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Peggy stopped and looked back towards Leonard’s house, engulfed in smoke, crackling. Vaguely aware of Bobby walking away from her, she suddenly felt woozy. The initial burst of adrenaline from the explosion no longer kept her from realizing she’d been affected by the blast. Her thoughts weren’t collected or organized.
Bobby Touro ruined her life, years ago, and it wasn’t that long ago that she’d last fled him, enrolling herself at the police academy. And soon after, he compromised her ethics as a policewoman, using her own brother to control her.
Peggy stumbled after Bobby, her thoughts in disarray. She had no job, no life (she was legally dead after all), and nowhere to go. Bobby Touro turned to look at her, and she couldn’t reconcile her inability to escape life’s ironies. Whenever she’d tried to change, it always backfired and brought her back to Bobby Touro. She wished she could despise him and hate him and leave it at that, but she couldn’t.
She stopped herself and stood on the beach, realizing something important for the first time. She wasn’t depending on Bobby Touro this time. Yes, he was there, with her, but Peggy wasn’t the same naïve girl that ran to the police academy. No longer did she picture herself as the girl waiting in upstate New York for her boyfriend to do prison time and come home. In the world at large, Peggy could handle herself. She’d learned to navigate the morally gray areas where decisions were dictated by survival and personal outcome. She longed for a chance to reinvent herself, to be better, to do things for the right reasons. Maybe circumstance would provide that opportunity from the wreckage of her current life.
She caught up to Bobby who was waiting for her.
He was mid-sentence when she could hear him speak over the ringing in her ear, “…Gotta get the fuck outa here and away from the explosion…. I still can’t believe Leonard was a different dude in real life. He was so damn good. And that program—”
Peggy looked at Bobby appraisingly and smiled, more to herself than at him. Bobby was still the same old Bobby Touro, but he was talking about starting a new life.
“If Bobby Touro can start over with a new life, so can I,” she thought to herself.
After all, she had changed. Looking at Bobby Touro, he hadn’t changed a bit.
“I’m telling you, Peg.” Bobby Touro ground his teeth together. “Payback.”
Maybe things could turn out okay after all.
The End
The Series Continues with Book 2, titled:
Gotcha!
Randall invents Gotcha!, a computer app that allows strangers to tell each other truths their friends think they should know. Affairs are outed, exposed secrets titillate, and the program never stops revealing intimate glimpses into people’s private lives. When Vortmit wants Randall’s company, it’s for the sign-up data – particularly the DNA samples that identify users. Keeping his motives to himself, Vortmit sets up the deal. But when Randall and his loved ones cross paths with an alligator-collecting drug dealer, staying alive hinges on Vortmit’s cunning deceptions and strategic thinking.