Number Seventy-Five

PRAISE FOR

“NUMBER SEVENTY-FIVE”

With an attention to detail, and a slowly building sense of dread and horror, Ashley Fontainne’s “Number Seventy-Five” will have you racing through her story of online connection, and just how bad things can go on a date. This is a tale with its Hitchcockian twists dealing with greed and murder, I dare you to stop reading.

~ Matthew Costello, author of “Vacation” and “Home” ~

Ashley Fontainne proves with “Number Seventy-Five” that she’s a talent to watch.

~
Raymond Benson, author of The Black Stiletto series ~

I absolutely love this woman’s style and plots. Have to read anything and everything she writes. Awesome talent! Nobody does “evil bitches” better. Oh, the twists and turns she takes us on...

~
Janelle Taylor, NY Times bestselling

author of “Necessary Evil”~

Stephen King owns the horror genre, and John Grisham owns legal thrillers, but Ashley Fontainne has created her own genre that is just as intense,
The Evil Bitches Thriller
. Fontainne is back again with a neck snapping, jaw dropping thriller you will not be able to put down. “Number Seventy-Five” had me at the first page and dragged me mercilessly along. I was unable to put it down. I had to put everything on hold to finish it in one reading and to be honest I was disappointed it was not much longer. No one captures the evil twisted mentality of a female sociopath better than Fontainne. Her characters are believable, real, and evil beyond belief.

~
Zach Fortier, author of “Curbchek” and “Street Creds”

THE SMELL OF
decaying earth filled my nostrils with a toxic stench, coaxing me slowly out of the darkness. Confusion poked at every corner of my mind like sharp talons and nearly made me gasp from their burning grip. My body woke up next and sent its own signals of torment speeding through my neurons up to my fuzzy brain. Every inch of me throbbed with white, searing pain. My ears joined the sensory overload fray and sent a signal of grating, metallic scraping sounds that came from behind me. The odd familiarity of the noise tried to take center stage in my thoughts but failed miserably. The struggle against numerous others clamored over it with ease.

The heavy fog of confusion was instantaneously burned away by the jolt of adrenaline that flushed out my system from its prior fugue state. My aching body reacted by stiffening, my mind controlled now by ingrained gut instincts which forced me to remain frozen in place like hidden prey. Memories burst forth in sharp succession and showered me with the last images of consciousness I could conjure up. My mind clamored to put the broken pieces together.

LIKE A GIDDY
schoolgirl, I primped and preened in front of the unforgiving mirror. I changed ensembles ten times before I settled on the ideal outfit which consisted of a pair of dark blue jeans, a white T-shirt and my brown riding boots. A bland choice but the one I was most comfortable in, which was really all that mattered. The pile of discarded clothes on my bed almost made me forget that I was in my forties. When I slid the mid-calf boots on, I laughed at myself since it was damn near summertime, but they were the only thing in my closet that had a heel and looked somewhat dressy.

The words of my best friend, Shawna, hung over me while I applied a minimal amount of makeup and finished fluffing my dishwater-blonde hair. Shawna had made me promise to call her when I made it home afterward and dish to her eager ears all the juicy details of the upcoming evening. My nervous laughter had tittered across the phone lines when she teased me about my timid excursion into the dating world. After all, three long years of playing the role of a bitter single woman was enough, she had said.

I made a quick phone call to secure dinner reservations at the eloquent yet affordable Chancery Court, which was over thirty miles from my hometown in Bainsville. It was a quaint, southern restaurant frequented by cops, which conveyed a safe haven…a neutral meeting ground. It also put my worried friend at ease since I would be surrounded by a sea of blue.

I winced when I noticed more gray hairs and wished I would have had time to hit the beauty parlor. My once vibrant locks desperately needed an update. Getting older sucked; that was for sure. Oh well, it was too late now. I would just have to be satisfied with what God gave me, and so would my date.

I pecked out a text message on my cellphone screen to Shawna that read “escape,” ready to send if I needed the cavalry to come rescue me should anything go awry during the date. That was Shawna’s last instruction to me before I had disconnected our call earlier after I told her that I would never make it to dinner if she didn’t hush. That girl was always planning ahead for everything and all unseen scenarios.

After one last perfunctory glimpse in the mirror I was off, full of anxious jitters. I was about to meet for the very first time the man I had been conversing with online for several weeks. While I drove to the restaurant, Shawna’s heavy, Tennessee lilt began replaying in my head. Like a broken record, it repeated over and over: “Safety first, Mandy. Your momma didn’t raise no fool anymore than mine did. A true woman is prepared for anything, especially a southern one, ’cause we know the woods is full of varmints.”

“Damn straight, girl. That’s why my gun’s sittin’ inside my purse. You know I’m a good shot and not afraid to take aim if necessary,” I had replied.

Shawna had laughed and told me I was being overly cautious, but I told her in this day and age, a single woman couldn’t be too careful. Especially one like me that only stood five foot two…equalizers were a necessity in the violent world we lived in. It seemed like I couldn’t turn on the news without a report about a missing woman and I had no desire to ever be in that category.

A sketchy smile at the memory crossed my face, thankful that I had taken all the necessary precautions. Jacob did not have my home address, my personal telephone number, or the name of my employer. We were meeting in a public place on my terms, not his. I let my friends and family know where we planned on dining and promised to call them all once I was on my way home.

Shawna even insisted the location of our first meeting be at the Chancery Court since her brother Samuel and his other cop buddies hung out there all the time. Even though Sam was on vacation, Shawna promised that she would contact him and make sure the place was crawling with gun-toting guards--each one ready, willing and able to watch my back if something seemed amiss. Such was the connection between cops and nurses.