Fresh FIction Box Not To Miss
Tracy Clark | Exclusive Excerpt FALL
Author Guest / December 14, 2023

CHAPTER 2 Marin Shaw would never forget the sound of prison doors locking behind her—the whoosh and heavy thud, the dungeon scrape, the almost medieval clunk of the metal workings, or the slow slide of the impenetrable barrier, its opening preceded by a warning blare, a Klaxon cry, when a prisoner was on the move. She knew those sounds, as desolate as a catacomb, as devoid of life as death itself, would wake her in the night in a cold, hard sweat for as long as she lived. The sound of the cell door had already nested in her gut like a watchful raven with twitchy eyes, taunting her, not letting her forget for even a second how she’d thrown her life away for $5,000, a two-martini lunch, and a lie. “Sign here,” the incurious clerk at the prison-release window said, her blank expression proof that she had become inured to the routine of the turnout process. Prisoners came and went like trains on a track, like loaves of bread down a conveyor belt. The only things that changed were the day and the time and the signature on the form. The clerk pushed a large plastic bag toward Marin….