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Last call for Freida Fail’s heart-pounding debut, Ace Deuce – Discover this complex, suspenseful thriller

Last call for KND Free Thriller excerpt:

Ace Deuce: National Security is Not a Game

by Freida Fail

Ace Deuce: National Security is Not a Game
4.7 stars – 23 Reviews
Kindle Price: $4.99
On Sale! Everyday price: $6.50
Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled
Here’s the set-up:

The sights, sounds, and smells began to awaken John’s senses, long subdued by hospital confinement. I am alive, John thought as he inhaled deeply as if to speed the process.Unravel the mystery in Freida Fail’s heart-pounding debut, Ace Deuce. A suspenseful blend of mystery and intrigue, this complex thriller pits a group of truth seekers against authorities ravaged by greed and revenge.

After stumbling across a comatose man in the middle of the road, the French ambassador to Niger takes the man, whom he begins to call John, to his own estate to recover upon his release from the hospital.

While under the watchful eye of the French ambassador, John begins experiencing painful flashbacks when he glimpses a sign reading “Ace Deuce, Ltd.” in a uranium mine.

As word spreads of the mysterious amnesiac, Chance Bradford, chief counsel of the world’s largest defense contractor, begins to suspect that he may in fact be her missing twin brother—and CEO of the company—Josh Bradford.

His reunion with Chance only further confuses him as she reveals a phone call from the day after Josh disappeared that indicated a threat to national security.

Will John and Chance discover the truth before it’s too late? And what exactly is Ace Deuce, Ltd.? There’s only one way to find out…

And here, for your reading pleasure, is our free excerpt:

Chapter 1

John Doe

 

Sounds. Gentle, rhythmic whirring tones of tapping that start and stop. Garbled sounds. No. Not garbled. A foreign language. The tapping becomes louder. Something on his face is soft but firm. Darkness. Oh God, I am blind, he thought! Have to move. The tapping is getting louder! Nothing happening. Brain is commanding me to move! Move! However, nothing is happening!

That smell. What is that smell? He had smelled it before. Fear. Yes, it is the distinctive smell of fear, but where is it coming from, he thought as he searched for an answer. His body stiffened as he was transported back in time. The same smell had wafted under his flight helmet as his A-7 Corsair approached the aircraft carrier on a black night with decks pitching fifteen feet and the ramp rising out of the sea like a huge black monster that was hungry for its next victim. This smell had also pervaded the ready room, as he and his fellow aviators paced, played Ace Deuce, and tried not to think of the life-threatening missions that were awaiting them. The catapult rumbled overhead, launching men in flying machines and dulling their voices.

Not since Vietnam had he experienced such terror. I’m not just blind, but I’m paralyzed as well, he thought. The familiar refrain of “The Navy Hymn” seemed to lull him back into unconsciousness:

 

Eternal Father, strong to save,

Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,

O hear us when we cry to thee

For those in peril on the sea.

 

“Good morning, ambassador. No, no. The patient has not regained consciousness. No, he has not spoken. He seems to drift in and out of consciousness. I believe Dr. Mamadou is planning to remove his bandages this afternoon.”

Charles replaced the telephone in its cradle and leaned back in his chair, remembering that dusty evening on the road to Niamey from Benin. Still deep in thought, he automatically dialed Dr. Mamadou. “Dr. Mamadou. Charles here. I understand that you are removing the bandages this afternoon.”

“Good morning, Charles. Yes, that is correct. Yes, I agree with you. It would be a good idea if you were here. I am sure that our patient will want to hear the details of how he came to be admitted to St. Etienne’s. Time? Let’s say three p.m. No, I have no way of knowing. Only time will tell.”

The tapping was coming closer. No, it’s not tapping, but what is it? It’s a steady rhythmic cadence. That is what it is, he thought.

People are walking. That is the tapping I hear. Voices are close by. They are louder. The airflow is changing. I can hear rustling movements. Fear mounted in the man’s chest like lava rising with explosive force from the depths of a volcano.

“My good man. If you can hear me, I am Dr. Mamadou, and I am going to begin removing your bandages. Try to relax.”

Mamadou? What kind of name is that? He had a heavy accent combined with the King’s English. Where am I? Slowly, he began to perceive light. Light? Light! Maybe. Please, God, let me be able to see, he thought.

“Charles, be so kind as to pull the shades before we take off this last bandage. Gently, gingerly try to open your eyes,” said Dr. Mamadou.

The man commanded his eyelids to open, but nothing happened. He commanded his eyelids again, but his sense of fear still paralyzed him. Relax, he told himself. You want to know if you are blind or not, regardless of the outcome. Slowly, his lids began to part.

Two fuzzy images came into focus. One man was smaller, rounder, and darker. The other man was lighter, taller, and thinner.

“Can you move your arms or legs? Can you speak?” asked Dr. Mamadou. “Your reflex tests were normal. However, many times the trauma itself will temporarily prevent any movement. Can you speak?” he asked once more.

 

<insert image dreamstime_m_32988135.jpg>

 

Niamey, Niger

“Yes,” he said with raspy vocal cords that he hadn’t used in a while. As the man began to join the ranks of the living, the fear began to subside, and a warming sensation like electricity began to flow through his body. As he opened his eyes once more, he saw two distinct figures. He saw a somewhat rotund black man in a white jacket. This was obviously Dr. Mamadou. He also saw a thin, impeccably dressed blonde man whom Dr. Mamadou had called Charles.

“I’ll leave you two gentleman to get acquainted, and I’ll be back to check on you this evening. I think you’ve had enough excitement for one day, and I have to finish my rounds,” said Dr. Mamadou.

The tall, stately gentleman pulled his chair closer to the bed. With an unmistakable French accent, he said in perfect English, “My name is Charles DuBois, and I am happy to say that I found you and brought you here. What is your name, sir?”

“I can’t remember my name. Where am I?” he asked.

“You, sir, are in St. Etienne’s Hospital in Niamey,” Charles said.

“Niamey?” he asked, clearly not registering any recognition.

“Niamey is the capital of the Republic of Niger in West Africa,” said Charles.

“What am I doing here, Charles? You did say your name was Charles, didn’t you?”

“Pardon me for my poor manners. Let me formally introduce myself. My name is Charles DuBois, and I am the French ambassador to Niger. I found you exactly three weeks ago on April first on the road to Niamey from the Republic of Benin. You were bloody and blindly staggering down the road before you fell and lost consciousness,” said Charles.

“Three weeks ago? You mean I have been unconscious for twenty-one days?”

“Twenty days, to be precise, John. I have counted every day with anticipation. I have been waiting for you to regain consciousness,” said Charles earnestly.

“You called me John. Is that my name?” he asked.

“I suppose it could be. Until you remember your name, I will call you John, as in John Doe. This is a custom in America, is it not?”

John Doe. His brain searched fruitlessly for an association. “Since I am indebted to you for saving my life, and I can’t seem to remember who I am at the moment, John Doe is fine. Should I know what is customary in America?” he questioned.

“Well, John, you Americans are an unmistakable lot, given that your accents are neither British nor Australian. In time, you will remember exactly what that means. You will recall your customs and all. Until then, let me tell you about the road to Niamey.”

Chapter 2

The Road to Niamey

 

“I remember April first distinctly because it was my birthday, and I was returning home after an official engagement in the Republic of Benin. It was dusk and I yelled to my driver to watch out. I said that there was something in the road ahead. He slowed and stopped abruptly just as you fell headlong in front of my Range Rover. You were covered in blood. Your clothing was torn and you were barefoot. I called ahead to St. Etienne Hospital. I said that I was bringing in an unconscious man who was injured. I told them to have Dr. Mamadou meet me at the hospital in forty-five minutes. That’s about the extent of it. You have been unconscious for twenty days. Dr. Mamadou determined that you were in shock and that you could not see. Your hair was singed as if you had been close to a fire. Dr. Mamadou said that you were emaciated. He said that you were suffering from exhaustion and trauma, but you appeared to have no internal injuries. He believed that your proximity to a fire caused the injury to your eye. He decided to keep your eyes irrigated and properly medicated with an antibacterial ointment. He bandaged your eyes to prevent infection and to let them rest so that they would eventually heal. For the last five days, you have been increasingly agitated, and Dr. Mamadou thought that you would regain consciousness at any moment. Of course, we do not know whether you will regain all your facilities, but Dr. Mamadou feels certain that with proper convalescence and physical therapy, you will be as good as new in a few months. During your stay, the local police have combed the area where I found you. Their efforts have been to no avail. It is as though you dropped from the sky. They have sent faxes to the major hotels and foreign companies operating in Niger, and thus far they have turned up nothing.” Charles paused.

“When you found me, did I have any identification, such as a passport, a driver’s license, or anything else?” asked John.

“Oddly enough, you had nothing. Oh, I almost forgot. There was one thing. You had a five-hundred-naira banknote,” said Charles.

“A single banknote?” asked John.

“Yes,” replied Charles. It was issued by the Central Bank of Nigeria. Does that mean anything to you, John? It’s all we have so far.”

“It means absolutely nothing,” said John. His flat voice was devoid of all emotion.

“In that case, I insist that you come and stay with me while you are convalescing. I’ll see that my staff readies the guest cottage within the week,” Charles said, pushing his chair away from the bedside and preparing to leave.

“I couldn’t possibly do that. I wouldn’t dream of imposing on you,” said John.

“You won’t be imposing. I live alone. My wife died five years ago in a skiing accident in St. Moritz. I welcome the company and perhaps I can be of some help to you in your search for your identity. I shall expect you as soon as Dr. Mamadou gives his permission that you can be moved,” Charles said with finality.

“It seems that I will be indebted to you for more than saving my life.” John’s voice trailed off. Words entered his mind in a seemingly desperate attempt to comfort him:

 

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

I am the master of my fate;

I am the captain of my soul.

 

Invictus, he thought. How very strange. I can remember a poem by William Ernest Henley, but I cannot remember my own name. He was thankful that Dr. Mamadou had told him that during his recovery there would be occasions when he would remember minute details one minute and nothing the next minute. If he did not know this, he would have thought that he was losing his mind.

Chapter 3

Memories of Another Aviator

 

John was standing at the window with his back toward the door when he heard the familiar voice of Dr. Mamadou. “John, Charles will be arriving momentarily to pick you up. I expect you to be vigilant in your physical therapy, and I will see you weekly for the next several months.”

“Dr. Mamadou, I want you to know how grateful I am to you for all that you’ve done. I can’t pay you for your services at present—”

Dr. Mamadou abruptly interrupted, “John, let’s not worry about that for now. There will be plenty of time to discuss these mundane things over the next several months. My primary concern is for you to fully recover. Here is Charles now. I’ll see you on Tuesday,” he said as he turned to leave.

“Well now. I see that my clothes don’t fit too badly. After a few weeks of Suzette’s cooking and a little sunshine, you’ll be as good as new. Are you ready?” Charles asked, grabbing John’s elbow to support him and steering him toward the exit. Kollo, Charles’s chauffeur, was six-foot-five. He weighed well over two hundred pounds. They were waiting with the Range Rover to take him to the ambassador’s residence.

As the Range Rover headed southwest out of the city, the various sights and sounds mesmerized John. The modern tree-lined avenues were juxtaposed with the older traditional street scene of markets filled with tie-dyed cloth, multicolored blankets, copper craftwork, silver jewelry, and the like. Vendors in colorful cotton shirts and traditional long dresses were calling out their wares in tongues that John had never heard before. Charles explained that although French was spoken in the major cities, Niger’s population was a mix of Hausa, Djerma, Kouri, Tuareg, and Fulani.

As the Range Rover crossed the Niger River, they saw canoes bringing fresh vegetables and fish making their way to the small market, where women shopped daily for their families. The sights, sounds, and smells began to awaken John’s senses. The hospital confinement had long subdued his senses. I am alive, John thought as he inhaled deeply as if to speed up the process.

Heading out of the city, they saw the shantytowns on the outskirts. John leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes, as if to say, “I am feeling overwhelmed. My brain needs time to make sense of all of this.”

Just as the rhythm of the Range Rover was lulling John to sleep, Charles said, “Welcome home, John.” Two black wrought-iron gates swung open invitingly and closed behind them, ushering them into another world.

Charles escorted John to the guest cottage, which was located behind the main house and opposite the pool. The decor announced comfort in garden hues. The huge overstuffed furniture had obviously been selected with lounging in mind. French doors provided direct access to the pool, and well-manicured grounds could be seen from every window. It was a perfect setting for contemplating and convalescing.

Charles interrupted John’s thoughts by beckoning him to lunch. Suzette, Charles’s diminutive French cook, had prepared it especially for John.

After eating a scrumptious meal that Suzette had prepared in the grandest French tradition, John accepted Charles’s invitation to acquaint himself with his new surroundings by touring the main house and the grounds. Charles had some work to finish at the embassy, and he would be gone for several hours. John surmised that the house had been built in the 1930s. Its spacious, airy rooms were reminiscent of haciendas. Saltillo tile covered both the exterior walkways and interior floors. In several of the rooms, dark wooden beams contrasted with the white stucco walls. The house had been renovated to incorporate air conditioning, overhead fans, and stucco construction. However, despite the high summer temperatures, these amenities were unnecessary for much of the year. The home was obviously designed with an understanding of the social obligations of a foreign ambassador. The focal point of the house was a great room that was filled with couches and chairs that were arranged to accommodate many simultaneous conversations. The magnificent bar and the grand piano impressed John. The great room opened onto a grand patio that was adorned by bougainvilleas, which were resplendent in their purple hues. Matching tables and chairs drew the patio and pool area together as one unified space.

The bougainvilleas adorned the walls in majestic beauty, secreting the high masonry walls that gave the ambassador’s residence its security and seclusion.

John paused in front of a room that seemed to be used more often than the rest of the house. Books lined the walls. Newspapers were strewn around the desk, and a sweater hung around the back of the chair, awaiting its familiar occupant. A credenza that was adorned with photographs immediately captured John’s attention. Wearing a tuxedo, Charles was linked arm-in-arm with a woman dressed in a wedding gown. The palest green eyes amplified her dark beauty.

It must be Charles’s wife, John thought. He wondered what name could possibly describe this rare gem. John continued perusing when he came upon a photograph of a man in uniform standing beside an airplane. There was an engraved inscription below the photograph.

John was involuntarily bathed in a cold sweat. His legs turned to jelly and his eyes lost their ability to focus. He reached for the chair next to the credenza, lest he fall. As John lowered himself into the chair, Charles appeared in the doorway, having spent the day working at the embassy.

“I must admit,” said Charles. “I had selfish reasons when I suggested that you tour the house. I was hoping you would venture into this room,” said Charles, walking forward and standing next to John. “This was Cherish and me on our wedding day,” he said as he almost reverently picked up the photo that John had admired.

Cherish, thought John. This name was befitting of a beautiful woman. As Charles replaced the wedding photograph, he reached for the photo of the aviator. John’s stomach lurched in anxiety.

“This was Lieutenant Fiske DuBois, my father,” explained Charles. “He died in the Battle of Britain.”

“Fiske DuBois? The Fiske DuBois with the Five Hundred and First County of Gloucester Squadron based at Tangmere?” John heard himself ask, once again surprised by his apparent knowledge.

“Yes. As he landed, enemy aircraft attacked his plane and it became an inferno. They were able to get him out, but he died the next day in the hospital. I never knew him. He died before I was born,” Charles explained, handing John the photograph.

As John looked down at the photograph, he read the inscription aloud. “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. With our nation’s great appreciation. Winston Churchill.”

“But Fiske DuBois was an American who flew with the RAF, and you are French,” said John, looking up at Charles questioningly.

“I’m half French. You see, my interest in you was not entirely altruistic. I suppose subconsciously I thought that having you here would somehow allow me to gain a better understanding of my father, since he was also American. I’ll tell Suzette to bring us cocktails on the patio, and I’ll meet you there as soon as I change my clothes. I’ll tell you the story of how my mother and father met,” Charles said, loosening his tie. He walked toward the master suite and John walked toward the patio.

 

Chapter 4

Nicole and Fiske

 

John was standing at the edge of the patio overlooking the garden. Although he appeared to be looking at the grounds in silent admiration, his thoughts were chaotic. Who the hell am I? What am I doing here? How do I know about Fiske DuBois and the 501? I remember dreaming of a carrier landing in the hospital. Was I fantasizing that I was Tom Cruise in Top Gun? So far, the only link between how I felt in the study and in the hospital is aviation. Am I a military pilot or a civilian pilot? Who the hell am I? As his anxiety continued to mount, he was jerked back to reality.

“What’s your poison, John?” inquired Charles.

“I don’t honestly know,” replied John. “I’ll have whatever you are drinking.”

Charles handed John a drink. As John took a sip, his facial expression revealed his displeasure.

“Well, we know one thing for certain, John. Scotch was not your drink,” Charles kidded. “Let’s try Bourbon. Most Americans like Bourbon, as I recall.”

During their second drink, the effects of the alcohol were evident. Gone was all stiffness and formality. Charles and John were just two chums knocking back a few rounds and telling war stories.

“It was a war story of a fashion,” said Charles. “Nicole Gaullede, my mother, had been sneaked out of France to Britain in the spring of 1940 with the help of her brother Charles, who was the head of the Free French Resistance. He was concerned for her safety. She quickly found work as a nurse in a military hospital that had been set up near Chicester at Tangmere Airfield. She met my father, Fiske DuBois, in the mess hall. Fiske was an American volunteer who was attached to the RAF under Sir Hugh Dowding, commander of the RAF Fighter Command. They slipped into an immediate friendship in large part because Fiske spoke French fluently, having studied it in college. Like so many couples during the war, theirs was a whirlwind courtship. They were secretly married within three months. Mother continued to work at the hospital, and she was on duty the day my father was brought in and died. She had not told my father that she was pregnant. She feared that it would jeopardize the concentration that he needed on his bombing missions. After the war, we returned to Paris, where I was raised surrounded by my mother’s family.”

“Did you ever want to live in America with your grandparents, the DuBois?” asked John.

“I’ve never met any of my father’s family members. My mother said that she had planned to tell my father and his parents in person at Christmas, which was when he had leave. Unfortunately, he died before then. Mother thought that it would be best to return to France after the war and to try to build a life for us there. I think the thought of dealing with America frightened her. She spoke very little English, and she had never been to America.”

“Did your mother remarry after the war?” asked John.

“No. Fiske was the love of her life. She never tried to forget him. I always felt that my father was still a part of my life. When mother died eight years ago, I felt an unbearable sense of loss. I realized then how often she spoke of my father.”

“That’s enough about me, for now. John, do you remember anything about your past? Do you recall anything that might give us a clue?” questioned Charles.

John told him that the only link he could come up with was aviation, but he wasn’t even sure if that was valid. Maybe he was a history buff, but somehow he doubted that this was the case. The feelings were too real to have merely resulted from academic studies.

“I have a great idea,” said Charles. “Let’s attend the Paris Air Show in June, if you have recovered sufficiently by then. We can stay at my house in Paris. Perhaps being around aviation will jog your memory further. What do you think? Do you think you’ll be up to it?” The tone in his voice clearly expressed his wish to go.

“How could I possibly leave the country? I do not have a passport. I have no identification. I have nothing,” said John as he looked at Charles helplessly.

“John, I will have a French passport made for you like we do for our intelligence services when they want to conceal someone’s real identity. You will be on my private plane, which does not go through regular customs. The embassy limousine will meet us at the airport and take us directly to my house in Paris. It is that simple. If you are with me then there will not be a problem. As you can see, this job does have its perks. What do you think? Will you come?” asked Charles.

“It is not as if I have any plans. Sure. Why not?” said John, not knowing if he would be opening Pandora’s box. Dinner was a light affair. Charles retired to his study, and John sought solace in the guest cottage. He had decided that tomorrow after lunch he would ride into town with Charles and then walk around a bit. Maybe he would go to the National Museum or to the library. He wanted to learn a little more about Niamey. Perhaps it would give him a clue as to why he had gone there.

Continued….

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Ace Deuce: National Security is Not a Game

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Ace Deuce: National Security is Not a Game by Freida Fail

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Now we’re back to offer our weekly free Thriller excerpt:

Ace Deuce: National Security is Not a Game

by Freida Fail

Ace Deuce: National Security is Not a Game
4.7 stars – 23 Reviews
Kindle Price: $1.99
On Sale! Everyday price: $6.50
Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled
Here’s the set-up:

The sights, sounds, and smells began to awaken John’s senses, long subdued by hospital confinement. I am alive, John thought as he inhaled deeply as if to speed the process.Unravel the mystery in Freida Fail’s heart-pounding debut, Ace Deuce. A suspenseful blend of mystery and intrigue, this complex thriller pits a group of truth seekers against authorities ravaged by greed and revenge.

After stumbling across a comatose man in the middle of the road, the French ambassador to Niger takes the man, whom he begins to call John, to his own estate to recover upon his release from the hospital.

While under the watchful eye of the French ambassador, John begins experiencing painful flashbacks when he glimpses a sign reading “Ace Deuce, Ltd.” in a uranium mine.

As word spreads of the mysterious amnesiac, Chance Bradford, chief counsel of the world’s largest defense contractor, begins to suspect that he may in fact be her missing twin brother—and CEO of the company—Josh Bradford.

His reunion with Chance only further confuses him as she reveals a phone call from the day after Josh disappeared that indicated a threat to national security.

Will John and Chance discover the truth before it’s too late? And what exactly is Ace Deuce, Ltd.? There’s only one way to find out…

And here, for your reading pleasure, is our free excerpt:

Chapter 1

John Doe

 

Sounds. Gentle, rhythmic whirring tones of tapping that start and stop. Garbled sounds. No. Not garbled. A foreign language. The tapping becomes louder. Something on his face is soft but firm. Darkness. Oh God, I am blind, he thought! Have to move. The tapping is getting louder! Nothing happening. Brain is commanding me to move! Move! However, nothing is happening!

That smell. What is that smell? He had smelled it before. Fear. Yes, it is the distinctive smell of fear, but where is it coming from, he thought as he searched for an answer. His body stiffened as he was transported back in time. The same smell had wafted under his flight helmet as his A-7 Corsair approached the aircraft carrier on a black night with decks pitching fifteen feet and the ramp rising out of the sea like a huge black monster that was hungry for its next victim. This smell had also pervaded the ready room, as he and his fellow aviators paced, played Ace Deuce, and tried not to think of the life-threatening missions that were awaiting them. The catapult rumbled overhead, launching men in flying machines and dulling their voices.

Not since Vietnam had he experienced such terror. I’m not just blind, but I’m paralyzed as well, he thought. The familiar refrain of “The Navy Hymn” seemed to lull him back into unconsciousness:

 

Eternal Father, strong to save,

Whose arm hath bound the restless wave,

O hear us when we cry to thee

For those in peril on the sea.

 

“Good morning, ambassador. No, no. The patient has not regained consciousness. No, he has not spoken. He seems to drift in and out of consciousness. I believe Dr. Mamadou is planning to remove his bandages this afternoon.”

Charles replaced the telephone in its cradle and leaned back in his chair, remembering that dusty evening on the road to Niamey from Benin. Still deep in thought, he automatically dialed Dr. Mamadou. “Dr. Mamadou. Charles here. I understand that you are removing the bandages this afternoon.”

“Good morning, Charles. Yes, that is correct. Yes, I agree with you. It would be a good idea if you were here. I am sure that our patient will want to hear the details of how he came to be admitted to St. Etienne’s. Time? Let’s say three p.m. No, I have no way of knowing. Only time will tell.”

The tapping was coming closer. No, it’s not tapping, but what is it? It’s a steady rhythmic cadence. That is what it is, he thought.

People are walking. That is the tapping I hear. Voices are close by. They are louder. The airflow is changing. I can hear rustling movements. Fear mounted in the man’s chest like lava rising with explosive force from the depths of a volcano.

“My good man. If you can hear me, I am Dr. Mamadou, and I am going to begin removing your bandages. Try to relax.”

Mamadou? What kind of name is that? He had a heavy accent combined with the King’s English. Where am I? Slowly, he began to perceive light. Light? Light! Maybe. Please, God, let me be able to see, he thought.

“Charles, be so kind as to pull the shades before we take off this last bandage. Gently, gingerly try to open your eyes,” said Dr. Mamadou.

The man commanded his eyelids to open, but nothing happened. He commanded his eyelids again, but his sense of fear still paralyzed him. Relax, he told himself. You want to know if you are blind or not, regardless of the outcome. Slowly, his lids began to part.

Two fuzzy images came into focus. One man was smaller, rounder, and darker. The other man was lighter, taller, and thinner.

“Can you move your arms or legs? Can you speak?” asked Dr. Mamadou. “Your reflex tests were normal. However, many times the trauma itself will temporarily prevent any movement. Can you speak?” he asked once more.

 

<insert image dreamstime_m_32988135.jpg>

 

Niamey, Niger

“Yes,” he said with raspy vocal cords that he hadn’t used in a while. As the man began to join the ranks of the living, the fear began to subside, and a warming sensation like electricity began to flow through his body. As he opened his eyes once more, he saw two distinct figures. He saw a somewhat rotund black man in a white jacket. This was obviously Dr. Mamadou. He also saw a thin, impeccably dressed blonde man whom Dr. Mamadou had called Charles.

“I’ll leave you two gentleman to get acquainted, and I’ll be back to check on you this evening. I think you’ve had enough excitement for one day, and I have to finish my rounds,” said Dr. Mamadou.

The tall, stately gentleman pulled his chair closer to the bed. With an unmistakable French accent, he said in perfect English, “My name is Charles DuBois, and I am happy to say that I found you and brought you here. What is your name, sir?”

“I can’t remember my name. Where am I?” he asked.

“You, sir, are in St. Etienne’s Hospital in Niamey,” Charles said.

“Niamey?” he asked, clearly not registering any recognition.

“Niamey is the capital of the Republic of Niger in West Africa,” said Charles.

“What am I doing here, Charles? You did say your name was Charles, didn’t you?”

“Pardon me for my poor manners. Let me formally introduce myself. My name is Charles DuBois, and I am the French ambassador to Niger. I found you exactly three weeks ago on April first on the road to Niamey from the Republic of Benin. You were bloody and blindly staggering down the road before you fell and lost consciousness,” said Charles.

“Three weeks ago? You mean I have been unconscious for twenty-one days?”

“Twenty days, to be precise, John. I have counted every day with anticipation. I have been waiting for you to regain consciousness,” said Charles earnestly.

“You called me John. Is that my name?” he asked.

“I suppose it could be. Until you remember your name, I will call you John, as in John Doe. This is a custom in America, is it not?”

John Doe. His brain searched fruitlessly for an association. “Since I am indebted to you for saving my life, and I can’t seem to remember who I am at the moment, John Doe is fine. Should I know what is customary in America?” he questioned.

“Well, John, you Americans are an unmistakable lot, given that your accents are neither British nor Australian. In time, you will remember exactly what that means. You will recall your customs and all. Until then, let me tell you about the road to Niamey.”


Chapter 2

The Road to Niamey

 

“I remember April first distinctly because it was my birthday, and I was returning home after an official engagement in the Republic of Benin. It was dusk and I yelled to my driver to watch out. I said that there was something in the road ahead. He slowed and stopped abruptly just as you fell headlong in front of my Range Rover. You were covered in blood. Your clothing was torn and you were barefoot. I called ahead to St. Etienne Hospital. I said that I was bringing in an unconscious man who was injured. I told them to have Dr. Mamadou meet me at the hospital in forty-five minutes. That’s about the extent of it. You have been unconscious for twenty days. Dr. Mamadou determined that you were in shock and that you could not see. Your hair was singed as if you had been close to a fire. Dr. Mamadou said that you were emaciated. He said that you were suffering from exhaustion and trauma, but you appeared to have no internal injuries. He believed that your proximity to a fire caused the injury to your eye. He decided to keep your eyes irrigated and properly medicated with an antibacterial ointment. He bandaged your eyes to prevent infection and to let them rest so that they would eventually heal. For the last five days, you have been increasingly agitated, and Dr. Mamadou thought that you would regain consciousness at any moment. Of course, we do not know whether you will regain all your facilities, but Dr. Mamadou feels certain that with proper convalescence and physical therapy, you will be as good as new in a few months. During your stay, the local police have combed the area where I found you. Their efforts have been to no avail. It is as though you dropped from the sky. They have sent faxes to the major hotels and foreign companies operating in Niger, and thus far they have turned up nothing.” Charles paused.

“When you found me, did I have any identification, such as a passport, a driver’s license, or anything else?” asked John.

“Oddly enough, you had nothing. Oh, I almost forgot. There was one thing. You had a five-hundred-naira banknote,” said Charles.

“A single banknote?” asked John.

“Yes,” replied Charles. It was issued by the Central Bank of Nigeria. Does that mean anything to you, John? It’s all we have so far.”

“It means absolutely nothing,” said John. His flat voice was devoid of all emotion.

“In that case, I insist that you come and stay with me while you are convalescing. I’ll see that my staff readies the guest cottage within the week,” Charles said, pushing his chair away from the bedside and preparing to leave.

“I couldn’t possibly do that. I wouldn’t dream of imposing on you,” said John.

“You won’t be imposing. I live alone. My wife died five years ago in a skiing accident in St. Moritz. I welcome the company and perhaps I can be of some help to you in your search for your identity. I shall expect you as soon as Dr. Mamadou gives his permission that you can be moved,” Charles said with finality.

“It seems that I will be indebted to you for more than saving my life.” John’s voice trailed off. Words entered his mind in a seemingly desperate attempt to comfort him:

 

Out of the night that covers me,

Black as the Pit from pole to pole,

I thank whatever gods may be

For my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance

I have not winced nor cried aloud.

My head is bloody, but unbowed.

I am the master of my fate;

I am the captain of my soul.

 

Invictus, he thought. How very strange. I can remember a poem by William Ernest Henley, but I cannot remember my own name. He was thankful that Dr. Mamadou had told him that during his recovery there would be occasions when he would remember minute details one minute and nothing the next minute. If he did not know this, he would have thought that he was losing his mind.


Chapter 3

Memories of Another Aviator

 

John was standing at the window with his back toward the door when he heard the familiar voice of Dr. Mamadou. “John, Charles will be arriving momentarily to pick you up. I expect you to be vigilant in your physical therapy, and I will see you weekly for the next several months.”

“Dr. Mamadou, I want you to know how grateful I am to you for all that you’ve done. I can’t pay you for your services at present—”

Dr. Mamadou abruptly interrupted, “John, let’s not worry about that for now. There will be plenty of time to discuss these mundane things over the next several months. My primary concern is for you to fully recover. Here is Charles now. I’ll see you on Tuesday,” he said as he turned to leave.

“Well now. I see that my clothes don’t fit too badly. After a few weeks of Suzette’s cooking and a little sunshine, you’ll be as good as new. Are you ready?” Charles asked, grabbing John’s elbow to support him and steering him toward the exit. Kollo, Charles’s chauffeur, was six-foot-five. He weighed well over two hundred pounds. They were waiting with the Range Rover to take him to the ambassador’s residence.

As the Range Rover headed southwest out of the city, the various sights and sounds mesmerized John. The modern tree-lined avenues were juxtaposed with the older traditional street scene of markets filled with tie-dyed cloth, multicolored blankets, copper craftwork, silver jewelry, and the like. Vendors in colorful cotton shirts and traditional long dresses were calling out their wares in tongues that John had never heard before. Charles explained that although French was spoken in the major cities, Niger’s population was a mix of Hausa, Djerma, Kouri, Tuareg, and Fulani.

As the Range Rover crossed the Niger River, they saw canoes bringing fresh vegetables and fish making their way to the small market, where women shopped daily for their families. The sights, sounds, and smells began to awaken John’s senses. The hospital confinement had long subdued his senses. I am alive, John thought as he inhaled deeply as if to speed up the process.

Heading out of the city, they saw the shantytowns on the outskirts. John leaned his head back against the seat and closed his eyes, as if to say, “I am feeling overwhelmed. My brain needs time to make sense of all of this.”

Just as the rhythm of the Range Rover was lulling John to sleep, Charles said, “Welcome home, John.” Two black wrought-iron gates swung open invitingly and closed behind them, ushering them into another world.

Charles escorted John to the guest cottage, which was located behind the main house and opposite the pool. The decor announced comfort in garden hues. The huge overstuffed furniture had obviously been selected with lounging in mind. French doors provided direct access to the pool, and well-manicured grounds could be seen from every window. It was a perfect setting for contemplating and convalescing.

Charles interrupted John’s thoughts by beckoning him to lunch. Suzette, Charles’s diminutive French cook, had prepared it especially for John.

After eating a scrumptious meal that Suzette had prepared in the grandest French tradition, John accepted Charles’s invitation to acquaint himself with his new surroundings by touring the main house and the grounds. Charles had some work to finish at the embassy, and he would be gone for several hours. John surmised that the house had been built in the 1930s. Its spacious, airy rooms were reminiscent of haciendas. Saltillo tile covered both the exterior walkways and interior floors. In several of the rooms, dark wooden beams contrasted with the white stucco walls. The house had been renovated to incorporate air conditioning, overhead fans, and stucco construction. However, despite the high summer temperatures, these amenities were unnecessary for much of the year. The home was obviously designed with an understanding of the social obligations of a foreign ambassador. The focal point of the house was a great room that was filled with couches and chairs that were arranged to accommodate many simultaneous conversations. The magnificent bar and the grand piano impressed John. The great room opened onto a grand patio that was adorned by bougainvilleas, which were resplendent in their purple hues. Matching tables and chairs drew the patio and pool area together as one unified space.

The bougainvilleas adorned the walls in majestic beauty, secreting the high masonry walls that gave the ambassador’s residence its security and seclusion.

John paused in front of a room that seemed to be used more often than the rest of the house. Books lined the walls. Newspapers were strewn around the desk, and a sweater hung around the back of the chair, awaiting its familiar occupant. A credenza that was adorned with photographs immediately captured John’s attention. Wearing a tuxedo, Charles was linked arm-in-arm with a woman dressed in a wedding gown. The palest green eyes amplified her dark beauty.

It must be Charles’s wife, John thought. He wondered what name could possibly describe this rare gem. John continued perusing when he came upon a photograph of a man in uniform standing beside an airplane. There was an engraved inscription below the photograph.

John was involuntarily bathed in a cold sweat. His legs turned to jelly and his eyes lost their ability to focus. He reached for the chair next to the credenza, lest he fall. As John lowered himself into the chair, Charles appeared in the doorway, having spent the day working at the embassy.

“I must admit,” said Charles. “I had selfish reasons when I suggested that you tour the house. I was hoping you would venture into this room,” said Charles, walking forward and standing next to John. “This was Cherish and me on our wedding day,” he said as he almost reverently picked up the photo that John had admired.

Cherish, thought John. This name was befitting of a beautiful woman. As Charles replaced the wedding photograph, he reached for the photo of the aviator. John’s stomach lurched in anxiety.

“This was Lieutenant Fiske DuBois, my father,” explained Charles. “He died in the Battle of Britain.”

“Fiske DuBois? The Fiske DuBois with the Five Hundred and First County of Gloucester Squadron based at Tangmere?” John heard himself ask, once again surprised by his apparent knowledge.

“Yes. As he landed, enemy aircraft attacked his plane and it became an inferno. They were able to get him out, but he died the next day in the hospital. I never knew him. He died before I was born,” Charles explained, handing John the photograph.

As John looked down at the photograph, he read the inscription aloud. “Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. With our nation’s great appreciation. Winston Churchill.”

“But Fiske DuBois was an American who flew with the RAF, and you are French,” said John, looking up at Charles questioningly.

“I’m half French. You see, my interest in you was not entirely altruistic. I suppose subconsciously I thought that having you here would somehow allow me to gain a better understanding of my father, since he was also American. I’ll tell Suzette to bring us cocktails on the patio, and I’ll meet you there as soon as I change my clothes. I’ll tell you the story of how my mother and father met,” Charles said, loosening his tie. He walked toward the master suite and John walked toward the patio.

 

Chapter 4

Nicole and Fiske

 

John was standing at the edge of the patio overlooking the garden. Although he appeared to be looking at the grounds in silent admiration, his thoughts were chaotic. Who the hell am I? What am I doing here? How do I know about Fiske DuBois and the 501? I remember dreaming of a carrier landing in the hospital. Was I fantasizing that I was Tom Cruise in Top Gun? So far, the only link between how I felt in the study and in the hospital is aviation. Am I a military pilot or a civilian pilot? Who the hell am I? As his anxiety continued to mount, he was jerked back to reality.

“What’s your poison, John?” inquired Charles.

“I don’t honestly know,” replied John. “I’ll have whatever you are drinking.”

Charles handed John a drink. As John took a sip, his facial expression revealed his displeasure.

“Well, we know one thing for certain, John. Scotch was not your drink,” Charles kidded. “Let’s try Bourbon. Most Americans like Bourbon, as I recall.”

During their second drink, the effects of the alcohol were evident. Gone was all stiffness and formality. Charles and John were just two chums knocking back a few rounds and telling war stories.

“It was a war story of a fashion,” said Charles. “Nicole Gaullede, my mother, had been sneaked out of France to Britain in the spring of 1940 with the help of her brother Charles, who was the head of the Free French Resistance. He was concerned for her safety. She quickly found work as a nurse in a military hospital that had been set up near Chicester at Tangmere Airfield. She met my father, Fiske DuBois, in the mess hall. Fiske was an American volunteer who was attached to the RAF under Sir Hugh Dowding, commander of the RAF Fighter Command. They slipped into an immediate friendship in large part because Fiske spoke French fluently, having studied it in college. Like so many couples during the war, theirs was a whirlwind courtship. They were secretly married within three months. Mother continued to work at the hospital, and she was on duty the day my father was brought in and died. She had not told my father that she was pregnant. She feared that it would jeopardize the concentration that he needed on his bombing missions. After the war, we returned to Paris, where I was raised surrounded by my mother’s family.”

“Did you ever want to live in America with your grandparents, the DuBois?” asked John.

“I’ve never met any of my father’s family members. My mother said that she had planned to tell my father and his parents in person at Christmas, which was when he had leave. Unfortunately, he died before then. Mother thought that it would be best to return to France after the war and to try to build a life for us there. I think the thought of dealing with America frightened her. She spoke very little English, and she had never been to America.”

“Did your mother remarry after the war?” asked John.

“No. Fiske was the love of her life. She never tried to forget him. I always felt that my father was still a part of my life. When mother died eight years ago, I felt an unbearable sense of loss. I realized then how often she spoke of my father.”

“That’s enough about me, for now. John, do you remember anything about your past? Do you recall anything that might give us a clue?” questioned Charles.

John told him that the only link he could come up with was aviation, but he wasn’t even sure if that was valid. Maybe he was a history buff, but somehow he doubted that this was the case. The feelings were too real to have merely resulted from academic studies.

“I have a great idea,” said Charles. “Let’s attend the Paris Air Show in June, if you have recovered sufficiently by then. We can stay at my house in Paris. Perhaps being around aviation will jog your memory further. What do you think? Do you think you’ll be up to it?” The tone in his voice clearly expressed his wish to go.

“How could I possibly leave the country? I do not have a passport. I have no identification. I have nothing,” said John as he looked at Charles helplessly.

“John, I will have a French passport made for you like we do for our intelligence services when they want to conceal someone’s real identity. You will be on my private plane, which does not go through regular customs. The embassy limousine will meet us at the airport and take us directly to my house in Paris. It is that simple. If you are with me then there will not be a problem. As you can see, this job does have its perks. What do you think? Will you come?” asked Charles.

“It is not as if I have any plans. Sure. Why not?” said John, not knowing if he would be opening Pandora’s box. Dinner was a light affair. Charles retired to his study, and John sought solace in the guest cottage. He had decided that tomorrow after lunch he would ride into town with Charles and then walk around a bit. Maybe he would go to the National Museum or to the library. He wanted to learn a little more about Niamey. Perhaps it would give him a clue as to why he had gone there.

Continued….

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Ace Deuce: National Security is Not a Game

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Becka Black is a burned out police detective trying to escape from her past. She is tired of murder and chasing killers. All she wants to do is settle down in a small town in an easy job, solve the occasional robbery, and go home at the end of the day with a smile on her face.
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Alex Smith woke up with a scream on her lips, not quite realizing the scream she heard was her own. As sleep fell from her eyes and she came more fully awake, she stopped screaming, took a deep breath, and rolled over to her side, breathing heavily. Always the nightmares, the screams, she thought. Would she ever have a night of peace?

Knowing that sleep was now impossible, she swung her long, shapely legs over the side of her bed and sat there quietly for a moment. She brushed a strand of blond hair away from her tan brow and glanced at the Sig Sauer .45 caliber automatic pistol on the night stand by her bed. Her hand reached for the pistol. As she caressed the dark rosewood handle and cool gray metal barrel of the gun, calm returned to her. She felt safe and secure with the pistol in her hand.

She rose from her bedside, grabbed a heavy cotton robe from a nearby chair, and wrapped her lithe, muscular form in the soft terrycloth, shoving the pistol into the pocket of her white robe. She walked slowly toward the sliding glass doors of her bedroom, enjoying the soft feel of the thick carpet under her bare feet. She enjoyed living in luxurious, expensive apartments. She had always liked the finer things of life and, being rich, she could afford them.

She unlatched the glass doors and slid one of them back, stepping out onto the balcony of her fifth story apartment. The October night breezes were cool and refreshing. The bay below was a dark undulating mass of water in the night. A low half-moon hung over the bay, and she could see some faint lights in the distance on the far shore. She glanced back at the clock radio on the night table. Its large red numbers showed 3:15 in the morning.

Soon, very soon, she would have her long awaited revenge. A smile lit her lips as she anticipated the joy of finally facing her tormentors. She had been preparing for this moment for a long time. All of the other murders up to now had been merely a prelude to what she would do now.

Alex took a deep, cool breath and held it for a moment, then slowly released it. It was good to be home, at last. Here where everything had begun so long ago at Serenity Sanitarium.

She still remembered the tall white columns that lined the front entrance to the sanitarium and the smiling gray-haired men in the white coats. They all seemed so friendly, so reassuring, when she had first checked into the sanitarium. She had been a shattered, depressed young girl trying to recover from the deaths of both her parents. But it had all been a charade for the terror to follow.

Alex had discovered the truth quickly enough after they strapped her onto a stainless steel gurney and sent thousands of volts through her. She screamed then, screamed for mercy until her throat burned and the pain drove her down into darkness. But the doctors never listened, only smiled at her and told her the treatment was necessary for her to get better.

She remembered the mind numbing drugs that followed and turned her into a drooling idiot. For months she didn’t even know who she was or where she was–lost in a deep drug haze. It was like being dead.

Then one night, the nursing attendant was in a hurry and the pills had fallen from Alex’s hand onto the bed without the attendant noticing. Being afraid, she didn’t say anything, just drank the glass of water that always came with the pills. When the attendant turned back all she noticed was the water had been drunk. The attendant had patted her head like she was some good little girl and left.

There had been no plan to avoid the drugs, just an accident. By this time, after long months of drugs and electroshock, she had been reduced to a mindless animal that only reacted to fear and pain. She hadn’t told the attendant that the pills had fallen onto her bed for fear of being punished.

By the next morning, the mental fog of months had begun to lift. By that afternoon, her mind was working, and she realized with horror that she was in a mental institution, and she had been here for some time. The next evening, when more pills were given to her to swallow, she had purposely pretended to take them, later spitting them out after the attendant left.

With the drugs no longer affecting her mind, a plan begin to form in her brain. She would escape this place of torture and pain. They wouldn’t expect it as long as she pretended to be in a drugged out stupor.

The next morning the attendant took her to the electroshock room. She began to panic even before she was fully in the room, twisting and turning, trying to escape her restraints. She didn’t understand why, but something deep within her did.

She understood all too well a minute later when the intense voltage sent her into convulsions of intense pain. She screamed then, pleaded for them to stop, not caring if they discovered she was faking taking the drugs.

But they didn’t stop, and took no notice of her screams. Apparently, her screams and pleadings were normal. She just didn’t remember them. This was the first time she was mentally fully aware of what was happening.

Later, when they dumped her, quivering like some spastic jelly fish onto her bed, she realized that most of her past memories were gone. She could remember her name, a mental image of her parents, but that was all. Her mind was almost a total blank.

Intense fear swept over her then. She had lost herself, who she was. It would take months after she escaped to piece back together her past life, to realize she was a teenager from a wealthy family and the only survivor of a terrible automobile accident.

It took years and a very good lawyer to regain control of her life and her family’s fortune. But she did it, then changed her name, removing all traces of her past, and then left Bayview; she thought forever.

But years later, while serving as a cop, the rage attacks began. She had been drawn to the police as a career. The violence and action had attracted her. Then a sudden confrontation with a particularly violent criminal triggered something inside of her. She killed the criminal without a moment’s thought.

Tremendous waves of anger and rage had erupted within her, causing her to temporarily lose control of herself. After the rage subsided, she had stood over the criminal’s body a long time, trying to figure out what had just happened to her.

Later, the rage attacks surfaced again. She would destroy anything within reach, screaming and shouting obscenities. For years afterward, when she felt those symptoms coming on, she would hide herself in her apartment or a nearby hotel room until the rage attacks passed. Slowly, she came to understand why she felt these rage attacks.

There was a deep abiding anger inside of her, a rage that knew no consolation. At first, she didn’t understand, but then as she studied her past, she found the source of that rage. It was the men in that sanitarium that had tortured her.

Anger and rage that she thought had disappeared had only bored deeper within her, working their poison through all the following years as she tried to establish a normal life for herself. Then they rose to the surface once more.

Slowly, over time, the rage had developed into an irresistible compulsion to kill. Her targets were always doctors, usually psychiatrist and any doctor involved with mental health. The hatred and rage would build over weeks and months until she felt that she would explode if those intense emotions were not released. Killing released them.

Her compulsions drove her to kill any psychiatrist she could find and if none were nearby, then any doctor would do. She bathed in the intense gratification and release of the rage that was constantly with her when she killed.

The newspapers had nicknamed her Ticktock because she always left a silver plated pocket watch beside her victims, showing the exact time of their deaths. It was her signature so that everyone would know who killed them.

She continued to kill over the years, developing her technique and preparing herself to return to Bayview to kill those psychiatrist she both feared and hated–the doctors at Serenity Sanitarium. She had dreaded coming back here, facing the pain and agony of her past, but it was only here that she felt there might at last be a chance to obtain some measure of peace.

Her knuckles turned white as she tightly gripped the iron railing that enclosed the balcony, remembering the pain and suffering she had endured in that sanitarium. Now she would face her torturers and kill them. No matter the cost, even her own death. No price was too much. She took a long, deep breath of cool air, letting the pain of past memories flow away from her for a moment.

She glanced at the darkness that surrounded her. Alex loved the night; the darkness was soothing and somehow comforting. The stars glittering in the vast dark vault of heaven above her were her friends.

She reached into the right pocket of her robe and softly caressed the cold metal of her pistol. Alex smiled as she thought of what was to come. All the years of killing, of drifting from city to city, had led to this moment and this place. At last she would be free of the rage and anger that drove her, free of the nightmares and terrors that lay in wait for her every night. She would live again.

She placed both hands on the iron railing of the balcony. The cold metal of the iron felt good against her skin. It wasn’t freezing, not yet. It was still early fall and the weather was mild in the south. She watched a fishing boat with its lights blazing heading out to sea for some night fishing. The bay was lovely this time of night, calming and restful as the dark waves ran to shore.

She frowned a moment as troubling thoughts pushed to the surface of her mind, struggling to get free. A part of her, buried deep within, knew that she was mentally unbalanced, out of control. There were brief moments when sanity came close to the surface of her mind, when she realized the terrible things she had done, knew that going from city to city killing was a maniacal, pointless exercise in terror. But then the rage and thirst for revenge that constantly hung over her mind like a large, dark cloud would come storming back, drowning out everything but that single purpose of revenge.

Then there was the lone survivor with the face of a saint that had forgiven her for what she was about to do–murder him. She had wanted to kill him, tried to kill him, but something deep down inside of her wouldn’t let her. Her finger had frozen into immobility on the trigger.

He had talked to her of forgiveness and cleansing of her soul. Alex told him that she didn’t believe in God and didn’t have a soul, but he continued to talk about heaven and hell, about repentance, and that everyone, even her, had a soul. Finally, in disgust, she had walked away from him. The only doctor to escape her vengeance.

Later, after walking for hours, she thought about going back and finishing the job, but she knew that she couldn’t face him again. He had looked too deeply inside of her, made her question herself, what she was doing, made her afraid. She continued to walk long into the night, turning his words over in her mind, wondering how true they were. If she had a soul, if there was some sort of accountability for what she had done, if there was a hell–she shuddered and shut all of those thoughts out. She couldn’t think about that, not now; she had work to do.

She would have her revenge even if she burned in hell for it.

 

Chapter 2

 

Detective Becka Black stood in the middle of the back room of a small, rundown house, surveying the cluttered piles of stolen property from dozens of homes and businesses. The burglary ring had been busy over the past month. Now, early on a Monday morning, she had finally broken the case and the perpetrators were on their way to jail.

The sunlight shining through a single, cracked window pane lit up the room and highlighted Becka’s short, vibrant red hair which framed an attractive but lean face. Detective Becka Black was a tall, athletic-looking woman, standing six feet tall, wearing a black leather jacket zippered half-way up over a pale pink cotton turtleneck blouse with the sides of the blouse neatly tucked into the sides of her beige pants.

She looked more like a model than a detective, but she was stronger and tougher than she looked which had surprised more than one suspect who thought they could overpower her. She was an independent, strong-willed woman that liked to think that she could handle any situation that confronted her. As a detective, those traits had allowed her to excel in her profession.

The morning sun was bright and warm for an October morning. Her green eyes swept the surrounding room again, shaking her head slowly. It had taken her too long to break this case.

Her reputation had been tarnished as a result; the mayor and the city council had unrealistic expectations of what she could do. She wasn’t some kind of superwoman; she was just a detective doing the best job she could to solve a case.

She also knew the limitations of her current job. She no longer had the resources or talents of a big city police department, but somehow they didn’t understand that in Bayview with the exception of the Chief. You had to be a cop to understand how hard this case had been.

Becka sighed heavily. She had been the only detective working the case; she was lucky to break the case at all, but her boss, Chief Williams, was the only one who really understood her dilemma, but then he was part of the problem. She gathered that in order to convince the city council to hire her, he had oversold her abilities and talents. The mayor and city council expected wonder woman to show up, not a plain ordinary detective.

There had been tremendous pressure on the Chief over the last month, but he had stood up under the pressure well, and she admired him for that kind of courage. There had even been talk of firing her. She had been here only a few months and was still on probation. To the Chief’s credit, he had backed her and gave her the time she needed to solve a difficult case.

She gathered that Bayview wasn’t use to any real crime, other than the occasional theft or break-in. This burglary ring had been a real shock to the citizens of Bayview and made them feel vulnerable and unsafe.

She knew from past experience those ugly feelings would fade with time unless something else happened. She fervently hoped nothing did. She had come to this small town hoping for a quiet, uneventful career as a small town detective. No more rampant street crimes and multiple murders for her. She was through with that violent life style.

Becka had always considered herself a good detective, a cut above the rest and taken pride in her abilities, as proved by her past citations. She had a talent for breaking open cases. It was her other attributes that got her into trouble.

“Good job, Detective. If I was still counting on the county detectives, these perps would still be free.”

“That’s why you hired me,” Becka replied, shifting her green eyes to meet her Chief’s gaze, forcing herself to smile. He had just walked into the room. She hadn’t expected him to show up.

“Absolutely correct. For a small town like Bayview to snag an experienced, big city detective like you was a major coup for us.”

“Sorry, this case took so long to break. These guys were part of a bigger ring that stretched back over a major part of the state. That made it harder to crack.”

“But you did; that’s what counts. You have been here only a short time, and you have already made a significant contribution. I just stopped by to see the wrap-up and let you know how pleased I am.”

“Thanks,” Becka said, pausing a moment, before adding, “I don’t think the city council was impressed. They still holding out for a guy?”

Becka knew that the council had wanted a male detective and had held up her selection for several months demanding that the Chief produce one. The Chief had finally convinced them that she was the best available for the small salary the city had offered.

The Chief smiled. “The council has unrealistic expectations as we have previously discussed. I know this last month hasn’t been easy for you–working a difficult case and worrying about being fired, but you have proven yourself now. I think you will find things will get better. We rarely get anything like this burglary ring in this town. So relax and bask in your victory. I think you will find this is a nice town to work in.” He turned and walked out, stopping to chat with several of the other police officers outside.

A few minutes later, in the living room of the dilapidated old house, she met Sergeant Timothy James. He assisted her on occasion, a sort of part-time investigator that the Chief had assigned to her. She was the department’s only full time investigator, and she wasn’t likely to get any full time help any time soon. And that was okay. This was a chance for her, a badly needed chance.

“See the Chief?” Becka asked Sergeant James.

“On the way out. He was all smiles. I guess the city council will get off his back about you now.”

“Let’s hope so.”

“Well, the Chief won this round.”

“They still aren’t satisfied, are they?” Becka said, knowing the answer already to her question.

Sergeant James shook his head. “There are some stubborn people on the council. And of course, they all have their own agenda.”

“I never suspected the in-fighting could get so intense about me. Perhaps I was just naive. I suppose the council is still looking for any excuse to bounce me out of this job.”

“Pretty much. They thought they had it with this rash of burglaries, but you came through. The pressure should ease off, at least for a while.” James paused a moment, then added, “These things take time, Detective. They will eventually accept you. The Chief is a good man to have in your corner.”

“I appreciate the candor. You are probably the closest thing to a friend I’ve got right now.”

James smiled and said, “I’ll be there to back you up whenever you need it. I promised the Chief. Besides, I have a good feeling about you. I have over twenty-nine years on the force, and I have learned to trust my instincts.” He glanced at several officers heading toward the back room. “I’d better help the other officers finish the inventory of the evidence. You heading back to the office?”

She nodded. “I have a mountain of paperwork to finish up.”

As she stepped outside, she paused on a small porch and watched as Jack Rand, the town’s local crime reporter, drove up in that old battered blue Jeep of his and parked. He had a nose for news. She was not surprised to see him here so soon.

A small smile parted her lips as Jack got out of the Jeep and walked toward her. His sandy-colored hair and tall, lean six-foot-two-inch frame made her heart skip a beat. He was wearing a pair of faded blue jeans and a dark blue sport coat with an open-collar white shirt; she had never seen him dressed up in a real suit and tie. He always wore casual clothes which only accented his rugged good looks.

She watched him approach with that dimpled smile and those light gray eyes fixed on her. Damn, but he looked good this morning.

Becka felt a strong attraction to Jack, but so far their relationship had been casual: friendly dates and light chatter. He hadn’t even tried to kiss her yet; she wondered about that. Did he not find her attractive?

“Finally nailed the burglars, huh?” Jack grinned as he stepped up on the porch. “I knew you would.”

“You were one of the few. I gather the city council was about ready to send me packing.”

“Those stuffed shirts are always hard on new hires. They are set in their ways and hard to win over. Don’t worry, they aren’t dumb. Eventually, they will see what a great cop you are.”

“Detective, not cop,” she corrected him. “That seems to be Sergeant James opinion as well.”

“I always thought James was smart,” Jack grinned.

“It’s just…I hate feeling like I am walking around on eggshells with everyone waiting for me to mess up so they can fire me.”

“Yeah, I sort of felt like that when I first went to work for the Progressive Times. No one really knew me, knew what I could do, and I felt like there were others in line behind me waiting for me to stumble. Not a nice feeling. But it worked out for me, and it will for you too.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” She glanced back inside and then said, “Sergeant James is inside taking an inventory of the stolen property. We arrested three suspects. They have already been taken to the police station to be booked. I will be interviewing them later. That’s about it for now. I’m heading back to make out the official police report. I’ll send you a copy of my report when I’m done.”

“I appreciate that,” he said, glancing at his pocket watch, which he then put back into his pocket. “I’ve got a close deadline. I’ll check inside, take a few pictures, and talk to Sergeant James, if that’s okay.”

Becka nodded, then she moved closer, touching his arm. “See you tonight?”

“Sure, Bayside Seafood okay? It’s close, and I have a craving for seafood.”

“You always have a craving for seafood.”

He shrugged with that cute helpless expression of his and walked inside the house. She sighed once and headed for her car. She hated seafood.

 

 

Chapter 3

 

Doctor Julian Tate, noted psychiatrist and currently employed at Serenity Sanitarium, stood in his barn piling hay for his horses into a neat pile in one corner of his barn. He was a tall, thin man with a small gray goatee perched on a narrow chin, wearing denim coveralls.

It was early Monday morning, and he was trying to finish his morning chores before going into work when he heard a car drive up. He didn’t bother to check who had come visiting. Whoever it was would find him soon enough. He had to get this hay taken care of first.

After a few minutes, he heard the barn door creak and turned to see a tall, lean blond in a gray pants suit standing in the doorway, her long hair falling to her shoulders. He didn’t recognize her, yet there was something oddly familiar about her, especially when she moved. The way she moved, the tilt of her head, stirred a memory he couldn’t quite place.

“May I help you?” Dr. Tate asked, puzzled by the appearance of this stranger so early in the morning. He stopped pitching hay into the corner of his barn and turned to face her, sticking his pitch fork into the soft earth.

Alex smiled. It was a hard, angry smile. Then, with her right hand in her coat pocket, she walked farther into the barn, stopping only a few yards from Tate.

“Have you forgotten me? You use to tell me I was your star patient, that I would make you famous.”

“I don’t…”

“Perhaps my old name would help. You knew me as Mary, a frail, shattered sixteen year old girl trying to get over the death of her parents.”

“Mary Carson, of course, I thought there was something familiar about you. You know, I devoted an entire chapter to you in one of my books.”

“I’m glad you found me so useful,” she sarcastically replied. Her frozen, grim smile never changing.

“When you escaped, I was very disappointed. I was really only beginning with you. There is so much we could have done together.” There was a wistful smile on his face as he remembered. “You would have proved so many of my theories.”

“Despite the pain of your patient? I remember as well doctor. I remember the thousands of volts pouring through my body, the agonizing convulsions, and the screams, the terrible screams. Do you realize the hell you put me through?”

“I know it was difficult, but it was for your own good. It was the only treatment that seemed to work. You were in a severe dissociative state when they brought you to the sanitarium. There were days when you completely shut down, refused to acknowledge any external stimuli. Nothing seemed to work. Electroshock treatment was our only recourse, and it worked. Surely, you see that?”

“All I remember is a young girl screaming for you to stop, to let her go. You tortured me for two years. And you killed.”

Doctor Tate frowned at that remark. He was beginning to be a little afraid. The woman was obviously full of anger and resentment. She could be dangerous.

“Who are you referring to?” he finally asked.

“Don’t tell me you have already forgotten Jenny, sweet Jenny. She died on the table of your torture machine.”

Dr. Tate inhaled sharply. He had forgotten about the young dark-haired woman with a weak heart. Of course, they hadn’t known about the weak heart then. Only when she died under the electroshock treatment did they discover that Jenny Wool had a history of heart trouble.

“That was an unfortunate accident. The entire sanitarium was sorry about that.”

“You weren’t all that sorry, not enough to stop, were you? You went right on with your treatments.” The accusation was sharp and angry. The smile gone from her face.

“We stopped electroshock treatments,” Tate said, nervousness showing in his voice and face.

“But not immediately, no you continued your torture on me until I escaped.”

Tate had been a psychiatrist long enough to know that he was in danger. He needed help. He removed his cell phone from his pocket to make a 911 call, and then saw the automatic in her hand pointing directly at him.

“Drop the phone, doctor.”

Wetting his lips nervously, he let the small cell phone slide off his outstretched fingers. He knew now that she had come to kill him. In his best professional manner and voice, he forced himself to smile.

“Don’t do anything drastic, Mary.”

“My name is no longer Mary. That woman died a long time ago. My name is Alex now.”

“Alex, I can help you. We can talk this out. ”

She shook her head and then smiled. It was a cold, vengeful smile. “No one can ever talk this out.”

He drew himself up straight, full of pride and defiance. “I have helped many people in my lifetime, restored them to a useful role in society.”

“You have destroyed a lot of lives, including mine. I was fortunate enough to finally escape or who knows what would have happened to me. I could have become another one of those mindless vegetables you keep locked up in the off-limits area of the sanitarium.”

He raised his eyebrows slightly. “You know about those? No one is supposed to know about them.” He paused a moment, frowning with his eyebrows drawn close together and thinking hard. “Many of those patients came to the sanitarium like that. There was nothing we could do for them except house them and take care of them. They were incurable.”

Alex took two steps closer, her knuckles white on the handle of her pistol. “How many of them were your electroshock patients?”

Doctor Tate backed up. His eyes nervously darted from side to side. “A few, only a few, but I couldn’t help them.”

“More than a few. You cover up your failures well, Doctor.”

He suddenly took a step forward and tried to smile, failing. He had to reach this woman, somehow divert her from murdering him.

“We can straighten this all out. No one needs to die.”

“Yes, they do,” Alex said as she squeezed the trigger, putting a bullet right between Tate’s eyes. He fell back in sudden shock, hitting the ground hard, face up, his eyes already glazing over.

“You won’t terrorize anyone else now,” Alex said, tears of relief and satisfaction streaming down her face.

At last, she had confronted her monster and banished him. She had dreaded this confrontation and been eager for it at the same time. She had been afraid of Tate for a long time. She was free of him at last.

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The Ticktock Murders

A serial murderer has swept across the United States like a lethal plague…
Is Detective Becka Black up for the challenge? Free sample of The Ticktock Murders by John D. Garrison

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The Ticktock Murders (Detective Becka Black)

by John D. Garrison

The Ticktock Murders (Detective Becka Black)
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Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled
Here’s the set-up:
Becka Black is a burned out police detective trying to escape from her past. She is tired of murder and chasing killers. All she wants to do is settle down in a small town in an easy job, solve the occasional robbery, and go home at the end of the day with a smile on her face.
But life has chosen otherwise for Detective Black. She has just arrived in town, and she is already in trouble. She has suddenly been thrust into the pursuit of a serial killer with her job on the line.
Ticktock is a serial murderer that has swept across the United States like a lethal plague. No one has been able to catch her. Ticktock’s trademark signature is a clock drawing at the scene of her murders, showing the exact time of death.
Now that killer is in her town and time is running out. Ticktock kills multiple times and disappears. If Becka doesn’t catch Ticktock by her last murder, Becka will lose Ticktock forever along with her job and possibly the love of her life.

And here, for your reading pleasure, is our free excerpt:

Alex Smith woke up with a scream on her lips, not quite realizing the scream she heard was her own. As sleep fell from her eyes and she came more fully awake, she stopped screaming, took a deep breath, and rolled over to her side, breathing heavily. Always the nightmares, the screams, she thought. Would she ever have a night of peace?

Knowing that sleep was now impossible, she swung her long, shapely legs over the side of her bed and sat there quietly for a moment. She brushed a strand of blond hair away from her tan brow and glanced at the Sig Sauer .45 caliber automatic pistol on the night stand by her bed. Her hand reached for the pistol. As she caressed the dark rosewood handle and cool gray metal barrel of the gun, calm returned to her. She felt safe and secure with the pistol in her hand.

She rose from her bedside, grabbed a heavy cotton robe from a nearby chair, and wrapped her lithe, muscular form in the soft terrycloth, shoving the pistol into the pocket of her white robe. She walked slowly toward the sliding glass doors of her bedroom, enjoying the soft feel of the thick carpet under her bare feet. She enjoyed living in luxurious, expensive apartments. She had always liked the finer things of life and, being rich, she could afford them.

She unlatched the glass doors and slid one of them back, stepping out onto the balcony of her fifth story apartment. The October night breezes were cool and refreshing. The bay below was a dark undulating mass of water in the night. A low half-moon hung over the bay, and she could see some faint lights in the distance on the far shore. She glanced back at the clock radio on the night table. Its large red numbers showed 3:15 in the morning.

Soon, very soon, she would have her long awaited revenge. A smile lit her lips as she anticipated the joy of finally facing her tormentors. She had been preparing for this moment for a long time. All of the other murders up to now had been merely a prelude to what she would do now.

Alex took a deep, cool breath and held it for a moment, then slowly released it. It was good to be home, at last. Here where everything had begun so long ago at Serenity Sanitarium.

She still remembered the tall white columns that lined the front entrance to the sanitarium and the smiling gray-haired men in the white coats. They all seemed so friendly, so reassuring, when she had first checked into the sanitarium. She had been a shattered, depressed young girl trying to recover from the deaths of both her parents. But it had all been a charade for the terror to follow.

Alex had discovered the truth quickly enough after they strapped her onto a stainless steel gurney and sent thousands of volts through her. She screamed then, screamed for mercy until her throat burned and the pain drove her down into darkness. But the doctors never listened, only smiled at her and told her the treatment was necessary for her to get better.

She remembered the mind numbing drugs that followed and turned her into a drooling idiot. For months she didn’t even know who she was or where she was–lost in a deep drug haze. It was like being dead.

Then one night, the nursing attendant was in a hurry and the pills had fallen from Alex’s hand onto the bed without the attendant noticing. Being afraid, she didn’t say anything, just drank the glass of water that always came with the pills. When the attendant turned back all she noticed was the water had been drunk. The attendant had patted her head like she was some good little girl and left.

There had been no plan to avoid the drugs, just an accident. By this time, after long months of drugs and electroshock, she had been reduced to a mindless animal that only reacted to fear and pain. She hadn’t told the attendant that the pills had fallen onto her bed for fear of being punished.

By the next morning, the mental fog of months had begun to lift. By that afternoon, her mind was working, and she realized with horror that she was in a mental institution, and she had been here for some time. The next evening, when more pills were given to her to swallow, she had purposely pretended to take them, later spitting them out after the attendant left.

With the drugs no longer affecting her mind, a plan begin to form in her brain. She would escape this place of torture and pain. They wouldn’t expect it as long as she pretended to be in a drugged out stupor.

The next morning the attendant took her to the electroshock room. She began to panic even before she was fully in the room, twisting and turning, trying to escape her restraints. She didn’t understand why, but something deep within her did.

She understood all too well a minute later when the intense voltage sent her into convulsions of intense pain. She screamed then, pleaded for them to stop, not caring if they discovered she was faking taking the drugs.

But they didn’t stop, and took no notice of her screams. Apparently, her screams and pleadings were normal. She just didn’t remember them. This was the first time she was mentally fully aware of what was happening.

Later, when they dumped her, quivering like some spastic jelly fish onto her bed, she realized that most of her past memories were gone. She could remember her name, a mental image of her parents, but that was all. Her mind was almost a total blank.

Intense fear swept over her then. She had lost herself, who she was. It would take months after she escaped to piece back together her past life, to realize she was a teenager from a wealthy family and the only survivor of a terrible automobile accident.

It took years and a very good lawyer to regain control of her life and her family’s fortune. But she did it, then changed her name, removing all traces of her past, and then left Bayview; she thought forever.

But years later, while serving as a cop, the rage attacks began. She had been drawn to the police as a career. The violence and action had attracted her. Then a sudden confrontation with a particularly violent criminal triggered something inside of her. She killed the criminal without a moment’s thought.

Tremendous waves of anger and rage had erupted within her, causing her to temporarily lose control of herself. After the rage subsided, she had stood over the criminal’s body a long time, trying to figure out what had just happened to her.

Later, the rage attacks surfaced again. She would destroy anything within reach, screaming and shouting obscenities. For years afterward, when she felt those symptoms coming on, she would hide herself in her apartment or a nearby hotel room until the rage attacks passed. Slowly, she came to understand why she felt these rage attacks.

There was a deep abiding anger inside of her, a rage that knew no consolation. At first, she didn’t understand, but then as she studied her past, she found the source of that rage. It was the men in that sanitarium that had tortured her.

Anger and rage that she thought had disappeared had only bored deeper within her, working their poison through all the following years as she tried to establish a normal life for herself. Then they rose to the surface once more.

Slowly, over time, the rage had developed into an irresistible compulsion to kill. Her targets were always doctors, usually psychiatrist and any doctor involved with mental health. The hatred and rage would build over weeks and months until she felt that she would explode if those intense emotions were not released. Killing released them.

Her compulsions drove her to kill any psychiatrist she could find and if none were nearby, then any doctor would do. She bathed in the intense gratification and release of the rage that was constantly with her when she killed.

The newspapers had nicknamed her Ticktock because she always left a silver plated pocket watch beside her victims, showing the exact time of their deaths. It was her signature so that everyone would know who killed them.

She continued to kill over the years, developing her technique and preparing herself to return to Bayview to kill those psychiatrist she both feared and hated–the doctors at Serenity Sanitarium. She had dreaded coming back here, facing the pain and agony of her past, but it was only here that she felt there might at last be a chance to obtain some measure of peace.

Her knuckles turned white as she tightly gripped the iron railing that enclosed the balcony, remembering the pain and suffering she had endured in that sanitarium. Now she would face her torturers and kill them. No matter the cost, even her own death. No price was too much. She took a long, deep breath of cool air, letting the pain of past memories flow away from her for a moment.

She glanced at the darkness that surrounded her. Alex loved the night; the darkness was soothing and somehow comforting. The stars glittering in the vast dark vault of heaven above her were her friends.

She reached into the right pocket of her robe and softly caressed the cold metal of her pistol. Alex smiled as she thought of what was to come. All the years of killing, of drifting from city to city, had led to this moment and this place. At last she would be free of the rage and anger that drove her, free of the nightmares and terrors that lay in wait for her every night. She would live again.

She placed both hands on the iron railing of the balcony. The cold metal of the iron felt good against her skin. It wasn’t freezing, not yet. It was still early fall and the weather was mild in the south. She watched a fishing boat with its lights blazing heading out to sea for some night fishing. The bay was lovely this time of night, calming and restful as the dark waves ran to shore.

She frowned a moment as troubling thoughts pushed to the surface of her mind, struggling to get free. A part of her, buried deep within, knew that she was mentally unbalanced, out of control. There were brief moments when sanity came close to the surface of her mind, when she realized the terrible things she had done, knew that going from city to city killing was a maniacal, pointless exercise in terror. But then the rage and thirst for revenge that constantly hung over her mind like a large, dark cloud would come storming back, drowning out everything but that single purpose of revenge.

Then there was the lone survivor with the face of a saint that had forgiven her for what she was about to do–murder him. She had wanted to kill him, tried to kill him, but something deep down inside of her wouldn’t let her. Her finger had frozen into immobility on the trigger.

He had talked to her of forgiveness and cleansing of her soul. Alex told him that she didn’t believe in God and didn’t have a soul, but he continued to talk about heaven and hell, about repentance, and that everyone, even her, had a soul. Finally, in disgust, she had walked away from him. The only doctor to escape her vengeance.

Later, after walking for hours, she thought about going back and finishing the job, but she knew that she couldn’t face him again. He had looked too deeply inside of her, made her question herself, what she was doing, made her afraid. She continued to walk long into the night, turning his words over in her mind, wondering how true they were. If she had a soul, if there was some sort of accountability for what she had done, if there was a hell–she shuddered and shut all of those thoughts out. She couldn’t think about that, not now; she had work to do.

She would have her revenge even if she burned in hell for it.

 

Chapter 2

 

Detective Becka Black stood in the middle of the back room of a small, rundown house, surveying the cluttered piles of stolen property from dozens of homes and businesses. The burglary ring had been busy over the past month. Now, early on a Monday morning, she had finally broken the case and the perpetrators were on their way to jail.

The sunlight shining through a single, cracked window pane lit up the room and highlighted Becka’s short, vibrant red hair which framed an attractive but lean face. Detective Becka Black was a tall, athletic-looking woman, standing six feet tall, wearing a black leather jacket zippered half-way up over a pale pink cotton turtleneck blouse with the sides of the blouse neatly tucked into the sides of her beige pants.

She looked more like a model than a detective, but she was stronger and tougher than she looked which had surprised more than one suspect who thought they could overpower her. She was an independent, strong-willed woman that liked to think that she could handle any situation that confronted her. As a detective, those traits had allowed her to excel in her profession.

The morning sun was bright and warm for an October morning. Her green eyes swept the surrounding room again, shaking her head slowly. It had taken her too long to break this case.

Her reputation had been tarnished as a result; the mayor and the city council had unrealistic expectations of what she could do. She wasn’t some kind of superwoman; she was just a detective doing the best job she could to solve a case.

She also knew the limitations of her current job. She no longer had the resources or talents of a big city police department, but somehow they didn’t understand that in Bayview with the exception of the Chief. You had to be a cop to understand how hard this case had been.

Becka sighed heavily. She had been the only detective working the case; she was lucky to break the case at all, but her boss, Chief Williams, was the only one who really understood her dilemma, but then he was part of the problem. She gathered that in order to convince the city council to hire her, he had oversold her abilities and talents. The mayor and city council expected wonder woman to show up, not a plain ordinary detective.

There had been tremendous pressure on the Chief over the last month, but he had stood up under the pressure well, and she admired him for that kind of courage. There had even been talk of firing her. She had been here only a few months and was still on probation. To the Chief’s credit, he had backed her and gave her the time she needed to solve a difficult case.

She gathered that Bayview wasn’t use to any real crime, other than the occasional theft or break-in. This burglary ring had been a real shock to the citizens of Bayview and made them feel vulnerable and unsafe.

She knew from past experience those ugly feelings would fade with time unless something else happened. She fervently hoped nothing did. She had come to this small town hoping for a quiet, uneventful career as a small town detective. No more rampant street crimes and multiple murders for her. She was through with that violent life style.

Becka had always considered herself a good detective, a cut above the rest and taken pride in her abilities, as proved by her past citations. She had a talent for breaking open cases. It was her other attributes that got her into trouble.

“Good job, Detective. If I was still counting on the county detectives, these perps would still be free.”

“That’s why you hired me,” Becka replied, shifting her green eyes to meet her Chief’s gaze, forcing herself to smile. He had just walked into the room. She hadn’t expected him to show up.

“Absolutely correct. For a small town like Bayview to snag an experienced, big city detective like you was a major coup for us.”

“Sorry, this case took so long to break. These guys were part of a bigger ring that stretched back over a major part of the state. That made it harder to crack.”

“But you did; that’s what counts. You have been here only a short time, and you have already made a significant contribution. I just stopped by to see the wrap-up and let you know how pleased I am.”

“Thanks,” Becka said, pausing a moment, before adding, “I don’t think the city council was impressed. They still holding out for a guy?”

Becka knew that the council had wanted a male detective and had held up her selection for several months demanding that the Chief produce one. The Chief had finally convinced them that she was the best available for the small salary the city had offered.

The Chief smiled. “The council has unrealistic expectations as we have previously discussed. I know this last month hasn’t been easy for you–working a difficult case and worrying about being fired, but you have proven yourself now. I think you will find things will get better. We rarely get anything like this burglary ring in this town. So relax and bask in your victory. I think you will find this is a nice town to work in.” He turned and walked out, stopping to chat with several of the other police officers outside.

A few minutes later, in the living room of the dilapidated old house, she met Sergeant Timothy James. He assisted her on occasion, a sort of part-time investigator that the Chief had assigned to her. She was the department’s only full time investigator, and she wasn’t likely to get any full time help any time soon. And that was okay. This was a chance for her, a badly needed chance.

“See the Chief?” Becka asked Sergeant James.

“On the way out. He was all smiles. I guess the city council will get off his back about you now.”

“Let’s hope so.”

“Well, the Chief won this round.”

“They still aren’t satisfied, are they?” Becka said, knowing the answer already to her question.

Sergeant James shook his head. “There are some stubborn people on the council. And of course, they all have their own agenda.”

“I never suspected the in-fighting could get so intense about me. Perhaps I was just naive. I suppose the council is still looking for any excuse to bounce me out of this job.”

“Pretty much. They thought they had it with this rash of burglaries, but you came through. The pressure should ease off, at least for a while.” James paused a moment, then added, “These things take time, Detective. They will eventually accept you. The Chief is a good man to have in your corner.”

“I appreciate the candor. You are probably the closest thing to a friend I’ve got right now.”

James smiled and said, “I’ll be there to back you up whenever you need it. I promised the Chief. Besides, I have a good feeling about you. I have over twenty-nine years on the force, and I have learned to trust my instincts.” He glanced at several officers heading toward the back room. “I’d better help the other officers finish the inventory of the evidence. You heading back to the office?”

She nodded. “I have a mountain of paperwork to finish up.”

As she stepped outside, she paused on a small porch and watched as Jack Rand, the town’s local crime reporter, drove up in that old battered blue Jeep of his and parked. He had a nose for news. She was not surprised to see him here so soon.

A small smile parted her lips as Jack got out of the Jeep and walked toward her. His sandy-colored hair and tall, lean six-foot-two-inch frame made her heart skip a beat. He was wearing a pair of faded blue jeans and a dark blue sport coat with an open-collar white shirt; she had never seen him dressed up in a real suit and tie. He always wore casual clothes which only accented his rugged good looks.

She watched him approach with that dimpled smile and those light gray eyes fixed on her. Damn, but he looked good this morning.

Becka felt a strong attraction to Jack, but so far their relationship had been casual: friendly dates and light chatter. He hadn’t even tried to kiss her yet; she wondered about that. Did he not find her attractive?

“Finally nailed the burglars, huh?” Jack grinned as he stepped up on the porch. “I knew you would.”

“You were one of the few. I gather the city council was about ready to send me packing.”

“Those stuffed shirts are always hard on new hires. They are set in their ways and hard to win over. Don’t worry, they aren’t dumb. Eventually, they will see what a great cop you are.”

“Detective, not cop,” she corrected him. “That seems to be Sergeant James opinion as well.”

“I always thought James was smart,” Jack grinned.

“It’s just…I hate feeling like I am walking around on eggshells with everyone waiting for me to mess up so they can fire me.”

“Yeah, I sort of felt like that when I first went to work for the Progressive Times. No one really knew me, knew what I could do, and I felt like there were others in line behind me waiting for me to stumble. Not a nice feeling. But it worked out for me, and it will for you too.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence.” She glanced back inside and then said, “Sergeant James is inside taking an inventory of the stolen property. We arrested three suspects. They have already been taken to the police station to be booked. I will be interviewing them later. That’s about it for now. I’m heading back to make out the official police report. I’ll send you a copy of my report when I’m done.”

“I appreciate that,” he said, glancing at his pocket watch, which he then put back into his pocket. “I’ve got a close deadline. I’ll check inside, take a few pictures, and talk to Sergeant James, if that’s okay.”

Becka nodded, then she moved closer, touching his arm. “See you tonight?”

“Sure, Bayside Seafood okay? It’s close, and I have a craving for seafood.”

“You always have a craving for seafood.”

He shrugged with that cute helpless expression of his and walked inside the house. She sighed once and headed for her car. She hated seafood.

 

 

Chapter 3

 

Doctor Julian Tate, noted psychiatrist and currently employed at Serenity Sanitarium, stood in his barn piling hay for his horses into a neat pile in one corner of his barn. He was a tall, thin man with a small gray goatee perched on a narrow chin, wearing denim coveralls.

It was early Monday morning, and he was trying to finish his morning chores before going into work when he heard a car drive up. He didn’t bother to check who had come visiting. Whoever it was would find him soon enough. He had to get this hay taken care of first.

After a few minutes, he heard the barn door creak and turned to see a tall, lean blond in a gray pants suit standing in the doorway, her long hair falling to her shoulders. He didn’t recognize her, yet there was something oddly familiar about her, especially when she moved. The way she moved, the tilt of her head, stirred a memory he couldn’t quite place.

“May I help you?” Dr. Tate asked, puzzled by the appearance of this stranger so early in the morning. He stopped pitching hay into the corner of his barn and turned to face her, sticking his pitch fork into the soft earth.

Alex smiled. It was a hard, angry smile. Then, with her right hand in her coat pocket, she walked farther into the barn, stopping only a few yards from Tate.

“Have you forgotten me? You use to tell me I was your star patient, that I would make you famous.”

“I don’t…”

“Perhaps my old name would help. You knew me as Mary, a frail, shattered sixteen year old girl trying to get over the death of her parents.”

“Mary Carson, of course, I thought there was something familiar about you. You know, I devoted an entire chapter to you in one of my books.”

“I’m glad you found me so useful,” she sarcastically replied. Her frozen, grim smile never changing.

“When you escaped, I was very disappointed. I was really only beginning with you. There is so much we could have done together.” There was a wistful smile on his face as he remembered. “You would have proved so many of my theories.”

“Despite the pain of your patient? I remember as well doctor. I remember the thousands of volts pouring through my body, the agonizing convulsions, and the screams, the terrible screams. Do you realize the hell you put me through?”

“I know it was difficult, but it was for your own good. It was the only treatment that seemed to work. You were in a severe dissociative state when they brought you to the sanitarium. There were days when you completely shut down, refused to acknowledge any external stimuli. Nothing seemed to work. Electroshock treatment was our only recourse, and it worked. Surely, you see that?”

“All I remember is a young girl screaming for you to stop, to let her go. You tortured me for two years. And you killed.”

Doctor Tate frowned at that remark. He was beginning to be a little afraid. The woman was obviously full of anger and resentment. She could be dangerous.

“Who are you referring to?” he finally asked.

“Don’t tell me you have already forgotten Jenny, sweet Jenny. She died on the table of your torture machine.”

Dr. Tate inhaled sharply. He had forgotten about the young dark-haired woman with a weak heart. Of course, they hadn’t known about the weak heart then. Only when she died under the electroshock treatment did they discover that Jenny Wool had a history of heart trouble.

“That was an unfortunate accident. The entire sanitarium was sorry about that.”

“You weren’t all that sorry, not enough to stop, were you? You went right on with your treatments.” The accusation was sharp and angry. The smile gone from her face.

“We stopped electroshock treatments,” Tate said, nervousness showing in his voice and face.

“But not immediately, no you continued your torture on me until I escaped.”

Tate had been a psychiatrist long enough to know that he was in danger. He needed help. He removed his cell phone from his pocket to make a 911 call, and then saw the automatic in her hand pointing directly at him.

“Drop the phone, doctor.”

Wetting his lips nervously, he let the small cell phone slide off his outstretched fingers. He knew now that she had come to kill him. In his best professional manner and voice, he forced himself to smile.

“Don’t do anything drastic, Mary.”

“My name is no longer Mary. That woman died a long time ago. My name is Alex now.”

“Alex, I can help you. We can talk this out. ”

She shook her head and then smiled. It was a cold, vengeful smile. “No one can ever talk this out.”

He drew himself up straight, full of pride and defiance. “I have helped many people in my lifetime, restored them to a useful role in society.”

“You have destroyed a lot of lives, including mine. I was fortunate enough to finally escape or who knows what would have happened to me. I could have become another one of those mindless vegetables you keep locked up in the off-limits area of the sanitarium.”

He raised his eyebrows slightly. “You know about those? No one is supposed to know about them.” He paused a moment, frowning with his eyebrows drawn close together and thinking hard. “Many of those patients came to the sanitarium like that. There was nothing we could do for them except house them and take care of them. They were incurable.”

Alex took two steps closer, her knuckles white on the handle of her pistol. “How many of them were your electroshock patients?”

Doctor Tate backed up. His eyes nervously darted from side to side. “A few, only a few, but I couldn’t help them.”

“More than a few. You cover up your failures well, Doctor.”

He suddenly took a step forward and tried to smile, failing. He had to reach this woman, somehow divert her from murdering him.

“We can straighten this all out. No one needs to die.”

“Yes, they do,” Alex said as she squeezed the trigger, putting a bullet right between Tate’s eyes. He fell back in sudden shock, hitting the ground hard, face up, his eyes already glazing over.

“You won’t terrorize anyone else now,” Alex said, tears of relief and satisfaction streaming down her face.

At last, she had confronted her monster and banished him. She had dreaded this confrontation and been eager for it at the same time. She had been afraid of Tate for a long time. She was free of him at last.

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The Ticktock Murders

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Meet Becka Black, a burned out police detective trying to escape from her past, but life has chosen otherwise….
The Ticktock Murders by John D. Garrison

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The Ticktock Murders (Detective Becka Black)

by John D. Garrison

The Ticktock Murders (Detective Becka Black)
Or FREE with Learn More
Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled

Here’s the set-up:

Becka Black is a burned out police detective trying to escape from her past. She is tired of murder and chasing killers. All she wants to do is settle down in a small town in an easy job, solve the occasional robbery, and go home at the end of the day with a smile on her face.
But life has chosen otherwise for Detective Black. She has just arrived in town, and she is already in trouble. She has suddenly been thrust into the pursuit of a serial killer with her job on the line.
Ticktock is a serial murderer that has swept across the United States like a lethal plague. No one has been able to catch her. Ticktock’s trademark signature is a clock drawing at the scene of her murders, showing the exact time of death.
Now that killer is in her town and time is running out. Ticktock kills multiple times and disappears. If Becka doesn’t catch Ticktock by her last murder, Becka will lose Ticktock forever along with her job and possibly the love of her life.

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Gatekeeper

by Mike Smart

Gatekeeper
4.5 stars – 4 Reviews
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Planes inexplicably colliding, economies in disarray. A psychotic businessman has brought the world to its knees.Can a former Special Forces operative with the help of a damaged Cambridge Professor save a bride to be and avoid worldwide anarchy?

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Prologue

French Airspace – Wednesday Night

 

Flight BA487 had left Heathrow on time, bound for Dubai. The flight was busy; it always was, Dubai being a very popular holiday attraction in its own right and one which had also, over the last ten years, established itself as a major hub for the near and far East, providing frequent connecting routes into every major business city and favoured tourist location.

Susan sat in the economy section of the Boeing 777 looking forward to getting to Dubai for a bit of shopping. She’d never been there, but her friends had been told stories of wondrous shops with knock-down prices. A supersized Harrods in a series of fabulously clean, perfectly air-conditioned terminal buildings – a great way to spend a couple of hours waiting for her connecting Emirates flight on to Sydney.

She was so looking forward to a month of travelling; she’d spent hours doing research on the internet. On the advice of more seasoned travellers, Susan had written a long list of “must dos”. As this was her first major long-haul trip on her own, she was hoping to meet up with some like-minded fun people to share all her new and exciting experiences.

She had broken up with Marty, her boyfriend of three years, a couple of weeks earlier. He had wanted a serious commitment – two-point-two kids and a nice house in suburbia. Susan felt this was all a little bit too premature. They’d argued, she’d walked out and now she was on her way towards a bit of adventure. In her own mind she was pretty certain that the two of them would work things out when she got back; but in the interim this was her life, to be lived to the full, and at 23 the petite brunette felt she was entitled to some fun before settling down to a life of matrimonial and domestic bliss.

Susan played with the entertainment controls and settled back to watch a movie. Love, Lost and Found had just come out featuring her favourite actress, Sally Stevens, with the bonus of having the gorgeous and oh-so-sexy George Hadley playing opposite her. Her last rom-com had been great fun and according to the reviews that she had read in the Evening Standard on her daily commute back from the smog of Central London, this movie was a good laugh. It had everything by all accounts; a great storyline, lots of intrigue, with some twists and turns in the plot thrown in for good measure. Headphones on, movie starting and looking forward to a couple of drinkies – life was good.

She never got past the opening scene, as the BA487 ploughed straight into the Air France 290 coming out of Paris bound for Atlanta. At 20,000 feet, over the killing fields of Flanders, the planes collided and erupted in a single massive ball of flame; there would be metal debris spread over a 100-mile radius below to be picked over and collected by the air investigators. For the friends and families of the 700-odd passengers and crew on both flights there would be no remains to bury, only the hollow consolation that the ashes of their loved ones would be scattered amongst the poppies, along with so many that had sacrificed their lives in the Great War.

 

Offshore Dominican Republic – Thursday Afternoon

 

‘Hey, Jack, you want another beer?’

Jack turned from his position in the fighting chair. ‘Sure, where’re the bloody fish?’ His accent betrayed its origins. Born and raised in south London, Jack was a consummate salesman and a natural trader. ‘We’ve been out here a day and half and not caught or seen bugger all!’

‘Yeh, mon, but that’s fishing… I’ll get you a cold one.’

Orlando, the hired deck hand, looked over at the owner of On a Sales Call. He wasn’t much to look at; late 40s, a couple of lunches too many, but one could sense a certain steel in his manner and he knew people wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of him. In the four foot swell he may move around the boat with the grace of a drunken elephant, but onshore his powerful, thick-set five foot eleven inch frame had purpose. Orlando imagined that this was a guy you’d like on your side in a bit of rough and tumble.

Jack focused his attention to the fishing again and turned to face the back of the boat. He had had On a Sales Call commissioned to be built three years ago; the name tickled him and reflected his background. Were he ever to be asked where he was, he could simply reply On a Sales Call, leaving the listener none the wiser; that’s exactly where he was – out fishing. Up close or from afar, at just over 50 feet long with her flying deck sat above a luxurious air-conditioned lounge area she looked and played the part of the archetypal sport fishing boat. Down below, the lounge led to a couple of spacious double en-suite cabins; with a top speed of forty knots, the boat could get him to the best spots ahead of the pack when he fished in the Marlin competitions he so enjoyed. Money being no object, rather than going for the cheaper fibreglass hull Jack had opted to have the boat built of polished wood. On A Sales Call attracted envious stares wherever she went and he was suitably proud of her.

Jack could see, around 15 miles to his left, the very faint outline of the Dominican Republic. According to some of his fishing pals this was a good time of year to be fishing for Blue Marlin, his target for the last couple of days. The Blue Marlin, largest of the billfish family, was a prized catch for any sport fishing angler. Jack had caught a few and recalled the thrill of hooking into one; it had become almost addictive. He’d go out looking for one of these rare fish at every opportunity. For the hundredth time he counted off the lures in the water – and as before, he watched the two close in some 60 feet behind the boat then seek out the remaining three artificial baits. All five of them were designed to imitate small fish or squid with the furthest set some 70-80 yards away, skimming through the tops of the dark blue Caribbean waves behind the boat. Jack never got bored fishing; it was cathartic, and for the umpteenth time he imagined seeing a dorsal fin appearing through a crest making a beeline for one of the baits. He pictured the fish, all 600lbs of muscle and bad temper snatching at his personal favourite lure. In all, about twelve inches long, it was a red and white mixture of rubber, coloured plastic and a four-inch steel hook, reminding him a tube shrimp fly, very much smaller in size, that he might use fly fishing for salmon on the Tweed, another passion of his.

The cold beer arrived before the fish. No change there then, thought Jack; still, life’s pretty good, the odd billion in the bank, sun shining, no phones – but he knew in his heart that this idyllic vista could well change abruptly and quite possibly not for the better.   He had a nagging thought that what had started out as a simple concept had rather spiralled out of control, and that he had inadvertently jeopardised all that he had worked so hard to build. Unlike the fate that awaited any fish silly enough to have a go at one of the five lures trolling happily off the back of the boat, he severely doubted that, when all that had transpired became public domain, he would simply have a tag stuck on him and be released back to swim the seas. .

A quick look at the solid gold Rolex Submariner on his wrist (a present to himself when he made his first million) told him it was nearing 5pm and that he ought to consider calling it a day and make the turn for shore, back to his wife who was waiting in the luxury villa that they had rented for a couple of weeks. Nice place, he thought, with staff to take care of everyone’s needs – he was particularly fond of the obliging masseuse who for the odd hundred bucks would ensure that a body massage was a truly memorable experience. He felt no guilt about his more-than-the-odd indiscretion; he was an alpha male and only thought it right and proper to take what he wanted, when he wanted. He had, at least in his mind, earned the right.

Give it one more Robusto, Jack mused. Smoking cigars was one of his favourite pastimes. He’d given up cigarettes in his early twenties and now managed to get through five or six of the hand-rolled luxuries a day. He pulled himself, less than gracefully, out of the wooden fighting chair which, though fixed firmly to the deck, allowed the occupant to swivel a full 360 degrees when playing a fish. The seat dominated the aft of the boat. Its recent occupant climbed up the twelve-step ladder onto the flying bridge.

‘Craig, take us out on more loop, please – we’ll give it another hour and then call it a day.’

‘Sure, Jack, whatever you say.’

Craig had been the Captain of On a Sales Call for just over two years; he knew that his boss was going to be in a pretty foul mood having two consecutive blank days but he reasoned that there was not much he could do about it. He’d quartered the water thoroughly and had ensured that Orlando had kept up a stream of fresh dead bait on two of the lures. He knew that Orlando would be working desperately hard to catch a fish in order to secure a healthy tip from his tenure as a temporary member of the crew. There wasn’t much work to be had on the island outside of tourism and sugar plantations, so the deck hand would certainly be keen to impress… nope, the fish just weren’t in a helpful mood today.

Craig didn’t know the waters here as well as his home patch off the shores of his beloved Cape Town. A consummate pro, he knew the capabilities of the boat and could read weather and water conditions extremely well; if there were fish to be had he’d normally return a good result. Fishing and the sea were in his blood; he’d fished all over the world with Jack and for the most part had thoroughly enjoyed being in this powerful man’s employ. They’d met by chance in truth; Jack was at a loose end, having finished his business dealings earlier than expected, and had shown up on the quayside at Hout Bay in the Cape looking for some sport. Apparently, an associate of Jack’s had recommended Craig’s chartering business over dinner the preceding evening.

For the past seven years, before he met Jack, he had been taking anglers of mixed abilities out to the confluence point of the South Atlantic and Indian Ocean about 30 miles south of the Cape of Good Hope. It was a prolific place to fish, Yellow Fin being the most common catch ranging in size from five or six kilos up to eighty or ninety. Occasionally he would get the bonus of hooking into a giant Blue Fin tuna which could run up to an enormous 350 kilos, or 750 pounds in old money. Hook one of those and he was in for a really good day as there was always a willing market in Tokyo for fresh Blue Fin. To keep them fresh for the sashimi restaurants he’d call ahead as he was making his way back to port. Waiting for his return there would be specially designed “tuna coffins” waiting on the dock which would then be flown, with their expensive contents, overnight to Japan.

His simple “lifestyle” business model was designed to let him go fishing every day and get paid for it; he’d give the paying passengers a good time and then pocket the money from selling any fish that they caught. In truth, business had been patchy and when, after a good day’s fishing, he and Jack started chatting he couldn’t believe his good fortune.

Jack’s offer was something of a no-brainer; money no object and lots of freedom to fraternise with whichever locals he could find in the various ports he hung out in while waiting for the owner to come aboard.

At thirty-two, he married a gorgeous South African model who’d taken a shine to his honed body and laid-back approach to life – in the end he couldn’t keep up with her hectic lifestyle and had little time for the flaky friends with whom she circulated in the world of high fashion. Karen had rang him from an assignment a year after their wedding and confirmed the inevitable, something to the effect that whilst she loved him it wasn’t going to work out in the long term and it would be best for them to go their separate ways – and that was it: a phone call, some paperwork arrived a few weeks later and he was a single man again. No tears, no bad feelings, some happy memories and no alimony – well, he was too proud to tap into all the money that Karen made, so at least she was happy to have got away without huge expense.

On a Sales Call turned through 180 degrees back into the gentle swell and headed back out into the open ocean.

‘C’mon fish!’ screamed Jack as he lurched down the ladder and slumped back into the fighting chair – he was content puffing on the Cuban cigar and drinking cold beer. He counted off the lures again, wiped his Revo sunglasses on his t-shirt, reset his cap which he invariably wore backwards and let his mind drift off to contemplate the rather concerning phone call he’d taken from the office in Hong Kong that morning.

 

 

Dominican Republic – Thursday Morning

‘Can you get that?’ The incessant buzz of Jack’s mobile could be clearly heard from the lounge. It would flip to voicemail eventually but had been set to ring twenty times before doing so. Jack hated missing calls and would interrupt almost anything to answer the phone. Ironically, when he went fishing he turned his phone off, and he did the same thing when he was having sex – other than that the phone remained doggedly switched on, to the intense annoyance of anybody who was holding a meeting with him.

Jack simply couldn’t stand voicemails and the ensuing game of telephone tag whilst he tried to return an important call with a client or one of his direct reports. He had to know what was going on right then and not wait to find out later; after all, information was power and delays created missed opportunities and that, most likely, cost money. He was a complete control fanatic and not being in possession of all the information meant he’d be out of control of something, which just wasn’t acceptable.

Over the years he’d coached his executives not to waste his time with trivia, and provided them with enough rope so they could operate for the most part on their own. Jack didn’t see this as a relinquishment of his span of control but rather a strict set of guidelines determined by him so that his will and purpose could be executed in his absence. After all, he couldn’t be expected to be everywhere at once – the management teams of the myriad of businesses he controlled knew the parameters within which they could operate. They were rewarded most generously for getting it right and punished mercilessly for failures. The owner of Meta Enterprises recognised people weren’t perfect and that making mistakes was all part of the learning process and an integral part (and therefore an associated risk) of growing a business – he just couldn’t accept his team or anyone in his employ repeating a mistake.That was plain stupid and, well, that just wasn’t good enough in his book.

Katie, Jack’s third wife, reluctantly got off her sun lounger where she had been soaking up the morning rays, which even at that time of day were powerful enough to burn unprotected flesh. She’d been reading a book whilst lying next to the secluded villa’s oblong infinity pool that disappeared off into the fabulous turquoise blue of the Caribbean. She was convinced that she had really lucked out with her husband of four years.

Prior to getting married, Katie had been working for a private jet hire company as both sales executive and glorified air hostess. The pay had been okay, the perks had been bountiful and the assorted gifts she accumulated from bored rich executives had meant that her lithe five foot ten inch body was always adorned with nice expensive trinkets. She recognised it wasn’t going to be a long-term career and that as her looks faded so might her “closing” appeal. Still, it was good while it lasted and she was having fun.

Katie didn’t consider herself a “trophy wife” as such, but that’s how most of the people who met her would probably describe her to their friends over a dinner party table. Blonde, deep blue eyes, legs that went on forever; her 33-year-old body was firm to the touch, toned from countless sessions in the gym and definitely shaped to please the eye. Clothes hung on her well and men were instantly sexually attracted to her. She didn’t have a great number of female friends, as many considered her a threat and frankly couldn’t compete in the beauty parade stakes.

Katie was far more than a pretty face; Jack was a smart man with good taste and whilst good looks were very important he needed more than a piece of eye candy on his arm. She was an asset. She could hold a conversation with anyone, and having her own well-reasoned opinions on a wide range of subjects was an interesting dinner guest; she , knew equally well when to speak her mind or when necessary to hold her own counsel.

Jack, her husband-to-be, had turned up one afternoon at her place of work on his way to New York. Northholt, a former RAF base 30 minutes from the centre of town, was an ideal location for busy executives with company expense accounts that stretched to private jets. Katie was a bit surprised that he was into renting jets and had only found out later that wife number two had taken the “family” jet off to see her family in Italy with the two children, Isabelle and Xavier. As it transpired, the jet never came back – at least metaphorically. It disappeared along with $200m of alimony into the hills around Florence never to be seen again. A bitter divorce had resulted in Jack seeing very little of his children; they had sided with Sabine, a striking and fiery half-German, half-Italian blonde. Jack had a penchant for blonde women.

Business was good in the private charter business.The rich were getting richer and the poor were, well, poor and, not surprisingly, the less well-heeled had little call for $50,000 flights. On this occasion, Katie had offered to “host” the flight as she fancied a few days in New York –in truth she had several reasons she wanted to get on the flight with Mr Jack Hunter. On a purely practical level she had recently been invited to a society wedding and she wanted to buy some new clothes. What better than a trip to the Big Apple to pick up a new wardrobe? The big opportunity and the bonus of playing “sales hostess” on a transatlantic trip was that Jack was a big fish. If she could sweet talk him into a long-term contract then she would make her sales target numbers for the year many times over. In so doing, she would earn a very sizeable bonus as just reward which she could use towards the apartment she wanted to buy in Knightsbridge or Chelsea.

It was almost inevitable on these types of trips that from the outset there was a degree of sexual tension in the air; unsurprising given the highly combustible mix of sex, money and power. Katie was stunning to look at and knew it. High-powered executives with egos the size of a planet who were used to getting what they wanted, when they wanted. Add to this explosive cocktail seven or eight hours to kill on a luxury private jet with all the usual amenities and being in close proximity with an ambitious “sales hostess” like Katie. The game, as one says, was well afoot and in many cases well underway even before the jet had left the ground. One thing could, and very frequently did, lead to the next and Katie knew how to use the rules of the game to her advantage.

Jack had taken his seat in the Citation. He was tired and had had a long day sorting out one of his more awkward customers. He graciously accepted the offer of a freshener; Grey Goose, lots of ice, slice of lime and a dash of tonic.  He’d taken a couple of calls, sent some emails and had then asked Katie to sit across the table on the basis he was keen to make the time pass more socially.

Anyone chatting with Jack would always get the impression that they were being interviewed. By the time they’d crossed over the Irish Sea and left Galloway behind them, Jack had ascertained most of Katie’s background. He knew she was single, how much she earned and that she was working hard to save up for a nice place in an expensive postcode. A woman of taste, expensive in the extreme, single, highly intelligent and a great looker: exactly Jack’s type – he cast an appreciative eye over the clothes and jewellery that adorned this sexy sales executive. Cartier watch, good stones in the rings and a solid gold necklace with matching bracelet and earrings; not on her salary, he thought. He knew her type and guessed, pretty accurately, how she might be able to afford such nice accoutrements.

After a couple more drinks and a continuation of the interrogation Jack leaned across the table, looked directly into Katie’s eyes and asked the question that had been coming for the last 45 minutes: ‘So what’s it going to cost me to get you out of those clothes?’

Katie wasn’t so much surprised by the question; she’d expected more subtlety but as she was to recognise early on in her relationship with Jack, finesse wasn’t one of his natural strengths. She was, however, taken aback by the direct approach. In her experience, and she’d had some, it normally took a lot longer, and several more drinks, for the subject of intimacy and the oblique references to mile-high clubs to surface.

‘What, do you think you can simply buy me?’ This wasn’t how the game was played, she enjoyed the cat and mouse bit, the innuendo gradually building. She was no whore, simply enjoyed sex with powerful men and invariably got some additional benefits in kind for a bit of fun at 40,000 feet. ‘Jack, I’m shocked and deeply offended that you would ask me such a thing, who the hell do you think you are?’

Jack sat back in his chair and smiled. ‘I’m the man who can give you everything you want in life. You, Katie, are a very sexy woman and are clearly skilled at playing out this little charade, but it’s a game I don’t have the time or inclination to play. Life is short and for living, we’re only here for a quick look round and I can, and do, take what I want when I want and right now I want you, Miss Fletcher.’

Katie was dumbstruck. Where to go from here? She could back out, but both knew the score and neither was naive enough to believe she wasn’t up for the chase. She admitted as much to herself but she hadn’t counted on getting to the end game quite so quickly or bluntly. This man could destroy her career in a heartbeat or could make her hugely successful; alternatively, he might simply want a quick transatlantic bonk to pass the time.

Katie found his total self-confidence and the allure of his wealth and power highly stimulating. Mmmm… nothing ventured, nothing gained. Without saying a word she stood, stowed the table away, and slowly unbuttoned her silk blouse, her full breasts pressing against a beautiful silk bra rising in time with her breathing, now a little faster than usual. Jack wasn’t disappointed; he’d guessed immediately that she had a great body under her very smart clothes and was even happier to note that, when she released the pencil skirt that had so tightly hugged her thighs and slid it over her shoes, she was not wearing anything but sheer black stockings.

Katie moved over to Jack in her heels and stockings and began to unbuckle his designer jeans – she looked up at him as she kneeled between his legs. ‘Jack, I’m going to give you a private safety briefing.’ She slid out his engorged penis and began to coax it further. ‘Passengers should remain seated with their seat belts fastened during periods of turbulence,’ she murmured. She may have been about to say more but the words were choked off as she took care of Jack’s most basic needs.

The next few days were spent in New York together, a mixture of fabulous restaurants, shopping for designer clothes, a stunning apartment and being treated like royalty – Katie looked after Jack, Jack looked after the rest. On the day of the planned separation, Jack dropped a prenuptial agreement in her lap along with a $100,000 engagement ring. “Yes” was only answer that Katie could think of.

In their four years of childless marriage, Jack seemed to have no interest in that direction and Katie didn’t want to be tied down; they had time for children later She hadn’t really done much digging into what had happened in the previous marriages, they were closed subjects as far as Jack was concerned. Out of idle curiosity she had done a little research of her own on Jack’s first wife, apparently some Professor, didn’t sound Jack’s type and none of the paperwork she’d seen cast any light on the relationship.

With regard to marriage number two, as far as Katie could discern Sabine had become fed up with Jack’s wandering eye and disappearing “off radar” for days at a time, supposedly on secret business trips. Katie had learned not to question too much, took her bit of pleasure along the way working on the basis that whilst the cat’s away… She had signed a prenuptial agreement which entitled her to a fixed amount in the event of divorce; $50m and a couple of properties from Jack’s extensive portfolio, which were dotted around the world in some wonderful exotic locations. Life was good and Katie simply took the view that she quite liked the understated lifestyle of being married to a powerful billionaire. He had connections in every major government around the world and a social network comprising of other equally well-heeled individuals spanning industry, media, fashion and property. If Jack didn’t have you in his book at his beck and call, you probably didn’t figure anywhere in the grand scheme of things.

She picked up the phone and could see from the caller ID it was Sergei. ‘Hi, it’s Katie.’

‘Katie, it’s Sergei, apologies but I have no time for pleasantries, is Jack there?’

‘Sure, cacu si?’ She liked to try out the two or three phrases of Serbian she knew.

‘Dobra hwala,’ replied Sergei curtly. ‘I’m serious, I need to speak with Jack and I need him now!’

Jack, still dripping wet from just having taken a shower and wearing only a towel, walked out of the bathroom adjoining the fabulous bedroom, which had great uninterrupted views across palm tree tops to the azure Caribbean beyond. He crossed the marbled main open plan living area.

He took a long appreciative look at his third wife; it wasn’t a loveless marriage. The sex was great, she was good company, an excellent hostess and perfectly capable of holding her own in the illustrious company that Jack kept. So not a Mills and Boon classic romance but functional and, at least for the time being, Jack was happy to keep it going. He knew about her little dalliances – if they got too serious Sergei would quietly have a word and the problem would disappear, sometimes easily or occasionally with a touch of Serbian subtle tact. Either way, Katie never knew what happened, simply that an inappropriate “friendship” had been terminated. She still had a great body, was good company and he particularly liked her as-nature-would-have-intended approach to sunbathing which avoided any of those tiresome bikini lines.

A naked Katie handed over the phone. ‘It’s Sergei.’

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Gatekeeper