06 Fatal Error by J A Jance

Author:J A Jance [Jance, J A]
Format: epub
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

San Diego, California

Brenda awakened in the dark. She was stiff, hungry, and agonizingly thirsty. While she had been asleep, she had evidently shifted positions. The weight of her body had been resting on her imprisoned hands. As circulation returned to her hands and fingers, so did a storm of needles and pins.

“I’m going to die,” she said aloud. Her voice was an unnatural croak. “I’m going to die here and alone and in the dark.”

She would have wept then, but she didn’t want to risk losing whatever moisture might be in her tears.

Her aching shoulder reminded her of her uncle Joe. She hadn’t thought about her father’s brother in years. Uncle Joe had come home after five years of being a POW of the Vietcong. His teeth were gone—broken out—and his broken limbs never healed properly. He had ended up in a wheelchair, but he had never complained. Brenda had asked him about his experiences once when she’d been putting together a Veteran’s Day piece for the news.

“Yes, it was hard,” he said, “but all I had to do each day was choose to live.”

Returning to the States, he had refused to accept the idea that his life was over. He had gone back to school and married his high school sweetheart. He had gone on to become a teacher and a winning football coach who had taken his team to championship games year after year. He had also been the kindest and most amazingly positive man Brenda had ever met. Could she be like him?

Lying there alone, Brenda couldn’t help thinking about how far she had fallen short in that regard, and she had no one to blame but herself. Losing her job and her marriage and being betrayed by Richard Lowensdale were nothing when compared to what Uncle Joe and his fellow wartime captives had endured. Unlike Uncle Joe, Brenda had capitulated. And now, when she was finally sober and getting back on her feet, this happened.

But what is this? she wondered.

Did it have something to do with Richard or with the book she was writing about him? The days before waking up in this place seemed shrouded in fog. Maybe one of the women she had interviewed had gone back to Richard and told him about Too Good to Be True, the book Brenda was writing. But this wasn’t Richard’s house. It couldn’t be. This cold, hard floor was too clean.

Thinking about the unfinished book brought Brenda back to her mother. Even if she didn’t let on to her sister, Brenda knew that she should have told her mother about the sale. It had been easier to keep quiet. She had kept everything about the book—her research materials, the signed contract for Too Good to Be True, and her laptop under lock and key in what had once been her mother’s hope chest. She had carried the key with her, in her purse, because she had worried that someone—one of her mother’s caregivers or even her sister—might go prying.

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