The Payout: a thriller

Pondering suicide sitting on a Malibu dock one night after running away from home, doe-eyed young Mina Deerling meets smooth-talking Gage Catton, who is trying to load his wife's body wrapped in a blanket onto his boat. When Catton finds out to his shock that his wife is still alive in the blanket, he talks the distraught Mina into helping him finish her off with his knife. Together they put out to sea and, miles from shore, toss his wife's body overboard with an anchor bound to it.

Mina learns that Catton faked his death a year ago and was trying to collect his half of the life insurance payout from his wife when he discovered she had double-crossed him and absconded with all of the money for herself.Now Catton wants that money, and he'll do anything to get it, including using Mina to help him achieve his goal in a psychopathic relationship that forces Mina to confront the horrors that lurk in the darkest corners of her mind in a nerve-racking voyage of self-discovery.

Bryan Cassiday writes thrillers and horror fiction. His story "Boxed" was published in Shadows and Teeth Volume Two, which won both the International Book Award for adult horror fiction anthology 2017 and the Florida Association of Publishers and Authors President's Award gold medal for adult horror fiction anthology 2017.