Entangled Moon: A Novel - Softcover

Frey, E.C.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1631523899 ISBN 13: 9781631523892

Verlag: She Writes Press, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

It only takes one moment to change everything. Long ago, Heather left her old life behind. Now, she has everything: a marriage to a handsome executive, a managerial human resources position in a powerful multinational, and a beautiful daughter. And she will do anything to keep it that way. But everything has a price. When a bullet ends the life of another woman―an ex-employee whom Heather helped fire―it sets off a chain of events that jeopardizes everything for which Heather has worked. Events of Heather’s past soon collide with her company’s wrongdoings, and she must risk everything to expose them. But all she’s ever known is the peril of being visible. Frightened and desperate, Heather calls upon her constant childhood friends―friends who long ago saved her from a life of pain―and, together, they will once again face the events of a traumatic night that each has sought to forget. Because sometimes the only ones who can save you are those with whom you share your deepest and darkest secrets―those who know that fear is the price of silence.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Elizabeth Campbell Frey has worked in Fortune 500 companies in positions dealing with systems analysis/project management, human resources, employee relations, and affirmative action. After surviving cancer, she switched gears and, during her studies for a master’s in history and non-Western cultures, she focused on water rights and resources and completed a thesis on the Doctrine of Discovery and land issues in Indian country. Born in the Philippines to chronic expat parents, she has lived in too many places to name and now lives in Texas Hill Country with her husband, two gypsy-hearted kids, dogs, cows, chickens, a horse, and a swarm of transient, kamikaze hummingbirds. Learn more at www.elizabethcampbellfrey.com.

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Entangled Moon

A Novel

By E. C. Frey

She Writes Press

Copyright © 2018 Frey
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-63152-389-2

CHAPTER 1

The Apartment

He had been following the bird's husband all day. He wanted evidence. A foot in the door. A chance to say to her all the things he had been rehearsing in his head for years.

In the end, he had known where her husband was going. He had waited for him outside his mistress's apartment, where he had found a well-concealed and well-used hole in the bushes that bordered the parking lot's chain link fence. He imagined the bird's husband had left work without a care — imagined how his tousled hair and carefree whistle would have proclaimed it to the world. And now her husband had arrived.

He smiled to himself. He felt like he was back in a time when his life had meant something; a sense of renewal fluttered at the fringes of his heart.

Taking three steps at a time, the bird's husband climbed the stained and crumbling concrete steps to the second-floor apartment in the rundown complex. It was the kind of day when the thinnest of cottons sticks like sweat-shredded tissue. A row of drooping flower heads hung from a sagging flowerbox at the apartment's window.

He pulled his clammy shirt from his chest, and then his boxers from his thighs, which clung defiantly to the seat of his pants. He had killed most of the day waiting, and now the time was at hand. All he had to do was stay there until her husband emerged and he would take a series of pictures. He could imagine every little moment — each one framed, each one a moment of betrayal. How would she react? He could not give up now, no matter how tired and uncomfortable he was.

Retrieving a tiny camera from his pocket, he checked its settings. Next, he pulled a well-used, crumpled bag from his waistband and checked its contents. Needle, spoon, lighter, tiny white rock. His hands shook, but he touched each item reverently.

He leaned back, closed his eyes, and sat tight as the minutes turned into an hour.

He almost missed the bird's husband leaving. He opened his eyes in time to see him coming down the stairs, but his opportunity to snap pictures died before he could turn on the camera.

He rubbed his eyes. A haze had seeped in, was lending an orange hue to his surroundings. The halo from the outside apartment light lent a pall to the impending night and a low rumble in the distance promised a break from the day's heat.

Unfurling his aching joints, he rose to follow, but his mark was younger and quicker than he was — the bird's husband vanished before he could get out of his observation spot.

He was still standing there when a black car with tinted windows pulled quietly into the empty space. Sleek and expensive, the engine cut noiselessly. He moved to sit, but tin cans and bottles clanked and he froze mid-movement, lest he was found out. He watched as two men emerged from the car. One, in an elegant trench coat that fell crisply to his shins, led, glancing around him as he took the battered steps to the woman's apartment. The other, sheathed in black leather, followed, his head bent with purpose.

* * *

Tanya paced, her steps following the same worn pattern in the carpet the string of previous occupants had left. Her loins still throbbed and her heart raced; she tingled with the love she felt for her man. Her man had promised he would leave his wife. He would take care of her and the baby — their baby. She gathered her arms around herself, caressed her belly, imagining its hardness, and smiled. Everything was falling into place.

He had a good job, but she still needed hers back. She needed to bide her time until he could disentangle himself from his loveless marriage. Until then, she needed to work. But how could she convince her boss to let her back in? She would not grovel. No! It was unbelievable the way he had treated her. She wasn't trash he could just kick to the curb. She had worked hard to get to her position and all she had wanted was a promotion. Instead, he had come up with some bullshit excuse to fire her for lack of performance, and that stupid witch in human resources had signed off on it.

She knew where the bitch lived. She could go and show her some old-fashioned revenge from the 'hood. She gnawed on her lip. Only she couldn't — not really. That had never really been her life. That was a life from which she had run. She had to get her job back. She couldn't go back to that life. She had worked hard to get out of her New Haven neighborhood, far from the snickers, far from her fear and want. Even though she was trapped here for now, she couldn't go down from here. Her man would save her. She just had to hang on for a little while.

Her boss would relent. He would have to. After all, she knew everything, and that knowledge was worth a lot. He was a lousy lover and a lousy boss and an even lousier human being. She could start with exposing him for sexual harassment. A hint of what she was capable of, in case he didn't take her seriously. And she could save her trump card, the dirty truth about the company's dealings overseas — his dirty dealings. So many people dead, and even more dying still. He knew it too. He was a bastard willing to sacrifice everything — and for what? For his selfish pride? So the stockholders and board would laud him for their short-term gains? They didn't have to know about the dead. Out of sight, out of mind. But she had copies of everything.

She could expose them all to the world. All she wanted was her job back, and the promotion she deserved. She wanted a life like the one her coworkers who went home to something more than peeling bathtubs, worn carpets, and barred windows had. Damn it! She wasn't asking for anything she didn't deserve.

The soft knocking at the door interrupted her thoughts. She crept to the peephole. Maybe he couldn't leave her after all. She smiled and her heart skipped a beat. She would make sure he never left again. She would make him throw caution to the wind. Make him dump his two-bit, whiny mouse of a wife to the gutter. Her heart softened. But she would love the woman's daughter like her own, and they would have more. After all, the little girl was half of him, and she would cherish whatever there was of him in this world.

She lifted the peephole cover.

The prism morphed the two men outside into an unpleasant blob, but she recognized one of them: it was her boss.

Her joy seized into ice. She was not in the mood for his sick sex games. No doubt this was his way of turning the tables and letting her know he was still in control. If it got her the things she wanted, though, then it was all the same. She would still be in control anyway. She held the cards and he knew it. She had seen it on his face when she threatened to expose their affair to his boss.

She pulled her robe around her and quickly removed any evidence that someone else had been there. Quietly, she put the dirty wineglasses into a cabinet — she would have to wash them later — but the sleeve of her robe caught the cabinet knob and ripped as she moved. A tiny thread clung to the metal.

"Shit."

He knocked again. She sensed the impatience this time. She opened the door and both men waltzed in and brushed her aside. The stranger grabbed the door from her and shut it. He put a leather-sheathed finger to his lips.

"What are you doing here?" she asked. "It's a little late and I need to be in early tomorrow. I have someone I have to talk to."

"We need to discuss our little ......

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: She Writes Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2018
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1631523899
• ISBN 13: 9781631523892
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 360
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV; info@simonandschuster.nl; ; Herculesplein 96; Utrecht; 3584 AA; Niederlande