Mystery: Suspense: Jaguar Ascends : : A Private Investigator Mystery Crime Thriller: (horror, thriller, science fiction, mystery, police, murder, dark, ... (Marie Avalon Mystery Crime Series Book 3)

by Josh Law

  “Eat dirt, you psycho braud. I won’t believe a thing you offer me is going to keep you from trying to harm my son which is my highest priority.” She folded her arms over her chest.

  “Clever, as always, Ms. Avalon. Of course, I’m not going to let your son off Scott free, but you haven’t even heard the offer I’ve got for him yet. If you refuse to play your part, I’ll do something far worse than hurt your son physically, force him to do my will, or even kill him. If you fail to play your role, I will kill Alex Prescott, which is your son’s highest priority. It will be your fault, in fact, you will be the one to administer his death you just won’t realize it at the time. Your son could never forgive you for that which is something he’d never admit to. I will have done worse than separating the both of you. I will have corrupted your relationship. Do you see my logic?” The Queen folded her hands. Marilyn spun around to see Nick’s gasping mouth and Alex shaking his head.

  “You don’t have to do this, Marilyn. If it helps, I’d understand.” Alex swallowed.

  “You’re about to look like the biggest hypocrite that ever lived, Alex. You see, because I’ve got a job for you too. You’re going to be Nick’s armor bearer and help me turn him into the Jaguar, or I will kill his mother which he’ll never forgive you for. That trigger points both ways, see?” The Queen laughed now as Alex looked at Nick in smothering horror. The boy held himself in rigid attention. He looked at Alex without feeling, but his brother could see the wheels turning in his head. Even now he was plotting a way for them to get out of this.

  “Alright, we see the trend in all your arguments and threats. Except, it’s funny that you haven’t offered us anything. Any reason other than your insisting we scramble to not bear the heavy end of your manipulative threats. You should have enough sense to know as long as you’ve been in this Game that we’re not puppets and we certainly aren’t stupid either. You’re going to kill us all anyway when you get what you want and you’ll never stop killing me if you get your way. Offer us some means of redemption. Give us a few cards of our own to play. Then, if your war machines are as effective as you say, you’ll win your empire fair and square. Conquest and not dinner theater, eh?” Nick clapped a hand on Alex’s quaking shoulder.

  The Queen smiled.

  “You really do have the guts, kid.” She winked and Nick wrinkled his nose, feeling somewhat violated by the look she gave him.

  “Isn’t that kind of your whole point of doing this?” He scratched the back of his neck. Marilyn held her breath. Her life and moral principle literally lay in her son’s hands now. Would he be clever enough to buy them the one card that could pull them out of this inconceivable disaster?

  “This is my proposal for you, Nicky. Two choices. Choice one: simply surrender now and agree to the transformation and guarantee that everyone you love lives and nobody has to be put in a position against their free moral agency. Choice two: agree to undergo the transformation anyway leaving your siblings totally at the mercy of my mercenaries in the process while Renee Vierra and the Death Angel nobly attempt to do your job and protect them from me. Use your power to fight for your freedom and the freedom of your loved ones. If you win, I let all these puppets I’ve selected out of your ranks off their strings. For every round of my game that you lose, one of your siblings dies. Lastly, I kill your mother and the rest of the puppets. I save Alex for the last. If you lose the most critical of all the Games then I will force you to kill Alex yourself.”

  Nick and Alex exchanged a glance. It wasn’t fear in their eyes or uncertainty. The plan that they’d been discussing just a few moments before this bombshell still lived on the backburner of their minds. Nick smiled and winked at Alex, who slapped on his best poker face. Saving each other was going to be a team effort. A conscious and deadly attempt at one-upping the Devil.

  “I assume you know which one of those things I’m going to choose, huh?” Nick smiled wickedly.

  “It will have to be the hard way I imagine. It always is with you daring types.” The Queen pursed her lips in disgust.

  “Well, then I choose door number two. I have one request before I lift a finger, though. I’d just assume bite a bullet as to do anything before I get it too.” Nick nodded and folded his arms.

  “Really?” The Queen tossed her head back in laughter. It seemed like she had already won.

  “Before this starts, I want to talk to a priest/doctor and my brother alone. Have some soul spilling to do before you send me back down to the Inferno if you can be gracious enough for that simple of a request, your ladyship! The only available one at the moment is Dr. Clark.” Nick spat at her feet in disgust and pointed to Clark who knelt on the ground.

  Clark looked up, eyes shining and showing that he understood. Nick was going to use Queen Guatavita’s arrogance against her. He was going to play his cards into the hands of the least suspected person. The unassuming field doctor that just happened to get bush-wacked into all this drama.

  “Done. You’ve got 20 minutes and then you and your brother better report on decks of my ship.” Guatavita disappeared into the Jaguar followed by FBI agents and mercenaries that carried wounded and yowling Snake up with them.

  Chapter 9:

  Dr. Clark eased his way through the foliage to the boys. Marilyn cut him a bit of a resentful look. Why would Nicky ask to speak to him in his last moments as a free human being? He barely knew him!

  Nick beckoned Clark into the shade of the forest, pretending with some ease to be cracking up emotionally. He let tears fall freely which is something he would rather die than do even in private. This sent a message to his mother and his siblings that he was giving up. They would be furious and hurt and it would dampen their spirits enough to play up Guatavita’s revelry. Nick had to bite his tongue to keep from laughing. He had her exactly where he wanted her and she didn’t even realize it.

  Alex and Clark knew better. Nick pretended to stumble to his knees, breaking down just as he got beyond his family’s lineup. Alex wrapped his arms around his waist and began to drag him away from the scene as he uttered quiet, effected sobs for dramatic emphasis. They were both red-faced and sniffling as they got to the edge of the forest. Clark followed wan-faced and blue-lipped.

  Finally, they were out of earshot.

  “Bravo, buddy. You can stand me up now.” Nick giggled and stood to his feet. Alex palmed the tears away from both their faces and smiled. It was sad that Nick had fake-cried by releasing real emotions of desperation and soul-cracking. It wasn’t the average person that endured repeat murder with mental soundness, after all.

  “Okay, guys. Seriously, you could have gotten yourselves a one-way to the Golden Globes for that one.” Clark took a step back, impressed.

  “We don’t have a lot of time, Doc. Which is why I’m gonna say straight up, I’m sorry I roped you into the Pan-American apocalypse. The work you were doing with the locals was amazing and should have been left alone.” Nick swallowed and nodded, having cleared his conscious with that.

  “What’s the plan then, boys?” Clark folded his hands, smiling with unspoken forgiveness.

  “Alex take notes. We’re calling it ‘How to host a mutiny against crazy Latin dictators in five minutes or less.’” Nick pulled a pen out of his boot and handed it to Alex.

  “Yeah, something like that. Only we’ve kind of been planning this for like 30 minutes. Nick’s just being cocky as per usual. You got any paper, Doc?” Alex pressed the pen’s tip to his tongue and scribbled it on his hands. Clark laughed. The brothers must be highly confident in the plan that they’d made. Faced with the end of the world, they had assumed nerve-chilling calm which was out of place mingled with their fresh staged tears.

  “I have my research notebook. Yeah, but stopping the end of the Free World is a good excuse to tear a sheet out of it.” He pulled it out of his shirt.

  “Okay, here’s the scoop. There’s an island in the South Pacific that’s packed to full-bursting of reluctantly resurrected former patro
ns of the Durango historical cemetery. I have coordinates. I got the top secret locale because I stole a phone from evidence when I was doing tipster work for the Durango PD a while back. Don’t judge, I had to know where my people were. I committed it to memory for the rainy day when I would need to saddle up my desperados again. Get these to Cipriano. I need the famous disappearance artist to host another abduction for me. We’re going to need all the soldiers we can get if we want to toss off Guatavita’s anchors. Who better than seriously pissed off scientifically enhanced super-street fighters?” Nick smiled as he took the paper scribbling the latitudes and longitudes for the Doctor and a note that said “Thus Always the God Players”. Clark raised a brow.

  “Trust me, they’ll know what it means. That’s what Cipriano needs to tell them when he catches up to them. We have a common enemy, Dr. Clark. A history that will definitely be a good motive to get them to join my cause.”

  “How are you so sure?” Clark swallowed, trying to share the boy’s assurance.

  “Have you ever died before, Doctor?” Nick swallowed. It was painful to even think about. They understood. The connection of shared death experience forever connected Durango’s Lazarus to the Wakers.

  “Even with a fresh influx of troops, you’ll still be hard-pressed to do this. The priority is getting the Prescott kids out of research’s way. Renee will be all for that. She’ll be the easiest of our team to work with. It’s Nicky’s mom that’s going to be the hard one to rescue and convince. Don’t try to go for her yourself. That’s not a good plan. I have a solution that kinda just dawned on me.” Alex smiled at his brother whose eyes lit up as he read his mind.

  “Hail to the Chief!” Nick winked.

  “Exactly. Doctor, Renee will totally agree with us on this. The best way to get Marilyn out of the Drop Science arrangement is to have Chief Riggs come for her on the way there as an escort. He’s on our side, regardless of how he felt about our ditching the scene for Panama. He’s got the weight of U.S. Marshalls behind him and it will be harder for Senator Kelly York’s unknowns to get past them. Particularly since she’s going to be in ill-favor of law enforcement anyway in the knowledge that she signed off on the Prescott Project.” Alex winked.

  “Brilliant! Where were you kids during Vietnam?” Clark clapped.

  “Well, there’s always a catch, right? In the meantime, you guys are going to have to fight for your lives against an enemy that doesn’t play fair. They’ve been using psycho-actives on me to lure me into isolation for at least three days now. Cipriano needs to know about this card. He wasn’t there before. That and we have to dance to her fiddle for a while. We’re playing Texas Hold ‘Em with the self-appointed Queen of the Jungle and the whole glory-grabbing posse. No pressure there, kids. No pressure.” Nick clapped a hand on Clark’s shoulder, rolling with devil-may-care laughter.

  Chapter 10:

  Nick tilted his chin high to the air as he was led on the Jaguar’s decks 20 minutes later, Alex at his heels. Snake reached and took a bowie knife to his and his brother’s shirts slicing them off until they were bare-shouldered before everyone.

  Guatavita beckoned them to join her and Chance on decks and smiled down at Marilyn winking.

  “Master Snake, you can now escort the Jaguar’s mother back to the U.S. I will send provisions for her clemency as soon as I am less engaged with our asset.” She nodded indicatively and Snake grappled Marilyn, cuffing her hands behind her back.

  “It’s going to be a pleasure to watch you burn.” Snake’s spit slathered on the nape of Marilyn’s neck. She barely noticed it. She could only stare up at the decks where Guatavita stood with a bowl of strange blue clay paste paint. She dipped her palm in it and began to slather it all over Nick and Alex’s faces, chests, arms and hands.

  Marilyn felt her heart squeezing in her chest. This was the end, wasn’t it? After all the hell she had been through to keep that kid alive, to get him out of the hands of people he wanted to use him as a puppet in their games, it was going to end like this. The crazy boy was just going to walk right into their trap, too cocky for his own good, and hope to God he could fight his way out of it before the guillotine came down on them.

  Nick smirked down at his mother and suddenly smiled, showing all his teeth. He was laughing silently through his nose in a way that Guatavita and the mercenaries wouldn’t notice, but would send neon signals to all those he cared for. Marilyn felt her heart warming, unsure. He had a plan. That was the reason why he had asked to see Dr. Clark and not her in his last free moments. He had a plan and if she trusted him they might be able to make it out of the jaws of certain destruction one more time.

  “You know something, Snake? I’m not an intellectual, but I love the History channel you know? I seem to recall that the old Mayan kingdom is believed to have crumbled because of political unrest and insurgence from within.” She winked up at Nicky, who had heard it. He was smiling knowingly.

  “What’s that supposed to me, braud?” Snake’s cold voice barely reached Marilyn’s ears. She looked longingly in the mist as the legendary gold-plated mystery boat slowly disappeared into the mist her strong young son standing with squared shoulders side by side his brother in its center.

  “It means that you should never underestimate your enemy.” Marilyn said this loudly enough for Renee to hear as she looked on face wan watching as the boat took away her baby brother as well. She turned to look at Marilyn and they held each other’s gaze for a long, breathless moment. With their eyes, they encouraged each other. This wasn’t over yet. As long as they were alive, there was still a chance for their sons, for their families.

  “What her? Her, the sicario ,a handful of gangsters, and a few mutated brats? Oh, please. You know that my boys will pulverize the lot of you before I even get back from the States.” Snake flickered his tongue at Renee who spat on the ground.

  “I hope you choke on your own diarrhea, you pig. I might not be able to waste your boys, but I’ll put up a fight they’ll never forget.” She looked over at Cipriano to see if he was with her. Clark was standing beside him now. They were talking in quiet European Spanish, something that they were both familiar with from their colorful lives but that the mercenary grunts were unlikely to understand. Cipriano looked up and smiled.

  “You seem not to take my men and these children seriously. How quick you are to forget who won the battle of Acapulco Bay, my friend. Then we have young Bacardi here who can blow whole blocks off the pavement. Peyo who can operate anything. Sally who is becoming quite the master of backwoods surgery and emergency medical aid thanks to the instruction of Dr. Clark…I might not have the numbers you do, but I have equal the talent with only a fraction of the training. I will pulverize you, Senor Serpiente. It will only be so much worse for your ego as well. I will slay your lions with a flock of lambs.” Cipriano barred his copper coated teeth and laid a hand atop Bacardi’s head.

  Snake rolled with mocking chuckles and plucked Marilyn up by her wrists making her walk on tip-toes.

  “You’re one clown short in your circus, Death Angel. Let the best of we the demons win.” The mercenaries, Snake, and Marilyn disappeared into the forest.

  Renee let out a shaking breath.

  “Alright, so you talk a good game, man. But, seriously, how are we going to stand up to the Wicked Witch and all her little goonies? There’s like 30 of us tops and our shelter is blown to hell!”

  Cipriano held up the sheet of paper.

  “I knew the boy’s tears were the same as a crocodiles. Nick is like a fox. I imagine he got that from his father. Gather close, look here.” He held up Nick’s note for everyone to peek at.

  “That jerk! He was making me cry and he was totally faking!” Brandon beat his fist to his chest.

  “I gotta say, this is brilliant.” Sally smiled. Her opinions of her big brother had done a complete 180.

  Bacardi rubbed the tears off her cheeks with both palms.

  “Grr…Nicky is a butthead. But this is beaut
iful. Okay, so like I get that we’ve got a plan but we’re still faced off against the Queen of the Jungle and her Blanco-juiced flying monkeys. We’ve got to get around these Mayanist psycho-siren drugs made Nicky go batty a few days ago. Then we got to get out of the jungle and sail to the South Pacific. I guess we’ll need a diversion, so that’s my bit. But what about the rest, boss man? Already filled in the blanks?” Bacardi smiled. All of their spirits were brightened by her cavalier attitude.

  “I like your guts, dolce. Which is why I’m gonna ask you to be the one to set off a bomb in Yaviza. I totally could use a diversion and there’s nothing better than a hornet swirling Yavizan night club. After that, I got people. That’s why we’re going back there anyway. To get to the Pacific, we’ll need a boat. To get to the boat, we have backtrack to the Panama Canal. For both of those things we’re going to need to see Tito.”Cipriano caught his breath as Renee clapped a heavy hand between his shoulders.

  “Who knew stopping the Apocalypse could be this fun! Voya Yaviza!”

  Chapter 11:

  Marilyn sat in the back of Snake’s Jeep, looking to the ceiling. She had no idea what Nicky’s plans were. There was just a deep burning in her stomach that told her he’d come up with something and that she needed to trust him.

  If he had known that his plan would only thrust her deeper into the danger, he would never have dreamed of it.

  They were drawing near to the border of Panama. From there, they were going to fly a personal plane back to Washington. From last coordinates, Chief Riggs was supposed to still be in Mexico with the press trying to talk peace with Acapulco’s coast guard authorities and label the problem as a metastasis of local terror in Colorado spilling over into Mexico. He was in the perfectly available place to take a call from old friends. It was the stroke of divine favor that he’d been so close. Riggs had been in their corner since the beginning of this show.