Brad walked out of the bank carrying a suitcase.  Max and Lucielle sat in the car and watched him approach.  Max still didn’t understand how it was this simple.  ‘Hey Brad, we need a shit ton of money.’  ‘Sure thing. No problem.’  If he had known it was this easy he might have hit Brad up for money a long time ago.  Not that he was in need as the shoe store was doing well enough.  But he hated Brad so why not?

Lucielle started to straighten up as Brad approached.  Max figured she hadn’t really thought this was actually going to work out.  Brad opened the back door of the car and slid in. Continue reading →

Shelia came in through the door in the garage.  Two bags of groceries and her brief case in her arms.  She almost dropped all of them.

“Billy?  Can you come help me please?”  She waited for him to come trotting into the kitchen but only silence answered her.  Slowly she rested the bags on her knees and tried to duck walk them over the counter.  Just as she raised them up one bag ripped on the side and spilled everything all over the floor.  A can of tomato soup hit the top of her foot.

“Damn it!” she yelled.  There would be a bruise tomorrow.  After setting the full bag and her briefcase on the counter she hiked up her skirt so she could bend down to pick up everything.  “Billy?” she asked again.  Still no answer.  She figured me must be over at Steven’s house.  Sometimes he went over there after school rather than sit at home for 3 hours by himself until both her and Max got home from work.  She had told him many times to either call her cell phone and let her know or to leave a note on the dry erase board on the fridge so that when she got home she knew where to call to get a hold of him.  After getting all this stuff put away she would go look and see if he left her a note.  If not he would not be a happy camper when he got home. Continue reading →

Alright.  A quick note before we get into the next chapter.  So this started as an off the cuff writing exercise.  I was supposed to write each chapter on it’s own and not try and think about it to much.  Well I was feeling that the story was falling apart.  So I’ve done some thinking and have a strategy on where we’re going.  So long off the cuff and hello more thought out writing.  Kind of a BIG DUH moment I know but here we go.  Hopefully the actual direction shows now.  So enjoy and here’s to more chapters.

He flipped his cell phone open and hit re-dial.  The other side picked up without even saying a word.

“I found her.”

“Where is she?” a male voice on the phone asked.

“She was at the mall.  She met up with someone.  I don’t know how he’s connected.”

“Where is she now?”

“I didn’t follow them.  She saw me and they took off.  But I can feel her and it’s not going to be hard to find her.  She’s radiating like crazy today.”

“You better be able to.  We need the money she took from us.  If we don’t get to the seller by tomorrow night we’ll have lost our opportunity.”

“Understood.  Let me know when you want us to go in and we’ll take care of it.”  The other side hung up.  He closed his phone and got back into his car.  She was radiating really heavy now.  Anger.  Fear.  He laughed to himself.  She had no idea that the very fear and anger she was exhibiting is what would lead him right to her. Continue reading →

The smoke stung Max’s eyes as he looked into the burning living room.  Fire was eating away at the heavy drapes that were in front of the bay window.  The curtain rod finally gave way and the heavy fabric fell to the floor.  Max put his sleeve over his mouth to help filter the smoke out of his mouth.

“Lucielle?!?”  He moved further into the house hoping that Lucielle had already found a way out.  As he pushed through the swinging door into the kitchen the first thing he saw was Lucielle’s father tied to a chair.  He ran over and shook him.  His head lolled to the side and Max saw what looked like a bullet hole in his temple.  He was about to lift him when the floor caved in.  Max was able to jump to the safety of the door out into the back door.  It was very apparent that bullet hole or not there was no saving Lucielle’s father.

He turned and saw Lucielle lying on the path that led to the garage.  She was on her stomach and there was a large red patch on her back.  Sirens could be heard in the back ground.  Max turned Lucielle over and she began to cough.  Blood flew out of her mouth and onto his shirt.

“What happened?” he asked.

“Crawled.  Through the fire.”  Max looked down and saw that her knees were scrapped up.  Her pant legs were burned away and the skin on her legs was already starting to fall away from the burnt flesh underneath.  He saw the front of her shirt had a large red stain on it as well.  She began to cough again and a lot more blood sprayed his shirt.

“What happened?  How did this start?”  She was still coughing and couldn’t seem to catch her breath.  “Hold on Lucy.  They’re almost here.”  As if on cue firemen burst through the gate into the backyard.  They circled around Lucielle and led Max away from the house.  “No I want to stay with her.”

“Just let us do our job sir.” one of the firemen said to him.  He was led to the front of the house by the fire truck and waited for word on Lucielle.  Eventually one of them came up and pulled him to the side.  “We couldn’t do anything for her.  She was to far gone.”

That was the last time he had seen her.  Dying in his arms in her back yard as her house burned down.  Now she stood here in front of him.  Twenty years had passed.  To him it was a life time.  He had grieved and moved on.  She was nothing to him but a memory.  Now flesh and blood was right in front of him.

“How?”

“I know.  I imagine it’s a shock.”

“A shock?  This is something that I considered impossible until a few minutes ago.”  She smiled at him.

“I thought so too.”  She turned a looked out the window again.  “I shouldn’t be here but like I said you’re the only person I can trust.  I’ve trusted to many people in the last twenty years and it’s only caused me more problems.  I wish I could fill you in but we don’t have time.”

“So what do you need from me?”

“How soon can you get together $150,000?”

“What? I don’t have that kind of money!”

“I didn’t figure you did but how soon can you get it together?”

“ I don’t even know.  I’ve never thought I would have to do that before.  Is that how much they think you owe them?”

“They think I ran off with $75,000.”

“Then why do you need double that?”  Max was flabbergasted that within the last ten minutes his life had gone from normal to needing to find $150,000.

“Because if I can’t get it and pay them double they will not stop until I am dead.  Really dead this time.”  Max shook his head.

“I . . . I can’t even begin to think of how to do that.”

“They had the money set aside for a specific purchase.  Just trust me if I tell you it’s better if you don’t even know what it is. ”  She walked over to him and looked him in the eyes. “If I thought I could do this on my own I would have tried.” Max looked at her and stared into her blue eyes.  In that instant all his feelings flooded back.  His wife wouldn’t have liked that but for this one instant it was all there.

“I’ll see what I can do.”

He stood on the second floor of the mall looking down at the shoe store.  She was in there.  He could feel her mind.  Her desperation.  She was in there.  He might have been picking up love as well but he wasn’t sure.  If he was it wasn’t coming off of her.  Might have been someone close to her but since he was only focused on her it was just coming in peripherally.  The fear coming off her was intoxicating.  All he wanted to do was to tie her down and see how much he could scare her just to soak in as much as he could.  It would be a thrill.  He backed away from the rail and walked further into the mall.  As scared as she was he would be able to find her when he needed to.  Now was not the time.  He was hoping that he could follow her to where she was keeping what he wanted.  She would eventually.  For now he was just enjoying soaking her in.