Sam Danou slid into the plastic gloves he used to examine a crime scene. He didn’t expect to find fingerprints in the chaotic swirl of a recently abandoned home. But he didn’t want to cut himself on any of the jagged edges left behind by the metal thieves. Detroit scrappers came in two varieties, the […]
I’d tried warning my mother. “But she knew his favorite color,” Mom said. “She knows how much you miss Dad. It’s how all these charlatans get on. They pick up on the clues you give them.” “This has always been your problem, Dwight. Too skeptical for your own good.” Soon as I saw the bank’s […]
Have you ordered your copy of White Knight by Bracken MacLeod? Why not? Our second Singles release has garnered some nice advanced praise: “Bracken MacLeod writes with the verve of someone who understands the genre in which he works well enough to know exactly when to turn tropes on their heads and twist them around […]
“Cigarette?” Aguilar eyed him closely, looking for the fear. “Sure.” Chavez put on casual. Even in the tightest spot, don’t give them the satisfaction. “Excellent, then let’s proceed. Ready!” But Chavez wasn’t ready. The night before he only managed to doze off occasionally in the oppressive heat, and the little sleep he got was filled […]
They lounge at bus stops beneath palm trees – waiting. They stand in the doorways of shops that contain no goods and wait for banks to open to receive money from other places. They sit on benches, linger on street corners and while their time away walking all the time waiting, waiting for their lives […]
The man, bent and old, moved with care through the oncoming wave of pedestrians. He knew his age made him insignificant to the rushing world, and, when he was out and about, he did his best to keep out of its way. Still he was unable to avoid a stream of adolescents, and they almost […]
With a cooling shotgun across his lap, Peter Bradley sits on his mother’s favorite couch and wonders if he has the nerve left to finish it.Two of his father’s chalky, tiny Ativans dissolve in a hot wash of whiskey in Peter’s stomach while he stares at the phone on the polished coffee table in front […]
Wind blows the snow into a swirling mist of pain as he shuffles along the sidewalk. Through ragged shoes Mother Nature assaults his swollen and blistered feet. Three toes were black the last time he checked. He supposes they are rotting even now as he stumbles along, he doesn’t care. He can no longer feel […]
“Hell, girl,” Morrie said, scratching the back of his neck. “I don’t guess I ever thought of nothing like that.” She rattled the handcuffs and looked up at him from the edge of the bed, where she sat birthday naked, her brown eyes wide and thick bottom lip puffed out. Morrie felt himself stir in […]
Usually, when my teenage son comes into my bedroom I think, “So this is how it is going to end,” and stretch for the box cutter taped beneath the headboard. Normally, he just wants to apologize for coming home late or murmur that he mistakenly thought it was his room. “Pa?” he half-whispered the night […]
The morning Jimmie was running late, he held a finger up to the guard who came to collect him. Just a sec, the finger said. The finger of a man shriveled down to the bone. A few months back, the guards would have whipped his ass for doing such a thing. These days those bastards […]
Slade was six-foot-three of muscle sewn together with scar tissue, his jaw square and hard as a bulldozer shovel. His face was more deeply lined than an acre of Midwest hardpan but you would never mistake him for old or defective—not if you valued your bones unbroken, or at least your thumbs in working order. […]
