Nicole Laurent

Book excerpt: Nicole Longet never knew her father. She was born in Paris, France, living with her mother and grandmother until she received a scholarship to study in the United States. After graduation, she returns to France and meets and marries Rene Laurent, the owner of a jewelry store who designs and makes his own creations. Nicole, besides working in the store, also delivers the jewelry to customers in many countries. She comes to the attention of a US government agency that is always searching for investigators and agents. Nicole is followed, tested several times, and accepted into the world of spies and secret agents. After a year or two of training and aiding other agents, she was assigned the job of capturing or eliminating a rogue agent in St. Augustine, Florida, who had killed one agent and was trying to kill Emmalou Shallotte, a smitten teenager, because he believed she deceived him. Her next job was to rescue a small six-year-old boy held in an embassy in Washington that she knew from one of her deliveries. Other assignments included the protection of a gypsy woman, Tanya, from her children on a trip from Washington to South Carolina by way of Pennsylvania. Throughout these stories and others are the recurring themes of her work for Rene Laurent, the death of her grandmother, the bequeathing of the brass-bound trunk, the divorcing from Rene, and the romantic start of a new love. The search for her father enters a new stage with the opening of the Grandmothers trunk containing information about a circus performer who might be a thief on the side and who just might be her father. The search continues through the mystery at the Hemphill plantation and the stalking of Jean Ducharme at Randolph College in Virginia. Her trials and tribulations with Carlo, another agent, and finally her trip with Derek the dwarf to Florida to find her father complete this interesting and compelling tale.