Partners in Passion - Synopsis (818 words)

Melinda F. Stanley                                                                                            Synopsis

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PARTNERS IN PASSION©

            Walking out on the man she’d been married to for less than a year, LUCY REESE decides, three years later, to start living again.  She agrees to meet JACK BEATY, an internet date, after chatting with him on-line for over a month. 

            When Jack fails to arrive at their designated meeting place, Lucy's senses scream foul play.  Trusting her intuition, she unknowingly launches herself into a nonstop, life-and-death adventure to rescue a man she’s never met.  A man who could very well become her worst nightmare, or her partner in passion.

            Lucy is a twenty-nine-year-old leggy blonde living in Rising Sun, Indiana.  Waving goodbye to Bandit, her beloved boxer, she drives to meet Jack, a thirty-three-year-old, six-four, one-hundred-ninety-pound hunk living in Russell Springs, Kentucky. 

            Forty-five minutes later, Lucy painfully concedes she’s been stood up.  Halfway out the door, she receives a call from a feminine voice asking to speak to Jack.  Claiming to be Jack’s ex-girlfriend, she informs Lucy she's making one huge mistake with Jack, and warns her to stay away.  

            For the next two nights, Lucy suffers nightmares involving a faceless man begging for her help.  Impulsively, she decides to go in search for Jack and get to the bottom of his no-show.  Her search eventually leads to ROSE, a voluptuous twenty-year-old who drugs and kidnaps Jack when he tries ending their relationship.  Suffering from Multiple Personality Syndrome,  Rose’s alter personality, Laura, sets into motion, a deadly plan of seduction and manipulation to take what isn't hers.

            BILLY, a hood from the slums of Detroit, tattooed with 666, shows up unannounced at Rose's with the intent of reigniting their sexual relationship.  Furious over Jack's presence, he plots to eliminate the unwanted competition. 

            Lucy rescues Jack from bondage.  They crash in her tin-can-of-a-car and are forced to flee on foot through cornfields and forests. 

            Billy and Rose ban together to recapture Jack and eradicate Lucy.  They are about to pounce when they watch Jack and Lucy disappear within the shadowed interior of an abandoned, three-story barn.   Barricading the barn doors, Billy and Rose lie in wait until first light. 

            SAM PATTON, a battle-tested former marine and Jack’s buddy, receives a frantic phone call from Lucy, informing him of Jack's kidnapping and rescue.  Lucy asks Sam to meet them back at her house.

            KATHERINE BONNET, a gold-star mother and Lucy's best friend is rudely awaken by Sam pounding on the wrong front door.  Sam and Kat partner together to wait for the arrival of their two best friends.    

            At daybreak, Billy sets the barn on fire.  Jack and Lucy escape through a third-story window, and land right back into Billy's awaiting hands.  Lucy is locked back into the burning barn, and Jack is drugged and tossed into the trunk of Billy's car. 

            And the chase, capture, and rescue is on for Lucy and Jack.

            They suffer drugged-induced hallucinations, knife and gunshot wounds, free falls from a towering bridge, and nearly drown in the Ohio River.     

            Meanwhile, Katherine and Sam get weary of waiting and join in the hunt for Lucy and Jack.  Sam is shocked when he realizes Rose is his long-lost, adopted sister.  Through trial and grief, a bond is forged between the marine-mom and former marine. 

            Rose falls into the river while Laura emerges from it.  She's picked up by a riverboat ferry and taken to Perry Hospital.  Sam arrives and is devastated when he meets Laura for the first time.   

            Then, a body matching the description of Billy is found floating face down in the Ohio River.

            On their journey home, Jack and Lucy spend the night in one another’s arms, deep inside a tiny cave where they feel the thunder and chase the lightening from the sky with their sizzling chemistry.   

            The next day, they arrive at Katherine's house where the four friends reunite and swap tales.  Lucy returns home that evening and takes Bandit on a walk around her private lake while waiting for Jack's arrival.  She strolls down a short pier to watch the sun’s fiery rays bleed out onto the lake, catching it on fire.

            Hearing the voice of Satan, Lucy jerks around to see Billy standing on his throne of madness, his evil voice demanding Jack's whereabouts.  Bandit reappears, launches for Billy's throat, hitting him full-force, and sending him flying across the pier into Lucy.  Together, they fall into the fiery waters of the lake.   

            Jack hears Lucy's scream, dives into the lake, and rescues her. 

            It was finished.  The beast was thrown alive into the fiery lake of burning sulfur.  The fate of eternal damnation that awaits the non-believing and the un-repented.    

            Four days later, Jack picks up his partner-in-passion for their first, real date.  Where together, they take the road where true love doesn’t come by finding the perfect partner, but by learning to see the imperfect partner...perfectly.