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    Three to the Heart
    Three to the Heart
    Three to the Heart
    Ebook80 pages1 hour

    Three to the Heart

    By RICK MOFINA

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    About this ebook

    With his anthology, THREE TO THE HEART, Rick Mofina provides three of his finest short pieces of crime fiction. Three acclaimed, heart-wrenching short stories of people facing enormous odds.

    In the story, "Backup," an 11-year-old boy finds his father's gun and rushes to a deadly stand off at the mall. In "A Lifetime Burning in a Moment," we meet John Devlin, a mild-mannered actuary and lifelong weakling, who searches for courage when his family is threatened. In "The Last Pursuit," a cop, desperate to redeem himself for the mistake that destroyed his life, works alone to track the murderer he was escorting to trial after their plane crashes in the Rocky Mountains.

    About the author:
    Rick Mofina is a former crime reporter and the award-winning author of several notable thrillers.

    Penthouse magazine calls him, "one of the leading thriller writers of the day." New York Times Bestselling author, Tess Gerritsen, says, "Rick Mofina's tense taut writing makes every thriller he writes an adrenaline-packed ride." His short stories have been selected for anthologies by Michael Connelly, Peter Robinson, Ed Gorman, the Mystery Writers of America and the United Kingdom's, Crime Writers Association.

    The International Thriller Writers, The Private Eye Writers of America and The Crime Writers of Canada have listed Rick Mofina's titles as being among the best in the world.

    His books have been published in 21 countries and have been praised by James Patterson, Dean Koontz, Michael Connelly, Lee Child, Tess Gerritsen, Jeffery Deaver, Sandra Brown, James Rollins, Brad Thor, Nick Stone, David Morrell, Allison Brennan, Heather Graham, Linwood Barclay, Peter Robinson, Håkan Nesser and Kay Hooper. For more information please visit www.rickmofina.com .

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRick Mofina
    Release dateApr 7, 2012
    ISBN9781927114278
    Three to the Heart
    Author

    RICK MOFINA

    Rick Mofina is a former crime reporter and the award-winning author of several acclaimed thrillers. He's interviewed murderers face-to-face on death row; patrolled with the LAPD and the RCMP. His true crime articles have appeared in The New York Times, Marie Claire, Reader’s Digest and Penthouse. He's reported from the U.S., Canada, the Caribbean, Africa, Qatar and Kuwait's border with Iraq. For more information please visit www.rickmofina.com

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      Book preview

      Three to the Heart - RICK MOFINA

      THREE TO THE HEART

      Three short stories

      of people without fear

      RICK MOFINA

      Title

      Introduction

      A Lifetime Burning in a Moment

      Backup

      The Last Pursuit

      Contact Rick Mofina

      Other Short Stories

      About the Author

      Also by Rick Mofina

      Praise for Rick Mofina’s Books

      tmp_cd1e47a24cf842370aef8b75d27db0d8_DA7kBb_html_m88593d.jpg

      Copyright © 2012 by Rick Mofina

      This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the creation of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

      Three to the Heart

      Rick Mofina

      Smashwords Edition

      Copyright 2012 Rick Mofina

      ISBN 978-1-927114-27-8

      e-Formatting provided by Carrick Publishing

      Backup Cover photo Copyright © 2009 © 2012 Rémi Thériault

      This e-book is intended for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be sold or given away to other people. If you’re reading this e-book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      INTRODUCTION

      Three to the Heart, is my second small collection of short stories, the follow up to my first anthology, Dangerous Women & Desperate Men. I regard the stories collected in Three to the Heart, to be among the best of my short crime fiction. The story Backup first appeared in Ottawa Magazine. It was later selected as finalist for Best Short Story Awards by The International Thriller Writers and the Crime Writers of Canada. A Lifetime Burning in a Moment, was first featured in the anthology Dead in the Water, by Rendezvous Press and later appeared in The Penguin Book of Crime Stories, Volume II, edited and introduced by Peter Robinson. The Last Pursuit, was selected by the Crime Writers' Association of the United Kingdom, to appear in its anthology, Original Sins. I hope you will enjoy them.

      Rick Mofina

      Rmofina @ gmail dot com

      tmp_cd1e47a24cf842370aef8b75d27db0d8_DA7kBb_html_m40e22cec.jpg

      A LIFETIME BURNING IN A MOMENT

      by Rick Mofina

      tmp_cd1e47a24cf842370aef8b75d27db0d8_DA7kBb_html_m1ed3d89.jpgtmp_cd1e47a24cf842370aef8b75d27db0d8_DA7kBb_html_m355dbef8.jpg

      knew the boys who lived in the clapboard houses by the railroad tracks not only liked beating him up, but needed to beat him up.

      He was the only part of their lives they could defeat because he didn’t dare hit them. Not like their fathers, who were always reeking of beer and cigarettes, or bruised mothers drowning in guilt.

      We can do whatever we want to you. The biggest boy with the broken tooth would punch Devlin’s face and stomach, always failing to make him cry. Nobody’s ever going to stop us.

      It was understandable then that years later colleagues at his firm would tell you that Dev, the quiet son of a widowed math teacher, listened more than he talked, as if conversation were a form of confrontation, something he had averted since the dark days of his boyhood by the railroad tracks.

      As an actuary, Devlin took comfort in the parameters, calculations and sums of an orderly world where everything added up. But whenever life required him to deal with mundane matters, he felt out of place. Like today, with Blake, his little boy, waiting with him in the checkout line at the auto parts store.

      The air smelled of rubber, echoed with compressors and the clank of steel tools dropped in the repair bays. This was a domain of greased-stained knuckles, rolled shirt sleeves and tattooed arms; of two-day growths, ballcaps and T-shirts emblazoned with skulls, flames and creeds on living, dying.

      Devlin had come to buy a pea-sized bulb for his Ford’s dome light.

      In line ahead of them a boy, a stranger slightly taller than Blake, turned and eyeballed Blake from head to toe. The boy’s face oozed contempt before he drove his fist into Blake’s shoulder. Blake tensed then retaliated with a punch just as the bigger boy’s father turned to see it. The man fired glances at Blake and Devlin then drew himself to his full height. He had a scar on his chin and a toothpick in the corner of his mouth.

      What the hell’re you doin’?

      Alarm rang in Devlin’s ears.

      Nothing, he said. I mean, it was a mistake. Blake, apologize.

      But Dad?

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