“I didn’t enter no contest,” he said, steadying himself by holding the door.
Mason looked at his phone. “Are you Gordon Maples?” He then rattled off his birth date.
“Yeah, but—”
“Your name,” Mason interrupted, “was entered by a...” He paused, appearing thoughtful as he scrolled. “Oh, here it is. ...by a Nancy Pierce.”
The man’s gray eyes widened as he yelled, “Turn off that damned TV.” He turned back to us, his tone now skeptical. “When did she do that?”
“Sir, our contest never expires. I can’t see here when you were entered, but if you want to turn down your prize” —Mason reached for my arm— “we’ll leave.” My brother-in-law looked at me. “Tell them to rip up the check.”
“I’ll do—” I began.
“Wait.” Mr. Maples opened the door wider. “What did I win?”
“May we come in?” Mason asked.
Maples didn’t look at him, but his eyes were on me. “Both of you?”
“Yes, sir,” Mason answered. “It’s a condition of our company. We don’t want any unsubstantiated claims.”
Maples opened the door wider with a grunt.
The overpowering stench of the house hit my nose with more impact as we stepped through the threshold. As I looked around at the old paneling, the stairs headed up, and the worn furniture, it took every bit of self-control not to wrinkle my nose. Knowing Mason and Lorna had lived in this dump hurt my heart. My mother, grandmother, and I moved to a smaller home after my father died, but never had we lived in filth.
“We need to verify a few things,” Mason began. He nodded toward a dining room table. Or I believed that was what it was somewhere below the mess. The surface was piled high with stacks of papers, newspapers, magazines.
Hey dude, the world has gone paperless. Try it.
Maples led us that direction.
As Mason pulled out a chair, he continued the farce. “So you confirm that you, Gordon Maples, are familiar with Nancy Pierce?”
“Yeah, I knew her.”
“Knew her?” Mason asked as I cleared a chair and also sat.
“Yeah.” Maples’s eyes were on me as if I may steal a two-week-old newspaper. “Why is he here?”
“This is my associate,” Mason answered. “And he’s as invested in this visit as I am. Isn’t that right?”
Oh, the question was to me. “Or more so.”
“Now,” Mason looked back to Maples, “back to the entry. It’s invalid if you haven’t had contact with Ms. Pierce in the last sixty months.” Mason started to stand. “We’re sorry to have inconvenienced you.”
Maples stood. “No, wait. Yeah, I’ve seen her.”
“In the last sixty months.”
“Well....” He seemed puzzled at the time frame.
“Five years,” I volunteered.
“Yeah. She lived here.”
“In the last five years?” Mason confirmed.
“Off and on for fucking ever.”
“You supported her?”
“Yeah. No. Mostly a place to crash. She was back on the street after the payments from some rich dude ended.”
Mason’s and my eyes met.
Rich dude.
Why was Nancy Pierce getting payments?
Maples waved. “Don’t matter. I saw her in” —he looked my way— “the last five years. I’m sure.”
Mason looked around. “Who besides your daughter and grandchild live here?”
“Ain’t my grandkid; he’s my son. It fucking took a while. Damn girls all over. But finally, I got me a boy.”
Mason’s stare came my way as my stomach rolled.
“Congratulations,” Mason replied. “Who besides your daughter and son are here? Maybe the boy’s mother?”
“That’s her. It’s just them.”
Bile rose higher in my throat.
“Is that everyone?” Mason maintained his persona.
“No, my fucking butler is in the kitchen.”
Maples laughed, looking behind him. From my vantage, what he referred to as the kitchen was overrun with trash and dirty dishes. No longer contained to the counter, there was a path through the debris.
“Just them,” he said.
“What is your daughter’s name?”
“Zella.”
“Could you call her?” Mason asked.
“What about?”
“The contest.”
“Zella,” Maples yelled, “get your ass down here.”
The sound of a crying baby grew louder as footsteps were heard over our head.
“Damn kid cries all the time.”
“Congratulations on a son,” I said.
When Zella appeared, the baby on her hip was stripped to the waist, wearing only a diaper. My nose told me it was now clean. “What, Dad?”
Mason reached into his pocket and pulled out a money clip. “Zella, we need confirmation of your father’s identity to issue his prize. All I need you to do is to go to the bank and get a photocopy of his account information so we can transfer the money.”
“Can’t we do that online?” Maples asked. “Got me an iPad somewhere.”
Of course he does.
Mason’s head tilted. “You know, this contest has been around for so long the rules are archaic.”
Maples looked at Zella. “Take him and go to the bank over by the beauty college. Marcy there will know me.”
“If you have problems,” Mason volunteered, “just call your dad.” He handed her a one-hundred-dollar bill.
“What’s this for?” she asked.
“For you, honey. For your trouble.”
Her eyes opened wide. “Really?”
“Go,” Maples instructed. “And before you walk there, ask Mrs. Stephens to watch little Gordy.”
“Dad, I can—”
His tone was more insistent. “Take him to Mrs. Stephens. Maybe Darrell’s home.”
Tucking her chin, Zella nodded and hurried through the kitchen and out what I assumed was the back door.
Once the door slammed, Mason stood. “Let me introduce myself.”
Reid
“I haven’t seen her,” Maples repeated as Mason’s knife cut another notch in his wrist.
“Next one will be deeper,” Mason said. “Poor Zella, she’s going to find you dead. If she can find anything in this shithole. I wonder if she’ll be more distraught over your death or at not winning the million dollars.”
Maples was now bound to the dining room chair where he’d sat nearly fifteen minutes earlier, his arms tethered to the chair’s arms and his legs secured to the chair’s legs.
“Who is the rich guy?” Mason asked.
“Hernádez, Garcia, Roríguez. Shit, some brown...” His beady eyes came my way. “Not like you, boy. You know...a Mexican. Not sure what we’re supposed to call them or your kind now days.”
As the small hairs on the back of my neck stood to attention, this asshole’s poor choice of vocabulary added fuel to the flames of rage that began when I figured out what he’d done to my wife twenty-five years ago. I worked to keep my expression statuesque though it wasn’t easy to suppress my enthusiasm for what was about to occur.
“Nancy was getting payments from” —Mason hesitated— “a—”
“Mexican,” I said, finishing his sentence using Maples’s words.
Missy was Latina. This had to be the connection. It was the only plausible explanation. “Why was Nancy getting payments from a Mexican?”
“He don’t live there...he lives here. But she made some deal with him. He paid until...well, eighteen.”
Mason’s knife went to Maples’s neck. “What is his name?”
Maples stretched his neck, backing away from the blade. “I can’t—”
Mason pushed the blade against his sagging skin until a crimson drop of blood dribbled to his dirty, worn collar. “Wait. It was Garcia. Yeah, I’m sure.”
Mason pushed the blade deeper. “Tell me what this
has to do with my sister.”
Maples’s gray eyes narrowed. “The brown one or the pretty one with red hair?”
My fist landed in his stomach. “What did you do to Lorna?” I asked as his coughs turned to gagging.
Maples spat as blood dripped from his lip. “The payments were for the other one, but oh, that redheaded one was downright sweet. She had the softest little hands. And her lips—”
My next punch connected to his jaw.
He spat more blood and this time a front tooth. “Don’t know why you’re mad. She wanted it. We were friends and she liked my attention. All little girls like to hear they’re special.” He looked at me. “Oh shit. Are you fucking her now? Damn, I wanted that tight pussy. Is it still tight or saggy like her mother’s?”
There was no conscious train of thought. I didn’t consider the ramifications. For once, I wasn’t thinking steps ahead. Taking Mason’s knife from his grasp, I plunged it deep in Maples’s upper arm.
It wouldn’t kill him immediately.
“What did you do to her?” I asked again.
His words sputtered as blood mixed with his oxygen. “Nothing she didn’t want. Just like her momma.”
I looked at the blade in my hand, dripping with deep red blood. “This is for my wife,” I said as I pushed the blade through his ratty shirt, above his belt and sliced laterally, as deep as the blade would go.
Maples’s eyes widened as he watched organs and tissue roll from his wound.
There were moments of consciousness before death. It was his only time to make amends with a superior being or beg for his life, not that we could save it now, but he didn’t. The vile creature stared at both of us.
Mason’s eyes met mine before he took back the knife, and buried the blade into Maples’s upper leg. Blood spouted as his body convulsed. We both stepped back as the asshole bled out before us.
His time for amends had expired.
“I would have been okay with him enjoying more of the experience,” I said. “You know, since he was such a good friend to Lorna.”
Mason took a deep breath before disappearing into the kitchen and returning with two towels. He handed one to me.
“Call the cleanup crew,” I said as I wiped my hands on the towel. “After this is done, we’re bulldozing this place. Too much shit happened here.”
Mason nodded as he sent a text. Once he was done, he reached for the knife, wiped the blade on the towel, removed a leather sheath from his pocket, and reinserted the knife. Next, he put the knife back in his pocket. “What? It was a gift.”
His casualness made me grin.
I took one last look at Gordon Maples. As grotesque as it sounded, the sight of him gave me my first glimmer of light. I would make this world safe again for Lorna. Killing this disgusting creature was only the first step.
Together Mason and I turned and walked toward the front door.
I’ll bulldoze every last splinter.
The hinges creaked as Mason opened the front door inward and we stepped onto the porch. Scanning the scene, I saw our SUV across the street and one of our Sparrows nearby on the sidewalk.
It was as we proceeded toward the stairs to the walkway that the bang of a screen door hitting a house across the street caught my attention. I barely had time to register the chain of events that followed.
The first to step from the house across the street was Zella. She wasn’t at the bank as she’d been told, but on that porch, her baby still on her hip. Next, a tall man came into view, exiting the house behind her.
Slow motion as in the movies was a cinematic illusion. In reality, the clock didn’t slow, it accelerated. There wasn’t time to register details. Things I’d been trained to recall such as the man’s characteristics or identity were merely a blur.
“Watch out...” I began to shout as the man behind Zella lifted a long shotgun and pointed it in our direction. With my reflexes on high alert and without conscious thought, my hand moved, reaching for my gun, freeing it from the holster.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mason crouched behind the porch’s railing with his pistol already aimed. Our backup Sparrows flew into action. One on the street ducked behind a car and pointed his gun toward the man. Another stepped from the side of the porch, his firearm aimed.
Don’t hit the baby.
That was one of my many thoughts as shots rang from different directions. The air filled with pops and bangs—multiple explosions—as if a pack of firecrackers left behind from an Independence Day celebration had been ignited.
And then...
It wasn’t the impact of the bullet that I felt as much as it was the way its thrust propelled my body backward toward the open doorway. I reached for the doorframe. Crimson from my palm painted the jamb as my grip loosened, sliding down toward the floor as my knees gave way. Collapsing in the threshold of the home that had caused Lorna too much pain, light disappeared.
“Reid.” Mason’s voice came and went.
Dark claimed another victory.
* * *
Thank you for reading DARK...find out what happens next in the dramatic conclusion of Reid and Lorna’s story, DAWN.
* * *
Pre-order your copy today by clicking on the link.
* * *
If you enjoyed DARK and want to know more about our other Sparrow men, Web of Sin, Sterling and Araneae’s story is complete with SECRETS (FREE), LIES, and PROMISES.
* * *
Mason and Laurel’s story is also complete in Tangled Web, with TWISTED, OBSESSED, and BOUND.
* * *
And Patrick and Madeline’s story is complete in Web of Desire, with SPARK, FLAME, and ASHES.
* * *
It’s time to binge Sparrow Webs!
Acknowledgments
A special thank you to my beta readers: Sherry, Angie, Val, Ilona, and Mr.Jeff, my editor, Lisa Aurello, and my sensitivity readers, Renita McKinney and Yulanda Bolton for their dedication to my Sparrow Web world, the array of characters, and to making Reid and Lorna’s story the best it can be.
You are all greatly appreciated. Please know I couldn’t do this without you.
Thank you.
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Books by New York Times bestselling author Aleatha Romig
NEW STORY COMING:
DEVIL’S DEAL
Coming May 2121
THE SPARROW WEBS:
DANGEROUS WEB:
DUSK
Releasing Nov, 2020
DARK
Releasing 2021
DAWN
Releasing 2021
WEB OF DESIRE:
SPARK
Released Jan. 14, 2020
FLAME
Released February 25, 2020
ASHES
Released April 7, 2020
TANGLED WEB:
TWISTED
Released May, 2019
OBSESSED
Released July, 2019
BOUND
Released August, 2019
WEB OF SIN:
SECRETS
Released October, 2018
LIES
Released December, 2018
PROMISES
Released January, 2019
THE IN
FIDELITY SERIES:
BETRAYAL
Book #1
Released October 2015
CUNNING
Book #2
Released January 2016
DECEPTION
Book #3
Released May 2016
ENTRAPMENT
Book #4
Released September 2016
FIDELITY
Book #5
Released January 2017
THE CONSEQUENCES SERIES:
CONSEQUENCES
(Book #1)
Released August 2011
TRUTH
(Book #2)
Released October 2012
CONVICTED
(Book #3)
Released October 2013
REVEALED
(Book #4)
Previously titled: Behind His Eyes Convicted: The Missing Years
Re-released June 2014
BEYOND THE CONSEQUENCES
(Book #5)
Released January 2015
RIPPLES
Released October 2017
CONSEQUENCES COMPANION READS:
BEHIND HIS EYES-CONSEQUENCES
* * *
Released January 2014
BEHIND HIS EYES-TRUTH
Released March 2014
STAND ALONE MAFIA THRILLER:
PRICE OF HONOR
Available Now
THE LIGHT DUET:
Published through Thomas and Mercer Amazon exclusive
INTO THE LIGHT
Released June, 2016
AWAY FROM THE DARK
Released October, 2016
TALES FROM THE DARK SIDE SERIES:
INSIDIOUS
(All books in this series are stand-alone erotic thrillers)
Dark Page 22