prologue
August 2018
The summer had been unusually dry, but last evening’s skies had opened and unleashed the wrath of God on the small Rhode Island peninsula known as Barrington. The sun was playing hard to get among the pines, casting shadows that danced and shimmered on the wet asphalt. It was four o’clock in the afternoon on a Monday, and Angela Brennan was five miles into her six-mile run. The first three miles were for her health, the fourth was for stamina, and the last two were punishment, plain and simple.
Cresting the hill on Chachapacasset Road (her kids never did learn how to spell the name of the road correctly), the expanse of Narragansett Bay sparkled before her, and Angela allowed herself a moment of quiet contemplation as she inhaled the exquisite scents of late summer. Freshly cut grass and the sunbaked seaweed of low tide—the smells of home. She unfastened her hair tie, letting her wavy blond hair cascade lazily down her back as she walked down the hill. Her long, tanned legs were tired from the run, yet maintained a bounce borne of endurance and purpose.
Approaching Barrington Beach, Angela expected to see teenagers eking out the last remnants of a summer filled with tanning, swimming, and furtive drinking. But to her surprise, the beach was barren, save for an old man about two hundred yards away, swinging a metal detector. She slowed her pace and surveyed the houses facing the water, then waved to a friend who sat reading on a balcony. Turning left, she jogged a half mile along the water’s edge until she came to a dilapidated dock that extended from an abandoned home on Rumstick Road. After the elderly owner had passed away several years ago, the once-breathtaking home had become a pawn in an inheritance battle among the woman’s grown children. The result was that no one maintained the grounds and the entire estate had fallen into disrepair. The old wooden dock, once a diving platform for local children, listed to the right and caution tape had been wound around it.
Ducking under the tape, Angela walked behind a secluded piling, squatted, and pushed a heavy rock until it rolled about a foot away from its original resting place. She then used her hands to claw through the sand until her fingers caught the edge of something hard. Glancing about to ensure she was still alone, Angela tugged at the object until the sand relinquished its hold with a violent sucking sound.
The gun was encased in heavy plastic, and she was meticulous as she unwrapped it. The plastic cocoon had done its job; the pistol was as pristine as the day she’d purchased it.
First, do no harm—a line from the Hippocratic oath she’d taken when she’d earned her medical degree from Dartmouth. And she wouldn’t do any harm. Not any more harm than she’d already done. Not yet, anyway. Not just yet.
Elizabeth B. Splaine spent eleven years working in health care before switching careers to become a professional opera singer and voice teacher. Six years ago she turned her creative mind to writing and hasn’t looked back. Elizabeth has written the Dr. Julian Stryker series of “Blind” thrillers, as well as two children’s books. When not writing, Elizabeth teaches classical voice in Rhode Island where she lives with her husband, sons, and her dogs.