Case of the Siberian
Page 1
Copyright © 2019
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, uploaded or distributed in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotation embodied in reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
The publisher and author acknowledges the trademark status and trademark ownership of all trademarks, service marks, and word marks mentioned in this book.
First edition: 2019
Published in print and electronic formats.
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Others Books By the Author
Infinite Limit
The Three Brother
Eightteen Hours
Pillow Scars
Wild And Dark
The Day Off
The Muse
Delayed Gratification
The Honeymoon
Camp In Shadow
Replay Message
Her Best Moment
Friend And Sister
The Sex Therapist
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I need to thank my wife, Angie, for letting me spend so much time alone with my characters. It would be easy to get jealous, but you’re legitimately great when it comes to sharing me with horny, make-believe ladies. Yet one more reason we’re so well matched.
I’m also grateful as ever to Shelley Thrasher, who never fails to make the editing process a true joy. If only I could stop overusing clichés and finally conquer the difference between lie vs. lay, maybe you’d feel like you were finally getting somewhere with me. For everyone else at Bold Strokes Books: thank you for the support and the community. It feels good to be part of this team.
And now the obligatory note to my beloved family: Kathleen, the cover may have already tipped you off, but you’ll need to keep your students the hell away from this one, too. Sorry. Maybe next time? Mom and Dad, this applies to you as well.
If ever you can’t help yourselves and choose to read one of my books despite my dire warnings not to, for the love of God, please…don’t make it this one.
About The Author
Author is a USA Today bestselling author. He’s the husband of a rock star, and the father of two young adults, but he’s also been a ballerina, a typographer, a film composer, a piano player, a singer in an all-man rock band, and a voice in those violent video games you won’t let your kids play.
He does his best writing on cruise ships, on his husband’s tour bus, and at home in his sunny garden. Author loves to play medieval matchmaker, transporting readers to a place where the bold heroes have endearing flaws, the man are stronger than they look, the land is lush and untamed, and chivalry is alive and well!
Contents
Copyright
Others Books by Author
Acknowledgement
About the Author
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Appendix
Back Cover
Thanks You For Reading
Before You Start
Again
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BONUS
(You might skip this story as it do not relate to author’s story)
1000 Words Short Story Submitted By Our Reader
A small boy is gambling down via the creek that runs through Marysville. I can see his body some of the wood and trees in intermittent flashes every time he rises like a touch pop-up toy and actions farther down the go with the float. Something in the water has grabbed his interest, because of the fact he remains rooted to the course alongside the rushing water for quality a second or , and then he’s off over again. His hair is purple, and with every motion wildish strands come to be silver-gold in the morning daytime dancing off it. He’s wearing a stick in his right hand, and he jabs it into the water each time he stops.
I don’t recognize him, notwithstanding the reality that I need to. I’ve met every dwelling soul in Marysville. Many of the useless, too, in advance than we buried them. Those we knew in element—our fathers and moms and pals, prolonged within the past given lower back to the rich, black consolation of the earth. Those we didn’t apprehend who lay for months and months rotting due to the fact there have been so many that we in the end gave up trying…
I am now not saddened via the usage of those loads of different souls I in no manner had the opportunity to meet. They’re really long lengthy past.
The boy stops all over again and jabs the stick out as an extended manner as he can stretch. He pulls it decrease once more in a whisking movement, and then reaches out another time. Whatever it's far that pursuits him hundreds want to be sincerely past his collect. But, he’s chronic, as kids may be.
I’m concerned that he’ll fall into the water, jogging excessive on this month of April, fed through manner of tiny streams some distance away in the Santa Ana Mountains to the east. It become a wet wintry weather. On the extraordinary peaks there are pockets of snow but the fact that visible. I lower the basket I carry onto the course and begin to transport quietly in his course. I don’t want to startle him.
If exceptional I have been clearly taken into consideration one among them…if I had been, I’d certainly whoosh as silently due to the fact the wind to his facet, and there I’d shield him with my hands of smoky substance. Perhaps I’d ease the object of his interest in the direction of the economic enterprise.
Perhaps I’d honestly allow him fall and be taken away in the rush of water.
Even regardless of the whole lot the ones years we despite the fact that don’t realise precisely who they may be, or why they got here and did what they did. Only that many even though continue to be. They watch. That is all we understand for extremely good.
I’ve unnoticed the little purple-haired boy, but I pay attention the splash. Now I am on foot as fast as I can. He grow to be born excellent days earlier than the calamity struck, I'm amazing, judging from his duration, and within the event that they acquired’t help him, I need to. He is harmless in the end. Surely they need to recognize this, but this morning they will be nowhere to be visible.
Maybe they don’t care. Maybe they in no way did. They in truth preferred us prolonged past, however we refused to leave.
Jason had simply left that afternoon. We’d been looking TV collectively in my bed room. Looking again, I discover it so ironic. Aftermath, a chain about a hard and fast of teen youngsters who through hook or thru criminal live on a global catastrophe. It changed into shape of lame, but I appreciated the lead person—a lady approximately my age. Mom have become within the kitchen. She didn’t care, or at least she in no way co
ncerned approximately Jason being in the bed room by myself with me. He became openly homosexual, you phrase, and upload to that the reality that he attended church together collectively together along with his parents and little sister every Sunday…properly, she relied on him. Daddy grow to be a touch greater suspicious. I go through in mind a 3 hundred and sixty five days in advance at the same time as Jason first started out out out coming over. Daddy confirmed him his gun collection, of all topics. Jas and I laughed approximately it later.
It have turn out to be raining. Jason have been sitting on the floor at the surrender of my mattress, right beneath the TV on my fabric cupboard. He had been given bored searching Phoebe fight off a p.C. Of zombies, I guess, and so he ultimately stood up and left. I’d been texting back and forth with Anna Merovich, my top notch pal at Marysville High, lying on my stomach on the bed, surely over Jason’s head all the on the same time as. I set Anna apart on the quilt, and decided him out of the room.
“Later dude,” Jason said as he pulled the the front door inward. He started out out out cussing proper away. He hadn’t notion about bringing an umbrella, even a jacket. I watched him jump off the porch into the rain, and via the downpour until I unnoticed him three doorways up the street. Mom walked out of the kitchen preserving a spatula in her right hand right then. I bet she’d heard him cuss.
“He’ll be soaked loopy by the time he receives domestic. And half-frozen,” she said shape of indifferently. Well, yeah. It’s December, Mom.
“Does his mom prepare dinner dinner dinner?” she asked. But before I even processed the dumb query, she’d have emerge as and lengthy lengthy past all over again into the kitchen.
How need to I apprehend?
My mom have turn out to be a cooking freak. I ought to perfume some bizarre new cookie concoction she’d been busy with all afternoon. Two days earlier than Christmas. There want to had been a hundred plastic boxes and gay-looking tins piled up anywhere inside the region. Platters of them sitting everywhere. Gifts for all the buddies. Gifts for family and instructors and the mailman. Christmas crap to make me gain weight, but I wasn’t going to fall for that. Not me.
She grew to become and went over again to her business enterprise agency once I laughed and shook my head.
“He’ll stay to tell the tale,” I shouted after her.
But he wouldn’t for noticeably hundreds longer. Nor need to she.
I walked lower lower decrease lower again into my mattress room and grabbed my mobile telephone, after which wandered returned out to the living room, debating which to expose on first; the Christmas lighting, or the massive flat display Daddy had sold final month. The TV emerge as less hard. I clicked the far flung, after which plopped onto the sofa and resumed texting Anna.
Hiya what’s up? Sorry jason have become right here.
I waited for her to textual content me yet again, curled my legs up at the sofa. Grabbed the a long way off another time and changed the channel to discover some trouble other than statistics. Out inside the kitchen, Mom have end up humming a Christmas music. I checked to look if Anna had responded. It modified into 4:39, and Daddy want to come back rolling into the storage via manner of using the usage of 5:00. Like punctually at 5:00. He modified into an accountant, and lived the religious life of “the entirety in right order.” Every “i” dotted, each second accounted for. The remaining simply clean detail I go through in mind wondering changed into that Mom had better be cooking dinner as opposed to cookies, and it had higher be at the table by way of manner of manner of manner of exactly five:15. If it wasn’t…
The excessive burst of slight taken aback me. I mean in truth extreme, like a million flashbulbs had popped all at the same time, right outdoor the window all through the room. But there wasn’t an explosion, even a valid, except for the spatula Mom had had in her hand hitting the ground, and then a clump on the identical time as her frame determined.
The TV went black. The lighting inside the room didn’t even crackle, they honestly poofed off. I sat there blinking for a 2nd or .
Mom?
I were given up, threw the smartphone apart, and raced into the kitchen. I freaked! She lay on her yet again with one leg bent awkwardly sideways, and her hands spread out as no matter the truth that she’d tried to interrupt her fall. The spatula have end up a few inches away from her right hand, and the oven door changed into open.
“Mom!”
She didn’t flow into. I ran finally of to her and hit my knees.
"Mom?” I shook her, however there has been no reaction. I located an ear to her chest, and then my hand. Nothing. Nothing.
“Oh God, allow her be alive. Let her sincerely be in a coma or...” But human beings in comas breathe a hint, don’t they? Their hearts irrespective of the truth that beat? I shook her a few more, and then kissed her over and over, begging her to rouse. She didn’t. I stayed there beside her for numerous agonizing mins, crying, losing it more and more with every 2nd that ticked with the beneficial useful aid of.
It have become already darkish as a tomb outdoor. The rain stored banging on the roof, but my coronary heart had stopped pounding so fiercely via then. I left her there and ran all another time into the dwelling room. Daddy is probably home brief. What time have emerge as it? I picked the cellphone up off the ground and looked at the show display show display screen. Black. I shook it stupidly, like that would wake it up, after which attempted to reboot it. That didn’t art work, and so I threw it aside over again. The Christmas lighting. I crawled in the decrease once more of the tree and jiggled the plug, driven the button on the electricity strip time and again, and eventually gave up.
I commenced to move once more to the kitchen, but my mind emerge as throwing instructions at me that had been contradictory; worse than jangled. I tried the wall switches rather. Click, click on, click on. Useless.
I cursed, stumbling inside the path of the room to the mantle, determined the candle lighter there and clicked it. The clock putting above the polished ground stated four:39, the very equal minute that the cell cellular telephone had stated as quickly as I first threw it down. But I knew as a minimum 5 mins had surpassed.
Daddy, get domestic. Help me!
Whatever that moderate become, it needed to have been the motive. I rushed to the the the front door and yanked it open. I didn’t understand what to anticipate after I landed out at the porch. Would all of the houses up and down the street be incinerated? All the wooden grew to become to blackened ghosts? But the whole lot seemed so everyday as I stood there searching proper and left and up on the irritated black-gray sky. One problem caught my eye, regardless of the fact that. Not normal. At the give up of the block, 3 houses down, an SUV sat all cock-eyed with the engine idling, its right the front fender smashed into the Rainey’s Mazda at the scale all over again. Why hadn’t I heard the collision?
I glanced lower again into our house, and then have grow to be and leapt down the stairs and headed thru the rain to the SUV. I anticipated…what did I expect? To see a few man or woman internal, shaking his head? Like, What happened? He wasn’t shifting. Whoever he modified into, he have become leaning in competition to the door, slumped beforehand inside the direction of the steering wheel. I pulled the door open. He tilted slowly, and then fell out onto the street. I screamed and jumped up and down in horror on the equal time as he hit. I left him there. Across the hood I want to appearance the Rainey’s house. The domestic domestic windows were all black. The same at the Joslin’s round the corner. The Jackson’s. Our residence. Every house on every facets of the street. Panic set in, due to the fact inside the occasion that they have got been all useless; if this guy lying on the road, and who’d been the use of peacefully alongside, modified into vain, what might likely have passed off to Daddy?
No, no, no. Whatever took place, it passed off outstanding on our block, or at the very worst, in our neighborhood.
Daddy in no way came domestic that night time time.
I Meet Crazy
Mom have turn out to be regardless of the truth that in the kitchen, lying there collectively alongside facet her fingers unfold out as no matter the truth that searching in advance to the skip to be dragged in. I cried a few greater, after which walked away.
I hated the dark, honestly the quiet, and so I positioned every candle I need to, unfold them out inside the living room at the tables, and lit them one by one. Have you ever sat in a room illuminated tremendous with the useful resource of candles? The flickering made it appear like ghosts had been whisking through the flames. I need to peer their dim shadows dancing on the ceiling and partitions. I also can need to pay interest them whispering unpleasant remarks.