by Blake Dixon
THE BLACK DIRECTIVE
A P.I. Jude Wyland Thriller
Blake Dixon
Contents
More by Blake Dixon
No matter where you run…
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Thanks for reading!
More by Blake Dixon
Thank you for picking up The Black Directive. Please join my mailing list to find out about the latest new releases from Blake Dixon, including further books in the P.I. Jude Wyland series.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Copyright © 2017 by Blake Dixon
All rights reserved.
Cover design by The Cover Collective
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
No matter where you run…
…they will find you. Always.
Three years ago, former black ops agent Jude Wyland got the hell out of the CIA. So far out, they could never find him. Or so he thought…
Today, the CIA deputy director is standing at his door with a mission he can’t refuse. One that dredges up the worst of his dark past and throws it in his face.
A little girl has been kidnapped. The demands have been set, the countdown begun. A group of ruthless mercenaries is involved in a twisted plot to buy the next election at any cost -- including a child’s life.
And the only way for Jude to stop them is working with the psychopath who killed his partner.
Chapter One
They called him Beast, because he never said no to a job. Even the fucked-up ones. A few years back, this whack job client wanted to hire someone to kill a guy mummy-style — while he was still alive. Cut him open and remove his internal organs, yank his brain out through his nose with a metal hook. Keep him screaming the whole time. And the client wanted it all on video. Some of the guys bet Beast he’d never do it.
He’d won that bet.
This new job almost rivaled live brain extracting in levels of screwed up, but it was a lot simpler. Kidnap a little girl from her bedroom. Bring her here, and do whatever the client said to her. So far the instructions had not been pleasant — and they’d only get worse. It was made clear that this kid was never going home.
Not too many people would take a job like this, especially knowing the outcome. Beast didn’t give a damn. Long as the check cleared, it wasn’t his problem.
The kid was in the next room right now, still bawling at full volume. Had been for hours. She had a set of lungs on her. Five years old, just as pretty as a picture. Well-spoken for such a young kid. And she did not like to follow directions.
He finished his beer, crumpled the can and tossed it on the floor. It was training time.
He grabbed his training materials on the way into the room.
“Let me go home!” the little girl shrieked as soon as he stepped through the door. “I want to go home, I want my mommy and daddy! You’re a bad man!”
“You’re right. I am,” he said cheerfully. The girl was sitting on a stained mattress, knees huddled to her chest, her wrists tied with rope. There was a wooden chair in front of the wall to the left of the mattress. He grabbed her around the waist and hauled her to the chair, ignoring the wild kicks from her small, bare feet, and plopped her down on the seat.
“Take me home!” the little girl cried. “Take me—”
“Shut up,” Beast growled, raising a muscled arm backhand-style.
She understood that. She shut up.
Beast knelt in front of her and took two more lengths of rope from his back pocket. “You kick me while I’m doing this, and I’ll break your legs,” he said. “You don’t need working legs to sit in that chair. Understand?”
Her still silence said she understood.
He tied her ankles one by one to the chair, drew a knife and cut the ropes from her wrists. “We’re going to play a little game now,” he said. “And we’re going to keep practicing until you get it right.” He pulled the rest of the materials over and set them beside the chair. “Pick that up,” he said.
The kid looked at them. Fresh tears coursed from her eyes. “I don’t want to play this game,” she said in a small, shaking voice.
“Pick it up. Now.”
It took her a minute, and she dropped it a few times. But she managed.
“Good. Now, hold it in front of you. Just like that.”
“Please.” The little girl started sobbing faster. “I don’t like this game.”
“Hold it and shut up.”
She did. For a very long, shaking minute.
“All right. You can let go.”
She dropped the materials with a wrenching cry. Snot ran from her nose now, mingling with her tears. “Please, I don’t want to play anymore!” she wailed.
“Shut. Up.”
This time her reaction was faster, her silence more complete. He was pleased.
“We have a message for your daddy,” Beast said with a sanguine grin. “And you’re going to send it, loud and clear.” He pointed to the materials. “Do it again.”
Trembling all over, the little girl did as she was told.
Chapter Two
Clover Perkins looked positively alarmed when Jude came out of the back office with a battered tackle box in one hand and his keys in the other. “You’re leaving us?” she said. “Mr. Wyland—”
“I told you, it’s Jude. Not mister anything. And yes, I’m headed out for a few hours,” he said, managing a slight smile as he closed the office door. It wasn’t really a smile kind of day, but sometimes he had to remind himself to do it anyway. To not scare the civilians. Because that’s what he was these days — one of them. “You two will be fine by yourselves.”
There was a minor crashing sound, followed by a muffled ‘ow!’ from the front of the shop near the live bait coolers. Dale Jones, the other half of Jude’s summer staff, popped up with a frown, rubbing his head. “Hold on, sir. You’re leaving us alone?”
“Jude,” he said firmly. “Not mister, definitely not sir.”
Dale shot a look at his worried co-worker. “But we’ve only been doing this for a week,” he said. “
What if something goes wrong?”
“We don’t want to get fired,” Clover chimed in. “I mean, there’s not exactly a lot of summer jobs around here, you know?”
Jude held back a smirk. Dale and Clover were good kids, far as he could tell from the short time he’d known them. They’d just finished their junior year of high school up in Sigma, the closest sizable town to this tiny bump in the road on the north end of Back Bay. Stone’s Throw, Virginia, population 350 or so, had exactly eight businesses. Most of them, including Jude’s bait shop, catered to the slightly savvier tourist and outdoor crowd who’d done their homework on the best bass fishing in this part of the country. And all of them had already wrapped up their summer hiring.
“You’ll be okay,” he finally said. “Look, the morning rush is over and it’s going to be slow here until dinner time. I won’t be gone that long. And I promise I won’t fire you.”
Clover looked sour. “Not even if Dale sets something on fire?”
“Come on, Clo. That was an accident, and it was in fourth grade,” Dale groaned. “Are you ever gonna drop it?”
“No, I’m not. I worked for hours on that birdhouse.”
“And it still looked like a pile of kindling,” Dale muttered.
“I heard that.”
“All right. I trust you both not to set anything on fire,” Jude said. “I’m leaving now.”
Dale raised an eyebrow. “Where are you going, anyway?”
“Where does it look like?” He hefted the tackle box.
“Oh. I didn’t know you fished.”
Jude shrugged. Truth be told, he was a lousy fisherman. Mostly he wanted to get out on the bay as far from everything as he could, drink a few beers, and forget for a few hours. Forget what happened exactly three years ago today — the brutal, pointless event that had signified the beginning of the end of his life.
Not something he talked about with the locals.
He hadn’t taken two steps when he remembered something important. “Forgot my hat,” he said, turning on a heel to head back into the office. And my gun, he didn’t say out loud. The Beretta went with his side job, but he also didn’t feel right unless he was carrying.
The door swung mostly closed behind him. He set the battered tackle box on the floor next to the equally battered desk, walked around to open the top drawer, and took out the holstered piece. As he strapped it in place and started looking for the stupid floppy hat that marked him as just another hobby fisherman, the muffled jingle of the bell over the front door reached him.
He heard Clover offer a cheerful, if slightly hesitant greeting. Then a voice — one that pinged a faint alarm in the corner of his mind — said, “I’m looking for a Neon Fire Fly.”
Goddamn it. That phrase meant someone was here for his other job, the one he didn’t advertise. Word of mouth already brought him more clients than he wanted. And that voice … well, he was pretty sure it belonged in the life before this one. To someone who never should have found him here.
With his hand on the gun, he moved across the small office and peered through the cracked-open door. Clover’s back was to him, but he had a clear view of the older man in the tailored suit by the front entrance, who clutched a slim briefcase in one hand and eyed the place with cold disdain as she told him she didn’t think they carried whatever he wanted, but she’d check with the boss.
Son of a bitch. It was him.
Jude sighed, took his grip from the weapon and stepped out to fix the man with a glare. “Hello, Ray,” he said. “If I told you to get the hell out of my store, what are the chances you’d listen?”
The man showed no expression. “Slim to none.”
“That’s what I thought.” Shaking his head, Jude stepped aside and held the office door open. “Come on, then,” he said. “But I’ll tell you right now, the answer’s no.”
“We’ll see.”
Without glancing at either of the stunned teens, the deputy executive director of the CIA crossed the shop toward him.
Chapter Three
Raymond Rubin let out a heavy sigh. “Christ, Wyland, is this really what you’re doing with yourself?” he said. “Selling worms?”
“Nightcrawlers, actually. Regular worms are for amateurs. I think.” Jude had closed the door and given the deputy director a chair on the wrong side of the desk, but hadn’t sat down himself. He wasn’t in the mood for pleasantries. “Tell me how you found me.”
“Why?”
“So I don’t make the same mistake next time.”
Ray smirked. “You damn well know it wasn’t easy. You made sure of that,” he said. “Tell you the truth, I got lucky. A friend of a friend happened to know a former client of yours.”
“Yeah? Which one?”
“Like I’d tell you.”
Of course he wouldn’t. Ray was almost as good at playing the game as he was. “Fine,” he said. “Tell me what you want, so I can turn you down and you can leave.”
Instead of answering, Ray scanned the small office with its sparse furnishings and stacks of old wooden crates. The only decoration in the room was a small wooden plaque on the wall behind the desk, a holdover from the previous owner of the shop, that read I Fish, Therefore I Lie. “Is this town really called Stone’s Throw?” he finally said. “Couldn’t find the damned place on a single map. I had to interrogate a bunch of old guys—”
“Ray,” he practically growled. “Get to the point.”
“All right.” His former boss set the briefcase he’d brought in on the desk, opened the clasps and looked at him. “We want to hire you. As a private investigator,” he said quickly, before Jude could point out that since hell hadn’t frozen over, there was no way he’d go back to the Agency. “Completely in an unofficial capacity.”
Jude watched him remove a thick manila envelope from the briefcase with more than a little misgiving. He’d become a licensed PI solely to help out a friend, and since then the clients he took on had been few and far between. The code phrase ‘Neon Fire Fly,’ a rare antique fishing lure that no one would ask for at a bait shop, was his only advertising — spread through trusted referrals, with the understanding that he took missing persons cases and nothing else. No process serving, no extramarital spying, no dirt-digging for court cases or political races.
He had a feeling Ray wanted that last one. Not happening.
“This is right in your wheelhouse,” Ray said, holding the envelope toward him.
Jude made no move to take it. “Tell me first, and I’ll think about looking.”
“It’s a missing person.”
“Who’s missing?”
Ray lowered the envelope slightly, and his gaze cut away for a second. Finally, he said, “Valerie Noakes.”
“Jesus.” Jude closed his eyes like he’d been punched — and the son of a bitch might as well have. He may live in the middle of nowhere, where the biggest news was the day’s fishing forecast, but everyone had heard the story. It’d been three days since five-year-old Valerie, the daughter of Virginia Beach County district attorney Gary Noakes, had vanished from her bedroom in the middle of the night. Shattered window, definite signs of a struggle. No ransom demands or notes from kidnappers.
The case was so much like what happened to his little sister Amy all those years ago that it hurt him to think about.
Ray damned well would’ve known that, too.
“You’re a bastard,” Jude snarled, snatching the envelope. “And I’m not working a pointless case that’s bound to end with a dead kid. If you don’t have something the media hasn’t reported, I’m shoving this file directly up your ass.”
“We do,” Ray said quietly. If the man felt like gloating, he didn’t show it. “No one knows about the ransom messages.”
Jude froze with his fingers on the envelope clasp. “So she was kidnapped, then. Not murdered.”
“Yes. And whoever it is, they’re very professional. Very … persuasive. And ugly as hell.” Ray looked into the distance. “An
yway, they aren’t asking for money,” he said. “They want Noakes to drop out of the race.”
“He’s going for governor?” Jude said.
Ray nodded. “So is Senator Bromwell. He’s on the list of suspects, for obvious reasons.”
Jude didn’t bother remarking on that. The CIA had investigated Sam Bromwell during his against-all-odds successful bid for the Senate, on suspicion of involvement with a nasty group of mercenaries known as the Black Strings. They’d never been able to prove a connection, but the investigation was ongoing.
It sickened him knowing how goddamned political this was going to be. A little girl’s life was on the line — and the only reason the CIA had gotten involved was for another chance to push Bromwell’s political self-destruct button.
Still, he’d take the case. Even though he was furious that Ray had known he would.
He dropped the envelope on the desk without opening it. “My fee is a hundred bucks an hour, plus expenses,” he said. “With a five thousand dollar retainer. And I’ll need access to all the Agency resources, plus everything you’ve got so far. I mean every damned thing, Ray. You hold anything back, and I’m out.”
Ray arched an eyebrow. “Is that all?”
