97f33ba
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There was no end date for her sentence in this place. She was a lifer.
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Blake Crouch |
ac82235
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And in that moment, he no longer regarded the residents of Abandon and the thousand other mining camps scattered like bacteria through the West as people of ambition and courage. They were a cold, dirty, desperate, miserable lot. He saw them now so clearly. They had crossed the plains and made homes in these savage mountains and borne their myriad afflictions not because they were brave pioneers pursuing a dream. They had come for no other ..
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Blake Crouch |
1ceec22
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If I represent the pinnacle of family success for all the Jason Dessens, Jason2 represents the professional and creative apex. We're opposite poles of the same man.
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Blake Crouch |
910232b
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I am hardwired to love and protect that woman.
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Blake Crouch |
f63a277
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If I represent the pinnacle of family success for all the Jason Dessens, Jason2 represents the professional and creative apex. We're opposite poles of the same man, and I suppose it isn't a coincidence that Jason2 sought out my life from the infinite possibilities available.
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Blake Crouch |
0c8a28b
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I'm running a battery of tests, but everything appears to have come through fully preserved.
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Blake Crouch |
13cba70
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Jack, I'm just telling you, if it turns out. . .I want you to shoot me." "Dee--" "I'm not kidding, not exaggerating, just telling you that I do not have it in me to handle that." "You have a daughter, too. You don't have the luxury not to handle shit."
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responsibility
perceverance
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Blake Crouch |
2c2a172
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What's the demographic?" "Men. Women. Children." "High-velocity GSWs?"
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Blake Crouch |
81bf4d4
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Her therapist, Christian, would tell her to challenge the thought to use. To stop, take a moment, and analyze the error in it.
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Blake Crouch |
715d79e
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Inside, the air-conditioning was set to blizzard.
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Blake Crouch |
dee4911
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I ask, "You think you'd ever forget it entirely? Your world?" "I don't know. I could see it getting to the point where it didn't feel real anymore. Because it isn't. The only thing that's real in this moment is this city. This room. This bed. You and me."
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Blake Crouch |
acc33bb
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Crazy hungry. Didn't even come up for air until she was halfway through and nearly choked when she did. Because that man was sitting across from her, smiling. It was a beautiful smile. Broad and bright. But there was something malicious and knowing in it that she couldn't quite put her finger on. Like the man wasn't smiling at her, but rather at something he knew about her.
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Blake Crouch |
a598b67
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No, what do you call that?" "I call that you-ain't-gotta-do-shit-ever-again money. I call that living-right-for-the-rest-of-your-life money. Don't tell me some part of you hasn't always dreamed of robbing a casino."
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Blake Crouch |
147d046
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Do you have any concept of what I've already sacrificed for you?
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Blake Crouch |
064fe51
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Fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely.
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Blake Crouch |
73b1bab
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Life is too hard and too short not to be with the one you love. So choose me.
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Blake Crouch |
1afdee1
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What about the truth?" Ethan asked. "In some environments, safety and truth are natural born enemies. I would think a former employee of the federal government could grasp that concept."
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Blake Crouch |
42347eb
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When Daniela drinks, three things happen: her native accent begins to bleed through, she becomes belligerently kind, and she tends toward hyperbole.
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Blake Crouch |
7188a4c
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Everywhere Ethan looks, lights are coming on inside houses, the air becoming fragrant with the smell of suppers cooking. Through cracked windows, he hears clanging dishes, indistinct conversations, ovens opening, closing. Everyone he passes smiles and says hello. Like a Norman Rockwell painting come to life.
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Blake Crouch |
55ca8cc
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By four o'clock in the morning they were tearing through a landscape that looked ready-made for missile testing. Scorched earth. Joyless mountains. No trees. Snakeskin country.
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Blake Crouch |
769de50
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His hair was curly and black, and he didn't boast the intimidating build of either Isaiah or Jerrod. But his eyes were as hard as any she'd ever met.
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Blake Crouch |
7ef76b3
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She had come twenty minutes early, but he was already there. He sat in a corner booth with a view of the street and the entrance. Watching her. She forced a smile and walked unsteadily down the aisle beside the counter. The points of her heels clicked on the nicotine-stained linoleum. Sliding into the booth across from Javier, she nodded hello. He had short black hair and flawless brown skin. Every time they'd met, Letty thought of that say..
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Blake Crouch |
e00aa11
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She cursed loud enough to attract the attention of an older man who'd dolled himself up for the evening, his eyes glaring at her over the top of the Asheville Citizen-Times. She slashed him with a sardonic smile and got up, enraged at herself over this swell of weakness. She took two steps. Everything changed. The anger melted. Exhilaration flooding in to take its place. In the emotion and fear of the moment, it had completely escaped her.
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Blake Crouch |
b5f8cb4
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Bartender." And though the word hadn't been shouted, something in its tone implied a command that ought not be ignored. Clearly the barkeep picked up on it, too, because he was standing in front of Arnold almost instantaneously, like he'd been summoned."
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Blake Crouch |
f2041bd
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Always puts me in mind of that F. Scott Fitzgerald line: Life starts all over again when it gets crisp in the fall.
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Blake Crouch |
729763b
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Careful. Like shooting-heroin-into-your-femoral-artery careful. There's a razor blade hidden in the bottom of your handbag under a piece of black electrical tape.
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Blake Crouch |
1ec6e45
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This is Daniela with an energy like the first time we met fifteen years ago, before years of life-the normalcy, the elation, the depression, the compromise-transformed her into the woman who now shares my bed: amazing mother, amazing wife, but fighting always against the whispers of what might have been.
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Blake Crouch |
1ef8feb
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Letty had barely touched her food. Javier stared down at her through a pair of aviator sunglasses. "You forgot something," she said. "What's that?" "My name. Who will they be expecting?" "Selena Kitt. S-E-L-E-N-A K-I-T-T. But you won't be carrying any identification."
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Blake Crouch |
ef18d05
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She studied the document. "Looks like a bunch of legalese." "Pretty much." "You wanna give me the CliffsNotes since I didn't go to law school?"
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Blake Crouch |
1b7b067
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He watched its heart beating. He watched it blinking. "You are one ugly motherfucker."
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Blake Crouch |
1c6bd75
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It has altered," Leven says, "but only slightly. Nitrogen and oxygen, thank God, are still the main components. But the makeup is now one percent more oxygen, one percent less nitrogen. Greenhouse gases have returned to pre-Industrial Age levels."
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Blake Crouch |
ff33402
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The day wears on. The light fades. It snows harder with each passing hour. Up and down Main, Christmas lights wink on.
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Blake Crouch |
6e4b039
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Jessica's smile makes Ron slide his hand over the console, let it work down between her blue-jeaned thighs.
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Blake Crouch |
136c755
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She stopped at the foot of the trio of beach chairs and smiled down at Richter and his men. Richter was in the middle. The one on the left was a hairy beast of a man with the fat-over-muscle build of someone who'd earned their conditioning from life experience, not a gym bike. Someone who possessed the brute core strength to physically break you. The man on the right was younger and leaner, but still carried plenty of brawn. It squared with..
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Blake Crouch |
22a1c27
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That's a perfect clone of Richter's phone. Has all his voice mails, text history, contacts, data usage, apps. More importantly, every call or text that comes to Richter will first hit us. We'll have the option to intercept, pass along, or kill it. You'll see the incoming texts and calls on that phone. I'll see them on my laptop. If it's okay with you, I'll just set up my base of operations here.
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Blake Crouch |
d96f3a8
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I make a phone call, and you spend the rest of your life in prison, possibly death row.
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Blake Crouch |
8d1f441
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It's a strange thing, being the parent of a teenager. One thing to raise a little boy, another entirely when a person on the brink of adulthood looks to you for wisdom. I feel like I have little to give.
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Blake Crouch |
764709c
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It was the strangest sort of fear. Unspecified. Like walking in the woods at night, not knowing exactly what you should be afraid of, and the fear all the more potent precisely because of its mystery.
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Blake Crouch |
bce05ef
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You're saying that, out of an infinite number of realities, I intentionally picked this shithole?" "Not intentionally. Maybe it's a reflection of what you were feeling at the moment you opened the door." --
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Blake Crouch |
264cff0
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Everyone black-suited. None younger than thirty, none older than forty-five. Each exuding his own special brand of ex-military, fucked-by-life hardness.
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Blake Crouch |
9f17e51
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She loved at light-speed. No hesitation. No regrets. No conditions. No reservations.
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Blake Crouch |
e4cbe90
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It took Letty four tries to get her left leg through the harness. Isaiah watching her from the window. He said, "You gotta lock that shit down." "Lock what down?" "Your panic."
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Blake Crouch |
dc1916b
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Letty sat on a velvet couch, propped up with pillows. Rich royal-purple drapes everywhere she looked. Ivy walls. Candlelight. She had the best lamb she'd ever tasted. Must've been fed gold flakes and the milk of the gods. The bread cart was legendary. Like baked clouds. Everything plated as beautifully as jewelry. The artistic detail more precise than coinage.
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Blake Crouch |
feb0cd3
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I'm often asked how Chad and I approach the process of cowriting a script. We figured out an egalitarian method (well, to be fair, it was Chad's idea).
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Blake Crouch |