Mental Malice: Malice, #9

By K'Anne Meinel

Kathy has to deal with the mental damage, as well as the physical, that has been inflicted on her. Between federal agents, doctors, and her own family, the stress is nearly killing her. Can Alice be patient enough to wait for her wife after she has been gone for so long, both mentally and physically…Can Alice wait to enact revenge for what has been done to her wife?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shadoe Publishing
• Release date: Nov 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9781497353091

K'Anne Meinel

K’Anne Meinel è una narratrice prolifica, autrice di best seller e vincitrice di premi. Al suo attivo ha più di un centinaio di libri pubblicati che spaziano dai racconti ai romanzi brevi e di lungo respiro. La scrittrice statunitense K’Anne è nata a Milwaukee in Wisonsin ed è cresciuta nei pressi di Oconomowoc. Diplomatasi in anticipo, ha frequentato un'università privata di Milwaukee e poi si è trasferita in California. Molti dei racconti di K’Anne sono stati elogiati per la loro autenticità, le ambientazioni dettagliate in modo esemplare e per le trame avvincenti. È stata paragonata a Danielle Steel e continua a scrivere storie affascinanti in svariati generi letterari. Per saperne di più visita il sito: www.kannemeinel.com. Continua a seguirla… non si sa mai cosa K’Anne potrebbe inventarsi!

Book preview

Table of Contents

MENTAL MALICE

MENTAL MALICE | Book 9

THE JOURNEY HOME

CHAPTER ONE

MENTAL MALICE

A Novella by K’Anne Meinel

E-Book Edition

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Published by:

K’Anne Meinel on E-Book

Copyright © K’Anne Meinel September 2013

Copyright 2nd Edition © K’Anne Meinel November 2017

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MENTAL MALICE

Book 9

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K’Anne Meinel is available for comments at [e-mail] as well as on Facebook, her blog @ http://kannemeinel.wordpress.com/ or on Twitter @ kannemeinelaim.com, or on her website @ www.kannemeinel.com if you would like to follow her to find out about stories and book’s releases or check with

www. ShadoePublishing.com or http://ShadoePublishing.wordpress.com/.

MENTAL MALICE

Book 9

The mind is a fragile thing, the brain so a part of every function of a body that it can take a while for the body to even realize it is dead after the brain goes.  Your brain is a wonderful concoction of fluids, tissue, nerves, and other mysteries that mankind has only begun to unlock.  When damaged whether physically or mentally the brain can heal itself or become so dysfunctional that an adult can revert to a childlike state or even what is termed a vegetative state.  Should the day come where my quality of life has been jeopardized to the point that machines and not my brain are keeping me alive, pull the plug...this has all been outlined in a living will. —K’Anne Meinel

Kathy didn’t have a living will, but she wasn’t in a state that required pulling the plug.  However, there were some days where she wished it were so.  Her will to live was definitely not what it once was; her delight in the simple things was long gone.  Life held no joy for her.  She didn’t understand things that went on around her.  Uncomplicated things, she knew she should know, were now difficult.  It required concentration to do the simplest tasks.  The people who were around her confused her, scared her at times, and caused her endless anxiety.

Once she came home from the hospitals, Alice had hired the best nurses, the best therapists, and the best round the clock care for her wife.  None of it did any good.  Kathy, the Kathy they had known and loved, was gone.  One of the nurses had had the temerity to suggest that Kathy be put in a long-term facility for care rather than home care.  Alice had nearly come unglued as she put the woman in her place before firing her and ordering her off the premises.  Occasionally, only occasionally, on rare instances Alice imagined that she saw the old Kathy.  She wasn’t certain, but she may be delusional herself.

* * * * *

You scare her, Dr. Lambert said to Alice as they both watched Kathy play with the younger children from the windows of the house as they ran along the beach.

Alice turned to look at the doctor, one of the few who had agreed to come to the house for an outrageous fee and an indefinite period.  How do I scare her? she asked in surprise.

She thinks you are expecting something from her, the doctor answered to watch Alice’s response.

Alice knew this, but then she had bugged her own home so she knew what the doctors, nurses, and other help were saying about her wife, what anyone was saying.  It was a lot to filter through to get the information she needed to help her wife because they didn’t confide in her.  She also knew that this doctor was actively trying to get Kathy to take her children and leave Alice.  This was an unhealthy relationship, and perhaps Kathy would get better back in the States, back in a heterosexual or normal relationship.  Alice cursed the fact that she hadn’t vetted this particular doctor enough to realize she was secretly homophobic.  The doctor had come highly recommended, and Kathy had seen some progress from the nearly vegetative state she had been in when returned home from the various hospitals.  Between the doctors and the FBI interviews, Alice had finally had to put her foot down, demanded the return of her wife, and got her out of their clutches and the easy access the feds had had to her, despite the private hospitals.  Her refusal to allow any more interviews without their lawyer present had put off the FBI and caused a few ruffled feathers, but Alice was sick of seeing Kathy upset by their constant and repeated questioning.  They had gotten enough out of her.  Alice had heard most of the transcripts, not without her own anxieties and anger being aroused.

Alice was pleased when this doctor had said that she had to leave for the States next week; she couldn’t treat Kathy any longer and had to get back to her neglected practice.  Alice didn’t need the homophobic woman around any longer.  She had done a lot for Kathy, but her subtle tactics had increased in trying to get Kathy to see that her lifestyle was causing her and her children irreparable damage.  This was making Alice angry in ways that were better left directed towards others.

Alice had made four trips in the months they had been down here on the island.  In that time, she had arranged for a satellite hookup so they were no longer out of contact with the mainland or the world, no longer dependent on an unreliable landline.  The good doctor had kept in contact with her office, the children with their schooling, and Alice with her investments, as well as in tracking the list she had created of people involved in the previous year and the business it had generated.  This list was invaluable.  Some of it had been released in batches to the FBI in Quantico, letting them believe that their skills at hacking into the computers they had confiscated at the compound outside of Portland were in fact working.  They had no idea that their super computers had been invaded by a sophisticated set of cleverly hidden bugs that now could access their information on select individuals throughout the world through various offshore and backdoor devices.  They had brought the bugs and worms into their own computers, and the information that was sent out was encoded, unbeknownst to them as it was so well hidden, so well encrypted by the most modern and refined devices, even the FBI with its infinite resources didn’t have some of the private technology to which Alice had access.  The few on the list that Alice had given the FBI she made sure were taken by them immediately, but a select few from her own list she wanted personally.  These individuals were either involved in Kathy’s abduction to a degree or had carnal knowledge of her wife.  These men and women had to suffer, and Alice was here to see it done.  Some she would take her time with, let them relax, but some she had already made disappear.

Alice returned to the doctor’s statement.  "I don’t expect anything from her.  I love her, and I want to see her happy."  She turned back to look at the children running with the dog in and out of the waves, and she was in time to see Kathy actually smile.  With that smile she looked normal, no longer tortured by the memories in her mind.  Bringing her here to the island had insured that she had no outside influences other than the family who loved her, the periodic nurses, and her doctor who had helped enormously but whose own agenda was now being implemented before her departure.  Alice was well aware that the doctor hoped Kathy would ask to return to the States with her.

What if leaving will make her happy? the doctor was bold enough to ask.

Alice turned her strangely colored yellow eyes on the doctor and stared at her intently, making the doctor feel distinctly uncomfortable.  When she saw the doctor swallow in her nervousness, she answered, "My wife wouldn’t want to leave her family."

Dr. Lambert didn’t know why this woman made her so uncomfortable.  She had questioned and analyzed herself on this and many other items in this whole situation.  Maybe the fact that her outrageous demand for money to accompany them on their family retreat had been met without so much as a quibble, maybe the fact that this woman seemed to have more money than anyone she had ever known, maybe her coldness that she had never been able to penetrate—she didn’t know what it was exactly, but in the time she had known her, she had scrutinized it to death.  She knew though, in her very being Kathy was not happy, and this cold woman was not her ideal mate.  There was