Erika Holzer - Freedom Bridge

Sobbing—deep-voiced. Sarah? Please God, Sarah?

“We better get outta here!”

“Shut your face and take your fuckin’ pictures.”

“Hey, anybody want some roast piggy?”

“Put those tongs down! Don’t hurt my baby!”

“Leave them alone! Don’t hurt them!”

“Shut your face, I tole ya! Wipe those prints, asshole.”

“Mommy, Mommy!”

“It’s all right, darling. Mommy’s coming. It’s all right.”

Sarah… so close she could almost reach through the wire and touch her.

“Sarah.”

It had come out a whisper.

“Sarahhhhhhhhhhhhh! ”

“Check out the phone! Hey, boss, we got us a motherfuckin’ snoop!”

“Sonofabitch…”

“—be afraid, Susie darling, it will be all—”

The sound that came through the phone stopped her in mid-scream. Dry, rasping—

She stared at the receiver.

What had she heard?

“Did you hear that, bitch? You get yourself a fuckin’ earful?”

What she heard next were sharp repetitive cries, a kind of whooping, like Indians on the warpath.

Then a click.

She was calm when she got the Bedford police on the line. She would have stayed calm if they hadn’t kept badgering her, wasting precious minutes with their questions. Who’s this calling? Where you calling from? Manhattan? How come you called in the emergency? Over and over they kept at it until she had to scream at them to shut them up, she couldn’t stop screaming.

“I’m her mother!”

Kai Bowen — “The Computermeister” — has been helping me (and my husband) with hardware and software computer service and advice for years, both in person and remotely. Kai is very accessible, reasonably priced, and no problem I have ever had has stumped him. (See www.thecomputermeister.com). Any possible errors in Freedom Bridge’s German phrases are mine, not Kai’s.)

Judith Sansweet ( www.proofreadnz.co.nz) put my text through the fires of professional proofreading as she polished the manuscript for print and digital publishing. I learned a great deal from Judith during the always delicate matter of editing an author’s writing, knowledge which I intend never to forget! (Deviations from the Chicago Manual of Style and Strunk’s Elements of Style reflect the author’s preferences and are entirely my doing, not Judith’s.)

Rita Samols ( www.jejune@mail.com), reading Freedom Bridge for pleasure, made considerably useful comments about the manuscript, for which I am very grateful.

To Tabatha Haddix, a fellow novelist ( www.tlhaddix.com), my thanks for graciously, and with good cheer, altering my scheduling and consults with Streetlight Graphics numerous times.

Glendon Haddix of Streetlight Graphics has been an unmitigated pleasure to work with from Day One. His talent and subtlety, from book cover to graphics, and his ability to divine exactly what I wanted before I was fully able to express it, has been invaluable.

My gratitude to Robert Bidinotto, bestselling author of Hunter. Robert is a very old and valued friend who, over the years, has had unstinting praise for my novels. Thanks to his posting on P.J. Media entitled “10 Reasons You Should Skip Traditional Publishers and Self-Publish Ebooks,” I—and lots of other fiction writers—did just that. Perhaps Robert’s generosity can best be expressed by what he wrote me a few years ago: “It gives me great pleasure to help great writers!”

In my earlier novel, Eye for an Eye , my acknowledgment to my husband, Hank Holzer, reads: “To my first editor and best friend.” Even though he has asked me to keep it that simple this time around, I cannot oblige. Freedom Bridge is enriched throughout with Hank’s historical research and some dramatic turning points.

Oh, and he’s still my first editor and best friend!

Eye for an Eye [1] A Paramount feature film based on Eye for an Eye , starring Sally Field and Kiefer Sutherland and directed by John Schlesinger.

Double Crossing

Ayn Rand: My Fiction-Writing Teacher

Fake Warriors: Identifying, Exposing, and Punishing Those Who Falsify Their Military Service (with Henry Mark Holzer) (Second Edition)

Fake Warriors: Identifying, Exposing, and Punishing Those Who Falsify Their Military Service (with Henry Mark Holzer) (First Edition)

“Aid and Comfort”: Jane Fonda in North Vietnam (with Henry Mark Holzer)

Erika Holzer received her B.S. from Cornell University and her law degree from New York University.

For several years following her admission to the New York bar, she practiced constitutional and appellate law with Henry Mark Holzer. Their clients included Soviet dissidents and defectors, and other lawyers for whom they prepared appellate briefs and Petitions for Certiorari for the Supreme Court of the United States.

One of the Holzer firm’s clients (and later friend) was the novelist, Ayn Rand. Because of Rand’s literary influence, Erika Holzer switched careers from law to writing.

With Henry Mark Holzer, she co-authored “Aid and Comfort”: Jane Fonda in North Vietnam , proving that Jane Fonda’s trip to Hanoi during the Vietnam War, and her activities there, constituted constitutional treason.

Again with Henry Mark Holzer, Erika co-authored Fake Warriors: Identifying, Exposing, and Punishing Those Who Falsify Their Military Service .

Her other non-fiction writing consists of essays, articles, reviews, political and legal commentary.

In addition, Erika is author of the book Ayn Rand: My Fiction-Writing Teacher: A novelist’s mentor-protégé relationship with the author of Atlas Shrugged.

Holzer’s most recent short story, Eyewitness, appears in Scout & Engineer, available on Kindle and most other eBook readers and through www.amazon.com.

Author Nelson DeMille has said about Erika Holzer’s novel, Eye for an Eye , that it is “a serious and disturbing look at street gangs, urban violence, the criminal justice system, and vigilantism. Erika Holzer, an attorney, has created a plot from what could be any newspaper headline and carried it a step further. Her characters are vividly created, impassioned, and interestingly flawed so that we relate to them. Highly recommended. A sort of American Clockwork Orange .”

Holzer’s Eye for an Eye became a Paramount Pictures feature film starring Sally Field and Kiefer Sutherland.

Erika Holzer can be contacted at erika.holzer@erikaholzer.comand through www.erikaholzer.com.

Copyright © 2013 by Erika Holzer

All rights reserved.

First Kindle Edition: 2013

Highlands Ranch, Colorado

Copyright (c) by Erika Holzer 2013

This novel is a substantially revised edition of Double Crossing, by Erika Holzer, first published in 1980.

Cover and Formatting: Streetlight Graphics

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