The Plot to Assassinate Secret Shepherd (The Secret Shepherd Conspiracies Book 2)

A Mission of Kindness. A Target on Their Backs.

Paul and Anne Winston believed true wealth lay in giving. From aiding First Nations youth in Canada to empowering women in rural Africa and revitalizing towns in America’s heartland, they quietly fueled change—until their philanthropic work drew deadly attention.

Now, hunted by a global crime syndicate and with their children in danger, the couple must uncover who is tracking them—and why. Their quest for justice and compassion becomes a race against time in a world where good deeds don’t go unpunished.

Get your copy of The Plot to Assassinate Secret Shepherd, the gripping second installment in the Secret Shepherd Chronicles by James Osborne.

Excerpt from the book

Westland Place

London, UK

September 9, 1994

Life was good … really good.

Paul Winston hung up the phone and pushed back from his huge oak desk, a happy man.

Oh, wow! he thought. We’re pregnant. At last.

Affection and excitement coursed through his six-foot, two-inch athletic body. Paul turned his high-back chair to gaze lovingly at a picture on the wall beside his desk: their wedding two and a half years earlier.

What a gorgeous bride you were and are, my lovely Anne. He thought, admiring his young wife dressed in her resplendent bridal gown. Above the picture hung an aerial photo of the ranch in Colorado where he grew up. Beneath their wedding picture was a framed photo of his investiture three years earlier as Lord Paul Winston, the 12th Earl of Prescott.

His intercom buzzed.

“Excuse me, Milord,” boomed the voice of Clementine Shackleford, his executive assistant. “There’s a young man here to see you. Won’t give his name. Doesn’t have an appointment. Shall I tell him to come back?”

American-born Paul chuckled. His notion of protocol was more casual than his matronly executive assistant’s, once described by a visitor as ‘having the combative nature of a Sumo wrestler merged with the heart of Florence Nightingale’.

He started to ask Ms. Shackleford to show the young man in when he heard her shout,

“Stop. You can’t go in there. Stop right now.”

A loud bang startled Paul. Experience left no doubt it was a gunshot.

Good Grief, he thought. I hope Mrs. Shackleford’s okay.

Paul leapt from his chair and began sprinting across his enormous office toward the door. Halfway there, the door flew open. A young man rushed in. He pointed a handgun at Paul’s chest.

“Back up!” the intruder shouted.

“Easy now,” Paul said, lifting his hands away from his body, palms open toward the intruder. “What can I do for you?”

“Where is it?” the gunman demanded.

“Where’s what?” Paul replied.

“The safe, asshole. I know there’s a bloody safe in here somewhere,” the intruder shouted. “Behind one of those pictures? Show me.”

The agitated young man waved his left hand toward the oak-paneled walls adorned with more than a dozen portraits and landscapes, some priceless, dating back centuries.

“There’s no safe in here that I know of,” Paul replied.

He was surprised to see the young man’s dark brown eyes scan the oil paintings with some appreciation and apparent knowledge.

Is this his first armed robbery? Paul wondered.

He looked closer. The younger man, a head shorter, wore faded black jeans and a stained sweatshirt with a football (soccer) logo. His eyes darted around uneasily. The features were Middle Eastern, his long black hair unkept and overdue for a trim.

“It’s behind one of those, right?” the skinny young intruder demanded. “Show me or I’ll slice up every friggin’ one of them until I find it.”

He pulled out a combat knife and held it poised to slice something … or someone.

Paul stepped toward the nearest painting, an original fifteenth-century portrait of King Henry VI. The gunman moved back warily. Paul could see the smaller man was intimidated by his height and fit, two-hundred-pound build.

That’s encouraging, he thought.

Paul grabbed the sides of the portrait frame with both hands. It didn’t move.

“It’s secured to the wall, just like all the rest,” he said.

Paul started toward the next painting, intending to do the same.