Split Second
Chapter One
EIGHT YEARS LATER
The motorcade streamed into the tree-shaded parking lot, where it
disgorged numerous people who looked hot, tired and genuinely
unhappy. The miniature army marched toward the ugly white brick
building. The structure had been many things in its time and
currently housed a decrepit funeral home that was thriving solely
because there was no other such facility within thirty miles and the
dead, of course, had to go somewhere. Appropriately somber gentlemen
in black suits stood next to hearses of the same color. A few
bereaved trickled out the door, sobbing quietly into handkerchiefs.
An old man in a tattered suit that was too large for him and wearing
a battered, oily Stetson sat on a bench outside the front entrance,
whittling. It was just that sort of a place, rural to the hilt,
stock car racing and bluegrass ballads forever.
The old fellow looked up curiously as the procession passed by with
a tall, distinguished-looking man ceremoniously in the middle. The
elderly gent just shook his head and grinned at this spectacle,
showing the few tobacco-stained teeth he had left. Then he took a
nip of ... read full excerpt from: Split Second ebook
