The Shattered Lens Read online



  The Shattered Lens

  Jason P. Stadtlander

  with Linda Sickinger

  With Special Preview of “The Steel Van Man”

  The Shattered Lens

  Jason P. Stadtlander

  Copyright 2013 Jason P. Stadtlander

  The Shattered Lens is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  2013 Ashian Ink Publishing U.S. International eBook Edition

  Copyright © 2013 by Jason P. Stadtlander

  Edited by Linda Sickinger

  All rights reserved

  Published by Ashian Ink Publishing, Massachusetts

  www.ashianink.com

  Book and cover design by Jason P. Stadtlander

  Ashian Ink and the ashen inkwell are

  registered trademarks of Ashian Ink Publishing.

  Contents

  The Shattered Lens

  Book Extra – Preview of The Steel Van Man

  Jillian sat on the floor crouched behind the bed, staring over the comforter at the door through the dim light of the room. She heard footsteps coming down the hall—heavy footsteps. The intruder had entered her house three minutes earlier, and she now sat listening to him as he made his way slowly through her small house.

  Startled by the crash of a vase downstairs, she had locked the bedroom door and ducked behind the bed. Trembling, her heart was pounding within, and she was frightened to such an extent that she feared she might pass out—despite the fact that adrenaline was coursing through her veins. She felt her thin, silk nightgown flutter behind her and jumped, but realized immediately it was the heating vent blowing at the hem. At this moment she wished she had listened to her sister and gotten a dog. “I know it’s a good neighborhood, but being a single woman and living alone…you really should have some protection. At least get a dog, or better yet, a gun,” her sister had told her.

  And so Jillian had opted for a gun over the dog. The gun, however, was locked inside the chest within the coat closet downstairs. Idiot! Why would you keep a gun meant to protect you somewhere that was farthest from your bedroom?

  The footsteps drew closer now. Her eyes were focused on the faint glow from the hall nightlight as it filled with shadow under the door. The footsteps stopped. The doorknob moved. She held her breath, heart beating so hard she felt it would pound right out of her chest. Jillian was smart as well as fit—the twenty-eight-year-old had finished her medical doctorate two years ago and worked out at the gym four times a week. But she realized she was not capable of holding back a deranged man who was determined enough to break into her home. And for all she knew, he might be drunk and armed. Wearing nothing but the sheer revealing nightgown and with no means to defend herself, she was vulnerable and alone.

  Glancing quickly around the room from her perch behind the bed, she searched for something to keep her intruder at bay. Spotting her father’s old baseball bat standing in the corner near the door, she jumped up so quickly that her vision washed out a bit from the blood rushing through her body. Grabbing the bat, she darted back behind the bed.

  “Hello? I can hear you in there,” said a deep, raspy voice from behind the bedroom door out in the hall. “Come on, little lady—show me some love.” The intruder sounded drunk, his speech slurred.

  The man threw his weight against the door creating a loud thud. Two more times he slammed his body against the fragile interior door. Jillian reached around behind the bed and unplugged the already extinguished light in a desperate attempt to make sure the man couldn’t see her until the last second. Her heart raced even faster as she tried hard to calm herself.

  A momentary silence. Jillian held her breath in frightened anticipation. Then she heard something. Scratching? Panic gripped her stomach as she realized the intruder was attempting to pick the simple bedroom lock. She remembered the small hole in the middle of the doorknob strategically placed so a parent could stick something into it to pop the lock should a child get accidentally locked inside—definitely not as secure as the lock on the outside of the house.

  But how had the man gotten past the outside lock and into her house in the first place? Her upstairs phone was just a cordless extension that required the base downstairs to work. She had grabbed the phone earlier to call for help only to realize he must have disconnected the phone line at the base downstairs. She thought of her mobile phone but quickly realized it was still charging in the cradle downstairs on the counter in the kitchen.

  “Keep out!” she screamed. “I have a gun! You come in here and I swear to God, I’ll blow your head off, asshole!” She lied.

  The noise from the doorknob stopped instantly. “I don’t believe you,” he called out, his words thick.

  “Care to test me?” she yelled, voice shaking. “I don’t want to hurt anyone, but I won’t hesitate to shoot you if you walk through that door!”

  Again, silence. Then there was an audible pop and the door slowly opened, making an eerie drawn-out creaking sound. Jillian slid under the bed, heart racing wildly. She crawled her way along the carpet on her stomach, a tight grip on the baseball bat. Straining to see beyond the hanging bedspread, she saw two worn brown shoes plod into the room—it looked like he might be wearing work boots. The feet traipsed slowly across the floor toward the master bath.

  Jillian seized this moment to slide out from under the bed. Dashing furtively for the bedroom door, she glanced back for only a second at his shadow in the entrance to the master bath. At a glance, she took in that he was thirty-something, had a stocky build, a heavy construction coat, jeans and work boots.

  She ran out the room and down the hall, pausing briefly at the top of the stairs. It was then that something tripped inside her brain. She was sick of deranged people taking over the lives of others. Now was her chance—her turn to take control of the situation. Running partly on instinct and partly on the rush of fear, she sprinted down the stairs, her bare feet hardly making a sound on the thick carpet. She ran to the coat closet and grabbed the Glock 19 – 9mm from the small chest sitting atop the shelf inside. Hands shaking, she pulled the clip expertly into the gun and pulled back on the slide loading a bullet into the firing chamber. She then crept back up the steps to confront her intruder.