THE LADY KILLER: intense, suspenseful, gripping literary fiction Read Online Free PDF

yourself, not worse, otherwise what’s the use.
    She wanted a trophy and, I believe, she figured immediately she’d found it in him. The fact that he was five years younger than her meant nothing. She considered herself a physical dynamo and in fact had proved it by working on the ranch of her ex-husband. Sandy had nothing to do; millions in the bank besides other investments and an older mother over the hill who lived in Redwood Grove that she sometimes catered to.
    This woman was far wealthier than her daughter and substantially more cultured. It was difficult to understand how one’d raised the other under the same roof, but such is the way mismatches sometimes transpire. Then to think one of them’d develop a healthy relation with a derelict psychopath who’d nearly killed you, to say nothing of visiting them in captivity, is just perhaps too outlandish, although rebellion can lead one into very troubled areas. One has only to look into the associations of some of our greatest tyrants of history to witness such bizarre alignments.
    When Hartwig arrived at the beach house, however, he had a far different surrounding to inspect than just a few oddities in an old houseboat in a run-down area. And this gave him pleasure. Convinced him he was somebody just to be able to feel part of amenities like that if I’m correct. First of all you know how the small town of Oceanview is oriented.
    A long densely forested ridge slopes gently down to the ocean where the little settlement lies at the foot, a regular cluster of homes and businesses in its center, which gradually thin out along the white sandy beach. It’s a wild community where everyone knows everyone else, what they do, how they are and who they’re sleeping with. According to Sandy that was everyone with everyone else, hyperbole I’m certain though with a reasonable amount of substance until one was reminded of Peyton Place. Remember that book. Lousy as it was it’s hard to forget
    “The notion,” Hammond remarked, “would be broached by her, naturally, to rationalize her own promiscuity …”
    “If true … if true,” I reminded him.
    Sandy’s home, by the way, was a ranch style wooden structure with beamed ceilings, hardwood floors and a walk in fireplace. Windows faced the ocean side where stood a weather-beaten deck and a hot tub. The furniture, while adequate, showed gauche taste as though the person who lived there had little time to spend but was somehow rushing through life and what’s more would rather have it that way.
    “As you can see,” she’d said to Hartwig while the two sat at the round oak table in the kitchen before the ocean, “I don’t have a lot of books like you have at your place but I’m very interested in reading what’s current. If you …”
    “Why yes,” said our predator taking her hand. “I’m sure I can help you there. I do a lot of reading …” A true statement, of course, since a man in his position has the free time to do whatever he wants. Naturally he has to want to. Hartwig had always read extensively. As I said he was well educated.
    The two walked hand in hand over the beach, spread out a blanket and lay next to one another in the sun behind a clump of bushes out of the wind. She in her white bikini, he in his navy boxer trunks. As beautiful as that beach was the weather was generally foggy and cold. On certain days you might be comfortable in a bathing suit, those were exceptions. After a quick swim, the ocean was literally icy, and a rapid trot to the bedroom where a warm shower awaited, the two headed right back to the bedroom, remained there until dusk, watched the sunset whereupon Sandy’d barbecue something outside, enter the living room with a platter of steak or chicken and the two’d settle down to a meal by candle light, the churning of the waves crashing outside, not unsimilar to the convulsions within their digestive tracts. Pleasant but violent like our universe.
    For Hartwig it was a far