The Ivy Nash Thrillers: Books 4-6: Redemption Thriller Series 10-12 (Redemption Thriller Series Box Set)

by John W. Mefford

  Dammit, Ivy, just think if you hadn’t taken the case? What if you’d told Armand to leave without even hearing the name Petro Udovenko? Just because you don’t see it, doesn’t make it all go away. Zahera might be in grave danger, and no one would know a damn thing. Nick and Alex wouldn’t be on the hunt for more details. So cut yourself a break.

  Cristina snapped her fingers at me. “Are you still with us?”

  “I’m here. Just thinking through how we got here—not that it matters at this point. Look, we can’t undo everything that has happened. If I don’t hear from Nick by morning, I’ll track him down. One step at a time, right?” I took a seat on the edge of the bed. “Now, didn’t you say you had something to share on the fake-kidnapping investigation? Wait, what happened to Megan? I left her on the couch, still sleeping it off.”

  “She’s cool. I stopped by your place, and she’s actually sober. A little depressed, but watching TV, eating cold pizza.”

  “I forgot I had any left over. She could have heated it up.”

  “Said it reminded her of the good old days, when she was in college.”

  “The excessive drinking or the cold pizza?”

  “Probably both. By the way, Zorro was stuck to her like Velcro. I think his feline ways are helping her to relax and chill out; she didn’t seem like she had the same doom-and-gloom attitude.”

  I emptied my lungs, allowing my shoulders to slump just a tad. “We all need some of that.” I pointed at her laptop screen, then said, “You’ve got good news?”

  She clicked the laptop mouse three times, then waited.

  “What’s going on?”

  “I think my laptop froze.”

  “I don’t want the detail. Give me the headline.”

  She flipped around to look at me. “I have verbal confirmation that eight of the thirteen families have kids who are patients at Stonebrook Pediatric.”

  “Wow. That can’t be a coincidence.”

  “Do you think Stan and the SAPD have this information yet?”

  “Who knows? We need to share it with him. Maybe he’ll have something to toss our way.” My sights drifted to a brass lamp sitting on the desk. I guessed it was worth more than my entire bedroom set.

  “Do you want to bring that lamp home?” she asked.

  “What?” I asked, not able to connect the dots.

  “The lamp. You were staring at it as if you’d fallen in love with it. I could try to stuff it in my backpack.”

  “I know you’re kidding; probably not the right day to get a rise out of Z.”

  “True dat.”

  A single shake of my head.

  “What?”

  “You’re such a teenager, that’s what.”

  She patted the top of her laptop. “But I’m pretty resourceful, huh?”

  I got to my feet and motioned to the door. “Look, I need to go spend some more time with Zahera. I’ll try to set something up with Stan for the morning. Hoping I can get Nick to join in and just lay everything out.”

  “Wait, you want to discuss Armand’s past, the whole spy-seduction thing?”

  “Every bit of it.”

  “But now that national security is part of the case, Nick is taking his FBI role seriously. At least that’s what you told me.” She began to pack up her computer.

  “He’ll get over it. I’m tired of keeping everything in the shadows. I know we can’t put it on the evening news.”

  “Evening news? When does that come on?”

  I arched an eyebrow. “Am I really that old?”

  “You’re really that old.”

  I had nothing to add to that, so I started to open the door. But something in the back of my mind rushed to the forefront, and I turned back around. “By the way, how did you get all of the confidential information from those eight families?”

  She smiled.

  “Do I want to know?”

  “Well, at first I was having a tough time. Two families caught on to my story of being a life insurance agent.”

  “Life insurance? That was the best you could come up with?”

  “But I changed my story after that.”

  “To?”

  She smiled.

  I tilted my head.

  “I said I worked for Stonebrook Pediatrics.”

  “You did what?”

  “I said I was confirming their emergency contacts, as a matter of routine. They gave up their information in a heartbeat.” She giggled. “Is that what they call a pun?”

  I ignored her attempt to get out of it. “What if one of the families starts to ask questions, calls up the doctor’s office? That could alert this Lisa Klein person or whoever is involved in this conspiracy.”

  She twisted her lips. “I didn’t think that far ahead. Damn.”

  I had to remember she was only a kid trying to do an adult’s job. “It’s okay. You meant well.” I put my arm on her shoulder. “You’re not the only one exercising questionable judgment.”

  “I guess that helps.”

  I opened the door and yelped. “Damn, Z, you scared me.”

  Zahera had raised her fist, as if she were about to knock. Her lips were pursed. “Ivy, something has been gnawing at me all day. But every time it pops into my mind, it’s gone a second later when I’m overcome with grief and my thoughts go back to Dad and how he died.”

  I reached out and touched her arm. It was stiff, unbending. “That’s understandable.” Then, I looked into her eyes and saw a determination I hadn’t seen recently. “What’s on your mind?”

  “Why was Dad at your ECHO office?”

  I quickly felt my throat starting to shut.

  37

  Reading a facial expression isn’t as easy as it seems. Take Nick, for example. He was on the phone, pacing outside the front door of the ECHO office. I couldn’t read his mood—he’d perfected the poker face, likely a requirement for working as an FBI agent.

  “You think it’s good news or bad news?” Cristina asked, a hand near her mouth to muffle her volume.

  “It’s impossible to know, based on what I’m seeing.”

  Cristina’s voice blended in with the hum of the overhead light. My eyes drifted back to my laptop. The browser was open to the adoption registry web page that showed my real parents had yet to signal they wanted to meet me. While a positive response would have been a nice surprise, I wasn’t harping on that. Not now. Maybe later with Saul.

  My mind was spiraling with a myriad of thoughts about Zahera, her all-too-visible pain from the loss of her father, and, in particular, my role in accentuating that suffering. Last night at her place, she’d confronted me with the question I’d been dreading to hear. Time seemed to freeze as I replayed the previous twenty-four hours.

  After debating whether I should come clean and just share everything I knew, I’d decided that, for her best interest, I had to find a way to defer that discussion to a later date…when I had a better idea of whether a true threat existed from Zeke. I’d conducted several internal brainstorming sessions yesterday, in anticipation of her question, trying to find that balance between offering information that would allow her some moments of peace and trying not to dig my trench of deception any deeper.

  But after hours of toiling over what to say and how to say it, I’d realized I’d given myself an impossible task.

  So, when Zahera confronted me at the guest bedroom door with the question of why her father was at the ECHO office, my mind went blank—because it was blank. I had nothing packaged and ready to deliver, and I couldn’t just unload everything. All I could muster was, “Your dad was a wonderful man. Even on a night when he’d planned to meet some old military friends for a beer, he offered to help us out.”

  I’d somehow pieced together a sentence that made sense, but it only bought me a few extra seconds. Zahera looked at me and then Cristina, who didn’t move. After a couple of beats, her eye twitched. The ball was back in my court. “My car, remember?” I touched Cristina’s shoulder.


  “Yeah, right,” she said in a tone that seemed forced, at best.

  “She thinks everyone should just handle things on their own.” I smirked, leaning closer to Zahera, pretending that Cristina couldn’t hear me.

  Zahera maintained her stoic expression. “Kind of like you.”

  Okay, that went nowhere. And she has a point. “Anyway, Black Beauty had been sputtering on the ride to work. When your dad called wondering why you weren’t responding to his text messages, I mentioned that my car wasn’t running well. He insisted on coming to take a look at it before I tried driving home.”

  The stress marks at the edges of her eyes relaxed as she released a heavy breath. “He really had a soft side to him.” She began to turn and walk away, but I could see something, a thought or memory, sweep across her face. She stopped her movement. “If Stan said Dad was killed by a professional, then how did this hit man know that Dad would be at ECHO?”

  “If you ask me, whoever did this had been tracking your dad. For how long, who knows?”

  A slow nod, then she walked off. She had believed me. Then again, I actually believed me—if a professional was behind this deed, then Armand must have been followed.

  Still, though, the rest of my story was all vapor, a desperate, pitiful attempt to give Zahera a positive thought about her father, while allowing us extra time to figure out what was really going on. I then spent the entire night battling my inner-guilt demons while unable to drown out Megan’s snoring from the couch.

  Unlike my previous periods of falling into a trance, this time I wasn’t awakened by the snap of Cristina’s fingers. It felt like someone had turned up the volume on my invisible pair of earbuds. She was still talking, which meant my lack of attentiveness hadn’t been noticed.

  “Can you believe this? It’s like we’re looking at a toddler.” Cristina snorted out a laugh. “Nick’s so involved in his conversation that he’s swatting at the sunrise shining in his face like it’s a gnat.”

  I caught just enough of a glimpse of Nick’s act to smile before he finally turned away from the eastern sun, pocketed his phone, and walked back into the office. “It’s already a hundred degrees out there. Damn,” he said, rubbing his forehead with the back of his hand. “I think I’m going to wash off my face, cool down a bit.”

  As if on cue, we heard the flush of the toilet. Nick pointed toward the back. “That’s got to be Stan?”

  Cristina and I nodded. “I guess I’ll pass on going to the restroom.”

  “By the way,” Cristina said, holding up her phone, “it’s only eighty-four degrees.”

  “I’m sure he needed that clarification, Cristina. Can you get him some water?”

  Another flush of the toilet.

  “Wow,” Nick said, glancing toward the back.

  “I got you covered, Nick,” Cristina said, jumping out of her seat.

  “Much appreciated. Thanks.”

  She zipped around Nick and nearly ran into Stan at the threshold to the meeting room. “Whoa, there.” He was cleaning his sunglasses with a piece of toilet paper.

  Cristina covered her mouth but couldn’t hide her laughter.

  “What? Can’t a man have five minutes of peace?”

  I jumped in. “Are you feeling okay, Stan?”

  “Sure.” He pocketed his glasses, then cinched up his trousers.

  How many times had I seen him do that? Too many to count.

  “Your metabolism. It’s a lot faster now, isn’t it?” Nick asked, hands at his waist.

  “How’d you guess?”

  He saw three blank stares.

  “Oh, right, the toilet.” He offered a single chuckle. “Bev found this awesome recipe for a vegetable smoothie.”

  I stood up. “Shut up. You had a drink full of vegetables?”

  “Kale and a whole bunch of other shit that’s good for you. Gotta admit, it does feel like it’s cleaning out my system.”

  A snort from Cristina.

  Stan glanced at her with a look of annoyance, then back to me and Nick. “Ever since you guys were at the house and gave me the pep talk, cleaned out our fridge, Bev has been on a mission. She’s really into this get-healthy craze. If you happened to notice, I didn’t need either one of you this morning to push me to do my morning cardio workout.”

  Nick and I traded a quick glance, as Stan pulled up a chair near the desk. “We’re proud of you, Stan,” I said.

  “Thanks.” He pulled a notepad from his pocket. “Not sure Bev and I will be able to work out together like that very often. Seems like every time we leave Ethan at the house, even if for just a few minutes, he gets upset. And then it takes a while to calm him down.”

  Damn, that had to be tough, not only on the child, but his parents. I lightly bumped his shoulder with my fist. “We can help out on that front too, you know. I have experience with all types of kids.”

  “We’ll see.” He sat down.

  38

  With Stan and Nick both finally in my grasp, I wasn’t going to waste another minute. “Who wants to go first?” I asked, looking at the Radowski cousins.

  They both exhaled, but Nick’s was more prolonged, so I started with him. “What have you learned from Alex?”

  He cleared his throat as if he were biding time.

  “I figured you told Stan about Zeke and Armand and all of this crazy—”

  “James Bond shit,” Cristina finished for me.

  “Yeah, that.”

  “I told him,” Nick said.

  Stan was chugging from his bottle of water so fast it dribbled off his chin. He used his sleeve to wipe his mouth. “Yeah, he told me. Why does it seem like I’m the last one to find out, when I should be the first to find out?”

  I opened my mouth, but he held up his water. “Don’t answer that. I don’t want to hear it. But I’ll tell you something I just learned on the investigation into Armand’s death.”

  “Are we saying that his death is definitely linked to Zeke somehow?” I asked.

  “Too early to tell,” Nick said, looking at his cousin.

  “Cops found what we believe to be the vehicle that killed Armand, and—”

  “Did you lift the prints? Have you picked them up?” Cristina said faster than I could comprehend Stan’s words.

  “Uh, no. They found it in a junkyard. It had been torched on the inside and was in the process of being crushed into a tin can.”

  “Any record of someone dropping it off?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “Just left there overnight. And no cameras either. Whoever committed this crime has done this kind of thing before.”

  I strummed my fingers. Before I could process my next question, Stan chimed back in. “So when Nick said he filled me in, that means he told me everything.” His beady eyes went to Cristina and then to me. “Well, at least everything that you told him. There might be more, right?”

  “What the hell does that mean?” My defenses were quick and stabbing. A night of no sleep and watching your best friend’s soul get crushed will do that to you.

  “Look, I know Armand put you in a tough spot,” Stan said.

  I could feel my pulse peppering my neck. “You think?”

  “But you could have come to me.”

  “How were you going to help me find a connection between Zeke and an international drug dealer?”

  “I couldn’t, but I know people. Dammit, Ivy, I thought you trusted me.”

  “I thought you trusted me.” Each retort increased in volume and intensity.

  Cristina put her hand on my arm. She’s lucky I didn’t bite it.

  “Hey, guys.” Nick scooted to the edge of his chair, holding up both hands like a boxing referee. “Is it really a trust issue here? Stan, Ivy was just trying to do what was right for her friend. She was in a no-win situation.”

  “Thank you,” I said, smacking my hand off the desk for a little extra emphasis.

  Nick turned to me. “Ivy, Stan’s got a point.”

  I gave
Stan a tight smile. Emotion moved up the back of my throat. I swallowed and said, “I never really thought there was inherent danger, at least not immediate danger, and not here on the streets of San Antonio.” I put my hand to my cheek. “Does that make me responsible for—?”

  “Don’t blame yourself for what happened to Armand,” Nick quickly interjected. “You had nothing to do with it, okay? You’d already told me about Armand and his past transgressions. If anyone could do anything about this Zeke connection, it was me.”

  “That’s what we’ve been waiting to hear.” Cristina set her water bottle on the desk. “So, what do you have for us? Because we’re pretty much at that place where the rubber meets the road, the shit is about to blow into the fan…whatever cliché you want to use. Our friend is suffering. We’re hiding all of this from her, and every minute that goes by makes us feel like Winston Arnold.”

  We all turned our heads to Cristina.

  “What? I’m tired of dancing around.”

  “Did you mean Benedict Arnold?”

  “Yeah, whatever. I’m not so good at history.”

  I tapped the top of her knee and looked over at Nick. In fact, we were all looking at Nick. He scratched the back of his head, then let out an exasperated sigh.

  “Ball’s in your court, cuz,” Stan said, leaning back in his chair.

  Nick pulled a small package from his pocket, then unwrapped a stick of gum and folded it into his mouth. “Oh, does anyone else want one?”

  “Don’t mind if I do.” Stan plucked one from the package.

  I found myself strumming my fingernails on the desk again. Nick’s eyes went there. “Enough delays,” he said, clearing his throat. “I have to remind everyone how confidential this information is. If it gets out that I shared this with you, then I’ll be fired and possibly brought up on charges.”

  “Nick, you can trust us,” I said, turning to my right. “Right, Cristina?”

  Cristina stood up, raised her hand, saying “I swear to tell the truth. The whole truth, so help me—”

  “She’s being sassy, Nick, but she won’t say anything. She’s got more secrets than most of us.”