The Curse of the Good Samaritan

Glenda Moss Sullivan

Description

A good Samaritan is mistaken for one of the "assailants", thus creating two victims, whose parallel lives eventually intersect in a life-and-death struggle.
3.22.22
A good Samaritan is mistaken for one of the "assailants", thus creating two victims, whose parallel lives eventually intersect in a life-and-death struggle.

“The Curse of the Good Samaritan” is not what you think. It’s a romantic mystery with twists and turns that you’ll never see coming. It’s the story of an attractive widow, Abby Christianson, who wants to start living a new and better life, a life that doesn’t involve any serious relationships with men. Abby has had some unfortunate experiences with men in her past, experiences that she has never shared and never plans to share, not even with her best friends. She is ready to leave her past behind her.

First, she sells her large home and then purchases a luxury oceanfront apartment in a retirement complex. There she makes many interesting and unique friends who end up playing important roles in her new life. This number includes a man, Bob Goldman, who decides immediately that he wants to know Abby better; however, Abby finds his interest and attention a bit unsettling.

Even more unsettling, are the letters and messages that she begins receiving from an unknown writer, who threatens to take her life and she doesn’t know why. The story doesn’t end where you think or how you think but it will hold your attention to the last page, leaving you wanting more.

Sujets

• Religious
• Christian
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: WestBow Press
• Date de parution: 06 octobre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781664269675
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE CURSE OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN
 
MISUNDERSTANDINGS AND PAST HISTORIES CAN TURN AN ACT OF KINDNESS INTO A CURSE
 
 
 
GLENDA MOSS SULLIVAN
 
 
 

 
Copyright © 2022 Glenda Moss Sullivan.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
 
WestBow Press
A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.westbowpress.com
844-714-3454
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
Scripture taken from the New King James Version® Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6642-6965-1 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6642-6966-8 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6642-6967-5 (e)
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022911352
 
WestBow Press rev. date: 08/25/2022
THE CURSE OF THE GOOD SAMARITAN
Contents
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
CHAPTER 1
A strangled cry shatters the silence of a dark and muggy Florida night. Inside her older two-story home, Abby Christianson suddenly bolts upright in bed. She’s drenched in sweat and her heart pounds in fear as she tries to locate and identify the sound that woke her, what was that? Is someone in here? Her heart races as she struggles to free herself from the tangled sheets. Her eyes strain to pierce the darkness in her room. She calls out tentatively, “Who’s there? What do you want?” Her hand trembles as she reaches for and turns on the bedside lamp. She looks around, sees no one, and thinks, the house alarm didn’t go off . . . Then she realizes, I was dreaming . It was a nightmare. I was trying to call for help. I made that s ound.
The dream had been so vivid that she’s still able to recall some of the bizarre details because they were in color. She reaches for the journal and pen that she keeps in the nightstand beside her bed, finds the next empty page, dates it and begins to write:
I just had another horrible dream, the third one this week. In each dream I’m being chased by a faceless man, but this time he catches me and ties me up with yellow duct tape, not black, not blue, but yellow! That was crazy! What would yellow represent, cowardness? I have no idea. All I knew was, I was sure I was about to die and was trying desperately to call for help.
Frowning slightly and bringing the tip of the pen to her lips, she worries, I wonder what would happen to me, if the time ever came, when I couldn’t wake up from a dream? Would I die? Surely not!
She continues to speculate, why am I having these terrible dreams again? Is it because I’m living alone now and I’m not used to that? I think it’s because I don’t feel safe in this house anymore. She’s aware of the sudden prick of a painful memory, but quickly tells herself, no, it can’t be that. That happened too long ago, it has to be something else.
Abby closes her journal, still trying to analyze her most recent dream. My nightmares all seem to follow the same theme: someone is trying to kill me, I’m screaming for help, but no one comes because I’m a lone.
She returns the book and pen to the nightstand drawer, gets up and puts on the yellow silk robe that has been lying at the foot of her bed. She slides her feet into matching slippers and begins walking around the house rechecking the locks on each door and every window, a ritual that she had already performed earlier that night as well as every other night, ever since the funeral.
Abby would admit to anyone who asks, that she hates living alone and has been seriously considering moving. Even more-so, since she learned about the recent break-ins in her neighborhood. However, her friends and family have all advised her to wait at least a year before making any big decisions and so she’s been waiting.
She walks back to her bedroom, sits down on the bed with shoulders slumped, and considers her situation. Days are bad, I miss having someone in the house, someone to talk to, but nights are worse, because of the nightmares. I remember when I was a child and had night terrors, I knew that I could crawl into bed and sleep with a sister who would comfort me. I still had nightmares as a teen, but they eventually stopped after I married Jake. But now the nightmares have returned. They started after Jake died, and after my son and daughter-in-law, moved back into their own home. Abby laughs at herself as she thinks , the problem is, I don’t have anyone to crawl into bed with anymore. I am all alone in this big house and I don’t lik e it!
She sits still for a few minutes longer, her head lowered and her eyes closed, and begins to pray silently, Dear God, what should I do? Please help me make the right deci sion.
After a few more minutes, she opens her eyes and stands up, having made her decision, I’m moving. I don’t care what anyone else says. I’m not going to put it off any longer. I’m going to move to a place where I will feel safe .
Her expression changes briefly to one of apprehension as she considers, I wonder what Jake would say. But she already knows what Jake would say. He would say, “You don’t need to move, this house is already paid for and it isn’t necessary.” She can visualize him saying all of those things because she has heard him say those same words to her many times in the past. Jake usually made all of the decisions, but Jake isn’t here anymore.
She looks at her watch and sees that it’s not even five am. It’s too early to make any phone calls, but I’m wide awake. I might as well sta y up.
As Abby heads for the shower, she is unaware that on this very same night, in a different location, another woman experiences a similar nightmare. Unfortunately, that woman wasn’t sleeping and now she will never dream again.
CHAPTER 2
It has been a dark and muggy Florida night in other areas, with threatening storm clouds covering the moon and stars. It’s exactly the kind of night that Dennis Flowers prefers for his nocturnal excursions. He feels confident that no one saw him when he left his apartment earlier, and now, no one sees him return just before daybreak, which is how he always plans it.
As he makes his way carefully through the darkness, toward the rear entrance of the exclusive Beaches Courtyard Retirement Complex, he chuckles to himself thinking, my, my, isn’t it convenient how the lights at this back door never seem to be working? Well, maintenance does need something to keep them busy. All they ever do is hide out behind the dumpster room and s moke.
Dennis detests the smell of tobacco or any other kind of smoke; too many unpleasant memories associated with those odors. And then, completely unsummoned, one of those memories begins to work its way to the surface of his mind. It’s a memory of the day his grandmother died.
He remembered that his grandmother always had a cigarette in her tobacco-stained hands. Sometimes she held two, the one she was smoking and the one she was going to smoke. Grandma, as he called her, had actually died smoking one of her Lucky Strikes cigarettes, which, when he thought about it, wasn’t so lucky that day.
He hadn’t planned it, but he had watched her die, and in a way, it was his fault that she died. He knew that she would be very upset when he delivered the news that he had lost his tennis scholarship and wouldn’t be moving out in the fall. She had been more than ready for him to get out of her house. Dennis knew that she had always resented having to take care of him because she had told him so many times.
He still remembers that day, when he stepped into that filthy, roach-infested house that they shared, to deliver his news. Grandma was in her usual position, curled up on that old, sunken sofa, surrounded by dirty dishes and ashtrays full of cigarette butts, watching television with the volume turned up so high, you could hear it from the street.
It was late afternoon, but he remembered that she was still wearing that dirty, thread-bare, chenille bathr