Car Wars , livre ebook

Lighthouse Publishing - Mike Brogan

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214 pages

English

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Description

Suspense thriller from Writer's Digest Award-winning author ...Madison Parker is excited. She just won a big advertising account for a revolutionary new car. Competitive car companies can't compete with it But one competitor decides to do something about that ... even though it may cost Madison and many others their lives.

Sujets

Thriller

Informations

Publié par	Lighthouse Publishing
Date de parution	24 septembre 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781733803717
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0420€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

Madison Parker is excited. She just won a big advertising account for a revolutionary new car. Competitive car companies can’t compete with it. But one man decides to do something about that – even though it may cost Madison and many others their lives.
A suspense thriller.
MIKE BROGAN
Lighthouse Publishing
Also by Mike Brogan
Breathe
Kentucky Woman
G8
Madison’s Avenue
Dead Air
Business to Kill For
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 By Mike Brogan
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-1-7338037-0-0 (print book)
ISBN 978-1-7338037-1-7 (epub)
ISBN 978-1-7338037-2-4 (epdf)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2019934509
Printed in the United States of America Published in the United States by Lighthouse Publishing.
Cover design: Vong Lee
First Edition
To all my pals in the ad world of “Baseball, Hotdogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet.” May all your pistons keep hitting on full throttle.
Acknowledgments
To my colleagues in the US auto industry who showed me how the business is working hard to deliver better, safer, more cost-efficient vehicles each year.
To my friends in the advertising business who gave me helpful guidance on the expanding social media world.
To good friend, John Hus, automotive engineer, for his expert guidance in the technical aspects of this story.
To good friend, Kevin Pierce, automotive engineer, for his many suggestions and advice.
To my fellow novelists and writing colleagues for their helpful suggestions and comments.
To editor/translator, Brendan Brogan, for his insightful improvements to the rough draft of CAR WARS.
To author, Rebecca M. Lyles, for her comprehensive final edit and enhancements to final manuscript of CAR WARS.
To wife, Marcie, for her advice as a backseat driver.
Contents
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY ONE
TWENTY TWO
TWENTY THREE
TWENTY FOUR
TWENTY FIVE
TWENTY SIX
TWENTY SEVEN
TWENTY EIGHT
TWENTY NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY ONE
THIRTY TWO
THIRTY THREE
THIRTY FOUR
THIRTY FIVE
THIRTY SIX
THIRTY SEVEN
THIRTY EIGHT
THIRTY NINE
FORTY
FORTY ONE
FORTY TWO
FORTY THREE
FORTY FOUR
FORTY FIVE
FORTY SIX
FORTY SEVEN
FORTY EIGHT
FORTY NINE
FIFTY
FIFTY ONE
FIFTY TWO
FIFTY THREE
FIFTY FOUR
FIFTY FIVE
FIFTY SIX
FIFTY SEVEN
FIFTY EIGHT
FIFTY NINE
SIXTY
SIXTY ONE
SIXTY TWO
SIXTY THREE
SIXTY FOUR
SIXTY FIVE
SIXTY SIX
SIXTY SEVEN
SIXTY EIGHT
SIXTY NINE
SEVENTY
SEVENTY ONE
SEVENTY TWO
SEVENTY THREE
SEVENTY FOUR
SEVENTY FIVE
SEVENTY SIX
SEVENTY SEVEN
SEVENTY EIGHT
SEVENTY NINE
EIGHTY
EIGHTY ONE
EIGHTY TWO

EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ONE
L illy Thompson smiled at the winding road ahead. For good reason. Dean, her cute, smart fiancé, was just minutes ahead, waiting for her with open arms at his parents’ home in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.
She looked forward to their dinner tonight at the romantic Grand Hotel on nearby Mackinac Island. After dinner, they’d check out the hotel’s availability for their June wedding. She’d already picked out her wedding dress, a beautiful Vera Wang she could afford thanks to the special price from the bridal shop, and her new promotion at Global Vehicles.
A promotion that included the new GV company car she was driving. Really new. An XCar . The XCar would not be on sale at GV dealerships for four months. Only two hundred early-release XCars had been shipped to dealers for showroom displays, Win-An-XCar contests, and sales to very select customers.
As she drove north on I-75, she glimpsed the pristine blue water of Lake Paradise, remembering that Dean said Michigan had eleven thousand freshwater lakes, more freshwater than any country in the world.
She noticed drivers glancing at her XCar’s sleek clean design, sort of a roomy SUV with a sleek hatchback flair. But XCar had much more than good looks. Thousands of people would soon be driving XCars for its revolutionary new battery power system that let them drive up to five hundred miles between battery recharges - recharges that took only fifteen minutes. No other car manufacturer had anything like its electric power or recharge system. The gas savings would be in the thousands annually for most drivers.
She passed a vegetable truck and saw the towering Mackinac Bridge ahead. The Mighty Mac, the longest suspension bridge in the western hemisphere, soared up into a misty sky like an ancient humpback dinosaur. She drove up to the entrance, paid the four-dollar fee, and drove onto the bridge. The five-mile-long bridge would carry her over Lake Michigan and deposit her in the state’s Upper Peninsula near the town of St. Ignace, where Dean’s parents lived.
She followed a royal-blue Chevy Malibu and wondered if her bridesmaids’ dresses should be royal-blue. Or maybe pink, or turquoise, or lavender, or lime green. Maybe her five bridesmaids should vote.
Approaching the summit of the bridge, she saw the churning waters of Lake Michigan below. The wind whipped up whitecaps. The view was spectacular. She looked toward Mackinac Island and glimpsed the Grand Hotel’s incredibly long front porch, perfect for some wedding photos.
The huge white hotel was embraced by lush green gardens and forests. She was looking at a Camille Pissarro painting.
Suddenly - her car surged a bit.
She eased up on the gas, but it surged faster.
She took her foot off the gas.
The car raced still faster!
She hit the brakes.
There were none.
What’s happening?
The speed limit was forty-five, but she was doing sixty - without touching the gas!
She raced around two cars whose drivers stared at her like she was crazy.
Ahead, slower cars blocked both lanes!
She couldn’t steer around them. Couldn’t brake! She hit the horn but it didn’t work. She would crash into them in seconds.
But then her car slowed and steered itself to the right, then left, then toward the short center-divider that blocked her from oncoming traffic.
Who’s driving this car?
She reached to turn the key off, but the car had keyless ignition. The key was buried in her purse.
Without warning, the car steered hard left again, plowed through the small center divider - barely missing oncoming delivery truck - and raced directly at the three-foot high guard-railing separating her from the water two hundred feet below.
She pounded on the brakes . . .
Still none.
She smashed through the railing, went airborne, and plunged toward the frigid water below.
This is not happening!
But it was!
Her life flashed before her. Dean, her wedding, their life together . . .
* * *
One hundred yards behind Lilly, a man in a black BMW stopped with the other cars and watched Lilly’s XCar crash through the railing and plunge into the choppy water below.
Perfect, he thought.
TWO
MANHATTAN
“H e’s not going to phone me,” Madison McKean-Jordan said to Kevin, her husband of eleven months, and with luck the father of their child in nine more.
“He’ll phone you!” Kevin Jordan said.
“He’ll email.”
“No - he’s a Midwesterner - he’ll use Morse code or smoke signals!”
“He’ll email. He’ll say ‘Thanks for your agency’s hard work, Madison, but sorry, we’ve chosen a larger global advertising agency.’”
“We have a chance!”
“Our competitors have advantages! ” she said.
“I’m an optimist! ” he said.
“Yeah, cockeyed!” she said.
“So . . .?”
“So if blood-dripping lions chased you up a tree - you’d brag about the view!”
“It could be stunning! ”
“Yeah, for the lions!”
They sat in the small meeting room attached to her office. Madison was Chairman of Turner Advertising, the advertising agency handed over to her by her father Mark McKean. He’d retired two years ago to go three-putt his hours away on a Florida golf course and regularly remind her that her biological clock was running and that he’d love to hear the pitter-patter of little feet around the house.
She told him to buy a Chihuahua.
As she and Kevin waited for the big phone call, anticipation crackled in the air like static electricity. She hoped Kevin’s optimism was justified, that they got the call saying they made the shortlist of three agencies who could pitch for a huge new advertising account.
But deep down she knew (heck - everyone in advertising knew) her agency’s chances were slim to none. Their competitors had awesome global advertising resources, exactly the credentials most multinational clients want.
The phone call would come from a very large prospective client: Global Vehicles. The caller would tell them whether they’d made the three-agency shortlist. If they did, they could make a presentation for the advertising assignment of GV’s new XCar with its revolutionary new battery-power system. The annual advertising budget was two hundred seventy million dollars in media advertising, plus another forty million in social media business.
It was business her agency badly needed because two years ago her former automotive advertising client, World Motors, was bought by Eastern Auto Manufacturing, whose chairman immediately took Madison’s World Motors advertising and gave it to his son-in-law’s agency. Welcome to the Ad Game.
The resulting lost revenue hurt Turner Advertising significantly. Madison struggled to keep her auto-advertising experts on staff until she won a new car account. But car advertising accounts rarely come up for review.
Her agency had to win some new business in the next few months or she’d have to release a number of their experienced automotive experts. And without them, it’d be very difficult to attract a future automotive client.
She reminded herself to prepare for tha