A Daughter's Vengeance

Plot

Miranda and her 6 year old twin boys, Brandon and Korey, are strolling on the beach. The kids run ahead of their mother as she lags behind, soaking up the last warmth of the setting sun and enjoying the freshness of the sea breeze. She is seven and half months pregnant and not as energetic as she would like to be. It is a late afternoon in late August; summer is almost over, and the boys will be going back to school soon. She yells at them to stay clear of the water’s edge.

The kids stop to make sand castles. Miranda spreads her towel on the sand and sits as she watches the seagulls fish for food in the swelling waves. In the distance, a flash of lightning splits the air, followed by a resounding, booming clap of thunder. Its echo is almost ominous. She shivers as a sudden chill creeps up and settles over her. Dark clouds are rapidly rolling in, replacing the lively red, yellow, and orange hues created by the setting sun. She should try to get home before it starts raining. She needs to fix dinner for Matt and the boys.

She motions to the boys that she is ready to leave. As they race each other to the back entrance where she is parked, they notice a man lying under a sea grape tree. Being the friendlier of the two, Korey runs up to the man to tell him he should go home because it is going to rain. He calls out to the man who, lying face down seems to be in a deep sleep. Brandon picks up a nearby branch and nudges the man with it but he still does not move. Miranda approaches the boys and is about to scold them for disturbing the man when she notices dried blood settled in the folds of his neck as well as his blood-stained shirt. Not wanting to scare the boys, she hurries them to the car, orders them to get in, grabs her cell phone from the dashboard and, standing by the side of the car, dials 911 to report what she had seen. The kids are curious but her nerves are rattled and she does not hear the barrage of questions they throw at her.

Minutes later the police, paramedics and medical examiner arrive; the man is pronounced dead by the medical examiner and is transported to the morgue for an autopsy. His family is notified. An ensuing investigation reveals that Carl Pendergast was a partner at a prominent law firm; a husband and father of two teenage girls, Selena, 15 and Paige, 18. He was killed and his body dumped by the beach by a hit man, Pete Thornbury, a client he once defended, who Paige hired to kill him because he was physically abusing their mother.




Brief description of Characters

Not only was he older but Korey was also the more outgoing of the two brothers. His large, curious, gray eyes were set in an inviting oval face sprinkled with freckles, all crowned by a glorious head of curly reddish-brown hair. Even at such a young age, he was matured, insightful, and smart, always seeming to ask the right questions or doing something to amaze the adults around him.
Paige Pendergast was an athletic, no-nonsense teenager whose unsmiling eyes reflected wisdom and experience well beyond her age. Over the past six years, she had transformed into this snippy, withdrawn character whose patience was as thin as her pale, chapped lips. She often wore oversized boys clothes to hide her slender figure. Her thick long black hair is usually swept up in a bun and the last time her friend Patti invited her to try some make-up, Paige swept the kit from her hands in a rage and, using the heels of her sneakers, crushed its contents with such force that Patti cringed. Her father, Carl Pendergast, was a renowned criminal lawyer who felt it was his God-sent duty to purge society’s corruption by punishing law breakers to the fullest. His tall burly figure made him seem menacing and he often used his stature to intimidate his witnesses. His largeness is often stifling and automatically commanded attention. His small beady eyes were overwhelmed by a generous endowment of coarse bushy eyebrows. His smirk of a smile made the fearless quiver.



A scene from A Daughter’s Vengeance

Smack! Smack! Smack!
“Who the hell is Bob?” He was clutching her by the throat now. “Who is he?”
“He’s just a friend, Carl. I swear to you, he’s just a friend,” she practically gasped as he tightened his grip on her throat. Her smiling eyes were now large, bulging bulbs of fear and her face, completely void of the serenity which usually invites people to approach her, gradually became beet red probably from the sting of the slaps or perhaps from lack of oxygen. Either way the tears just seemed to flow on their own, streaming down her face in urgent rivulets.
“Carl, please…” She couldn’t finish her sentence.
He released her throat but grabbed a fistful of her long black hair, spun her around hard so her back was to him, then pulled her roughly up against him. Paige watched from the crack of her room door as her mother whimpered in pain.
“Are you cheating on me? Do you know how hard I have to work to provide for you and the girls?” he growled into her ear. “And this is how you repay me?” The impact of his large, heavy hands striking her soft skin resounded sickeningly.
Smack! Smack!
It was at that moment that Paige decided she could not watch her mother suffer any more. Her father, who was supposed to be upholding the law, had been beating on his wife for almost six years, right around the time he got promoted to partner at the firm. No one at his job would suspect he was an abuser. In public, he was the devoted father and husband. In the confines of these walls, the beast unleashed.
As the years rolled by, the beatings got more violent, and Paige’s resentment towards her father spiraled to unimaginable levels. Each time she heard her mother cry, saw the bruises over her body, it was as though a piece of her had been ripped out. Determinedly, she crossed the room to her desk and retrieved the piece of paper on which she had written his number. No one would suspect her. She had watched her father work on his cases and had a firm grasp of what she needed to do to avoid being caught. Plus, Pete Thornbury was trustworthy. After all, her father had hired him to take out Mr. Jinsberg who was the opposing candidate for partner at the firm.
“Hallo?”
“Pete? Hi, it’s Paige.” He’d been at their house so often , he was almost family. “I need a favor.”
“A favor? From me? Miss, am not good comp’ny for you. Your father might be…”
“I know all about you, Pete. I also know what you did to Mr. Jinsberg, my father’s partner.”
He shifted nervously around on the sofa. No one was supposed to know about that job. No one except him and Pendergast.
She smiled at his silence.
She was not to be underestimated.
“I need a favor, Pete. I need you to meet me at Spring Creek in twenty minutes.”