Tag: Thrillers

“The Devil You Don’t”, be careful what you wish for

John Pennington’s life is in the doldrums.  Looking for new opportunities, prevaricating about getting married, the only joy on the horizon was an upcoming visit to his grandmother in Sorrento, Italy.

Suddenly he is left at the check-in counter with a message on his phone telling him the marriage is off, and the relationship is over.

If only he hadn’t promised a friend he would do a favor for him in Rome.

At the first stop, Geneva, he has a chance encounter with Zoe, an intriguing woman who captures his imagination from the moment she boards the Savoire, and his life ventures into uncharted territory in more ways than one.

That ‘favor’ for his friend suddenly becomes a life-changing event, and when Zoe, the woman who he knows is too good to be true, reappears, danger and death follows.

Shot at, lied to, seduced, and drawn into a world where nothing is what it seems, John is dragged into an adrenaline-charged undertaking, where he may have been wiser to stay with the ‘devil you know’ rather than opt for the ‘devil you don’t’.

Purchase:

http://amzn.to/2o7ZtxZ

 

newdevilcvr3

A matter of life and … what’s worse than death – Episode 19

For a story that was conceived during those long boring hours flying in a steel cocoon, striving to keep away the thoughts that the plane and everyone in it could just simply disappear as planes have in the past, it has come a long way.

Whilst I have always had a fascination in what happened during the second world war, not the battles or fighting, but in the more obscure events that took place, I decided to pen my own little sidebar to what was a long and bitter war.

And, so, it continues…

 

Marina drove the truck slowly and carefully, without the benefit of headlights on a night that have become very dark when cloud cover moved in.  A good night to be out on foot, but not in a few tons of metal.

It seemed to take longer to go back to the old factory, if that was what it was, or it may have just been my imagination.  Certainly, it was rather tense in the cabin.

I wondered if what Chiara had said about not trusting me had made Marina have second thoughts of taking me back.  From where we were, I would have no idea where it was, and if she dropped me off, I could not find it again.

And that fear came true a few minutes later when she pulled off to the side of the road, near some trees, and stopped, turning off the engine.

The silence crept over us like a fog.

Such was the atmosphere I found myself whispering, “What’s wrong.”

“Lights.  Appearing briefly and disappearing.  Like someone is following us.”

She sat still for about five minutes, looking intently at the rear vision mirrors, and at times turning around to stare of the small window at the back of the cabin.

I did too, but I couldn’t see anything, nor had I, but I hadn’t thought to look in the rear vision mirrors because I thought we were safe.  How wrong I was, to assume that.  If there was one lesson I should learn from what I was doing, was that I should know what’s going on around me and that at no time could I ever believe I’m safe.  The moment I did and let my guard down, I would be dead.  I’d been told that in London, and in a relaxed moment, I’d forgotten it.  How many others had done the same and died?

A shake of her head, she got out of the truck, and quietly closed the door.  I did likewise and joined her at the rear.

“What’s happening?”

“I’m going to check back over the road, see if there’s anyone following us.  There have been too many instances of lights for it to be coincidental.”

“Since we left the church?”  In thinking that, it meant that either Chiara or Enrico may have inadvertently, or deliberately, told someone about the meeting.

I hope it’s just my imagination, but it was shortly after we left I saw the first light.”

“Could be a local farmer stumbling around at night.”

“It could, but no one is that silly to be caught out after dark.  There was a curfew, and most of us like to believe there still is.”

She looked back down the road, but all I could see was inky blackness.  The moon was still hidden by dark clouds above, and it looked like there was going to be rain.

“I’ll come with you.”

“You’d be better off staying here.  The last thing I need is a soldier stomping around in the dark.”

Thanks for the compliment, I thought.  “Then I’ll have to be quiet, and try not to stomp.”

Even in the darkness I could feel rather than see the scowl on her face.

“As you wish, but don’t get in my way, and don’t make me shoot you.”


Short and wiry, she was built for stealth and speed, unlike the bulky soldier I was.  Not that I was overfed and fat, but I was still a larger target than she was.  I could just see her outline in front of me, and she was moving very quietly.

I was trying very hard to emulate her.

Then I saw it.  A light going on briefly, then off, definitely in the direction we had just come from.

She had stopped and I nearly ran into her.

“You were right,” I said quietly.

“I was hoping I wouldn’t be.”

So had I.  The last thing we needed was trouble, trouble that would have to be eliminated.  She couldn’t have anyone else knowing about their hiding places, and meeting points.

A few minutes further along, we both heard a strange sound at the same time.

A wheel scraping against a fender?  There was no engine noise.  It became louder, then we saw what it was.  Someone riding a bicycle.  Close to the edge of the road so as to remain hidden from view because of the turns in the road, which would account for seeing the light at odd times.  At the front, there was a light that was taped to show only a thin slit of light.

I saw her look around, then take hold of a long branch that had recently fallen off one of the trees, pared it down, and then waited.  I could see what she was going to do.

When the bike came alongside, moving slowly because it was up a hill, and the rider was labouring hard, she poked the stick through the spokes of the front wheel, the rider just seeing her at the last moment, and not being able to avoid her.

The result was predictable, the rider went flying over the handlebars and crashed into the hard ground with a thud and a loud grunt.  

My role was to jump on the rider so he, or she, couldn’t escape.  Marina was right behind me and jammed a dirty rag in the persons mouth as I held them very tightly under me.

“Now what?”

This was not going to work for very long as the person under me was beginning to kick and thrash about.  In a few seconds, the gag would be spat out and the silence would be shattered.

I heard the gun before I saw it, a whooshing sound near my ear just before it hit the head of the captive, and suddenly there was no more movement or sound.

“A moment’s silence.”

We rolled the figure over, and looked at the face, just visible in the near darkness.  We had just been blessed with a shard of moonlight for a few seconds.

A man.

“You know him?” she asked.

Another look, just as the clouds shut off the light, and I thought so.

“One of the soldiers from the castle.  How would he know we were meeting at the church?”

“He might not.  Nor might he be following us, but just unlucky.”

“How so?”

“Chiara sometimes entertains men from the castle.  Part of our eyes and ears.  She was not part of the resistance when Fernando was in charge so they would just use her like any other enemy soldier would.”

“So this was a mistake.  If he doesn’t return, then they’ll get the wrong idea.”

“Unfortunately.  He has to be dealt with.”

“Killed?”

“No time to get squeamish on me.  He’s an enemy soldier.”

An enemy I preferred to be some distance away from before shooting to kill.  Up close and personal makes it so much harder.

“Come on.  Grab his shoulders.  There’s a gully over there, so we can make it look like he ran into a tree, tipped off the bike and hit his head on a rock.”

“Or a gun.”

“A few hits with a rock will fix that.  I’m sure there’s no one up there that can do autopsies on bodies.”

No, there wasn’t.  I just hoped I was not going to be the one that had to hit him.


Ten minutes later it was done.

We carried him to the gully, and at a suitable place laid the body as if it had landed off the bike and onto the rocks, where Marina picked up a large one and hit him several times with a lot of force the last making a sickening sound, and the blow that killed him.

I went back and collected the bicycle and staged it to meet the crash criteria, and then left.

For all intents and purposes, he had died falling off his bike after wandering off the road in the dark.

Both of us hoped it would not cause Chiara any trouble.

And, it was the first person I’d seen killed up close, and I doubted, in the coming days it would be the last.  It was not a sight I was going to forget in a hurry.

© Charles Heath 2019

I still hate editing!

It’s that story again, you know, the one from the 1970s or around that period.

Chapter Twenty Nine.

But before we get into that, I always thought that editing was exactly that, editing, removing the slack, the bits a story could do without, tightening up the plot.

At times, I think I’ve lost the plot!

So, Chapter Twenty Nine used to be Chapter 19.  Yes, you heard it right, I’ve added new chapters, more words, and expanded the story from 340 pages to 386, as it stands at the moment.

I just finished working on page 202.

I took what is one of the pivotal moments in the story and practically re-wrote it.

But…

You know how it goes.  That first critical rewrite doesn’t sit too well, and for the next twenty-four hours, it mulls around in your head, where there’s a ferocious debate going on.

It was right the first time.

It was too wordy and too repetitive and needed amending

Did the slash and burn go too far

What is being sold here?

24 hours, and a headache and a half later, I look at it, and it’s bugging me.

Yes, I went through it again, line by line, and reworked it, shed words, added words, and dropped a page.  It now ends on page 201.

And yes, I might just read it again tonight, dammit.

But that’s my problem.  There is always one chapter that causes me no end of trouble and sometimes takes a month, even two before I get it right.

It still doesn’t feel right.

Maybe I’ll leave it and move forward, see what that brings.  Perhaps somewhere in my mind is the answer, that I’ve forgotten something important that needs a hook back here.

Pardon me while I get a couple of paracetamol for this headache.

More tomorrow, maybe.

Was it just another surveillance job – Episode 18

I’m back home and this story has been sitting on a back burner for a few months, waiting for some more to be written.

The trouble is, there are also other stories to write, and I’m not very good at prioritising.

But, here we are, a few minutes opened up and it didn’t take long to get back into the groove.

Nothing good ever comes of snooping

 

Ever had the heart-stopping feeling when you’re in the wrong place, and someone has interrupted you?  Especially if you shouldn’t be there, or that you have no right to be there.

I stood quietly in the corner and hoped whoever the visitor was would go away.  No answer meant no one was home, didn’t it?

Unless…

I heard a key in the door, and it turn in the lock.

I moved quickly to the other side of the door so I would be shielded when the person came into the room.  Too late to get out, I was of two minds what to do.  Hit them over the head and flee, or ask them what they were doing, before they asked me that same question.

Then nothing.

Until a few seconds later I heard a voice, a man, say, “Jan, you’re back.  How was the visit to Philadelphia?”

Hand off the handle and moving away from the door.  “Sad, as all funerals are.  Now, we are left with the house, and my father’s stuff, a huge collection over the years.  Seems he never threw anything out.”

Jan?  Did she live here, with O’Connell?

“Yes, “I’m a bit like that.”

Another tenant, or the building super?

“I made sure Herman was looked after while you were away.  I don’t think he missed you at all?”

She laughed.  “He’s a cat, Fred.  We belong to them, not the other way around.”

“True.  Your friend has not been around for a few days.”

“I know.  I was just going to make sure everything was OK, before going upstairs.”

“I could if you want?”

“No.  Thanks anyway, but last time I was here I left a jacket behind.  Thanks, Fred.”

A moment later I could hear his footsteps heading away, and Jan moved back to the door and opened it.


I heard the light switch, and then, suddenly, the room was filled with bright light. 

The girl was unassuming, stepped into the room, and closed the door behind her.  Before she could take a step, I put a hand over her mouth and an arm around her neck and started squeezing.

Instinctively she started to struggle and call out for help.

I whispered in her ear, “I mean you no harm, but if you struggle it could turn out very bad for you.”

We had been taught how to subdue people without killing them, but that always didn’t go to plan.  There was that instinct to fight back in everyone, and it was sometimes hard not to apply excessive pressure which could, depending on the severity of resistance, see the target asphyxiated.

She was still struggling, which mean I had to exert more force.

“Stop fighting me or you will harm yourself,” I said, this time in a more forceful whisper.

It had an immediate effect, but I don’t think it was her obedience that caused it.  I gently lowered he to the floor.  Unconscious, not dead.

Then footsteps outside the door.

What else could go wrong?

Then knocking on the door.  Short and sharp.

And again, followed by, “Jan, are you in there?”

The building super.  What did he want?”

Another knock on the door, this time more urgent.

Damn.  O’Connell’s flat was like a busy store.

I looked around for an escape, there would be no going out the front door.  Not unless I had to disable another person, and I assumed the building super would not be a small man so it would take greater, and noisier, effort to subdue him.

A fire escape?

I went over and checked the windows and found it.

The window needed a little force to open it, but the sound of a key in the door motivated me.

Out the window, close the window again, I made it down the stairs just as I heard the door open, and the expected reaction.

That was close.  Too close.

© Charles heath 2019

I’ve always wanted to go on a Treasure Hunt – Part 26

Here’s the thing…

Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.

I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.

But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.

Once again there’s a new instalment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.

 

When I woke, I was outside the warehouse near an ambulance, and when I opened my eyes, I could see my mother, looking close to hysterical.  Further back, behind her, was Benderby himself, looking concerned.

A voice was saying, on the other side, “Just take it easy.  You’ve had a nasty knock to your head.”  I tried, instinctively, to move my hand there, but it was not responsive.

That scared me.

I tried wiggling my toes, and it felt like something was happening.  That was a good sign, wasn’t it?

Then I realised there were more people around the gurney I was lying on and a lot of chatter about a break-in and possible casualties.  There was only one, wasn’t there?  Me.

I went to say something to that effect when I stopped.  Not a good idea to say two masked assailants came to interrogate me about a map.  Firstly, my mother would be annoyed I was wasting my time on frivolous matters with Boggs, and secondly, everyone would think the blow did more damage to my sanity.

If they were calling it a break-in…

“What happened?” I asked.

I moved my head sideways further and could see the Sheriff standing next to Benderby.  The sheriff moved closer.

“We think one or two unknown persons got past the perimeter security, disabled the alarm system, and broke into the warehouse where you were.  One of the night security guards was doing his rounds when he found you on the floor in the main office.  Can you tell us what happened to you?”

One of the paramedics answered for me, “We need to stabilise the wound, check for concussion and any other side effects before you can question him.  That might have to wait until we get him to the hospital.  Now, I need everyone to stand back.”

And he meant everyone, including my mother.  I guessed they would let her come to the hospital with me, but if not, I was sure Benderby would bring her.  He actually had his arm around her, talking to her.  I didn’t think she liked him that much or was I just delirious?

I was about to tell the paramedic to tell the sheriff to go check on Boggs, but that would only lead to uncomfortable questions, and since Boggs had been so cavalier in putting the assailants onto me, I wasn’t very happy with him.  But I did wonder if they had gone back to him about my lack of co-operation, and what they might do to him.

Or, I just remembered, maybe nothing, because they thought it might be an elaborate hoax.  I was beginning to think that myself, despite Boggs giving me a copy of the map.  When I looked at it, on the surface it seemed to be the same as the one Osborne was peddling.

Whilst getting my head bandaged, I saw one of the sheriff’s men come running up to him, speaking and gesturing wildly.  I thought I heard a name, but the paramedic chose that exact moment to accidentally wrap the bandage around my ear.

Then I heard it, sharp and clear, perhaps as an answer to a question by Benderby.

“It’s Boggs.  Looks like someone gave him a severe beating and left him outside his house.”

The result of an equally forceful interrogation, or had it been a warning not to waste people’s time?

It would have to wait.  I had problems of my own.

© Charles Heath 2019

“What Sets Us Apart”, a mystery with a twist

David is a man troubled by a past he is trying to forget.

Susan is rebelling against a life of privilege and an exasperated mother who holds a secret that will determine her daughter’s destiny.

They are two people brought together by chance. Or was it?

When Susan discovers her mother’s secret, she goes in search of the truth that has been hidden from her since the day she was born.

When David realizes her absence is more than the usual cooling off after another heated argument, he finds himself being slowly drawn back into his former world of deceit and lies.

Then, back with his former employers, David quickly discovers nothing is what it seems as he embarks on a dangerous mission to find Susan before he loses her forever.

http://amzn.to/2Eryfth

whatsetscover

A slight book addiction, perhaps

This is part of the library:

20190919_012822

Every now and then I add to it, but the rule is, since I’ve run out of shelf space, I have to give up some before I can buy more.

This is two of the shelves.  There are eight in all, and all are full.

Last week I found a $5 book shop, that is all the books are $5 and, if course, I can’t resist a rummage.

In the event, I turned up two books by a new author (for me) Mick Herron, who writes spy novel, another by James Rollins and Chris Ryan.

I don’t always limit my purchases to novels, and, found a non-fiction book about London in the time of King James.  Just in case I decide one day to write a novel during that period.  That’s in addition to James Naughtie, also spies, James Patterson, which is generally mandatory if I see one, and Peter James (crime).

My new comprehensive a-z crossword dictionary is a great help too.

What happens after the action-packed start – Part 30

Our hero knows he’s in serious trouble.

The problem is, there are familiar faces and a question of who is a friend and who is foe made all the more difficult because of the enemy, if it was the enemy, simply because it didn’t look or sound or act like the enemy.

Now, it appears, his problems stem from another operation he participated in.

 

At the end of the discussion, which began to get quite heated, I was escorted from the room and taken to another interrogation room.


Fresh from his intimidatory success with Jacobi, Lallo was, no doubt, going to try and press on his advantage with me though I was not quite sure what it was he thought I could help him with, other than to dissuade him from his current plan.

I had to wait an hour in that small, stuffy room considering the possibilities.  Surely he wasn’t expecting me to join his band of merry men.

When he finally came, he arrived with a folder and two bottles of cold water, one of which he gave to me before he sat down.

I took a sip of water out of the bottle, after checking the seal hadn’t been broken.  I still didn’t trust him, and with good reason considering the trick he’d played on me.

“Now, I’m sure you saw and heard everything that happened with Jacobi.”

I nodded.

“He’s the reason your mission failed.  He met the other team on the ground and was supposed to lead them to the building where the targets were hiding.  Instead, he told the Government forces, Bahti, the plan for their rescue and their location.  It was a double-cross brought on by greed.”

“It always is.  But he’s more than likely right about the fate of the two prisoners.”

“Half dead, yes, pressed into working on a prison farm, but neither has been cracked yet.  After the last attempt at rescuing them, we cultivated new agents on the ground.  Their advice has led to us being able to formulate a new attempt to rescue them.”

Had they asked my opinion long before the first attempt, I would have told them to have more than one source, and particularly if they were paying handsomely for information.  It was always an opportunity for double-cross.

There still was, but I don’t think that eventuality was factored into Lallo’s thinking.

“Who’s the fool you have in mind to lead this disaster.”

“You.”

Good thing I’d braced myself for the bad news, and it came as no surprise.  In that hour of considering possibilities, they all seemed to come back to one person.  I was the only one left who’d been there, if only for a few hours.

It had also given me time to work on an excuse not to go.

“I don’t think so…”

Lallo put his hand up to stop me.  My protestations might have worked on a reasonable man, but Lallo wasn’t reasonable.

“Well, you, too, have a choice.  Stay and be court marshalled for your failure to follow orders in the last attempt or redeem yourself and volunteer to lead the next.”

“I did nothing wrong the last time.”

“Not according to the investigation I’ve just completed, the one that I intend to submit to the JAG if you are unwilling to follow orders.”

And there it was.  All the time I’d been in Lallo’s hands he had been compiling a feasible case against me, just so that I could be induced to do his bidding.  I was stupid not to connect the dots long before this and shut my mouth.  Everything I had denied, was the same evidence he could use against me.

n typical military-style, someone had to shoulder the blame for the previous mess.

And to be given a choice, one that made me as expendable as Jacobi, was, as far as Lallo was concerned, a masterstroke.

If I went and was killed in action, he would have a scapegoat he needed.  If I didn’t go, I would be court marshalled and thrown in a cell for the rest of my life.  And if I went, and succeeded, he would become the golden boy in the intelligence services, and the same fate as any other scenario would befall me.  It was lose-lose.

“You’re not throwing out any bones?”

“Don’t have to.  But you get to pick the team you want to go with you.”  He tossed a file across the table to me, and I opened it.  Several pages, with photos attached.

A who’s who of the military types that spent more time in the stockade than on the battlefield.  Men who would do anything to stay out, men who had nothing to lose.  Men who were expendable.

“You’re kidding?”  I looked up at him, but his expression told me he wasn’t.

“Are you sure any of these will obey orders?”

“You have my assurance they will.  We’re sending an observer, just to make sure everyone stays on mission.  You have three days to pick a team of four men, establish command, and prepare to leave.”

Something else I thought about in that hour, other than it was probably the last time I would have for reflection, was that it would have been better to die in the helicopter crash.

I waited until he left the room before I reopen the file.

© Charles Heath 2019

A matter of life and … what’s worse than death – Episode 18

For a story that was conceived during those long boring hours flying in a steel cocoon, striving to keep away the thoughts that the plane and everyone in it could just simply disappear as planes have in the past, it has come a long way.

Whilst I have always had a fascination in what happened during the second world war, not the battles or fighting, but in the more obscure events that took place, I decided to pen my own little sidebar to what was a long and bitter war.

And, so, it continues…

 

It was clear, however, that Marina was familiar with the man and very annoyed with the woman.

When I took a longer look at the man, I realised he was not a man at all, but a boy in his teens, blessed by the fact he looked older than he was.  My guess, about 16.  I was surprised he had not been conscripted into the war, there seemed very few young men in the area.

Marina went straight over to him and snatched the elderly rifle he was holding away from him, the glared at Chiara

“Are you stark staring mad.  Enrico is not supposed to be out in the open, hell, it’s been a battle to keep him hidden away.  What will his parents think when they discover he’s here?”

“Pleased,” Enrico said.  “My father said it’s about time I did something to rid of the Germans, of the English too for that matter.  None of you has any right to be here.”

Fervently spoken, and to the wrong person, it would earn him a bullet to the back of the head.  But I agreed with him.

“All well and good,” Marina said to him, “but now there’s no easy way of doing that.  We must be careful, and you must stay put with your parents.  What we’re doing isn’t a game, you are neither trained or equipped to take anyone on, except perhaps rabbits.”

Back at Chiara.  “Take him home, and never bring him back here.  You don’t want to be the one who has to tell his mother if he gets killed.  Now, both of you go now, before I shoot both of you myself.”

“This is not the end of the matter,” Enrico said.

“And when you’ve taken him back, come back here.  We need to talk.”

Chiara said nothing, just nodded sullenly.  I think she believed the less said the better and did as she was asked, nodding her head in his direction, and adding a few choice phrases in Italian to him that I couldn’t understand.  It also just occurred to me that she had not asked Chiara the questions about the two men from the castle.  I guess that would have to wait until the safety of Enrico was settled, and she returned.

“Make sure they’re safe,” she said to Carlo, and he disappeared, leaving us alone.

“I thought all of the young men had been taken away by the Italian Army.”

“Not all.  We managed to hide a few away, but as you can see, despite our best efforts, they don’t seem to appreciate the trouble they could get into.  We used to have about a hundred young men from 14 through to 20 at the start of the war.  Two have found their way back, casualties of war, the rest, we may never see them again.  Enrico just doesn’t see the trouble he could get into.”

“It’s called youthful enthusiasm.  In the first world war, joining up, or going to war, was a lark.  It was a little less so this time because most of the parents knew from firsthand experience what it was like and tried to shield them.  And if you didn’t join up, questions were asked, and quite often jail, except for some who landed cushy jobs away from the fighting.”

“You were not so lucky?”

“No, I was one of those mad buggers who thought joining up to fight would be an adventure.  That quickly faded when the enemy started shooting at me.”

“And now you’re here, and a spy to boot.  That’s what they’ll hang on you if you get caught.”

“Then I shall try very hard not to get caught.  Again.”

 

Chiara came back about an hour later.  It seemed to me it was a lot safer to move around at night with the blackout, and I doubted Thompson would spare any men from the castle to check up on the local farmers.

And while I was at the castle, I didn’t hear anything raised about the local resistance, which I thought odd at the time, but now I knew why.  Most of them had joined him.  Better that than be hunted down and killed.

Chiara still looked sullen.  A closer look showed she was not very old herself, barely out of her twenties, and surprising that the Italian army, or Thomson for that matter, had not rounded her up for ‘duties’ at the castle.

There were a number of the local women working up at the castle, but they were mostly staff, or more likely forced labour, though I had thought we, when I believed it to be a British outpost, would be fairer to the locals than either the Germans or their own Italian military.  It’s odd how you tend to look at certain situations because of who you are, and the fact you would not do similar things at home.  The Germans, however, we would always treat differently, because they were the enemy, and because we expected the worst from them.  At that moment, though, wouldn’t the Germans think the same of us if the positions were reversed?

Best not to think about that.  My view of the war and the people in it was clouded enough.

Chiara, however, clearly thought the worst of me, and of those in the castle, and certainly didn’t think I was as neutral as I appeared.  A gun always in hand, I was sure she would shoot me again with the least provocation.

We sat, both Chiara and Marina with their weapons on the table in front of them.  I wasn’t trusted enough to be given a weapon.

Marina’s first question was directed at Chiara, “I’m told there were two men from the castle following Sam, and that he told you about them.”

“He did.  We did not see them.  We didn’t take the path, because, as you know, it’s not safe.”

It was a reasonable answer.  If the men at the castle were unfamiliar with the area, as I’m sure they would be, because they hadn’t been there for very long, and I doubt Thompson would want to advertise the nationality of those at the castle unless he had to, they would stick to the clearly-marked roads and paths.

I had on my way to the castle, from a different direction.  It didn’t explain why I had not been met by the leader of the resistance as arranged, but that was now explained, both by the former leader trying to kill me in a roadside explosion, and then what I learned at the castle in the last few days.

“Even so, there’s not that much distance between the two, and it is possible to shadow them.”

“I keep well away from them.  Perhaps Leonardo saw them.  He doesn’t have to worry about what they might do because they use him to supply food.  Maybe he knows more.”

“Perhaps I shall ask him next time I see him.  We need to know who from the castle is about and when so that we don’t get caught.”

“I’ll remember next time.  Is that all?”

“Yes.”

Chiara picked up her gun, gave me an extra-long sullen stare.  “I don’t trust this one, Marina.  You 

need to be careful.”

“I will.”

We waited a few minutes until after she had departed, and then Marina said, “We should be going too.  This place is a little eerie at night.  There are far too many ghosts for my liking.”

I shuddered, then followed her out.

 

© Charles Heath 2019

“One Last Look”, nothing is what it seems

A single event can have enormous consequences.

A single event driven by fate, after Ben told his wife Charlotte he would be late home one night, he left early, and by chance discovers his wife having dinner in their favourite restaurant with another man.

A single event where it could be said Ben was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Who was this man?  Why was she having dinner with him?

A simple truth to explain the single event was all Ben required.  Instead, Charlotte told him a lie.

A single event that forces Ben to question everything he thought he knew about his wife, and the people who are around her.

After a near-death experience and forced retirement into a world he is unfamiliar with, Ben finds himself once again drawn back into that life of lies, violence, and intrigue.

From London to a small village in Tuscany, little by little Ben discovers who the woman he married is, and the real reason why fate had brought them together.

http://amzn.to/2CqUBcz

onelastlookcoverfinal2