Download or read book RELINQUISHED written by Thomas W. Devine and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2011-06-18 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Relinquished An Australian graduate, Michelle Apperton, disappears while working on a conservation assessment of two islands in New Zealand’s rugged Marlborough Sounds. Ben Arthur, a New Zealand university lecturer, has to defend his innocence of any crime and convince the police that tuatara smugglers abducted her. Michelle’s nightmare is just beginning. She finds out she will be a consolation prize for a visiting Singaporean collector of rare and endangered wildlife, and that she will be murdered by the smugglers once he leaves their Wairarapa farm. Frustrated in every desperate attempt to resist her captors, her only hope of survival lies with Keith Shandler, an ex-con, but his help has a price. Ben, quite prepared to risk his life for Michelle, follows a lead to her whereabouts, but by then she is on the run with Keith. Pursued, Keith makes a succession of fateful decisions that lead to he and Michelle becoming trapped on a Cook Strait ferry. One life will be forfeit, and the other will never be the same.