Special Agent Rainie McClain wants out. Out of The Agency. Out of the shadow life that has consumed her for far too long. Walking away from The Agency means letting go of the only man she's ever loved, her husband, Captain Roc Branson. But at thirty-eight, Rainie has...
CRAB PUFFS Puffs (miniature cream puffs) 1 c. boiling water 1/2 c. butter 1/4 tsp. salt 1 c. flour, sifted 3 or 4 eggs, unbeaten Add butter and salt to boiling water and stir over medium heat until mixture boils. Lower heat, add flour all at once and beat vigorously...
Some mistakes are easy to forget, while others can become glaring reminders of past failures that stand ready to haunt you for the rest of your life. For Laney Winters, life is full of glaring reminders. Starting with the fact that she's pregnant at forty-one, has...
The recipe of the day at Carrie's Creative Catering... Basic Salmon Croquettes Prep: 10 min., Fry: 6 min. per batch. You can mix up the batter a few hours before you plan to cook these. I serve them with grits, but some people like to use cooked white rice and hot...
Watching her best friend die was the hardest thing Emma Dupre has ever had to do. It felt as if she'd lost the only person who would ever love her. Nickie was more than a friend. He was like a brother. When Nickie was first diagnosed with Leukemia, Emma knew...
Now's your chance...send me an email with Worth Staying For in the subject line to maryjeason@netzero.com. I'll select the winner and announce it later in the day. All the best... Mary Eason www.maryeason.com
The biggest challenge to Grace's self-imposed celibacy? Love. As a little girl, Grace Caldwell watched her father walk out on her mother as she struggled through the final stages of breast cancer. Grace, knowing the odds that she could suffer her mother's fate,...
Thank you Tammie and NOR readers for allowing me to share this time with you. What would you do if a killer were hunting you? What if you're child was the target? What if the killer was someone you knew? What's it like to look into the mind of a killer? Ask any author...
Prologue
The Monster Leaves The Abyss
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.
Friedrich Nietzsche
He’d promised. Sworn the last time would be the last time. He’d lied. The throbbing pain cruising down the right side of her body, the dark bruises under her eye, served as vivid proof of the deadly extent of those lies. They were staring her in the face just as clearly as the choices she faced.
To stay would all but guarantee death. To leave would mean he’d follow through on his promise to track her down no matter where she went. Even to the ends of the earth. The third choice was unimaginable.
Which meant there was only one real choice left after all.
* * * * *
If you ask a dozen people what they believe the true meaning of life is, you’ll get at least as many answers. So what’s my take on life? What pearls of wisdom can I impart? Well, I am convinced that the true meaning of life can be found in this analogy. Life is like a book. You never know when one chapter ends what the next one will bring.
Take me for instance. Every important event in my life came at either the beginning or the ending of what I liked to call an imaginary chapter in my book of life.
One chapter ends. Another begins. And so it goes until the final chapter.
Today was no exception. The events of today represented the ending of another chapter. What most fiction writers call the black moment of the book.
It was certainly the black moment of my life.
Now, looking out through the sheets of pouring rain as the coffin bearing my husband’s body lowered slowly into the weeping earth, I believed this was the blackest moment of them all. The kind that never ends. The kind you don’t move beyond.
Soggy red dirt fell in bloody clumps, framing, covering the single red rose I’d placed on Aaron’s mahogany casket.
Dead. Fifty was far too young to be dead, especially when the end came in such a humiliating way. Even now, it made me physically sick, and angry, and hating whoever or whatever could allow such a horribly tragic thing to happen to such a good man.
I glanced beyond the minister who watched me with an expression that did not welcome my tears or encourage sympathy, away from John Delaney who’d glued himself to my side since Aaron’s death, past the handful of mourners to where the gravediggers smoked and waited patiently to finish their task. Grudgingly I accepted this moment for what it was.
The end of another chapter.
I would always associate this chapter with the day I lost my innocence as well.
The only question facing me now was would it be the end of me along with Aaron and my book of life? At this moment, it certainly felt like it.
Today, the bleak D.C. sky allowed no sunlight to penetrate my despair. Not even the good times Aaron and I shared throughout our ten-year marriage could be found here today.
But I think if something had been able to make its way through the sorrow that had begun a year earlier with the first hint of the madness that lay ahead for me and Aaron, I would have done everything within my power to stop it. To end the horror before it could be allowed to take life within the unseen author’s mind.
So I’d like to began this new chapter by saying I am not special. No one of any importance. I’ve never done anything remarkable in my life other than live, get up each day and do what thousands of others do in anonymity. Go to work, come home. Repeat the process.
So what makes me different from those thousands of others?
I’d made a very special connection.
A connection with a killer.
Carrie Sinclair thought she knew exactly what she wanted from life until she came face-to-face with the bluest eyes in Texas. Caterer Carrie Sinclair thinks she has the perfect life and doesn't need a man to complete it. Her pudgy kitty Max is the man in her life, and...
