They Were Divided by Cold Debt: Bryant Street

By Dean Wesley Smith

Bryant Street, a standard subdivision street, haunts us all. To escape Bryant Street often takes real courage.

Meet Neil Prendell. He made a mistake. He lost his job but avoided telling his wife. Instead, he pretended to go to work while looking for another job.

Pride? Fear? Stupidity? The reason no longer mattered. He paid the price.

A price that only made sense in the twisted logic of Bryant Street.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WMG Publishing
• Release date: Mar 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524296049

Dean Wesley Smith

Considered one of the most prolific writers working in modern fiction, USA TODAY bestselling writer, Dean Wesley Smith published far over a hundred novels in forty years, and hundreds of short stories across many genres. He currently produces novels in four major series, including the time travel Thunder Mountain novels set in the old west, the galaxy-spanning Seeders Universe series, the urban fantasy Ghost of a Chance series, and the superhero series staring Poker Boy. During his career he also wrote a couple dozen Star Trek novels, the only two original Men in Black novels, Spider-Man and X-Men novels, plus novels set in gaming and television worlds.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

THE MAILBOXES IN HIS SECTION of the Wilderness Park Subdivision all had stylized images of beavers on them cut out of metal. Every section of the subdivision had different animals on the mailboxes. And every mailbox was the same, just with slightly different numbers on their sides.

Every day that Neil Prendell drove off to his pretend job, he shook his head at the rows of identical metal beavers perched on top of the boxes as they mocked him.

And every day when he came home, they mocked him again.

It didn’t help that he was coming home from a day of sitting in three different coffee shops searching for any possible job. He wasn’t the only one in those shops searching, and he doubted he was the only lonely, desperate soul at those tables who hadn’t told his wife that he had lost his job.

Times were bad for jobs.

Real bad.

Especially middle-management like him. His main skill was saying yes to one person and bossing others under him around. And he wasn’t even that good at that, even with his MBA.

His goal had always been to be a guitar player in a band, but in the last year he hadn’t even