Killer Reads: A Collection of the Best in Inspirational Suspense

by Luana Ehrlich

  Alexia sat silently soaking it in for several minutes and finally said, “I think that would have driven me crazy. Look, we have to go back. You need to see if that chest is still there, if the photo is still in it.”

  Myra knew she was right.

  After eating, they climbed back into the Mustang and made the trip again to Frampton Corner. Alexia needed no directions this time and drove directly to the old house. Myra walked to the front door and rang the bell. No answer. As she stepped off the porch, Jared and Amy pulled into the drive in their car. They caught up to Myra as she reached the Mustang.

  “We were in town and saw you go down Main Street,” said Jared.

  “I want to apologize for last night.”

  “That’s okay,” replied Amy. “If you weren’t feeling well –”

  “I wasn’t being totally honest.” Myra paused. She didn’t want to continue but saw Alexia nodding her head in encouragement. “I grew up in this house. That was my old room and my old bed. Something happened to me in that room, something terrible, and the memory of it overwhelmed me. I hadn’t expected it to after all these years, but it did.”

  Jared and Amy looked at each other and Jared spoke first. “Are you the one Mr. Umfleet was accused of killing? Is that why he’s free now, because you came back?”

  Myra nodded.

  Both let out a long sigh. “Wow.”

  “We came back this morning to apologize and to, uh, ask for one thing, a favor.”

  “Sure,” said Amy. Jared didn’t look so enthusiastic.

  “Do you have a shovel?”

  Jared shrugged and nodded.

  “Meet me by the old foundation.” She pointed toward the area of the old shed.

  Jared walked off to get his tool and Myra walked to the foundation, took ten paces along the western side, and stood waiting for him. Was it even possible that the chest would still be there? Five minutes later, Jared pulled a metal box wrapped in old rubberized canvas from the ground. Myra trembled as he unwrapped it. All those years and never unearthed, was everything still in there? Would the contents be intact?

  Jared carried the case to the home's front porch and placed it on a small table. "Would you like to do this alone?"

  Myra smiled nervously. "Not on your life. You own the property now; this box is yours. There's only one thing I want from the box." Amy started to protest, but Myra held up her hand. "Just one item. The rest is yours."

  Using a sturdy screwdriver and hammer, Myra tried to pry the box open to no avail. Jared took the hammer and with one solid whack, broke open the lock. Myra opened the lid. Its contents remained in remarkable condition. She removed a small manila envelope and opened it. Tears welled up in her eyes as she clutched the faded 3-by-5 photo and a tattered birth “certificate” to her chest. She held it out to Alexia.

  “The final piece. My proof, after all these years.”

  She pushed the box toward Amy. The young woman opened the lid, gasped, and grabbed her husband. Jared stared at the contents.

  "All yours. Railroad gold that my grandfather once gave me for a rainy day. If I recall correctly, it's probably worth over $50,000 in today's market. Maybe more to collectors."

  "We can't take this!" Amy protested.

  "What do you mean, take it? It's yours. Salvage rights on your property. I'm sure you can find a good use for the money. Your family is about to expand by fifty percent."

  Jared started to stammer, but Amy cut him short. “We’ll discuss it later.”

  Myra chuckled. Leave it to the wife to use common sense.

  Amy turned back to Myra. “Thank you. Actually, it’s going to double. We’re expecting twins. What’s that?”

  Myra hesitated, but turned the crackled photo to show her. “My only photo of my baby. Two days old in bed with me. Two weeks later, he was gone, taken while I slept, to God knows where.”

  Amy burst into tears and rushed from the porch. Myra sat back, unsure as to what just happened. Even Jared looked surprised by his wife’s action – until he saw the photo and his face blanched. A moment later, Amy returned and thrust something into Jared’s hand. Now as teary-eyed as his wife, Jared said, “My biologic mother,” and gave Myra a matching photo.

  Sneak Preview:

  “Looks that Deceive”

  One

  **********

  Did your doctor miss the diagnosis? Call Brumly, Grimshaw, and Payne. Has a medical error led to the loss of a loved one? Call Brumly, Grimshaw, and Payne. Has your doctor failed to rid you of your accursed hemorrhoids? Call Brumly, Grimshaw, and Payne.

  Their ads flooded the local television channels throughout the night and early morning and again during a myriad of afternoon talk shows, resulting in unrivaled success for the corporate partners. Their two-story office building in Ladue – an inner ring suburb of St. Louis with its population of 8,500 – with its worn, but stately, red brick Georgian architecture and park-like grounds, looked as if it had occupied its lot for decades. Ladue was a neighborhood defined by its history, its classical style, and its well heeled, country club populace; and the building radiated that character. From its ivy-covered southeast corner to the hammered copper rooster weathervane on its cupola, the building presented itself with a refined elegance that lent its occupants a sense of permanence and a genteel air of sophistication.

  Yet, within the two-year-old brick veneer, with its synthetic ivy and mail-order reproduction weathervane, there was a state-of-the-art legal firm with posh offices, chic conference rooms, a heavily secured computer network, and an unrivaled media production complex where the partners produced more than slick courtroom visual aids. Brumly, Grimshaw, and Payne, LLC had spared no expense to attain that image of gentility.

  Edward Payne glanced at his watch. Six fifty-eight. His legal assistant had just left for the evening and he decided he would stay no longer than seven-thirty before he, too, would leave for home. The last to leave. He would have it no other way. Turning from his beautifully hand-carved teak desk and matching credenza to his computer, he hit a keyboard combination that saved his current case file first to the firm’s network server, and then to an off-site backup server. Data security and preservation. It was a lesson learned quickly by many companies following the catastrophic loss of the World Trade Center.

  As he opened his last case file for the day, the monitor flickered. A second later, he sat bewildered, watching a strange flow of random characters march across his screen. His first instinct was to initiate an emergency shutdown of his system to prevent the spread of a potential virus, but the current of digits, letters, and dingbats mesmerized him. He couldn’t have been watching for more than fifteen, twenty seconds when the horizontal stream ended and a digital clock materialized in its place. Six fifty-nine and thirty seconds.

  “What the …” He reached for his phone to call their network administrator. The dial tone clicked in and he punched the first digit of the speed dial number as the clock hit six fifty-nine and forty-five seconds. A new message appeared. “Goodbye Edward!”

  At seven o’clock, as he heard the second ring of the administrator’s distant phone, a fireball erupted from the first and second floor windows and 1535 Ladue Road became a flaming memory.

  Lynch Cully, startled from a sound sleep, glanced around, momentarily confused by his surroundings. His bedroom didn’t have beige walls and four old, wooden desks, their edges worn smooth by years of hard use and their surfaces cluttered, as stacks of paper fought recently-purchased computer hardware for space. Maps, charts, and a large dry-erase board sat interspersed along the walls. It took a moment to remember stopping by his office to pick up another unsolved crime file.

  His unexpected, three-day call-up to the MCS, the Major Case Squad, had turned into an unprecedented stint of three weeks of twelve to fourteen-hour days, seven days a week. This case had taken on a life of its own. Just when it seemed to grow cold, a new victim ratcheted up the political heat. Half a dozen local departments had given up dete
ctives to the squad for extended duty. And the way things were going, those half a dozen police chiefs didn’t expect their people back anytime in the near future.

  To say he looked worse for the wear would be an understatement. He worked his hands through his ruffled oil-black hair to smooth it out and then checked his watch. Twenty-one thirty hours. Ten, maybe fifteen, minutes had passed. If that was a power nap, who drained my battery? he thought, feeling worse than before sitting down. His lower back and neck, stiff from stretching the top third of his six-foot two-inch frame across the top of a much too small desk, ached as if he’d been there for hours. The side of his face tingled from the pressure of laying it atop his forearms.

  Lynch arose from the desk, still wobbly, and pulled his keys from his pocket. He unlocked a nearby file cabinet, opened the second drawer, and rifled through the cramped jumble of manila folders. He sighed in frustration. The file he needed wasn’t there. He released his breath slowly, took a deeper breath and started at the beginning of the folders once again, taking care to move through them one by one, more slowly this time. Ah! There it is. I’m more tired than I thought.

  He slid the folder up and out from between its neighbors, opened it to assess quickly its contents and, satisfied, closed and relocked the cabinet. Back at his desk, he placed the file in his open, overstuffed briefcase and with more effort than he thought it should take, snapped closed the case, and prepared to head back to the MCS’s temporary headquarters. No, what he needed was to drive home and go to bed, in his real bed, not on a couch that, like his desk, would award him a stiff back and sore shoulders come morning should he fall asleep there. The file would be there for review over breakfast, a meal he planned to enjoy for the first time in three weeks.

  Lynch was three yards from his car and a night’s sleep when he heard the click of the electronic door lock behind him.

  “Cully!”

  He stopped, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath before turning to respond. It was his supervisor, Bob Janick, a good cop, mediocre detective, and astute politician who had played his cards close to his vest and pulled an ace from someplace dark to move up to team leader. The two men’s styles were about as compatible as a breast-baring costume malfunction at a Pentecostal tent meeting, but he knew why Janick tolerated him and continued to grant him excellent ratings on his yearly evaluations. He made Janick look good. Their team’s solve rate was the best in the county, due largely to him, the wunderkind, Lynch Cully. Yet, their arguments frequently threatened the thin filament of camaraderie connecting them.

  Lynch had never been the compliant child, but he disliked being described as rebellious. Among the first signs of his defiance was his refusal to use his first name. That was his father’s name, not his. At the age of thirty, he wasn’t even sure where the name ‘Lynch’ came from, other than it was most likely what his father wanted to do to him during some really rough teenage years. Gifted in mathematics and the sciences, he resisted the harangues of his parents to utilize his intellect fully, as they defined ‘fully.’ His physician father had encouraged him to follow in his medical footsteps, while his university professor mother was a bit more broadminded. Still, they had both blown aneurysms when he chose police work. To them, this was yet one more mutinous act, but he saw no future in a profession hamstrung by insurance companies and government.

  Criminology, Psychology, and Investigative and Forensic Science interested him and human behavior mystified him with its unpredictability, its range of emotion, and its sometime moral depravity that could lead to grave mistreatment of others. More importantly, he had a gift, one that made him perfect for his current assignment. Rebellious? No. Independent? Yes. The term ‘maverick’ suited him and he embraced its roguish undertone.

  Lynch turned to face his team leader, who had caught up to him. “Hey, Janick. What’s up?”

  “We are. Got a probable homicide we need to check out. You want to follow me, or ride with me?”

  “Now? Look, I’m on loan –”

  “Yeah. I know. I know. You look like you’ve been run hard and put away wet, and I figure you need more than a good night’s sleep. But your boss at the squad wants you to check into this one. Fire’s out and our presence is requested.”

  “Fire? My case has nothing to do with arson.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe now it does. You’re the guy who sees things no one else sees, right? A lawyer got toasted, along with his entire building.” Janick started for his car. “Coming with me?”

  A Quick Note from Braxton:

  I hope you enjoyed “Indebted” and thank you for purchasing our collection. Please consider writing a review. They are critical to Indie authors. It doesn’t have to be lengthy. Just a couple of sentences will do. You can post it at Amazon by clicking here.

  Also, if you’d like to stay informed about my new books, book signings, and more, please sign up for my newsletter. You can do that at my website: http://bit.ly/1oPeSML

  Okay, now that you’ve had a taste of my new thriller, “Looks that Deceive,” are you ready to get it? If so, click here to order.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Braxton DeGarmo spent over 30 years in Emergency and Family Medicine, both in and out of the military, before retiring to focus on writing in 2014. Many of the incidents in his books are based on real occurrences, people, and experiences in his own life, such as learning to escape a water crash in a helicopter. And the technologies described in his books are all current... and possible.

  Fortunately, he did not pull the events of the main plots from his personal life, although they are issues that affect us all. Human trafficking, medical kidnapping, the insanity of Washington, DC, and other injustices have become the premises used for his stories.

  He writes from a Judeo-Christian worldview, but he writes his stories to reach and entertain people of all backgrounds. Now, he just needs to find a way to fit his experience with the incredible shrinking woman of Ft. Campbell, KY into a story. Hmmm…

  Until Death Do

  Us Part

  Lillian Duncan

  Until Death Do Us Part

  Copyright © 2014 by Lillian Duncan/Lost & Found Books

  Cover Design by Delia Latham

  All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from

  the Holy Bible, New International Version(R), NIV(R), Copyright 1973,

  1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All

  rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com

  eBook Edition License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to the appropriate eStore and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  This and all I do is for God’s Glory.

  CHAPTER 1

  Theresa Addams drove down the mountain road toward Paw Paw, West Virginia in her canary yellow VW Bug. She loved her car. The more color in her life the better.

  As she rounded a curve, she slammed hard on the brake.

  A car was blocking the lane. Another vehicle—a van was half on the shoulder and half in the ditch. Must have been an accident.

  Nowhere on this mountain road was a good place to have an accident, but this had to be the worst possible place. Which is probably why it happened in this exact spot. The curve had hidden the disabled cars until the last possible moment.

  Being a slow driver, she stopped without a problem. But the next driver might not be quite as slo
w or as careful.

  The two men were yelling and gesturing at each other. Neither looked happy. In fact, they both looked as if they wanted to hit the other. She hesitated. Billy wouldn’t want her to step into a situation with two unknown men.

  But if someone was hurt, she needed to help. After all she was a nurse.

  After putting the car in park, she set the flashers to emergency.

  Opening her car door, she stepped out.

  The men turned toward her as she walked up. “Is everything OK?”

  “No, this idiot crashed into me, and my wife hit her head on the windshield.” He held up his cell phone. “And I can’t get a signal to call 911.”

  Her gaze moved to the van in the ditch. She didn’t see anyone. “Where is she?”

  He pointed beyond the van. “She’s sitting on the grass. I didn’t think it was safe to stay in the van. Another idiot might come along and hit us.” He glared at the other driver.

  “I’m a nurse. Let me get my medicine bag.”

  “You go look at her. I can get your bag. Where is it?”

  “In the backseat.” She moved towards the other side of the car.

  The other driver crowded behind her. “I didn’t mean to hit them. I came around the curve and there they were. Just sitting there. Not moving. It wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t stop in time.”

  “I’m sure it wasn’t. Accidents happen.” She rounded the corner but no one was sitting on the grass. She turned and almost bumped into the man. “Where’s his wife?”