Extra Credit: Loyalty! by Stuart J. Whitmore

Author:Stuart J. Whitmore [Whitmore, Stuart J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: thriller, action, adventure, Dan Starney, loyalty, government, liberty
Publisher: Stuart J. Whitmore
Published: 2017-05-03T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 7

Dan looked over at Ron as the two drove past the city limits of Purthansburg. “So she’s not too happy with me, I take it,” he said. There was so much to say and so much to do, Dan didn’t know where to begin. Healing his body, healing his relationships, and most of all figuring out what he was going to do with his future. It was overwhelming beyond words.

“Is anybody going to be really happy with you at this point, Mr. Starney?” The younger man asked with a quick glance over at him. “I can’t say that I am. Are you?”

“Good point,” Dan admitted. “I think any happiness with myself ended the day Paul and I were arrested.”

“Why did you go along with it?” Dan couldn’t help noticing the accusatory tone in the other man’s voice, but it wasn’t just accusation. There was an element of disappointment, and of the hurt of being betrayed.

“Fear. Confusion. Selfishness,” Dan answered glumly. “Don’t think I haven’t asked myself the same question countless times already, and there’s never a good answer. I was thrown completely off balance by it all, and once I made the initial decision to play along, the prospect of telling the truth looked increasingly hard. Maybe ‘Trevor’ planned it that way.”

There was a long silence as Ron seemed to process Dan’s answer. “Why do you think he did it?”

Dan gave a short, humorless laugh. “Another often-asked question with no good answers. His note was ambiguous, and I’m sure that much was intentional. He wasn’t going to give me anything to work with. All I really got out of it was that there was some ‘professional indiscretion’ somehow related to Paul that motivated him to ruin Paul’s life. But who knows what that means? I don’t really know that much about Paul, maybe he wasn’t just a teacher, in the same way that Trevor/Steve was not just a student. It’s all guesswork and there don’t seem to be any answers at hand.”

“Do you think he could be behind the killing of Paul, the attempt on your life, and everything else that has happened?” Ron asked, keeping his eyes on the road ahead of them. “He didn’t seem the type to me, not like someone who would actually kill another person without good reason. But he didn’t seem like a federal plant, either.”

Dan turned to look absent-mindedly at the passing landscape. “Who can say? He was obviously the type to tamper with evidence, lie on the witness stand, and make an extensive effort to send someone to prison for something he didn’t do. Would arranging a killing be beyond his scope? Then again, with Paul already in prison, I don’t understand what might have been his motivation. If he wanted Paul dead for some reason to begin with, he could have arranged that without all the other nonsense.”

“Yeah,” Ron said with a nod. “It’s confusing.”

After riding in silence for awhile, Dan spoke up, “I want to run the ad.”

“The ad?”

“Yeah. The one mentioned in the letter, in the envelope you found at my house.

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