You Only Die Twice (27 page)

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When
everyone left, including Barbara, who said she would return with James when the
movers arrived, Cheryl found one of the sturdier boxes and sat down on it.

She was
tired.
 
This whole ordeal had taken
its toll.
 
Her dreams were bad.
 
Her days weren’t much better.
 
But she was moving on.
 
She was getting out of here.
 
And that was a gift because after what
she’d been through over the past four months, she needed to start anew.

In the
months following what happened to her in the woods, she’d had two operations on
her leg, one to set the femur she broke when he fell on top of her, and another
to remove the bullet from her thigh.
 
Months of therapy helped her to get to the point where she was now.
 
She was able to walk with the use of her
walking stick and soon, within the next two months or so, she was told she
wouldn’t need it at all.
 
She’d be
able to walk normally again.
 

But she
wasn’t sure what normal was anymore.

For a
woman who already had died twice in her young life, right now, for Cheryl
Dunning, she felt uneasy about her future.
 
Given all she’d been through, she felt she had every right to feel that,
as much as she didn’t want to, but there it was.
 

The
scars of her past had settled in and they continued to sink in, not unlike
acid, burning straight through her.
 
When she was with Barbara or James, her father or her grandfather, or
even with Patty, with whom she’d eventually come clean, she tried to mask those
scars with a brightness she didn’t feel.
 
It was despair that she felt.
 
It was fear of the unknown that she felt.
 
It was the idea that if this could
happen to her twice, why could’t it happen again?
 
Of course, it could.
 
Probably would.
 
But when?

She
decided not to tell anyone her concerns or the state of her mental health,
which was so poor, she knew at some point soon, she needed to see a
therapist.
 

But she
didn’t see the point in worrying her family and her friends more than they
already were worried for her.
 
All
they wanted was the best for her.
 
She knew that and she felt it, so she went forward with an upbeat
attitude in an effort to make them feel better.
 
Would she snap out of how she really
felt?
 
She didn’t know.
 
Probably not.
 
Maybe so.
 
At the very least, while Mark Rand and
Kenneth Berkowitz had succeeded in taking her life, it was only for a moment,
which means they failed to fully succeed on each count, didn’t they?

And that
was something, wasn’t it?

Cheryl
Dunning stood and went to the kitchen window.
 
Snow was falling.
 
No sign of the movers.
 
She looked down the street she loved and
committed it to memory.
 
With her
walking stick in one hand and the baseball in the other, she walked through her
apartment and felt the walls closing in to the point that she wished that she
was with Blanche, who, in her quiet way, knew how to comfort her.

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Thanks
for reading “You Only Die Twice.”
 
I
hope you enjoyed it.

What
follows is a small taste of the best-selling thrillers “A Rush to Violence” and
“From Manhattan with Revenge,” each of which is a stand-alone book, but also
part of the “Fifth Avenue” series (“Fifth Avenue,” “Running of the Bulls,”
“From Manhattan with Love,” “From Manhattan with Revenge” and “A Rush to
Violence”).
 
All books have hit the
overall Top 100 on Amazon Kindle, with the book “Fifth Avenue” itself thriving
there and on the UK list for seven consecutive months before it dropped off
each list.
 
It has since returned to
each list several times.

“A Rush
to Violence” will be followed by “A Rush to Murder” and “A Rush to
Vengeance.”
 
It was published in
June 2012, and already has sold more than 300,000 copies.

“From
Manhattan with Revenge,” published at the end of August 2012, has sold more
than 125,000 copies in four months.
 
It is a stand-alone book, as all of my books are (with the exception of
“The Bullied Series”), though you might benefit from reading “From Manhattan
with Love” first if interested.

A RUSH TO VIOLENCE

The
Fifth Avenue Series

By
Christopher Smith

BOOK
ONE

PROLOGUE

May

New
York City

The dog,
a Great Dane who ultimately and unfairly would be blamed for Kenneth Miller’s
brutal and untimely death, sat at the end of Miller’s desk with a leash in its
mouth and an unapologetic well of anticipation in its eyes.

It was
noon and time for their daily walk. The dog stomped its paw down on the
gleaming parquet floor and made a whimpering sound.

Miller
looked away from his journal. “Two seconds,” he said. “You can see I’m
writing.”

The dog
nuzzled Kenneth Miller’s arm with his nose and Miller, the 76-year-old tycoon
who made his fortune by skillfully taking his family’s old money and turning it
over and over in the market with the sort of financial finesse that makes new
money, put down his pen and looked at the dog, whose eyes were lifted to his.
“I suppose you want to go out,” he said.

The dog,
Blue, made a sound that sounded like a happy growl.

“And I
suppose you want me to go with you?”

Again
the paw, this time striking the floor impatiently.

Miller
ran his hand over the dog’s smooth, bluish-gray coat and removed the leash from
its mouth. “You know,” he said, “with the exception of Camille and Emma, you’re
the only one in my life who knows how to have your way with me. The others
would kill to possess that quality. They’d want it bottled and preserved for
future use.”

He
folded the piece of paper, put the paper in an envelope, wrote Camille’s name
on the envelope and carried it over to his wall safe. He put it inside and
entered the private code that would seal it there. Then, he strapped the leash
to the dog’s collar and leaned down toward his ear. “But they’ll never have it.
Not like you. You’re special, aren’t you, boy? You love me for me.”

Miller
stood and Blue, who years ago took to his obedience training like a pro,
immediately got to Miller’s left and sat down. Miller always kept a supply of
treats in his pocket and he gave one to the dog. “So, where to today?” he asked.
“The usual?”

Blue
barked.

“I
thought so. Let’s go. We’ve got five miles ahead of us and I think that after
today, we both could use the walk.”

They
stepped out of Miller’s library, which was one room out of twenty in his lavish
penthouse apartment on Sutton Place, and the moment they did so, Miller saw out
of the corner of his eye a blurring rush coming toward him.

He was
struck hard in the head by a heavy object, which knocked him to the floor and
to the gray edges of unconsciousness.

He shook
his head, tried to get up, but the room was spinning. His vision was clouded.
He could hear tapping on the floor. He blinked hard and watched Blue being
taken away from him by someone else. The dog was led back into the library.
Miller heard the door click shut.

Blue
barked. That dog meant everything to Miller. He tried to get on his feet but a
dark plastic bag was slipped over his head. Someone’s hands tucked beneath his
armpits, he was lifted up and urged toward the winding staircase. Whoever it
was, was far stronger than he.

But
Miller struggled.

He may
have been older now and no longer the once-celebrated quarterback of the Yale
football team, but Kenneth Miller was nothing if not in shape and in spite of
his age, he wasn’t weak. He took his elbow and rammed it hard into the ribs of
the person behind him, which was enough to make his assailant rear back and
lose the grip on the plastic bag, which Miller tore off.

Gasping
for breath, he spun around and faced his killer just as the person charged
toward him.

It all happened
so quickly, his mind couldn’t fully process it. He couldn’t tell if the person
coming at him was a male or female—they were wearing dark clothes, a
black Lycra ski mask and then they were upon him.

Miller
grabbed a vase on the table beside him and threw it just as he was about to be
taken down.

The vase
struck the person in the chest, crushing the momentum. The attacker slipped on
the marble floor and with a hard whack on the head, became unconscious.
Unbelieving, Miller stood there, calling out for help. Where was his staff? Why
weren’t they here? And then he remembered.
It was Sunday
. They had the
day off. He was alone.

He
walked over to the body and pulled off the mask. He stared at the face with
disappointment and pulled away from it just as the door to the library opened
and the person who took Blue away appeared.

“You
can’t get us all,” the person said.

“Why are
you doing this?” Miller asked.

“You
know why. You forced this situation. We know where you were today. We know what
you’re in the process of doing.”

“In the
process?” Miller said. “There is no process. It’s
done
. I signed the
paperwork.”

“No, you
didn’t.”

Miller
laughed. “Yes, I did. You can kill me now or let me die naturally because it
won’t matter. You’ll never have my money. Ever.”

And with
that, the person leaped forward and dropkicked Kenneth Miller in the gut. The
force was so great, there was nothing he could do to prevent the inevitable. As
he flew back toward the winding staircase, Miller saw his life’s mistakes flash
before him. Still, even in the face of death, he only regretted one thing. He’d
never see his beloved Camille and Emma again.

His back
struck the stairs hard and he rolled over into something that resembled a crude
somersault. His face smashed against one of the walnut rungs and he was aware
of his nose and his front teeth breaking. His shoulder gave and when it did, it
seemed to dissolve. Then his leg caught on one of the rungs and somehow, this
twisted him up high into the air.

For a
moment, Kenneth Miller soared. And as he turned in the air, he saw exactly how
his life would end.

He was
heading straight for the intricately carved newel post at the bottom of the
staircase. On it was a bronze statue of the Greek god Neptune, who held in his
right hand a large iron trident.

Miller’s
chest connected easily with it. The trident impaled him with such force that
his body slumped over it as it drove through him, ripping through his back and
jolting out his spine.

The room
started to spin. The lights began to dim. Death was closing in, but it hadn’t
touched him yet.

In his
last few moments of life, he heard Blue trotting quickly down the stairs. And
then the dog was beneath him, looking up at him, his expressive face stamped
with something Miller hoped was sorrow. Maybe rage.

The dog
was standing in the growing pool of Kenneth Miller’s spilled blood. He looked
up at the top of the stairs, where the murderers would be, and then back again
at his master. Just as Miller’s mind winked out, he saw Blue look down at the
blood and then, with unexpected force, stomp his paw in the center of it.