Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Collegial Conspiracy
    Collegial Conspiracy
    Collegial Conspiracy
    Ebook123 pages1 hour

    Collegial Conspiracy

    By Clabe Polk

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Harry Morgan is a happy active retiree living on the Gulf Coast, owns a sailboat, has a grown family and a wife of thirty-five years named Jean. Harry loves adventure, enjoys good times with friends and family, and sailing his boat along the Florida coast.

    Wiley Middleton, an old friend, calls Harry out of the blue inviting him for lunch. Wiley has a request; the last request of a dying man. “Please help me rob a bank.”

    Harry is sure Wiley’s gone nuts. But Wiley is dead serious, has a terminal illness and there’s a method in his madness. Compassion forces Harry to consider Wiley’s proposal. Naturally, Harry wants to help his friend, but helping Wiley risks everything Harry stands for; his values, his life, his liberty, and his marriage to Jean.

    Forced out of his comfort zone, Harry must make a choice; between risking life as he knows it and helping fulfill the obsession of a dying man. How far should he go to help a friend?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherClabe Polk
    Release dateAug 1, 2016
    ISBN9781311727244
    Collegial Conspiracy
    Author

    Clabe Polk

    CLABE POLK is into a second career as a writer of fiction. So far, he has written four novels, three novellas, several short stories, and has a couple of other novels in process. He is a lifelong reader with a great variety of life experience.With a background in biology and natural sciences, Mr. Polk has more than thirty-seven years in professional environmental protection program management and law enforcement.He lives in Powder Springs, Georgia with his wife, two daughters, and the family’s Cockapoo named Annie.

    Read more from Clabe Polk

    Related to Collegial Conspiracy

    Related ebooks

    Thrillers For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Dying Of The Light

      Dec 13, 2023

      The Dying Of The Light
      7 min read

    • Article

      The Cancer Celebrities

      Nov 1, 2021

      The Cancer Celebrities
      6 min read

    • Article

      A Monstrous Silence

      Dec 15, 2021

      BETH GILSTRAP is the author of Deadheading & Other Stories (2021), winner of the Red Hen Press Women’s Prose Prize. She is also the author of I Am Barbarella (Twelve Winters Press, 2015) and No Man’s Wild Laura (Hyacinth Girl Press, 2016). Born and r

      11 min read

    • Article

      An Accidental Witness

      Jan 27, 2020

      An Accidental Witness
      5 min read

    • Article

      The Secret Life of Grief

      Dec 3, 2013

      The Secret Life of Grief
      12 min read

    • Article

      Commentary: When I Almost Died: My Days Battling Coronavirus And What I Remember The Most

      Sep 16, 2020

      CHICAGO - Last week, when I read my own obituary, I remembered the first time I almost died. It was a cold December morning in 1963 when I fell through and under the ice covering the south edge of the Lincoln Park lagoon and was rescued by my younger

      7 min read

    • Article

      Living With A Painful Past

      Jun 24, 2023

      Living With A Painful Past
      8 min read

    • Article

      Out Of The Darkness

      Feb 21, 2021

      It’s November 2023 and a pandemic is hitting chilly London, a new one that’s far worse than Covid-19. There is no cure, only a pill for a quick death. The virus’ name? 6DM, for “Six Days Maximum” once contracted until death – by way of fever, diarrho

      2 min read

    • Article

      How Secrets Keep Us Sick

      Jan 20, 2023

      How Secrets Keep Us Sick
      5 min read

    • Article

      How Secrets Keep Us Sick

      Jan 21, 2023

      How Secrets Keep Us Sick
      5 min read

    • Article

      Acid Is the New Xanax

      Feb 3, 2017

      Acid Is the New Xanax
      3 min read

    • Article

      To Hell And Back

      Jun 4, 2021

      To Hell And Back
      11 min read

    • Article

      Where Is My Brother?

      Jan 21, 2020

      Where Is My Brother?
      13 min read

    • Article

      The Trick Of Reality

      Apr 11, 2021

      The Trick Of Reality
      2 min read

    • Article

      A Rear Old Time

      May 9, 2021

      A Rear Old Time
      7 min read

    • Article

      A Year in Reading: Sophia Shalmiyev

      Dec 20, 2019

      Let us begin at the natural home of all the white-men-are-garbage controversies and go right to the crotch area. The post A Year in Reading: Sophia Shalmiyev appeared first on The Millions.

      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Collegial Conspiracy

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Collegial Conspiracy - Clabe Polk

      Collegial Conspiracy

      Books by Clabe Polk

      The Detective Mike Eiser Series:

      Backslide

      Hot Summer Nights

      Schism

      Angelica

      Fire on the Mountain

      The Adventures of Harry Morgan Series:

      The Adventures of Harry Morgan, Book 1 (A collection of the following three novellas:)

      Collegial Conspiracy

      Emilio

      The Pirates of Cayo Pelau

      Christian fiction:

      The Road to Armageddon

      Short stories:

      Short Fuse

      Devolution

      Collegial Conspiracy

      A Harry Morgan Adventure

      By
      Clabe Polk

      This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events, and situations are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

      ISBN-13: 978-1979683371

      Copyright © 2017 by Clabe Polk all rights reserved

      Edited by Felicia Sullivan, http://indie-editor.webs.com/

      Published by:

      Clabe Polk

      Powder Springs, GA

      CPolk625@gmail.com

      Dedication

      Here’s to all of our bucket lists…

      whatever is to be found there.

      TABLE OF CONTENTS

      CHAPTER 1 Meet Wiley Middleton

      CHAPTER 2 The Bucket List

      CHAPTER 3 Milk, Bread and Dog Food

      CHAPTER 4 Honor Among Thieves

      CHAPTER 5 The Call To Arms

      CHAPTER 6 Where is Wiley

      CHAPTER 7 Needle’s Point

      CHAPTER 8 Tightening the Noose

      CHAPTER 9 Banker’s Hours

      CHAPTER 10 Break Point

      CHAPTER 11 Killing the Pain

      CHAPTER 12 Tony’s Ghosts

      CHAPTER 13 Planning FUBAR

      CHAPTER 14 Telling Tales

      CHAPTER 15 The Plan

      CHAPTER 16 The Heist

      CHAPTER 17 The Getaway

      CHAPTER 18 Auld Lang Syne

      FROM THE AUTHOR

      ABOUT THE AUTHOR

      CHAPTER 1

      Meet Wiley Middleton

      Wiley Middleton downed the last of his beer and dug in his pocket for a credit card. There was no use putting off the inevitable. He had traveled more than a thousand miles, from St. Petersburg, Florida to Houston, Texas, for a second opinion. Now it was time to face the music.

      When the headaches first started, he and Amanda were at a Tampa Bay Rays game at Tropicana Field. At the beginning of the second inning, he’d asked Amanda if she had any aspirin or ibuprofen. His head was pounding; he’d felt as though his head would split open like a cantaloupe on a cutting board. The ibuprofen hadn’t helped. By the end of the game, Amanda had to lead him by the hand to the parking lot, and then fought other drivers as she maneuvered to a place where she could pick him up. He couldn’t walk to the car.

      That headache had passed, and life moved past the weekend and into the following week. The headaches recurred. Not every day, but a couple of times a week, and they were disabling. He didn’t tell Amanda about them, however, and in his third week of misery he went to the doctor, got a prescription for a strong painkiller, and endured for another two weeks. The painkillers weren’t helping, and he was becoming addicted to them. This time the doctor sent him for CT and MRI scans; the scans that clenched the rest of his life into a knot of fear and pain. The doctor was empathetic. He delivered the bad news professionally and with feeling, although no amount of regret would minimize it, no amount of vacillating would avoid it. It simply was what it was.

      There was a recommendation for a course of radiation and chemotherapy that should begin at once, but Wiley didn’t hear it. He was already making plans for a second opinion. Amanda still didn’t know.

      A waiter appeared. Paying his lunch tab with a casualness he didn’t feel inside, he walked out of the Irish pub and down the street toward the cancer center. If his life was going to turn into hell on wheels, he may as well not be late for the starting gun. More accurately, he felt like he was blindfolded, tied to a post facing the gun. At least, that’s what he dreamed about at night as he tossed and turned.

      Amanda was irritated with his tossing and turning. He hadn’t told her, couldn’t tell her, about the diagnosis facing him. How could he condemn the woman he loved unconditionally to watch him waste away into oblivion a little more every day, until he faded away like a washed-out watercolor painting? Amanda’s father had died of cancer when she was a little girl. She had vivid memories of his sickness, his weakness, and the toll that radiation and chemotherapy had taken on his body. She was too young then to understand why, and it had left her with deep psychological scars and an ingrained fear of illness that Wiley had spent a large part of their thirty-year marriage trying to quiet. It’s not fair that she has to relive that with me, he thought.

      ***

      So he’d asked for a second opinion to be sure whether his demons could be quieted, or whether they would eventually arise screaming, condemning him to death and Amanda to widowhood. Now, two days before New Year’s Eve when much of the rest of the working world was on vacation, as far as Amanda knew, he was in Houston on business instead of facing the inevitable alone. Two days until New Year’s Eve. Just fuckin’ wonderful. It was going to be a hell of a New Year’s celebration.

      ***

      Thankfully, the doctor did not keep him waiting. With human concern but professional detachment, the doctor summarized the MRI and CT findings in light of his recurring symptoms. He concluded with one word—inoperable—and then launched into treatment recommendations.

      ***

      Wiley, lost from the word chemotherapy, didn’t hear any of the treatment recommendations. Vaguely, he was aware of the doctor talking about a lifespan measured in months to a year or so. He didn’t want to be sick. The headaches were bad enough, but the chemo? The nausea? The hair-loss? He had a real fear of the effects of chemotherapy and radiation. While he understood that his life expectancy was probably less if he refused treatment, he couldn’t stand the thought of being sick all the time.

      Was he being selfish? A few extra months was more time with Amanda.

      Amanda can’t watch me die.

      A few extra months would only make it worse on her.

      Oh, God! Not only am I dying, but I’m going to have to leave my wife to protect her sanity…and that’s definitely not fair!

      With a sinking heart, Wiley realized he needed a plan: a bucket list of things to do before he died. He didn’t know where to start. Maybe with his medical and life insurance; cancer was expensive and his medical insurance didn’t cover everything. Even if he left Amanda, he wouldn’t divorce her. He couldn’t. And he certainly wouldn’t leave her with his leftover medical bills. There wasn’t enough life insurance to cover everything if there were medical bills left.

      The doctor was holding out his right hand. "I’m sorry, Mr. Middleton. It has been a pleasure to meet you. If there’s anything I can do for you

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1