Book One of The Girl on a Cross series:She’s bright, she’s beautiful, she’s young, she’s smart, she’s ambitious...she’s an orphan. As the sun sets on the day before Maria Martin's dream is to come true, her tennis ball gets away from her as she practices her strokes against the garage door of her foster home and rolls down a hill and into the garage of the house below. It is the home of two dark and evil men. He’s the come-back champ. Left four years previously by the only woman he’s ever loved, Russell Tucker has finally put down the bottle and resurrected his tennis career. As a bonus, he’s just made a remarkable new friend in ball-girl Maria Martin at a pro tennis event and his life couldn’t be better. Then Maria steps in front of a bullet that is aimed at him. Holly Stone is a world-renowned singer, remarried and on top of the charts, her life is perfect, until her brand new husband, the man she thought she knew so well, brutally attacks her in their own home. Afraid for her life and with nowhere else to go, she takes a long red-eye flight to her childhood home where she finds her ex-husband desperately fighting to save a young girl’s life. Benny Gluman is a snoop; he’s a paparazzi reporter and he’s hell-bent on destroying the lives of Russell and Holly. Join him as he looks through his camera lens and tries to figure out just what they are up too with this young girl lying comatose in a bed on Russell’s beach estate and then listen in with him as Russell and Holly give Maria something to cling to as they tell her the story of their lives in this epic coming-of-age tale that brims with love, hope, and new discovery. But they must wake her quickly, for evil comes their way, and it seeks the secrets that Maria found in the shadows of that basement garage and then hid away so well.