked him off the lounge chair and before he could even let out a single scream of frightened protest launched him in a flowing arc three quarters of the way across the pool. Jake landed in a confused jumble of arms and legs, only to emerge from the shadowy depths some seconds later coughing water out of his mouth and rubbing his nostrils intensely, since he was mildly allergic to chlorine.

      What was that for? he sputtered after finally draining his nasal passages of any excess moisture.

      We need to talk, Snowflake bellowed, standing alongside the pool with her sturdy arms akimbo and her knees jutted outward like some haughty football coach.

      About what? Jake muttered as he began to swim listlessly toward the whitewashed concrete edge of the pool.

      About our future? she said languidly.

      What about our future?

      How to spice it up.

      Jake shook his head.

      You're wearing me out with all that sex lately. You're just too rough. My body can't take it anymore.

      Snowflake rolled her eyes with disgusted annoyance.

      I'm not talking about that, and moreover we were not having sex. We were just rolling around a bit.

      Maybe that's what you call it, Jake protested, but when you shove your tongue into my mouth I have other words to describe it.

      Normally Snowflake would have disciplined her husband for such loose and profane talk in public. But since there was no one around to hear his silly discourse but a few Robins and a diligent Cardinal foraging for food in the lush green forest surrounding the pool, Snowflake decided to let his indiscretion slide, at least for the time being anyway. She also did him the favor of extending her long and muscular arm toward him, presumably in order to give him a lift out of the pool. She had noticed lately that Jake had been experiencing some difficulty in pulling himself out of the water on his own, often flailing about at the side of the pool like some injured bird trying to fly. It was yet another sign that Jake also needed a challenge to get himself back to at least half decent shape, both mentally and physically.

      Jake clutched her warm meaty hand in his much softer and more fragile appendage. Then in an uncharacteristic burst of mischief he braced his feet against the wall of the pool some four or five feet beneath the surface where Snowflake couldn't see what he was up to. He then yanked her toward him with all his might. The dirty trick worked, and Snowflake went sailing over him and splashed in a great tidal wave of fury some yards behind him. Now his great and immediate challenge was to get out of the pool alive.

      In a surprising burst of alacrity he scampered out of the foaming water and onto the concrete ledge, where he quickly leapt to his feet. Naturally Jake realized that he couldn't avoid his fearsome wife forever, but if he were lucky he could scurry into the nearby woods, which he knew like the back of his hand, find an obscure trail leading over to his daughter's house on the far side of the valley beyond the lake, and spend a quiet morning with her and Dirk. Snowflake would never thrash him while he was a guest at Fierce's home. Fierce didn't like such fisticuffs in her more sedate domestic surroundings, and moreover in a pinch Fierce could kick the snot out of her strident mother, a fact she had proven numerous times during their sparring matches in the gym. Later, when Snowflake had cooled off, Jake would gladly take whatever milder form of punishment his wife had to offer and live to fight another day.

      The trick, however, was to get away, and Snowflake seemed in no mood to let that happen. In one sweeping maneuver she lunged to the side of the pool and lifted herself out of the water like some great bird rising in flight. She then traversed some twenty yards only touching the ground a half dozen times as she leapt and flew with astonishing smoothness and agility toward her fleeing husband. Snowflake caught him just as he was about to enter the woods, grabbing his shoulders and whirling him around with such force that he tumbled head over heels into a nearby thorn bush, emerging some seconds later screaming and howling and declaring himself near death.

      Disavowing Jake's protestations of mortality, Snowflake slung him over her broad back and carried him back to the pool, where she dumped him into the water and watched him flail about while trying to remove the jaggers from his reddening backside. After viewing this rather depressing display for some minutes, she took a seat in the lounge chair formerly occupied by her husband and began sipping on his glass of orange juice. Eventually Jake dragged himself out of the pool and stood dripping at her side, his eyes sweeping along her lush and shredded body.

      Okay, he sputtered malignantly. You win. What do you want?

      I don't want anything, she replied cooly.

      You always want something, he snorted.

      You misjudge me, she replied testily. I am always looking out for your best interests, but you insist on getting in the way.

      Like nearly killing me, you mean, Jake snarled, sufficiently alarmed at her professed concern for his short term welfare that he backed away a few paces.

      Had I wished to kill you, she replied with the serenity that comes from profound self assurance, you would be quite dead already.

      True enough, Jake sputtered, but irrelevant.

      It's always relevant, she corrected him. It's one of the overriding facts determining the course of our relationship.

      I thought love was, Jake observed.

      That too.

      It's love when it suits you, and murder when it doesn't.

      I prefer to call it lack of trust rather than murder. After all, I have never murdered you. The proof of that is rather obvious.

      But you would have liked to numerous times.

      Perhaps you're right, she admitted casually.

      How can a person love someone when she harbors such malice in her heart toward him?

      Not malice, Snowflake noted somberly. Simply a healthy realization of the true state of affairs.

      Which are?

      Snowflake paused to utter a deep and troubled sigh.

      Which are that you are, and have never been, trustworthy. It's a fact which I have long noted, but since we are all sinners I have no business judging you for it. I must take this glaring weakness of yours into account, however, when I am planning for our next adventure. Anyway, you don't need to worry. I have always assigned you tasks that, even with your many foibles, you are eminently able to perform. Thus, your character deficiencies, untrustworthiness being just one of them, have had no enduring consequence and have not resulted in the premature termination of our marriage, with me being left a grieving widow. And I would be a grieving widow, even it fell upon my shoulders to put you out of your misery, so to speak.

      My only misery, Jake growled, sitting down in a nearby chair now that it seemed that Snowflake intended no more violence against him, at least not for the time being, is being yoked to some crazy amazon who can kick the snot out of me with her little finger.

      Snowflake took his assertion as a compliment, which could be seen in the faint arc of a smile gracing her lips.

      And it's a good thing for you too, she chuckled. It keeps you out of trouble.

      Trouble, Jake muttered helplessly, his voice fading away.

      She put down her drink and began to flex her biceps into mountainous orbs of fleshy muscle. The only differences Jake noticed between her arms now and twenty years before were that they were currently a few inches larger in circumference, the result of an intense power lifting regimen, particularly on the bench press, and the fact that a thin layer of fat had begun to stretch out over the rock like muscle beneath. This slight layer of flesh, however, was nothing to get either alarmed or excited about it. It was barely noticeable, even to Jake's discerning eye, and was nowhere near the sagging heaps of flab that often formed on the lower arms of men and women alike as they tumbled through middle age.

      Jake yanked his eyes away from her powerful arms toward her shredded abdominals, which were every bit

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