Black Dawn by Cristin Harber Excerpt Hop and Giveaway
BLACK DAWN by Cristin Harber releases on July 14th – but we couldn’t wait that long to share the first chapter with you! Check out the first part of chapter one, plus enter to win a gift card + a Titan mug by spotting the highlighted word in the excerpt below. Be sure to stop by each stop on the excerpt hop every day this week for more chances to win, plus the rest of chapter one!
Excerpt Hop:
Chapter 1 Part #3 from BLACK DAWN
Lexi wandered through the crowd. A few high fives and a couple hellos later, she was posted in another corner, eyes peeled for Shadow. Her broker dealt with the upper echelon of the hacker world. As a rogue independent contractor, he knew every important corporation and government contact interested in buying her high-tech projects: patches, programs, codes, and exploits. Over the years, he’d made himself her father figure as well as her business adviser.
Lose the douche. Those were Shadow’s only words of wisdom when she mentioned the engagement.
As if it were that simple. Shadow had been by her side since she was seventeen. Last year, for their ten-year working relationship anniversary, he took her to Paris, where they disabled the security and paid off the guards for a private tour of the Louvre. Shadow had a lot of friends in dark places.
“Silver.” His familiar voice caught her from behind.
“Hey.” She smiled then watched him nod hello as he handed her a fresh drink, switching out the one in her hand. “Good times, right?”
“Not bad. How’s life?” He always asked the same question, recently with undertones about concern over the wedding she hadn’t started to plan yet.
For how close she was to Shadow, it was peculiar that he hadn’t met Matt—that she knew about. Actually, now that she thought about it, given how confident his dislike of her fiancé was, Lexi was sure that Shadow had met Matt.
“Same as it always is.” She stared at her new cup.
Carefully, he touched her chin, turning her face, and pushed away one messy curtain of platinum hair. There was a fading bruise on her eye that she’d caked makeup over. In the dark strobe lights, it’d be hard to see, especially given the smoky smudges of black and gray she’d painted over it, but nothing ever got past Shadow. He prided himself on it. Steal from him, he’d steal back. Lie to him, he’d force the words back in your mouth. Ignore the truth—even if it was a black eye that was impossible to avoid—he’d make sure that it was most certainly not ignored.
“Care to explain?” he asked simply.
“No.” She toyed with the leather strings on her wrist.
Shadow would read into that and would be right. Nothing had changed, at least not for the better.
The lines around his eyes tightened. “You ready for Monarch?”
“Absolutely.” The website hack that exploited the social media site was her best work to date. Flawless maybe, definitely untraceable. Program had been absurdly complicated to put together, but it was a beautiful work of code.
Monarch’s social media site had a security hole. Lexi had mapped out and rewritten the code to access and/or fix that hole. It would go to auction if the company didn’t want to purchase the program. Shadow had made the offer privately, but they’d declined, as expected.
That was how those things worked. When Shadow put the code—which she generally just referred to by the site’s name, Monarch—on the auction block, it would likely sell in a hotly bid contest. Her cyber creation would give its new owner access to all of the data the social media site housed: names, ages, credit cards, family, locations, and more.
Everywhere she went, Lexi wondered how many people around her plugged their information in Monarch. It was just as popular as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, but offered a slightly more niche focus for military families. Every time she caught a glance of someone in the real world using Monarch, she wanted to tell them not to post that picture, not to notify the world of where their significant others were stationed, details on their kids, or when they left on vacations. Just stop with the oversharing.
She almost wished Monarch bought the program just to be safe. But even had she given it to them, they might not have touched it. So typical of a mega-corporation. Most of those companies didn’t buy the fixes to their website problem on the zero day market. It was cheaper to let a malicious, black-hat hacker steal consumer data than it was to fix mistakes. A public apology and a year’s worth of credit monitoring, and they were out of trouble in the public eye.
Lexi wasn’t malicious, but she did earn a living in that shadowy area between right and wrong. Exploit sales were huge business. Governments bought various hacker programs like they were equipping an army—because they were. She was a manufacturer of cyber bullets. Every country with an intelligence agency bought them to spy on everyone. Their own people. Foreigners. Governments. Allies. Enemies. Whoever.
The auctions were as legal as buying a can of mace, and Lexi happened to be really good at creating products for Shadow to sell.
He bent to her ear to fight off the loud music. “I put out some whispers. Everyone’s curious. Uncle Sam is salivating. They want Monarch in a bad way.”
GIVEAWAY
Want to win a $10 Amazon gift card and a Titan mug? Find the highlighted word in the above excerpt and enter it in the rafflecopter below! Make sure to stop by each stop on the excerpt hop for more chances to win!
Excerpt Hop Stops:
ABOUT BLACK DAWN
What happens when nothing is as it seems?
Lexi Dare is on a one-woman mission to stay alive. Both at home and at work. Because how did she end up with a ring on her finger and an abuser in bed as she readies to hit the high point in her career? Everything should be perfect. Amazing job. Handsome fiancé. It’s all a disaster.
Parker Black is the brains behind Titan Group, an elite security firm. In his world, everything is ordered and controlled, except what he feels for his buddy’s girl. Something in her eye screams for help, but he has no idea what.
When Lexi disappears, Parker realizes what he should have known. The lines blur between friendships and work, and they must find each other to survive a terror attack that only Lexi can stop.
Black Dawn can be read as a standalone and does not have a cliffhanger.
BLACK DAWN releases July 14th – add it to your Goodreads list here!
Black Dawn Release Party!
Want to celebrate the release of BLACK DAWN by Cristin Harber? There’s a release party on facebook on July 16th! Join the event here for more details!
ABOUT CRISTIN HARBER
Cristin Harber is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling romance author. She writes sexy, steamy romantic suspense and military romance. Readers voted her onto Amazon’s Top Picks for Debut Romance Authors in 2013, and her debut Titan series was both a #1 romantic suspense and #1 military romance bestseller.
