excerpt 5

A Fool's Gold the 4th of nine books in my series Failure's Legacy.

While this book is supposed to be about Derick Combs on of the paternal twin half siblings it is more so the story of Jermey McDaniels. From a broken home and sent to live with his father Otis who owned a junkyard in rural North Carolina. The junkyard was located behind his father's house and the school bus stopped in front of it to pick him he grew up with the nick name Junkyard Jermey.

Okay I admit, I didn't like Derick. Derick was just shy of being what some people call a "dude bro" so naturally, this book more centered on Junkyard Jeremy.

The basis of the book is simple, Jeremy spent twenty years in prison for attempted murder during a robbery of gold coins recovered from a shipwreck. Jeremy however was innocent of that crime. When Jeremy was arrested he became despondent when Lauren (we met her in book 2) dissappears and pleads guilty.

After his sentence is finished Jeremy returns to the junkyard, happy just to be free. An acquaintance tells him Lauren's whereabouts and tells him she has a daughter about the right age to be his. Jeremy sets off to find her. The reunion is short lived and both Lauren and her daughter Kendall (from book 2) are kidnaped. The ransom demands os the gold coins Jeremy was falsely accused of stealing.

That is how Derick Combs the half sibling ties into this story, he joins Jeremy on the quest to find the gold and save Kendall. There's little character growth a lersin like Derick can do,at least not believable growth, making him one of my least favorite of the siblings. So this excerpt is from A Fool's Gold, Jeremy and Derick are tracking down the people Jeremy was supposed to steal the gold with when this encounter happens.

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He climbed in and removed the .45 from his waistband and slid it under the seat.

“We fixin’ to get ourselves pulled over,” Jeremy said bluntly.

Jeremy drove easy through the run down trailer park and was still fifty yards from the exit When Abbot pulled in behind him with the blue lights on.

“What did you do?” Derick asked.

“Talked to the wrong people I reckon," Jermey put the car in park and shut the engine down watching in the rearview mirror as the deputy approached. Now that Sam had told him it was Abbot Livengood he did recognize him, he had bulked up and cut his hair short but there was no denying who it was.

Abbot came up to the window.

“Jeremy just give me your license and registration I ain’t in no kind of mood for no lip today,” Abbot said sternly.

“Damn Abbot if you know my name you don’t need that shit, you know this is my car I had it since you were a young un',” He joked.

“Listen Jeremy the sooner you cooperate, the sooner I can give you a warning ticket and you can go wherever, and I can go find a shady spot to take a nap, hear me?” Abbot said.

Jeremy handed him the paperwork.

Abbot looked at it a moment, handed it back and pulled a paper off his ticket book.

“It’s a warning for unsafe vehicle movement, you don’t have to pay nothing, you don’t have to go to court just read it real careful then you can throw it away,” Abbot said.

Jeremy read the ticket, his eyes got wide a brief second then he laid it on the seat.

“Abbot you could have leaned over and said this when we was getting gas you know? Might would have saved us both some time,” Jeremy said.

“I hadn’t made my mind up if I was gonna or not then, but I see where you went and figured I would. Hell daddy would have wanted me to, on account our families go back a ways,” Abbot said.

“Well deputy, I appreciate the warning, you be safe out there,” Jeremy said.

Abbot turned and walked back to his patrol car while Jeremy drove off.

Derick picked up the ticket and read it.

Don’t trust nobody nothing is what it looks like and they are watching you

“What’s this supposed to mean?” Derick asked.

“It means we gonna have to be cagey like a fox, and we need to run far and fast when we get those girls, hear me? You got any place you can carry them to where they’ll be safe?” Jeremy asked.

“My sister’s house has a wall and a gate, she even had armed guards for a while," Derick said.