The Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller Series Boxset

by David F. Berens

  “You ain’t Troy,” she said suspiciously. “Whar the hell is Troy?”

  Darren could only shrug his shoulders. “Got no idea what thet eez.”

  “Well, then who the Sam hell are you?”

  With extreme effort, Darren sat up in his bed. Pain lanced through his various injuries and sent him into a groggy flop back down onto his back.

  The girl jumped up out of her chair and ran to her sister’s side. She grabbed the nurse call remote and clicked the button several times. The nurse’s voice came over the intercom, sounding very much like she’d been enjoying a coffee or a smoke and was being interrupted.

  “What is it now?” the nurse asked.

  “Thar’s a strange man in my sister’s room.”

  Darren took offense to that. “Ahm not thet strange!”

  “The hospital is over full tonight, ma’am,” the nurse said, sounding as if she had explained this a thousand times before, “and that man has significant injuries. Your room was the only room with a bed left.”

  “But he’s lookin’ at me all funny like.”

  Darren sat up again and looked over at her. “Huh?”

  “Thar, see?” she said, pointing at him. “He done it agin.”

  “Ma’am, if there’s no emergency attention needed, I have work to do. The doctor will be doing rounds soon for your sister’s baby and you’ll probably be moved to a regular room by yourselves soon.”

  “Better sooner ‘n later,” she harrumphed.

  The nurse had disconnected the intercom when the baby squawked. Darren watched as the girl raced over to the chicken warming tray and lifted the baby up to cradle it.

  “Thar, thar little one,” she cooed at the baby, “mama’s getting’ some shut eye. Aunt Ellie Mae is here.”

  Something in Darren softened. He never had a mama—or an aunt for that matter—pay him any attention. Psychologists in the pen tried to tell him that was why he was a criminal… something about neglect and all that.

  “Thet’s a beautiful baby,” he said, adjusting his bed with the electric remote so that he could see them better.

  The woman, Aunt Ellie Mae, glared at him, but then she softened a bit too.

  “I know he is.” She traced her hand over the top of the baby’s head. “Cuz his mama’s beautiful too.”

  Darren felt tears begin to well in his eyes. “Thet she is.”

  “Who are you?”

  He thought Ellie Mae seemed to be asking less out of suspicion and more out of curiosity.

  “Name’s Darren,” he said, nodding.

  “You in a car wreck or sumthin’?”

  Darren opened his mouth to say no, that he’d had his toes torn off by a rogue recliner, his eyeball and socket crushed by a beer bottle and a fist, his other eye slammed into the dashboard of a van, his cheek burned by the barrel of a gun he’d been shooting at his criminal partner, and his fingers ripped off by that partner grabbing the gun out of his hand, but then he thought better of it.

  “Yeah, that’s it,” he said and smiled, sending a sharp pain into his cheek, “car wreck. Damn drunk driver.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said, “I hope they ketch the bastard!”

  “Ah, don’t ya worry, lass.” Darren pictured Man’ti in his mind. “Ahm gonna get ‘im good.”

  Ellie Mae shrugged. Beside them, the other girl in the bed yawned and opened her eyes.

  “C’mere little T.C.” She stretched out her hands and Ellie Mae handed her the baby. “Yer mama’s here. You hungry, little one?”

  She promptly pulled out her boob and shoved the baby on it. Little T.C. began to nurse.

  “Daisy Mae,” —Ellie Mae pointed a finger— “This here’s Darren, right?”

  He nodded.

  “He was in an awful car wreck.”

  “I can see ‘at. Ya look like shit,” Daisy Mae said matter-of-factly.

  Darren flushed. “Ah don’t normally look like ‘is! Ahm pretty good lookin’ actually.”

  Daisy Mae shrugged and turned to her sister. “Whar’s Troy?”

  “He done run off.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Guess he figured since little T.C. ain’t his, he’s off scott free.”

  “Well, shee-it.” Daisy Mae switched the baby to her other boob. “Who’s gone take care of us and little T.C.”

  Darren watched this exchange with growing interest and an idea bloomed behind his broken eye socket.

  “Ah ken take care of all three of ya,” he said, surprising himself.

  She turned toward him, looking at him as if they thought his meds had made him crazy.

  “Ah got so much money comin’ in that it’ll set us all fa life,” he said defensively, “but we might have ta move to Mexico… or Australia.”

  His clouded mind was still working on the small detail that Troy had disappeared, but he’d figure that out later.

  “I ain’t never been to Mex-eee-co,” Daisy said to her sister.

  “And we can all get married,” he started, “or at least two of us ken get married. The other could be a live-in or something.”

  He could see that the sisters were clearly warming up to the idea.

  “You’ll hev all tha money ya eva need,” he said, trying to clinch it. “Ah got seven million comin’.”

  Ellie Mae whistled through her teeth. “Seven million?”

  Daisy Mae looked down at her baby. “At’s enough to make ‘lil T.C. very happy!”

  “Um, yeah.” Darren crinkled his eyebrows. “About thet. Any way you’d consider changin’ ‘is name to little Darren?”

  “Darren Gallup,” Daisy Mae said, testing out the name. “It does have a nice ring to it. What you think, Ellie Mae?”

  “I think it sounds like a million bucks!”

  “Seven million,” Darren corrected her. “Is thet a deal, ladies?”

  Ellie Mae looked at Daisy Mae. They nodded at each other.

  “Yup, it’s a deal,” Daisy Mae said, smiling. “Little T.C.—er, ah mean little Darren—is gonna be so happy!”

  “The deal is,” a deep voice said from the door to the hospital room, “ya comin’ wit me.”

  The girls jumped at the sound of a new voice and gaped at the figure in the doorway. A giant man with close-cut black hair and black tattoos scrawled all over his muscled arms stood silhouetted in the opening. He had on a black t-shirt and black jeans that strained against his NFL sized shoulders and legs. His skin was dark olive and slick. His eyes were hidden in the shadows.

  “Ah, shit,” Darren whimpered.

  “Get ya shit and let’s get outta heyah,” the giant said and turned to walk out.

  Darren eased out of the bed and said to the wide-eyed girls, “Take good care ‘o little Darren. Ah’ll be beck.”

  22

  A Böhring Family Vacation

  Victor Böhring considered himself a man of impeccable taste. His hands caressed the dark wood inlays on the steering wheel of his brand-new Mercedes Benz AMG G65 SUV. It was the only vehicle he’d found that matched his considerably high standards.

  He eased the accelerator toward the floorboard and the 621-horsepower engine pushed him backward into the black handcrafted Napa leather diamond stitch patterned driver’s seat. He lovingly traced the gleaming chrome Mercedes logo on the horn, and allowed himself a small tight-lipped smile. He loved this car.

  His newly constructed beach home on Pawleys Island had been built with the same attention to detail. By the island’s standards, the house was palatial. Eight bedrooms and six bathrooms, each with its own particular theme, made the house into a veritable beach mansion. Lazy palm leaf ceiling fans kept the air breezing comfortably over the terrazzo marble floor. A modern palette of creamy whites with splashes of bright colors in the furnishings. Custom artwork on every wall represented the theme of each room.

  The master suite was an exact duplicate of the honeymoon suite at the private island estate in Jamaica that had served as the Böhring’s marital holiday des
tination. A massive four-poster mahogany bed with draped sheets, deep chocolate furnishings with only the smallest antique brass knobs, hinges and pulls, and original Angela Moulton paintings of local birds and landscapes, made this room anything but shabby island chic. It was more like a European interpretation of shabby island chic, which suited Victor just fine. It was in this bedroom that Mrs. Böhring slept, awaiting her husband in a mid-morning, mimosa-fueled daze.

  Victor had been feeling particularly generous, so he called ahead to have the maid warn his wife he was coming. She usually required half an hour or so to compose herself. Her melancholy moods were becoming tiresome. He would do something about this soon.

  As he turned onto Myrtle Avenue, the main drag on Pawleys Island, he slowed to the required twenty-five miles per hour. Normally, it didn’t bother him to cruise at the island speed limit, but today he was in a bit of a rush. Tourists on rusty rental bicycles, runners carrying bottled waters and iPods, and the occasional high strung toddler mom pushing a stroller, crowded the street. This time of year, it made the two-lane road a veritable obstacle course to navigate.

  He tapped his horn twice to gently nudge a double-wide stroller over just a little and gave the obligatory sorry-about-that wave as he passed. “Go home, Yankee,” he whispered under his breath, and smiled a broad, gleaming white smile.

  The crunch of gravel was satisfying under the wheels of his new Mercedes as he pulled into his new beach home. The outside of the house was broad and covered four side-by-side parking spaces beneath. The green metal roof covered two stories of window after window winged by green storm shutters, all of which overlooked creek-side and beachside wraparound porches. Stately square columns held charcoal grey railings and offered foot rests to at least twenty white rocking chairs. Victor was looking forward to resting his travel-aching body in one of those chairs while sipping on a beautiful Pinot Noir he’d brought for just that purpose.

  Again, feeling generous, he shut off the car and tapped the horn twice and waited. Everyone deserved at least a little warning. He pulled the driver’s side sun visor down and adjusted the mirror so he could see himself. He had the smooth tan that came from perfectly even man-made tanning lotions and clear, crystal blue eyes. The lines around his eyes had deepened in the past few years, more from stress than laughter, but he’d had a few Botox treatments to slow that down. He ran his tongue over the new perfectly white caps on his front teeth; coffee, wine and cigars had yellowed his own until he’d decided to get them fixed. Finger combing his hair straight back revealed a hairline that had also been surgically augmented, but only a very close inspection would reveal that to any observer. He’d kept it salt and pepper though; it looked distinguished and age-appropriate, even if his smooth skin did not.

  He glanced down at his Junghans Meister Handaufzug watch, a timepiece that equaled the Mercedes in craftsmanship and elegance, and decided that he’d given them enough time. He wondered if the children would come up from the beach to meet him. Often when they did, he felt very much like Captain Georg von Trapp from the sound of music, interviewing his offspring about their recent behavior and escapades. He didn’t have the whistle to blow to send them scampering to and fro, but he thought he might acquire one soon.

  As he closed the door of his SUV, a stray beach ball floated in and bounced off the hood. He grabbed it quickly before it could bounce again and squeezed it until it popped. Pushing the button to call the elevator to the ground floor, he idly threw the busted ball into a nearby trash container. I vill devinitely be getting a vhistle, he thought to himself.

  Laura Starlington yawned as she clicked through the first few pages of a new book on her Kindle, trying desperately to become attached to the new characters, but it just wasn’t happening. The first book in the series had been amazing, but this one just hadn’t caught any steam yet. She had gotten up and dragged her chair down to the beach to watch the sunrise. It was a good one this morning; Pawleys never disappointed in the sunrise department.

  Her toes were digging in the crunchy bits of shell that had washed up with the tide as her right hand traced the condensation on her mimosa. Her cousin, Karah Campobello, was still in the bed after their crazy late night at Drunken Jack’s.

  Frat boy bar fights and weird foreign dudes barfing all over and creepy, psycho wrestler looking guys using stolen credit cards; it had been a circus. In fact, thinking back about the night, she realized all those characters were more interesting than the ones in her new paperback. If this book didn’t get any better, Laura thought she’d run to Starbuck’s for a couple of coffees to help pep things up around her Pawleys Island cabana.

  A couple of houses to the North, four cute little kids were digging in the sand, throwing a beach ball around and splashing in the gentle surf. They looked to range from about five-years-old all the way up to ten. They all had shockingly blonde hair, and matching teal swimsuits with matching teal beach towels. She thought if she ever had kids, she wanted them to look like these kids. They looked like kids from a Parenting magazine ad. A horn honked twice and the kids froze, all of them looking up like a group of meerkats scanning the beach for a predator. Nobody moved.

  Suddenly, running down from the house was an older boy. He ran like he was trying to warn the others of a boulder chasing him out of a cave like Indiana Jones. He stumbled and fell to his hands and knees in a splash of sand.

  “D.A.D.!!! Repeat, we’ve got a DAD alert!!” he yelled. “Did you hear me? D.A.D.!!”

  The kids playing in the sand scrambled to pick up belongings; towels, beach balls, sand castle building tools, paddle balls and paddles, bocce balls and Frisbees. They looked like the victims of Pompeii, furiously—but futilely—trying to escape some impending doom.

  The older boy looked almost in tears as he cried. “Hurry guys! He’s coming!”

  In a whirlwind of dropping toys, picking up towels, running, falling and stumbling, the children made their way up the beach collecting their fallen comrades along the run like the soldiers storming Normandy on D-Day. And suddenly it was quiet again.

  Laura tipped her hat back on her head and looked at her watch: 6:48am. Mmmm, Starbucks will be open by the time I get there! She dragged her chair up toward the dune, and plopped it down on the deck, not bothering to spray it off (they’d be back out on the beach in a little while anyway).

  She dipped her feet into a tub of cool water to wash the sand from between her toes and slipped her flip flops on. Entering the house always felt like stepping into a refrigerator, and she wrapped the towel around her shivering body. She listened for Karah and heard her soft snoring coming from the upstairs bedroom. Lazy thing won’t be up for at least another hour, plenty of time to grab a couple of lattes.

  She jotted out a quick note and grabbed Karah’s keys, since her cousin’s Land Rover was parked behind her Jetta. No need to get dressed; she’d be hitting the drive-through anyway. She clicked the door shut and padded down to the car.

  Karah’s cell phone was lying in the console compartment between the driver’s seat and the passenger’s seat. Idly, Laura picked it up and clicked it on. One missed message from Troy early this morning:

  -“In cab, on way.”

  Laura clicked out a reply:

  -“Hey it’s Laura, Karah still sleeping. Heading to Starbucks, you’ll probably beat me back. You want something?”

  -“Yeah, get me that white chocolate thingy they have.”

  Laura couldn’t help but smile—that had to be Karah’s doing.

  -“You got it. See you in a bit.”

  She dropped the phone into the passenger’s seat and headed north to the causeway.

  Victor Böhring paced back and forth as his children dripped on the marble floor. They were shivering in the air conditioning, all in various states of dampness and sandiness from the beach. The maid stood at the end of the line, lips pursed and looking as if she were guilty of the children’s current disheveled state. Victor preferred everything to be in very precise, ne
at order, including his offspring.

  The shock on their faces resembled those of an audience watching Harry Houdini perform an incredible escape, when he said, “one hour. Zat eez your beach time today.”

  The youngest girl, Eliza, said, “Yayyy, thank you, Daddy!!”

  “Shhhhh!” the others scolded her.

  “You are velcome,” he said and ruffled her nearly white hair. “Off vit you. Enjoy your day.”

  The children jumped for joy and laughed hysterically as if Christmas had come in the summer. Within seconds, they were back on the beach and the maid was standing alone, dumbstruck by the generosity of her employer.

  “Meester Böhring,” she started to say, “thees ees wonderf—”

  He held up a hand to stop her. “I did not tell you to speak.” He motioned to the sandy, wet aftermath of the children. “Clean it up, now.”

  She bowed and meekly replied. “Yes, Meester Böhring.”

  “Where is Mrs. Böhring?” he asked derisively, knowing the likely answer.

  “She ees in da bed, Meester Böhring.”

  “Wake her ven you hev zis cleaned up.” He waved a hand. “I need her out ov here as vell.”

  “Yes, Meester Böhring.”

  Victor checked his watch. Man’ti and Darren would be here soon and he needed time alone with them to discuss their next move. They had proved to be bungling idiots, and he felt like they needed a little more motivation. He sat down heavily into the plush leather recliner facing the ocean-side windows. As he watched the kids playing in the sand, he opened the cigar humidor sitting on the coffee table and took out a pristine, unsmoked Montecristo #2 cigar. From his pocket, he produced the razor-sharp cigar cutters engraved with the initials VB, and snipped the ends of the cigar. He prided himself on keeping his cutters so sharp that he barely felt the resistance as he squeezed them through his cigars.

  He put the popular Cuban smoke in his mouth and rolled it around on his tongue to moisten the end. He quickly clicked the cutters open and shut to remove any debris from them, and grinned around his teeth. Motivation comes in all different shapes and sizes, he thought, picturing the damage his snippers could do to a finger. He didn’t light the cigar, he just sucked the end… waiting.