Lane Change

By Niz Thomas

Husband and wife black ops snipers Arthur and Maggie never conduct operations amidst the glitz and glamour of their hometown Miami Beach. Too dangerous. Too unsanctioned.

But when the luxury cars, boats, and properties – not to mention the beautiful people – produce an evil that hits too close to home, Arthur takes matters into his own hands.

With Maggie as his spotter and ethical counsel, they set their sights on someone the cops overlook.

But when faced with a tough ethical choice in the middle of their operation, what decision will they make?

A tense story that simmers with the slow intensity to match its exotic locale, Lane Change delivers a bullseye!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Throughplace Publishing
• Release date: Feb 23, 2024
• ISBN: 9798223398028

Book preview

Lane Change

LANE CHANGE

NIZ THOMAS

Throughplace Publishing

COPYRIGHT

Lane Change

Made in the USA

Published by Throughplace Publishing

throughplace.com

Text copyright © 2023 by Michael Nisivoccia

All rights reserved.

Cover and Layout copyright © 2023 by Throughplace Publishing

Cover design by Michael Nisivoccia / Throughplace Publishing

Cover art copyright © summercandy / Bright pastel pink swimming pool / Depositphotos

Cover art copyright © anilin / Sunbathing young woman on a floating mattress/ Depositphotos

This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

COPYRIGHT

Family Tree

Made in the USA

Published by Throughplace Publishing

throughplace.com

Text excerpt copyright © 2023 by Michael Nisivoccia

All rights reserved.

Cover and Layout copyright © 2023 by Throughplace Publishing

Cover design by Michael Nisivoccia / Throughplace Publishing

Cover art copyright © Robert Adrian Hillman / Shutterstock

This text excerpt is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. All rights reserved. This is a work of fiction. All characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

CONTENTS

Also By Niz Thomas

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Exclusive Sneak Peek

Family Tree

Chapter 1

Also By Niz Thomas

About the Author

ONE

As far as Arthur was concerned, some things about Miami didn’t feel like they’d ever change. Top of mind at the moment was the fact that the city was crawling with scumbags who deserved far worse than Fate (or whatever one believed in) seemed capable of doling out.

One thing that was different, though–and something Arthur could really get behind–was that snipers never had it this good.

Arthur was in the prone position on his belly, floating in opulent luxury aboard his thirty-meter yacht just offshore Downtown Miami’s coast. It was late-October after the hurricanes had drifted out of everybody’s consciousness and the temperature was just as perfect as you could imagine–especially now in the early evenings.

Conditions were so perfect–both for comfort and for what Arthur was there to do–that he would hardly need to account for much to ensure a smooth, accurate shot.

The veranda of the Masquiatt Grille was centered on a long cement outcropping which jutted into the dark downtown Miami water like a short chin, the waves of the unprotected shoreline lapping against the faded and erosion-smooth concrete like tired kitten paws against their owner’s calves.

Arthur noted the falling sun–a problem at the moment as it descended just above the roof of the Masquiatt, a red Spanish tile slant which covered much of the veranda in a long shadow punctuated only by fingers of blinding light leaking through toward the veranda, the water, and most crucially, Arthur’s vantage. The sun’s light was blood orange and red as it leaked through alleyways on either side of the restaurant and a sliver of space in the roof that had crumbled long ago into the sea, never to be replaced, giving the place a certain Mediterranean flair.

Picturesque, no doubt.

But for Arthur, it was little more than a blinding nuisance. And so he settled in to do what all successful snipers did better than anyone.

Wait.

The Grille was not crowded but nor was it hurting for patrons. Ten tables on the veranda, eight full, one two-top open with a pending couple at the hostess stand deciding on indoor or outside dining. They’d be wise to take it inside, Arthur thinks (they’re wearing white in an area soon to encounter a forecast of pink mist), but he just watches as the woman hems and haws and finally decides it’s just divine out and why not watch the water while they dine?

That’s alright. After all, Miami dry cleaners have plenty of practice with far worse stains than what’s in store for that couple.

The restaurant serves fish, of course, though it has no smell to Arthur. It wouldn’t fry anything–heavens no, not with this lean, beautiful clientele–but Arthur had no sense for how anything else might be prepared. He might be able to smell a fry kitchen from here, but fresh fish prepared well? No chance unless the limp wind picked up and did a one-eighty. Grilled halibut? Smoked salmon? Butter-roasted cod? Impossible for him to say from this distance. But what he was here to do didn’t leave him with much appetite.

A quick scan of the tables could tell him, but Arthur knows this was not the sort of detail that would help him in this situation. Whether they were eating fish and chips or diamond-encrusted caviar mattered not.

All that mattered was what he was there for.

There, of course, was a bit of a relative term. The restaurant was there. Arthur was somewhere else. Four hundred thirty-three yards away on his yacht called Terminal, elevated roughly ten feet from the water and six feet from the front of the concrete chin (depending on how high or low the light chop of waves beneath Terminal kept the ship in their buoyant embrace).

Arthur lay flat. Hidden in the folds of the ship, so to speak, though not overly so. Anyone on land doing countersurveillance would