Vengeance Is Mine (An Emily O'Brien novel #1)

Vengeance Is Mine

An Emily O’Brien novel

By M.R.Miller

Copyright 2012 M.R. Miller

All rights reserved. No reproduction of this work is authorized without prior written consent from the author.

This book is a work of fiction. All characters, dialogue and plot are products of the author’s imagination. Any similarities to people, living or dead, or actual events are entirely coincidental.

Published by M.R. Miller at Smashwords

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

A Word from the Author

I am normally not a big fan of author’s notes; I tend to skip over them. So, with that in mind, I’ll keep this brief and to the point.

Vengeance Is Mine, and the other books in the Emily O’Brien series, don’t fall clearly into any listed category, though the powers that be did make me choose one or two for the purpose of selling my books. But I don’t want my readers to be confused.

Here’s what you should know. The books have Christian themes. But these themes play out in the real world, and that world includes not-so-nice elements, including some profanity, that I’ve chosen to include for the sake of authenticity.

If either of these elements bothers you, then this might not be the series for you. That’s okay; not every book is right for every reader. But I hope you’ll give it a try with an open mind.

Happy reading.

Prologue

He maneuvered his way along residential streets, his eyes probing for the right house. The neighborhood was filled with older homes, everything from Victorians painted in bright colors to sandy brick bungalows – none of the cookie-cutter styles found in the brand new subdivisions. With the exception of a few rundown places, the homes were kept up with nice landscaping and trimmed grass.

Mayberry, he snorted. Get me out of here and back to the city.

But he’d been hired to do a job, and he wasn’t leaving until he’d done it.

He looked much younger than his thirty-four years but the knowledge he’d acquired during that time made him practically an old man. He’d been a hired gun since he was eighteen, a trade he’d picked up from his father and uncle. In his years working that trade, he’d learned that the rate of success increased significantly with the amount of leg work you put into the job.

He’d driven past her house once, any more than that could raise suspicion during these early evening hours. This was the kind of place old biddies joined Neighborhood Watch in the name of good citizenship but really just wanted an excuse to spy on their neighbors. He couldn’t risk being identified.

He knew that doing a drive-by was not enough for surveillance. He needed to scout the place, look for a point of entry before he returned after dark. He’d learned the hard way that parking too close to the location of a hit could be a disaster, serving three years in the pen when a job went south. Someone had snapped a picture of his car only half a block away from where he’d illegally entered a home looking for evidence a wife was cheating on her husband. No idea why the photo had been taken or how it had ended up in the hands of the cops, but he’d had to serve time all the same.

He drove three blocks over and four blocks up and eased the sedan to the corner. He grabbed his jacket from the passenger seat. He didn’t plan on using the gear hidden inside, not yet anyway. He preferred to work in darkness, but it was a good idea to be prepared.

He began to walk back the way he’d come, stuffing his hands in his pocket and tucking his chin into his chest. He lit a cigarette and smoked it as he walked.

He’d gone only a block when he saw her.

He recognized her from the photo he’d been e-mailed. The photo had been taken from a distance but her reddish-brown hair was distinct. She wasn’t a beauty but the photo had made her seem plain. In person, she was attractive in her own way…His thoughts trailed off as he weighed what kind of fun he might have with her, how much latitude his employer would allow in his mission to shake her up.

She was walking toward him, a black Labrador on a leash pulling her along. When she glanced up and saw him, he watched the muscles in her body coil, tense, as she evaluated whether or not he was a threat. For a minute he considered ways he could scare her here and still deliver the message he had for her. But two things changed his mind. The dog was the main factor; he had no idea how protective the mutt would be. But he also noticed her body language. She was watching him, her chin stuck out defiantly and her eyes locked on his.

She wouldn’t go quietly, he decided. Her adrenaline was already racing, and he was fairly sure she’d give him a hell of a fight. He didn’t need that. He needed to terrify her, to break her, to take any notions of security she had and obliterate them. And he already had an idea how to do that.

"Hey," he said to her as he passed by, no reason not to be friendly.

"Hey," she responded, her voice betraying no fear.

He let her walk by as he continued to make his way back toward her house, careful not to look back so as not to raise suspicion.

She might not be scared now, he thought, but she would be.

Chapter 1

I crossed my arms and tried to relax as I watched the clerk at the grocery store attempt to sort my food into plastic bags by degree of coldness. I couldn’t figure out why she was going through all the trouble, but apparently she thought it was part of doing a good job. Rather than arguing, blowing up and saying, Geez. Just put it all in the bags, I decided the nice thing to do was to let her work.

I wasn’t good at being nice when I was in a hurry.

I watched her take the carton of ice cream and stow it with a bag of frozen vegetables. Then she took the cups of yogurt and put them with the cheese. Then, she put the cereal in with my box of microwave popcorn. At last, she was done, smiling at me, pleased with her efforts.

I felt guilty for wanting to throttle her.

She gave me the total, and I swiped my credit card, quickly scribbling my name onto the screen. Can I see your card?

Sure, I said, handing it to her.

She studied my signature against the one that appeared on her register. She studied it so long I began to squirm.

It doesn’t match.

What?

She began to point out the inconsistencies but my temper erupted.

You’re kidding, right? I mean, who can sign their name on this tiny freakin’ screen?

I’ll need to see some other identification. To be sure.

I grumbled profanities under my breath, digging my driver’s license out of my wallet and handing it to her.

She studied it, this time even longer than before. My face was growing hot, and I watched from the corner of my eye as the woman behind me began shifting restlessly from foot to foot. Apparently satisfied that I hadn’t stolen someone’s credit card, the clerk handed me back my stuff, along with the receipt. I bit back a cutting remark and left, reminding myself that she was just doing her job. Even if it did make me later than I had planned.

When I was outside I breathed a deep sigh and walked out to where I’d parked. When I got there, I realized someone had left a cart loose in the lot and the wind had blown it into the side of my Jeep. I wasn’t sure why I cared. My old gray Jeep Cherokee had the clear coating cracking off the hood and dings all over the doors. It was the principle – the idea that it was too much work to put the cart in one of those stupid corrals. Jerk. I told myself again that I should look into grocery shopping online. If it was up to me, all shopping would be done online.

I maneuvered out of my parking space and onto the highway, following the road out of Winston. Once I passed the distribution centers, car dealerships and factories on the outskirts of town, the countryside spread ahead of me like a patchwork quilt. The corn was growing strong and green, well on its way to being knee high by the Fourth of July, as the saying went. The soybeans looked a little sickly, the heavy spring rains having brought out some disease that not every farmer had been successful treating.

Occasionally, a field was only grassy, with a few horses or cows scattered about. The land was basically flat, with only a few swells in the road to break up the monotony of this part of northern Illinois. But I didn’t mind. I liked the openness and peacefulness in the country.

As I drove, I mentally scolded myself for being so mean about the cashier. I was fairly new to my faith and, unfortunately, I wasn’t exactly the poster child for how a Christian should act. I tended to be cynical. Given my mood at the time, I could have a potty mouth. I couldn’t quit smoking. There were days when all I really wanted was an ice-cold beer or a shot of Jack. And I had a temper that always seemed to land me in trouble. No way would I ever put a fish symbol on the bumper of my car. If I was the only testimony out there, everyone would be atheists.

The irony was that I’d actually come a long way in the year I’d known Christ. I used to be much, much worse. A year ago, I would have sniped at the clerk, and I wouldn’t have even given a rat’s butt about it. Now, at least I felt bad about it. Baby steps, I guessed.

About ten miles from Winston, I turned off onto a township road, which was just tarred and chipped, no stripes. Not enough people used the road to justify asphalt. I followed the winding road, past a few farm houses, before I finally reached mine.

Or what used to be mine.

I still had mixed feelings about the for sale sign impaled into the front yard. An offer was pending, but the Realtor told me she was pretty sure everything was in order. The couple recently moved to the area when the husband got a transfer to one of the far west Chicago suburbs. They were pretty well off, which made me wonder why they wanted this place. Not that it wasn’t nice. It was – at least now it was. When Alex and I bought it, it was a little rough. Old farmhouses usually were. But we were young and stupid, and the idea of fixing it up appealed to us. So we bought it and got to work.

I remembered the hours of stripping the old paint off the front porch rails and then re-painting them. The time on the roof hanging architectural shingles. Painting each of the four bedrooms after removing hideous wallpaper. Updating bathroom fixtures. The list seemed endless. How had we done all that in just three years? And with both of us holding full-time jobs? Being childless helped, I guessed, though the intention of buying a four-bedroom home was to fill it up with more than just the two of us. But that hadn’t happened, and now Alex was dead. I winced as I realized just how alone I really was. Being by myself in this big house was ridiculous.

When Alex died this past winter, I had intended to stay in the house, but quickly realized that wasn’t a good idea. I couldn’t keep up with mowing the three-acre lot. I couldn’t manage the snow drifts, and I couldn’t afford to pay the property taxes on just my salary – not if I wanted to be smart about my money.

I had paid off the mortgage with his life insurance money, but that didn’t leave a lot left over. And being a reporter at a small daily newspaper wasn’t the place to make the big bucks. When the Pruitts came along, it was an answer to prayer. The house had only been on the market for two weeks, and they agreed to pay close to asking price. I was relieved to have that part of the process behind me.

But as happy as I was about the decision, regret nipped at me each time I walked through the door and saw the place that had been home for the last three years. The first real home I’d had since I was a kid. A place I actually wanted to be as opposed to the place I had to be.

I would miss the character of the house, from the curved stairwell railing that would beckon any child to try taking a slide down it, to the cozy fireplace that probably sucked out more heat than it actually provided, to the big, cast-iron, claw-foot tub in the bathroom upstairs. How many nights had I soaked in that?

I would miss being here. But it wasn’t the same without Alex.

As I unloaded the groceries, I dropped a bag of popcorn into the microwave. I had to cover a school board meeting tonight, and I didn’t feel like making a real dinner. An apple and popcorn would suffice. It did on lots of nights. When it came to meals, I was just plain lazy. And, if I was honest, I liked junk food.

I had already started packing so the kitchen was a mess, as were most of the other rooms. I was using a system where I started with the least used items first. Some of those things were already at the new house. Not new really. Just new to me. The two-bedroom bungalow was on Winston’s east side. An older home, it also had some character in its architecture, and the landscaping was gorgeous.

I had been a little worried about making the transition to living in town. I would miss the quiet and privacy of the country. But the more I settled into the idea of moving there, the more I liked it. My new place was only about a mile from the newspaper office. On nice days, I could walk or ride my bike to work if I wanted. And I was only four blocks away from Mattie.

Which reminded me. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed.

Hey, it’s me.

Hey, Em.

So is Jeff working this weekend?

Nope. He’s all yours.

Thanks.

So what’s going to go?

Everything. The Pruitts want to move in next weekend. But I’m still trying to get rid of a few things. Are you sure you don’t want Alex’s desk?

I’d love it, but it’s too big for the dining room and that’s the only space I’d have for it.

Well, you have until Saturday to change your mind.

Okay. Oh, and Jeff told me to tell you that some other guys from church are coming, too. So you should have plenty of help.

By the time I hung up, my popcorn had been sitting for a few minutes and was no longer hot. Oh well. It was sustenance, I thought. And something I could eat as I drove to the board meeting. The only reason I’d bothered coming home at all was to avoid another meal from the drive-thru and because I knew I wouldn’t feel like grocery shopping after the meeting. Provisions were pretty sparse around here, but I needed enough to make it through the rest of the week.

That’s another thing I wouldn’t miss about living out of town. I wouldn’t spend so much time on the road between my house and covering stuff for the paper. That was a plus. I got back on the highway and navigated back to Winston, but instead of going downtown, I turned off by the canal and took the back way into town, arriving at the high school.

Winston was situated along the Illinois River. The high school was right along its banks. I never understood why the city fathers decided it was a good idea to build a school along a river. Every time the river swelled from heavy rains, school officials started sandbagging. It was kind of dumb, but my guess was the land had been cheap, if not free.

Inside, the building was stifling since there was no air conditioning. Fortunately, the superintendent had a window unit in his office that opened into the board room, making it cooler there for the meeting. Good thing, too, because the discussion lasted for well over an hour.

Afterward, I talked to a few of the administrators to clarify some points for my story, and then headed over to the office to write and file it. Technically my deadline was eight in the morning, but it was usually just easier to get it done so it was ready for my editor to read when he got there at seven.

The Winston Chronicle building was in the heart of the downtown, within walking distance of the courthouse, City Hall, the police station, the high school, the grade school office and various other spots reporters visited often. The building was old, but I liked that better than having some ultra modern office. The crummy building sort of kept us humble.

I walked into a mini-celebration exploding from the sports section, which butted up against the newsroom. They had a pretty good-sized TV in there, and every night they blasted whatever game they could find while they did their work. Sometimes I joined them, but tonight it was the Sox so I took a pass. The celebration was because the South Siders crashed and burned against the Yankees. Like me, most of the sports reporters were Cubs fans.

You missed it, Em, called Kim Whitaker. They had a four-run lead, and they totally blew it. Just fell apart. It was so sweet. Poor jerks.

Yeah, I can feel the sympathy oozing out of you.

Now, Jacobs is all ticked off. He’s been bragging about how the Sox are going to make the playoffs and the Cubs are gonna blow it. Who’s laughing now?

Whit hopped to his feet and did a little dance around his desk. Glen Jacobs, the sports editor, glared at him from his computer station. We’ll see. It’s a long way till September. And your pitcher is back on the disabled list.

We’ll be fine.

Not to change the subject here, I interrupted, but are you two hack-masters still planning on helping me move this weekend? I’m buying the pizza.

And beer? Whit asked.

No beer. I got guys coming from my church. I think you can survive a twelve-hour period without it.

We’ll be there. I’ll drag his butt out of bed, Jacobs promised. I’ll bring my truck.

Thanks, guys. I owe ya.

I can think of how I can collect, Whit said, giving me his most seductive look.

I think I’m gonna barf, Jacobs retaliated. She said she wants help moving, not help finding new ways to make her skin crawl. Get back to work.

I guess he told you, I said, trying not to laugh.

Whit grumbled, and then turned the volume down on the TV before going back to his desk. Momentarily speechless, that was rare. Whit was a giant teddy bear, tall and a little pudgy with a warm smile and a sharp wit. Most of the time, I wanted to adopt him as my older brother. Most of the time.

Jacobs was a pretty good guy. He was married, with a kid on the way. He was in charge of two other full-time sports writers, Whit being one of them, and a couple freelancers. Unlike the bulk of his department, Jacobs was mature.

But Whit was my friend so I took the juvenile behavior along with his willingness to come over and help me lift something heavy or bust loose the lug nuts on my tire when I had a flat. He sometimes would flirt with me too heavily but he was harmless. He didn’t want me per se; he just wanted a girlfriend.

It didn’t take me long to knock off my story. After logging out, I headed back home. I crawled into bed, still on the right side of the mattress, still leaving Alex’s space vacant even though he’d been gone for more than five months. I read for awhile to make sure I was really tired before trying to close my eyes. I hadn’t been sleeping well.

Because of the dream.

It was always the same. Someone is knocking at the front door. I go to answer it, but I’m moving like I’m in quicksand. When I open the door, it’s Alex, but then he steps back and starts falling into a dark pit that has materialized behind him. Even though I know what’s going to happen in the dream, I can never grab him quickly enough to pull him to safety. Instead I listen to his agonizing screams as he falls forever. The pit, it seems, doesn’t have a bottom.

Every time, I wake up in a cold sweat with tears streaming down my cheeks. I have wondered if I’ll still have the dream in the new house and if I do, if the front door will be the one here or the one there. I guess it doesn’t matter, but the idea of having the dream in the new house, with a new door bothers me. It seems I should be able to make a clean break.

The dream was just one of the things that had Mattie worried about me. When the police came to tell me Alex had been killed, I had insisted on seeing the body. I read the autopsy report myself. I went to the inquest. I had paid regular visits to the state police headquarters in nearby Manaqua. She thought I was obsessed.

I just couldn’t understand how my husband, an investigator for the Illinois State Police, could have died on duty. I knew it happened all the time. But he wasn’t even doing his own job that wintery night. He was filling in for a sick trooper on a night when being short-staffed was not an option.

The blizzard was bad. He was helping with traffic. The police thought he stopped someone who was doing something wrong, and the guy shot him and left him on the side of the road. It just didn’t make sense to me that he spent his days tracking down serious criminals then got killed on routine patrol duty. Maybe that reasoning was dumb, but I hadn’t been able to let his death go.

Chapter 2

The Past

The wind kept blowing the hood off my head – no matter how hard I tried to hold my slicker in place – as I trotted down the side of the highway. The rain was icy as it pelted into my face and soaked my jeans, then the blast of wind would send chills over my skin. Cold, miserable, wet weather. But I hardly felt it.

I spotted the red and blue flashing lights on top of a squad car, parked to the side of the white semi tractor and trailer jackknifed on its side in the middle of the road. Since it was late on a Sunday evening, traffic was light but it was still backed up at least a half mile both ways. I had just pulled my car on the shoulder and walked the rest of the way.

The DuPage County deputy didn’t see me at first. I heard him on his radio asking the dispatcher what was taking the tow truck so long. The ambulance, he said, had left twenty minutes ago. Her response was blurred by static. Something about it being a Sunday.

He tossed the radio back in the car, frustrated, then started when he saw me standing there. He was a younger guy, but that’s about all I could see. His slicker – which somehow wasn’t fighting the wind as much as mine was – covered most of his face in shadows.

Ma’am, I know you’ve probably been sitting awhile, but you have to go back to your car.

I’m Lee Walker. I’m with the Chicago Daily Journal.

I extended my hand but he just looked at it, and then chuckled sardonically. Oh, great. Now this.

I just wanted to ask some questions about the accident.

Ms. Walker, you really need to go back to your car. I’m a little busy now.

Doing what? Waiting for a tow truck? The ambulance is gone. No one is here. Why can’t you just talk to me for a couple of minutes until the tow truck gets here?

You’ll have to wait for the accident report, just like everyone else.

I’m not interested in just this accident. I’ve been doing a story on this company. They seem to have a lot of accidents like this. I …

I’m sure it’s all very interesting, but like I said, wait for the report.

Oh, come on. Off the record. Just give me something to go on.

Nope. Busy.

He turned back to the squad car. I