Thursday, February 1, 2024

Those Empty Eyes

 Fiction by Charlie Donlea. 

At the beginning of this story, an intruder breaks into a home in the middle of the night and shoots a sleeping couple in their bed. Then the pair's young son is awakened and startles the killer, who shoots him as well. The house is left with only one survivor, teenaged Alexandra Quinlan, sitting in terrified shock with a shotgun in her lap as the cops swarm the place.

The authorities assume that Alexandra herself is the killer and arrest her immediately. As the poor traumatized girl is loaded into the back of a police car, news cameras are already rolling and her image is soon broadcasted everywhere. "Look at those empty eyes," a reporter says, and Alexandra's fate is sealed. Although she is eventually cleared of the crime, and indeed wins a defamation suit against the state prosecutor, the public will now never believe in Alexandra's innocence. Perhaps worse, the person who really killed her family is still at large.

This is just the beginning of an exciting story that I received from Amazon Prime's "First Reads" on Kindle. I recommend it!

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