Every Good Plan Read online

  Every Good Plan

  A Turtle Cove Christian Suspense

  Urcelia Teixeira

  EVERY GOOD PLAN

  A TURTLE COVE CHRISTIAN SUSPENSE

  * * *

  URCELIA TEIXEIRA

  Copyright © 2021 by Urcelia Teixeira

  All rights reserved.

  Every Good Plan is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents, events, and dialogue found within are of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, either living or deceased, is purely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or publisher.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission or the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review where permitted by law.

  Bible scriptures were quoted from both the King James Version and/or the New International Version of the Bible. (Copyrighted worldwide as public domain)

  Copyrighted material

  Ebook © ISBN: 978-0-6398434-7-6

  Paperback © ISBN: 978-0-6398434-8-3

  Independently Published by Urcelia Teixeira

  First edition

  Urcelia Teixeira

  Wiltshire, UK

  www.urcelia.com

  [email protected]

  To my three boys, Noah, Micah and Elijah,

  who without, none of this would make any sense!

  * * *

  Your encouragement, support, and hugs when I needed it most are what got me through the long writing sprints. You have my heart!

  Contents

  Dear Reader

  INSPIRED BY

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  COMING SPRING 2021

  Author Connect

  TURTLE COVE SERIES- Christian Mystery & Suspense

  ALEX HUNT Adventure Thrillers

  About the Author

  Dear Reader

  All glory be to the Lord, my God who breathed every word through me onto these pages.

  I have put my words in your mouth and

  covered you with the shadow of My hand

  Isaiah 51:16

  * * *

  It is my sincere prayer that you, not only enjoy the story, but draw courage, inspiration, and hope from it, just as I did while writing it. Thank you sincerely, for reading Every Good Plan.

  * * *

  If you would like others to also be encouraged by this story, you can help them discover my book by leaving a review.

  Writing without distractions is a never-ending challenge. With a house full of boys, there’s never a dull moment (or a quiet one!).

  So I close myself off and shut the world out by popping in my earphones and disappearing into my imaginary book bubble.

  * * *

  Here’s what I listened to while I wrote Every Good Plan:

  * * *

  10 Hours/God’s Heart Instrumental Worship—Soaking in His presence (https://youtu.be/Yltj6VKX7kU)

  2 Hours Non-Stop Worship Songs—Daughter of Zion (https://youtu.be/DKwcFiNe7xw)

  * * *

  When I finished writing the last sentence of the book!

  How great is our God—Chris Tomlin

  (https://youtu.be/KBD18rsVJHk)

  INSPIRED BY

  "Many are the plans in the mind of a man, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand."

  Proverbs 19:21

  (NIV)

  Chapter One

  For the first time in his life he felt fear. True fear. The kind of fear that drains your body of every other emotion and then spits you out to rot. The kind that penetrates the deepest, darkest corners of your soul and has you suddenly question the purpose of life. A life he didn’t know was even worth fighting for. It would have been so easy to give up. He no longer felt pain. He no longer felt anything. This was it. This was how he was going to die. Death suddenly felt far more exciting than ever before. Almost welcoming.

  As another fist slammed into his already pummeled jaw he snickered inwardly. He had found himself in many tricky situations over the forty-four years of his miserable life, but this one took the cake. This time he had somehow gotten himself caught in a snare he didn’t know how to escape from. And unlike all the other times he had come close to situations like these, he had always managed to talk himself out of it. Not this time though. This time his greed had finally caught up with him.

  Perhaps his little sister was right all along. He was a good-for-nothing idiot who’d had this day coming. She’d certainly predicted it plenty of times. But she was too young to understand why he had chosen the life he had. It wasn’t as if he ever really had a choice in the matter anyway. He had his father to thank for that. Now there was no turning back. His luck had finally run out. Luck. As if that really existed. His life had never been one filled with good fortune or success. He took whatever scraps had come his way and did what any other cursed sod would have done; survived.

  Another blow to his nose interrupted his wretched thoughts. It yielded him nearly unconscious on the ground. His body pushed down hard onto his already broken arm. That was the first bout of punishment they had served him. But he had felt that type of abuse many times before. An experience that had made it easier. A bolt of pain shot up his broken limb as if to emphasize the memories he had worked so hard to forget. He wasn’t numb after all.

  In the distance he heard the command come to finish him off and suddenly he was faced with a decision. Should he give up or should he fight to live? But before he could answer his question the decision was made for him and he felt the sharp edge of a knife slam into his back. He counted four more thrusts before Lucky Lenny blacked out.

  * * *

  It was deep into the night when the shrill sound of a passing car’s horn brought him back to consciousness. The sound of several more cars rushed past him, their headlights blinding what little vision he had left. As his mind tried to piece things together, he realized he was still lying with his face in the dirt, his broken arm pinned beneath his mutilated body. He drew in a few shallow breaths. His ribs made a cracking sound in his ears. Again a feeling of self-satisfaction came over him. It seemed neither he nor his attackers had any say in whether or not he should live. Something or someone else had had the final say. They had certainly given it their best shot at killing him. Left him for dead somewhere in a ditch on the side of the road. But they had failed. He had survived… again. But somehow his survival was different this time. He could sense it. Instinctively he knew that Lady Luck had nothing to do with it either. Then who did? Who decided he should live?

  He managed to lift his head enough to see he was only about twenty yards away from the road. A road he didn’t recognize. They had pulled a hood over his head before they threw him in the trunk of the car but if he had the chance, he’d wager on being at least an hour outside Atlanta. Another set of headlights pierced his retinas.
Obscured by the shadows of a nearby tree and the pitch darkness of the night, he would likely not be noticed at all. If he could somehow crawl to the edge of the road, he would at least have a chance of being spotted by a passing vehicle. It was worth a shot. It was his only shot. The only one he had right now, considering his unfortunate predicament. He tried moving his right leg up to push his body through the dirt but couldn’t. It didn’t respond at all. They must have damaged the nerves in his back when they stabbed him. Instinctively he tried moving his left foot and felt the sweet sensation of pain from the sharp gravel under his bare toes. Relieved to have feeling in his left leg he pulled his knee in a forty-five-degree angle next to his weakened body. With his right arm broken and still pinned beneath his frame, he stretched out his left arm, digging his fingers into the gritty soil. He drew in another few short breaths before he pushed the side of his big toe down into the ground and tucked his fingernails firmly into the top layer of the hard soil. The push-pull action dragged his scrawny body across the damp earth—one inch at a time. Caught in the motion his broken arm was pulled along beneath his weight and he groaned with pain. When he finally caught his breath again, he turned his eyes in the direction of the road where another car just flew by. Again his left leg curled up into position followed by his outstretched arm. With his eyes pinned on the prize he drew in a shallow breath and pushed his body forward again. The familiar agony flooded his body once more. Except, this time he didn’t flinch. He had shut his mind off to receiving it and kept his eyes firmly on the road ahead. Just like he had done all those times he was the receiver of his father’s wrath. It instantly surprised him that he suddenly had an overwhelming will to survive. To live. Why, he didn’t quite know. But he wasn’t about to give up without a fight.

  The short distance to the road would have taken less than a minute had he been able to walk it. Instead he had only gained a few inches at a time. There was no way of telling how many hours it had taken him to haul his near-lifeless body across the uneven dirt. But what he did know was that the time between passing vehicles had increased. As the cars became fewer, it was clear that his hope of being rescued was slowly slipping away with each passing second. Until the cars eventually stopped altogether.

  The night grew eerily quiet. His body no longer felt the icy winter air that pushed through the thin fabric of his tee shirt. Somehow his body had adapted to the near-freezing temperature. Or perhaps he was already dead.

  He forced his heavy eyelids open. Inches away from his nose his left hand stared back at him. Dark red patches of dried blood mixed with dirt lay in a thick crust around each finger. On two of his fingers his nails had chafed away to expose his flesh; evidence of how hard he had already fought to stay alive. Lucky Lenny refused to believe his luck had run out. He’d wait. For however long it took to be found. All he needed to do was stay awake. Stay alive.

  * * *

  While his body now lay halfway over the ridge where the dirt met the tarmac, sprawled like the crime scene sketches on his favorite detective show, he started to question the purpose of life. His life, to be more exact. Had he squandered valuable opportunities that had already come his way? Was spinning the wheel of fortune all his life amounted to? Who decided that for him anyway? His alcoholic father who’d beat him to a pulp just for the fun of it. Or his weak mother who’d finally had the nerve to defend herself. It’s not as if he had planned to be born into this empty world that had never once dealt him a decent hand. But there he was. Born to be someone’s punching bag. A tool that qualified his pathetic father to claim his drinking money through state grants. No, Lucky Lenny was everything but lucky. Every opportunity that had ever come his way he had meticulously planned. He had always created his own plans. Big plans. The last of which was meant to be the final payoff that would’ve set him up for the rest of his life. A chance to get away from his cursed existence. Yet, with all the odds stacked in his favor, his plan had failed. Or had it? Lenny paused to mull over his thoughts. Even if he did somehow survive this horrible twist of his fate, could he go back to a life that relied solely on luck? Did he want to?

  And as he once again pondered the meaning of his shabby life, with his ear flush against the near-frosted tarmac, the faintest of vibrations drove into his eardrum. At first, he thought he was imagining it. But then it grew louder and louder. Until the wheels of a car screeched to a standstill right beside his head. Suddenly fear reared its ugly head. What if they had come back to make sure he was dead? What if they, in the interim, had discovered he knew more than he had let on?

  But as quickly as panic tried to take over his broken body, something else, something far more powerful than fear, overwhelmed his senses. For the first time, he experienced hope. Not the superficial hope he felt each time he rolled the dice. True hope. The kind of hope that told him he had a chance to do things differently. A chance to do things right. A chance that had nothing to do with luck, and everything to do with survival.

  The male voice next to his ear was calm and reassuring. Nothing more than a faint whisper. What Lenny imagined an angel would sound like. Not that he believed in heavenly beings of any kind. But he believed it when this voice told him he would live and that everything was going to be just fine.

  Chapter Two

  When Lenny came to he was lying in a hospital bed, alone in the room. His broken arm had been neatly set in a cast and his other hand’s fingertips bandaged. When he tried to sit up he cringed with pain.

  “Oh, you shouldn’t be moving. I’ll call the nurse.”

  A female voice from the far corner startled him. She had dashed out the door screaming, ‘he’s awake!’ before he even had a chance to speak to her. Moments later a nurse hurriedly entered the room.

  “Well, hello there. You are one lucky man. In all my years I have never quite seen anyone survive as many injuries as these. It seems the big man up there isn’t quite finished with you. Any idea who did this to you?” The upbeat nurse ended with a question.

  He shook his head and looked over to the wide-eyed young woman who now stood in the corridor and peered through the small window in the door.

  “That’s Jo. She’s one of our more regular in-treatment patients here. She’s got a bit of a curious streak, that one. But she’s totally harmless. Visiting the patients keeps her mind off the cancer. Of course, it doesn’t help that no one knows how you got yourself to the front steps or that we’ve been forced to keep you sedated for an entire week. The mystery has been driving her mad. If she bothers you just let me know,” the nurse said with a smile.

  “What’s your name?” she probed as she inserted a needle into the IV bag and rolled her thumb over the valve below it.

  “Lenny.”

  “Well, Lenny, is there someone you’d like us to call? Any family members?”

  He paused for a few moments. There was, but there was no way she’d come.

  He shook his head.

  “All right then. I’ve just given you something extra to control the pain. You should feel it kick in anytime now. Your vitals are fine but surviving seventeen stab wounds is going to take a little more time to recover from. Somehow they had missed all your vital organs. That in itself is a miracle. Dr. Munroe said you should make a full recovery now that most of the infection has settled down. You might have already noticed that you’re able to move your right leg now too.” She smiled then continued. “The paralysis was only temporary because of the swelling. But you’re stuck here for a bit I’m afraid. Just to give the wounds enough time to heal.” She turned to leave but then stopped and looked back at him.

  “Oh, and the police will be here soon.”

  “The police? Why?”

  “Don’t you want to find out who did this to you? We had a duty to report it. It’s just a routine visit. I doubt you’ll ever get your wallet or whatever else they stole back, but it can’t hurt to try. I’ll be back to check on you in a little while. Get some rest.”

  The news left Lenny anxious. If the
police got involved he’d end up back in the slammer. He couldn’t risk that. Right now they’d suspect he was mugged. He had to keep it that way. But once the police questioned him they’d expect him to provide them with his full name and social security number. Then it would definitely be game over. He couldn’t let that happen. He’d worked far too hard to become a snitch or end up spending the rest of his life behind bars. All he needed was one sweet deal and a ticket to Mexico.

  The tempting thought was enough motivation to have him fling back the covers and swing his legs over the side of the bed. Using his teeth he yanked the IV tube from his arm. Whatever the nurse had injected was strong enough to have numbed most of his pain. It should buy him enough time to get away. Halfway between the bed and the door, he realized the hospital gown wasn’t going to do it and he flung open the nearby locker door. It was empty. He hurried back over to the steel cabinet next to the bed and pulled open the single drawer. His eyes lingered on the blue Bible. It wasn’t the Bible itself that had brought him to pause. The big, bold, red words written on a tract that lay next to it held his attention.