Chasing China White by Allan Leverone (best time to read books TXT) 📗

away. He stood in the doorway, staring at his brother’s lifeless body, angry with Derek, furious with himself for not seeing until it was too late what should have been obvious.

He was still screaming when the cops came to the door and led him away.

EPILOGUE

“You couldn’t have saved him, you know,” Brenna said. The statement sounded almost foreign to Greg as he sipped his drink. He understood the words but couldn’t quite wrap his head around their meaning.

“I should have seen it sooner. The way his whole manner changed almost instantly, the way he morphed from nervous and desperate and stressed fugitive junkie to calm and accepting human being. It should have been a tip-off.”

“They say people who are suicidal become calm and pleasant, cheerful almost, once they’ve committed to the decision to take their own lives. It sounds like that’s what happened with Derek.”

“That’s exactly what happened,” Greg agreed. “And I should have recognized it sooner.”

“But you still couldn’t have saved him,” his wife insisted.

“That’s not true. I almost had him. If I’d started out from behind that damned counter a half-second sooner, or if I hadn’t slipped on the blood, or if—”

“But that’s my point,” Brenna insisted. “Even if you’d managed to tackle him and keep him inside the diner, you would only have delayed the inevitable.”

“He admitted to me that he didn’t have the balls to do it himself,” Greg said miserably. “If I had managed to keep him from bolting out the door, he wouldn’t have committed suicide.”

“He would have found a way to make it happen. Maybe not at that moment, but later in the day, or the next day, or next week or next month. He’d made the decision, Greg.”

He nodded, not sure he agreed with his wife but not sure he didn’t, either. One thing he was sure about was that he loved the sound of her voice. Over time he’d forgotten how much he enjoyed just chatting with her. The circumstances were ghastly but the company was special, just the two of them, sitting in a dark corner of a dive bar, talking like they hadn’t taken the time to talk in months.

Years, maybe.

And while he didn’t think he would ever get over the horror of seeing his brother ripped to shreds by dozens of bullets right before his eyes, in some strange way he felt as complete as he had in a very long time. Seeing his wife held at knifepoint had crystallized his feelings about her, and about his marriage, in a way that probably nothing else could have.

Brenna was the one he wanted. He’d been impetuous and stupid and hurtful with his affair, as she’d been with hers. But between seeing her in danger, and then seeing the events unfold at the diner—he still didn’t know the name of the damned place, even after all that had happened there—Greg’s eyes had been opened.

He was grateful she had agreed to try to work things out, and while there was a lot of work to be done to repair the damage they’d both caused, he was committed to doing so and he knew Brenna was as well.

He thought Derek would be happy to know he’d played a critical role in saving his brother’s marriage, even if it had been unintentional on his part and accomplished in the most horrifying of ways.

He had to think so. Had to believe Derek’s pain-filled life and death—and the damage his brother did, the people he hurt and the ones he killed—had resulted in something positive and good, even if it was something as minor in the grand scheme of things as refocusing his brother on what was important in his own life.

Because otherwise, what the hell did any of it mean?

Back to TOC

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

In the spring of 2011 I read a novella by Tom Piccirilli titled Every Shallow Cut. It was dark and gritty, a noir/crime piece written by an author I already greatly admired for the consistently high quality of his work.

But this was different. This was something special. In a review on Amazon I called Every Shallow Cut “a noir masterpiece…a red and raw nerve that will punch you in the head and keep smacking you until you look straight into the eyes of your own fears and insecurities. It’s the best thing I’ve read this year.”

I really missed the mark with that review, because Piccirilii’s novella was more than the best thing I read in 2011. It was one of the best things I’ve ever read, maybe THE best. For years it’s haunted me. When I finished reading it, I vowed I would eventually write something that might come close to matching the emotional impact Piccirilii’s work had on me.

Chasing China White is that story. I may not quite reach the razor’s edge Piccirilli walked in his novella—it’s tough to equal perfection—but if I didn’t get there it’s not for lack of trying. I tell myself he would have enjoyed the story and appreciated the effort, but there’s no way to ever know, since Tom Piccirilli died much too young in the summer of 2015.

I don’t often encourage people to put down my work. It’s damned hard to attract readers, and I look at each one as a precious gift, a valuable opportunity to entertain someone for a little while and maybe at the same time earn a loyal fan.

But let this be the exception. If you’ve never read Every Shallow Cut, or aren’t familiar with the work of the man who inspired Chasing China White, do yourself a favor. Go buy it and read it.

Then you’ll understand.

I started work on my first novel in the fall of 2006, with no idea what I was getting into and no clue whether I would even be able to finish it. In the thirteen years since, I’ve written twenty novels and five novellas, as well as countless short stories, and through it all, one person has stood