“Nothing like that, Justin. Henry is taking me to… are you ready for it? Hawaii!”
Cindy and Alisa giggled liked frenzied eighth-graders, while the other woman in our presence, Maggie, simply smiled, her response subdued.
“Congrats,” Josh said, shaking Henry’s hand like it was an engagement announcement.
“What island?” I asked.
“Start off on Oahu. Apparently, Cindy’s a big Five-O fan.”
“Ah,” I said.
“Then, we’re off to Maui. It’s a dream vacation.”
Cindy leaned in and squeezed Henry so hard his eyes bulged.
“I’ve decided to not sell The Jewel,” Justin blurted out.
Outside of Samantha engaged in a quiet conversation with Dax and the orchestra playing behind us, our space turned quiet instantly.
“Justin, I’m a big boy. I can find another office.”
“No, it’s not that, or even Alisa’s job, not all of it anyway. It’s hit me in the last few weeks. The Jewel is part of me. I’m connected to it, the people who visit—”
“The people who spend money,” I said, jabbing his side.
“That helps too,” Justin said with a grin. “I enjoy working this other side of my brain. I’m learning a lot from David, as a chef so to speak.”
“Yummy, my fajita is the best, Uncle J,” Samantha said with a full mouth.
Alisa walked up and gave Justin a hug.
“There is one thing, though. To allow me to juggle things between both businesses, Dax here is going to fill in for me at the bar when I can’t be there.”
Alisa and I traded shocked stares. “Okay…” Alisa said, obviously processing how she’d handle taking orders from Dax.
I said, “It will work out. Glad you came around, Justin. I never wanted to get into the bar business anyway.”
“Oh, were you interested in throwing in some cash, becoming a partner? Maybe you want to partner in our food truck business?” Justin asked, always the salesman.
Maggie raised a hand. “I’ve got a good recipe for a Cubano sandwich.”
I held out my hands, just as Samantha swirled around me, then took off running and giggling with endless energy.
“I think our PI business will keep me more than busy. On top of that, I don’t want to wake up and see Samantha walking out the door on her first date. When she’s twenty-five, of course.”
Everyone laughed, while Maggie sidled up next to me.
“Cherish every minute, Booker.” She patted my back.
I’d already taken Maggie’s advice.
ALSO BY JOHN W. MEFFORD
Redemption Thriller Series
The Alex Troutt Thrillers
AT Bay (Book 1)
AT Large (Book 2)
AT Once (Book 3)
AT Dawn (Book 4)
AT Dusk (Book 5)
AT Last (Book 6)
The Ivy Nash Thrillers
IN Defiance (Book 7)
IN Pursuit (Book 8)
IN Doubt (Book 9)
Break IN (Book 10)
IN Control (Book 11)
IN The End (Book 12)
The Ozzie Novak Thrillers
ON Edge (Book 13)
Game ON (Book 14)
ON The Rocks (Book 15)
Shame ON You (Book 16)
ON Fire (Book 17)
ON The Run (Book 18)
Other Thriller Series
The Booker Series
BOOKER – Streets of Mayhem (Volume 1)
BOOKER – Tap That (Volume 2)
BOILERMAKER – A Lt. Jack Daniels / Booker Mystery (Volume 2.5)
BOOKER – Hate City (Volume 3)
BOOKER – Blood Ring (Volume 4)
BOOKER – No Más (Volume 5)
BOOKER – Dead Heat (Volume 6)
The Greed Series
FATAL GREED (Greed Series #1)
LETHAL GREED (Greed Series #2)
WICKED GREED (Greed Series #3)
GREED MANIFESTO (Greed Series #4)
Next In The BOOKER Series
The second BOOKER Box Set (Books 4-6) is full of nail-biting suspense and includes a “cast of wild, edgy characters and far-out action.”
Blood Ring:
Her dimpled smile and alluring gaze wouldn’t work this time. Neither would her charm, curves, and effervescent youth--qualities that had always kept her moving in all the right circles. The high life.
Not this time. This time was terrifyingly different.
Shackled by her own regrets and the hell delivered by her captors, she struggles to find a sliver of hope where there is none. Time ticks . . .
Having made a name for himself in just a few short months as a Dallas PI, Booker T. Adams yanks the brake on everything once the sister of his business partner and friend, Alisa Lopes, goes missing.
For Alisa. For the grieving family. For every girl plucked off the street never to be heard from again. It has to stop. Today. In Dallas. Booker will either succeed or die trying. And so will countless others.
No Más:
No more deception.
Brought to the Caribbean island of Dominican Republic on the premise that he could finally close the chapter on the darkest moment of his life—and rid the world of a cold-blooded killer—Booker T. Adams instantly finds a far different scene. Set against the backdrop of a city consumed by the rising fear of terrorism and a brutal drug lord, a woman, seemingly with two lives and even two faces, uses her hypnotic charm to get what she wants, sending Booker on a mission to rescue a teenage boy held hostage.
No more lies.
Befriended by a fired cop and a homeless kid with nothing to live for, Booker struggles to understand fact versus fiction, while staving off wild bores, snakes, terrorist traps, and a past that has haunted him for almost thirty years.
No more killing.
The all-powerful rule with brute force, killing women and children like they’re swatting flies. It’s a savagery that Booker can’t comprehend, let alone defeat. With the smell of death stuffed down his throat, the man with everything to lose puts everything on the line—because he can stand…
No more.
Dead Heat:
A new breed of killer has hit Dallas. The victims? They bleed blue. And the brotherhood is calling in the cavalry: one Booker T. Adams, PI.
Excommunicated from the Dallas Police Department for refusing to overlook conduct unbefitting an officer, Booker has every reason to slam the door shut when the chief pleads for his assistance. But Booker can’t turn his back on the community he’s always felt drawn to protect, even if it means getting in bed with someone who tried to ruin his life.
As pandemonium floods the city from the inside out, Booker chases an invisible plague. He can’t stop what he can’t see. And then the unthinkable happens. Another killing…and this one guts him.
Driven by an eternal camaraderie he’d once shared with his long-time partner, Booker shifts into overdrive to end this sinister game, some sort of sick vigilante justice.
A vengeful fury of his own takes hold. And the damned can hear him coming.
An excerpt is just below for the BOOKER Box Set #2:
Excerpt from BOOKER – Blood Ring (Book 4)
1
The putrid stench of raw sewage shot bile into the back of her throat. She hardly noticed.
Her lanky arms chugged harder than they had in years as a warm mist sprayed her freckled face and bare shoulders. Lime green sandals clipped and shuffled along the pavement on Shorecrest Drive, her left shoe flapping against her oversized foot.
She paused for a quick moment, then reached down, ripped the leather strap from her left ankle, and kicked off the other sandal. Flipping her eyes over her shoulder, the two-lane paved road behind her was barren, a buzzing streetlight funneling into a black vacuum.
She still had hope.
Three quick steps, and she was back at full speed. Realizing she still held a broken sandal, she tossed the shoe toward the lake that
bordered the road just beyond a patch of dirt and grass. She’d once partied like her life depended on it on the other side of Bachman Lake, up and down Northwest Highway.
Now she ran like her life depended on it. It did.
Squinting into the thin sheen of rain, her green eyes only saw a haze of motionless lights in the distance—her glasses had been crushed days ago, and a blanket of fog had engulfed Dallas in the middle of a still night.
What night is it?
With her legs and arms motoring as fast as she could pump them, she felt like the only person on the planet. Panting breaths poured from her lungs, the pattering of her bare feet against wet pavement offsetting the rapid-fire thud of her overworked heart. Not a single other noise.
Had the world ended while she’d been held captive?
A jagged shadow cut across her path, firing a jolt of electricity into the stem of her skull. Jerking her body away from the absence of light to escape the unknown assailant, she threw up a defensive arm. Her unblinking eyes cast a frightened gaze and found a barbed wire fence with metal poles mounted at least twenty feet off the ground, red lights blinking against the sky—nothing more than a gray moat.
Slowly, her pulse retreated to a level her body could actually sustain without exploding. Now just in a jog as she glared at the razor-sharp spikes at the top of the fence, her neurotransmitters punched through the mental haze. Then it hit her—she was staring at the northern border of Love Field Airport. That’s why it seemed too eerily quiet. The fog had grounded the planes.
Pissed at herself for wasting so much energy on an inanimate object, her knees propelled her body forward. Within seconds, her lungs couldn’t take in enough oxygen and her head became woozy. It felt like she’d run a 10K, but she knew she’d covered no more than a few hundred yards.
The exercise to escape the hellhole only seemed to saturate her bloodstream with more heroin. She’d tried her best to not inject each lethal dose she’d been forced to give herself the last few days, but the puncture wounds on her arm didn’t get there by magic—at least a small amount of the toxic drug had infiltrated her system.
Wafts of feces still lingered in the air, but not as strong as before. She picked up another foul odor, possibly dead fish hitting the shore of the polluted lake. Her stomach did flips, a result of too much poison pumping through her veins and not enough food over the course of at least a week. But with no access to windows or fresh air of any kind, days and nights had merged together, her swirling, drug-induced mind trying to make sense of what had happened since she’d been plucked off the street.
Amidst her panicked attempts to feed her depraved muscles more fuel, images flashed into her frontal lobe. In her current state, she couldn’t determine if they were hallucinations, agonizing nightmares. While her resolve had always been strong—almost to the point of pissing off everyone she’d become close to—she questioned whether she should have been able to fight off all the advances back in the basement. Without surrendering her thoughts to a detailed replay, as spotty as it might be, she knew she’d been violated. She’d prepared herself for that…the moment she looked in his eyes. Eyes of degeneracy. Eyes of domination.
But she thought she recalled even worse actions. Or were they just threats? Dammit! Something told her to look at her nails. She did, and they still looked the same, chewed up with chipped silver paint. Wait. Was that the moment she figured out how to escape? While they tended to another hostage, she’d shoved a finger down her throat, puked all over the floor, the chair, and herself, which delayed their promise to yank her nails off her hand and allowed her to skip the last dose of heroin for the night. The vomit must be part of the odor she continued to smell. Later, after the house went quiet and her restraints were already loosened from her regurgitation exercise, she found an open window on the first floor, slipping through until her thin frame landed on dirt. She didn’t look back.
There was no way in hell she’d allow herself to return to that house of torture, or anywhere near that demented psychopath. She’d rather slit her wrists than let that heathen… Wait. Another image. His tongue, a disgusting serpent-like appendage, bright pink, coated with a gel-like film. It had a mind all its own, slinking against her skin.
Releasing a grunt, she blinked away the image before it went to the point of no return. She’d deal with the post-traumatic stress crap later. Now it was all about finding someone to call the police, finding safety, then maybe back to her parents’ home, the only place she’d truly felt safe.
A bridge appeared out of the soupy fog just as the road seemed to bend right. She noticed a fast-food restaurant glowing on the other side, orange and white. Must be open twenty-four hours, she thought.
Audible breaths escaped through her thin lips, and she surged even faster, the bridge less than a hundred feet away—not soon enough. Instantly, her legs felt like hundred-pound steel tire boots had just been strapped to her feet. Her calves had locked up.
Fuck!
Glancing down, she willed her legs forward.
“Move, dammit!”
But the more she pressed, the tighter her muscles got, her shins feeling like they were dragging two cinder blocks, her toes unable to push off.
She cried out and sputtered along a few more steps. Then she paused and rubbed her calves with both hands, tying to knead the muscles, hoping they’d somehow revert to their normal, pliable existence. No response from the muscles, none. The pain was unbearable, as if the muscle was curling into a tiny snail while a hammer—the pavement—pounded on it with each step. She adjusted and tried to run stiff-legged. Frankenstein came to mind. Releasing a loud gasp, her breathing went south, and the entire fluid motion of running broke down. Surging her body forward, she hobbled and lunged, hobbled and lunged. Two, three feet at a time, her pace whittled down to a fraction of what she was running before.
She clenched her jaw, refocused her effort, swinging her arms with every ounce of strength she had, anything to propel her tree-trunk legs ahead. Forward.
She heard a faint sound. A car?
Jerking her head back, the road behind her was still dark. Nothing there, unless a car had yet to emerge from the pit of fog. Back to the mission of running to find someone to help.
Suddenly, lights appeared on the bridge. It was a car, headlights low to the ground, moving toward this side of the lake. It turned in her direction. Her lungs emptied, a feeling of relief starting to engulf her body. She planted her hands on her knees, her chest heaving. The car crept closer. It looked like an older model Corvette.
Hobbling to the center of the road, she waved her hands. Fifty feet and closing, the car didn’t appear to be slowing. She waved again. “Hey, hey! I need help! Stop the car!” she yelled as loud as her husky voice could go.
The engine growled at an even rate, but it didn’t slow down.
Is the driver blind?
Squinting, she spotted a middle-aged man with a cheesy perm, wrist over the steering wheel. A twenty-something female with straight, black hair sat in the other seat. They both looked right at her standing in the road, wearing only boxer shorts and a borrowed T-shirt with some type of blue logo from a bodybuilding center on it.
Less than twenty feet and closing. They must be ignoring her. She had no modesty at this point. Hell, she lost that a long time ago when she had to turn a couple of tricks just to feed herself.
She raised her T-shirt and flashed the Corvette couple, hoping to elicit some response.
At the last second, the man with the fake fro punched the horn, and the girl somehow forced her legs to lunge out of the way, falling to the wet road. She threw up two middle fingers, praying the asshole would get pissed and turn around.
But nothing.
“Asshole.” As the word fell off her lips, she heard a crack in her voice. Hope was disappearing into the murky fog.
She pried herself off the ground and balanced on two useless fence posts. Raising her head, she set her sights on the bridge, knowing the fa
st-food joint was on the other side. She felt a single tear roll down her face. She smacked the tear away, ashamed she’d allowed even the slightest pinhole to poke through her dam of resolve.
With her legs still unresponsive, she realized she was dehydrated, which likely had caused her muscles to cramp up. She held out her tongue, but the slight mist didn’t provide any relief. She trudged ahead, shuffling and lunging, grunting out breaths on every third step.
Just as she reached the stone side to the two-lane bridge, she paused a brief second. The bridge had a hump, but it was only a couple hundred feet across. Then, she guessed it was another quarter mile to the fast-food joint. Turning her head to catch her breath, she noticed a soft yellow glow around the bend of the road. A small, wood frame home. The first she’d seen since she escaped. Which destination was closer…the restaurant or the house? Which had less risk?
She picked up a scent of burgers and fries, and her stomach felt empty. Hobbling twenty feet to the opposite side of the road, resting her hand on the stone wall nearest the house, she leaned her head even closer. A single Bradford pear tree sat in the home’s front yard, surrounded by short grass so green it appeared spray-painted. The home’s exterior was made of cobalt blue siding, older, pre-2000. The entire property was as flat as her back, situated at an odd angle off the street, as if the home predated the road. A white sedan sat in the driveway that ran along the right side of the house. Someone must be home.
She wasn’t sure her legs could go any farther. Even with the brief rest, her heart was hammering her chest. She might have to crawl. But she would never stop. Later, after the cops showed up, she would ask them to take her through the drive-through and order a double cheeseburger and onion rings. That would be her simple reward.
Taking in a breath, her body quivered. It was mid-May, the temperature probably in the sixties. Her body felt like it might just break down completely. Refusing to give in to what could happen, she rubbed her arms and made a beeline for the home surrounded by green turf.
BOOKER Box Set #1 (Books 1-3: A Private Investigator Thriller Series of Crime and Suspense) Page 70
