AllFreeNovel
Share Us
They’re smart businessmen, Ed explained to his daughter. That was why conglomerates like Prine’s were so successful—they know how to squeeze every dollar. Jackie wasn’t so sure. The job was too unwieldy, and now the margins were far too low. She didn’t like or trust Prine’s people. She had heard stories about smaller contractors like them being stiffed.
But Ed wouldn’t hear of it. A prominent job like this would be incredible publicity for them. It would give Newton and Daughter legitimacy that money couldn’t buy. If they could break even on something like this, Ed told her—heck, even if they lost a dollar or two—they’d come out ahead.
After lowering their numbers one more time, Newton and Daughter won the bid.
The job was all-consuming. It took everything out of them in every way, but hey, they were playing in the major leagues now. Dad loved that. He walked into O’Malley’s Pub with his back a little straighter, his smile a little wider. He got congratulatory slaps on the back from his old coworkers. They wanted to buy him drinks.
Like so many things, it was all good until it wasn’t.
First off, Prine was late on the down payment. The money was coming, they were repeatedly told. This was the multinational conglomerate’s standard operating procedure, they were assured. Just get started on the job. And so they did. Ed took out another loan to buy the flooring from his favorite sawmill in Hazlehurst, Georgia. A little more expensive but worth it. Ed and Jackie turned down other jobs, good jobs, to focus solely on the Prine skyscraper. It was a hard job with lots of red tape, delays, overruns, cost issues.
In the end, they’d lose money, but the hardwood flooring was top-notch, impeccable. Ed and Jackie took tremendous pride in what they’d done. They’d had their backs to the wall and showed they could play with the big boys.
You can guess the rest, can’t you?
Prine stiffed them. Not a little bit. Not a chisel. He simply didn’t pay them. When they finished the job and presented the final invoice, Prine ignored it. He didn’t even bother to lie, to say the money was coming, to claim it would just be another week. He didn’t even offer up the hoary chestnut that the check was in the mail. Ed Newton sent another invoice. Then another. Weeks passed. Then months. Ed and Jackie made phone calls, but no one with any authority would get on the line. They showed up at the office, but security wouldn’t allow them on the premises. Left with no other option, Ed and Jackie ended up hiring an attorney appropriately named Richard Fee. Prine ignored the attorney too. More months passed. They eventually had no choice but to sue the Prine Organization. It wasn’t David versus Goliath—it was David versus a thousand Goliaths. Prine’s lawyers, a massive team of them, swarmed and overwhelmed them. They drowned Ed and Jackie in paperwork. They submitted constant motions. They made outrageous demands on discovery. Ed and Jackie’s legal fees started piling up. Richard Fee dropped out once the money ran out. When Ed and Jackie tried to dig in their heels, Prine’s people bad-mouthed their work, just straight-up lied about shoddy craftsmanship and needing to redo. Newton and Daughter’s reputation was left in tatters. After two more months, Prine finally offered to settle for twenty cents on the dollar. Ed refused.
You know the rest, don’t you?
They lost their business. They lost the house. Eventually, to pay off a small percentage of their growing debt, the bankruptcy courts forced them to take a deal that gave them fourteen cents on the dollar. As part of the settlement, Ed and Jackie were forced to sign nondisclosure agreements, so that they couldn’t tell anyone what Prine or his organization had done to them.
In April of this year, Ed Newton suffered a debilitating stroke. Maybe it was just his age or a lifetime of not eating right. Maybe it wasn’t connected at all to the lawsuit or all the losses. But Jackie didn’t believe that. It was Prine. What he had done to her father. What he had done to them.
She fantasized about revenge, but of course, that would never happen.
They moved into a low-income housing development. Jackie ended up working for Ed’s old bosses at TST Construction at a reduced hourly rate.
They had nothing. Almost nothing. But one thing Jackie kept:
Her father’s hunting rifle.
You—you who learned her story and saw an opportunity in it—have the rifle in your hands now.
You are pointing it at Prine’s chest.
“Who are you?” Prine asks. “What do you want?”
You had wanted this mission to go in reverse—kill Jackie, pin it on Prine—but that would have been very difficult. Prine had never even known the woman whose life he had ruined. He didn’t even know Jackie’s name.
There’d be no motive.
“Look,” Prine says to you, “whoever you are, we can make this right. I have a lot of money—”
You pull the trigger.
You anticipated a big recoil, and you got one. The slug blows a giant hole through the rich man’s chest. Money does a lot for a man, but it doesn’t stop a bullet. Prine is dead before he hits the ground. You drive back to the low-income project in Philadelphia. You have a key to the Newton place. When Jackie left her key at work one day, you took it, duplicated it, and put it back without her ever knowing. You can enter and go as you please now.
And as always, you planned.
That’s how you got her father’s rifle this morning. That’s how you got access to Jackie’s dated computer where you could send the Prine Organization emails threatening violence for what they had done to Jackie and her father.
You use the key again now. The TV is on. It always is during the day. You tiptoe past the bedroom where Ed Newton will probably spend his final days.
You found the unloaded rifle in the closet toward the back. You return it there now.
You didn’t add a DNA tie-in this time. The rifle and threatening emails and messages should be enough. Jackie might have an alibi—you couldn’t cover all the bases, what with the rush to get this done—but you know that’s unlikely to sway anyone.
Ironically, if Jackie Newton were rich, if she had Prine’s money, this wouldn’t be enough. She’d probably get off. She’d hire a team of top lawyers who would buddy up to the right judges and cops and politicians and heck, it might not even go to trial.
