Unforgiving

By Vibert Miller

Late-season hurricane, Pauline, comes ashore in the Miami-Fort Lauderdale area and lays waste to the region.
Archie, Jenny, Moonbeam and Shenandoah receive good news when they find out, they hold the winning ticket to a huge lottery jackpot. But their good fortune later propels them into a nightmare.
Moonbeam undergoes a double mastectomy and decides to advocate for women, whose husbands want to discard them. The men think their wives are no longer enjoyable sex partners after the operation. With help from Archie and Shenandoah she is able to win large settlements for some women.
The four friends are forced into a nightmare, when a vicious criminal learns about their lottery win. He and an accomplice abduct Jenny off the streets of Fort Lauderdale and hold her for ransom.
Archie and Shenandoah are now faced with the greatest challenge of their careers. They must bring all their detecting resources to bear, to find Jenny and bring her back unharmed.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vibert Miller
• Release date: Mar 3, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370676934

Vibert Miller

Vibert Miller is the author of fourteen books, msot of them romantic thrillers with a touch of paranormal and science fiction. He lives in the Pioneer Valley of Western Masssachussetts.

Book preview

UNFORGIVING

BY

VIBERT MILLER

This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright @ 2017 by Vibert Miller

All rights reserved.

For Rubina, who made all the difference.

Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.

From The Tempest by William Shakespeare.

CHAPTER 1

Sunday morning. I was in our living room having my first cup of coffee of the day. Jenny was in the kitchen putting the finishing touches to breakfast with waffles, eggs and sausages, when my cell phone rang. I saw it dancing across the coffee table. I picked it up. It was my friend and partner, Shenandoah Highwater.

Where are our lottery tickets? he asked, coming straight to the point.

Jenny has them.

Get them and turn on the news, he said. They’re showing a repeat of last night’s drawing.

Jenny and I and Shenandoah and Moonbeam had each put in ten dollars to buy a bunch of lottery tickets, since the payout had reached a staggering 400 million dollars.

Jenny, I called out. She appeared at the living room door.

You bellowed, Master?

I don’t bellow. Where are the lottery tickets?

In my underwear drawer

In your underwear drawer?

What better place? she replied.

Can you get them, please? I said.

No. You get them. I’m just a little busy right now.

You want me to go trundling through your undies?

Don’t trundle. But you can look through the drawer. There is nothing there you haven’t seen already.

I had put the television on pause with the numbers showing. Just then Jenny came into the room. I handed her half the tickets.

Look through these, I said. I’ll do this batch

Jenny was bent over the tickets, checking each one with the numbers on the screen. I heard her scream. I looked at her and she was pointing at the television and at the ticket in her hand. Her words had failed her. I took the ticket from her and after checking the numbers, I yelled. Then I remembered Shenandoah was still on the line.

My Indian sidekick, I said, you can now buy the whole damn reservation. We won. We won. According to the television, there is only one winner. It’s us.

Shenandoah had put down the phone, because the next voice I heard was that of his wife, Moonbeam.

Archie. Why is Shenandoah stomping about and doing a war dance? You guys planning a massacre or something?

That’s not a war dance, Moon. That’s a victory dance. We won the lottery.

Oh, my God, Moon said, and the phone went dead.

When we bought the tickets, we had agreed that if we won, we would take the early payout option. We flew up to Tallahassee Monday evening, and checked into a hotel for the night, with the intention of presenting ourselves first thing Tuesday morning, at the Lottery office.

We had also decided we did not want our identities publicized. When the receptionist asked who we were we refused to identify ourselves.

We are the winners of Saturday’s lottery, I told her, and we do not want publicity. Please explain this to the director.

She probably thought we were a bunch of kooks but didn’t say. She spoke on the phone to the director who came out to meet us.

Did you say you’re Saturday’s winners? he asked.

Yes. We are, I said. We don’t mean to be cagey, but we would like to avoid publicity.

I take it you hold the winning ticket, the director said.

We do.

In that case, please come to my office.

Once we were in his office, we introduced ourselves, and explained our reasons for not wanting our identities known. We simply did not want to call attention to ourselves. He understood and saw no reason why he could not acquiesce to our request. He pointed out, however, that policy dictated that his assistant, Frank Whitfield, be involved. We accepted that and got down to the business of getting our hands on millions of dollars.

It took the director and his assistant several hours to check us out and verify the win. We returned to the office at three o’clock that afternoon and were each given a check for 80 million dollars.

After discussing it further, we decided that we would each be responsible for taking care of our funds. To this end, we accepted Moon’s advice that we each sit down with one of her colleagues, who ran the Investment Department at her law firm.

CHAPTER 2

Jenny and I were married, in Japan, about two years ago. We were married in a Japanese garden as a tribute to her mother who was Japanese. She is the product of a Caucasian American father and a Japanese mother, both of whom perished in an airplane crash.

We were finishing a relaxing brunch at a waterfront restaurant, in Fort Lauderdale, when something caught my eye on the television over the bar.

What’s taking your attention away from me? she said with a smile in her voice.

Nothing can ever do that, I said. But there is some news on the television, about a hurricane.

A hurricane? Archie, hurricane season is long over. This is almost the end of November.

I hear what you’re saying. I wish someone had mentioned that to Pauline.

Who’s Pauline? she asked, sipping her mimosa.

Pauline is the hurricane who does not know the season is over.

Many of the customers had already gathered around the bar, to better hear the television. We joined them. The bartender turned up the volume as the forecaster was explaining that Pauline had formed off the coast of Africa and was already a category one storm.

We left the restaurant and headed home. When we returned from Japan, we bought a large home in a suburb of Fort Lauderdale. It was a dream come through for Jenny, who wanted enough space to put in a Japanese garden. It was that garden that was now on her mind.

Do you think Pauline would impact us? she asked.

Too early to tell. She has a lot of open water to travel before she gets here. They know she’s headed west. But that’s all.

I thought we had dodged that bullet, she said.

I thought so too. We still might. That hurricane has a long way to go. Anything can happen.

I know.

The meteorologists admitted to being