Left Field Lillian Byrd Crime Series Book 5 – Elizabeth Sims

Her territory, like a little pit bull. When my turn came to bat, I strolled over to the plate, bat on my shoulder. As I scuffed the dirt, pretending like it was necessary, I kicked a little toward Carmen and murmured, “You think all that padding can protect you from the truth?” I felt the shock-vibe right through her face mask, her eyes angry behind their little black bars.

Her voice shot out at me. “What did you say?” “You heard me.” I let it stay there as I whiffed on two consecutive pitches, took a ball, then grounded out weakly to third. I knew Jackie was trying to be merciful and serve me up the easiest pitches she could: no spin, no nothing. When I managed to open my eyes while swinging, all I could see was her. Oh, well.

After practice Jackie asked if we could talk. I said, “Why don’t you stop over at my place?” The look on her face was like, I thought you’d never ask. I hate clutter, so my design aesthetic was along the lines of a Navy barracks—plain white enamel-metal table in the kitchen, plus chairs of the kind that used to be considered utilitarian, then went away altogether, then came back when some designer in a loft in New York decided the style was incredibly hip.

Then it got expensive and all the cool people had to have it. Then they got tired of it, and now you could find the new-old stuff in secondhand stores. I’m always suspicious of secondhand upholstery, so I managed to score a brand-new couch and a couple of armchairs on clearance. They were an offbeat zucchini color, but everything else I had was neutral, so it all looked OK. My Aunt Rosalie had made a few throw cushions in a somewhat complementary gold color.

Perhaps the old ’70s-era green and gold were poised to make a huge comeback, and I’d be riding the crest of that exciting wave. Jackie and I both knew where things were headed. I offered her a seat on the couch. “What a—nice—place!” she said.

Elizabeth Sims Starter Pack Get free stuff to read! Sign up for the no-spam newschat and get three exclusive pieces of Elizabeth’s work: a novelette, a brief on writing convincing characters, and a personal essay about being a Midwestern writer, all for free, as a thank-you. Details are at the end of this book. LEFT FIELD Lillian Byrd Crime Novel #5 Elizabeth Sims Spruce Park Press This book won a GCLS Goldie award CONTENTS Elizabeth Sims Starter Pack LEFT FIELD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 GET THE STARTER PACK Special Note About Elizabeth Books by Elizabeth Sims Thanks Copyright 1 Ever since I’d killed a person in hot-blooded self-defense, my life had been kind of sketchy.

During that messy time—two years ago, it was—I’d had to abandon my car, euthanize my best friend, and come to realize that my taste in women was really, really shitty. Well, was that last thing entirely true? My luck in love was calamitous, but how could I know at the start that a woman was going to turn out bad? Love is like reason in reverse: instead of starting with some little idea or premise and developing a logical body of thought from there, you start with this thunderbolt, this immense passionate storm of pelvis and heart; you jump into it, and one day you realize you’re in so deep you can’t even see the place you jumped from anymore.

So the possibility of making a measured, considered descent is impossible. It’s past. You’re in. I’ve spent my entire adult life trying to figure that out. The best friend I referred to a minute ago was my beloved pet rabbit, Todd. I’d had to mourn him and my 1985 Chevrolet Caprice, and I’d had to come to grips with the new capacities I’d discovered in myself. (Fortunately, my best human friend, Truby, was alive and well in California.)

You’re probably wondering about the life I took in self-defense and how it happened. She was a lover who turned out to be a murderer, and she was in the act of trying to kill me, because I had uncovered the things she had done. So, yes, self-defense. Still, it’s a pretty heavy trip when you feel the heart that you were at one time ready to defend to the death quiver, then stop beating, through the haft of your knife.

Had the capacity for killing always been inside me, the product of some unknowable synapse development, buried deep? Or had it developed on the instant of necessity and from now on was my quiet little companion, to be called up at will? Will I go to heaven or hell?

This is a short excerpt from the opening of “” by Unknown, quoted for review and introduction purposes. All rights belong to the copyright holders.

Book Information

• Unique ID: 0f3b94b68deec6d2
• File Extension: .pdf
• File Size: 759,825 bytes (0.725 MB)
• Title: –
• Author: Unknown
• Pages: 213
• Language: English (en)

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• Estimated Reading Time: 358.54 minutes
• Total Words: 71,708
• Total Characters: 398,423
• Average Words per Page: 336.66
• Average Characters per Page: 1870.53

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