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Category:
Action/Thriller
Publisher: SetApart Press
ISBN-10: 1537710281
Type: Fiction
Pages: 344
Copyright: Nov 12, 2016
ISBN-13: 9781537710280
Price: $2.99 (eBook)
Daniel Wescott is not doing well.
After witnessing the murder of his best friend, Daniel is dogged by grief and guilt. To make matters worse, an injury has left his arm temporarily paralyzed and in horrible pain.
His parents aren’t interested in him; his friends are fed up with him; even his pastor doesn’t know what to do with him. With nowhere else to turn, Daniel relies more and more on his pain medication for to get him through the day. But he’s lost sight of the most important source of his strength – God.
Returning home from a disastrous mission trip that ended in tragedy and left him wounded, college student Daniel Wescott spirals into deep depression. Tormented by guilt, he pulls away from his family, from his friends, and from God. He leans more and more on prescription medication to escape the physical and emotional pain. Meanwhile, his deceased friend's sister Natalie is battling her own addictions, his roommate Kevin is faced with a racist neighbor, and Resha's gangster past is coming back to haunt her. With his life spinning out of control, Daniel is in no shape to help any of the friends who have always looked to him for leadership. Instead, he needs their help to find his way back to God before he loses everything that matters.
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Icy roads, freezing wind, and a steady drizzle; only a fool would go out on a night like this. A fool, or someone desperate.
It was both foolishness and desperation that brought the little Toyota to the deserted corner of a shopping strip that had closed for the evening. A skinny girl with wispy, brown hair climbed out of the car, her pale face turning left to right as she searched anxiously for the person she'd arranged to meet.
“Cruz?” she finally called out in a small voice, wrapping her thin arms around herself to ward off the chill.
A few feet away, someone lit up a cigarette, briefly illuminating the thick, dark-skinned man she was looking for. A wide doorway sheltered Cruz from the worst of the weather, and he wore an expensive fleece-lined coat far better suited to the chill than the frayed denim jacket the girl wore. He greeted the girl as if there was nothing unusual about either of them being in such a desolate place, and on such a frigid night.
“Hey, Sweet Thing. How's my favorite girl this evening?”
Although Cruz had adopted the lingo of the Houston streets he serviced, his accent was unmistakably Puerto Rican. The girl studied the man's ebony features, hungry for the affection she found there even though she knew it wasn't real.
“Not so good, Cruz.” Her shoulders drooped and she stared at her feet. “My little brother died.”
Cruz did a near perfect imitation of sympathy. “Ah, I'm sorry, Babe. Life on the streets is hard, ain't it? How can I help?”
“Jeremy wasn't on the streets,” the girl objected, confused. “He was....never mind. I need a fix, Cruz. Can you hook me up?”
“Don't I always deliver the goods, Baby?” purred Cruz. He took a long drag on his cigarette before asking, “How much you got on you?”
The girl fished in the pocket of jeans that were too loose on her and came up with a handful of rumpled twenties she'd stolen from her mother's purse that evening. A fleeting moment of guilt tugged at her as she remembered how her parents struggled to pay the bills, but her need for the temporary relief the money would buy was stronger than her conscience. She handed over the cash.
Cruz flicked his cigarette away and counted the bills, then gave her a huge smile, his gold teeth reflecting the streetlight. “Nice. You got enough here to upgrade to something better.”
She hesitated and Cruz poured on more sympathy, more persuasion. “You're going through a bad time, Baby. Might need a little extra help to get you through, you know.”
After a moment, the girl shook her head. “No. The usual, I guess.”
His smile didn't fade. “You got it, Sweet Thing.” He pocketed the money and counted out three little packets.
The girl licked her lips subconsciously when she saw them.
Cruz resisted the urge to taunt her. He’d learned he got more repeat business if he played nice with his customers. He pressed the packets into her grasping hands. “You go on and enjoy that, now.”
“I will,” the girl promised, backing away with her treasure. Before turning to trot back to her car, she called, “Thanks, Cruz.”
Cruz almost laughed. The fool had just thanked him for ripping her off and destroying what was left of her brain!
As she drove away, two more figures emerged from the shadows, a young Puerto Rican with a slight build and a taller, darker man sporting dreadlocks and shades, even in the darkness. They had watched the entire transaction, ready to jump in to protect their boss if anything went wrong.
“Is that the last one, Cruz?” the short, Hispanic teenager whined. He had his hands jammed deep into his pockets to protect them from the cold, but he still shivered. “Can we go now?”
The charm Cruz had manufactured for his customer vanished as he barked at his latest recruit. “What's wrong with you, Emilio? You better toughen up if you want to hang with the big boys.”
Emilio cringed and stammered through blue lips, “I'm okay, Cruz. I just want to learn, that's all.”
Cruz swung his glare to the tall, grinning Jamaican, “What about you, Tony? You getting cold feet too?”
He laughed at his own play on words. Tony's smile grew wider and he answered in a distinct Jamaican patois, “Yuh de boss man, Cruz.”
Tony's calculated flattery and Emilio's fearful submissiveness were exactly what Cruz wanted, needed, to make him feel like the man he was. Pacified by the adulation, he answered Emilio's question. “We have one more meeting tonight, and then we can all go home with fat pockets. The boss lady is sending us another dealer. She wants us to supply him. That means we're movin' up in the ranks, boys.”
Tony said nothing, just kept grinning, but Emilio couldn't hide his eagerness to be done for the night. “Are we gonna meet him pretty soon, Cruz? Is he gonna come here?”
“I'm already here,” a deep voice said from directly behind Cruz.
Cruz whirled to find himself with his nose inches from someone's chest. None of them had noticed anyone approach.
His hand discreetly going to the weapon he had tucked into his waistband, Cruz turned his gaze upward and looked into the face of a light-skinned African American man in his twenties.
Cruz had dealt with plenty of street thugs before and the one standing in front of him now looked like any other, with his chunky bling and low-riding baggy jeans. There should have been nothing intimidating about this dealer, but when the tall man smiled, the dead look in his eyes sent a chill through Cruz that rivaled the bitterly cold wind pounding his back.
Cruz wondered if his boss realized that she had signed on with pure evil.
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