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

by John W. Mefford

  Before I could respond, Nick called out through the phone, “The signal stopped.”

  “Where?” Stan asked.

  “Just on the other side of Sabinal. Two miles tops.”

  I saw Nick reach on top of the car and pull down the flashing light. We slowed our speeds to a normal level as we reached Sabinal.

  “How are we going to play this?” Zeke yelled out so Nick and Stan could hear.

  “I don’t want to get my hopes up. They could be playing another trick on us,” Stan said.

  “Stan, how can they actually know we’re right on their tail?” I asked.

  Nick spoke. “True. They may not have any idea.”

  “Have to assume they are aware,” Zeke said. “Do you guys have a plan?”

  “Depends on what we find. But whatever it is, I’m going to get my son back—alive.”

  Voices went silent for a solid minute. Now wasn’t the time to preach to Stan about following protocol or playing it safe. He was desperate and willing to die or kill for his son. We had to do everything possible to keep anyone from dying.

  Nick led us off Highway 90. We took Ranch Road 2730 north, a little two-lane road that had no shoulder. I saw a few oil derricks sprinkled across the distant landscape. Two or three miles later, just beyond a cluster of trees, we followed the Impala as it turned left onto a dirt road. We went no more than a hundred yards and were stopped by a closed metal gate. Nick hopped out and found the gate only closed by a simple hook. He unhooked it, pushed the gate open.

  We drove cautiously forward. The dirt road was narrow, with countless potholes and tree stumps along the snake-like path. At the top of ridge, I saw the Impala brake lights flash. Stan and Nick got out of the car, and we pulled up next to them. In a small, dusty valley, there was a white van parked just outside of an old mobile home. No way that could be the medical facility Zeke had mentioned.

  “What’s the plan?” Zeke asked, pulling out his small pistol as he stepped out of the truck.

  Stan and Nick glanced in his direction, but neither told him to put the gun away. In fact, neither had said a word about his bloody shoulder or asked what had happened back at the River Walk. I knew why. Right now, the only thing that mattered was getting to Ethan. “I’m not waiting on umpteen cars of cops and FBI agents,” Stan said.

  Nick, who was chomping on a wad of gum, looked at each of us, then sighed. “But we want him out safe, Stan. Negotiating our way out of this is the best path.”

  “I’m not going to play their game for the next forty-eight hours.” He pushed up and started walking straight for the mobile home.

  “Stan,” Nick said in a loud, irritated whisper.

  Stan kept walking. We had no choice but to catch up.

  Zeke began to peel off to the right, but stopped when he saw me moving in Stan’s direction. That stare again. “Ivy, you shouldn’t be here. Get back to the car.” He looked to Stan and Nick for support, but they had all eyes focused on the mobile home. I shrugged and kept moving, falling in behind Nick, the person I deemed the most stable at this point.

  All three had their guns drawn as we moved to within about twenty feet of the mobile home, all of us walking like we were crossing a mine field. Zeke disappeared off to the right of us. I noticed an oil derrick in the background.

  Stan moved forward and peeked through a window, then turned to us and held up three fingers. I guessed that meant there were three perpetrators inside. Or was it two plus Ethan? I didn’t ask.

  Nick moved against the side of the mobile home on the opposite side of the door from Stan. I was next to Nick. There were three stairs leading up to the door. Stan peeked through the window one more time. Again, he held up three fingers—amazing how he could hold a gun in his prosthesis. He switched it back to his left hand after he held up his fingers. He scooted closer to the front door, his gun raised.

  Was he going to just crash the door in and take them by surprise?

  This didn’t seem right. Shots would be fired. Someone would get hurt. The bad guys? Maybe. But what about Ethan, or even Stan? I wanted to reach out, tell him to stop, to hold off and wait. But he inched closer to the door. Nick now followed suit from his side of the door, and I was a mere two feet behind him. I could feel my heart at the back of my throat.

  Stan nodded, and then Nick began to count down with his hand. Five, then four, then three…

  The door swung open, and a thin guy with a little scruff on his chin appeared at the threshold, looking out straight ahead.

  He hadn’t seen us.

  Just as he began to turn his head in our direction, Nick reached up and grabbed his arm and yanked him down the stairs onto the dirt. Stan raced inside.

  I jumped on top of the guy on the dirt. I didn’t see a weapon. I said to Nick. “I got him.”

  He turned and ran into the mobile home. The guy tried to push me off of him, but I kneed his kidney and he grunted, falling back to the dirt.

  A gunshot pierced the air. I flinched. Was Stan okay? What about Ethan? “Stay here or I’ll shoot you,” I said to the guy on the ground. I jumped up, ran to the stairs. Before I got to the door, Stan walked out. He was holding Ethan, who was wrapped in a blanket.

  “Is he okay?”

  Stan nodded. Just behind him, Nick held the arm of another man. He was young, probably not legal to drink. “Who got shot?” I asked Nick as he walked the guy down the steps and ordered him to lie face down on the ground. He turned to me. “No one.”

  Stan walked up. “Nick saved Ethan’s life. A figure came at me with the blanket curled around him. I thought it was one of the kidnappers. I almost shot my own son until Nick pulled my arm down.” He began to cry.

  I put my hand on his back. Ethan had his arms wrapped tightly around his dad’s neck.

  “We’ve got one more here.” I turned to see Zeke walking a woman around the corner. “She tried to escape through the bottom escape hatch.”

  He put her next to the other two guys. I flipped around and asked Nick, “Did you ever figure out where the GPS chip was?”

  “No clue,” he said.

  “It’s here.” Ethan opened his mouth. I saw something silver on the end of his tongue.

  Stan gasped. “How did you know…?”

  “I heard you and Mom talking; you were getting worried. I know all about GPS signals. I knew it was in my shoe all along.”

  Stan let Ethan stand on his own, still wrapped in a blanket. Stan took the chip in his hand. “When did you hide the chip?”

  “I heard them talking about technology. Some of it I understood. They had all of this equipment and I thought they might find the chip, so I took it out of my shoe when they weren’t watching. Later, they made me take off all my clothes and throw them out of the van.”

  “They didn’t touch you?”

  “No sir,” Ethan said. “They only talked about how to get more money—from you, Dad, and from other people. They kept talking about kids with autism. It was kind of scary.”

  While Stan and Nick hugged Ethan, Zeke held a gun on the three kidnappers.

  “I can’t breathe, Uncle Nick.”

  They let go, then Nick said. “Where did you get the idea of putting the chip in your mouth?”

  “I heard Mom and Dad talking about playing tonsil hockey.”

  The three of us just stood there, expressionless.

  Ethan continued, looking directly at his father. “That gave me the idea. Is that how you play tonsil hockey with Mom?”

  We all cracked up as Stan brought his son in close and kissed the top of his head.

  Zeke pulled up next to me, his gun still pointing at the three people on the ground. His other hand was tapping his phone screen. “Yao isn’t answering his phone.”

  “Have you tried Z?” I asked.

  “She’s not answering either. But they could have left so abruptly that she didn’t have time to grab her phone.”

  Zeke asked Nick to take over watching the three kidnappers. “I have t
o get to the safe house and make sure she’s okay.” He started walking away.

  “I can get a unit there in ten minutes, Zeke. Just tell me where it is,” Stan said.

  Zeke turned around, looked at Stan, then the kidnappers. “Sorry. I can’t share that information. I’ll let you know once we’re all safe.”

  He jogged off, and I was just a couple of paces behind him.

  58

  On the ride back into San Antonio, as Zeke drove like a bat out of hell, Nick called to tell me that the kidnappers were terrified at what had gone down. The two males had actually started crying, asking if they could call their parents. They had eagerly shared everything they knew.

  They were the group of hackers who were responsible for the fake kidnappings. I asked why, then, had they kidnapped Ethan.

  The answer was they got their orders from Carlos Espinoza.

  “He’s the mastermind behind this entire thing? But why would he care about trying to do research for autism?”

  “According to them, he doesn’t,” Nick said. “They said Carlos only knows about them because of his connection to the Klein sisters.”

  “How did he come across them?”

  “Nancy Klein told this woman here that Carlos had delivered a package to her apartment and it was love at first sight. Eventually, she shared with him what she was involved in, this group of hackers extorting money from unsuspecting parents.”

  A quick thought pinged my aching head. Carlos must have gone home before I’d arrived there, seen evidence that someone had been there with the sliced mattress and stolen note, and then found that his precious porn photos weren’t there. He had to have known that Megan was my client. Maybe he found out the cops were looking for Nancy and got pissed. Stan’s son might have been on Nancy’s radar because of his autism.

  I said, “So Carlos ordered them to kidnap Stan’s son because he believed someone was getting close to catching him.”

  “Yep. Said he’d give them fifty grand on top of the money they got in the ransom. But they admitted they didn’t really know what they were doing. They’re hackers, not kidnappers.”

  “And by kidnapping Stan’s son, what would that buy Carlos?” I asked.

  “The girl here thinks it was nothing more than a power trip. She called him a Scarface-wannabe. He didn’t really think it through.”

  “But these people fake-kidnapped Carlos’s own daughter, terrorized his wife. Why would he—”

  “Apparently, Carlos despised his wife so much he wanted her to suffer. Through his connection with the Klein sisters, he got that hacking group to target his wife.”

  I knew Megan had issues, but it was hard to fathom how vicious and callous Carlos had been to his own wife, the mother of his children. “So what about this medical lab, where someone is running some type of test on kids with autism?”

  “They claim they know nothing about it. They communicate with an email address that they say is untraceable. They share part of their proceeds from the ransoms they get from the fake kidnappings with the person on the other end of that email address.”

  “That’s it? We don’t know who’s behind this damn thing?”

  “Nope. But at least we saved Ethan and stopped these fake kidnappings. And with the FBI fully focused on his case, I’m sure we’ll be able to find the ringleader. Maybe Zeke has additional information he can share as well.”

  I looked at Zeke as we turned into an upscale neighborhood of older model homes. His mind was on Zahera. At least I assumed it was.

  I hung up with Nick as Zeke slowed to a regular speed. Our pickup didn’t fit in with this neighborhood. Old money. The homes were all unique, different sizes and shapes and colors; the lawns were green, glistening from the rain that had ended. We passed a number of walkers, a few older folks, some families using baby joggers. The neighborhood was as close to Utopia as you could find in San Antonio.

  Zeke didn’t utter a word until he pulled into a long driveway. I could see a small sports car near the back of the house by a detached garage. “That’s Yao’s car.” Zeke made another attempt to call his old buddy. It rolled to voicemail.

  I followed him as he walked up on the covered porch. It was a smaller home, blue and gray siding with navy blue shutters. It was quaint, but maybe the most unassuming home in the neighborhood. I wanted to ask Zeke who owned the home and all the other details about how he operated in this other life of his. That could wait until later, once we knew Zahera was safe.

  He put his hand on the door and slowly turned the knob. It wasn’t locked. “Not good,” Zeke whispered as he pulled out his gun.

  Three steps into the house and we could see it had been tossed. Lamps shattered on the floor, furniture tumbled over. Zeke ran through a living room and dining room, then stopped at the kitchen. I was right behind him. We saw the body on the floor. I closed my eyes for a second.

  It was Yao. He had what looked like a gunshot wound to his forehead.

  “Dammit all to hell.” Zeke leaned over, checked his pulse. He looked up and shook his head. “It’s me, dammit. I’m the reason Yao was killed. I’m a magnet to those maggots.” He stood up, still staring at Yao.

  “Who did this? Udovenko? Someone who works for him?”

  Zeke’s eyes had that thousand-yard stare. He was someplace else.

  My heart began to race. “Where is Zahera? Did the person who killed Yao take her?”

  “I doubt it. I think Yao probably saved her life.” He ran out of the kitchen and into the living room, stopping at the fireplace. It had one of those fancy iron gates covering the opening. He began to unscrew a bolt in the upper left-hand corner. I stepped forward and quickly did the same with the other screws as Zeke stepped back.

  I shouted, “Z, are you in there?”

  I heard a knock on the iron wall. It had to be her. I moved even faster on the last screw, then pulled the iron wall away.

  Zahera was trembling, her knees tucked under her chin. She was still in her robe, although it was covered with black soot and grime. I reached out for her, pulled her out. She hugged me with everything she had.

  “I think someone else might want to hug you.” I turned around and Zeke wasn’t there. The front door was ajar.

  I stood up, then noticed a crumpled envelope on a table. I picked it up and read the front. My dearest Zahera.

  I handed it to her. We read the note together, me looking over her shoulder. It was what I would have expected. Short and, yes, even sweet. But it didn’t explain his other life. And I didn’t bother adding what I’d witnessed at the River Walk. Maybe later. She cried, and I cried with her.

  Later, after I’d called Stan, cops showed up in droves. So did Nick. He kept their questioning to a minimum. After a couple of hours, he escorted us to Zahera’s place.

  There, I unloaded everything to Zahera that I’d kept bottled up inside. In some respects, she was crushed all over again. Slowly, over hours of questions and periods of silence, she understood the dilemma I had been put in. “You had no choice, Ivy. My father played the ultimate guilt card.”

  She said it was obvious that my intention—trying to keep her out of harm’s way—was the truest form of friendship and love. We made our peace and cried more tears, for love lost by death, for love lost by choice. “Someone else’s choice,” she reminded me with a typical Zahera eye roll. We shared a few laughs and pledged to always be transparent in our friendship.

  59

  Zeke lifted his eyes to the mirror and checked out his new look: a thin beard the color of honey, which matched his new hair color on his head. He’d used a wig previously, but that didn’t fit his new persona. He pulled a passport from his sports coat and compared the photo to what he was seeing in the mirror. A perfect match. He made sure his new driver’s license matched the name on his passport. He was ready to go.

  “Tank, you’re the best,” he said to himself.

  He pulled two pictures out of his pocket. He stared at Zahera, who was modeling one of h
er ultra-sexy dresses. It was a silver number with a slit up the side. Those legs are amazing, he thought. A smile came to his face. He had finally admitted to himself that he cared for Zahera far more than he thought he would. Far more than he should. On a couple of occasions, he’d felt a tingle inside and wondered if he was falling in love with her.

  He released a deep sigh. He hated hurting her. But it was necessary to create this fake life so he could focus his efforts on working his way inside Udovenko’s operation, trying to learn the truth about their new trafficking operation, and gaining the seed money he needed to get his family to a new location where they would always be safe. He was pained by the fact that he wasn’t able to find out who was behind the medical lab that was using autistic children as test monkeys and then discarding the spare parts like they were broken electronic devices. It sickened him, in fact. But he knew the FBI would be all over it. They would figure out who was at center of this, eventually.

  He wanted to put this scene behind him. Actually, it was more than that. It was his entire way of life that needed to change.

  But could he flip a switch and transform just like that?

  He looked at the other picture. His son and daughter were playing in the sand on the beach. Damn, they were the cutest. Those heartstrings were made of steel. Nothing could break them.

  He tore up both pictures and tossed them in the trash. Then he walked out of the bathroom of the President’s Club and headed toward his gate. If all went as planned, he would hook up with his family in about twenty-two hours.

  On the flight, he thought about his kids and all the great times they would have. But he couldn’t convince himself that he would be satisfied living a normal life, working a nine-to-five job, staring at a cubicle wall for inspiration.

  There were too many bad people out there. He knew one day Tank would rise up and call to him. He’d be forced to make a decision then. Would he live his life solely for his two kids, or would he feel that urge to do something for the greater good of society?

  He didn’t know that answer. He simply stared out the first-class window and took in the view as the sun sprayed rays of orange and purple across the vast sky. It brought him a moment of peace. One of the few he’d felt in the last twenty years.