Agents of Literary Change
Excerpt From My Forthcoming Novel "The Hitman Chronicles"
PROLOGUE
The Kanto Plain, Japan
Fifteen Years Ago
“How many have you killed?” she asked.
Duncan opened his eyes and looked up at her. The apartment’s tiny air conditioner hadn’t kept pace with their frenzied lovemaking, and Nikira’s golden skin glistened with perspiration as she straddled him on the tiny bed.
“What?”
Without breaking the rhythm of her hips she tossed her hair out of her face. “I said, how many people have you killed?”
Her black eyes locked on his – probing, piercing, demanding something that his instincts warned was best not to give. He gripped her waist and thrust upward, making her groan. “We’re not supposed to talk about that,” he said.
“We’re not supposed to fuck each other either,” Nikira gasped. “And yet here we are.”
Nikira smiled down at him from behind the strands of her ebony hair. A twinge of unease took the edge off his arousal. She looked like a hungry lioness peering between blades of high grass, yearning for the blood of some unwary prey. Lying beneath her, he suddenly he felt exposed…vulnerable.
“So tell me Duncan, how many?” she urged.
Instead of answering he pushed himself up off the bed, lifting her with him and making her laugh as he flipped her onto her back. The fact that she barely weighed one hundred and twenty pounds meant nothing. In close quarters she could kill a fully armed Special Forces trained Marine twice her size with only her hands and feet before he knew he was dead. And she would enjoy it.
That was the difference between them. Duncan killed for money. For him it was just business – how he made his living. Nikira Horikoshi killed because she loved it. For her, the thrill was worth much more than the pay. She would kill for nothing more than the pleasure of taking a life.
They were friends, and during they year they’d trained together in Japan they had become lovers. Still, Duncan felt better when he was on top and in a better position to defend himself.
Just in case.
----------
CHAPTER 1
Praia do Forte, Bahia, Brazil, 7 Years ago
He made breakfast for her –scrambled eggs fluffed and laced with diced tomatoes and green peppers, Canadian bacon, waffles topped with fresh sliced strawberries, and country sausage imported from the States – North Carolina specifically. The sausage had been hard to come by, but she was worth it.
It was Saturday morning, and he wished they had more time together. But she was going to work at noon at the clinic. She was a pediatrician, and once a month instead of working from her office she provided free care for children whose families couldn’t otherwise afford to pay. She was good that way, a warm and caring person, truly beautiful, inside and out.
“Paul, that smells wonderful,” she said behind him. He turned around to watch her come into the kitchen, fresh from her shower.
As always, the vision of Eloa Mendoza nearly took his breath away. Even though he’d seen her nearly every day for the past year, he couldn’t get used to her beauty. She wore a white tee-shirt that fell to mid-thigh and contrasted fetchingly with her dusky skin. When she wasn’t working she lived almost constantly in a bikini, and the Brazilian sun had burnished her skin a rich walnut brown. The memory of her tan line, which was truly just a line - a pale shoestring strip of flesh that ran from her crotch around her waist and disappeared between the smooth, rounded cheeks of her bottom - were burned forever into his brain cells.
She ran her fingers through her still damp hair as she walked across his kitchen, and even the baggy shirt couldn’t hide the natural, sensuous sway of her hips. An hour earlier they’d been in his bed making love. Already he wanted her again. It would be worth letting breakfast get cold.
Eloa smiled at the way Paul was looking at her. She loved to see his desire for her burning is his eyes, and she loved fulfilling his desire, because she loved him. She went to him and kissed him softly. He held her close, and she felt the power of his need. Tonight she would quench his desire. She would let her passion wash over him until his fire was extinguished.
She loved being with Paul, loved the way he made her feel. With him, she wasn’t just the daughter of the powerful Caesar Mendoza. With him, she wasn’t the prim and proper Doctor Eloa Mendoza. No, with Paul Webster, she was a woman. He brought out the woman in her, and all the passion and fire that being a woman entailed.
“What are you going to do today, while I’m hard at work?” she asked. She hid her smile against his chest, because she already knew his plans.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe walk on the beach, or drive up into the hills…nothing special.”
She forgave him his lie, because it was a lie born of love. She knew that in truth today Paul was going to ask her father for permission to marry her.
**********
Caesar Mendoza smiled when he saw the man coming up the beach. He was early. Good. It showed respect. Caesar was one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in Brazil, and he always demanded respect.
As the man approached Caesar’s cell phone chirped. It was his son, the eldest of his two children.
“Yes Carlos?”
“We searched him, Papa. He’s clean.”
“Good,” Caesar said, watching the man’s shaved brown head gleam in the morning sun as he approached. “Go back to the house. I will see you there shortly.”
Caesar clicked his phone shut and scanned the area as el Negro approached. They were alone on the beach this morning. El Negro had requested this meeting in private. That was something that Caesar – a cautious man by nature and necessity – would never normally have agreed to. He hadn’t gone anywhere except to the bathroom without a bodyguard in nearly twenty years.
But he knew the reason for this man’s request. El Negro, whose name was Paul Webster from the United States, wanted to ask for Caesar’s daughter’s hand in marriage. That the man would request this private meeting to make his request was another sign of respect. Caesar liked that.
It wasn’t always so. When he’d first learned that his beloved Eloa was seeing a black from the United States he was angry. In his mind no man was good enough for his daughter, and certainly not such a man. It wasn’t particularly about race. There was plenty of African blood in Caesar’s own family, especially on his wife’s side. But it was the fact that the man was a black from the United States, a place where most Africans had devolved into criminals and lazy slackers – burdens on civilized society - that caused his disapproval.
He’d been opposed to his daughter’s relationship with Webster, but like her late mother, Eloa was stubborn. She was the only person living who dared defy him, and the only one from whom Caesar would allow defiance. From any other, it would mean certain death.
He’d had Webster investigated, and learned that he was a man of means, a wealthy investor from Atlanta, Georgia with a degree from Stanford. That calmed some of Caesar’s concerns. Still, it was nearly a year before he invited Webster to his estate.
And now this man, whom his precious daughter loved dearly, was about to ask permission to marry her.
Caesar extended his hand as Webster reached him. They shook, and Webster said, “Thank you Senor Mendoza, for meeting with me.”
Webster seemed nervous, as would any man who was about to ask a powerful man for his daughter’s hand in marriage.
“It’s my pleasure, Paul,” Caesar answered. He placed a reassuring his hand on Webster’s shoulder. “Come, let’s walk, and you can tell me what it is you wish to speak to me about.”
As they strolled down the beach, a shirtless and barefoot boy of about ten years old approached from up ahead. He carried a stack of sugar cane stalks under one skinny arm.
Caesar noticed that Webster watched the boy as he approached. Apparently in his nervous state he didn’t want to speak his request even in the presence of a child.
When the boy reached them he looked up at Webster and said, “O senhor, você gostariam de comprar uma cana de açúcar?”
Webster smiled down at the child. “Quanto?”
“Dez centavos,” the boy answered.
“Ah, ten cents,” Webster said. He reached into his pocket and extracted a dollar bill and held it out to the child. “Well, I have no coins, young man. Would you take a dollar instead for a sugar cane?”
The boy didn’t understand English, but the sight of the offered dollar made his eyes widen.
“Sim senhor,” the boy said anxiously.
Webster gave him the dollar. The boy handed him a cane of sugar and dashed away as if afraid that Webster might change his mind. He disappeared over a dune.
Caesar laughed. “It was very kind of you to give that child so much. I can see why you’ve won my daughter’s heart.”
Webster didn’t respond. His attention was on the sugar cane. He was twisting and bending it in his fingers, as if testing its resiliency.
“Ah, have you never eaten sugar from its natural source?” Caesar asked. “Here, let me show you…”
Caesar reached for the sugar cane, but Webster did a curious thing. He stepped away from Caesar, drawing the stalk of sugar away like a child protecting his toy from another child.
Caesar frowned. He wasn’t accustomed to being denied anything.
He started to speak, but suddenly Webster thrust the cane forward, driving it through Caesar Mendoza’s right eye and into his brain.
Caesar Mendoza gasped and clawed at the stalk for a moment, and then the wiring in his brain, torn loose by the intruding makeshift weapon, short-circuited. He collapsed onto his back and lay twitching in the sand.
Paul Webster – whose real name was Duncan Gray – stood over the convulsing man and waited. He was in no particular hurry. It had taken him a year and a half to get close to the drug lord Caesar Mendoza. He could wait a few moments more for him to die.
CHAPTER 2
On a warm summer night three years ago law enforcement officials raided an elegant colonial home located on a cul-de-sac in the suburbs of Atlanta. Their intelligence said that the house was occupied by a drug dealer who used his basement as a manufacturing facility for crack cocaine and ecstasy.
The Drug Enforcement Agency, backed by local police, burst through the doors and windows with as much noise and disruption as possible, just as they were trained to do. The operation might have gone beautifully, if the cops had invaded the right home.
The family sitting around their dinner table was terrified. Their frightened 13 year old son, who was in the den, ran to his family clutching a game pad in his hand. The first blast of gunfire sent him hurtling across the dining room to die at the feet of his screaming mother. Other adrenalin-pumped law enforcement officers opened fire, and in the space of fifteen seconds mother, son and teenage daughter lay dead or dying on their dining room floor.
Paul Webster survived the erroneous assault on his family, suffering serious but non-lethal wounds.
Wanting as little publicity as possible on this case, the state of Georgia settled his lawsuit quickly out of court, making Webster a wealthy man. The money meant nothing to him. It couldn’t replace his family. He took his fortune and left the country, not to be heard from again.
Duncan needed a foolproof false identity to get close to Caesar Mendoza, one that would pass the scrutiny of the most meticulous investigator. Paul Webster was perfect - a man with money who had no love for the United States government. When Duncan accepted the contract he was provided a dossier on Webster’s history and a birth certificate, driver’s license, and passport in Webster’s name, but with Duncan’s photograph. From the moment Duncan entered the airport in Miami in route to Brazil eighteen months ago he had been Paul Webster, wealthy widower from Georgia.
**********
The 757’s hydraulic system whined as its landing gear clunked and locked into place in preparation for landing. Duncan gazed through the window, watching as the California landscape rose to meet the plane. For the first time in a year and a half he was about to step onto US soil. He’d missed being home. He missed being himself.
He took the contract on Caesar Mendoza with the knowledge that getting close to the target would be a slow and meticulous undertaking. He knew that he might have to spend months trying to get near the man who was better protected than the president. But the payoff on this job would make him set for life. He’d be able to retire from the business, if that’s what he chose to do.
One of Mendoza’s businesses was the production and export of sugarcane. His company was the third largest producer of sugar in Brazil, and he’d made a fortune, much of it from exports to the United States.
Mendoza was also the head of one of the largest cocaine cartels in South America. Much of that export also went to the United States. The US government was aware of Mendoza’s illegal import. He was on their long list of targets in the war on drugs. It was accepted however, that winning that war or even winning small battles, was a slow process. And so in the last decade, between his sugar and drug exports, Caesar Mendoza had become a billionaire.
Five years ago Mendoza became the majority shareholder of Atlantic Sea Oil. Three years later, as the price of crude oil skyrocketed, Mendoza sold the precious liquid to selected energy providers in several countries, including in the United States, at a discounted cost. He stated that he wanted to assist people in need, wherever they might be, and therefore he priced his crude well below the price of his competitors. It was one thing to ship tons of cocaine into the United States every year. Undercutting the profits of corporate America was an entirely different matter. Caesar Mendoza had to be eliminated.
For three months Duncan watched Mendoza from afar. The man always traveled with at least three bodyguards, one of whom was sometimes his son Carlos. He never allowed himself to be exposed outdoors for more than a few moments when he was outside the ten foot stone walls of his 30 acre compound.
He traveled in different vehicles, and any vehicle was searched for explosives before Caesar was allowed anywhere near it.
There seemed to be no way Duncan could get close to the man, much less take him out. But Duncan found a way – through Mendoza’s daughter Eloa.
He didn’t want to think about Eloa, but he couldn’t get her out of his mind. He wondered what she might be doing right now – what she might be feeling. Her father was dead. Did she know he was responsible? Did she hate him now, after loving him for the past year?
Duncan told himself that it didn’t matter. He’d gone to Brazil to kill Caesar Mendoza. The most efficient way to get close to the drug lord had been through his daughter. He told himself that he hadn’t really cared about Eloa, that she was just a tool he’d needed to use to accomplish his assignment.
He was home now, back in the United States, and Eloa was back in Brazil. She was a part of his past. She didn’t matter anymore.
That’s what Duncan told himself.
He hoped that sooner, rather than later, he’d actually believe it.
© 2006 Christopher Bynum
www.christopherbynum.com
The Kanto Plain, Japan
Fifteen Years Ago
“How many have you killed?” she asked.
Duncan opened his eyes and looked up at her. The apartment’s tiny air conditioner hadn’t kept pace with their frenzied lovemaking, and Nikira’s golden skin glistened with perspiration as she straddled him on the tiny bed.
“What?”
Without breaking the rhythm of her hips she tossed her hair out of her face. “I said, how many people have you killed?”
Her black eyes locked on his – probing, piercing, demanding something that his instincts warned was best not to give. He gripped her waist and thrust upward, making her groan. “We’re not supposed to talk about that,” he said.
“We’re not supposed to fuck each other either,” Nikira gasped. “And yet here we are.”
Nikira smiled down at him from behind the strands of her ebony hair. A twinge of unease took the edge off his arousal. She looked like a hungry lioness peering between blades of high grass, yearning for the blood of some unwary prey. Lying beneath her, he suddenly he felt exposed…vulnerable.
“So tell me Duncan, how many?” she urged.
Instead of answering he pushed himself up off the bed, lifting her with him and making her laugh as he flipped her onto her back. The fact that she barely weighed one hundred and twenty pounds meant nothing. In close quarters she could kill a fully armed Special Forces trained Marine twice her size with only her hands and feet before he knew he was dead. And she would enjoy it.
That was the difference between them. Duncan killed for money. For him it was just business – how he made his living. Nikira Horikoshi killed because she loved it. For her, the thrill was worth much more than the pay. She would kill for nothing more than the pleasure of taking a life.
They were friends, and during they year they’d trained together in Japan they had become lovers. Still, Duncan felt better when he was on top and in a better position to defend himself.
Just in case.
----------
CHAPTER 1
Praia do Forte, Bahia, Brazil, 7 Years ago
He made breakfast for her –scrambled eggs fluffed and laced with diced tomatoes and green peppers, Canadian bacon, waffles topped with fresh sliced strawberries, and country sausage imported from the States – North Carolina specifically. The sausage had been hard to come by, but she was worth it.
It was Saturday morning, and he wished they had more time together. But she was going to work at noon at the clinic. She was a pediatrician, and once a month instead of working from her office she provided free care for children whose families couldn’t otherwise afford to pay. She was good that way, a warm and caring person, truly beautiful, inside and out.
“Paul, that smells wonderful,” she said behind him. He turned around to watch her come into the kitchen, fresh from her shower.
As always, the vision of Eloa Mendoza nearly took his breath away. Even though he’d seen her nearly every day for the past year, he couldn’t get used to her beauty. She wore a white tee-shirt that fell to mid-thigh and contrasted fetchingly with her dusky skin. When she wasn’t working she lived almost constantly in a bikini, and the Brazilian sun had burnished her skin a rich walnut brown. The memory of her tan line, which was truly just a line - a pale shoestring strip of flesh that ran from her crotch around her waist and disappeared between the smooth, rounded cheeks of her bottom - were burned forever into his brain cells.
She ran her fingers through her still damp hair as she walked across his kitchen, and even the baggy shirt couldn’t hide the natural, sensuous sway of her hips. An hour earlier they’d been in his bed making love. Already he wanted her again. It would be worth letting breakfast get cold.
Eloa smiled at the way Paul was looking at her. She loved to see his desire for her burning is his eyes, and she loved fulfilling his desire, because she loved him. She went to him and kissed him softly. He held her close, and she felt the power of his need. Tonight she would quench his desire. She would let her passion wash over him until his fire was extinguished.
She loved being with Paul, loved the way he made her feel. With him, she wasn’t just the daughter of the powerful Caesar Mendoza. With him, she wasn’t the prim and proper Doctor Eloa Mendoza. No, with Paul Webster, she was a woman. He brought out the woman in her, and all the passion and fire that being a woman entailed.
“What are you going to do today, while I’m hard at work?” she asked. She hid her smile against his chest, because she already knew his plans.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe walk on the beach, or drive up into the hills…nothing special.”
She forgave him his lie, because it was a lie born of love. She knew that in truth today Paul was going to ask her father for permission to marry her.
**********
Caesar Mendoza smiled when he saw the man coming up the beach. He was early. Good. It showed respect. Caesar was one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in Brazil, and he always demanded respect.
As the man approached Caesar’s cell phone chirped. It was his son, the eldest of his two children.
“Yes Carlos?”
“We searched him, Papa. He’s clean.”
“Good,” Caesar said, watching the man’s shaved brown head gleam in the morning sun as he approached. “Go back to the house. I will see you there shortly.”
Caesar clicked his phone shut and scanned the area as el Negro approached. They were alone on the beach this morning. El Negro had requested this meeting in private. That was something that Caesar – a cautious man by nature and necessity – would never normally have agreed to. He hadn’t gone anywhere except to the bathroom without a bodyguard in nearly twenty years.
But he knew the reason for this man’s request. El Negro, whose name was Paul Webster from the United States, wanted to ask for Caesar’s daughter’s hand in marriage. That the man would request this private meeting to make his request was another sign of respect. Caesar liked that.
It wasn’t always so. When he’d first learned that his beloved Eloa was seeing a black from the United States he was angry. In his mind no man was good enough for his daughter, and certainly not such a man. It wasn’t particularly about race. There was plenty of African blood in Caesar’s own family, especially on his wife’s side. But it was the fact that the man was a black from the United States, a place where most Africans had devolved into criminals and lazy slackers – burdens on civilized society - that caused his disapproval.
He’d been opposed to his daughter’s relationship with Webster, but like her late mother, Eloa was stubborn. She was the only person living who dared defy him, and the only one from whom Caesar would allow defiance. From any other, it would mean certain death.
He’d had Webster investigated, and learned that he was a man of means, a wealthy investor from Atlanta, Georgia with a degree from Stanford. That calmed some of Caesar’s concerns. Still, it was nearly a year before he invited Webster to his estate.
And now this man, whom his precious daughter loved dearly, was about to ask permission to marry her.
Caesar extended his hand as Webster reached him. They shook, and Webster said, “Thank you Senor Mendoza, for meeting with me.”
Webster seemed nervous, as would any man who was about to ask a powerful man for his daughter’s hand in marriage.
“It’s my pleasure, Paul,” Caesar answered. He placed a reassuring his hand on Webster’s shoulder. “Come, let’s walk, and you can tell me what it is you wish to speak to me about.”
As they strolled down the beach, a shirtless and barefoot boy of about ten years old approached from up ahead. He carried a stack of sugar cane stalks under one skinny arm.
Caesar noticed that Webster watched the boy as he approached. Apparently in his nervous state he didn’t want to speak his request even in the presence of a child.
When the boy reached them he looked up at Webster and said, “O senhor, você gostariam de comprar uma cana de açúcar?”
Webster smiled down at the child. “Quanto?”
“Dez centavos,” the boy answered.
“Ah, ten cents,” Webster said. He reached into his pocket and extracted a dollar bill and held it out to the child. “Well, I have no coins, young man. Would you take a dollar instead for a sugar cane?”
The boy didn’t understand English, but the sight of the offered dollar made his eyes widen.
“Sim senhor,” the boy said anxiously.
Webster gave him the dollar. The boy handed him a cane of sugar and dashed away as if afraid that Webster might change his mind. He disappeared over a dune.
Caesar laughed. “It was very kind of you to give that child so much. I can see why you’ve won my daughter’s heart.”
Webster didn’t respond. His attention was on the sugar cane. He was twisting and bending it in his fingers, as if testing its resiliency.
“Ah, have you never eaten sugar from its natural source?” Caesar asked. “Here, let me show you…”
Caesar reached for the sugar cane, but Webster did a curious thing. He stepped away from Caesar, drawing the stalk of sugar away like a child protecting his toy from another child.
Caesar frowned. He wasn’t accustomed to being denied anything.
He started to speak, but suddenly Webster thrust the cane forward, driving it through Caesar Mendoza’s right eye and into his brain.
Caesar Mendoza gasped and clawed at the stalk for a moment, and then the wiring in his brain, torn loose by the intruding makeshift weapon, short-circuited. He collapsed onto his back and lay twitching in the sand.
Paul Webster – whose real name was Duncan Gray – stood over the convulsing man and waited. He was in no particular hurry. It had taken him a year and a half to get close to the drug lord Caesar Mendoza. He could wait a few moments more for him to die.
CHAPTER 2
On a warm summer night three years ago law enforcement officials raided an elegant colonial home located on a cul-de-sac in the suburbs of Atlanta. Their intelligence said that the house was occupied by a drug dealer who used his basement as a manufacturing facility for crack cocaine and ecstasy.
The Drug Enforcement Agency, backed by local police, burst through the doors and windows with as much noise and disruption as possible, just as they were trained to do. The operation might have gone beautifully, if the cops had invaded the right home.
The family sitting around their dinner table was terrified. Their frightened 13 year old son, who was in the den, ran to his family clutching a game pad in his hand. The first blast of gunfire sent him hurtling across the dining room to die at the feet of his screaming mother. Other adrenalin-pumped law enforcement officers opened fire, and in the space of fifteen seconds mother, son and teenage daughter lay dead or dying on their dining room floor.
Paul Webster survived the erroneous assault on his family, suffering serious but non-lethal wounds.
Wanting as little publicity as possible on this case, the state of Georgia settled his lawsuit quickly out of court, making Webster a wealthy man. The money meant nothing to him. It couldn’t replace his family. He took his fortune and left the country, not to be heard from again.
Duncan needed a foolproof false identity to get close to Caesar Mendoza, one that would pass the scrutiny of the most meticulous investigator. Paul Webster was perfect - a man with money who had no love for the United States government. When Duncan accepted the contract he was provided a dossier on Webster’s history and a birth certificate, driver’s license, and passport in Webster’s name, but with Duncan’s photograph. From the moment Duncan entered the airport in Miami in route to Brazil eighteen months ago he had been Paul Webster, wealthy widower from Georgia.
**********
The 757’s hydraulic system whined as its landing gear clunked and locked into place in preparation for landing. Duncan gazed through the window, watching as the California landscape rose to meet the plane. For the first time in a year and a half he was about to step onto US soil. He’d missed being home. He missed being himself.
He took the contract on Caesar Mendoza with the knowledge that getting close to the target would be a slow and meticulous undertaking. He knew that he might have to spend months trying to get near the man who was better protected than the president. But the payoff on this job would make him set for life. He’d be able to retire from the business, if that’s what he chose to do.
One of Mendoza’s businesses was the production and export of sugarcane. His company was the third largest producer of sugar in Brazil, and he’d made a fortune, much of it from exports to the United States.
Mendoza was also the head of one of the largest cocaine cartels in South America. Much of that export also went to the United States. The US government was aware of Mendoza’s illegal import. He was on their long list of targets in the war on drugs. It was accepted however, that winning that war or even winning small battles, was a slow process. And so in the last decade, between his sugar and drug exports, Caesar Mendoza had become a billionaire.
Five years ago Mendoza became the majority shareholder of Atlantic Sea Oil. Three years later, as the price of crude oil skyrocketed, Mendoza sold the precious liquid to selected energy providers in several countries, including in the United States, at a discounted cost. He stated that he wanted to assist people in need, wherever they might be, and therefore he priced his crude well below the price of his competitors. It was one thing to ship tons of cocaine into the United States every year. Undercutting the profits of corporate America was an entirely different matter. Caesar Mendoza had to be eliminated.
For three months Duncan watched Mendoza from afar. The man always traveled with at least three bodyguards, one of whom was sometimes his son Carlos. He never allowed himself to be exposed outdoors for more than a few moments when he was outside the ten foot stone walls of his 30 acre compound.
He traveled in different vehicles, and any vehicle was searched for explosives before Caesar was allowed anywhere near it.
There seemed to be no way Duncan could get close to the man, much less take him out. But Duncan found a way – through Mendoza’s daughter Eloa.
He didn’t want to think about Eloa, but he couldn’t get her out of his mind. He wondered what she might be doing right now – what she might be feeling. Her father was dead. Did she know he was responsible? Did she hate him now, after loving him for the past year?
Duncan told himself that it didn’t matter. He’d gone to Brazil to kill Caesar Mendoza. The most efficient way to get close to the drug lord had been through his daughter. He told himself that he hadn’t really cared about Eloa, that she was just a tool he’d needed to use to accomplish his assignment.
He was home now, back in the United States, and Eloa was back in Brazil. She was a part of his past. She didn’t matter anymore.
That’s what Duncan told himself.
He hoped that sooner, rather than later, he’d actually believe it.
© 2006 Christopher Bynum
www.christopherbynum.com
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Push_Nevahda on
-
Interesting! A few nidbits here and there, but really good!
-
Permalink Reply by Christopher Bynum on -
Thanks, Push.
ckb
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