Her life was restricted enough as it was. Had her brother been in town, he would have insisted she wrap it up and come home. It was better to get it done in one long, sustained effort. This was the most difficult chapter in the book to write. She arched her back and rubbed at the knot. The rest of her day had been spent working on the book. She had taken a brief break for lunch-two apples and a ham sandwich-while she reviewed the mail Judy had prioritized for her. The push to finish a story always took over as she reached the final chapters. A glance at the clock on her desk showed it was almost eight in the evening. She had been writing since eight that morning. She would like to be in the basement parking garage right now instead of her office. Her office suite on the thirty-fourth floor put her close enough to the storm she could hear the air sizzle in the split second before the boom. She frowned, crossed out the last sentence, added a new detail, then went on with her description of the farmer who had found the boy. The impact was necessary for the rest of the book. Sara did not pull back from writing the scene even though she knew it would leave a bitter taste of defeat in the mind of the reader. His family, the Oklahoma law enforcement community, even his kidnapper, did not realize it. The child had died within hours of his abduction. Despite the dark specificity of the scene, the flow of words never faltered. Writing longhand on a yellow legal pad of paper, she shaped the twenty-ninth chapter of her mystery novel. What she was writing was disturbing enough.
The desk lamp as well as the overhead light were on in her office as she tried to prevent any shadows from forming. Sara Walsh ignored the storm as best she could, determined not to let it interrupt her train of thought. The summer storm lit up the night sky in a jagged display of energy, lightning bouncing, streaking, fragmenting between towering thunderheads.
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