Kindle Edition
Amazon
Amazon
Category:
Action/Thriller
Publisher: Shelfstealers, Inc.
ISBN-10: 1619720299
Type: Fiction
Pages: 335
Copyright: Jan 1, 2015
ISBN-13: 9781619720299
Price: $4.99 (eBook)
Five million pedophiles. Three angry women. One desperate solution.
"A brave novel with sympathetic characters that goes far beyond shallow revenge fantasy"-Publishers Weekly
WOULD YOU MURDER TO PROTECT A CHILD?
You can admit it because this is the world of psychological thrillers, the world of fiction.
Loring Jeremias has it all: stunning looks, a career as a San Francisco stockbroker, and her loving husband David, a lawyer who defends the justice system—even when it fails. But she can’t forget her father’s child abuse and her angry memories threaten to destroy her marriage.
During a girl's night out and way too much wine, Loring and her two best friends, outraged at society’s failure to protect our children, play at being vigilantes—they devise ten rules for committing the perfect murder. Their targets…
Predatory pedophiles.
Just a game? Not for long, because when Loring stalks a pedophile to test the rules of the conspiracy and her resolve, she doesn't know her target is a serial killer and tortures his victims to death. She doesn't know he spotted her following him, but when he threatens her life and David's, the hunter becomes the hunted, and it's far too late for regret.
For the fans of Dexter and Law and Order:SVU, and for the many parents who worry about their children's safety, ANGRY ENOUGH TO KILL fulfills their fantasies of vigilante justice. Wonderful satire. Packed with suspense and action, yet much more than mere revenge fantasy. (Book club Discussion Guide included.)
Excerpt
CHAPTER ONE
HUNTING SEASON
Loring Jeremias is tempted to turn back, but this decision is not reversible. No. She's come too far and given up too much. The time to reconsider is past.
In the late Fall chill, she quickens her pace along the forest trail, the ground hard and frozen beneath her moccasins. The winter snows have yet to fall in Jackson, Wyoming, and for this, she is grateful. The sawed-off shotgun digs through the backpack into her waist. She shrugs its weight to the side, rubs her hands over her arms to warm them, and forces her fingers deep into her gloves. Her mouth is so parched, her lips cling to her teeth.
The fog forms and fades away, only to form again in different shapes, hunters...witnesses.
Don’t think. Just get it done.
Beside the Snake River, trees pierce the haze. Tendrils of fog slither down the alder standing alone in the center of the clearing, and she imagines them creeping along the ground toward her. Magpies tch, tch, tch. An eagle screeches, wings flapping, and the river churns in the distance.
At the side of the clearing, she clambers over a fallen pine, and crawls under the boughs she arranged so meticulously the day before. The laces on one of her moccasins have come undone. She ties them, this time with a double knot, loads the tranquilizer pistol and settles down. It shouldn’t be long now.
Nothing obstructs her view of the pathway leading from the town to the river. She rests her arms on the log, and waits.
Something crawls up her neck. She swats at it; a spider lands on her arm. She coughs back a scream, and brushes it off. After a time, her knees ache and she shifts on the damp leaves, releasing a whiff of mold and decay.
A twig snaps.
Her hand tightens around the dart pistol.
Please let it be Devlin.
He's whistling, a tuneless wheeze she’s heard before, and he carries a plastic bag. She knows what’s inside: a Sears catalog with pictures of children in their back-to-school clothes.
Will he take a leak as he did yesterday and the day before? She tries not to breathe.
He hangs the bag on a branch of the alder and unzips his fly. Urine steams against the tree. He grunts, zips up and paws for the bag.
The dart won’t kill him, but if they find him before the Medetomidine-Ketamine dissipates...
Too many ifs.
She fires.
“What the fuck?” He grabs his rump, yanks out the dart, and frowns.
She rises and shakes the branches from her shoulders.
His hand grasps for the tree. He stumbles and drops to his knees, as though praying for forgiveness.
Damn, he’s going to fall forward.
She wants to rush to him, to prop him up, but she waits for the drug to take effect.
He rubs his eyes and squints. He's hallucinating. She can hear her own ragged breathing over his mumbled gibberish.
When he falls forward on his hands and knees, and leans to the side, she scrambles to him, props him up with her hip. She places the shotgun on the ground, picks up the dart and jams it into its case in the pocket of her vest. One piece of evidence out of the way.
His eyelids flutter, his jaw sags, and when his head nods, she rolls him onto his back the way she learned in First Aid. It’s easier than she thought. Too much beer and age have thinned his bones, wasted his muscles.
With her arms under his armpits, she drags him and props his back against the tree. His body remains upright. No need for the rope in her backpack to keep him in place.
Fetid whiffs of sweat and mothballs rise from his wool jacket. She holds her breath, picks up the shotgun and confirms the chamber is empty.
To test the suicide position, she wedges the gun barrel into his chin with the butt on the ground between his legs, close to his groin.
His eyelashes . . . long and curled like a child’s. He was someone’s child once. But so was she.
She needs his prints. He’s right-handed—for days she watched him open doors, drink beer, and scratch his nose, all with his right hand. But early in the morning, in the woods, and free from the vigilant eyes of the locals who tried unsuccessfully to run him out of town, he turns the pages of his scrapbook with his left hand. His special pictures. His special children.
She places his right hand around the trigger guard, shoves the thumb into the slot, presses hard, removes the hand and clamps the fingers and thumb around the stock and again on the action and barrel. Except for the area around the trigger guard, she repeats the process with his left hand, near the muzzle end, compressing thumb and fingers into the barrel, and steadies it under his stubbled chin.
Satisfied, she removes the box of shells from her pocket, keeps two, and scatters the rest on the ground. She presses his fingers onto the box and on the shells.
From the backpack, she pulls out the drop sheet, shrouds her body from head to toe. She finds the armholes and ensures the gun is in the proper position, but when she tries to chamber a shell, the grip won’t move.
Damn.
She pumps.
Nothing.
She pumps again.
Thunk. The grip loads.
She drops to her haunches and rams the barrel under his chin. The world pauses, waiting for her to fall. She remembers to breathe.
Gritting her teeth, she thinks about the children and squeezes the trigger.
Sound waves blast through her and beyond. And blood, so much blood. Brain tissue gushes onto the drop sheet, splatters on the tree, startling her even though she memorized the after-effects of shotgun suicides.
Wave upon wave of nausea. Gagging sounds.
Hers.
Run.
Hide. Anywhere. Anywhere but the closet, that musty closet, behind Mommy’s muskrat coat.
But she mustn’t run. She cannot leave evidence. She has done what she had to do; now she must save herself and the others who depend on her to escape.
She sacrifices stealth for speed, rises and folds the sheet into itself and away from her. An alert forensic investigator might notice a gap in the splatter pattern where her body shielded the ground, but the investigators might be parents. A parent might choose to overlook many things.
Or might not.
Perhaps animals will disturb the site and cover her tracks.
Hurrying now, down the bank to the river, rinsing the drop sheet, folding it into itself, resisting the urge to plunge into the river until her soul runs clear, stuffing the drop sheet into a green garbage bag, cramming it into her backpack.
She's still alone. Still safe.
She hangs a camera around her neck, and pulls an orange vest over her camouflage jacket. If other hunters come, she'll say she was hiking, taking pictures, heard the shot, and found him.
She will cry. It won’t be difficult to cry.
One last check of the site. Devlin’s bag still hangs on the tree. Would he have brought it today? No, not if he intended suicide. She shoves it into the backpack. Are there furrows where she dragged him? A few. She scuffs the dirt with a fallen branch.
Where’s the spent shell?
It should be on his left. No, his right.
Think!
She can’t see it. She should be able to spot the red casing.
Did she trap it in the drop sheet and flush it into the river? What if she can’t find it?
Tears push at her eyes. It must look like a suicide. She cannot fail now.
She steps back. “Calm down. Breathe.” She’s muttering, but can’t stop.
With a stick, she checks up and down his clothes.
Nothing.
She pokes the leafy debris.
A glimpse. Red plastic and brass still in the chamber. How could she have forgotten? Pump-action shotguns don’t eject the shell until the next round is chambered. She swallows to moisten her tongue and struggles to her feet. When she checks her clothes and her moccasins, she can’t see any evidence. No obvious bloodstains, no brain tissue. She backs away from the body, shoulders the backpack and slides the straps over her jacket.
To survive now, she must leave unseen and she must forget, but forgetting is not one of her skills.
Along the trail, she prays they’ll find his body soon, that she’ll read about his suicide in the "Jackson Hole News and Guide" when she checks the Internet back in New York. A pointless prayer because what will be, will be, and that's okay.
The sun breaks through the sky's stinging haze. She feels exposed. Someone is shining a flashlight into her eyes, the closet door is open, and she can see Daddy’s shoes, and Daddy, waiting.
At the edge of the forest, protected by the pines, she watches a Range Rover leave the Edelweiss Motel’s parking lot and turn left onto Harbinger Road. When it chuffs out of sight, she slips out of the woods and into the end unit of the motel, changes her clothes, and cleans the room. She shuts the door behind her, throws the backpack into the trunk of her nondescript Ford and drives away.
For the first hundred miles, she fights back nausea, and grips the steering wheel with whitened knuckles until her hands cramp. Gunshot echoes rumble in her ears.
Will they ever disappear? She wants to forget them, but she won’t. She knows she won’t.
At the second hundred-mile interval, she buries her moccasins and the drop sheet in the woods. At the third, she rips the Sears catalog to shreds, imagining that same catalog sitting so openly, so innocently on the coffee tables of homes with children. She stuffs the pieces into the bag, buries it, and tries not to think about the picture of a little girl she knows, holding a Barbie doll, Gold Jubilee edition.
The dirt settles over the bag. She exhales and straightens her shoulders.
Later, deep in the woods, she digs one last hole, burns her hunting clothes and gloves, and buries the ashes.
From time to time along the way home, she pulls over and tries to sleep in the back seat, a shallow sleep, floating on top of a pond roughed by the wind.
In Summit, New Jersey, she parks the car in a garage she rents under a false name, and changes into a navy business suit.
She will take the Transit to Hoboken and the P.A.T.H. train to the subway. She’ll ride the elevator to her office. There, she'll search for hints of suspicion in her colleagues' voices, and pretend to be normal. She’s had a lifetime of pretending to be normal.
Perhaps her next murder will be easier.
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