Sunday, November 10, 2013

Sunday Snippet: Spider's Webb (A Furlough 99 Novella)

Howdy!

Well, my week in television ended up being pretty damned awesome. Seriously, the Walking Dead kind of caught me off guard, but gotta give it to Rick. When he steps up, he sorta goes full tilt and gets it done. Not sure how I feel about the parting of ways, but I'm leaning towards it being a good thing.

Thoroughly enjoyed Castle, which is a nice change since I've been kind of 'meh' about this season. I love getting to see Rick and Kate together—that kind of never happens and it pisses me off—but the storylines either underwhelmed or made me scratch my head. Sons of Anarchy continues to rip the scabs off old wounds. I love having my smart Jax back. He's always at his best when he's not reacting to and working through shit like watching his best friend die. Very interested to see what side Tara's actions have him landing on. My hope is he'll stay smart, get the Irish out of the way, deal with the DA, and then let the emotional fallout hit. And good Christ, stay away from Gemma so she can't throw gasoline on the fire. *shakes head*

Arrow and The Tomorrow People just make my Wednesday the best day of the week. I can't say enough about Arrow at the moment, and anything I would say would contain spoilers, so *zips lips*. Haven twisted everything sideways again, but hit on a theory I had from the first episode. I kind of can't wait to see how the new wrinkle plays into the mythology. I have more thinky thoughts, but again… spoilers. LOL

So, that's my week in TV. Maybe I should get to the actual post, right? Tonight's snippet is from Spider's Webb, my next installment for Furlough 99. The story features Spider Smith from Finding Home. Spider is fun to write, but his female counterpart, Hailey is an absolute joy. Her voice is very strong and very insistent. LOL

Here's the tagline:

Spider Smith, techno geek extraordinaire, meets his match when Hailey Webb decides she needs his expertise. When her carefully planned escape from a life of crime goes awry, Spider wants to help, but with his team out on a fool's mission, Spider has to fight the battle on his own.

And a sneaky peek…

Hailey Webb let her fingers fly over the keyboards at a comp station, ignoring the four burly men standing behind her. Haj urged her to speed it up. Mal kept asking if she'd hacked in yet. And Dom informed her she'd better crack the system or their plans were fucked. Well, no shit. Taking the time to answer them would only slow her down.
One man remained silent. And he would be the one she worried about. Lou Bonera, their esteemed leader. An ex-enforcer, he tolerated Hailey for her hacking skills, but considered her expendable. Hell, he pretty much thought her only good for sucking his dick, taking his cock, or catering to his sexual whims. Within twenty minutes of meeting the guy, Hailey started referring to him as 'Boner' in her head. And she set him straight on their first encounter. She would not be his semen receptacle… but she would make him as bleeding rich as he wanted to be.
He didn't appreciate her point of view until she flashed her blade and promised to unman him the next time fell asleep. When she proved she could back up the promise of almost unlimited funds, he'd settled back and kept a watchful and sometimes leering eye on her.
Two years and she'd avoided any kind of physical entanglement with Boner. She found money and goods and hacked security systems to get the team in. They grabbed the bounty and split the profits—her share being considerably less than theirs. She could live with the cut. The men did the dangerous stuff. Hailey had the talent and know how. She also had money stashed in slush accounts all over the galaxy.
Lou finally broke his silence. "Come on, we don't got all day."
Fidgety and impatient never equaled a good combination with the crew she worked for.
"Yeah, yeah. I know. I'm almost there. Give me ninety seconds." She prayed she had the time right. Thirty to finish working through the firewall into the vault control mainframe and sixty to lay the trail of kilobytes she hoped would be found on a timed delay.
Her life might just depend on it.
She'd been a master thief since the age of twelve. But at twenty-five, she'd taken a hard fall when her drop cord failed and she barely made her egress point before the ISP hit the scene. Hailey missed the thrill of getting in and out under the nose of authority, but the close call signaled her retirement—at least from the physical end of stealing. She had to keep her hacking skills current, hence the necessity of working with Bonero's team. She knew it would be dangerous, knew Lou to be ruthless, but lately he'd become sloppy, too. He'd left bodies behind on their last three jobs. Bodies that didn't need to be dead. Hailey always worked an op from the angle of no bloodshed unless absolutely unavoidable. And seriously… with the size of the men she worked with, a gloved fist to the face would render most opponents unconscious long enough for them to escape. Why chance leaving trace DNA? So much smarter to get in and out, leave nothing behind. The first two deaths she wrote off as shit luck of a coincidence. But the last heist… she knew, deep in her gut, Boner murdered one of the guards… simply because he could.
Hailey took it as her cue to get the hell out while she could. And she had a plan… a risky one… but she lived for risk. What she didn't live for? A trail corpses. She could totally do without dead bodies.
She hit the last keystroke, laying her plan into action. She'd picked the next target for the team with great care and deliberation.
Her crew's next stop?
Furlough 99.
Her last chance to get the hell out.
For a great introduction to Spider, please pick up Shyler: Finding Home on Amazon.



That's it for this week. Catch everyone on the flip.

ML Skye

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