Flash

best, had leaned close to whisper beneath the cover of the organ music.
    "Give 'em time," Rollie said with the wisdom of eighty years. "They're all hurting now, but they'll get past it eventually."
    Olivia was not so certain of that. In her heart she knew that her relationships with the Danes and with Nina would never be the same again.
    When she reached the small, cluttered office, she took a sip of the zinfandel to fortify herself. Then she put down the glass and went to the black metal file cabinet in the corner. She spun the combination lock and pulled open a drawer. A row of folders appeared, most crammed to overflowing with business correspondence, tax forms, and assorted papers. One of these days she really would have to get serious about her filing.
    She reached inside the drawer and removed the journal. For a moment she gazed at the leather-bound volume and considered the damning contents.
    After a while she sat down at her cluttered desk, kicked off her black, low-heeled pumps, and switched on the small shredder. The machine whirred and hummed to life, a mechanical shark eager for prey.
    The small bedroom-cum-office with its narrow windows was oppressive, she thought as she opened the journal. In fact, she hated the place where she and Logan had lived since their marriage six months ago.
    She promised herself that first thing in the morning she would start looking for a bigger apartment. Her business was starting to take off. She could afford to buy herself a condo. A place with lots of windows.
    One by one, Olivia ripped the pages from the journal and fed them into the steel jaws. She would have preferred to burn the incriminating evidence, but she did not have a fireplace.
    The zinfandel was gone by the time the last entry in the journal had been rendered into tiny scraps. Olivia sealed the plastic shredder bag and carried it downstairs to the basement of the apartment building. There she dumped the contents into the large bin marked
Clean Paper Only
.
    When the blizzard of shredded journal pages finally ceased, Olivia closed the lid of the bin. In the morning a large truck would come to haul away the contents. The discarded paper, including the shredded pages of the journal, would soon be transformed into something useful. Newsprint, maybe. Or toilet tissue.
    Like almost everyone else who lived in Seattle, Olivia was a great believer in recycling.

1
    « ^ »
    The present…

    J asper knew that he was in trouble because he had reached the point where he was giving serious consideration to the idea of getting married again.
    His attention was deflected from the dangerous subject less than a moment later when he realized that someone was trying very hard to kill him.
    At least, he
thought
someone was attempting to murder him.
    Either way, as a distraction, the prospect was dazzlingly effective. Jasper immediately stopped thinking about finding a wife.
    It was the blinding glare of hot, tropical sunlight on metal reflected in the rearview mirror that got Jasper's attention. He glanced up. The battered green Ford that had followed him from the tiny village on the island's north, shore was suddenly much closer. In another few seconds the vehicle would be right on top of the Jeep's bumper.
    The Ford shot out of the last narrow curve and bore down on the Jeep. The car's heavily tinted windows, common enough here in the South Pacific, made it impossible to see the face of the person at the wheel. Whoever he was, he was either very drunk or very high.
    A tourist, Jasper thought. The Ford looked like one of the rusty rentals he had seen at the small agency in the village where he had selected the Jeep.
    There was little room to maneuver on the tiny, two-lane road that encircled tiny Pelapili Island. Steep cliffs shot straight up on the left. On Jasper's right the terrain fell sharply away to the turquoise sea.
    He had never wanted to take this vacation in paradise, Jasper thought. He should have listened to his own instincts instead of the urgings of his nephews and his friend, Al.
    This was what came of allowing other people to push you into doing what they thought was best for you.
    Jasper assessed the slim shoulder on the side of the pavement. There was almost no margin for driving error on this stretch of the road. One wrong move and a driver could expect to end up forty feet below on the lava-and-boulder-encrusted beach.
    He should have had his midlife crisis in the peace and comfort of his own home on