The second Zoe thriller.

…

I’ve been looking back at what’s been written, something you shouldn’t do when trying to get 50,000 words written in 30 days, but I’m ahead of the count, and a little checking is needed, just to make sure everything is running smoothly.

Not that any book written on the fly like this runs smoothly.

There are three themes to this story:

1 – Worthington, now head of the Intelligence agency, seeking revenge for Zoe killing his brother by mistake, a mistake that he caused

2 – Alistair’s mother deploys a collection of agents, some being Zoe’s colleagues once, to assassinate the woman who assassinated her son

3 – John’s ever-growing fear that Zoe is tired of him, and, after she leaves, even though she promised to come back, he doesn’t want to wait to find out he’s been dumped.

4 – Sebastian is always lurking in the background, ostensibly to recruit her as an assassin, but really because he’s jealous of John’s good fortune.

Our two intrepid heroes go off to save her in Marseilles where she learns of the identity of who is ostensibly looking for her and sets her off on a lone hunt for him.

We then deploy two new characters, Rupert and Isobel, who along with John will create a private detective agency, that John uses to locate Zoe by any and all means.

Isobel soon finds out that searching for Zoe on the internet brings risks, both at home and abroad, bringing her in contact with another hacker who seems to know where Zoe’s past is hiding. But can they be trusted?

John heads off to Vienna, after being supplied a file on Zoe, full of information he had not known about her. What he learns in Vienna leads him to Bratislava, when a photo identifying where she suddenly arrives on his phone.

John locates her, and she realizes he is being used as bait, and they leave, but not before the hit team almost completes their mission, and leave behind a trail of bodies as they get away, but not without injury.

John gets the answers he is seeking, that if he wants a life of looking over his shoulder, by all means, tag along. She is quite pleased to see him, not so much that he brought ‘friends’ but she might yet get to train him.

Sebastian, feeling left out, grills Isobel and Rupert, and gets sidelined by Worthington because anywhere Sebastian goes, trouble follows, and then convinces Isobel that John is in over his head and needs their help.

He’s not wrong because Worthington has dispatched another hit team to the main railway stations in Vienna where John and Zoe are looking to escape, only another shootout occurs as they once again escape when all the station’s exits are not covered.

The story has now reached a point where everyone is converging on Vienna.

Along with another person who John knows, and will least expect to arrive on his doorstep.

…

Today’s writing, with Zoe languishing in a dungeon waiting for a white knight, 3,999 words, for a total of 47,066.