Okie dokie, here's the scoop. Something is wrong with my computer and I am not able to upate my main website www.sandratuttle.com Luckily, my blogger is web based and works beautifully. So instead of putting my book excerpt on my website as per normal, I am blogging it.
Now, we know why as far as location is concerned, but not why the blasted thing was written in the first place. I have been rewriting book 1, Inevitable of the Just Sam series. The process is extremely slow going but any progress is good right?
So, was the first version of chapter 1 bad? No, not at all, but upon completeing the rough draft and a few edits of the books, I decided my book needed a little more focus on certain issues. I also decided that Samantha needed a little more maturity than what I had written before. Also, the initial first scene of the book, while funny to me, had little to do with the rest of the book. A rewrite ensued and here is the result.
Let me know what you think...
Chapter 1:
Talking Heads
“Burning Down the House”
Friday, January 13th
Crime doesn’t pay. Everyone knows that. It’s a good thing I wasn’t doing this for the money.
Eyes squeezed shut, I turned the knob to the back door, the only thing between me and phase one of my criminal career, when I was interrupted by a young happy voice.
“Hey Samantha, kick some ass… uh… butt for me tonight.” Summer’s voice rang clear and bubbly until her swearing snafu, then her cheeks turned pink and her downcast face muffled the rest of my ten year old step daughter’s statement.
I released the doorknob and turned around with a forced smile on my face. The swearing was probably my fault; lord knows I can never keep it under control. It took Summer and I a long time to be at ease with one another. I didn’t want to ruin our relationship by making a big deal out of her swearing just because of my conscience. I forced my smile even bigger and winked at her like the conspirator she knew me to be.
Summer’s mouth opened in a little “O” shape of surprise before her stick straight blonde hair flew around her head in a perfect arc as she sliced her hand in the air with a “Hiii-ya!” She proceeded to jump kick our mustard yellow fridge, a relic from the seventies. The floor of our trailer bounced despite her slight weight. Too many kung fu movies for that girl.
Normally I felt guilty going to the martial arts dojo every Friday. I mean, what kind of step mother needs to beat people up once a week to stay sane? For as long as I can remember, I’ve had an itch to do battle and sparring in a controlled environment was preferable to my teenage street fighting. First swearing and then beating people up… how many more items could I check on the list of bad things mothers do? Even still, I would’ve preferred a normal level of guilt to the crushing weight I felt now. At least sparring was legal. My plan tonight was illegal in every way I could think of—and yet it needed to be done.
I had to break into my boss’s office.
I forced the thought from my mind and faced the door again. The door represented the threshold of my black and white world and the grayish one on the other side. Surely doing something technically “illegal” wasn’t always bad. I grabbed the doorknob and turned, but chickened out at the last moment. I stopped turning the knob and tilted my head over my shoulder. “Okay, I’m really leaving now. Luke, make sure you keep an eye on Summer.”
All I got in return was a “Yeah, yeah” and a muffled, “Leave already.”
Luke, my husband, played drums as a hobby, one he would’ve liked to turn into a career until his ex died and he got “saddled” with Summer. The loud noise of concerts affected his hearing and caused him to talk louder than most people. He knew this of course, and didn’t seem to care that I could hear his rude remarks.
Before I could let his behavior affect my confidence any more than it had over the years, I wrenched the knob and stepped over the threshold. Some things, even illegal things, are easier than facing the mistakes we’ve already made in our own life. I slammed the door behind me. It rebounded back open and hit my ass. I grabbed the outside handle and bumped the door with my hip until I heard the click.
The outside light popped on and I checked the air for a swarm of mosquitoes or love bugs. I relaxed when I remembered it was January and that even though Florida was warm in January, it wasn’t warm enough for the common pests to be out in force.
Summer’s smiling face appeared in the panes of glass in the window next to the door. Her sporadically toothed grin and floppy wave made me smile. She tapped her fingers in the familiar bum buda bum bum pattern. I bumped the heel of my hand on the door twice in answer, my final goodbye for the night.
The light winked out and I stood on the few wooden steps in darkness. I took a deep breath and tiptoed down the steps. I had secret dealings tonight. I may as well get used to being sneaky.
I fisted my hands and gritted my teeth. Before self doubt could trickle in, I jumped into my ’88 red Chevy Nova, started it with a roar—it needed a new muffler—and pulled out onto Green Swamp Way in the direction of my work—an archaeological dig site. Green Swamp Way was Lakeland, Florida’s answer to Rodeo drive, only for swamp buggy enthusiasts, hog hunters and bullfrog shiners instead of high end shoppers.
Dilapidated trailer after dilapidated trailer zoomed by my window as I sped down the straight road. Nice thing about Florida being flat—you could speed on almost any road. I let my lead foot off the gas pedal as I recalled where I was going and what I’d be doing once I got there.
Fortunately this archaeology job was only a few miles from my house. That would limit the amount of time I had to chicken out.
Unfortunately this archaeology job was only a few miles from my house. That would limit the amount of time I needed to mentally prepare myself for this. I’d never pulled a B&E before.
Pulled a B&E? When have I ever talked like that? Sure I dabbled on the wild side a bit in high school, but I hadn’t done anything illegal except get into physical fights with people who already wanted to scrap. Now I was referring to breaking and entering by some cool slang term, like it was perfectly acceptable?
Yeah, some great role model for Summer, I am.
Despite lifting my foot off the gas pedal, the dirt turnoff to the dig site came into view sooner than I would’ve liked. I slid onto the access road and flicked off my lights. I coasted past the first strand of cypress trees and stopped the car.
I took a deep breath, focused on my skewed reflection in the windshield and pretended that talking to oneself was normal.
“I have to do this, right?” the tentative part of me whispered.
The moral part of me answered, “There is no other way.” That part of my brain raged at the idea of breaking into anywhere, but agreed that Orson Naston, my former boss, the one who fired me earlier this morning, should not be able to get away with what he was doing.
I stared at the reflection of my white knuckled hands gripping the steering wheel. “He’s the scum of the earth Sam, you have to do this! You have to break in. There’s no other option. There’s no telling what kind of horrors Orson has already performed on your artifact.”
My knuckles grew even whiter. He’d probably already taken the skull out of the protective case and breathed on it. All kinds of carbonized material would be on the skull by now. That’d fuck up my Radio Carbon 14 dating for sure. Not that it was my dating anymore.
Orson shouldn’t be able to sweep the archaeological finds under the carpet just so he can build yet another subdivision. As the contractor, he hired me as an archaeologist to do a cursory inspection and clear his site of being of any historical importance, except his site couldn’t be cleared. I’d found something, a big something in fact, something that no one else has ever found. The skull of an ancient breed of wolf that never before existed in the historical record, and certainly wouldn’t be found in a strata, or dirt layer, from when Florida was underwater.
That sounds a lot cooler than it is. I’ve found several somethings in my short career that no one else has ever found, and those somethings are exactly the reason my career is so short and I’d been forced to take Orson’s stupid job. Clearing a site for a slimy construction contractor is not what most archaeologists dream of doing, but no respectable archaeologist would include me on a dig. Apparently I’m a “loose cannon and a shoddy archaeologist prone to fantastical ideas.” In reality I’m an excellent archaeologist who is not afraid of the truth. It’s just that my finds didn’t fit into the accepted theories of archaeology and that challenged other archaeologists. That’s when I learned that threatened academics are some of the scariest mother fuckers out there.
Yesterday I reported my find to my boss, Orson, via his preferred method, a sticky note, and today, my day off, he fired me, before I’d been able to secure my artifact and send it off to the lab to be dated. My artifact was in the hands of a morally corrupt buffoon who had no training in archaeology whatsoever. What did he, a construction contractor, think to do with my artifact?
He doesn’t want any artifacts to be found on his land or he won’t be able to develop it. He would destroy the skull and any evidence of historical importance. I had to recover it before he did any permanent damage. If that involved B&E then so be it. Orson was practically putting a gun to my head and making me perform criminal acts, right? Any sane person would surely understand that. Well, any archaeologist would at least.
What kind of ass backward dickweed would fire an archaeologist before she could find out the age of her newest find? Not a very smart one, I’ll tell you that much. It took me weeks of careful extraction to relieve my artifact from the swamp soil. If Orson so much as looked at my artifact askance, I couldn’t be held responsible for what I’d do. I had to save my artifact, my skull, from him.
Finally resolved in my decision, I drove down the twisting driveway with my headlights off. I don’t know why I did this, my barely hanging in there muffler still sounded like a rhino on the rampage, but the lights, well surely someone would see the lights. About a quarter of a mile away from the archaeological dig, I put the car in neutral and coasted. Although, considering the site was close to being in the middle of a Florida swamp, the car didn’t make it very far down the muddy driveway on its own. One hundred feet later and not nearly close enough to my destination as I would’ve liked, I hopped out of my car.
“Mother fucker,” I mumbled through gritted teeth.
Why hadn’t I thought to change my clothes? My aqua baby girl tee, pale skin and light blue jeans glowed in the light of the almost full moon. My long red hair no doubt flared like a homing beacon. Lord knows I have plenty of black clothes in my wardrobe. Why the hell hadn’t I thought to put some on?
Because, my little inner voice told me, you weren’t thinking clearly at all. You were simply enraged about being fired and you acted rashly. Imagine that. You, of all people doing something dangerous. Isn’t that how you landed in this situation in the first place? Whisking off into parts unknown to relieve the earth of strange things that would’ve been better off left there? Eagerly reporting your findings without thought to how they would be received? Being shunned from the world of academia and instead of tucking your tail and sucking it up, what did you do? You donned your silly super hero cape of truth and pontificated to well known experts on how they should do their jobs.
I squeezed my fist tight and the jolt of pain from my fingernails piercing my skin helped me tune out the facetious voice in my head and forge ahead. Trudging through the mud became difficult.
I knew this well, I’d trudged through the muck every day, save one day a week off, for the past six months.
I ground my teeth to prevent the string of expletives from escaping my mouth. It stormed earlier today and the muddy ground was wet and littered with twigs, making for uneven footing. I lifted my shoed foot from the muck with a sucking noise and headed toward the small work trailer on the other side of the bend. Peeking through the gaps in the cypress trees I saw lights shining from inside the windows of the aged metal trailer. I jumped into a strand of trees between me and remaining thirty feet to the trailer.
Shit. Orson had no reason to work late. Hell, the asswipe hardly worked at all. Why would he be here? In front of the decrepit temporary structure sat Orson’s shiny black BMW and despite the mud splatters around the wheel wells the car looked amazing. Amazing and ill fitting with the surroundings. Really, who drove a BMW into a swamp?
I tried to tiptoe through the muck to avoid the sucking noise and alerting my presence to whomever occupied the building, but putting all of the weight on a small portion of my body turned out to be a mistake. My foot sunk into the mud to my ankle. I tugged slightly and tried to release the suction but no amount of slight pressure would remove my foot. I braced my hands against a live oak tree, and tugged hard. The thwup of my foot releasing from the suctioned mud rang loud and clear, silencing any and all noise made in the swamp. No buzz of large scary insects. No bellowing or hissing of alligators. No croaking of bullfrogs. Just silence.
All I could hear was my heart pumping and my lungs breathing in the moist swamp smell, both rich and disgusting in scent. Rain in the north smelled like worms to me. Rain in the south, in the swampy south, smelled like unmentionable things even the worst of landfills couldn’t hope to duplicate.
As soon as I thought it was safe to move again, the door to the trailer opened. I peeked around the huge live oak tree. Luckily, most of the trees had Spanish moss dangling around, making it much easier for me to see the person in the doorway than for them to see me, but that didn’t stop my heart from beating a mile a minute like a cornered rabbit.
My lungs took in enough air to get me through an explanation if caught by Orson, but the air rushed out as I viewed the silhouette in the doorway. Orson’s frame towered over everyone in the way that church spires tower over cities—all tall and spindly, but the male frame in the doorway stood at a normal height and filled out his clothes nicely.
Shit. Someone else occupied the office? I hadn’t planned on anyone being there, but an unknown entity was exactly that, unknown. Should I walk up and pretend like I’m supposed to be there? After all, I was the presiding archaeologist on this dig, I had more of a right to be there than this schmuck. I stepped around the tree with my shoulders back and resolve cemented, only to see a second man with a familiar willowy stature step into the doorway.
Fuck. Maybe I won’t be playing it cool. I stepped back behind the tree, but kept my eyes peering over the edge.
“It’s probably just a rabbit.” Orson’s low dulcet tone, contrary to his personality, flowed over the heavy air.
His voice, his damned voice, was the reason I took the job in the first place. Surely someone with a voice that nice over the phone would be delightful to work for? Oh, how wrong I was.
“Naston, you’ve never really embraced your senses. It doesn’t smell like a rabbit. Why I bothered to turn you, I’ll never know.”
Smell? Are they talking about me? They can smell me? Over the swamp must? What the fuck!
“You shouldn’t be here,” said a new voice from directly behind me.
I flung my body around and flattened it against the tree. In front of me stood a man dressed head to foot in black. His button down shirt had the first few buttons open and his dress pants drew a long straight line to his shiny shoes. Shiny shoes? In the swamp? I glanced around for foot prints but didn’t see any. The tall Nordic looking man with long blond hair, chilly blue green eyes and perfect features looked like something off the cover of a bodice ripper. His good looks were intimidating and had an air of danger to them, that, damn him, I responded to in an unusual way—speechlessness.
“You need to leave.”
His polished voice made it even more difficult to speak, but I swallowed my awe and replaced it with anger. Where the hell had this guy come from?
“Maybe you should leave,” I tossed back.
I’m not afraid of a one on one confrontation. I’ve been trained to not only defend myself, but to go on the offensive when needed. No hot pampered model was going to frighten me with his good looks. Not doubt the muscles were all for show and the 6’4 behemoth didn’t know what to do with them. I may be a curvy 5’4 but what muscles I had, I knew how to use. I stepped away from the tree and squared my shoulders. The branches above swayed, letting moonlight breech their defenses.
Some sort of recognition flashed in his eyes.
Ahh good, he identified me as a threat.
“It can’t be. It’s too early yet.” His soft voice seemed more for himself than for me.
A creak directly behind me caused me to whirl around. The well built man descended the few rickety stairs of the trailer. Surely the noise sounded a lot closer than that? I shook off the eerie feeling. Fight or flight mode always made my senses more aware.
I watched with a keen eye, flicking back and forth between the well built man stalking closer to me, Orson hovering in the doorway and keeping an ear out of the Nordic model behind me.
When my eyes flicked to the doorway yet another dude stepped in the doorway. What the fuck, are we tailgating at the local archaeological dig or what? This guy had shoulder length hair and was nearly as tall as Orson, but slightly more muscular. I ceased noticing his body when he turned sideways and I could discern what he was holding from his silhouette.
“Oh no, he didn’t.” I stepped out from the tree and headed straight for the guy. He held my skull, my lovely new artifact in his hands. No protective case shielded it from rogue carbon particles that may affect the Radio Carbon 14 dating that still needed to be done. He was corrupting my artifact. I charged at him with more vigor.
I hadn’t made it out of the strand of trees when a large steely hand clamped my shoulder and held me in place, causing me to focus on a more pressing matter than my livelihood. On instinct, I grabbed the Nordic dude’s hand, twisted my body around to face him and made to toss him over my shoulder but he didn’t budge, not one single centimeter. He stood standing perfectly still in the mud without so much as a speck of dirt anywhere, not even on his shiny black dress shoes. That’s when I knew I was in trouble with this guy. He had muscle, knew how to use it and despite this being my domain for the last six months, somehow he knew the terrain better than I. A lot of determining how to fight is the terrain. One would fight different in rocky terrain than one would on a sandy beach. I worked on this muddy earth almost every day for the past half a year and never managed to come home clean, even on dry days. This wet day proved to be difficult for me, but this guy somehow mastered the art of walking in muck. I’d been outsmarted and out gunned. It pissed me off to no end. I should’ve read the situation better.
I stared into his eyes and didn’t blink. I sized him up as I would any opponent. He didn’t look away or even flinch at my unyielding stare. He just stood there as if he’d been waiting his whole life for me to inspect him.
A smile tugged the corner of my mouth. This guy knew how to be a worthy opponent. He had all the advantages, mass, terrain, hell even disorienting good looks.
A twig snapped behind me. I tried to turn but the hand of iron on my shoulder stopped me. A breeze suddenly whipped past me and swept around the tree in an unnatural way that had chills running up my spine.
I craned my neck as much as I could, but I still couldn’t see anything of worth. Twigs snapped behind me again, but now they were traveling away from me.
The hand on my shoulder pushed me up against a tree, forcing my head to snap back around to face him. The Nordic model leaned over me and whispered, “You need to leave here.” His hand on my shoulder flexed. “Now.”
He gripped my other shoulder as well and leaned closer. “You aren’t safe here.”
His pupils, wide open in the dark widened even further to encompass the majority of his irises.
The effect startled me, making me feel like I wasn’t safe here. I’d never felt so small and insignificant, being between this tall man and the live oak tree had little to do with it. What I saw in his eyes made me feel small. This man knew things I’d never know. He looked wise and like he wanted to protect me. For the first time in my life that I could remember, I wanted to be the protected instead of the protector.
That alone clued me in that something was seriously wrong. If I felt like I needed protecting, then I did. I’d never felt that before. I wasn’t safe here. Time to go. I wiggled against the tree and shrugged my shoulders but his hands wouldn’t release me. I fought down the urge to use physical force and opened my mouth instead. “How can I go if you won’t let me?”
He let go as if my body were molten and looked away from me. “Go.”
I stumbled over my muddy feet but caught myself in time to run around the side of the tree. I turned my head each way to check that the way was clear. My eyes latched onto the figure in the doorway of the trailer. The sight of the long haired man holding my skull up to the light to examine it with Orson heated my blood. I paused for just a minute for one last look at the skull.
A breeze blew by, chilling me to the bone again. Time to get going. I took a step like normal, but the mud took advantage of the moment I stood still and started eating up my feet. Tripping, I fell to my knees with a loud squish. All noise in the swamp stopped.
The Nordic model suddenly stood in front of me and grabbed me by the elbow. He lifted me up.
The silence of the night shattered when a rustling noise came from a few yards away. The firm hand on my elbow held me still. He surveyed the area like something being hunted, or perhaps like the hunter himself.
Straight in front of us, about twenty feet away, a bush parted and the largest animal I’d ever seen in the wild stalked out. A mother fucking wolf, larger than a Great Dane, stood still, eyes focused on us and hackles raised.
“Go now, Samantha.” The model set me to his side and pushed a little to help my inertia. I put one foot in front of the other as fast as I could, but not nearly as fast as he did. In a blur of motion he ran straight at the wolf and they disappeared into the brush.
My stomach clenched at the mournful sound of the howl echoing through the night, but I pushed it aside and kept running. I had to keep running. This shit was too weird for words.
“There are no wolves in Florida.” I kept repeating the line, as if somehow that would make what I saw less real.
One leg after another, I ran, ignoring the loud sucking noises of the mud. Globs of mud flew behind me. I tripped on a live oak root and feel knee deep into the muck.
A menacing growl flowed out of the bushes behind me. I hauled my ass up and covered the ground with a quickness. My lungs burned and my muscles threatened to give out, but I ignored them. Whatever the hell happened at this place tonight, I would not be a part of it. I just wanted to go home and forget about all of it. Hell, forget about the last six months.
I finally reached my car and fumbled with my keys as I opened the door. I jumped in, jabbed the key into the ignition and started my baby up with a roar. Slamming the car into drive, I spun the tires out and sped along the muddy drive. I flicked my lights on, no sense in hiding anymore. Now the name of the game was to get out alive.
I swerved around bends and floored the Nova as fast as she would go. About a hundred yards from the main road something big, black and gray darted out in front of the headlights.
A wolf faced me, throwing out any notion I had of my earlier vision being incorrect. In a second of suspended time my eyes zoomed into the wolf’s frosty blue ones. My stomach tried forcing its way out of my bellybutton to get at the wolf. My core wanted to be there, inside the animal. I blinked and felt like I got kicked in the gut.
Thrown back into real time I grappled with the steering wheel. I slammed on the brakes but the mud wouldn’t let my tires find purchase. The car flew forward and I swerved to miss the wolf that was no longer there. A live oak materialized in front of me. The front end of my little car folded in on itself as it connected with the stubborn wood. Thrown forward, my nose connected with the steeling wheel. My head exploded in pain with a lightning flash. Stunned momentarily from the pain, all I saw was the steering column getting closer and closer until I saw nothing…
and heard nothing…
and finally felt nothing.
This is a picture from the tallest point in Oklahoma. This is where the deer and the antelope (read prairie dogs) roam. Home of buffalo and long horn steers. This is the range and many people call it home. I went out there twice in the span of a week. The next picture will explain why.
AHHH! Meers! Possibly the best burger I've ever had. This place is literally in the middle of NOWHERE in Oklahoma. You drive down a windy road, make a turn, and slam on your brakes because people are walking out in front of your car to go to this place. Some of the open spaces in the previous picture are Meer's Long Horn Steer grazing territory. This restaurant was voted to have one of the top 10 burgers in the nation by family owned businesses. It has been open decades (getting close to a century now.) Not only are their Meer's burgers delicious, but their peach cobbler and homemade ice cream is to die for. The restuarant started as a smallish building, and they added several shanty's onto it. Makes for an uneven floor, but I'm happy they added space! As a recovering vegetarian of 10 years, I stared at the Long Horn Steer head mounted on the wall, took a bite of my burger, and thanked it for having such a delicious cousin.
Estes Park, Colorado: Home of the rock formation Twin Owls. This is not the most scenic picture I took. Come on, I was in the Rocky Mountains people, majesty abounds in that place. But we've all seen picture after picture of the Rockies (and yes, it really does look that amazing) But the Twin Owls kind of stole my heart. They truly do look like owls all huddled up to one another and I'm a sucker for rock formations that look like things.
