Author: Rick R. Reed
Publisher: NineStar Press
Release Date: April 20, 2020
Heat Level: 1 - No Sex
Pairing: Male/Male
Length: 93300
Genre: Horror/Thriller, NineStar Press, LGBTQIA+, crime, suspense, dark, men with children, reporter, hurt/comfort, psychic ability
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Synopsis
Who knew that a summer thunderstorm and
a lost little boy would conspire to change single dad Cayce D’Amico’s life in
an instant? With Luke missing, Cayce ventures into the woods near their house
to find his son, only to have lightning strike a tree near him, sending a
branch down on his head. When he awakens the next day in the hospital, he
discovers he has been blessed or cursed—he isn’t sure which—with psychic
ability. Along with unfathomable glimpses into the lives of those around him,
he’s getting visions of a missing teenage girl.
When a second girl disappears soon after
the first, Cayce realizes his visions are leading him to their grisly fates.
Cayce wants to help, but no one believes him. The police are suspicious. The
press wants to exploit him. And the girls’ parents have mixed feelings about
the young man with the “third eye.”
Cayce turns to local reporter Dave
Newton and, while searching for clues to the string of disappearances and
possible murders, a spark ignites between them. Little do they know that
nearby, another couple—dark and murderous—are plotting more crimes and
wondering how to silence the man who knows too much about them.
Excerpt
Third Eye
Rick R. Reed © 2020
All Rights Reserved
Prologue
She was only thirteen. It wasn’t fair
she now lay, bound, waiting for death. Before, there had been struggling:
clawing and fighting, scratching their faces, pulling at their hair, batting at
whatever part she could reach. Her breath had come in choking spasms,
adrenaline pumping, burning, anteing up the hysteria so much she thought her
air would be blocked. Then had come the dread that made her lose most of her
fight, when her terror-addled brain had begun to accept her fate was to die
here, in this tiny, hot room, with the only witness to her demise the sparkling
eyes of her killers and the maddening, crooked whirl of a ceiling fan long past
its prime and wobbling, doing nothing more than blowing the overheated, moist
air around the room. The dread had risen up, a nausea twisting her gut and
making her afraid she would vomit. And then had come the numbness, a dull
tingling throughout her body that precluded movement, stripping her of coherent
thought.
They stood above her. Faces she had
trusted, faces she had seen before, around her neighborhood. The man she and
her friends had had a crush on. He used to drive by her little house on Ohio
Street in his old red Mustang, looking the picture of youth, confidence,
masculinity. His hair was dark, cut bristle-brush short, and his face always
clean-shaven. Thin lips bordered rows of perfect white teeth, and when he had
smiled at her, only hours ago, she had lit up. A tingling had started in her
toes and had worked its way up until the color rose to her cheeks. At her young
age, the interest of a man in his twenties was inconceivable, although it had
been something she had hoped for since the first day she had seen him, back at
the onset of summer, when the sun had turned white-hot, burning up the grass
and making illusory waves rise from the hot, cracked sidewalks.
He had pulled to the curb and sat there,
car idling. She sat in the front yard, sorting through Barbie clothes: ball
gowns and swimming suits, miniskirts and stretch pants. He didn’t say anything,
not right away. She had looked at him once, then looked away, certain his
interest could never be in her. Suddenly she felt ridiculous with her metal
trunk, her Barbie dolls, and all the outfits she had once been so proud to
collect. Swiftly, she returned the clothes to their case and slammed it shut.
She leaned back, resting on her palms,
and lifted her face to the sun. Its heat beat down relentlessly, making the
skin on her face feel tight.
She felt his eyes on her still. She
opened her own eyes a crack and regarded him peripherally. He really was
looking at her! The adorable little smile that caused a dimple to rise in his
right cheek deepened in the sun’s play of shadow and light. She leaned back
more, left hand reaching out to surreptitiously move the Barbie trunk farther
away. In this posture, here on the withered and brown grass, she felt that her
breasts, little more than two tiny bumps an unkind boy at school had once
referred to as her anthills, looked larger. She could be eighteen, couldn’t
she? With the right makeup and her hair pulled up….
But now her long blonde hair was pulled
back in a ponytail, clipped with a pink plastic barrette. She wore a pair of
cutoff shorts and an oversized South Park T-shirt belonging to her older
brother. He would have killed her had he known she was wearing it. But he was
away at the Y’s summer camp and would never know the difference.
The idling of the car was like an animal
purring.
And then the sun disappeared, and she
sat in darkness. Beneath her closed lids, she sensed someone standing over her.
Why hadn’t she heard the slam of the car
door? Her eyelids fluttered, but she did not open them. It would be just like
her mother to come outside now and stand above her, hands on hips, and ask her
what she thought she was doing.
“Lucy?”
Finally, she opened her eyes and blinked
at the brightness of the August day. He was smiling. So unlike the other guys
in Fawcettville, he was dressed in pressed black slacks and a collarless white
shirt, buttoned to his neck.
“How did you know my name?”
“Oh, I make it my business to know the
names of all the pretty young ladies around here.”
Lucy felt the heat rise to her face once
more. She grinned and could not think of a single word to say.
“Playing Barbie?”
She shoved the case farther away, until
it was completely out of her grasp. The case lay in the white heat, glinting,
looking, she hoped, as if it had nothing to do with her.
“What? Oh…no, no. These are my little
sister’s. She always makes such a mess of things, and I was just organizing for
her.”
“What a good sister.”
“Yeah, well…”
The two said nothing for a while, and
Lucy began to grow uncomfortable under his gaze. She shifted her long, tanned
legs in front of her, crossing them at the ankle.
“I was driving by and saw you sitting
there, and I had to tell you”—he hunkered down beside her—“what a lovely sight
you are. It made me stop just to have a better look.”
She laughed and thought she sounded way
too much like the thirteen-year-old she was. “Thank you,” she whispered,
wondering where her voice had gone.
“No, thank you, for being here, for
making the heat of this day a little more pleasant.”
Oh, stop! she wanted to cry out but
whispered again, “Thank you.”
He leaned closer, enough for her to feel
his breath near her ear. In spite of the day’s heat, his nearness caused
gooseflesh to rise on her arms, her spine to tingle.
“Listen.” He glanced around the empty
street with eyes like none she had ever seen: green, ringed with thick black
lashes. And in his gaze was a conspiracy that included only the two of them.
“My car has air-conditioning. I know this is out of the blue and all, but I
wondered if you’d like to go for a ride with me.”
Lucy glanced back at her house. She
wished suddenly she lived in a bigger house, in a better neighborhood. Here on
this modest residential street close to the river, her small white clapboard
house was surrounded by other houses very much like it, some of them covered in
rusting aluminum siding. She pictured her mother inside, on a vinyl-covered
kitchen chair, watching All My Children on a thirteen-inch portable TV on the
Formica-topped kitchen table. Her mother, she knew, would never approve of what
was transpiring here, right in her front yard.
He stood suddenly. “Okay, okay. I get
the message.”
“Wait.” She sat up straighter. A pickup
rumbled by and left in its wake a smell of exhaust and a rush of hot air.
He turned. “What? Need to get your mom’s
permission?”
“Of course not!” Her voice came out
higher than she would have liked, the whiny protest of a child. She stood. “I’d
like to come with you. But I can’t stay out too long.” She was about to say “My
mom will be worried” but realized how immature that would sound. “I’ve got some
people I have to meet in a little while.”
He smiled. And the smile erased any
nervousness she had about going with him. After all, she had seen him around
the neighborhood dozens of times. He wasn’t exactly a stranger, not really.
“That’s fine, Lucy. I’ll have you back
within an hour. I promise. I certainly wouldn’t want to get off on the wrong
foot with you.” He winked, and she followed him to the waiting car.
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Meet the Author
Real Men. True Love.Rick R. Reed is an award-winning and bestselling author of more than fifty works of published fiction. He is a Lambda Literary Award finalist. Entertainment Weekly has described his work as “heartrending and sensitive.” Lambda Literary has called him: “A writer that doesn’t disappoint…” Find him at www.rickrreedreality.blogspot.com. Rick lives in Palm Springs, CA, with his husband, Bruce, and their fierce Chihuahua/Shiba Inu mix, Kodi.
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