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UNAVAILABLE
He started with the website nomorefear.biz. There wasn’t much to it, just a black screen with a simple quote: “No passion so effectually robs the mind of all its powers of acting and reasoning as fear.” When he clicked on the sentence, he was taken to another page, featuring the image of a man embracing a weeping woman and a paragraph:
Maybe you’ve lost someone to violence, or perhaps you have been the victim of a violent crime. Either way, your life has been altered and a hole has been punched open in your world. Through it comes the most malignant, destructive monster of all: FEAR. More vicious than any violent criminal, more evil than the deeds of any killer, fear will rob you of what’s left of your life. There’s only one way out of the haunted forest: You must go through. You must face what you most fear. We can show you how.
There was a number to call, and he was surprised to see that the area code was local. He cast about
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“I don’t understand. There’s some kind of military connection to Grief Intervention Services?” Harrison prodded finally.“Hmm,” Mike said, mouth still full. “Sorry, I haven’t eaten all day. Alan Parker was a former Navy SEAL. One of his daughters was the victim of a serial killer by the name of Frank Geary. He and his wife, Janet Parker, founded an organization called the Families of the Victims of Frank Geary, after Geary was released in what many considered to be a travesty of justice. Then Janet Parker lost it and killed Frank Geary, burned down his house.”Harrison could almost smell the scent on the wind.“The organization disbanded, but Alan Parker kept lobbying for evidence retesting,” Mike went on. “Eventually it came to light that it might have been Marlowe Geary, Frank’s son, who killed Parker’s daughter. Parker disappeared for a while after that, then reappeared as the
THE VENGEFUL LUNA DO NOT DISTURB
“What are you doing with yourself, anyway, huh?” he went on. “Are you crazy or what? You don’t look like you’re all there, Lolita. That’s why I’m willing to help you. No one wants you to get hurt - any worse than you’ve been hurt already.”I tightened the towel around myself, edged closer to the wall. I couldn’t think of how to respond.“I’ll be waiting, watching,” he said, and got up with a groan from the bed and took the DO NOT DISTURB sign from the door and laid it on the table. “All I need you to do is unlock the door and hang this sign outside when he falls asleep. Then go in the bathroom and lie down in the tub. I’ll knock when it’s safe to come out.” With his free hand, he took a thick packet of cash from his pocket. “I’ll give you this, and I’ll drop you off at a bus station.”“What makes you think I’ll do any of
THE VENGEFUL LUNA WHERE IT BEGAN
My father stares straight ahead for a second, then lowers his head and releases a long, slow breath. We both know he’s not coming with me. I don’t know the reasons, but I know he’s not capable of going any further. He has always done only what he was able to do. Maybe that’s true of all of us. Maybe it’s just that when it’s your parents, their shortfalls are so much more heartbreaking.“Look, kid,” he says, and then stops. I hope he’s not going to launch into some monologue about how he’s failed as a father and how sorry he is. I don’t have time, and I don’t want to hear it. We sit in silence while he seems to be striking up the courage to say something.“It doesn’t have to be like this, you know?” he says finally. “How about we just call the cops?”“They have my daughter.”“Lolita...” he says, then stops again. Whatever he wanted
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THE VENGEFUL LUNA REGRETS
“Our rage was the driving force in our lives for years. It consumed us.” He releases a throaty cough, then pulls a pack of Marlboro reds from his pocket, lights one with a Zippo, and takes a long, deep drag. He has the look of a lifelong smoker, gray and drawn.“You know, the thing was, I was a terrible father. Absent a lot, distant when I was around. I never so much as held my daughter or told her I loved her in all the years she was alive. I provided for her, sure, roof over her head, nice things, college. That’s what I knew how to do. That’s all I thought a father had to do. The point is, I never devoted much of myself to her until after she’d been taken from me. But I was a berserker in the crusade for justice against Frank Geary. I think Melissa would have been surprised by my devotion. I think she died believing I didn’t love her.”I don’t know what to say to him. I’m not sure why he’s telling me t
THE VENGEFUL LUNA TACTICS
I notice how still he is. There was so much anxiety and adrenaline living inside me that I couldn’t keep myself from fidgeting, shifting my weight from foot to foot, pacing a few steps away, then back toward him. But he is fixed and solid. He keeps his hands in his pockets, his eyes locked on some spot off in the distance. All there is to him is his raspy voice and the story he tells.“When I went into remission, I started an organization called Grief Intervention Services with some friends of mine to help other victims and families of victims face their fear and heal.”I draw in a sharp breath as I remember. “Your website. I visited it after I heard about you on television.”He nods. “The website captured your IP address. It was only a matter of days before we traced it to Gray Powers. It was only a little while longer before we connected him to you. Just one visit confirmed that you were Lolita March.”I stare a
THE VENGEFUL LUNA FIND A WAY
I feel that adrenaline pump again as my heart starts to thud.“What are you talking about?”“It’s all up to you now, Lolita.”“I don’t understand,” I say, moving closer to him. My voice has taken on the quality of a plea. “Where are we? Where’s my daughter?”I’ve never felt so frightened or so desperate, but he just moves away from the car. I see he is going to leave me here. “The keys are in the ignition. There’s a gun in the glove box. At the end of the road, you make a right. You’ll know where you are once you’re driving.”He starts walking away from me then, moving toward the trees that surround the airfield. “You need to be strong now, Lolita. Stronger than you’ve ever been. For yourself, for your daughter, for me.”“You never needed me to lead you to Marlowe,” I call after him. “You knew where he was
THE VENGEFUL LUNA TRAPS
She must have seen the despair on his face, because she moved back over to him and placed a hand on his leg. He couldn’t even look at her.“Everybody makes mistakes, Ray,” she said, her voice very low and gentle. He’d heard her talk to the baby in this tone. “Everybody stumbles. It’s what you do then that makes or breaks your life. It’s what you do after you fall that’s the measure of who you are.”He left the room then. She called after him quietly, but he kept walking. He walked out onto his back porch and gazed up at the sky. He didn’t want to be in the same room with her. He couldn’t stand for her to see him cry.“What’s going on?” Harrison was snapped back to the present by Ella’s voice. She stood in the open doorway looking different somehow, a little angry maybe. She looked fit and strong dressed in jeans and a black T-shirt, sneakers on her feet. She didn’t se
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