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

by John W. Mefford

  “Alex, hey,” he said. “Gretchen just stuck her head in the war room saying something about a video and Turov. We might have a lead.”

  “I saw it all. Watched it on a guy’s tablet. She’s kidnapped Gusset.” I gave him the details on what I’d seen.

  “Holy shit.” I then heard him barking out instructions.

  I said, “Assemble the team on a call and bring me in. Include Capitol Police and the Secret Service. We’ve got two hours. No, make that one hour fifty-six minutes.”

  I punched the call dead as I made it outside, a gust of wind carrying a waft of sewage across my face. My phone buzzed. A text from Archie.

  Im here.

  I looked up just as the bumblebee scattered the crowd in front of the diner.

  “Good timing,” I said, running up to the driver’s side open window. “Turov kidnapped the senator. She’s given me two hours to find him. We have to find him.”

  He touched my arm. “Alex, they’re calling me in.” His placid expression spoke volumes.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I think they’re going to make me the scapegoat for this trail of blood.”

  “But you’ve turned out to be okay.” It sounded strange to say those words, but I was serious.

  “It’s okay. I’ll land on my feet. But I can’t go with you. You should be getting a call from another agent shortly. You can team with him or her.”

  I dropped my head and stared at the concrete then turned and spotted the Capitol as my mind replayed the image of Turov licking the knife.

  “Get out of the car.”

  “What?”

  I pulled open the door, and he slowly got out, his face locked in confusion.

  I brushed his shoulder as I jumped into the driver’s seat. “I can’t wait for all the bureaucratic bullshit.”

  “But Alex, the CIA will have your ass for dinner unless you fall in line. Look what they did to me.”

  With my hand on the door, I paused my gaze for a split second. “So be it. Good luck in your meeting. Give me a holler sometime. Later.”

  Slamming the door shut, I slid the gear into drive and punched it.

  I snapped the phone into the holder suctioned to the front window—a pretty cool little tool that Archie had purchased about three murders prior—and asked my digital butler to call Nick.

  “What happened? I thought you were supposed to bring me into a conference call?”

  “That was five minutes ago. Been on the horn with FBI brass and Jerry. He’s got a hostage rescue team on call waiting for an address. Hold on a second.”

  A rustling noise, followed by sharp voices, male and female.

  Then Nick said, “Brad’s bringing up the conference call right now from the Polycom. I’ll pull my phone into it so you can listen in.”

  I motored through about six blocks and found myself in the southern part of DC. I crossed over the upper part of the Potomac River, taking Route 4 eastbound. I knew Turov wasn’t near a big city. She had to be in a remote location but still close enough to get there in two hours. She wanted me to get there; at least I thought she did.

  “All hands are on deck.” Jerry had taken the reins on the call. “Time is ticking, ladies and gentleman. We’ve got under two hours if we want to save a senator’s life.”

  “First, I think we need to ensure we follow protocol, just to make sure we don’t have fingers pointed our way after the fact.” A man’s voice.

  “Who’s this?” I jumped in.

  “CIA Assistant Director Joseph Cain. Is this Special Agent Troutt?”

  “We don’t have time for protocol. I need to hear from my team so we can hunt down this homicidal maniac before she kills Gusset.”

  He cleared his throat. “As a starting point, we need the head of the joint task force to declare this a formal act of terrorism on US soil.”

  Was he hard of hearing? I could feel my pulse peppering my neck like a drum roll.

  “You guys are still stuck on that hammer and sickle tattoo, thinking Turov is some kind of Russian spy? Or would that just make it easier to sell to the public once they find out that you’ve been covering up for a war crime, gang rape, and a CIA-trained murderer who’s been allowed to walk the streets while you knew she was a danger to everyone who crossed her path.”

  “You better stand down, Troutt, or I’ll—”

  “Hey,” Jerry barked. “Stop the bickering. I don’t care about your agency affiliation or your title. If you don’t have anything to offer to help us find where Turov is holding Gusset, then get off this call. Understood? Now, down to business.”

  I pumped my fist, then noticed I was crossing the Beltway, zipping under I-495 on the southeast side of DC.

  “Alex, she called you out, and we know about the notes she’s left for you. But I don’t want you arriving on the scene all alone. We have an HRT ready to move from Quantico.”

  “Nick passed that along. I need some help. Gretchen, Brad?”

  “Right here, Alex,” Brad said.

  “Have you been in contact with the people at this VidNow company?”

  “Gretchen has their CEO on the other line.”

  “Cool. I won’t get into why they don’t keep parasites like Turov off the Internet, but can they tell us where her IP originates? I need an idea on which direction I should be moving.”

  Gretchen spoke up. “Turov is doing something with her phone. Her IP is bouncing all over the country, even into Canada. Hundreds of possible locations.”

  “Shit!” I heard Jerry’s fist pound the table. “Can’t they just shut the damn thing off?”

  “It’s called shutting down the server,” Gretchen said in her soprano pitch.

  “Don’t do that!” I called out. “We’ve got to get a better idea of where she is.”

  “Right,” Jerry said.

  Fingernails tapped across a keyboard in rapid fire, then Gretchen spoke up. “Alex, I just sent you a text. Click the link, and it will load the VidNow app on your phone. I’ve set it up where once Turov goes back on the air—I guess, if she does—then you’ll see the video.”

  Silence for a few seconds as I punched my screen and watched the download bar fill up. While I waited, the light traffic came to a standstill. Up ahead I noticed flashing red and white lights. I pulled off to the apron and cruised up the side, moving far too fast to be safe. A Maryland state trooper held up his hand.

  I held my badge through the open window. “What’s the holdup?”

  “Gas truck crashed and spilled all five thousand gallons across the road and into the median. Traffic is shut down, both directions. We’re looking at a ten- to twelve-hour shutdown.”

  I noticed a crossroad up ahead, and I pointed in that direction. “Where’s that go?”

  “That’s Route 301. Takes you south through a rural part of the state. Lots of marshes down that way.”

  I waved an arm and jammed my foot to the floorboard, accidentally spraying dust and gravel in his face. “Sorry,” I yelled out the window.

  “I’m tracking you, Alex,” Brad said.

  I quickly glanced at the phone a couple of times then returned my focus to the road. “The VidNow app finished loading. Nothing but a blue screen underneath a heading that says User Name - TKM.”

  “The Killing Machine.”

  “Archie?”

  “That’s me. I decided to join the call. Nothing to lose. Just waiting in the hallway for my come-to-Jesus meeting, as I’ve been told.”

  “Agent Woods, this is Assistant Director—”

  “I don’t give a shit. This woman is butchering people faster than we can count. And we, or I guess it’s more like you, the CIA, could have stopped it before it ever started. We saw the session notes from Dr. Teague, another one of Turov’s victims that she sliced open.”

  A few beats of silence, everyone likely in shock over Archie’s surprising pushback. I was as well, but I didn’t have time to offer my congratulations for sticking it to the man
.

  “Now what?” I asked.

  Brad jumped in. “We’re pulling the video from Turov’s first session and running it against a database of rural pictures. This new program is supposed to be able to identify a percentage of photos with similar elements.”

  “How long will that take?”

  “Who knows? Gretchen, your best guess?” Brad asked.

  “A few hours. Hard to say. Could be two, or might be eight or ten. The software intelligence is rather new, might be a bit buggy.”

  Without a car in sight, I increased my speed up to eighty-five, all while looking for a small bridge. For the next sixty minutes, I drove while the others tossed around theories. Every five minutes, Gretchen would offer an update on the geographical recognition program. On her last update, she’d said, “Looks like we’re only at sixty percent done.”

  I began to question my decision to turn onto this road to nowhere. She could be a hundred miles the other direction. If so, Gusset was as good as dead.

  Just as the thought left my mind, my phone lit up. The first image was of the blue sky with a few white clouds. Then Turov moved the phone to where she took up most of the screen.

  “Hey there, Alex. Just checking in. Me and the senator are getting lonely. Want to make it a party of three?”

  She walked over and used the side of her knife to pop the senator’s gut. He wiggled and grunted.

  “There we go. Finally a little bit of feistiness. Want to give us a few of those hip thrusts that you gave those twins? You know, the girls who work for that PAC that’s been funneling all the money into your campaign.”

  I heard a snort on the conference line. I think it might have been Nick covering his laughter, likely noting how one of the most notorious serial killers in the country was further exposing Gusset and the overlap between his political machine and his personal proclivity for screwing twins.

  “Let’s see, we’re down to…” Just then, the picture turned upside down, then flipped around in all sorts of angles. “Crap,” I heard her say, then a few rapid thuds.

  The phone must have slipped through her fingers.

  Keeping one eye on the road and another glued to the tiny screen, I took mental pictures of every single angle. A cloud shot, a shot of a steel beam where the rope was tied to it, a shot of Turov’s black pants, another shot of the pavement with a faded yellow line running down the middle, then a shot of the area just behind Gusset. Tall grass sitting in water on the banks of a narrow river.

  I noticed a sign for the Zekiah Swamp. The exit was two miles away.

  Turov righted the camera, her face rooted with frustration. She stuck out her jaw. The playful Turov had faded away. “Six minutes, bitch. Show up and he lives. You miss it by ten seconds and he dies. Of course, you’ll be doing your country a favor if you run a little bit late. I won’t tell. Ha!”

  The screen went blue.

  “Jerry, call in the HRT. I’m exiting as we speak.” The muscle car fishtailed as I hung a left. “Moving east onto Highway 234.”

  “We got you,” Brad said.

  “Alex, be careful,” Nick said. “Wait on the HRT. Remember, she’s a killing machine.”

  A half mile down the road, I saw a sign for Budds Creek Road. I veered right and plowed through a rickety wooden fence across the old road. Not thirty seconds later, I could see a splinter of the Potomac. “I’ve been here before,” I said. I fished my Glock out of my purse and rested it on my lap.

  “What?” Nick asked. “You’re there? You’ve been there before?”

  The desolate bridge was straight ahead, but I knew she’d already seen the bumblebee, heard the grumbling engine.

  “Gusset’s got under a minute to live,” Nick said.

  “But HRT is still ten minutes out,” Jerry said.

  Rocks rattled against the frame of the sports car as I sped closer, my eyes searching for the senator. Less than a quarter of a mile away, I saw something dangling on the left side, but it wasn’t a man. It was just a rope. I skidded to a stop at the edge of the bridge and threw the door open.

  “Alex, HRT is…”

  I left the phone in the car, and with my head on a swivel and both hands clutching my gun, I made a beeline toward the rope. No sign of Turov as I reached the point where the rope dropped. I looked up and saw it tied to a beam ten feet above me, extending at least ten feet out above the marshy waters. Looking down, I could see Gusset’s arms and head. He was perched on some type of makeshift wooden platform, about a foot in diameter. I wanted to call out, but I knew I couldn’t.

  Racing around to the end of the bridge, I scooted halfway down the banks. I spotted another beam that crossed right next to the senator. I slid the gun in the back of my pants and plowed up the hill to reach the beam. I knew a minute had passed, but no sign of Turov. Maybe she’d teased me all along and was now on a boat headed out into the Atlantic.

  I could see the senator moving. I looked down as I took my first step on the beam, no more than four inches wide. Holding out my arms for balance, I noticed I was about twenty-five feet off the ground. I moved heel to toe, puffing out breaths as if I were giving birth. Just needed to keep the cadence and my focus.

  I was ten feet from Gusset. His right eye blinked repeatedly.

  “Almost there,” I said.

  Three feet away, I reached for the rope, then felt the weight of a boulder drop on my body. It was Turov, who must have been hiding under the bridge. I lost my footing, and my shoulder crunched against the beam. She slid off my back and landed on her knees as she screamed out loud. She swung her knife, but I’d already started falling. I swung my arm back, stuck a finger inside her pant leg, and held on for life. She toddled for a moment, then just before falling backward, she kicked out a boot and shoved the senator off the platform.

  As I dropped to the earth, I watched helplessly as Gusset plunged six feet. I heard his neck snap like a twig just before I splashed into the water. The impact knocked the air out of me. Not a half-second later, just as my mouth reached the surface, Turov fell on top of me, her boots smashing my face, her knees slamming into my ribs. I swallowed a mouthful of water, and I began to choke as I sank. She began to flail her arms, and even under water I could make out her muted voice, an odd combination of laughing and crying.

  I could feel panic start to take over as my lungs filled with water. I couldn’t breathe. I kicked and clawed but couldn’t find the surface. And then the edges of my vision became dark, and I started to lose the urge to fight. For a quick second, an image of my father on the sailboat, me holding a tennis ball and tossing it in the air. Then another image, me with Erin and Luke, throwing snowballs at each other in the front yard as a half-built snowman sat there waiting for its head.

  I opened my eyes, and through the murky water I saw the blade of the knife swish right by my face. When it missed, for the first time I saw fear in her eyes, as her arms and legs appeared out of sync, unable to tread water. I quickly realized Turov wasn’t a good swimmer. A final jolt of energy electrified my body. I pushed myself under her body, grabbing her boot as I moved behind her, pulling her head under water. Then I went after the knife. Using my leg as a fulcrum, I dropped her arm across my thigh and slammed both of my fists onto her forearm. She screamed out. I’d broken her arm, and I watched the knife fall out of her hand and disappear in the light current of water. I pushed off of the top of her head, propelling myself to the surface. I came up coughing, barely able to take in oxygen. But even a little helped my brain. I got in three deep breaths, then I felt a tug on my leg.

  I dropped back under as Turov dug her teeth into my calf. She quickly reached bone. I wasn’t going to screw with this bitch any longer. I stuck two fingers up her nostrils and two in an eye and yanked with everything I had. I felt skin rip in my hands, and she unclenched her teeth. Then I rammed my elbow into her temple, and she went limp.

  I pushed back to the surface and gasped for more air. I heard the whomp whomp of helicopter blades as water ripp
led around me. Turov’s body bumped mine. I grabbed a fistful of her shirt and realized she was unconscious. I thought about all the death by her hands, and for a moment, I considered just leaving her there. Still snorting up water, I looked at the muddy shore, then I gripped her good arm and pulled her with me.

  Soldiers called out my name, and I saw boots all around me. Pushing up to my hands and knees, I saw the senator swaying in the gentle breeze. Turov had killed her final victim. And it wasn’t me.

  21

  Leaning over my sink, I applied mascara, then a small layer of eyeshadow. Finally, I searched through my cadre of lipsticks, found a ruby red, and puckered.

  “Going all out tonight, huh, Dr. Alex?”

  I glanced in the mirror and saw Ezzy leaning against the doorway.

  “I don’t know. Just thought I’d put a little effort into it. I really don’t know how it’s supposed to work. I haven’t been…”

  “I know, dear. I’m just glad you’re getting out, socializing. Putting that crazy work stuff out of your head.”

  I looked in the mirror and took in a breath. While I’d used a fair amount of cover-up, I could still make out a shade of purple on my jawline. The pain was still front and center as well. But I wasn’t about to harp on something that insignificant.

  “Something is still troubling you, Alex, even three weeks later, huh?”

  I chose not to look at my prying nanny and good friend.

  “I’m good.”

  “That’s code for something’s not good.”

  The lipstick slipped through my fingers and fell into a cup of water. “Dammit, now that’s ruined too.”

  Ezzy reached in and fished out the lipstick.

  “Alex, tell me what’s going on.”

  I could feel tears bubble in my eyes. I huffed out a breath. “Dad called me today. Said he’d spoken with the CIA and another FBI agent.”

  “Good Lord, girl, what did he do now?”

  I locked eyes with her in the mirror as my hands dropped to the counter. I felt blood draining from my head, and I started to sway.

  “He…” I filled my lungs again. “He set me up, Ezzy.” A single tear escaped, but Ezzy was there with a tissue before it dropped from my face.