 Begotten By Steven D. Richards Marianna was aroused from her sleep with a start. It was Roberto shaking her shoulder. "Get up, Marianna. Get up! We have to get out of here, now!" he exclaimed with tension in his voice. "Why, what's wrong," she replied, wiping her eyes and blinking as she sat up in the darkened room. Roberto grabbed her clothes from the nearby chair and threw them at her. "Put them on. Don't ask questions. We have to get going yesterday." Marianna sensed his urgency as he ran out of the hotel room going to Nick's door and banging on it. As she finished dressing the two men came in. "What's going on," she demanded. "Where are you taking me?" Neither said anything but rather picked up her bags and dragged her from the room, one on each elbow. Before she could ascertain their predicament, they were in the Saab, roaring out onto the highway, everyone slinging about inside the vehicle. Roberto was driving, this time like a madman. He kept looking in the rear view mirror for apparently someone following them-or about to follow them. Marianna felt the panic rising in her throat as she too looked out the back window, seeing nothing. "What's happening here? Are we not going to bother to check out?" she quietly squeaked. It was Nick who began the interrogation for an explanation of the sudden panic in Roberto, and then both of them as well. "I knew we've been here too long. I was walking by the pool when I saw them. They were police of some kind with plain-clothes men with them. Could have been locals-I don't know. They were talking with the desk clerk when I saw them. If I were a betting man I would say that they were looking for us." Roberto was correct on that score. One of the men in the Campallini family had turned state's evidence for another crime, and in the course of his interview with Italian officials he had offered information about the cocaine deal that had transpired a week before. He identified Nick and Roberto as well as a young woman traveling with them. After contacting Swiss police and Interpol, they instigated a search, bringing them ultimately to Zurich after the Institute reception clerk had notified local police regarding a threatening young man. A quick scouring of local hotels brought them to the one where the three Costa Ricans were staying. The only question in Roberto's mind was whether they were spotted leaving the parking lot and if there might be a road block placed on the highway back to Lugano. Steven D. Richards is a forty-nine year old practicing physician who has begun writing to satisfy his hidden inner desire to entertain and stimulate others with provocative stories-weaving medical topics with ethics and religious belief interfacing with modern technology, mystery, and adventure. BEGOTTEN is his first full-length novel that crystallizes such perspectives into a fiction tale. "My utmost desire is that my readers will find excitement and eventually joy as they read the pages - this is my goal." His next work will be AND A CHILD SHALL LEAD THEM, a story of a new terrorism in America - the kidnapping of children who are sold into slavery. Steve lives with his family of two girls and his wife in the mountains of Virginia. You may contact him via email at trophmind@yahoo.com |