The Tempest by A.J. Scudiere (best books to read in your 20s .txt) 📕

have a hard time finding him. He didn’t exist. Hadn’t since the day he’d found his wife and kid. Well, technically his brother had propped him up long enough to collect the life insurance policies. He’d drunk several thousand of the dollars away, before ‘they’ had showed up demanding his cooperation.

He’d been smaller then. And he’d agreed. Although the urge to laugh at them had been overwhelming‒what else was there for them to threaten? But he’d held it together even though he smelled like a brewery and felt like the mouse in the vat. Then he’d gone to the bar to look drunk while he planned. He cashed out his account about five minutes before he drove his car off a bridge and disappeared. Looking back, it had been a pretty amateur job he’d done of ‘killing’ himself.

He was much better at these things now.

Which was why it was such a shock to look up and find out he’d run into her. With eyebrows raised, she was standing right in front of him in the dark back alley. He’d spent too much effort thinking and not enough acting.

The houses here were too far apart, trees had been planted along these back roads offering plenty of cover that would only be broken if a car came through with headlights blazing.

The girl was glaring daggers at him and, having seen her work, he wondered if actual metal just might come out of her eyes.

Lee took a moment to look her over. He’d been so startled the last time he’d seen her that he hadn’t really seen. She was slim and dressed in her leather shadows again. Her skin was slightly olive and her eyes dark. Even God had made her for blending into the night. He might have called her pretty, but she was much too young. She was actually ‘cute’. And that alone was scarier than any demons he could think up.

She was also about six inches shorter than him, which he guessed put her at five-six, five-seven. And she had her little hands clenched on her hips, her body rigid. “Did you kill him?”

Lee let himself look a little taken aback at the demand. “Yes, honey, I did.”

“I am not your honey.”

He hmphed. “Maybe not, but you owe me one.”

She shrugged back into a blue quilted jacket, and slung a red standard high school backpack over her shoulder. “I don’t owe you shit.” She turned to walk away, but Lee hadn’t heard enough.

The Heckler came out from his back and he shot a silenced round into the tree next to her.

She stopped even as the bark still flew, then slowly turned. He had to hand it too her, she didn’t look intimidated. Even people with guns were often intimidated by him. He was big, brawny, and bad ass. And he didn’t care what anyone did to him. He’d just keep coming ‘til he was dead. But this girl looked almost bored with him.

“What the hell do you want? You ruined my evening.” The light from the moon filtered through the trees and barely bounced off her. He might have looked past her if he hadn’t almost run smack into her.

“Your name.” He held the gun trained only a few lethal inches from her.

“Sin.”

He laughed. That was perfect for her.

Laughing was a mistake.

She was near enough to take advantage of his momentary change of focus. With swift movements, she grabbed his hand in both of hers so softly that he didn’t even realize what she was doing. But she put pressure on the pulse point at his wrist and against the back of his hand, easily turning the gun away from her and almost around to him.

He felt himself jerk with surprise, and in that moment she yanked the Heckler from his grasp.

A quick bite to his tongue was all that kept him from yelling out “Shit!”

With the haughty air of a sheriff punishing a delinquent, she slipped the ammo from the gun, tucking the clip into her pocket before handing the gun back to him with a look that said she thought he ought to be a little more careful with it in the future.

Two could play at that.

With a sigh, he moved his hand along the front of his belt and pulled another clip loose. He casually slid it into the gun and re-aimed it at her.

She should have at least kept the gun, he had three more on him and had been reaching for another even as she had popped the clip out of the one she’d taken. At least then it would have been a fair fight.

She flung her hands out to the side. “Fine then, shoot me already.”

She wasn’t afraid. Not of him, or his gun, or the fact that the two together could easily remove her from this life.

She looked like a high-schooler‒with her backpack and her hair hanging down in French braids this time. There was every possibility that she didn’t just look like a school-girl but was one.

She was also an artist. She’d gotten in his face, although a good part of that was his own fault. But she’d gotten his gun off him, which had never happened before.

The first thing he’d learned about guns was that you never aimed at anything you didn’t intend to kill. So Lee lowered the gun.

He couldn’t shoot Sin.

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About the Author

A.J.’s world is strange place where patterns jump out and catch the eye, little is missed, and most of it can be recalled with a deep breath. In this world, the smell of Florida takes three weeks to fully leave the senses and the air in Dallas is so thick that the planes “sink” to the runways rather than actually landing.

For A.J., reality is always a little bit off from the norm and something usually lurks right under the surface. As a storyteller, A.J. loves irony, the unexpected, and a puzzle where all the pieces fit and make sense. Originally a