Guest Blog
Heroes and Villians by R.J Scott
It’s always so hard to come up with ideas for blogs but this time I thought I would explore bits of my favorite spy/action/buddy movies, given that Accidental Hero is a bit of both.
The movie/book villain is vital in any spy/buddie/story, because it the one thing the heroes have to defeat before they can move on. The best villain of all time was, to me, being a Star Wars freak, is Darth Vader. Oh my God, when I saw Star Wars for the first time (aged 10) I was so scared of him. The absolute unbeatable power he had, meant that the destruction of the death star became so much more; the heroes had overcome the near impossible.
And Hans Gruber in Die Hard – the perfect evil nasty, randomly shooting people, apparently without morals, or redemption, he had to die, and boy was his death a good one! His evil was the perfect foil for John McClane’s white T-shirted, bare footed, hero. Oh, and T-1000 (the silvery changing baddie from Terminator 2) he was again apparently unbeatable, which made his ending all the more sweet.
A good bad guy will have you rooting more for the hero.
Do you have a favorite bad guy or villain in a book or film?
***
Accidental Hero
Sanctuary #8
by R.J. Scott
Buy Links
Chicago Cop Simon Grant and Sanctuary operative Cain Brodie, have to be the heroes of their own stories, just to stay alive.
Everyone wants Chicago cop, Simon Grant, dead. Armed with an address, he is on the run and heading for Sanctuary, only to end up at the wrong end of a gun. Is it possible the tall amber-eyed man holding the gun is actually going to be able to help him?
Cain Brodie is in charge of Sanctuary’s new Chicago office, C-Tower. His well organised administration day takes an unexpected turn when he has a man wanted for murder right in his gun sights. Thrust into a situation he has no control over suddenly he needs to be the one in control.
Accidental or not, Simon and Cain have to be the heroes of their own stories, just to stay alive.
Sanctuary Series:
Book 1 - Guarding Morgan
Book 2 - The Only Easy Day
Book 3 - Face Value
Book 4 - Still Waters
Book 5 - Full Circle
Book 6 - The Journal Of Sanctuary One
Book 7 - Worlds Collide
***
Excerpt:
Everyone wants us dead.
Cops. The entire Drugs & Gangs team. Varga. Any of them, all of them, they all want us gone.
Simon Grant crab-walked backward, reaching the wall and curling his knees up so that he was as far away from the body as possible. Blood pooled in a macabre circle of scarlet, spreading almost to his feet. What was left of Jamie Harrington’s face was toward him, and Simon couldn’t look. He closed his eyes tight, aware the sight of broken skin and shattered bone would never leave his memory.
I’m telling you, we should talk to someone outside the precinct.
The last words Jamie had said just a day before. Mere hours before Simon had found this tableau of blood and gore, laid out before him.
A noise had him plastering himself against the wall, belatedly realizing it was he himself who had made the sound, halfway between a groan and a keen of denial. Horror had nausea rising and he tried to breathe to calm his gorge, but all he could smell was cordite and blood.
“I should have—” not said a fucking thing to anyone. Simon finished the harsh words that had begun out loud and ended inside, where he knew he would keep them forever.
He pushed his hand through his hair, anchoring his fingers in the length of it, blood smearing his skin. Then he crawled over, the wetness of blood soaking his pants, and felt for a pulse.
Jamie had half his face missing, his dark hair and skull matted, and one of his eyes blasted away… no face.
He’s gone, and I checked for a fucking pulse.
Simon froze in place. A gun lay in the blood, obscenely black against the red, just inches from Jamie’s outstretched hand as if he’d been reaching for it, looking up at his attacker and hoping to hell he reached the police-issue gun before he was killed. Why had it been left?
For fuck’s sake, think. Analyze the situation.
Was Simon supposed to pick it up, put his prints all over it? Was the killer watching, waiting for him to fuck up, waiting for him to be blamed for the death of his partner?
He had to box away the horror, push aside the shock and grief, and think.
He counted down from five and considered what next. The apartment was on the second floor. Whoever did this could be waiting or coming for him next; there was a gun in the blood, and Jamie was dead. What if it wasn’t Jamie’s gun? Simon looked around the otherwise spotless room, grabbed the nearest bag he could see—a brown grocery bag—upending it. The apples and cans inside spilled into the scarlet on the wooden floor. Had Jamie been out shopping? Did his murderer follow him home?
Just to one side, a bouquet of red roses lay half in and half out of the pool of blood. The white paper they were wrapped in had darkened in places; petals lay on the ground, weighed down by blood.
Simon used the grocery bag to pick up the gun. Long strings of sticky scarlet linked the gun to the floor for a moment and Simon pushed back sickness again. He’d seen death before, but never one that hit so close to home.
He turned his head to get some fresh air from the open window. The sound of sirens closing in was enough to have him leaving the apartment, turning left instead of right, moving to the back of the building and the way he knew he would be able to get out. Going up instead of down, he made it to the roof in record time, only a little winded. The gun was in the bag, pushed firmly into a pocket of his jacket.
He stepped back right near the edge and centered himself. Counting in his head again, he sprinted toward the next building and jumped the six-foot gap, landing and rolling onto solid roofing on the other side. He fell heavily on the gun, shoving it into his ribs, but he’d made it across and that was no mean feat.
The exit plan had been formed amid teasing and laughter over beers at Jamie’s last get-together for colleagues, on that clear Chicago night.
“You’ll never make it across,” Jamie had said on a belch. “Your short ass and stubby legs will have you tumbling into the alley. You’ll end up in a dumpster, and don’t think anyone’ll come get your stinking body.”
Simon had shoved him. “Five ten is not short, asshole.”
I can’t think of Jamie now. I made it over.
He looked around for somewhere to hide the gun. No way was he getting caught with it. He shoved it into the air intake, pushed it a long way back to a small shelf area. Done.
Why am I even keeping it?
“Because there may be other prints, or a trace, or something,” he answered his own question. “If it isn’t Jamie’s gun, we might be able to….”
To what? Why did you take it? Are you stupid? You took evidence?
With stealth he made his way across the roof and to the stairs, taking them three at a time and landing lightly on the first floor. From there he took a joining walkway to yet another apartment block and finally left that by using the fire escape, stopping only to scrub his face to clear away any blood. Finally he joined the crowds walking the sidewalk with purpose. They parted before him, some acknowledging him with nods, others bypassing him, and some shooting him guilty looks. A couple cursed him as he walked against the flow, but no one stopped him. No one shot at him, no one shouted. There was no recognition of who he was inside the uniform.
He was just another Chicago cop on the beat. Nothing to stand out. As long as he walked steadily and with resolution and didn’t break out into a panicked run, no one would look twice past the badge.
At soon as he could, he stepped into business premises—a coffee shop. He went straight to the bathroom, washed his face and his hands properly, then looked critically at his uniform. There was blood there—Jamie’s blood—but the dark blue of the uniform was enough to cover it. He pulled out his cell and stared at it for the longest time. It was nothing special, but it had all his numbers in there. Including Elliot’s. It also had a GPS chip that could be traced. No way was he calling anyone or reaching out.
He fingered the card in his pocket.
“Here, if you need anything…”
Elliot had told both him and Jamie. Promised them a place where they could get help. Even at that moment Simon had placed his faith squarely in the cops he served with, Jamie as well.
“This is bigger than just you two,” Elliot told them.
***
About the Author:
RJ Scott has been writing since age six, when she was made to stay in at lunchtime for an infraction involving cookies. She was told to write a story and two sides of paper about a trapped princess later, a lover of writing was born.
As an avid reader herself, she can be found reading anything from thrillers to sci-fi to horror. However, her first real true love will always be the world of romance where she takes cowboys, bodyguards, firemen and billionaires (to name a few) and writes dramatic and romantic stories of love and passion between these men.
With over seventy titles to her name and counting, she is the author of the award winning book, The Christmas Throwaway. She is also known for the Texas series charting the lives of Riley and Jack, and the Sanctuary series following the work of the Sanctuary Foundation and the people it protects.
Her goal is to write stories with a heart of romance, a troubled road to reach happiness, and most importantly, that hint of a happily ever after.
rj@rjscott.co.uk
www.rjscott.co.uk/
https://twitter.com/Rjscott_author
www.facebook.com/author.rjscott
www.librarything.com/author/scottrj
www.tumblr.com/blog/rjscott (some NSFW (not safe for work) photos)
www.pinterest.com/rjscottauthor/
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I really love Nik because he started this series.
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