69 INCHES OF STEEL by Rebecca Steinbeck

CHAPTER ONE
     
    J onathon shifted the silver BMW he was driving into fifth gear and pressed his foot hard against the accelerator. The engine roared and the car powered around the bend, hugging the bitumen like it were a long-lost lover. The man who had scared millions with his novels about ghosts and ghoulies paid scant attention to the hundred foot drop several yards to his right. After all, he was used to living on the edge and most times that edge stood between him and a hell of a lot more than a hundred foot drop.
    The road straightened ahead of him. He kept his foot flat to the floor and the BMW motored along the road at over a hundred miles an hour. The adrenalin washed over his body like a breathtaking wave of energy. His heart pounded like a drum inside his chest. He was alive. And he was free.
    He passed a sign on the side of the road that read WELCOME TO BELLINGEN: POPULATION 3001. He often wondered when he saw that sign who that one was. Were they happy or sad? Loved or loathed? Overworked and underpaid, perhaps? And would they climb to the top of the tower and start blowing people away if they were handed a rifle and a dozen bullets, just like the girl the Boomtown Rats wrote about in the song, I Don’t Like Mondays ? He took his foot off the accelerator and pressed it gently to the brake. The BMW slowed to about forty miles an hour as he passed the first house whose address was officially a Bellingen one. It was an old house with two bedrooms and a small yard. It was occupied by an elderly man whose wife had died there of a heart attack several years earlier. His only son had begged him to move on, to leave it all behind and not be held back from living the rest of his life by the memories of a lost love, but the old man would have none of it. He had lived in that house for fifty years and his wife had died there. Come Hell or high water, so would he.
    Jonathon eased the BMW to the side of the road in front of another two bedroom house. Bellingen was full of them because no one could afford back when to build anything bigger or better. Jonathon was glad of a talent that allowed him not only a BMW, but a five bedroom mansion overlooking the beach that he paid a princely sum for and was worth twice as much now as then instead of one of these tiny cottages that were pretty if nothing else, but in all reality were really nothing much else.
    He climbed out of the car with his overnight bag in tow and went to the front door of the house. It was worn by the sun and the house itself needed a good coat of paint. He had offered any number of times to do it but each time had been knocked back. He knew the people of Bellingen liked to keep things in their natural state which most likely explained why every time he came here he felt as though he was travelling back in time. But he did love it, even if it wasn’t much. He knocked on the door and a middle-aged woman with greying hair answered. She looked at Jonathon and smiled. “Welcome home, son.”
    Jonathon wrapped his arms around his mother and hugged her tight. It had been several months since he had last seen her - she had made a rare visit to his mansion - and they had much to catch up on. They went inside and closed the door behind them. The pretty young thing that had watched Jonathon from the house on the other side of the road closed the drapes and went back to helping her mother cook dinner for her father and brother who would soon be home from work.
     
     
    CHAPTER TWO
     
    J onathon went to the bathroom and washed up while his mother made a pot of tea. He looked at himself in the mirror and saw a man who was twenty-seven years old and counting. He had dark hair and was clean shaven. The light above the mirror shone brightly into his deep blue eyes and they sizzled like steaming pools of water. He was good-looking, and he knew it. He was also good at what he did, and he knew that too. If he ever forgot, he had a list of girls as long as the road between his