We are delighted to welcome back author B.E. Sanderson to Omnimystery News.
B.E. has a new suspense thriller published today titled BloodFlow (B. E. Sanderson; November 2015 ebook format) and to introduce you to it she provided us with an excerpt from the book, the first two chapters.
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June 2nd
PAYTON LANDIS CARESSED THE SERVICE REVOLVER in his lap. The coward in him wanted to believe one bullet would end all this, but it would only end his involvement. Project Hermes would move forward whether he lived to be a hundred or died tonight. Even his death and the loss of their Director of the Terrorism Task Force wouldn't stall the machine. Secretary Dougherty wouldn't let a little thing like suicide hamper him for long.
Insane laughter welled in his throat, buoyed by the idea of how easily he could be replaced. His fall from 'respected government official' to 'mere patsy' made him choke.
Playing lap dog to a power hungry man got him to the top. It had also gotten him to this point where his only choices were proceed with a project his gut told him was immoral or put a bullet in his own brain. If any other course of action seemed feasible, he would take it, but circumstance convinced him otherwise.
From the moment he'd first heard whispers about the ideas behind Hermes, he felt the wrongness of it in his veins. He also knew those whispers had less to do with protecting the nation than with political games. When Dougherty first broached the subject, he refused to have any part in it. After what happened to Evelyn, though, the reasoning no longer mattered.
Evelyn.
He'd come home late from a fundraiser during which Dougherty's speech dragged on forever. As he pulled into the driveway, nothing looked amiss. He parked in front like he always did and climbed the steps to the home he shared with his wife. Putting his key to the lock, he noticed the cracked doorframe.
A sound broke from his throat only to be met by silence. Stumbling forward, his loafer went through the face of her mother's mantel clock. Their belongings were strewn every which way, but nowhere could he find a sign of his most precious possession. Somehow he reached the top of the stairs. Blood tainted the air. A gurgle sounded.
Her body lay at the foot of their marriage bed. For an instant, his mind tried to trick itself into believing the scene wasn't real. But the broken doll lying on the floor could've only been his better half.
Payton's hand spasmed around the grip of his gun as the memory washed over him. If he'd had this in the house. If she hadn't been adamantly against weapons.
They caught the bastard in Utah. He didn't survive his arrest. Payton learned much later the man had been taking the scenic route back to his homeland. He'd already been arrested and deported twice before when he slipped into America and raped Evelyn. So, instead of extradition back to Virginia where he'd stolen her future, the man had chosen suicide by cop
Evelyn.
His beloved would never again focus her beautiful, blue eyes, let alone form words or thoughts or emotions. The crumpled husk lying in a hospice bed only vaguely resembled the woman he'd married. The last time he visited he hoped against hope to see some sign of the progress her doctors kept promising might come. Instead, he arrived just in time to see the nurse changing Evelyn's diaper. One look at her buxom figure left wasted and skeletal and he threw up in a potted palm. Neither the plant nor his wife were aware enough to care.
From a frame on the corner of his desk, his wife smiled at him the way she had since the day they'd met. Usually the sparkle in her eyes made his day easier. Today, disappointment tinged her expression. She couldn't understand why he waffled over what should've been an obvious decision.
He glanced at the photo beside and slightly behind his once-lovely wife. Randi was the one person under his leadership who didn't hunger after his job. Ever since he'd met her during a guest lecture at Quantico, she'd been a shining light in his life. He and Evelyn had never been blessed with children. If he could've wished for a child, though, he couldn't have wished for them to be better than Randi Kruz.
Suddenly the gun lay heavier on his thighs than a lead brick. No matter what his choice, Randi would damn him. She wouldn't understand his suicide. As for proceeding with Project Hermes? Hell, he wasn't sure he'd understand existing with Project Hermes on his résumé.
His mind turned toward the few men in the world he considered his friends. Should he live to see another day, his work on this project would be a slap in the face to the values they'd always shared. One by one, he ticked their names off a list as he asked for their forgiveness the only way he could — silently.
Pulling the gun from his lap, he laid it between two proposals that had arrived earlier in the day. The first bore the insignia of Davis Labs. The second, Mertex Engineering.
Jack Davis had promised to bring the project in on time and under budget, but his quote was high. If the job could be given to him, though, he would walk away once he knew the particulars. Jack only read the engineering specs Payton had permitted him to see. The rest? That would turn a man like Davis' stomach. Hell, it turned Payton's stomach, but this was his job.
The Nigerian at Mertex presented a different problem. Dr. Onwuka Ahumibe's bid undercut even the half-shit contractors who couldn't design a paper airplane. And Ahumibe was, by all accounts, a brilliant man. Something about him made Payton's skin crawl, though. A hunger lay behind those dark eyes that, he suspected, had little to do with the profit motive or the challenge of a difficult design. He only wished he knew what drove the man.
Overwhelmed by the weight of his thoughts, Payton slumped forward.
As he cradled his face in his hands, he considered the third option he had staunchly refused to think about since it first niggled at him. If he could muster an ounce of backbone, he would pick up the phone and tell someone about Project Hermes. Alert the media maybe. Find some way to make this public. The public couldn't possibly stand for this if they knew what it was all about. Once it was out in the open, he could put a bullet in his head and be done with it.
After the men behind this found out he'd served them on a tray to the court of public opinion, though, he wouldn't have to worry about killing himself.
The weapon gleamed up at him. If he was half-honest with himself, he had to admit he could never take his own life while Evelyn still breathed. According to the doctors, she showed no sign of stopping. As long as the tubes kept feeding her, her lungs worked like they belonged to a champion swimmer. Her heart beat as strongly as it had the day they'd first made love.
His stomach hitched up into his ribcage and his muscles twisted as they fought against the paralysis overtaking him. Both sides of the issue were too vile for silence — too grotesque for calm. Someone had to make this lunacy stop. Someone had to prevent what happened to Evelyn from happening to anyone else's loved ones. If this project worked the way it was supposed to, other lives could remain whole instead of being shattered. If he could stop one travesty from happening, it might be worth the shattering of his own values instead. The possibility existed that he could control Hermes enough to stop its worst aspects from being realized.
One call to Mertex could save lives. Or signal the death of ideas he once held dear.
The needs of the many …
Payton didn't allow another thought past his blatant rationalization. He simply returned his revolver to its place in the bottom drawer and picked up the phone.
TWO
Thirteen months later.
I KNOW YOU HAVEN'T NOTICED LATELY, Edgar, but I am not a poodle." Lila Reynolds gazed at her husband's reflection in her vanity mirror and wondered what happened to the man she married. Once, he would've considered the idea ludicrous, too. He used to be a man of conviction. He used to have a backbone and a mind of his own. Now he only had ample lips he applied to whatever ass would get him the most votes. "There is no way I'm letting anyone implant anything in me. And you wouldn't let them do it to you either," she said, putting a fat brush to her blonde hair, "if you weren't so worried about what everyone on the Hill thinks."
Senator Edgar Reynolds had been a handsome man when she married him twenty-three years before. Those intervening years hadn't been kind. His hair had thinned while his waist thickened. At some point along the way to the capitol, he stopped worrying whether his wife found him attractive. Instead, he worried whether his constituents found him worthy of their trust. Before he went from city councilman to state representative to U.S. Senator, he hadn't worried about her love. At one point, he hadn't really worried about the voters either. He had been who he always was, and the people loved him for it.
Now she didn't know why they continued to love him. He had become a spineless toady. And because of that, she wasn't quite sure why she loved him either.
"We've been over this," he said, stepping closer. "It's in the name of patriotism. In these trying times, everyone has to do their part to keep the country safe."
She'd heard it all before. In the name of patriotism, they had to drive a tiny hybrid car. Because of these 'trying times', they had to submit to searches everywhere they went. In the name of whatever wind blew at any given moment, they had to eat organic, buy domestic, vacation within the fifty states. Oh, how she longed to visit the land of her ancestors again. Edinburgh would be beautiful this time of year. But no. She had to spend more money at home. Hell, because of some lame brouhaha, he'd asked her to tell her mother not to shop at any store that outsourced overseas. Like her mother could afford that.
She stared at her fingernails in an attempt to feign boredom. "This is too much, Eddie. Even for you. How do you know this microchip thing is safe for humans? Didn't they already try this once and the FDA shut them down?"
Eddie smiled like she'd said something cute. "That was for commercial purposes. Some tech companies figured it would be a good idea to microchip people so it would be easier to sell them stuff they don't need. Obviously, we had to shut that down. It wasn't safe."
"If it wasn't safe then, why is this safe now?"
"Because it's being handled by the government, Honey." His tone implied that any moron could've figured that one out. He didn't used to talk to her that way, but ever since he got to D.C., he'd become more and more patronizing. "We're one of the last couples in the senate to have it done. No one's complained so far. Besides, whoever makes these things had to pass FDA inspection didn't they? It wouldn't be available to the public if it hadn't."
Lila made a show of inspecting her pant leg for lint before she looked at him again. All the things she wanted to say lay bottled inside her. Some days, keeping the cork in the bottle was more trying than others. "If you ask me, it's an invasion of our privacy." The words slipped out, but she didn't bother trying to look ashamed. Those words were more than she should've said, for certain, but they were so much less than she wanted to say.
"Oh, honey." He leaned down and tried to nuzzle her neck. She expected his lame attempt at affection, but it irritated her nonetheless. "You're being silly now. One little chip? How could that possibly invade anything? It's designed to protect us."
She pushed his face away as gently as she was able, turning it into a fake attempt to maintain her hairdo. "Protect us? You don't really believe that."
"In fact, I do."
His feigned hurt was obvious even in the mirror, as if she'd maligned his integrity or something equally as false. "You've got to be kidding me. This thing will protect us? From what?"
"Well, you know —"
"No, Eddie, I don't know." She arranged her hairbrush with practiced care, lining it up precisely with the matching tortoiseshell comb she received from an admirer. He never even noticed their presence.
Eddie twiddled with his tie. With his growing paunch, he would make a perfect Oliver Hardy at the yearly Halloween party they threw for the less fortunate children in their district. "Well," he said, "take deportation. It would protect us from that."
"I don't think there's any chance of anyone deporting us. Who in their right minds would mistake the two of us for illegal aliens? Where would we have immigrated from? Canada?" He mumbled something about the word 'alien' not being P.C., but she ignored him. It was either ignore him or slap him. With his pale skin, he wouldn't look good sitting on the senate floor with a handprint on his cheek. "Seriously. This is ridiculous. If you're really worried, I'll carry additional identification."
"That's not the point." His lower lip drooped into a pout. "Just don't bother with the reasoning. All you need to worry about is what the rest of them will think if you refuse." One short finger pointed toward her. "If you won't do this for yourself, do it for me. I could lose my standing in Congress. You know what that means. I could end up on some useless subcommittee, voting on whether or not to offer a grant for the study of the mating habits of head lice."
She raised one sculpted eyebrow. Over the years, he'd pulled the social standing card too many times for it to be effective any longer. Despite being unsure she loved her husband, she knew she loved the lifestyle. 'Mrs. Senator Edgar Reynolds' was a powerful enough incantation to let her into the finest restaurants and the best clubs. She received invites to all the A-list parties. She rubbed exfoliated elbows with the most powerful and the brightest America had to offer. And she adored them all. Especially that diplomat's delicious son, Alexi.
"Are they letting ambassadors and their families get chipped?" She tried to sound casual and surprised herself by slipping past that right into painfully bored.
"Of course. All our biggest allies have already had the procedure."
She thought again of the young Ukrainian. His perfect body getting marred by an implant seemed a shame, but she feared how he would react if he didn't see a similar scar on her own body. "Fine. Schedule it. But the scar had better not be too big or too ugly."
"Don't worry your pretty little head, Lila-dear. They don't call them microchips for nothing. From what I've seen, it's only a tiny incision near the hairline. You'll never know it's there."
11 days later
Pulling her blonde ponytail tight, Lila Reynolds checked her reflection in the full-length mirror beside her closet. At forty-four, she couldn't pass as a kid anymore, but she continued to turn heads. Not her husband's head anymore, of course. It had been years since he bothered to look in her direction, let alone whip around to watch her pass.
Her smart phone beeped with an incoming text.
Alexi.
His head had turned the first time she walked past his table at a state dinner. This afternoon, her own head would turn as he stalked naked through the cabin she owned south of D.C.
"Are you playing tennis with the girls today, Lila-dear?" Edgar stepped behind her to adjust his tie.
As she expected, his eyes didn't bother drifting down to the V her t-shirt made over her breasts. From his vantage point, he should've seen more than enough to get his blood pressure up. She glanced over at him. Not even a flicker of his pulse showed in that thick neck.
She laid the phone face up on her vanity. If Edgar couldn't bother to look at her, he wouldn't deign to read her messages. "Tennis," she said. "Or golf. Maybe both. Then probably drinks at the clubhouse with whoever's around."
"Good. I'd hate for you to have to spend another dinnertime waiting around for me."
"I don't mind." She inserted a certain amount of 'wistful wife' into those three words, so her husband would think she cared. But not so much to guilt him into staying home. These late meetings of his were the perfect times to meet with Alexi.
"I should be home around nine."
Which meant she'd be home around ten — after putting in an appearance at the club.
"Good luck today," she said as she accepted his peck on her cheek. If she remembered correctly, this was his first day presiding on the committee or subcommittee or whatever nonsense he'd been so fired-up to be on.
He mumbled his thanks. Lila counted to thirty and the door to the garage closed right on time. Another thirty and the sound of his energy-efficient, clown car buzzed from below. Her husband had become so predictable that she wanted to cry. Sure, he'd never been Mr. Spontaneity, but he used to surprise her every now and then. Now she could predict every move he made from the moment he rolled out of bed at 5:15 to the way he'd fall asleep in front of cable news every night, forcing her to wake up and turn the damn television off.
With a final fluff of her bangs, Lila turned from her mirror. She grabbed her purse and left, setting the alarm on her way out. The act made her laugh. Maybe Eddie wasn't the only one getting predictable in these advancing years. Well, she doubted her dear husband would be able to predict the things she had planned for this afternoon.
Lila didn't pay much attention to the world around her as she left the D.C. suburb where she lived. With the sparse traffic, driving her Cadillac XTS didn't require much focus. The residential neighborhoods were quiet for a summer afternoon. Few children were playing on the spacious lawns she passed. If she'd been young, this would've been an idyllic day.
It'll still be an idyllic day.
As she turned her luxury car onto the Blue Ridge Parkway, her pulse lifted. By now, Alexi should already be waiting for her. He'd have the wine breathing and the oysters she'd had delivered fresh this morning would be chilling on ice. She imagined him turning toward her when she arrived. He would be wearing the silk robe she bought for him to highlight the sexy hazel of his eyes.
He barely spoke English and she hadn't bothered to learn what language tumbled from his mouth. They rarely uttered a word anyway. They didn't need to.
A semi loaded with lumber barreled toward her, making her yelp and jerk the wheel.
"Asshole! Get in your own lane!" There are too many trucks on this road these days. I should have Edgar do something about that.
The fleeting image of her spouse nearly ruined her taste for this tryst. Nearly. But she deserved this. She earned this. After all, hadn't she done everything Eddie asked of her? She went to that luncheon with the other congressional spouses and those things bored her stiff. She'd let that awful Secretary Dougherty put his arm around her while Edgar schmoozed to gain a position on that damn committee. The bastard had groped her ass when her husband turned away, and she hadn't raised a fuss. And to add injury to that insult, she now had one of those damn implants.
Maybe I am Eddie's poodle after all.
Lila's thought had enough time to sink in before she felt a slight tingle at the side of her neck. She had barely enough time to make her want to prove she was no one's bitch before she felt a burning behind her ribcage. The pain of her heart clenching in her chest scattered her thoughts into a million tiny pieces.
By the time her car crossed the centerline into oncoming traffic, she didn't have any thoughts at all. The next driver hauling logs had time to apply the brakes, but not nearly enough to stop.
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Photo provided courtesy of
B.E. Sanderson
Former sales "road warrior" and corporate "Jack of all trades", B.E. now lives the hermit's life in southwest Missouri, where she divides her time between doing writerly things, inhaling books, networking on the internet, and enjoying the "retired" life with her husband and her crazy cats.
For more information about the author, please visit her website at website and her author page on Goodreads, or find her on Facebook and Twitter.
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BloodFlow by B.E. Sanderson
A Suspense Thriller
Publisher: B. E. Sanderson
Prove you're an American! Join your elected officials and get implanted today!
The highest levels of the government believe Project Hermes is the best way to control America's immigration problem. A simple microchip carrying a citizen's information will allow officials to sort out who belongs — and who doesn't. Harmless.
Unless the chip carries more than just information.
Agent Miranda Kruz of the Terrorism Task Force has reason to believe something is very wrong with Project Hermes. People are dying and the clues all point to a microchip implant. But Randi's superiors don't want anything or anyone interfering with their pet project. They're threatening her job, her loved ones, and her life to keep her from revealing their secret. With the help of medical examiner, Vic Hammond, and electronics engineer, Jack Davis, Randi has to uncover the truth and make it public before anyone else is targeted for death.
Locating the madmen behind these executions will be hard enough — stopping them might just be impossible.
— BloodFlow by B.E. Sanderson
