Mark dropped the kids off in front of school.  He made them kiss him good-bye before they got out of the car like he always did.  They hated that.  Too bad, you’re never too old to kiss Daddy good-bye.  Besides, when you’re late for school none of your friends are outside to see you kissing Dad good-bye anyway.  Mark pulled away as the kids were storming up to the door.  It was locked.  They’d have to go into the front entrance.  Five minutes after eight and they had to buzz you in so they could make you check into the office.  As Mark turned the corner, he noticed Matt’s lunchbox sitting on the seat next to him.  That kid would forget his head if it wasn’t attached.

Mark drove around the block, but the kids were already gone.  He’d have to go into school.  The secretary would look over the top of her glasses at him with her eyebrows raised because he’d be coming in right behind his kids who were late.  Sorry Miss Mathews.  Don’t you realize how important it is for a fourteen-year-old girl to have her hair and make up perfect before going to school?  Well geez Ms. Mathews, I thought everyone knew that. Mark pulled around to the corner toward the front of the school.

Once he made it around the corner, he saw that the kids weren’t in the building yet.  In fact, a couple of jokers in black suits were trying to drag them into a black Caddy.  Mark was no fighter.  He had spent his childhood watching his mother get her ass kicked by his dad and then getting his own ass kicked once he thought he was big enough to stick up for her.  He abhorred violence.  Watching those punks grab all over his kids snapped something inside of him though.  He felt like he was five years old, hiding behind his dad’s easy chair and watching the bum beat up on his mom.  The muscles in his jaw tightened behind his scowl.

Mark’s little Saturn squealed up right behind the big Caddy.  He yanked on the parking brake and flew out of the car before it even stopped moving.  It killed instantly as he forgot to take it out of first gear.  The two suits turned to look at him.  This was all the time Alyssa needed.  The grease ball that had her by the throat got a nice hard pounding on his foot from her heel.  The guy took two steps toward her before he walked into an overhand right that smashed his nose against his face.  Mark was just as surprised as Danny to see the blood pouring out of his face.  Danny Pappalardo, that’s the guy who had just got his nose popped like a cherry tomato.  He’d never been hit like that before.  His hands immediately shot up to his nose and they were instantly covered in blood.

It didn’t take long for Mark to shake the surprise off of himself and throw another punch.  This time it was a right hook that pounded into Danny’s temple.  The big man’s knees buckled as he stumbled backward.  Mark couldn’t believe it.  The last person he had thrown a punch at was his father.  The old man had just laughed and then beat him from one side of the house to the other.  Mark didn’t have too much time to think about it though.  He chalked it up to years of pent up aggression.  He would need every bit of it.  Another suit had his boy in a headlock.

Vincent Valentino turned to face Mark, careful to keep Matt in between them.  “Look man, I ain’t got no trouble wit’ you.  I just gotta’ get these kids, that’s it.  Why don’t you move along?”  It was a weak attempt at a Brooklyn accent.

“Are you kidding me?”  Mark’s eyes flashed his anger.  Any fear that he had fled to make room for shock and anger.  “You really think I’m going to let you take my kids?”

Mark stopped thinking completely.  Rage took over.  His left arm shot up to Vinny’s throat and squeezed as his right hand balled itself up and flew at the big man’s eye.  Vinny’s hands immediately grabbed onto Mark’s wrist.  Matt bolted as soon as he was free.  He charged for Mark’s Saturn as his dad was dropping rights all over Vinny’s face like a trip hammer.  The assault lasted only seconds.  Mark hadn’t noticed the guy that had been sitting behind the wheel of the Caddy. 

Jimmy Pappalardo was Vinny’s wheelman and Danny’s older brother by eight minutes.  He also happened to be built like a Mack truck.  On top of that, he hit like mule kick.  Mark never saw it coming.  It felt like a sledge hammer hit him in the side of the face.  Little white dots were instantly dancing before his face.  Boom…Boom…Boom, he took three more shots to the side of the head from Jimmy before Vinny collected himself and cracked him in the nose.  Mark fell to the ground in a heap.  He threw a couple more wild punches on his way to the ground, hitting nothing but air.  He kept trying to fight his way back to his feet, but those bastards just kept knocking him down.  ‘Where the hell are my kids?’

* * *

Alyssa only made it about ten feet before two huge arms wrapped around her and the ground flew up to smack her in the face.  The guy that tackled her weighed a ton.  All the air in her lungs flew out way too fast, burning her throat as it went.  The guy had hit her so hard that he rolled right over her when they hit the ground.  She struggled back to her feet trying to take off again, but the guy grabbed her arm.  Instincts took over as she screamed and slapped the side of his face.  That turned out to be a horrible idea that only served to anger the big fellow further.  As he stood up, he planted a palm in the middle of her chest and pushed her back to the ground.  Damn he was strong.  He loomed over her with his fist cocked like he was going to punch her.  Her foot shot up to his groin before he could swing that giant fist.  He doubled over, groaning.

Alyssa tried to get to her feet again.  This time he punched her, a right hook against the side of her face.  His hand was huge.  Nobody had ever hit her like that before.  Everything went black.  Lenny Weston was a young kid, barely twenty.  His blonde hair and fair skin didn’t fit with the rest of his group.  They called him the albino sometimes.  He hated that.  It wasn’t as bad as tomato face though.  They called him that too on account of the acne that he hadn’t been able to shake since puberty.  Just then, he was dragging Alyssa’s unconscious body over to the Caddy.

By this time, Danny had collected himself enough to chase Matt down.  He almost felt bad for the kid, trying to get back into his dad’s car.  You ain’t going anywhere kid.  He was all set to walk him over to the Caddy and gently set him in the trunk with his sister when he got a shot to the groin.  ‘The little bastard kicked me!’ he thought.  His lower abdomen burned. Instinctively he slammed Matt’s head into the hood of Mark’s car.  Then he dragged him over to the Caddy.

* * *

Mark was slipping out of consciousness.  His whole body was so numb that he could barely feel Vinny and Jimmy kicking him anymore.  Everything started going black when he felt his hair being yanked.  He was dragged to his knees.  When his eyes came back into focus, he was staring down the barrel of a gun.  It looked like a .45.  The way his head was spinning, it looked more like two barrels in his face.  His gaze continued passed those two blurry barrels to Vinny's sneer.

Mark managed a grin through the pain, “That nose looks broken,” his chest burned.  He could barely get the words out.  “Good.  Fuck you punk.”  The last thing he heard was the hammer click.

“Vinny, what the fuck are you doing?”  Jimmy screamed.

“Shut the fuck up and get in the car,” Vinny was cold as ice as he wiped blood from his chin.  “A couple of fuckin’ kids and a wannabe hero and you Nancy boys are running all up and down the street.  I told all a yous not to lay a finger on those kids.  The boss is gonna’ be pissed.  Not only did you knock the kids around, but you let the hero get to me while I had my hands full and made me shoot him.  The boss is gonna’ be pissed.”

Danny wasn’t moving.  He just sat trembling, looking down at the bloody mess that used to be Mark Ramsey’s head.  “Vinny, you shot him.  You killed him.”

Vinny didn’t flinch, “Get in the car.”

As the Caddy pulled away, Vinny silently assessed the situation.  Only two good things came out of the grab.  First, they got the kids.  The boss would be happy about that.  The other was that his car was registered to his old address downtown.  He hadn’t been there in a month.  His girlfriend moved to England with her parents and the place got a little too lonely for him.  He had let the lease run out and moved back to his parent’s house in New Berlin.  They’d be in Florida for another month, which would mean that when the cops went to see them they wouldn’t be around.  By the time the cops figured out that Neil and Anna Valentino had a small cottage just outside of Coleman, Wisconsin that would make a perfect place to hide a couple of hostages, Vinny would have been paid for snagging the kids.  Then he’d have enough money to get the hell out of town.  Somebody had obviously seen his plates so he would have to see about getting his identity scrubbed. It would be a good couple of weeks before he would have to worry about the cops knowing where to look for him though.  By then he would have a new name and a new life.  He’d be long gone.  He grinned with just the left side of his mouth as he looked over at Jimmy and said, "Step on it."

Shelia decided to take some time off work to deal with her dilemma.  The accident was serious enough that Mark didn’t want her to go to work anyway.  He’d been doting over her like she’d been paralyzed by it.  If he only knew who she really was, why she really hit the tree, he might not be so helpful.  She really didn’t want the kids to go to school.  She didn’t want Mark to go to work either.  There was no way to accomplish that without blowing her cover.  That would cause more problems than following the normal routine.  Hopefully “VNY HRT” thought she was dead and would leave Mark and the kids alone.  Either way it wouldn’t matter.  Whoever hired “VNY HRT” knew she wasn’t dead.  That’s why he hired a two-bit amateur from Wisconsin.

“Oh my god dad, it’s ten to eight!” Alyssa stomped through the house while getting her things together for school.  “We are so late!  I bet you we’re the last ones there.”  She was always freaking out about being late for school.  Unfortunately, she was usually the one they were waiting for.

“Relax, we’ve got plenty of time,” Mark was big on relaxing.  Bombs could be going off all around him and he’d be calmly assessing the situation.  ‘Panic sunk the titanic’ or ‘Just say the serenity prayer a few times.  Everything will be all right.’  Those were his favorite sayings, sometimes.  “Did you brush your teeth yet?”

“No!  God dad!”  Way more drama than being a few minutes late to school warranted.

“Hey Matt,” the youngest Ramsey was still in his room playing with his action figures.  He still didn’t have the concept of time nailed down.  “Get your shoes and jacket.  Let’s go.”

Shelia watched everybody play their normal morning roles and get ready to go about their normal daily routine.  She desperately wanted to stop them from leaving, but she couldn’t.  If “VNY HRT” were watching them, she’d want him to think that everything was business as usual.  Besides, she had work to do.  The house had to be empty.  On top of that, whoever hired the hit would want to know what was up with Shelia before he did anything to her family.  She could be in a coma or something and miss all of the suffering he’d want her to go through.  They’d be safer with the regular routine, for now.

Mark and the kids finally left.  Shelia went down to the basement.  Buried underneath all of the boxes in the storage closet was a box full of keepsakes, mostly.  Among those keepsakes was a two-way radio, something like a walkie-talkie, but a bit more involved.  Shelia wasn’t sure exactly what made it special.  That was Rufus’s department.  It scrambled the signal some how so it couldn’t be traced or intercepted.  Rufus was big into electronics, Shelia wasn’t.  She plugged the unit in.  ‘Hope it stills holds a charge.’  She didn’t think she’d ever have cause to use it.

She depressed the talk lever, “Thunder, come in Thunder.  Do you copy?”

Static.

She tried again.  “Thunder, this is Stiletto Rose.  Do you copy?  Over.”  She felt like a trucker.  Ten four good buddy.  We’re east bound and down, loaded up and truckin’.  What movie was that from?  She couldn’t remember.

The reply was nothing but more static.  Then just as she was set to depress the lever again, she heard a voice on the other end.  “Baby girl!  Is that you?”

It sure is.  I need your help.  “Hey big daddy.  It sure is good to hear your voice.”

“Stiletto?  Damn baby, I didn’t think I’d ever hear that sweet voice again.”  A short pause.  “What’s up baby?  You was only s’posed to call if you found some heat.  You got trouble?”

“Yeah, I got trouble.  I need you to check a plate for me.  You ready?”

“Hold on baby, let me get a pen.”  She could hear fumbling around on the other end.  “Okay shoot.”

“Alright, Wisconsin plate Victor, November, Yankee, Hotel, Romeo, Tango.  You got that?”

“Yeah I got it.  Give me a second.  I just got this new, super fast computer, state of the art.  I’m still figuring it out though.  Okay, ready?”  That was fast.  “The plates belong to a fella’ named Vincent Valentino.  Heh, heh, Vinny Heart, cute, sounds like an amateur.  What about him?”

“He ran me off the road yesterday.  I figured he was small time.  I need to know who hired him though.  I figure they’re just messing with me right now.  Otherwise they’d have hired a pro and I would not have seen it coming.  I don’t know how they found me.  Anyway, I need everything you can get me on this guy.  I’m worried about Mark and the kids.”

“That’s the bad thing about baggage baby.”  He paused.  “You gotta’ carry it around wit’ ya’.  Listen baby, anything you need, we’ll get it done.”

Rufus did some more searching and found all the info they could possibly want about Vincent Valentino.  Vinny Heart, what a dick.  There was a ton out there.  Just as Shelia had hoped, he was small time trying to prove he was big time.  His scent was all over the place.  Pigs, that’s what they called his type.  They never cleaned up their messes.  They were the ones that took the fall in place of the pros.  Shelia would have to put the squeeze on Vinny.  He wouldn’t know what hit him.

He had a near east side address.  The sucker couldn’t even pop for a pad where the real players lived.  Talk about small time, he was living on the fringes.  He actually had a pretty big rep in Milwaukee.  The whole city was small time though.  All the heavy hitters in the area worked out of Chicago.  Shelia always got a kick out of how competitive Milwaukeeans tried to be with Chicagoans.  They didn’t realize that the rest of the world saw their city as a northern suburb of Chicago.  They were a small town trying to be a big city.  Everybody there had something to prove.  Sometimes that made them more dangerous, but usually it just made them sloppy.  Vincent Valentino, or Vinny Heart as he was known on the street, was sloppy.

Shelia was getting her things – the little bit of equipment she had brought with her – together when her cell phone rang.  It was Mark’s phone calling.  Something must have happened at work.  He’d been having a rough time lately.  She answered, “Hey baby, what’s up?”

“Mom?”  Alyssa’s voice was shaky and scared.

“Al?  Why aren’t you at school yet?”  This wasn’t good.

Shelia woke to the wail of approaching sirens.  ‘I hope there weren’t any witnesses.’  Somebody obviously saw her minivan wrapped around the big oak that managed to get the better of the MPV.  Squads, an ambulance or two, maybe a fire truck, she didn’t need that.  She didn’t have a choice though.  The van wasn’t going anywhere.  She’d have to wait it out.

Little crowds began gathering all up and down the street.  She definitely couldn’t run.  The little boy with the curly locks that she had almost creamed was in the arms of a woman who had to be his mother, same curly locks.  Hers had been hit with a straightener though.  She scanned the woman’s face, obviously hadn’t seen a thing.  There was too much concern in her expression as she looked on the wreck of the minivan to have any idea that it had almost killed her child.  Shelia continued to scan the crowd.  None of the faces showed any clue that they had witnessed anything.  Somebody must have seen something.  Either way, Shelia needed a story fast.  A police squad fishtailed around the corner in front of her.  It’s not quite an emergency any more boys.  You can relax a little.

The story, why is this big silver minivan wrapped around this innocent, though terribly strong, oak?  Shelia quickly rifled through ideas.  Drunk driver?  No way, too early in the morning.  Maybe he’s a third shifter.  There you go, stopped at the bar after work.  He spent two hours pounding them down and then couldn’t see straight enough to make it home.  That would have to do.  The officer was standing at the window.  Two ambulances and another squad pulled in around the scene.  She let her intense expression give way to one a bit more innocent and confused.

“Are you alright Miss?”  The officer’s calm and reassuring voice didn’t fit his rough appearance.

She glanced up at his nametag, O’Malley.  She almost laughed.  Her dad used to crack jokes about Irish flat feet.  This guy had never walked a beat in his life.  He was too round for that.  She shook her head before responding.  “I think so.”

“You mind telling me how you managed to get your car around this tree?”  His tone remained completely relaxed.  He was good at this.  He must have a lot of experience dealing with scared moms.

Shelia played the part perfectly.  She continued, the slightest tremble in her voice, “I swerved to miss a car.  I think the driver might have been drunk.  They were all over the road.  They must have clipped my back end.”  She kept her eyes fixed on O’Malley’s.  She didn’t flinch.

“Can you give me a description of the vehicle?  Did you get the plates?  Did you see the driver of the vehicle at all?”  He was sold.  He seemed completely bored with the situation.  Nothing to report here Captain.

Shelia noticed out of the corner of her eye that other officers were questioning the various groups of onlookers that had gathered to watch the excitement.  It looked like a block party.  Can’t worry about them.  “It was a big black car.  It happened so fast.  I didn’t see the plates.  I don’t know, I think it might have had four doors.”

“You don’t know what kind of car it was?”

Yeah Sherlock, it was a late model Cadillac Deville, license plate number “VNY HRT”.  “No.”  She shook her head again and gave him a distant look, “It was black.”

O’Malley sighed and took a deep breath.  It was always the same with these women.  He’s looking for a big black car.  Well at least he’s kind of sure that it has four doors.  That narrows it down.  “Thanks Ma’am.  I’ll send a paramedic over to have a look at you.”

“Oh that’s okay.  I’m all right.  I’m just a little groggy.”  No examinations here thanks.  We’ll be just fine.

“Look lady,” O’Malley seemed to be losing his patience.  He must be working overtime and eager to get done.  “You’ve got blood all over your chin and your lips and nose are obviously swollen.  Now my friend,” He paused and read the paramedic’s name tag, “Williams…Williams what’s your first name?  My friend Steve Williams is going to take a quick look at you.  You don’t have to go to the hospital, but I need to know that you don’t have anything broken.  Okay?”  His eyebrows raised and his eyes bugged slightly as he finished.

Shelia just nodded.  Steve could have a look, but she wasn’t getting stuck in any hospital.  There was work to do.  She needed to know what kind of a jackass drives around running people off the road with personalized plates on his Cadillac.  He wouldn’t be hard to find; one of those wanna’ be big city players stuck in a small town that they had confused for a big city.  The poor moron would be so eager to prove he was a player that his scent would be all over the city.  Once she found him, she could find out who hired him and how they found her.

By the time Steve finished looking Shelia over, she was out of the van and it was being loaded onto a flatbed tow truck.  O’Malley had been back.  Thankfully, if there were any witnesses they didn’t feel like talking.  All the better, this was her fish to fry.  She didn’t need the cops getting in her way.

Suddenly, a wave of panic swept over her.  What about Mark and the kids?  Obviously somebody knew who she was.  This somebody didn’t want her dead.  If they did, they would have hired a pro and not some jackass from Wisconsin.  Whoever had a price on her head was just messing with her.  That was the type that would use your family to get to you.  They’d make you suffer before they took you out.  She called Mark.

“Hey Babe.  What’s up?  Is everything okay?”  Same tone as always, blissfully unaware of the world he was living in.  He was so lucky.

Scared and alone, scared and alone, “I had an accident this morning.”

“Oh my god!  Are you alright?”

“I’m okay.  The van’s in pretty rough shape though.  I hit a tree.”

“How did you hit a tree?”

“Drunk driver, I swerved to miss him but he hit the back of my van and I slammed right into a tree.”  She kept up the scared and alone act.  After twelve years of marriage, she knew just how to play it.  Let him be the hero and come to her rescue.  That’s what she’d do.

“Where are you?”  He was beginning to freak out.

“Honey, I’m okay.”  She eased up a bit on the scared and alone.  “Don’t freak out or you’ll end up wrapping your car around a tree before you get to me.”

“Alright,” a little calmer, “where are you?”

She didn’t know.  She wasn’t sure just yet why she was where she was either.  He’d definitely want to know why she wasn’t at work.  “I’m not sure.  Wait, let me look at the street signs.  I’ll be waiting on the corner of Lucy Lane and Deborah Way.”  She hated these subdivisions.  Oops, we ran out of names for our streets.  Guess we’ll have to use common first names in place of something that means something.

“Where the hell is that?”

“I don’t know.”  Here comes the story.  “I was dropping off Stacy’s candle order on my way to work.  She lives in Brookfield past 124th in this subdivision from hell that I’m stuck in.  Anyway, after I dropped it off I got lost because all of these streets curve around and cross each other ninety five times and…”

“Wait a minute.”  Mark interrupted her, “I’ll look the intersection up on Mapquest.  Don’t worry about it.  Who’s Stacy?”

Who’s Stacy?  Good question.  “You know, I work with her.  You met her at the Christmas party two years ago, the one downtown at the Grain Exchange.  We hung out with her and her husband Tim.  Stacy Fleming?  Is any of this ringing a bell?”  Mark never remembered anything.

“No, we hung out with a lot of people that night.  Anyway, it doesn’t matter.  I’m on my way.  I’ll see you in a bit.  Love you.”

“I love you too babe.”  Scared and alone, scared and alone, “Please hurry.”

She couldn’t believe he didn’t ask if they caught the guy.  She’d tell him it was a hit a run and give him the same song and dance she gave O’Malley.  He’d want to find the guy and kick his ass.  He always fancied himself a hero.  She let him pretend he was.  He was always in control of the situation.  She let him be.

The crowd began to break up as the flatbed pulled away with the van.  Then the ambulances left and then all of the squads except for O’Malley’s.  “Can I give you a lift somewhere Ms. Ramsey?”

“No thanks.  My husband’s on his way.”  ‘And I’m done with the pride of the Brookfield P.D., Sergeant O’Malley’, “He’s picking me up at that corner over there.”  She pointed at the intersection.  “Thanks anyway.”

“Alright, take it easy Ms. Ramsey.”  He fished a card out of his pocket.  “If you remember anything about the vehicle that hit you, please give me a call.”

She nodded as she took the card.  ‘Will do Sarge.’  He left.  Shelia walked to the corner to wait for Mark.  She put the finishing touches on her story as she went.

The traffic on 45 North was like every other morning, a slow crawl.  Wisconsin drivers suck.  They were like cattle slowly trudging off to the slaughter.  Shelia ran a hand through her thin blond hair and sighed as it fell right back into place.  How the hell did she end up here?  She glanced at the rear-view mirror.  Three cars back a black Caddy was slowly rolling along with the rest of the cattle.  That same car had been following her for the past four days.  She would have never noticed except that it was quite a few years old and stuck out among the big, lumbering SUV’s and the little Honda’s like a dandelion on the green of a well groomed golf course.  On top of that, she left her house at a different time every morning. Yet that same car followed her from 60th and Cleveland to 124th and Capitol every day that week. That Caddy was definitely following her.

Shelia flipped the radio on, trying to get her mind off of the Caddy.  Instantly Bon Jovi was hollering, “…It’s my life and it’s now or never.  I ain’t gonna’ live forever…”.  Shelia sang it right back at him.  She loved Bon Jovi.  She loved that song.  It reminded her of a time when her life really was hers.  It hadn’t been for quite some time.  Now her life belonged mostly to Mark and the kids.  She didn’t have any regrets, but there definitely was a big part of her that missed the person she used to be.  The person she was before she became just another working mom.  Bon Jovi was still hollering at her, but she wasn’t really paying attention to him anymore.

Shelia pulled off on to the Capitol exit.  She had gotten so lost in her thoughts that when she checked her mirror again, she was surprised to see the black Caddy was right behind her.  She was so wrapped up that she had forgotten it was back there.  It wasn’t three cars back anymore though.  It was right behind her, and following a bit too close.  She passed her turn on 124th and kept heading west on Capitol.  The Caddy had made that turn with her every morning that week, but this time it followed her straight.

“Okay Shelia, where the hell are you going?”  She said just as she realized that she was chewing on the pinky nail of her left hand.  A nervous habit from when she was young, she had given that up years ago.  Mark was always on her case about it.

“Hey honey, if you’re hungry I can make you something.  You don’t have to eat your hand.”  That’s what he would say when he’d catch her chewing on her nails.  Oh well, he wasn’t around and that Caddy had her nervous.

Shelia kept an eye on the rear-view as she changed lanes.  The Caddy wasn’t trying to appear inconspicuous anymore.  It was obviously following her.  She couldn’t get a good look at the driver and the car didn’t have a front plate.  ‘What the hell do you want?  Where the hell am I going?’  She decided to try and lose the Caddy.  The little engine in the big silver minivan whined its disapproval as she buried the gas pedal into the floor.  The Caddy gave chase immediately, swallowing up the little bit of distance Shelia had managed to put between them.

Shelia quickly realized that there was no way she was losing the big Caddy.  The little four popper in the van was no match for the power plant that Caddy's big hood concealed.  She banked a hard right from the center lane, smoke and squealing tires.  ‘Mario Andretti, the soccer mom,’ she thought.  If she hadn’t felt like she was running for her life she might have chuckled.  It didn’t seem so funny as the big van leaned far to the left, dangerously close to rolling over.  She managed to keep her cool and stay on the road as it curved ahead of her.  She didn’t have any idea where she was going, lost in one of those subdivisions where the roads cross twenty six times and they all seem to lead to nowhere.  The Caddy hadn’t been able to make the Grand Prix worthy turn with her and was nowhere in sight.  Confident that she had lost the big Caddy, she tried to get her wits back about her and find a way out of the suburban maze she was lost in.

She turned right and then left, eighty-six roads to nowhere.  How the hell do these people find their homes at the end of the day?  She couldn’t tell if the houses were all beginning to look the same or if she was passing the same houses again and again.  It was like a bad episode of “The Twilight Zone”, trapped in subdivision that had an abundance of roads that all led back to where they began.  Maybe it was a sub dimension.  This time she chuckled.

Finally, she pulled over to get her bearings.  Lucy Lane, Deborah Way, all of the streets carried common women’s names.  What happen to Lincoln or Main?  Maybe she was in hell.  Maybe she’d spend eternity driving in circles, stuck in a subdivision that was probably only one hundred feet from a busy road and civilization.  She decided to try another left turn.  What’s the difference?  As soon as she made it around the corner, she saw the black Caddy heading right for her.  It was so close that she barely had time to react.  She cranked the wheel to the right but the Caddy clipped her rear quarter panel and sent her careening up onto the sidewalk.  She smacked her head against her side window as she bounced up onto the curb with her van’s tail end threatening to spin around in front of her.  The pounding of her heart against her chest reverberated through her whole body like the bass at a rock concert.  Her knuckles were quickly turning white from the grip she had on the steering wheel.  She didn’t even notice the pain in her fingers.  Instincts took over as she got on the gas again and managed to straighten the big minivan out.

Shelia’s head was a little cloudy from being slammed around, not so much that she didn’t see the little boy riding his tricycle down the same sidewalk she was flying down though.  He couldn’t have been more than three years old, curly blond hair.  Where the hell were his parents?  She cranked the wheel to the left and flew back over the curb into the road.  Three seconds later and she would’ve splattered that curly haired little cutey all over the sidewalk.  “Damn it,” she shouted.  “What the hell did I do to deserve this?”

She didn't get a chance to turn and look for the Caddy again before it slammed into her rear end.  This time she spun out of control.  Her foot instinctively nailed the gas pedal to the floor, but that only served to slam her head on into a giant oak tree on the other side of the street.  Her head hit the headrest first and then the air bag.  Little white dots danced all about before her eyes as a purple haze began crowding her vision.  She laid her head down on the steering wheel.  Her whole world was spinning as her stomach threatened to violently spew its contents all over the upholstery that had just been cleaned.

The sound of squealing tires helped her focus return.  They were coming back for more.  Shelia kept her head down and feigned unconsciousness, not that she was far from it.  Just keep driving.  Just keep driving.  It did.  The Caddy crept by and Shelia kept her head down until it was passed.  Once it was, she picked her head up ever so slightly and peered over the steering wheel.  The car wore Wisconsin plates, “VNY HRT”.  ‘What the hell does that mean?’  Whatever it meant, she knew the owner was an amateur.  She was still alive.

Stiletto Rose is a story I started immediately after finishing the first draft of Lake of Dragons. The concept actually began as a joke. I was teasing my wife because she and her sister were investigating something. I can't remember what the something is now, but it inspired me to take my wife's initials - S.R. - and use them to develop a "super detective" name. The name I came up with was Stiletto Rose. I thought that name was pretty spectacular so I started working on a story line to go with it. The tagline, "Don't let her beauty fool you, this flower is pure poison," popped into my head. That actually got me pretty excited about the concept. I decided to write a comic book about this assassin whose favorite weapon was a spring loaded blade in the stiletto heel of her leather boot. She was quite fond of delivering the death blow via that blade on the end of a reverse crescent kick across the throat. At this point, I was pretty stoked about the concept. As it turns out, I suck at writing comic books. Add that to the fact that my attempts at drawing look like a third grader's depiction of their family drawn in crayon and my dreams for a Stiletto Rose comic book were destroyed.

Stiletto Rose didn't die due to my inability to pen comic books though. I spent a little more time on her back story and she became the star of a novel. Stiletto was born to Jack Rose (formerly Rosatti) and Tasha (a prostitute who was hooked on heroin). Jack had to leave home when his father - Big John Rosatti, head of one of the most powerful mafia families in Chicago - discovered that his wife had been cheating on him for years and Jack wasn't actually his son. When Jack was fifteen, Big John had his mother killed. He would have had Jack killed too, but Christopher (Jack's uncle on his mother's side) managed to get Jack out of the house. Christopher took Jack to stay with an Irish fellow named, Miles Blaney who owned a bookstore and, unbeknownst to Jack, was his biological father. Miles is fascinated with several Asian cultures and histories. He is also a martial arts expert and trains Jack who ultimately becomes an assassin. On his way to becoming that, he takes odd jobs delivering drugs, collecting on debts, or doing small time hits.

Tasha becomes one of Jack's regular deliveries. At the time, Jack is nineteen and Tasha is twenty-five. Jack ends up falling in love with her and she becomes pregnant. Housing a child drastically changes Tasha's outlook on life and she gets herself off of the heroin. Jack starts working his way up in one of Rosatti family's rival organizations and he starts earning bigger payoffs. By the time Tasha is ready to deliver the baby, Jack has saved enough that this one last big hit will afford them the opportunity to get out of the city and try to begin a life together. It just isn't meant to be though.

After Jack gets his big payoff, he rushes to the hotel that he and Tasha have been living in and finds her hanging from the ceiling by a belt. He walks over to the bloody mess that is crying on the bed and meets his daughter. After Tasha delivered her on her own, she was overwhelmed with emotion and guilt. She feels unfit to be a mother, shoots up, and hangs herself. Jack is left with a child to raise. He names her Stiletto, cleans her up, and they move back in with Miles. Jack never gets out of the life. In fact, his new responsibility makes him feel like he has to continue to earn bigger pay days. Jack and Miles raise Stiletto and she eventually enters the "family business". By the time she is sixteen years old, she is an efficient killing machine.

Just after Stiletto turns eight years old, Jack gets a line on a bigger hit than he has ever managed in his life. A family in Miami that is having trouble with their Colombian supplier seeks him out to not only kill the head of the operation, but to completely destroy it. They pair him up with Rufus Walker, an ex-marine and explosives expert. Neither man likes the idea of teaming up with someone on a hit. They both work alone. However, the hit goes off with out a stitch. Jack does the killing and Rufus blows everything up. A partnership is born that will last until Jack dies in Rufus's arms on an airstrip after a hit. Rufus managed to kill the shooter, but can't save Jack. Jack's dying wish is that Rufus look after Stiletto.

Rufus takes on the responsibility of raising Stiletto and they become family. Stiletto continues to mature as an assassin and begins working for the Rosatti family. Of course, she has no idea that she is working for people that could have been her relatives, though they don't share any blood. She ends up falling in love with one of the men she works with, Danny. Danny would have been a cousin had Big John been Jack's biological father. Stiletto and Danny have a relationship that becomes very serious and at seventeen, she becomes pregnant with his child. Danny turns his back on her and breaks her heart. Her pain is more than Rufus can bear. He kidnaps Danny and tortures him to death. The horrifying things that Rufus does to Danny as he is killing him, affect him so deeply that he never kills again.

Once Danny is dead, Stiletto and Rufus have to go into hiding because the entire Rosatti family and their network are trying to kill them. Rufus moves near Beloit, Wisconsin where he has a farm that belonged to his grandmother and they move Stiletto to Milwaukee. Stiletto's identity is erased and she becomes Shelia Brody. It isn't long before she meets someone new, Mark Ramsey. They marry, he adopts Alyssa and a few years later, they have a son named Matt. The years go by and the memory of Stiletto Rose slowly fades. When her husband is killed and her children kidnapped, it all comes back. Stiletto Rose will have to return if Shelia hopes to save her children...

That is the back story...well, a condensed version of it anyway. I may actually dive deeper into it in prequels because I really like the back story of this one. For now, I'm going to release Stiletto Rose via this blog. Stay tuned. I will try to release a chapter per week. I hope you love the story.

After forty years of living in Wisconsin I had grown completely comfortable with the horrible drivers there. Okay, perhaps comfortable is too strong a word; I had grown used to them. However, the worst thing the drivers in Wisconsin do is sit in the left lane doing five miles per hour under the posted speed regulation and honk their horn at you when you pass them on the right because you actually have someplace to be. Oh yes, they drive drunk quite a bit there too. Now that I live in Los Angeles, Wisconsin drivers don't seem so bad. Did I really just say that? Truly, the thing that bothered me most about Wisconsin drivers is that they just really didn't seem like they were trying to get anywhere, like every day was Sunday and they were just out relaxing in the motorcar. In Los Angeles there are actually quite a few people that are really bad at driving and they all seem to be looking at their phones.

Texting and driving; I know it is a problem everywhere but it never seemed as prevalent when I was driving in Wisconsin. I suppose it could be because there are just so many more drivers here in L.A., but I constantly see people playing with their phones. I mentioned it on Facebook yesterday, but that wasn't enough to get it out of my system. I have to share the story. Hopefully then I will be able to move on and think about something else. If not, I'll have to start pulling people over and taking their phones away from them.

I was driving to work yesterday when I came upon a white, Toyota Camry that was driving erratically. As I approached this vehicle, I had to slow significantly. The posted speed regulation was forty miles per hour, but this vehicle was traveling at fifteen. Due to dark, tinted windows, I was unable to see what the hold up was. Of course there had to be something in front of this car as the brake lights were lighting up sporadically and the car kept swerving slightly. I would have just gone around, but there was heavy traffic in the left lane. Finally, after a few moments and a little cursing, my opening came. I slipped into the left lane and saw that there was absolutely nothing in front of this car but empty lane. There was no reason for the car to be traveling twenty five miles per hour under the speed limit, no reason for the sporadic braking, and no reason for the random slight swerving into the left lane. There was no reason for any of it aside from the fact that the idiot driving was sharing his attention between the road and his phone. I am not a huge fan of name calling (that might be a lie, I'll have to pay more attention) but this asshat earned the steady stream of vulgarities that poured out of my mouth as I watched him make an unnecessary traffic spectacle of himself. Sadly, the story of this jackass is only one of many. As I drive through the streets of L.A., I am astounded at the number of people I see looking at their laps. They sit through stop lights until you honk at them, they swerve into your lane, and they randomly hit their brakes for no reason at all. It is ridiculous.

There is never a good reason to text someone, look at Facebook, or Tweet to your Tweeps while you're driving. There are absolutely no nuggets in that little noggin of yours that are so earth-shattering that they cannot wait until you get there to drop them. Put your damn phone down and drive. I am perfectly okay with the idea of you leaving this world behind because you decided that texting, "He's hot...lol" to your bestie was too important to wait until you made it to Starbucks, but there is a good chance that you're going to take some innocent people with you. That is not okay. You are more dangerous than a drunk driver when you text and drive. Now, I am in no way shape or form advocating operating while intoxicated, but at least those drunks in Wisconsin are looking at the damn road. When you're looking at your lap, you aren't even trying.

That's it. That's my rant. Thanks for listening.

I just finished Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. I love everything about the story; the narrative style, the elegant and beautiful language, and the themes both obvious and subtle. I was quite surprised by the book though. It was not at all what I expected. Completely certain that I knew the story of Frankenstein and his monster all these years, I was shocked to discover that I had no idea what the story was truly about until I read it. That is why I haven't read it before. Everyone knows that story and it has been depicted several times in the movies with a slight twist here and a bigger twist there, but always it is a scientist searching for the meaning of life, challenging science, and playing god. The monster is always uncontrollable and usually quite dumb. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that the monster wasn't really even a monster at all. Victor Frankenstein is the real monster in Frankenstein. His creation is nothing more than a victim of a scientist's desires and then abandonment by his creator.

There are several themes in this story that spoke to me on several different levels, some obvious, some more subtle. This isn't intended to be a book review - although it kind of sounds like one so far - so I'm not going to dive deeply into all of them. There is one idea that was shouting at me the entire time I read though. It is a question actually. What did you expect would happen? I ask that quite a bit lately when I listen to the lamentations of people dissatisfied with their current situations. As Victor's story unfolded, I was constantly reminded of that idea. During the entire story, his situation is precisely what it should be based on the decisions he has made. I'm not sure if Shelley intended this or if it is a byproduct of her exceptional telling of the story, but the theme was obvious to me throughout. In each step of Victor Frankenstein's lamentable life, his situation was exactly what he should have expected based on the decisions that he had made. Shelley made this character so real that I found myself asking him that question repeatedly. Come on Vic, what did you expect would happen?

In the real world, you'll hear things like, "I never have any money," followed - sometimes immediately - by, "Oh, look at this thing I just bought." Of course, this isn't about money, that is just an obvious example to illustrate a point. It amazes me how hard a time people have sometimes correlating the situation they find themselves in with decisions they have made up to that point. Luck is a fantasy. Things you perceive as good or bad both happen because you allow them to, even seek them out. Whether conscious or unconscious, your situation is exactly what you want it to be based on the decisions that you have made.

Victor Frankenstein wanted to create, to test the laws of science and nature, and expand human knowledge. He succeeded in that, mostly. What he could have viewed as a triumph he regretted and shrank away from. Ultimately he came to hate the result of his success. At that point, he made a series of equally bad decisions that led to the demise of everything he held dear, even himself. I think we can all relate to that idea. We believe in something, toil to achieve it, and either don't recognize it once we have succeeded or decide it really isn't what we wanted in the first place. Then, sometimes, we blame that thing - that at one point we wanted so much - for our unhappiness rather than accepting the blame for our own desires. Our happiness or misery is completely up to us.

This is sounding a little preachy and it isn't meant to be. I'm no teacher or philosopher, just making an observation. I am as guilty as the next for blaming anything but me sometimes when things don't go the way I expect them to. However, when I really put some thought into those situations I realize that they could not have turned out any other way. We are all the authors of our own stories and those stories will be exactly what they should be based on the words we lay down on the page. We create our own realities and we are in control of how we perceive them. If our situation becomes something we no longer desire, all we have to do is look at the series of decisions that led us to this point, and make different ones. Whether those decisions are better or worse is completely based on our own perception. We are in control.

So...Victor is a monster who got what he deserved. His creation is also a monster - though a tragic one - who probably got what he deserved if he remained as true to his word as he had been throughout the entire story. Both found themselves in situations that they did not desire and both decided to battle against and focus on the negatives rather than allowing anything positive to come to them. The whole thing is so terribly tragic that the beauty of it is almost astonishing.