by J K Ellem
Morgan Bates, who ran the local grocery store was convinced that while he was packing her groceries into a bag, the woman was concealing a black eye behind her sunglasses. She also had one hand lightly bandaged that no glove could fit over. The rumor mill went into overdrive and the woman became a battered wife who was hiding out from her abusive husband.
At night, when the sea wind died to a gentle breeze and the last gull had settled in amongst the nooks and crannies high up on the cliffs, some of the locals would swear they could hear the distinct sound of bow on strings, carried across the water of the channel from the lighthouse.
Long after last drinks had been called and the pub had shut its doors, Albert Grouse staggered home one evening along the cliff tops overlooking the village. With the haunting shape of Whitby Abbey, a crumbling and desolate 7th century Christian monastery at his back and the moon-lit channel in front, he decided to relieve himself of the last three-hours of drinking ale along the cliff edge. Through his boozy haze, he swore he saw the silhouette of a woman, her hair wild and wind blown, walking restlessly amongst the jagged outcrops of the Craven Rock screaming at the wind.
And the mystery of the angry woman, the most recent resident of Whitby and the sole occupant of Craven Rock continued.
* * *
Nadia sat on the wooden bench overlooking the ocean, its timbers bleached raw from the harshness of the sun, the wind and the rain. It was her favorite spot where she sat each morning drinking her first cup of coffee of the day. The ocean, a rolling carpet of deep blue speckled with white crests stretched all the way to the horizon and to the Danish coastline thousands of miles beyond.
Waves pounded off the black rocks below, leaving a boiling mass of foam in their wake and a fine spray of seawater in the air. Gulls hovered above her, buffeted by the wind they pitched and yawed, brown eyes spying on her from above. Some gulls ventured out across the waves searching for food but soon returned to the woman who sat alone on the bench near the rocky edge.
Nadia had made the mistake of feeding the gulls with stale bread when she first arrived two weeks ago, and had regretted it ever since.
The morning air was cold and blustery, but it was refreshing. It cleared her mind and revitalized her senses.
When she first arrived, the island seemed a lonely, mournful place with only the gulls during the day and the moaning wind and crash of the waves at night to keep her company. But as the days passed and her tension slowly washed away, she began to open her mind and appreciate the beauty and solitude of the place, deciding that she had made the right choice when she had briefed a real-estate agent to find her an isolated coastal location where she could just vanish into the rugged scenery.
Her hand was healing nicely and the swelling, cuts and abrasions she had endured had nearly vanished.
It had been three weeks and still the body of Denis Ratchford had not been found in the icy river nor downstream of where they had fallen. Nadia could remember little of what happened after they hit the freezing water together. She recalled the initial shock, like hitting concrete, then the slow descent below the dark churning surface, Ratchford struggling under her, their arms and legs entwined, then breaking free before pushing him down deeper with her feet, watching him fade into the darkness beyond then the current finally pulling him away. She remembered the heaviness of her clothing, the pull of the current, the desperation to live as she clawed and kicked her way upwards. She remembered the joyous sensation of breaking the surface, tasting the sweet cold air and pulling herself out and over the slippery rocks.
She didn’t remember how she walked the two or so miles to the outskirts of Innsbruck, in the mind-numbing cold, her body racked and shivering, sodden to the core. But she did.
She didn’t remember how she managed to still have the USB flash drive in her hand, clutching onto it for dear life. But she did.
She didn’t know how Giles and his team found her, deathly pale and disorientated inside a barn on the outskirts of the city, her face hollow and gaunt, lips of blue, her cell phone held tightly between jittery cold fingers, a testament to the waterproof qualities of her snow jacket inside which the phone was zipped. But find her they did.
* * *
Each day she would walk the entire island, small as it was. There were rock pools, thick with brown seaweed, the submerged rocks covered with mussels. On the mainland side of the island was a shingle beach where the boat was tied to a small dock.
At night she would drink red wine and play her violin despite her hand, the air inside the lighthouse aromatic from a pot of mussels in a savory broth simmering on a small stove-top. Hours would pass as she lost herself in Paganini, Vivaldi and Shostakovich, the best tonic to soothe and heal. But the bane of her existence was Paganini’s Arpeggio, the first caprice for solo violin. It would launch her into the heights of ecstasy, then plunge her to the depths of despair with its complexity and her efforts to master it. On more than one occasion she had thrown her sheet music at the curved wall and ran from the lighthouse in a fit of rage to the edge of the cliffs to scream in Russian at the ocean below and shriek at the gulls that hovered above. Sullen and brooding, she would later return inside to glare at her violin, scolding it like a naughty child as it sat in the corner near the window.
Then one day an encrypted email arrived.
She was required.
The email was just three lines of instructions with an attachment, a confirmation of funds deposited into her bank account. Payment in advance for services to be rendered.
Giles, in his infinite wisdom thought that the best form of recuperation was to give her another assignment. And so for her sins, he did.
Nadia gazed at the screen of her cell phone, mystified.
“Martha’s End, Kansas?”
THE END
Turn the page to see a sneak peek of American Justice - Book 3 of the No Justice Series
AMERICAN JUSTICE
The last time Ben Shaw stepped in to help a young woman, five people died. Now he’s back…
A despicable act of pure evil happens in the skies over Wyoming leaving hundreds of people dead.
A nation-wide man hunt turns up nothing for Carolyn Ryder, the FBI agent in-charge of hunting down those responsible. But what Ryder didn’t count on was Ben Shaw walking innocently into a gas station in the middle of nowhere in Utah and confronting one of the perpetrators face-to-face.
Shaw sees a ghost from his past and takes it upon himself to follow the trail and exact his own form of justice. Shaw’s quest quickly turns into a break-neck race across Utah with the FBI, local police and a gang of disgruntled bikers on his tail.
Can he stay one step ahead and uncover the ruthless killers responsible before they unleash their next act of evil?
But there’s someone else stalking the lonely highways of southern Utah leaving behind a trail heart-broken families in their wake. For Officer Beth Rimes, catching the Highway Killer has become her obsession over the years, and when Ben Shaw crosses her path, she has him squarely in her sights.
Set amongst the small towns, desolate open highways and ruggedness of Utah, American Justice is a rollercoaster road trip adult thriller.
Buy American Justice Today
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