The Alex Troutt Thrillers: Books 1-3 (Alex Troutt Thrillers Box Set)

by John W. Mefford

  Nick opened the folder and scanned the first page. “That’s what the data shows.”

  I thought about Cobb’s social-anxiety issues. He was also remarkably smart, especially in the areas of math and information technology. But I was forced to also recall that he was the bastard who had murdered my husband.

  The room grew quiet until I felt a distant vibration from my purse. I pulled out my phone, and I saw a text from Erin.

  Got a tennis thing. Won’t be home until after 8. Trish’s parents will give me a ride. Later.

  I thumbed a quick response. What tennis thing?

  The cursor blinked about twenty times.

  “Is that Luke?” Nick asked.

  “No, my other one.”

  “What does she need?”

  I glanced up at my partner. “Nothing. I think.”

  I moved my eyes back to the screen and typed Hello?

  A couple of seconds later she replied. Sorry, Mom. Busy. See you around 8. Luv u.

  I emptied my lungs, relieved that Erin seemed to be in a good mood. But I knew that Luke needed me.

  “Guys, everything you shared...really, it’s incredible work. I’m intrigued, but also concerned.”

  “Because of the relation to Cobb?” Nick asked.

  “Of course. If his brother killed people, who’s to say this Arnold Lyons guy hasn’t killed? He’s into bombs, and he’s made at least one inflammatory statement about priests. Do we know if he’s Catholic, went to church a lot as a kid?”

  “That much we don’t know yet,” Brad said. “Look, we can sit on this another couple of days. It could give us an opportunity to build a better foundation of data. Confirm his childhood, his relationship with Cobb, his parents.”

  I let Brad’s comments marinate amongst the images of the two dead priests and the initial research Gretchen had connected.

  “Did Lyons make any specific threats in the three posts?”

  “On first glance, nothing direct,” Gretchen said.

  “But that only goes back one week,” Brad offered.

  “True. More time and I could probably get my program to conduct a deeper scan.”

  “How long would it take?” I asked.

  “Hard to say, given the limited usage of the tool, as well as other variables that are difficult to predict, including bandwidth of the blogs I’m visiting, how much data is collected, etc. If we let it run a good two days, we might be able to go back another four, five, maybe six months.”

  I rubbed the back of my neck. It felt warm to the touch, but also like a steel beam had been inserted. I hated feeling this torn. I knew my judgment was being tainted by the mentioning of Cobb’s name, but I wasn’t going to share that with the group. Also, I knew I should be on my way to Luke’s middle school. Damn, Ezzy was worth a million bucks. Well, I didn’t have even twenty extra dollars on me at this time, which only piled on another layer of stress.

  I started massaging my temples.

  “Where’s this guy’s house?”

  “Near the border of Lynn and Saugus, in more of a rural area near a line of woods.”

  I licked my cracking lips. “Okay, Nick, tell Jerry we need Special Agents Mason and Silvagni. They’re good. Set up a command post near the suspect’s home and text me the location. I’m going to pick up Luke. I’ll meet you there in less than an hour.”

  Nick gave me a single nod, and I flipped on a heel and headed for the door.

  “Alex, you sure you want to do this?” Brad called out. That was a first. Normally, an IA never questioned the call of a special agent.

  “More than you know,” I said with my back to him.

  Recalling the downtrodden tone of Luke’s voice, I ran out of One Center Plaza, hoping I could make at least one life better today.

  4

  The brakes of my FBI-issued Impala squeaked as I pulled to a stop at a red light in our hometown of Salem. I peered over at Luke, who was resting his head against the window, his dark, stoic eyes staring at something, or nothing at all.

  He’d spoken no more than ten words since I picked him up. He seemed different—that much was easy to discern. But I couldn’t get past his sullen mood to determine what had changed about him.

  “You texted all three of your friends asking if you could stay over for dinner while Mom works this special case?”

  “You saw me text them, didn’t you?” His voice was laced with attitude. Maybe he was simply having an early hormonal episode like Nick suggested, because that sounded just like Erin during her more challenging times.

  “Luke. I’m not the enemy, okay? I’m here for you if you want to talk.”

  He mumbled something, although his lips never separated, and he continued to stare outside as my foot pressed the gas pedal. I wasn’t entirely sure where I was going, given my lack of options at home. Luke’s friends weren’t coming through. While Erin was fully capable of making sure the house wouldn’t burn down, she was now committed to this tennis thing, whatever that was.

  I’d tried to reach Ezzy multiple times. But she wasn’t answering her phone, which told me her doctor’s appointment had gone long. And that only added to my mounting stress. Was there a complication while she was in the office? Maybe she’d been asked to get a second opinion from a partnering doctor. The possibilities were limitless, at least on the negative side of the ledger. I didn’t want to envision a life without another family member. Ezzy wasn’t related by blood, and that was probably why we had such a close-knit, transparent relationship. We rarely played those guilt games with each other, and she always seemed to be the voice of reason.

  In other words, I needed her. The kids needed her. But I also knew she got something out of us.

  I glanced over at Luke again, noticing his reflection in the side mirror. His thick head of hair sloped across his forehead, trailing into his eyebrows, a bushier version of a Bieber haircut—although he hated me telling him that.

  His eyes. They suddenly appeared more grown up, less like a little boy. My little boy. He reminded me of his dad. And for some reason that didn’t sit right.

  “I promise I won’t judge you, Luke.”

  “Eh.”

  He actually spoke. There was hope. I needed to keep the dialogue moving, regardless of the topic.

  “So, you think the Celtics are going to make much of a run in the playoffs?”

  He lived and breathed basketball, starting with the hometown Celtics. He had two posters hanging on his wall, one of Bill Russell and another of Larry Bird. What eleven-year-old kid respected history enough to hang posters of players from decades before they were even born? My little man, Luke—that was who.

  He inched up in his seat. “I don’t know. They don’t have much of a low post game, so their half-court offense is screwed unless they just start draining threes. Then again, I probably have my expectations too high. I keep hoping another Russell or McHale, or even a Garnett, will call for the ball down low and just take over the game.”

  I tried to hide my smile for the next five minutes—the entire time we were stuck at a blinking red light in mounting traffic. I even got him laughing at the idea of me being on the court trying to score one-on-one against the Celtics point guard.

  “Oh, Mom, he’d school you,” Luke said, waving a playful hand as if I’d have no chance.

  “Maybe I could take him in a set of tennis. I hear I was pretty decent.”

  “Yeah? I remember Dad saying you were good.” He gave me a tight-lipped smile.

  “So what happened at school?”

  “Middle school sucks.”

  “That’s what happened? Sounds more like a condition.”

  His perfect lips weren’t smiling anymore. “After school, when the coaches were in a meeting, five eighth-grade boys grabbed me and hung me from the basketball rim.”

  A burst of energy shot through my spine, and I squeezed the hell out of the steering wheel.

  With a measured voice, I said, “That does suck. How did they suspend
you from the rim?”

  He poked at a hole in the knee of his jeans. “By my underwear, using bungee cords. I’ve never been so humiliated in my life.”

  I swallowed back a rush of emotion. In my peripheral vision, I saw him swipe a couple of wayward tears from his face.

  “Are you okay?” It was all I could do not to stop the car and hold him until the hurt went away. But I knew that kind of love had been rendered useless a couple of years back.

  “Yeah, but my underwear ripped so I’m going commando.”

  I wasn’t ready to hear that term from my youngest, but now wasn’t the time to sweat the small stuff.

  “I want you to know, Luke, that I’m going to your school tomorrow, and I’m going to speak to your principal and the head coach. I want to know how they’re going to punish the boys who did this.”

  “Mom, please, you can’t do that. If you do that, my rep is ruined for the rest of my grade school education. I might as well just wear a sign that says ‘Mommy’s boy’ on it.”

  I took in a breath, giving me a second to think it through.

  “I know you’re trying to come up with another reason why you should talk to them, Mom. But really, I’m fine. It’s up to me to deal with it. Okay?”

  Damn, he was a brave kid. “Thanks for telling me, Luke. Just know you can tell me anything and I’ll be here for you. I can’t promise I won’t step in if it happens again, but on this one, I’ll let you handle it. For now.”

  “Cool. Thanks, Mom.”

  “Just one thing.”

  “What?”

  “Once you figure it out, or even after you do it, you have to tell me how you, uh...chose to handle this situation. Deal?”

  His lips parted, and I could see that he knew what I was really saying.

  “Deal.”

  ***

  “Nothing I hate worse than a bully,” Nick said from a crouching position just behind a Foster holly bush about fifty yards from the ramshackle home of Arnold Lyons.

  I peeked over Nick’s shoulder and scanned the sloping property, where dense clumps of weeds and vines dotted a muddy landscape. The curved driveway consisted of buried stones, and ran up the incline to a dead end just in front of the front door. The driveway was more indicative of eighteenth-century Boston than twenty-first-century Boston.

  No sign of Lyons or a vehicle that might belong to him. I couldn’t see through the windows because they were all boarded up. In fact, the entire home, which looked to be no more than about a thousand square feet, was nothing more than warped boards hastily nailed on top of other boards. The ultimate band-aid job.

  Pulling back out of sight, I tapped Nick on the shoulder and said, “It’s really strange. The school district preaches how they have this zero tolerance policy about bullying, and then this kind of shit happens.”

  My core temperature spiked again, which did have at least one benefit. While the wind had died back some, the brisk breeze carried a light mist. It looked like the tiny droplets were suspended in midair, swaying like a flapping sheet hanging on an outside clothesline.

  “Ah!” Nick grunted, quickly grabbing hold of my shoulder to pull himself upright.

  “Are you ever going to get your knees checked out?” I wondered how many people in my life would continue to turn a blind eye to their health. It was damn annoying.

  “Never mind about my knees. They’ll last until the end of time. What are you going to do about Luke’s bullies?” Nick peered around my head and waved his hand at my car positioned a half-block down the road. Luke was sitting on his knees in the driver’s seat, pretending he was actually driving. Through the gray sheet of light rain, I could barely see that he was expanding his cheeks. I giggled to myself, knowing he was making all sorts of car and truck noises. Probably threw in a few explosions and crashes along the way as well. Maybe he was destined to be a future film sound editor. Or the inventor of virtual reality video games.

  “Not a damn thing,” I said, while still staring at my son.

  Nick ambled another ten feet away from the suspect’s home, as a thick forest of trees and underbrush gave us plenty of cover. He flung his right leg out like a whip every other step. A pop cracked the moist air, and his eyes rolled back in his head for a brief moment.

  “Good gosh, Nick.”

  “What? That’s how I relieve the pressure on the side of my knee. It’s natural.”

  I arched my eyebrow. “Naturally stupid.”

  He changed the topic. “Mason and Silvagni should be here in five minutes,” he said, checking his wristwatch.

  “Normally I’d be stressed, thinking the suspect might be a flight risk, but it doesn’t look like he gets out much.”

  “I’d say. I spotted six bags of trash on the other side of the house when I pulled up earlier.”

  I wondered if Lyons had some type of medical condition that prevented him from moving around much. He was, supposedly, sixty-three years young. “Did Brad and Gretchen ever figure out how he’s supposed to be Cobb’s half-brother?”

  Nick shook his head and wiped the sheen of water from his face. “Not before I left.”

  “Well, I’m questioning my instinct that this might be our perp, but at least it’s worth a discussion. Maybe he’ll give us a better indication of his motivations and goals, or even point us to someone he knows who has more issues than he does.”

  Nick glanced over his shoulder at Luke again, then turned back to me. “So Alex Troutt is going to sit on her hands after hearing her son was bullied at school.”

  “I’m not fond of you using my name in the third person when I’m standing right here.”

  “It got your attention.” He reached over and gently popped my upper arm.

  “Funny.” I took in a breath and ran my fingers through my damp hair. I knew I looked like crap, but it wasn’t the first time, and it certainly wouldn’t be the last.

  “Seriously. You’re not going straight to the principal or, better yet, the superintendent?”

  “I thought about it. Hell, my mind was already there in about two point two seconds.”

  “But?”

  I pursed my lips. “Luke asked me to not get involved.”

  “And when has that stopped you?”

  “You’re full of it today.”

  “Well, I’m just saying that Alex Troutt doesn’t retreat from confrontation, especially not when it involves her kids.”

  “There you go with the third-person act again. Have you been reading from some screenplay?”

  Nick brought a hand to his chin and turned to show me his profile. “Do you think I have that Hollywood look?”

  “Well...only if they’re looking for slightly overweight men with bad joints, an orange patch of hair, and peach fuzz for a beard.”

  “Hey,” he said. “It’s taken me forty years to grow this out.”

  “Just sayin’.” I socked him on the shoulder, then moved back and peeked around the fifteen-foot-high thorny bush.

  “Still no sign of Lyons,” I said, turning back to Nick. “And no sign of Mason and Silvagni either. Where the hell are they?”

  “Five minutes before Jerry called them, the assistant US Attorney they’re working with on some type of international money-laundering case decided it was time to file an official search warrant for one of their suspects. They said it wouldn’t take them long to fill out the online form, but you know how that goes. I think they’ve systematically updated all of those forms to ensure you write a novel in each section. Can they make our jobs any tougher?”

  Turning back to face Nick, I twisted my lips while glancing over at Luke, who was still pretending he was Speed Racer.

  “Did you hear anything I just said?”

  “I heard it. All of it. So we’re really not sure if they’re ever going to show up.”

  “I can call Jerry and ask him for someone else.”

  I debated our options, knowing we couldn’t afford to let it ride another day. Jerry admitted that the public�
�fueled by our overzealous press corps—would soon be whipped into a frenzied panic. I guessed it would take just one more bombing, or another two to three days of endless stories where reporters fought and begged for every little snippet of information, even if it was more sensationalism than real journalism.

  “Hold on.” I jogged over to my car, said hi to Luke, and reminded him to stay in the car, then I pulled out my Kevlar vest and jogged back to Nick. He was securing his vest as I pulled up next to him.

  “So you’re as impatient as I am,” he said.

  “Worse. You know that by now.” I zipped up my vest and then pulled out my FBI-issued Glock 22 and reloaded my ammo. I then patted my pockets for two extra cartridges.

  Nick paused a second. “I’m all in for doing this, Alex, but did you see something on the other side of that bush that I didn’t?”

  “Just being thorough. Without Mason and Silvagni, I don’t want to take any chances.”

  I motioned to my partner, and we both clopped along on the half-buried stones. They were smooth, and every third or fourth step, my hard-soled flats would slip. But it was really our only viable path. The surrounding area of mud looked more like a frozen chocolate shake.

  “Do you see that?” Nick whispered, nodding toward the front door, nothing more than a flat block of wood.

  It appeared Lyons has scrawled a welcome message in red spray paint, outlined in black. I read it out loud: “If you can read this, get off my property, or I’ll shoot you dead.”

  I eyed Nick, who said, “I guess he doesn’t do trick-or-treaters.”

  For a quick moment I thought about the suspect’s knowledge about bombs. I hesitated and surveyed the area around us, and our path up to the porch.

  “You don’t think he’d have the balls to blow up his own place, do you?” I kept my fingers on the grip of my holstered gun. Peace of mind meant everything in our world.

  “Looks like he’s already blown it up, then pieced it back together one splinter at a time.”

  We quietly made our way to the end of the driveway. Looking back toward the street, the slope appeared more severe from this perspective. During the many wintry days of snow and sleet, I imagined it would be quite difficult for a car or truck to make it up the hill, let alone a human being.