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Coming of Age
Date Published: June 2018
Danny McCall loves basketball more than anything in the world. So why would he risk his basketball scholarship, the love of his life and his entire future to fix the point spread in a series of college basketball games?
Set in the early 1990s, Shadow Games is an exciting page-turner, filled with fast-paced hoops action. A topical novel for readers of all ages, the book is a powerful portrayal of the loss of youthful innocence.
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Jim Lester is the author of three successful young adult novels: Fallout, The Great Pretender and Till the Rivers All Run Dry. He has a Ph.d in history and is the author of a non-fiction book entitled Hoop Crazy: College Basketball in the 1950s.
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![]() War King by Eric Schumacher
Publication Date: October 15, 2018
Creativia Publishing
Series: Hakon's Saga, Book 3
Genre: Historical Fiction
![]() About the Author![]() Cover Reveal Hosts100 Pages a Day Ageless Pages Reviews Bri's Book Nook Broken Teepee CelticLady's Reviews Donna's Book Blog For the Sake of Good Taste Historical Fiction with Spirit Hoover Book Reviews Locks, Hooks and Books Maiden of the Pages Naomi Finley Passages to the Past Pursuing Stacie The Book Junkie Reads What Is That Book About![]() ![]()
Historical Romance / Erotica
Date Published: July 2018
Publisher: Totally Bound Publishing
'You marry a man he owns you. I won't do it.' Will falling in love change her mind?
Victorian England 1872
Lady Henrietta escapes from her locked bedroom and stepfather's attempt to starve her into agreeing to an arranged marriage that will only be of benefit to him. Underage, she must avoid his clutches until she turns twenty-one, and as Amelia Brown, she finds employment in the household of Damion, Marquis of Ashton.
High-spirited and fiercely independent, Amelia has a chance encounter with Damion, which establishes a powerful attraction between the two. Their passion ignites, the sex between them of an unrestrained delight hat is contrary to the customs of the times.
But the storm clouds are gathering. Amelia will have to take desperate measures to protect herself and the man she loves.
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Cassie O'Brien is a writer of erotic romance. From A Lady To A Maid is the second book published by Totally Bound. The first was a contemporary romance, The Girls' Club which was published in February 2018.
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Sci-fi Mystery/Thriller
Would you modify your daughter’s DNA to end war forever?
In the near future, a World Oil War leaves the Midwest in ruins, except for pristine GMO crops controlled by a monopoly, Ambrosia, and the Army, which savagely protects the crops from starving war survivors.
A genetic engineer, Rachel Anne Lane hates violence and war, and has protected her unusual 16-year-old daughter, Alexis, since birth. If Rachel modifies Alexis’s special DNA, she can end all wars forever.
But Alexis rebels against her mother, traveling to the desolate Midwest to help survivors. Her healing gaze cures Jeff Trotter, a PTSD-afflicted soldier who’s searching for his father, Dan Trotter. Alexis and Jeff fall in love, though he dislikes her reading his mind, fearing she will discover secrets.
Desperate for more oil, the Army will kill millions of Americans with lethal GMO foods Rachel mistakenly developed. They’ll use Jabril El Fahd, the worst kind of brutal, mutated terrorist, who wants revenge against Rachel for his years of torture.
Helped by CIA and Army friends, and computer geek, Dan Trotter, Rachel chases Jabril across a post-apocalyptic U.S., desperate to save Alexis, Jeff, and the U.S. But Jabril is always one step ahead.
Excerpt
Chapter 1
Jeff trudged along the highway, now a barren strip of cracked cement, reminding him of a book he’d read. Before. Before the world had changed. The book had a dad and a son and they pushed a shopping cart over the bleak, empty road. Jeff wasn’t a little kid, though. He wasn’t sure, but probably close to twenty. He had a pack instead of a shopping cart, a gun and an axe handle. Did he have a dad? Of course he did. But who and where?
Not here. He hadn’t seen a soul. Today. Though it was early May, he was thankful the parching Texas sun that had spotlighted him all day was fading. Twilight was near. Woods lined the road now instead of horse meadows, and mesquite trees being the only cover. He didn’t feel like a solitary ant on a sand hill. The woods held cover. That was good. And bad. Others could use that cover, too. He eyed the woods. They were probably waiting.
It had been four years since his first attempt at making this trip. Four years of not knowing who he was, why he was here, why he wanted to go north. Four years of living in cardboard boxes in the ruined city of Dallas, or north of the city, out in the bush, a haze of headaches, running, hiding. Survival mode.
The headaches usually bored deep in the middle of his brain and jumbled his thoughts. But lately they had been getting better. His thinking was more clear. He was ready. This time he would get there.
He did another one-eighty check, walking backwards then forward again. The spring-green of the trees beside the road reminded him of another place, but where? A doe and fawn grazed on shin-high grass to his right in the ten yards of clearing between the trees and the crumbling, gray-black highway. Violet-colored flowers bloomed in the clearing, thick. For the last few miles, and as far as he could see ahead, the trees grew close to each other and undergrowth stuffed any empty space so it seemed like a violet carpet ended at a wall of green.
His gun, an M4 MWS, Modular Weapon System, hung like a satchel on his right hip; the nylon web belt crossed over his left shoulder and through the butt of the rifle. He’d fashioned a thin belt of Velcro scrounged from a trash bin in Dallas and looped it around his right thigh and the gun. It helped steady the gun on his hip, ready in an instant, like a gunfighter of the Old West. The gun rattled as he walked.
The doe lifted her head at the rattle. He put his hand on the gun, trying to muffle it. Both deer bounded away like stones skipped on a river—jump, jump, jump, then into the green on the last skip. Gone. Had the deer actually been there? Another tickle of a distant place smoked through his mind. The vapor of memory disappeared as quickly and completely as the deer.
His camouflaged fatigues were torn on the right knee, threadbare on the other, but at least there had been enough clothes in the pack to last. Lucky to find underwear, though. Dallas had many abandoned Walmarts. The one off Arapahoe near the Tollway had been perfect. He’d slept under some trees in a country club golf course on dead grass, but not bumpy. In the morning, it had taken only five minutes to get to the vacant Walmart. There were a couple of new packages of Hanes, size 34-36, tighty-whities, six per pack in a shopping cart, sitting behind the counter at the sporting goods department. No other clothes there fit him, although he liked his military garb. He felt a little safer in it.
What he’d really wanted was ammo for his gun, or a knife. But all the ammo in every store was gone. And all the knives. Oh well. At least he’d have clean underwear on if he got into a car accident. Yeah right. Hadn’t seen a car in forever.
The gun weight on his right hip felt good, open for the world to see and fear. The M4 MWS was a great gun, had attachments for the M203 grenade launcher, rail and night vision system, all kept in the pack on his back. It was a great threat. Bad thing, though: He didn’t have one damn bullet or one damn grenade. A fake.
Was that all he was, a fake man walking on an unknown road to a place he couldn’t remember? Was he a man? Inside he knew, felt it deep. It ran through him like dirty water through a broken house in a hurricane. Though he still had boy feelings and boy thoughts, he knew. The memories robbed him of sleep in the early morning: the pounding of his M50, chopping through trees in that Louisiana bayou, and the black man falling from one tree, limp and dead; an Army poker buddy burning and screaming and flailing like a torched scarecrow after an IED hit his Humvee; a man firing an RPG, the smoke trail an arrow at his Humvee. Jumping. The explosion. Darkness. Yeah, he was a real man. If only the path had been different.
He shook his head and gripped the axe handle. Real, hard, nothing false about it: a fairly nice club—absent its axe head, though still good hickory stock—heavy, hard and easy to swing. Blood stained the end he’d had to use yesterday on dogs, feral, crazy mutts that attacked him. He squeezed his eyes, pinched his face. The one he’d . . . Shit! She’d looked like his Lab back home.
There it was again—a memory about home instead of that stupid war. Seemed like when he got upset, memories popped into his head: bubbles floating up from a shifting sunken ship, breaching the surface, sometimes floating on the water reflecting the entire memory in a convex iridescence, but usually a mere glimpse before the bubble snapped into thin air. This time, the friendly panting face and happy brown eyes stared at him from over the top of a bed, his bed, his Lab, blond and her name was . . . ?
He sighed. Maybe another time. But she’d never bit him like that one yesterday. Right in the wrist. The puncture was beginning to fester, red and tender. Guess washing it out last night hadn’t helped. It had been his last two cups of water, too. He’d caught the water in a pan after running it over the bite. Had to conserve water for drinking. But even after boiling it, at the first swallow, thinking about the blood in it, he’d gagged and flung it in the bush.
Now his tongue was tacky on the roof of his mouth, his lips as dry and hard as a lizard’s tail, and the headache that had been doing so well was back. It had started in little fits, a nagging ache behind his right eye in the evening. Each morning the lack of it had given him hope. But yesterday as he’d walked and the day grew longer, the ache became a pounding that made him nauseous. It had been there this morning behind his right eye, and now his right eye teared trying to drown that evil gnome that surely lived inside his head, drilling behind his eye.
Water. Please. A stream or lake like the one he’d seen two days ago would be great.
There was nothing except dry road and the wall of trees and bush.
Survival methods came back: digging a hole in low ground, waiting for water to seep in the bottom (he didn’t want to wait); collecting dew on the grass (maybe in the morning); cutting a thick vine and sucking the end (no ropy vines as far as he could see, only trees and bushes).
He knew one thing, if he stayed on the highway, he stuck out like the lonely survivor he was: lonely, thirsty, without real protection, and soon to have an infected arm.
In the smudged twilight, the service station about a mile up the road was a beacon. Lights were on inside. That could be good, or bad—likely bad. He’d run across two guys, a woman and a preadolescent boy on the highway a few days ago. His first instinct had been to talk with them, join and help. Then he saw their eyes, soulless pools that followed him like a big cat eyeing a wounded zebra on the African savanna. The kid was the worst. He smiled brown crags of teeth and waved a filthy hand sporting long fingernails. Jeff ran—the other way. He could still run fast. Faster than them, that’s all that mattered.
There it was again. He had run before, and knew he was fast.
Somehow he was already off the highway, starting toward the green wall. He agreed with his legs. What he had to do was approach the service station from the rear. Or maybe from the side, so he could see the rear and the front. Whether they were good or bad folk, they would likely have both front and back covered. No matter how he approached, the highway at night was a bad idea. Though entering the deciduous forest made his skin crawl.
He shrugged off the thought of being tracked by someone or something behind the wall of trees, and broke into waist-high bushes that impeded every step. He waded forward for twenty feet and broke through to an old, two-track maintenance trail. It paralleled the highway. Surprisingly, he could see pretty well in the low light, so he shifted to a jog. If he didn’t get to the station before the end of light, he’d be a blind, easy target. Each step seemed to whip the evil gnome behind his right eye to drill deeper. He half-closed the eye. The musty odor of dead leaves and a faint skunk smell accompanied the beginnings of cool night air. That could be lucky: A skunk might keep predators away.
Trying to bring his concrete tongue out to moisten his cracked lips was no use. He gripped the axe handle at port arms. It could do some damage. A knife or a bullet would be better. Just one bullet. If they were good people in the station maybe they would give him a bullet. He would plead for two, and some antibiotics. How could all the people left be bad? There had to be some good people.
He slowed to make less noise. The clear space of the two-track allowed him to see a good distance ahead, though it felt like he was in a tunnel between trees and bushes on either side. About twenty yards ahead, a faint glow broke through from the left. It must be from the service station. Would there be traps set? Maybe even on this path? He inspected the ground. No signs of recent travel, though the dim light made it hard to tell. He forced his way through the bushes on his right, deciding to get deeper in the forest and watch his target.
A prickle ran up his neck when he entered the thicker forest. This was dark, wild country, and had been without the constant noise of nearby traffic for four years. That’s as far back as he had been awake enough to sort out this world. The only moving vehicles stuck to the wide freeways. He had specifically stayed away from them. A warning from his cardboard city pals. At least you could outrun people on foot. Out here there were no cars. So whatever animals had lived here once, had probably ventured back—he caught himself. That was another memory: cars and trucks on a highway close to where he’d grown up. How long since he’d been there?
His eyes grew more accustomed to the growing darkness. The brown vertical tree trunks alternated with black void. Leaves of a low-lying, unknown foliage floated in space—ghostly apple-green petals. He stopped and listened.
A faint breeze brought the night, ticked a few branches, rustled leaves. The smell of skunk was fading. Time to move forward.
Each step sounded too loud, crunching like an elephant dancing through crushed glass on tile. Maybe he should go back to the two-track. At least he would make less noise.
That’s what he did, and sighed in relief at his quiet steps. Then he thought about traps. Could be anywhere. He used his club like a blind man’s cane, touching the path ahead tentatively. Two taps with the club, one step. It took longer to cover the distance, but soon the back of the service station was visible through the web of foliage.
The back door, very solid, was closed. Fluorescent white light vibrated out of the window above it. A neon Kentucky Fried Chicken sign flickered on and off in reds and yellows atop the relatively modern building, probably tan-colored brick, judging from the scant illumination on the back walls.
Someone might be hiding on the far side of the building. He had to move a little further forward on the two-track to see the far side. A tap with his club, a step, a tap with his club—it touched a hard thing.
Bright lights flashed from the top of the building, blinding him. Netting erupted from the ground under him, surrounding him and closing high overhead. The netting rippled and settled and hung, a loose wall a foot around him. Still standing, he swung hard at the net with his club. It bounced back. A knife would sure be handy. Yeah, so would real bullets for whoever was coming next. Now he knew what a rabbit felt like in one of his traps, right before the end.
About the Author
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Milt Mays was winner of the Paul Gillette Writers Award in 2011. He grew up in Colorado, graduated from the Naval Academy and traveled the world as a Navy doctor. Two prequel novels are: The Next Day and Dan’s War. His website is www.miltmays.com.
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We are so excited to reveal the cover of T. A. Massa's debut novelSilent All These Years: A Novel. Check it out!![]() About Silent All These Years: A NovelAvailable September 13, 2018A broken daughter’s search for the truth unwinds a spiraling journey of panic, lust, and murder in this manipulative thriller from debut author T. A. Massa.
Melanie Stewart has just been left ten million dollars by a man she never knew. Should she accept the money? What if it means her mother, Marilyn, who died when she was only three years old, was murdered by the man who left it to her?
Melanie is trapped with crippling anxiety after the loss of her mother at a young age and the fatal stabbing of her fiancé on the night of their engagement.
When she discovers she has been written into the will of Roger Andrews, a name linked to the mysterious death of her mother, Melanie must trudge down a path of buried memories, reliving painful heartache, all while attempting to restart her life and trust a new admirer, Jake Andrews, Roger’s grandson.
Told from the alternating perspectives of Melanie’s investigation and Marilyn’s last weeks leading up to her death, the clues unravel one by one, leaving you guessing until the final climax. Who should Melanie trust? What happened to Marilyn all those years ago?
SILENT ALL THESE YEARS: A Novel is a Standalone Fiction Mystery Suspense Novel.
Add Silent All These Years: A Novel to your Goodreads list here!Silent All These Years: A Novel by T. A. Massa releases September 13th!![]() ![]() ![]() About Author T. A. Massa
Tiffani lives near Austin, TX with her husband, three kids, three dogs, and all her cats. She spends her days helping her husband with his company, running her kids around town, caring for the house, and trying to figure out what to make for dinner.
She is a lover of all stories.
She enjoys reading, writing, blogging, and going to the movies (especially on opening day!). Her background is in marketing and entrepreneurship and she is addicted to learning new things.
She manages a Lifestyle Blog at Pages & Lace covering books, movies, design, style trends, and her favorite products. Check it out today!
Her debut novel, Silent All These Years: A Novel, releases September 13, 2018. She has started her second novel with hopes of publishing in the Fall of 2019.
Stay Connected with Author T. A. Massa!
Website: www.TAMassaWrites.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TAMassaWrites Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tiffanimassa/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TiffaniMassa Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/tamassa
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Fiction—Romance, Women’s Fiction
Date Published: August 2018
Publisher: Front Street Press
Elite athlete Rainey Abbott is an intense competitor on the outside, but inside, she feels a daunting apprehension about her chances of finding true love. Her life as a downhill skier and race car driver keeps her on the edge, but her love life is stuck in neutral. A tragedy from her past has left her feeling insecure and unlovable.
Now that she’s in her thirties, Rainey’s best friend Natalie insists she take a leap and try online dating. Rainey connects with brian85 and becomes cautiously hopeful as a natural attraction grows between them. Fearful a face to face meeting could ruin the magic, Rainey enlists Natalie to scheme up an encounter between the two where Brian is unaware he is meeting his online mystery woman. Rainey is left feeling both guilty about the deception and disappointed by something Brian says.
When they finally meet in earnest, Rainey’s insecurities threaten to derail the blossoming romance. As she struggles with self-acceptance, she reveals the risks we all must take to have a chance for love.
About the Author
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Tricia Downing is recognized as a pioneer in the sport of women’s paratriathlon, as the first female paraplegic to finish an Iron distance triathlon. She has competed in that sport both nationally and internationally, in addition to competing in road racing and other endurance events. She has represented the United States in international competition in five different sport disciplines—cycling (as a tandem pilot prior to her 2000 accident), triathlon, duathlon, rowing and Olympic style shooting, in which she was a member of Team USA at the 2016 Paralympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
She was featured in the Warren Miller documentary Superior Beings and on the lifestyle TV magazine show Life Moments. She has been featured in Muscle and Fitness Hers, Mile High Sports and Rocky Mountain Sports magazines.
Additionally, she is founder of The Cycle of Hope (www.thecycleofhope.org), a non-profit organization designed for female wheelchair users to promote health and healing on all levels—mind, body and spirit.
Tricia studied Journalism as an undergraduate at the University of Maryland and holds Masters degrees in both Sports Management (Eastern Illinois University) and Disability Studies (Regis University).
She lives in Denver, Colorado with her husband Steve and two cats, Jack and Charlie. Visit Tricia at triciadowning.com
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Website www.chanceforrain.com or www.triciadowning.com
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Suspense
Date Published: March 2018
Publisher: Black Opal Books
Aldo is a mystery/thriller/love story in which a brilliant and dangerous ideologue attempts to eliminate a university’s genetics institute by holding the university’s president hostage.
On the same day that Isabel Canto, associate director of Pembrook Atlantic University's Institute for Genome Modification, discovers she is pregnant with IGM post-doc Frank Marks's baby, Pembrook's president Mary Ellen Mackin receives a letter from "Aldo" threatening harm if she does not dissolve the institute and fire its director. Aldo claims to represent "ethical people across the world concerned with the detrimental consequences of germline genetic modification in humans" who fear not only "designer babies" but also the unintended consequences of changing human DNA for future generations.
The institute's director, Linus Winter, conducts research into germline gene modification, which is the controversial modification of a gene in reproductive cells to affect descendants. Linus hopes to use genetic therapy to eliminate Huntington's Disease, for which he has tested positive, and other horrific hereditary disorders.
Isabel suspects that Frank, who has disclosed his opposition to germline genetic therapy, is willing to sabotage Linus's project. She finds her loyalties divided between Frank and Linus.
President Mackin refuses to dissolve IGM. The next evening Aldo kidnaps her.
This story is embedded in a letter Isabel writes to her son Lino on his sixteenth birthday.
About the Author
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Since graduating from Pomona College in 1968, Betty Jean Craige has been a teacher, scholar, translator, columnist, and mystery writer. She retired from the University of Georgia in 2011 as University Professor of Comparative Literature and Director of the Willson Center for Humanities and Arts. After retiring she published a Sunday column in the local paper about animal behavior titled "Cosmo Talks" and a book titled Conversations with Cosmo: At Home with an African Gray Parrot. Then she began writing fiction. Her Witherston Murder Mystery series, set in north Georgia, includes Downstream, Fairfield's Auction (First Place in Chanticleer Book Awards' category of Mystery and Mayhem), Dam Witherston (Honorable Mention in the 2017 Royal Dragonfly Book Awards for Mystery, and Distinguished Favorite in 2018 Independent Press Awards), and Chieftains in Witherston (scheduled to be published in 2019). A suspense novel, Aldo, came out in 2018.
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Psychological Suspense
Date Published: 08-04-2018
Laurie Brandon isn’t crazy. It’s a bout of panic that has her muttering indecipherable sounds and crying out like a mad woman, an attack brought on by her infant daughter’s sudden disappearance from the town’s annual Apple Festival. Not insanity. She needs help to save Emily. Someone has to see that, do something.
But her recent history of psychosis coupled with witness claims that Emily was never at the festival with Laurie isn’t helping her credibility. Neither is recent suspension from her job as a school teacher over stability concerns. Perhaps most damaging, though, is Laurie’s insistence that her ex-husband, Jake, had something to do with the child’s disappearance. Any sane person knows a dead man can’t run off with a baby.
The town sheriff believes Laurie is, at best, unreliable and possibly something much worse. But Laurie knows what she saw. She knows other things, too, details too hard to believe and even harder to accept. Now, she needs to convince someone – anyone – that Emily is in danger before the sheriff locks Laurie away permanently.
About the Author
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Christine Barfknecht has a passion for weaving the darkest bits of the human psyche into page-turning fiction. She’s been crafting stories since before she printed her first word and credits her overactive imagination to a lifelong love of reading. She seeks out books that keep her hiding beneath the covers at night or turning pages long after her eyes begin to cross, and strives for those qualities in her own writing.
Christine lives in rural Wisconsin with her husband, children, and pets where she is also a virtual bookkeeping entrepreneur. In addition to reading and writing, she enjoys gardening, crafts, time with family, and traveling. APPLE OF MY EYE is her debut novel.
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Paranormal Romance
Date Published: August 20, 2018
Publisher: FAB Books
Charlie runs for her life, bruised and bleeding after yet another visit from her former boyfriend. The only one she can turn to is a colleague, and Carrie sends Charlie to her parents on the Islands, a safe haven where she can rest and heal.
Prepared to leave, things take an unexpected turn when Charlie finds out about the legacy some of the families on the Islands share, and how she has links to it.
Joao is about to propose to his girlfriend when his uncle calls to ask for help, and he arrives at his uncle Nico and aunt Pauline’s house to find an abused girl. As the Chief of Police and protector of the Islands, he’s used to handling situations like this, but then the girl opens her eyes and his world shifts. The turquoise gaze is a clear indication that the girl comes from the Islands, but it also cuts straight to his soul.
Charlie and Joao grow close as she adjusts to her new life, but then their lives are turned around yet again, and this time, there might not be a way back to who they were becoming together.
Seaborn is loosely linked to the Birds of a Feather series where Joao played a part in book #4, Black Snow. The story takes place after the series ends, but it is not a continuation and can be read standalone.
Excerpt
There wasn’t any other way. I’d have to trust Carrie. We’d worked on the same team for two years and weren’t friends outside the office because I couldn’t have close friends. I’d tried but he drove them off, by being rude to them until they gave up, or telling me what would happen to them if I didn’t pull back, so I stopped calling and eventually, they did too. But Carrie and I were co-workers who talked every day, so in a way, we were friends after all. And Carrie knew who my former boyfriend was, and what he was capable of.
“Okay,” I whispered. “I’ll hold on to the phone for ten more minutes, then I’ll leave it behind.”
“Shit,” Carrie said again. “Okay. Shit. Move toward the airport, Lottie.”
I closed the call without saying goodbye and started walking. Everything hurt, but now I had a plan, and that gave me the strength to keep moving, step after agonizing step. I’d pulled the hood up to cover my face and used the arm to wipe off blood as I walked, hoping the dark blue color would hide the stains. The phone was in my hand, and I answered before the first silent buzz had come to an end.
“Yeah?”
“Benito is waiting for you. Side door, west of the building.”
“Side door, west of the building,” I echoed. “Carrie?”
“Yes?”
“Thanks.”
“Oh, Lottie...”
I could hear how Carrie sniffled but didn’t know what to say to assure her everything would be okay. It wasn’t okay, and I wasn’t sure it ever would be.
“Carrie?” I rasped out, finally.
“Yes?”
“In my real life, the one I had before him… I wasn’t Lottie then. I had a real life once, and everyone called me Charlie.”
A sob came through the phone, and a quiet, “Oh, sweetie.”
“I’ll keep moving toward the airport now.”
Then I closed the call and started the long, painful walk toward my escape. I stopped outside a convenience store to put the phone in the back of a pick-up, hoping the owners wouldn’t get hurt if someone were tracing the signal.
When I reached the airport terminal, my head was spinning, and it felt as if I was stumbling along in a strange bubble where all sounds were warped, and the only emotion available was a dull, thumping pain.
“Side door, west of the building,” I repeated as a mantra, placing one foot in front of the other until I walked straight into a man.
“Jesus. Fuck, what the –”
I tried to smile and used the sleeve of her hoodie to wipe away sweat and blood from eyes which were swollen almost completely shut.
“Benito?” I asked.
“You’re Carries friend?”
“Yeah.”
“Jesus,” he repeated and reached for me.
“I’m good,” I mumbled and sidestepped. “No one can know I’m here.”
“I know,” he said. “Shit. Okay, let’s go.”
He led me around the building, through a gate, and over the tarmac. When I was sitting in one of the passenger seats, he tilted the chair all the way back and wrapped a blanket gently around me.
“Thank you,” I slurred. “Don’t talk about me on the radio.”
“What?”
“He might hear. There can’t be any trails to follow.”
“Okay, honey. Okay. Shit. Just rest, and we’ll leave in a few minutes.”
There was no way I’d relax, not as long as he could find me, but it was nice to take the weight off my aching foot and close the small slits that were my eyes. Then the engines roared, the plane started moving, and finally – we were in the air.
Silently, hot tears started running across my temples and into my dirty and blood-streaked hair. Two minutes later, I slept.
About the Author
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The proper way to put it here would probably be to describe how I love to play with our two big dogs, adore my fantastic daughters and how much I love to read.
Another way would be to use my imagination and then I would be a super powerful warrior woman, think Xena the warrior princess (though with less tacky clothes). Or when I think of it, maybe I’m actually more of a Hercule Poirot (sans the suit and moustache). Or maybe I’m like Aragorn, strong and cool and then I might get to meet Gandalf! Or I could be Bella’s pretty cousin and snap Jacob up in a second (yeah, I’m so not team Edward), or wait, maybe I could be like one of them heroines in historical novels who swoon all the time. I’ve always wanted to swoon…
Well, I guess you get how my mind is working (or not working, some say).
Anyways, I like to write. Stories, adventures, romantic and happy stuff mixed up with sorrow and hardship, and bit of laughter here and there because the way I see it – life is way too short to go around feeling grumpy.
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