Found Wanting Pt 01

A mysterious man with a shrouded past who wants nothing more than to be left alone.

A single mother on the run from a powerful, malevolent crime syndicate.

One's life is in danger; the other stopped living long ago; only together can either hope for salvation.

It was all Reyna could do to balance the demands of life as an emergency room nurse with providing for her son. Becoming a mother had meant walking away from not only the carefree life of partying and nightclubs, but also the dream of her own happily ever after. However, it was a decision she vowed to never regret. She was determined to build a life for her son that would make her father proud. She certainly never expected that a random patient on an otherwise unremarkable weeknight could so completely upend her life.

Bruce had finally found the life he had been seeking. He had his land, his dog, and his books. No one expected anything from him... or even took much notice of his existence. He occasionally found himself in a position to help the fellow citizens of the tiny town where he had settled, but they were content to let him disappear again once the deed was done. No one ever asked about his past, or the ghosts of all those he was directed to eliminate who greeted him each time he closed his eyes.

When Reyna realized just how much danger she was facing, she took her son and left Miami without hesitation. But her decisiveness seemed all for naught when her pursuers forced her car off the highway. She woke to discover that a mysterious man rescued them before disappearing again despite his own injuries. Her quest to thank the enigmatic man who saved them soon spiraled out of control; due both to the dogged efforts of the villainous forces sworn to see her dead, and what she discovered as she got to know the stalwartly independent, terrifyingly capable and downright grumpy man known to the town only as Bruce.

Found Wanting is the tale of a woman who finds herself caught between running for her life and the growing urge to save a man so consumed by the mistakes of his past that he gave up living, even if his body never got the message. One spent a lifetime dreaming of finding happily ever after; the other was just annoyed the 'after' part hadn't happened yet; together, they have found themselves in the crosshairs of a man anxious to deliver them both to the afterlife. All that remains to be seen is whether they will discover in time that the growing attraction they share might be their only hope; not only for survival... but for true love.

Author's note:

This novel is a slow-burn, dual-POV dark romantic thriller. I've broken it up into three sections for publication here. There is no sensuality in the first section, but I assure you that your patience will be rewarded.

Make no mistake, this novel delves into some weighty subject matter. Trigger warnings for significant on-page violence, depression and suicidal ideation.

All sensuality (on page or otherwise) takes place between characters who are eighteen or older.

***

Copyright © 2023 Jake Lazarus

All rights reserved.

This book, or any portion thereof, may not be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the author (except for the use of brief quotations in a review).

This is a work of fiction.

Names, characters, business, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner.

Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

***

One

Reyna

"Oh, great! Real bullets!" Reyna Lewiston quoted as she studied the rapidly darkening sky through her front windshield. "Wouldn't have minded in the least if we skipped our regularly scheduled three o-clock rain-shower today, Florida." She glanced down at the fuel gauge whose needle was rapidly approaching empty on her ancient hatchback and muttered, "Just fucking perfect."

She glanced in her review mirror, once again wondering if her imagination was playing tricks on her. She had been on the road for over three hours, and she felt certain she would explode if her anxiety climbed any higher. A glance at her surroundings told her relief might be a long time coming. She had lived her entire life in the country's most southeastern state but could still sometimes be surprised by how empty parts of it were. She had once road tripped to the Pacific, and while Florida could not compare to sections of Texas where you could go a hundred kilometers with no sight of civilization, it was not far removed.

She pushed the button on her phone to activate her virtual 'assistant' and barked, "How long until the next fuel station?"

"Thirty-seven minutes along present course," the unsettlingly realistic computer responded cheerfully.

She groaned in frustration and shifted uncomfortably in her seat, cursing the 'biggest size you've got' coffee she had ordered upon departing Miami. She spotted a sign for an upcoming exit but quickly realized it was the 'drive ten minutes out of your way to hit up a fuel station built when leaded gas was still a thing' type as opposed to the 'every imaginable convenience within a few hundred meters of the expressway' type. She nearly convinced herself to just keep going before her bladder filed a strenuous objection. She swerved across the right lane to take the exit, narrowly avoiding a slow-moving SUV in the process.

Reaching the bottom of the exit ramp, she saw that her suspicions were correct. A small sign was posted by the side of the road which indicated that a fuel station could be found twelve kilometers to the west. She nearly pulled back on to the expressway but a small sign indicating the speed limit was one-hundred kilometers per hour convinced her otherwise. She turned left and floored the accelerator, the pitiful three-cylinder whine of her engine complaining in protest as she sped toward her destination.

Ten minutes later, she gratefully drove into a dilapidated service station. She pulled up to a pump and extracted her precious cargo from the rear of the vehicle before dashing inside in search of a restroom. The smell was unpleasant, but not nearly so bad as she had feared. Nevertheless, she touched as little as possible while hurriedly attending to the urgent business at hand.

She emerged to find a bearded man eyeing her car suspiciously from a rocking chair near the fuel station's front door. She hurried past him to re-stow her cargo. As she closed the back door, she heard a pointed throat-clearing come from behind her which sent an icy sliver of fear shooting down her spine.

"You gonna buy anything?" a gravelly voice grunted.

"Uh...yeah..." Reyna stammered.

She popped open the fuel cover and grabbed a nozzle to top off her tank. Moments later, the flow cut off when her tank reached capacity. The man wandered over and peaked at the readout on the pump.

"There's a ten-dollar minimum," he grumped.

"I don't know what to tell you," Reyna snapped. "The tank's full. Benefits of an efficient engine, I guess."

"How efficient?"

"Twenty kilometers per liter, give or take. I can go eight hundred kilometers on a full tank."

"Good for you. How'd you like Alligator Alley?"

Reyna glanced around nervously before saying, "How'd you know I came from the east?"

"Can't get mosquito hits like that coming down I-75," he said gesturing to her windscreen which was covered in insectoid remains.

"Oh. Um...it was fine. Listen, I've really got to get going. Can't I just pay ten bucks for the gas?"

"Fair enough. Where you headed?"

"Um...west."

"Ain't much more west you can go. The gulf's only a few minutes from here."

"Thanks a lot," Reyna huffed as she climbed into the driver's seat and hurried away.

In fitting with the falsehood she had used with the fuel station attendant, she turned west. But she quickly discovered just how right he was when the road she traveled dead ended into the placid water of the Gulf of Mexico, shimmering in the late afternoon sun. She turned north along the road which followed the shoreline but quickly found herself impossibly lost. Belatedly, she fired up the navigation app on her phone and, after nearly an extra hour of driving, found her way back to the expressway.

By this point it was getting dark, and she knew that her goal of making it to the state line before stopping was in serious jeopardy. She had chosen the less direct route intentionally, intending to hug the west coast rather than the more direct path of utilizing the turnpike. She did this in hopes of eluding the pursuit she knew instinctively must be searching for her, both by using the less logical route and by staying off the road where, by design, every vehicle was carefully tracked.

A quick calculation in her head told her that Alabama was still at least ten hours distant. In her younger years, she would have pushed on without hesitation. After all, back then staying up until five in the morning was child's play. But the young woman capable of such feats no longer bore any resemblance to the serious person at the wheel of her vehicle.

She continued to head north, paying close attention to the billboards in hopes of finding a place to stop which sat comfortably between 'way out of her budget' and 'definitely going to get ringworm'.

Passing Tampa two hours later, she still had not found a suitable candidate. A stop for food had seemingly buoyed her stamina and she was now considering pushing through to the panhandle since she knew there was little to find along the state's west coast beyond sleepy vacation towns.

Once the sky transitioned from dusk to fully dark, it did not take long for Reyna to begin doubting the wisdom of her strategy. The oncoming headlights were starting to dazzle her, and she started working her way through the standard list of things to do when one feels their focus slipping behind the wheel. Rolling her window down did nothing but fill the car with humidity, which only made her sleepier. She tried listening to fascist talk radio for a bit, which certainly got her blood boiling, but it did not take long to decide the headache she was getting was worse than being drowsy.

It was in the midst of her futile efforts to regain her alertness that she noticed the car which had started to overtake her had matched speeds and was holding station to her left. She glanced over and was overcome with a sense of foreboding when recognition bloomed in the eyes of the luxury pickup's passenger.

"God damnit," she muttered quietly.

She looked around anxiously for some sign of salvation, but all she saw was the headlights of her fellow travelers. The road she traveled was a four lane B-road which ran along the coast. There were no exits to offer salvation, only endless blacktop occasionally interrupted by small towns which had not been fortunate enough to exist near one of the state's many interstate highways.

Reyna tried to calm her nerves and convince herself she had been mistaken, but she soon felt her car accelerate, is if on its own. She remembered back to a driving demonstration her father had designed for her as part of her lengthy process of learning to operate a motor vehicle. He had pulled alongside a random vehicle on the highway, but matched speeds with them instead of passing. He had then slowly increased his speed until the vehicle in the right lane had accelerated by twenty-five kilometers per hour. He had explained it was far more often a subconscious act on the part of the other driver, rather than them being intentionally difficult, although there was certainly plenty of that in south Florida.

She glanced down at the speedometer and saw she was going twenty percent over the speed limit. More worryingly, the truck she had noticed was holding station in the lane beside her. She cast a worried glance in their direction, only to find the car's passenger still staring at her with eyes that sent a spike of fear coursing through her body.

Casting a look to the horizon offered no comfort. In fact, she seemed to be quite literally in the middle of nowhere. Not even the sky held a hint of civilization, only inky blackness in every direction. Her phone's GPS was of no help as it only suggested that her next turn would not happen for several hours.

She thought about calling the police, but what would she tell them? That another car was also driving on the highway? The question would not be if they would hang up on her, it was whether or not they would laugh at her before or after.

She noticed movement out of the corner of her eye and glanced back at the pickup to find that it was much closer now. Less than a meter separated her door from theirs and she felt like the menacing passenger could easily see right down into her pitiful hatchback.

A deafening rumble rang out from beneath the truck's hood as the driver accelerated sharply. He swerved into the lane in front of her and braked hard. It was no trouble for her to slow her own, much lighter car, but that knowledge did little to quell her rising panic.

The truck accelerated again, spinning its tires slightly in an attempt to regain some momentum. Reyna slowed, hoping someone would come up behind her and offer a measure of safety, but the review mirror offered no hint for salvation.

The truck swerved abruptly and cut across the median before speeding south. She watched the taillights fade in her review mirror and breathed a sigh of relief.

"How in the fuck did they find me?" she whispered to the heavens.

Just as she thought she had seen the last of the truck, the taillights flared in the distance behind her before disappearing altogether. She feared for the worst and stomped her foot down on the accelerator. Her phone said the next town was only ten minutes away. If she threw caution to the wind, she could make it there in half the time. Or she thought grimly, perhaps she would get pulled over which would be an ironically welcome turn of events.

Her little hatchback topped out at a bit less than two-hundred kilometers per hour as she sped north. She had the first inkling of spotting the light pollution of an approaching city when the sight she had been dreading appeared in her review mirror.

"Fuck," she breathed.

The headlights grew rapidly in her mirror until she was nearly blinded. She tried to focus on the road but that quickly became impossible as the truck slammed into the back of her car.

"Are you fucking crazy?" she shouted as she sawed at the wheel in a desperate effort to regain control.

A snap of the wheel to the right which would have made her father beam with pride gave her a measure of traction and she quickly got the vehicle back under control. She looked around for the truck, confused by the fact that the larger vehicle's headlights were no longer filling the cabin of her car with blinding light. She had just spotted a movement out of the corner of her eye when the truck smashed into her passenger's side rear-quarter-panel. She fought for control once more, but it was for naught. The truck outweighed her tiny hatchback by at least a tonne. She felt her rear wheels break loose and her car wrapped around the front of the larger vehicle as though in a deadly dance.

Once the hatchback broke contact with the truck, it started losing speed quickly due to its sideways slide. Just as Reyna started to cut the wheel in an attempt to break free of the skid, she heard a crunch and felt the intensely disconcerting sensation of the loss of gravity. She was still trying to determine what had happened when her car struck the water.

Two

Bruce

"What now?" Bruce whispered gruffly to his indefatigable companion in response to the latter's sudden fit of barking. "Did the aliens finally come to abduct you, you jumpy bastard?"

The barking stopped as Charlie sniffed anxiously at the air before beginning to trot west. Bruce watched him for a moment before shrugging and saying, "You'd best get it all out of your system, or you're sleeping outside again."

He gave no thought to trying to reign in the stubborn quadruped, having long ago learned that trying to call the young bloodhound back to his side was next to impossible once he heard, or even worse smelled, something which he decided was out of place.

Bruce continued along his normal path tracing the fence line despite the loss of his companion and the lack of illumination. It was something he did at least daily, no exceptions. The current check of the perimeter had led to the discovery of a young calf from their neighbor to the north caught in the fence. Freeing the animal had taken only a few moments but it had taken over an hour to repair the damage to the ancient fencing. The repair had left them walking in total darkness as they completed the check, not that it made much difference. The moon was half past new, and the late afternoon heat had burned off the cloud cover following an afternoon shower. The illumination was not quite sufficient to read a book, but it more than sufficed for navigation across the property he knew down to every tree and stump. His property sat firmly wedged in what he thought of as the forgotten part of Florida. Far from the beaches and theme parks, this land was dedicated, for the most part, to cattle farming. Upon retirement, Bruce had found a thousand hectares of land deemed too rocky to be of much use to livestock and too remote to attract the attention of the land developers always looking to find the perfect piece of land to build their latest retirement community.

He reached the northwest corner of his land and turned left along the creek which marked his northern border. The fence here was less likely to be trifled with, at least by cattle. The southern bank to the creek was steep and the walking steaks tended to frown on attempting the descent. It had been several minutes since Charlie had taken off when he heard his mournful howl drifting in the breeze. He picked up his pace without a second thought. Charlie was as apt as any dog to overreact to the slightest stimuli, but his howl was reserved for situations where he seemed convinced there was genuine danger.

Bruce set his pace at ten kilometers per hour in the knowledge that he would likely need to run for a while. His property was not big by cattle ranching standards, but he knew his body well enough to know that sprinting was only effective for up to a few hundred meters, and whatever Charlie had found was further away than that. The sound of Charlie's howling came from the west, so Bruce continued along the bank of the creek.

The sound of tires squealing brought Bruce to a halt. He commanded his breathing to be silent and closed his eyes to focus his senses on his hearing. A V8 engine revving; the softer sound of a much smaller internal combustion engine; the chirp of tires struggling to adhere to the road. He resumed his jog, albeit with a bit more urgency. He thought it likely some teenagers with more money than sense were playing a dangerous game on the highway. More than a few had thought the long open stretches of well-maintained road were perfect for testing their driving abilities. The local cops tended to lighten the wallets of such fools quite regularly, but that did not stop the occasional roadside monument from being erected every few months when someone found out the hard way that the rules of the road existed for a reason.

Bruce had nearly reached where his property terminated at the highway easement when he heard the crunch of two cars colliding. The sound came from the south, but he could spot two pairs of headlights in the direction and neither seemed to be maintaining their lane. In an instant, another thunderous rev of a V8 echoed off the sparse trees of his land. This was immediately followed by the lower pair of headlights swinging wildly around as the two vehicles collided again. He watched helplessly as the larger vehicle drove the smaller toward the bridge which crossed the river meters to his north, only backing off when the smaller vehicles fate was sealed. He broke into a run towards the water, his feet splashing through the thick mud of the bank just as the smaller car smashed into the embankment above.