Another Way to Die

Another Way to Die

A Short Story by: Amy McCorkle

Genre: Dark Romantic Suspense

Release: January 20, 2012

Editor: Lea Schizas

Line editor: Greta Gunselman

Cover artist: Delilah K. Stephans

Words: 12773

Pages: 45

ISBN: 978-1-927085-51-6

Price: $2.50

Blurb:

Almira Sands has been running all her life from her abusive father Jack. She knows one day the running will end and only she or her father will be left standing. What she doesn’t expect is to be kidnapped by Daniel Logan.

Daniel Logan is a mercenary who only intended to use Almira long enough to get to safety, but when she takes a bullet and almost dies he finds himself questioning who he is and what he does and saves her life.

Excerpt:

I felt his hand tapping on my face and heard his voice coming from what seemed like a million miles away. “Almira. Almira, wake up.”

My eyes slid open for a moment and I saw him as he was. Older, stronger, maybe crazier for helping me now than he had been then. My eyes drifted closed. I was back in the past with him carrying me out of my father’s estate and into his waiting car. I was so doped up on pills and heroin at the time I couldn’t think beyond ‘help me get out of here.’

Then Daniel’s voice called again, this time from the present day. “Don’t you dare die on me! Not now. Not after all of this.”

My eyes opened again, and he was standing over me. I managed to scan the room and saw a beautiful woman preparing to work on me.

“If you fail her, I’ll come looking for you.”

“Don’t be so dramatic, Danny. You know I do good work. If I didn’t, you wouldn’t have called me in on this.”

I gazed up at Daniel and said raggedly, “Yeah, Daniel, don’t be so dramatic.”

His head jerked downward and he took my hand; images of our brief time together flooded me: him carrying me… throwing me in the shower... of us naked in the shower, making love. Suddenly I felt hot all over—well, as hot as can be under the circumstances.

“Daniel, don’t go…” I murmured. Daniel let go and pulled up a chair, lighting a cigarette.

“I’m giving you something for the pain but it’s still going to hurt. Put that out,” Jasmine said as she worked over me, digging out the bullets; the pain was mind numbing. Tears rolled down my cheeks as he took my hand again and I crushed it.

With each dig into my body to retrieve those goddamn bullets, memories flooded my head. The night Daniel and I spent together surfaced. Suddenly I felt at peace…

“I’m losing her, Daniel.” Jasmine’s voice sounded like a faint echo.

“Stay with me, kiddo, stay with me.”

I opened my eyes but I wasn’t in the present. I was in another time, another place. I felt hands pressing down on my chest. Air rushed down into my lungs.

“Save her damn it!” Danny’s voice was so like it had been all those years ago.

I could see us that night as we made love. Hear his voice. “You don’t know what kind of man I am,” he’d said.

I’d known exactly what kind of man he was then.

His mouth captured mine. His air breathed life into me, desperately pulling me back from the brink.

I opened my eyes, coughing and sucking in air as he held onto my face, his gaze burning into me, reminding me of why I had slept with him in the first place. “Don’t ever do that to me again,” he said. “Do you understand me?”

“Is she gone?”

He looked up toward Jasmine. “No.”

“Then get her the hell out of here because I don’t trust her.”

“Ungrateful bitch.”

Daniel leaned back. Before he could stop me, my hand shot up and I nailed her in the mouth with a hard sucker punch.

“Crazy—”

Daniel stood up. “I suggest you choose your next words very carefully,” he warned her.

My eyes slid shut. I heard a door slam, and before I lost consciousness completely, I heard a faint whisper. “This time I refuse to let you go.”

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Customer Reviews:

The World is all too often filled with people...and have you ever noticed the word VILE and the word EVIL have the very same letters in them?rnrnAmy McCorkle has given us a short story that will make your skin crawl, your nerve endings flare in disgust and your blood pressure ratchet up at least fifty dangerous points...that is how well written, ANOTHER WAY TO DIE, this dark suspense story is.rnrnI have known many a dark demon in my life time...some come to you with no artifice, celebrating their cruelty, while others mask their tarantula-like stingers until you are so close it is too late to run from the rapid spread of their poisonous attacks.rnrnThis is such a story.rnrnAlmira Sands is born to a father bent on making her his special toy, but not exclusively...Daddy is not above exploiting her, drugging her, letting others hurt her to get his nefarious way: His daughter lost beneath the vicious bonds of his ownership.rnrnI felt incredible REVULSION for her father, while turning page after page on my Kindle, cheering Almira on as she wades through her father's battalion of sick minions...but can one young survivor win against an army of cruel abusers?rnrnDepravity exists in the real world we all step out into when we leave the safety of our private havens...not all of us have to confront it in our day-to-day existence...and some of us, for reasons unknown, draw it to us like we're beacons evil needs to crush...rnrnAmy gives us the extreme depths of how vicious a person swinging solely on the side of evil is, and the equally extreme highs of someone taught by evil how to rise above it fights back....but will it be enough?rnrnI give Amy and Almira FIVE STARS for the gripping story.rnrnANOTHER WAY TO DIE, that will haunt me well into the years to come.rnrnWell Done Ms. McCorkle. rn

Almira is a young woman running from an abusive past. Daniel is a man trying to set things right in a corrupt world. Together, they are one hot couple, but can they mend their broken past and present to have any sort of future together?rnrnThis is a short read but it’s action packed! Suspense/Thriller fans will love the shoot ‘em up and car chasing scenes. Romance fans will love the sparks and emotions that fly off Almira and Daniel. A truly fun story. If the author can pack this much into a short, I’m positive her longer books will be even better.rn