a novel by Jason A. Penn
19 Chapters
Mark answered before the second ring.
Cough-cough-miss. Mark was home.
The woods shut behind her.
Light was different.
The rifle lay across Sarah’s lap. Mark had called it Ghost.
The house had been dark for an hour.
She could smell herself now.
Sarah sat three blocks from Rebecca’s house, trying to decide if this was the worst idea she’d ever had.
She’d been watching the door for forty minutes.
The highway narrowed to two lanes, an uneven strip of asphalt that caught headlights in scattered flashes of quartz.
The planks gave under her boots with the particular hollow sound of old wood over moving water.
Radio off, both hands on the wheel, eyes flicking to the mirror every few seconds.
George Holt had been awake for two days when the pattern finally took shape.
Three years before Mark’s death.
The lot at Twisted Lanes was still a crime scene at seven in the morning.
George woke to the smell of Spanish rice and a hip full of broken glass.
We'll fill up here. We don't get second chances tonight.
The road had forgotten where it was going.
The stairwell door looked like part of the wall.
Not for distribution · Beta reading copy