(2012) Blood on Blood (27 page)

BOOK: (2012) Blood on Blood

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He got that part right. She was
never
going back to Chicago. No matter how easy or how predictable the marks were in that town.

She shook her head at the thought of the Sawyer brothers. Running around like a pair of ass clowns, chasing the dreams of a dead father. What a joke.

But they’d come through in the end, hadn’t they?

Jerzy had been the easier of the two for her to kill. His mean nature played out in that last smile. The world was a better place without him, as far as she was concerned.

Mick had been slightly more difficult. But only slightly. Whether they do it for love or they do it for money, how do you really feel sorry for a mark?

You don’t.

Maybe if their loser convict father had been around to teach them some smarts, the Sawyer boys wouldn’t have made it so easy for her. But that was their bad luck. Her own father had taught her well. Well enough to play both of the brothers and the Polish mobster, to boot.

So now she had two hundred thousand of Patrik’s cash. And she’d get at least three times that much from a diamond fence in San Francisco. That was plenty. Enough to get off the grift for a while. Live a straight life somewhere warm and quiet until the money ran out or the itch to get back in the game became too much. Whichever came first.

Ahead of her, the day’s sun dipped low, sending a bloody smear across the sky. The color of red marked her destination.

Ania kept her car pointed west and drove into the dying sun.

Acknowledgements

Jim: I want to thank Snubnose Press and Brian Lindenmuth specifically for rolling the dice and giving our story a home. Snubnose has been terrific and will continue to be; from experienced editorial guidance, to terrific design work, to launch and post launch. Of course none of this would have happened without Frank, an established novelist who made an outstanding offer to me. He persuaded me to do this when I didn’t think I could. A true friend.

Thanks also to the many talented authors and friends, some of which Frank has already mentioned, who have provided and established the short story community that is the bedrock of my writing background.

Frank: Snubnose Press, including Brian for taking a flyer with this book, and Eric, for designing and designing until we had the perfect cover.

My writing partner, Jim, for being something better than a Chicago half-brother. Jill Maser, for being the steady crit partner for this and other projects. Thanks for finding the center of this book. Cindy Rosmus, Melanie Donaldson, Brad Hallock, Steve Wohl, Justin Lundgren, and Sara Griffin, for reading drafts and providing valuable input. My bonny wife, Kristi, for being at once the most loving and most critical of readers.

About the Authors

Jim Wilsky is a short story author with a considerable number of published stories. Many of his stories are in the crime genre.This will be his first pubished novel.

Frank Zafiro has written numerous novels and short stories, most in the crime genre. Together, they've joined to be hardboiled partners in crime, writing gritty, hardboiled crime novels in two distinct voices.

About Snubnose Press

Snubnose Press is the ebook imprint of Spinetingler Magazine.

The snubnose revolver dominated visual crime stories in the 20th century. Every cop, every detective, every criminal in every TV show and movie seemed to carry a snubnose. The snubnose is a classic still used today.

The snubnose is easy to conceal and carry.

The snubnose is powerful.

The snubnose is compact.

That’s how we like our fiction.

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