SURVIVORS: a gripping thriller full of suspense (Titan Trilogy Book 2)
Read SURVIVORS: a gripping thriller full of suspense (Titan Trilogy Book 2) Online
Authors: T. J. BREARTON
SURVIVORS
BOOK TWO OF THE TITAN TRILOGY
T. J. BREARTON
First published 2014
Joffe Books, London
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental. The spelling used is American English except where fidelity to the author’s rendering of accent or dialect supersedes this.
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©T. J. Brearton
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Further novels by Brearton are scheduled for release in 2015 by Joffe Books
SURVIVORS IS BOOK TWO OF THE TITAN TRILOGY
Read HABIT, book one in the Titan Trilogy, now
A #1 best-selling thriller that you won’t be able to put down
A young woman, Rebecca Heilshorn, lies stabbed to death in her bed in a remote farmhouse. Rookie detective Brendan Healy is called in to investigate. All hell breaks loose when her brother bursts onto the scene. Rebecca turns out to have many secrets and connections to a sordid network mixing power, wealth, and sex. Detective Brendan Healy, trying to put a tragic past behind him, pursues a dangerous investigation that will risk both his life and his sanity. Habit is a compelling thriller which will appeal to all fans of crime fiction. T.J. Brearton amps up the tension at every step, until the shocking and gripping conclusion.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/HABIT-detective-mysteries-thrillers-BREARTON-ebook/dp/B00HRIJVFS/
http://www.amazon.com/HABIT-detective-mysteries-thrillers-BREARTON-ebook/dp/B00HRIJVFS/
ALSO AVAILABLE BY T. J. Brearton: DARK KILLS
Who is murdering female college students and can they be stopped?
The only link between the victims is their participation in an unusual psychology experiment. Leading the investigation is Detective Dana Gates. She has a past no one talks about and a husband and daughters she hardly ever sees. She’s a dedicated, by-the-book investigator. And now a serial killer is ripping through the local college campus, and everything she knows is going to change.
Robert Hamill, her police partner, is a wild card. Unmarried, no kids, Hamill is Dana’s polar opposite. But as the case progresses their differing methods threaten to tear them apart. Hamill breaks with procedure to uncover a list naming potential victims, but the two detectives must work together to stop any more girls from turning up dead.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0168W4RHK/
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0168W4RHK/
CHAPTER ONE / Saturday, 8:18 AM
CHAPTER TWO / Saturday, 8:44 AM
CHAPTER THREE / Saturday, 9:04 AM
CHAPTER FOUR / Sunday, 9:53 AM
CHAPTER FIVE / Sunday, 2:11 PM
CHAPTER SEVEN / Sunday, 4:26 PM
CHAPTER EIGHT / Sunday, 5:38 pm
CHAPTER NINE / Sunday, 6:44 PM
CHAPTER ELEVEN / Sunday, 7:09 PM
CHAPTER TWELVE / Sunday, 8:20 PM
CHAPTER THIRTEEN / Sunday, 9:47 PM
CHAPTER FOURTEEN / Monday 12:53 AM
CHAPTER FIFTEEN / Monday 1:03 AM
CHAPTER SIXTEEN / Monday, 6:18 AM
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN / Monday, 8:18 AM
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN / Monday, 8:30 AM
CHAPTER NINETEEN / Monday, 8:44 AM
CHAPTER TWENTY / Monday 10:56 AM
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO / Monday, 11:36 AM
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE / Monday, 11:53 AM
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR / Monday, 12:09 PM
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE / Monday, 12:36 PM
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX / Monday, 12:52 PM
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN / Monday, 1:06 PM
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT / Monday, 1:44 PM
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE / Monday, 2:44 PM
CHAPTER THIRTY / Monday, 3:08 PM
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE / Monday, 3:31 PM
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO / Monday, 3:55 PM
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE / Monday 4:08 PM
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR / Monday 4:15 PM
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE / Monday 4:09 PM
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX / Monday 4:20 PM
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN / Monday, 4:28 PM
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT / Monday, 4:35 PM
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE / Monday, 4:35 PM
CHAPTER FORTY / Monday, 4:44 PM
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE / Monday, 4:59 PM
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO / Monday, 5:10 PM
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE / Monday, 5:10 PM
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR / Monday, 5:22 PM
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE / Monday, 5:29 PM
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX / Monday 7:03 PM
Titanomachy:
In Greek mythology, the Titanomachy, or War of the Titans, was the ten-year series of battles which were fought in Thessaly between the two camps of deities long before the existence of mankind: the Titans, based on Mount Othrys, and the Olympians, who would come to reign on Mount Olympus. This Titanomachia is also known as the Battle of Gods. The war was fought to decide who would become the rulers of the Universe.
PROLOGUE
The crash of metal. That was what she knew before she was aware of anything else. First it crashed, and then it squealed – an ear-splitting noise like the sound of those big machines that crunched cars into compact squares. Angie was thrown forward, and at the same time her body wrenched to the side as the car started to roll.
Her next thought was of Gloria, in the car seat behind her, and she turned her head while the car was spinning on the black freeway.
Baby. My baby.
And:
What hit us
?
It happened so fast – too quick to process. Those headlights had been coming up in her side view, and she’d made one of those casual, slightly indignant observations,
This maniac has really got it to the floor
. And then: impact. A shuddering bludgeon, the back of the car, on that side, she thought it was the left side, urging the car into a skid.
Then the tires caught on their edges, and the car was rolling over now,
Oh Dear God Jesus, Gloria, my baby,
they were launching up and they were over on their side. Her body was mashed against the driver’s-side door, she’d only just been driving, for God’s sake, just driving along, center lane, best place to be on the Saw Mill Parkway, let them pass you on the left, get out in front of the slowpokes on the right – in the center lane you went a sane speed, a civilized speed, and then that son of a bitch came up on her like that and . . .
The car was sliding along on its side, and that was the screeching, and she saw something that her mind first called
welding
, but she knew it wasn’t welding, it was the metal scraping along the macadam, and they still had to be at least doing fifty, maybe fifty-five, and the world was a roar of razor metal sheared away by the asphalt, bitumen biting into the paint, the steel, tearing it, hot sparks like a metal-works factory, oh so much
industry
, so much
power
and combustion and things exploding in this world, and my baby. My baby.
Gloria was suspended by her car-seat straps, hanging off to the side, just a moment of her sweet face, her big blue eyes wide – she had his eyes, she’d always had his eyes, more than anything else, and his dark hair. Damn him, goddamn him for not being here.
The car screamed on its side, the rushing black all around her, hunting her, sucking her into its maw, and Angie felt her body start to fall, to come away from its cramped crunch against the door, and gravity taking hold, pulling her down to the jagged orange sparks. But then there was another shrieking peal of metal, and a lightning crack, a sound that then shattered into a million pieces, a bright, terrifying symphony of bells as the windshield imploded, showering her with glass.
And the car continued to roll as it tore along the night parkway, bright white lights whipped past –
Help us!
– spangling the deadly splinters of glass as shards stabbed into her, nettling her face and hands and arms with white hot pain, and somewhere in there she reached out with everything and tried to shield Gloria, tumbling as the car continued its thunderous pitch onto its roof.
Glass everywhere, and she was blind. She couldn’t see her baby. She heard something – did she hear something? High above the cacophonous monster of glass and steel and oil and engine and growling pavement. Did she hear her child?
Oh where was she? Where did her baby go, lost in the black world, lost in the bedlam of a deafening orchestra. Angie flailed with her hands, but her body was taken by the inertia of the gimbaling automobile, the goddamned Land Cruiser, the car
he
said would be good in the snow, the car that made her feel like some Westchester yuppie when she was not a Westchester yuppie, she was a girl from Hawthorne, her parents had had the same place since she was three, all she could remember, those two Goldfish plants hanging from the rusty brass hooks underneath the porch roof in the summer time; the short walkway across their tiny postage stamp lawn with the one piece of disgorged concrete that was sort of cockeyed, like a lazy eye; her bedroom window, tucked secretly in behind the twining branches of the Maple tree; her second floor bedroom that was, with the electric baseboard heaters that came on always smelling a bit like syrup and dust, like a lost crayon was slowly sizzling down inside; the ghungroos chiming around the doorknob; her mother watching ice skating on the TV downstairs, her mother’s gray hair, the ragged sponge-gold apron, her father smelling like ink toner and cigarettes.
Her baby, she couldn’t find her, because she was pinned to the roof of the car, nothing but white noise now, no discernible sounds, no sense of direction, the grating rush of the angry road, it screamed at her, all around her, a million black teeth gritting in the riot of noise. Leering, pinwheeling around her, blank and loud and remorseless, a chasm of vibration and rage.
They were upside down, they were on the roof of the car, and it was still careening along, trembling, shaking concussively, rattling her bones to the hollow straws of their centers, filled with cold air now, her skin scorched black and scalding with the searing fire of the sparks of metal, the flints of paint and steel in her hair, her teeth, her eyes, the glass embedded in her.
My love. I met you when I was so young. You gave me our girl. Our baby. My love. When did you start to leave? What didn’t I do? What could I have done better for you?
She saw him as he stood in the doorway of the restaurant, that slight smile on his face, the one that was righteous and guilty and somehow young, leftover from before time had dragged on the skin and bones and bent us over with responsibility, and the crush of reality. His eyes swimmy with drink, but still cutting through to her, the part of him trapped in there – had his eyes said goodbye?
Thank you, my love, for giving me our baby girl.
She’s lost now; I need you to help me find her.
I think, I think the car is going to flip again. I can’t tell for sure but we’re lifting. I feel lighter.
Bleeding, broken – something is broken, oh I know, my leg is not right, my arm, my throat – my throat feels hot and wet and angry. I want to scream.
And Angie realized she was screaming, and she was crying, and there was compression from all sides. The thought occurred to her – just a mote, really, that this
was
in fact like those car crushers, that the Land Cruiser was not handling the stress of overturning, it was crumpling like an accordion, pinching her, trapping her, while the wreckage of it all raged around her, blood singing as loudly in her ears, her mouth open with her lips moving as if in prayer.
When the baby fell into her arms, it was the last thing she knew, and it was warm, warm, and Gloria’s face was pressed into hers, her skin soft and calm, and the baby gripped her around her neck, and Angie found she had an arm free and she put it around her.
They were in that position when the first police arrived fifteen minutes later, lights spinning. The highway patrolmen cleared the rubberneckers out of the way, and prepared the jaws to open the twisted metal. They were like that, enmeshed in the center of it all, mother and child.