Ames To Kill (Three Full-Length Thrillers): The Killing League, The Recruiter, Killing the Rat by Dan Ames

Author:Dan Ames
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Slogan Books
Published: 2013-06-01T06:00:00+00:00

FORTY-SEVEN

“Fischer for three!”

Her voice echoes off into the night. It’s a thin sound, like the hollow resonance of a fake laugh. The ball bangs off the backboard and veers off into the shrubs along the house. She hobbles over to it, scoops it up, pays no attention to the fact that it’s wet and cold, and that her hands are losing their feeling. Her shoes are untied, mud caked along the white bandage. Her shirt is untucked, and her hair is in loose, wet strands. A lopsided grin is on her face as she turns and faces the basket.

Beth reaches down to the narrow cement path that runs between the driveway and the house. The whiskey bottle is almost empty. Holding the basketball under one arm, she unscrews the cap, takes a long pull from the bottle, wipes her mouth with her sleeve, puts the cap back on, and sets the bottle down. She releases the ball from under her arm, catches it with the other hand, and starts dribbling the ball on the driveway. She pounds it hard against the pavement, and as drunk as she is, the movement is so natural and so ingrained that it’s a perfectly timed, perfectly executed, unconscious movement.

“Three seconds to go, Lake Orion is down by one, all eyes are on Beth Fischer.” Her enunciation is diminished, but her volume is not. Her words broadcast far into the night. Before the last one leaves her mouth, a light appears in the house next door.

Beth doesn’t notice.

“She fakes left,” Beth says, then hobbles left, the pain in her knee cuts through the whiskey fog and momentarily wipes the hysterical grin from her face. She grits her teeth and bears down on the ball. “She dribbles right.” A crablike motion gets her in that direction. “She’s like poetry in motion out there folks, I gotta tell ya, I’ve never seen anything quite like it.” Beth, moving in nearly slow motion, mimes a slow head fake. “She’s got space between herself and her defender.” Beth, in a reckless but remarkably fluid motion, brings the ball from a dribble to a half hook shot. The ball sails through the air. “She shoots! The ball rotates beautifully, her follow through is magnificent…this girl has got the goddamn, motherfucking eye of the tiger, folks.” The ball careens at the basket like a missile but misses the hoop entirely and goes over the roof of the garage. She hears it bang off the roof, roll down the other side, and crash into the garbage cans. A cat hisses.

“Whoa, that one got away from her, folks.” Beth sways on her feet, her arms upraised in mock victory. “But what do you expect? A knee made of rubber, a boyfriend fucking the opponent…it’s all just another day in the life of one Beth Fisch—”

“Beth.”

She whirls around

“That’s enough,” her mother says. Anna is in a bathrobe, her hair squashed against one side of her head, sticking up on the other. Her white tube socks and slippers seem to glow in the night.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.