Rowland Books Grand Prize--Dana Ellison
Dana glanced furtively from left to right before she entered the stairwell, comforting herself with only a slight reassurance that no one was following her. It had been a long journey, but she had made it. Well, almost. She hadn't actually completed the task at hand, but it wasn't like she could turn back now. Lives were at stake, and it was pure loyalty and obligation to her friend that had driven her this far.

Her rubber soled shoes made a slight scuffling noise as she rounded the second flight of stairs. The building was old and dank, but sturdy. It had survived a half century of seasonal changes, renovations and deterioration as east Chicago had transformed from a thriving neighborhood of steelworkers and hard-working immigrants in the 50s and 60s, to an abandoned part of town just a few decades later.

Dana paused and muffled a sneeze, covering both her mouth and nose. She was pretty sure this place was ridden with asbestos, rodents, and any other unpleasant sign of decay, particularly since she had seen the telltale droppings in the corner of the stairwell just as she had entered. But a few rats were hardly a threat to her when she considered the rodents she was truly up against.

She looked up the winding stairwell, surveying how much further she had to go. All her calculations told her the 7th floor was where her friend would be. She could have taken the elevator - she had even eyed it carefully before choosing the stairs - but she didn't want to make any moves that would draw attention. Her imagination had converted the old, cranky elevator into a steel coffin as she thought about what would happen if the predators were as dangerous as she assumed. She could very well be staring down the barrel of a gun when the doors slid open. So she took her chances with the stairs. She rounded the sixth flight and paused, gathering her thoughts.

The last two weeks had been a blur. It seemed just yesterday she was sitting in her office enjoying a morning cup of tea when her fax machine whirred to life, spitting out a message that had made her knees buckle.

5 million cash
Katherine Rowland account
1634 Grand Avenue Chicago
July 17
No police or shes dead

Dana's eyes raked over the words, her heart pounding so hard in her chest she thought it would crack her ribs. Katherine… million… dead. Dead? It had to be a joke. Who would want to kill Katherine? Young married woman, mother of two, active in the community, responsible citizen, regular voter. It had to be a joke.

But it wasn't. She received the letter on Independence Day, so most people were home. She had called the Rowlands and found that Katherine hadn't been home for two nights, which was not characteristic of her. Her husband, Chris, had been dazed and cooperative, obviously trying to keep the truth from his children by taking the cordless phone into the bathroom to answer all of Dana's inquiries. He hadn't received the same note that she had. Something was terribly wrong.

Over the next few days, she had pieced together the most accurate story she could based on her research and information. Katherine was extremely smart, and always had been. Ever since their junior high school days, when she and Dana went head to head at spelling bees, debate clubs and even the orchestra. Graduation, career and marriage had taken them their separate ways, though they kept in touch with each other by email, phone and the occasional visit.

Dana had become a police officer and was on the fast track to joining the FBI. She had submitted numerous applications, but couldn't seem to get past the front door. It wasn't that she wasn't qualified, but that with all the terrorist activities over the past few years, the FBI had been shaken up and hiring had become sporadic and unreliable. Rather than continue down the one track career of law enforcement, Dana opened up her own office as a private detective in the Atlanta area, where she could determine her own hours and legally oblige her inquisitive nature. Katherine had gotten married to an engineer and started a family. However, unbeknownst to Dana, Katherine had also become filthy rich. Well, maybe not filthy rich, but quite wealthy. Her modest nature and desire to raise a well-adjusted family had encouraged her to refrain from revealing the inheritance she had received from a family member.

Chris filled Dana in on all the details. Katherine had inherited $25 million at age 23 from her grandmother, who had hit a 9-figure lottery just months before passing away. Overwhelmed, Katherine and Chris decided to keep the information private and carefully filtered the money into trust funds for the children, retirement funds, and charity organizations. They also privately sponsored building projects for their church and lived a very satisfactory life. No one questioned them when they bought the house on the upper class side of town, or the Mercedes Benz that sat parked in the garage more often than not. Of course, no one realized they were paying for everything with cash, either. Most people just assumed that Chris Rowland's engineering consulting practice had grown substantially or that they had naively entered into the debt-ridden lifestyle characteristic of their generation.

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©2004 Rowland Books