Murder, betrayal, and love.
Alex, a struggling artist, bolts across America on an impromptu road trip with Gregory, a sex shop owner, in his customized Cadillac. They burn rubber in their getaway as the Mafia isn’t happy with Gregory’s gambling debt. Rowena enters their orbit – a down-home cowgirl who’s innocent, alluring, and becomes the diversion between the mercurial duo.
Meanwhile, from Paris to San Francisco and beyond, a cadre of lethal operatives initiate a maelstrom of espionage and murder. This forces redhead Veronica, a courier carrying secrets, and now hunted by assassins, into an encounter with the boys during Mardi Gras. Lives are drastically changed as daggers fly between Veronica and Rowena, while the CIA and KGB are in hot pursuit. The escapade turns whackily surreal as everyone scrambles to save themselves, each other, and maybe the world.
Will be published soon.
DRIVEN
“Obsession is the wellspring of genius and madness.”
Michel de Montaigne 1533
CHAPTER ONE
Chihuahuan Desert, Mexico – March 1990
The bullets surely meant for our heads, died with sudden shrieks piercing tiny holes into the customized trunk of the Cadillac. Gregory kept his foot jammed to the floorboard and aimed the car for the distant mountains, a vanguard to the plume of exhaust spreading out across the Mexican desert. I looked back to see the pick-up with its nameless occupants fading fast into the perspective of the highway. Then, they were gone. Veronica, staring into the distance, her face blank and pale, clutched my thigh so tightly it felt as if her fingertips might meet. I looked past her to Gregory, but he continued to gaze straight ahead.
I thumbed backward to our uninvited guests. “Friends of yours?”
With a calmness usually reserved for ‘What’s for dinner,’ he said, “Never saw them before in my life.”
*****
I guess I would consider that the high point of that day, but later, I was sitting in a Mexican motel, thinking. Asking myself questions, and trying to answer them. Just sitting there on that Mexican bed, propped up against the wall, using lumpy Mexican pillows stuffed with God knows what as support, and thinking. Yes, I had wanted adventure, and hitting the road with Gregory had certainly promised that. Running from danger was one thing, but running to it was something else. Although I wished I could blame Gregory for all our problems, I couldn’t. I had invited Veronica away from her problems in New Orleans and now she’d affected me more than our brushes with death. For dozens of years later, then as now, I’d been trying to unweave my tangled emotions about her, but the harder I try, the more matted they became.
Memories are something buried, and not always treasured. They come when you search for them, but mostly they arrive at their own convoluted will. These memories are on their own. Even as we discover why we do things, we’re already into the next problem.
*****
Gregory took the motel room next door, but Lord knows it wasn’t to accommodate me and Veronica. He just wanted to sleep. Veronica was in the bathroom, ten feet away, but just as much an enigma as the face on a new moon. How will I put all this into perspective? I’m here, but how did a guy in his early twenties get here? No, that’s not the question. It should be: Why did a guy in his early twenties get here? Maybe if I can figure that out, I’ll know what’s going to happen when the bathroom door opens.
