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    Eye for Revenge: A Ken Backhouse Thriller
    Eye for Revenge: A Ken Backhouse Thriller
    Eye for Revenge: A Ken Backhouse Thriller
    Ebook124 pages1 hour

    Eye for Revenge: A Ken Backhouse Thriller

    By Steve Duncan

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Ken Backhouse, a former counterintelligence Marine Corps officer fresh off the battlefield of Afghanistan, seeks justice for the ruthless slaughter of innocent teens and their parents--and it’s personal. But while co-operating with local Atlanta PD to identify the murderer, he’s swimming in an alphabet soup of federal agencies: the CIA, NSA and FBI. The question is why. When he must take matters into his own hands, he finds himself in the deadly crosshairs of the same legal system he seeks to avenge.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRum Water Eyes Media, LLC
    Release dateDec 19, 2014
    ISBN9780988341647
    Eye for Revenge: A Ken Backhouse Thriller
    Author

    Steve Duncan

    Steve Duncan is a writer and Professor of Screenwriting. He served as Interim Dean from 2009-2010 and Chair of the Screenwriting Department from 2007 through 2009. He is the author of "A Guide to Screenwriting Success: How to Write for Film and Television" (Rowman-Littlefield, 2006) and "Genre Screenwriting: How to Write Popular Screenplays That Sell" (Continuum Books, 2008). He is a contributing author to Write Now! Screenwriting (Tarcher/Penguin 2011) and The Handbook of Creative Writing (Edinburgh University Press/Columbia University Press 2008). Steve Duncan's produced screen credits include Co-creator and Executive Consultant for the CBS-New World TV one-hour Emmy Winning Vietnam War series Tour of Duty, Writer-Producer for the ABC-Warner Bros TV one-hour action series A Man Called Hawk, and Co-writer of Emmy Nominated The Court-martial of Jackie Robinson, Turner Network Television-von Zerneck-Sertner Films' original movie. Steve has also developed and written comedy and drama projects for Aaron Spelling Television, Columbia Television, NBC Productions, Republic Pictures, TriStar Pictures, Procter & Gamble Productions and Precipice Productions. He holds a B.S., Art Design, Cum Laude, from North Carolina A & T State University and a M.A. in Communication Arts, Television and Film from Loyola Marymount and is a member of the Writers Guild of America West, the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Steve holds the rank of Lieutenant Commander, U.S.N.R. Retired.

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      Book preview

      Eye for Revenge - Steve Duncan

      A Ken Backhouse Thriller

      Episode 1

      Eye for Revenge

      By

      Steve Duncan

      Rum Water Eyes Media, LLC

      Smashwords Edition

      Eye for Revenge: A Ken Backhouse Thriller

      Copyright 2014 Steve Duncan

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      ~~~~~

      Eye for Revenge

      If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles.

      Sun Tzu, Art of War

      Part 1

      Eye for an Eye

      Chapter 1

      It’s a unique occasion.

      It’s Margret Robinson and Vanessa Backhouse’s birthday. Born on the same day in the same year in the same hospital. They live next door to each other. And they are best friends. BFFs.

      The family room buzzes as they gather around the kitchen table at the Robinson’s home with ten of their closest friends. Abby Robinson, a chubby and cute working-class wife, makes a grand entrance with the cake and unveils it as if she were an illusionist who had conjured it up. She places it on the table. The cake is rectangular: a vanilla square and chocolate square side-by-side but made to be one. In cursive, the red icing reads Happy Birthday Vanessa and Maggie. Why two different cakes? It isn’t that Vanessa likes vanilla cake; it is that she hates chocolate. But Maggie adores it. Maggie loves any kind of cake. Or candy. Or cookies. She has a sweet tooth. So, to avoid any fuss over the matter, Abby special ordered the cake at Steward’s Bakery in Lennox Square Mall.

      As she did every year.

      This is a tradition.

      But this year she’d instructed the chef to add Sweet 13 under the girl’s names.

      Eddie grins at Maggie. He’s a rugged auto mechanic and had even put on a tie for the occasion. Special hardly describes the emotions he’s feeling. Maggie had teased him about the tie as he pretended to be stubborn when she offered to tie it for him. She’d even coaxed him into putting on a nice pair of slacks instead of his usual faded blue denim carpenter jeans. Eddie and Maggie are as tight as a father and daughter could be at her age. She’s the sweetest little girl and he knows it’s only a matter of time before he’ll lose that bond of being the first man in her life. He knows he won’t lose her to death (God please no) or to her leaving home for college.

      He’d lose her hormones.

      Those damn little horny boys in the neighbor were already starting to circle her like hungry buzzards. On weekends, they gathered in the cul-de-sac on their low rider bikes with the high handlebars and rear flags on poles and gawk at her.

      Each year, they alternated where the birthday party would take place since the girls where born. Last year, it was at the Backhouse home. His buddy, Ken, was overseas and had not contacted Abby or Vanessa for nearly a month leading up to that party. For this reason, Eddie is relieved it is at his home this year.

      Major Kenneth Xavier Backhouse, U.S. Marine Corps, is out in the field. And when he’s out in the field, everyone knows it means he’s in harm’s way. Last year he’d volunteered for another tour. But this year, he was due to come home. Not for the party but soon afterwards. So, both Elise and Vanessa are in high spirits today as they’d Skyped with Ken the night before.

      Despite their divorce, Ken keeps Vanessa in his life. Spoiled her. They are so close, Elise sometimes feels jealous. She’d loved the man like that once. She still did but the marriage hadn’t worked out. And he’s still angry with her though he never says so. Whenever they talk she feels it lurking behind his smile and good-natured teasing. There’s enough blame to spread around for the both of them. It hurts them the most that the breakup causes Vanessa pain. During the Skype session, Ken made a big announcement: He’s leaving active duty in the Marine Corps and will be in Atlanta permanently.

      The last thing he told them was that he loved them.

      Abby starts singing as soon as she lights the thirteen candle on the cake. Then Eddie joins in, his voice loud and as off-key as ever. Vanessa beams and, as if on cue, all the teenagers begin singing.

      Happy Birthday, dear Vanessa, sings Maggie.

      Happy Birthday, dear Maggie, sings Vanessa.

      The two girls sing over each other, not in competition but in unity and both their names get lost in the performance. All the bad singing is made better by Abby whose voice rises above them all and soars over the noise. This lady can sing. Maggie and Vanessa had tried to talk her into trying out for one of those TV talent shows but she had no interest in that. Singing at church is prize enough for her.

      When the last verse of Happy Birthday fades, Eddie declares, How often do you have best friends born on the same day? Happy sweet 13, girls.

      Elise takes in a breath as if it were her who had just turned thirteen and says, Make a wish then blow out the candles, girls.

      The tree-lined street looks like any middle-class street in any middle-class neighborhood in any American city. Outside, its yards green, the streets black asphalt, white sidewalks and all of it capped with a sapphire sky. The cars parked neatly on both sides of the street. While inside, with their friends gathered around and giggling, Vanessa and Maggie look at each other, close their eyes and open them and exchange smiles and then simultaneously blow out the candles.

      It happens thousands a time a day everywhere in the country.

      But this time it’s the last moment of their young lives.

      In fact, it’s the last second of all of their lives.

      As two newly minted teenagers blow together at the very moment the Robinson home and everyone inside vaporize.

      ~~~~~

      Chapter 2

      There are only smoldering ruins.

      The Atlanta Police Department’s plain sedan pulls up and stops in front of where the Robinson home once stood. Detective Sergeant Roy Walker--a stout man with a perpetual smile in his expression--slips out from behind the wheel and stares at the rubble. It’s as if he’s dreaming. Watching a scene from a television show. The smell of burnt everything assaults his nostrils.

      And he catches a whiff of the odor of death, the putrid odor covertly mixing with the smoking remains that was once a family home.

      Now an eye sore.

      His partner, Detective Lieutenant Angela Nielsen, gets out of the passenger side and closes the door. Though physically fit--she works out everyday--, she looks tired. She is tired. She didn’t sleep well last night; too much shit streaming through her mind’s eye. Old cases. Bad missions. Muted guilt. And now this: another nightmare to add to the pit of misery that seems to haunt her only in the obscurities of sleep.

      Walker and Nielsen just stare for what seems like too long before Angela says, Jesus, this looks like a surgical Drone strike. She’d seen enough of the aftermath of that Over There.

      They glance over at the fire department sedan parked nearby and see Fire Captain Bryce Meade, a large man with the height and width of an NFL linebacker, making his way toward them. She only knows him in passing.

      Who the hell would want to murder teenage girls at a birthday party? says Angela.

      Walker gives her a look and grins, You obviously don’t have children.

      Angela throws him a glare and he cracks, Or a sense of humor today. He closes the driver’s side door and joins her on the sidewalk.

      Detectives, sings Captain Meade with a grim tone when they meet. Thanks for coming out.

      Angela can’t help but to notice that the homes on either side of the black lot are untouched. Captain Meade picks up on her observation and says, We got here in time to save the neighboring structures. He takes a breath of pride, then

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