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

by John W. Mefford

  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.

  I did another quick scan of the area. A rusted back end of a pickup sat awkwardly over a tree stump. Next to it was a hacksaw and an empty leather tool belt. I moved a few feet to my right and peered around the right side of the house.

  “Do you see the trash bags?” Nick asked in a loud whisper.

  I nodded and moved back to the front next to Nick and surveyed the dilapidated structure. “I get this weird feeling that we’re being watched.”

  “Alex, don’t freak me out, okay?”

  I placed my foot on the first step, but refrained from putting any weight on it. I slowly shifted my weight, and the board sagged a good inch.

  “This is the ultimate house of cards,” Nick said.

  “A strong gust of wind might bring it all down,” I added.

  I took every step up the staircase with precision, trying to reduce my weight, even though I knew it wasn’t possible. When we both reached the porch, Nick hunched over. The ceiling sagged a good two feet.

  He mouthed claustrophobia as I approached the door. Not surprisingly, there was no doorbell. I rapped the door with my knuckles three times.

  A few seconds ticked by, and I didn’t hear another sound, except for the creaks of the boards when Nick shifted from one foot to the other. I brought a finger to my mouth, a signal for him to stop moving.

  Just as I brought up my hand to knock again, a tiny door, no more than a two inches in diameter, opened at my chest level, then an eye appeared.

  “Mr. Lyons, please open the door. We’re with the FBI.”

  “Don’t you know how to read?” a voice snapped back.

  “Mr. Lyons, we’re not here to harm you or your home. But we need to speak with you. Face to face.”

  The ey
e blinked once, then shifted over to glance at Nick.

  “I know my rights. You can’t come in here,” he barked, his voice sounding like a blender full of nails.

  “We can either have this conversation here, or we can handcuff you and take you to our office. Your choice.”

  The pupil of the red-rimmed eye shrunk as he hesitated in his response.

  Finally, he said, “I can’t move anywhere. I lost both of my legs in the war, and I’m stuck to an oxygen machine. And I’m not allowed to let anyone in because my immune system is susceptible to any type of disease.”

  I picked up a waft of smoke, the kind backed by nicotine, and I instantly questioned his story.

  “All agents are required to shower each day. I think you’re safe.”

  “You don’t seem to understand, lady. I’m not going to risk my life just because you got a hard on to talk to me. What do you want to discuss anyway?”

  That eye blinked again, and I was starting to feel violated, if not revolted. More than anything, this crackpot thought he could keep us at bay, and that pissed me off.

  I removed my phone from my pocket, tapped the screen three times, and brought it to my ear as I kneeled lower, my eyes about a foot from the cyclops.

  “Mason, Silvagni…we were just told by Mr. Lyons that you could enter the back door, even if you have to force your way in.”

  “What the fuck?” he screamed.

  The eye disappeared, then we heard hard soles clopping off wooden planks at a very quick rate.

  “This shithead is lying about everything. Nick, kick the door down.”

  “With pleasure.” He took a giant step, swung his foot up, and slammed it into the door. The wood caved under his heel and clawed at his shoe, but the door didn’t budge. He slipped his foot out, then pried his shoe loose.

  “Crap. I think he’s got a metal safety bar across the door frame.”

  “Kick it again, lower.”

  Nick quickly slid his foot back into his shoe and grunted as he connected with the bottom third of the door. His shoe went all the way through, but the hole was no more than six inches big. I dropped to my knees and tried to find Lyons.