The Black Shepherd - Chapter 1
**Chapter One** **Friday March 14, 2008** **11:49am** _Today's the day_. It wasn't the first time he had thought those words to himself. In fact, it had become some sick Monday-Wednesday-Friday ritual. Psyche self up. Today,...
The Black Shepherd - Chapter 18
**Chapter Eighteen** **Monday July 21, 2008** **11:04am** "Ready?" The distinctive blend of canine odor and perfume clung to gray leather, and a small paw fell from a gearshift to press and stroke green mesh. "Yes." The answer rumbled from deep...
The Black Shepherd - Chapter 6
**Chapter Six** **Friday April 11, 2008** **1:15pm** Not normally the type to get in a funk, Tyson struggled with the dejected feeling that Elena's words--and the words she hadn't said--had left him with. He felt foolish and embarrassed. Worse, he...
The Black Shepherd - Chapter 21
**Chapter Twenty-one** **Tuesday July 29, 2008** **1:58am** She had told him to wake up, to get his act together. She seemed to believe it was that it was his inhospitality which would expose their illicit game._She_ had told _him._ She knelt with...
The Black Shepherd - Chapter 2
**Chapter Two** **Friday March 14, 2008** **8:40pm** Sandy was as plain and Midwestern as could be: a modest spec of northern Indiana surrounded by fields of melting snow, home to seventeen thousand souls plus Jenner, the World's...
The Black Shepherd - Chapter 16
**Chapter Sixteen** **Saturday July 5, 2008** **8:51am** The room was silent and sunlit, his body faint and fluctuant. While Firecrackers barked, bottle rockets hissed, exploded, Tyson lay awake, lay underneath the slight layers of his bedding and...
The Black Shepherd - Chapter 3
**Chapter Three** **Thursday March 20, 2008** **11:47am** A cool drizzle and a gloomy procession of clouds made no attempt at matching Tyson's mood as the shepherd cruised east on I-60. His days of waiting were at an end. The day of their second...
The Black Shepherd - Chapter 20
**Chapter Twenty** **Friday July 25, 2008** **9:52am** Patricia kicked days three and four of the otherworldly vacation off with continental breakfast and a cigarette, and she capped each night with several rounds of rough sex. It was a routine she...
The Black Shepherd - Chapter 17
**Chapter Seventeen** **Friday July 18, 2008** **11:04pm** Again, they were bundled together within the glow of the television--the house quiet beyond the fringe of artificial luminance, the house forgotten beyond the stinging scent of perfume and...
The Black Shepherd - Chapter 7
**Chapter Seven** **Saturday April 19, 2008** **6:50pm** "Wow." Tyson's aching legs buckled underneath him as he was lowering himself to the passenger seat of Elena's Honda, and after falling into the cloth seat he gulped down a few breaths of...
The Black Shepherd - Epilogue
**Epilogue** **Wednesday July 4, 2018** **3:36pm** Dandelion-gold winked through bright-green summer grass around a red-brick corner house in Sandy, Indiana. Along with the tickle of a refreshing breeze were the faraway reports of firecrackers and...
The Black Shepherd - Chapter 19
**Chapter Nineteen** **Tuesday July 22, 2008** **7:39pm** "There." Tongue lolling from his muzzle, Roger straightened over the garage workbench which held his most recent project. It was nothing advanced--a four-foot floating shelf comprised of a...