Sweet Paradise by Gene Desrochers (most read books in the world of all time .txt) 📕

various competitors as they came and went. Harold found fault with everyone’s technique, stance, or attitude on some level. He really knew his stuff. For some reason, at about one o’clock, they gave the judges a fifteen-minute break.

“It’s like the seventh inning stretch,” Harold said, lifting his arms and yawning.

“We gonna sing Take Me Out to the Ball Game?” Dana asked.

“Ha, ha,” Harold mouthed.

Everyone took turns going to the bathroom, first the women, then Harold and I. The bathroom sometimes produced my clearest moments of thought. For whatever reason the gentle echoing of the porcelain and the running water from the sink outside my stall, brought contemplation. In my lucid state, thoughts of Jermaine LaGrange swirled. The man had rage in spades. He had killed at least two people, that much was certain. But something was wrong in his motivations. He had made dire mistakes. Even assuming the man was justified, his rage was poorly directed. Like eating when what you really wanted was a hug from daddy. His was a crime of substitution, of misplaced justice. Who did he truly feel wronged by, and why hadn’t he taken it out on them?

As I washed my hands I came back to the same thought I often had about motive: people much preferred to redirect their emotional energy anywhere but where it really belonged. Confronting your true emotional source was beyond daunting, it was only for those of a rarely brave nature. Murderers sometimes exhibited such bravery, but mostly, just like the rest of us, they substituted someone else for the person they never could or never would deal with directly. Usually someone from childhood. In Jermaine’s case, I had no doubt his childhood had been a hot mess. For all I knew, his father, uncle, or mother were dead, so killing them was not an option, although even if it was, it was very unlikely he’d actually do that.

I finished washing my hands and did a quick flossing to questioning looks from the other patrons. Harold was outside the bathroom, waiting.

“I thought you’d fallen in.”

“Sorry. I just got to thinking about Jermaine.”

“Man, can we stay off all that depressing shit for an afternoon?”

“All right. We’ll stay off that for the afternoon.”

As we walked back, he stopped me. “You have a way of making me feel like I want to know what you know, so spill. What about this asshole you want to ask?”

“I feel like your grandmother and Kendal got screwed, because they did nothing to the actual killer. Sure, Gilroy put him up to it.”

Harold held up a hand. “Let me stop you there. Gilroy killed ‘em, not fucking Jermaine. Gilroy wanted all this to happen. Jermaine was like, I dunno.”

“A substitute?”

“Yeah, that’s it, a substitute. Gilroy’s a fucking coward. If you’re going to do something, at least have the guts to do it yourself.”

I was about to mention that Gilroy did not intend to kill Francine, but thought better of it.

“It also got me thinking about who Jermaine really wanted dead. Who he felt wronged by. Didn’t you tell me some story before about a judge?”

“Yeah, that’s what I noticed today, too.”

My skin broke out in a cold sweat. “What did you notice?”

“The judges, for today’s match. The one sitting in the middle of that table, she’s the same one who d-qed Isabelle’s uncle all those years ago. That’s why I was ... ”

The crowd roared as Isabelle LaGrange was announced.

As I raced back to the arena, Harold yelled, “Boise! Wait up”

Chapter 37

Bursting out of the hallway, I shoved through the milling people who guzzled beer, munched on fried food, and chatted about all of the mundane things people chat about. I heard a snatch of conversation as I rushed by a couple swaying to their own song.

“Hey baby, what’s your smoke signal?” the man intoned. “You like arrows?”

Everything shifted into slow motion, while I dodged and weaved through the crowd and Harold struggled to keep pace, my knee felt incredible, like some kind of lightning surged through it. Ever since the basic training accident had ended my military career, I had a slight limp. But every time my heart moaned to walk normally, I tried to be grateful for it could have, probably should have, been a lot worse. I should never have walked again. Now, here I was over a decade later, running with the practiced ease of my nineteen-year-old self. Perhaps I was the mother who suddenly has the strength to lift the car off her child. However, I wasn’t going to save my child, I was going to save someone I didn’t even know.

As I pounded up the bleacher steps I suddenly knew why I’d accepted the gun from Leber without a fight. Why all my protestations about guns were hollow. Why the pepper spray wasn’t enough. Why the Taser wouldn’t do, either. It was for this very moment. I would need to pull out the weapon before anyone else knew why and I could be executed for that. I wished there were time to do something more logical. Something less deadly, both for myself and for Isabelle. Surely she was misguided or she was the product of some elaborate brain-washing scheme triggered by the queen of hearts. Deep down, I knew that wasn’t the case. Isabelle had made the choice to leave Harold and join Jermaine. Yes, she’d been young and impressionable, but she was now a worldly woman who could discern right from wrong. She’d had years to correct her error. She had chosen wrong and stayed the course.

I burst out of the stairwell in time to see Isabelle move into position. It seemed so obvious now. Her training to shoot multiple arrows so quickly. That was not training for competition, it was training for an assassin. Jermaine LaGrange had turned his daughter into a killer. That’s what he’d meant when he’d said, “She was unbeatable at all of it.”

She had already shot arrows at the target,