Mick
Kingston Corruption, Book One
Jennifer Vester
Contents
Special Thanks
Books by Jennifer Vester
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Epilogue
Coming Soon!
Thank you!
About the Author
Copyright © 2018 by Jennifer Vester
All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book is intended for mature audiences only.
Cover design by: Marianne Nowicki @ PremadeEbookCoverShop.com
Edited by: Beyond the Click: Photography & Publishing Services
For more information about the author:
Join my Reader’s Group on Facebook! Vester’s Vixens
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Author Website: www.JenniferVester.com
Special Thanks
Jamie Davis – I never quite know when you’ll “text hug” me, and I laugh every single time. I’m still not sure why we’re pen-pals and yet we both own a phone. So many hashtag moments and thank you for letting me have the cheese. You’re my unicorn.
Angela – As always, thank you for the countless hours you spent letting me ramble, question my mental stability, send plots, chapters, message you well after midnight, and just being my friend.
Jane S. Wells – I promise I won’t glaze over the next time we start talking about the law. Thank you for the two am chats and needing an HEA. You’re beautiful.
Tracey – 24 emails, 482 chat messages, one phone call, and this book is finally born, thanks to you! I’m eternally grateful.
Nadine – Thank you for being tough on me and honest about my writing. Without challenge we never grow.
S. Van Horne, my friend, my brainstorming buddy, thank you. You don’t have enough faith in yourself, so I’ll have enough faith for both of us.
Mick Galloway is yours.
* * *
Muse ~
Pandora’s dilemma in a shadow man, a mystery.
Books by Jennifer Vester
~ Lakefield Series ~
Run
Hide
Break
Chase
Damage
~ Fleming Brothers ~
Smoldering Heart
~ Kingston Corruption Series ~
Mick
Prologue
Mick
Three months ago…
Waking up in a haze, I opened one eye slowly. There was a noise coming from somewhere beside me, that sliced through my head like a sharp knife.
Reaching out, my hand ran across the carpeted floor of my living room. I had no memory of how I got there. Couldn’t even remember the bar I’d been at. There was a fuzzy memory of pissing some woman off, and stumbling into a car after multiple rounds of shots. Then the bottle of whiskey that kept me company when I got home.
Rolling over, I groaned when the noise started again. It was too early, I was still drunk from the night before, and all I wanted to do was sleep.
The screeching sound stopped then started again.
“For fuck’s sake,” I mumbled in a gravely voice. Even to me it sounded like I’d eaten fire and doused it with gasoline the previous night.
Rolling to sit up, my head pounded, and my stomach churned. I eyed my phone, ringing on the floor beside my leg. Wayne Husley’s number popped up. My boss at the FBI, he’d been trying to reach me for the last two days.
“Yeah,” I croaked as I answered the phone.
“You sound like shit,” his deep voice replied. “Did I wake you up?”
I ran a hand over the rough stubble on my jaw. “What time is it?”
“Nearly noon. Look, Mick, get yourself cleaned up. We need you back on the job. Taking two weeks leave, I can understand. I can even understand four, but you’ve been cleared to come back, and we want you to come in.”
“I can’t. You got my resignation…”
“I’m not accepting it,” Wayne interrupted. “You’re grieving, I get it, I’ve been through it. No one wants to lose a friend like that. No one. None of us knew.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine, Mick. You were on suspension pending an inquiry that was over weeks ago. I gave you some time to get back in the game, but you’re still out of it by the sound of it. We’ve all lost someone. I’m sorry you had to go through it, it’s a shitty situation that no one expected. And like I told you before, we had to open the investigation, it wasn’t your fault.”
He kept talking as I stood up and stumbled across the living room. Boxes of my belongings lay half open around the edges of my apartment. I weaved around the labyrinth, trying not to trip on them.
Wayne repeated the same things as every other phone call I'd had from him since I left. I listened, just like I was doing right now, but what he didn’t seem to understand, was that it didn't make a damn bit of difference.
I stepped in something wet, and glanced down at an uncapped bottle of liquor I’d started drinking yesterday and had apparently finished off last night. Picking up the bottle, I noticed about an inch of brown liquid still left and finished it off. It trailed down my throat, scorching all the way. I set it down on a box, where it teetered for a moment before falling to the floor again. I left it where it landed and walked toward my bedroom.
“What I’m saying is, you’re not alone, Mick. What happened was self-defense, pure and simple. It’s a sealed case now. Done and over with. Get dressed, get sober and come into the office. We can talk about it and get a counselor assigned to you.”
Images of my partner started to roll through my head and my stomach responded. Balancing myself with one hand on the wall, I fumbled my way to the bathroom.
“Wayne, I know you mean well, but I’m not coming back. You have all my credentials and my firearm. I’ve signed all the non-disclosure agreements. I’m done, that was it. I need to go.”
I hung up the phone on his next protest and instantly felt bad about it. Wayne was a good man, decent boss and someone who I’d listened to for advice many times over. He’d been one of my mentors when I’d first joined the Bureau several years ago and didn’t deserve my shitty attitude, but he was trying to fix something that was long gone.
My bare feet touched the tile in the bathroom as I entered and made my way to the sink. Grabbing some headache meds, I popped two quickly then looked at myse
lf in the mirror. What I saw was a man I didn’t recognize. Not even close.
My once shaven face was now overgrown with a beard that I rarely trimmed. My hair had a couple of months of growth and was currently sticking up all over the place. The only thing that was familiar were the muscles on my bare chest. But even those stared back at me in mockery. I knew beneath them was a man that was half dead.
Guilt and stress had eroded the man I’d been over the past month and hadn’t left anything behind. I felt raw, like my emotions had been shredded, and there was only a husk left of who and what I used to be.
My phone buzzed again. Mason calling.
“Yeah,” I answered while eyeing the tub. I turned the water on and let it run as I started stripping the slacks off that I’d worn the night before. I had no idea where my shirt, my keys and my wallet were, and didn’t care.
“Hey, bro. You still headed this way this weekend?”
“I’ll be there. Moving company gets here Friday, packs it, ships it. I’ll drive down and they’ll deliver a few days later.”
“Alright. Dad asked if you wanted to have dinner…”
“No,” I cut him off shortly. “I need some space and I don’t want to see him.”
“Mick,” he began, his tone patient. “Look, I know you’re going through shit, but maybe coming back here isn’t the best idea. I know you quit the Bureau, but don't forget you never liked Kingston. It’s different here.”
I turned off the water and slid into the bath. My skin protested with the burn from the heat and I flinched.
“It’ll be fine. I just need out of here. I’ll see you in a few days.”
“Yeah, see you soon.”
I hung up the phone and threw it on the floor. Laying back in the water, I shut my eyes and immediately regretted it. Images flashed through my head. Things I’d seen and done swam to the surface as I tried to block them out.
I’d been with the FBI for more than five years, and had called it home more days than I could remember. Sleeping in the office on occasion, staying in hotels. Always hunting and searching for the next clue from the dead. That was the normal status of things working in the Behavioral Science Department.
When I’d been transferred to the missing person’s department several months back, I’d had hopes that I could do some good, make a difference. It hadn’t been my choice to move from behavioral science into that line of work, but I’d tried to make the best of it.
I hadn’t realized how much of a toll that would take on me at the time, but I’d learned after the first month. The months following were even worse. And now those cases had me waking up at night, drenched in sweat, and barely able to breathe. Alcohol seemed to kill it some nights, other nights it was women. But nothing ever got rid of it completely and I’d burned out long before I’d gotten here.
Anger burned in my chest. Resentment, rage, and bitterness flowed through me, quickly followed by sorrow. My body hurt, and I felt broken.
Mason was probably right, but Kingston was the only place I could go. The city was calling me home.
Chapter One
Mick
Present Day…
The smell of decaying flesh this late at night wasn’t exactly how I thought my day would end. Whiskey would have been nice. Neat, with nothing else, and whatever the hell was playing on late night T.V.
This? God, no. I felt like I couldn’t manage to extract myself from seeing this shit no matter what I did.
The Bureau, at one point, said I had an unhealthy attraction to it. My personal therapist was constantly trying to get me to open up about it. The nightmares and cold sweats just never went away.
It was like a codependent relationship and I was the addict. It happened, I was called in and would get to know the intimacies of the crime. I’d latch on to all the little things, the small details, what they told me and what they didn’t. I rarely saw them as humans when I looked at them. Just details, cases, information.
A life was taken by violent means every time I stood over a body. There were very few that weren’t riddled with the stink of crime when I was called. Unfortunately, looking at dead bodies and the tales they told was something I was trained for. And like an addict, I digested every violent thing with rabid need and fascination for the particulars.
“Why am I here?” I asked, as my eyes slid over to the barrel-chested man beside me.
He'd been the Chief of Police for many years in Kingston, Texas. An unyielding man with a grizzled complexion and an uglier disposition.
“I wanted you to take a look. That's why you're here.”
“I looked. I’m not a body-whisperer. The coroner and M.E. are going to tell you the same thing. Three shots to the upper left part of his chest, close range. And if I’m not mistaken, he was drunk and taking a piss.”
My father glanced at me with a serious expression as his crew worked the scene. The back-alley pisser had likely met his fate at the hands of some street punk that spotted his tailored suit and polished shoes. Nothing but a normal homicide, if they were ever normal.
He pointed down at the corpse. “That's George Richardson, son. That’s why I called you.”
I cringed at the familiarity he used. “Son” wasn’t what I wanted to hear from him right now. I wasn’t used to it, and it sounded unnatural coming from a man that had been less of a father growing up and more of a tyrant.
I glanced back at the corpse on the ground. The name didn’t ring a bell at all. I hadn’t lived in Kingston since the day I went to college at Notre Dame on a football scholarship. Something my father knew, but ignored. Except for the occasional holiday visit when my mother was still alive, I hadn’t been interested in staying long at all.
After I’d joined the FBI, I hadn’t visited much. Occasionally, my brother would visit me, or we’d catch up by phone, but he was really the only reason I’d moved back. Not my father, not the location, and certainly not because I wanted to be standing here in the middle of the night looking at the body of a dead Kingston resident.
Rubbing my forehead, I quietly groaned. “Okay, who is that and why am I up at this hour?”
“Denny King’s brother-in-law, and you’re here in an unofficial capacity,” he replied as he glanced over my shoulder.
I looked back at the random reporters as they snapped photos and yelled questions from across the street. Even at this ungodly hour, they were vultures to their prey.
Glancing over at him again, I let my annoyance show. “I’m not in this line of work anymore.”
He shrugged. “The work never leaves you. Might as well come to grips with that.”
“I’m going home. I’m going back to bed and I’m not waking up until noon tomorrow.”
“Didn’t you date one of the King daughters in third grade?” he asked while scratching his chin. “Yeah, Tammy. Anyway, Mr. Richardson here wasn’t a faithful man.”
“You can’t date in third grade and she wasn’t a King. It was one kiss behind the bushes and you gave me five swats with the belt for it. Fuck this. You know what? I’m not into your reverse psychology tricks today. I’m not going back and I’m not joining the force. I’ve had enough.”
He smirked, knowing that the game was up. He’d been trying to convince me that my life in law enforcement wasn’t quite over for weeks. Ever since I told him that I’d quit the FBI, it’d been one thing after another. He didn’t get it and I wasn't about to give up the specifics. It was bad enough for me to think about it on a daily basis, without having to explain what happened. He just knew that I’d left my career as an agent and had no intention of going back.
“Well,” he said as he stepped around one of the privacy barricades. “Then maybe you can help me with Denny King when he shows up. You know his son, Alex, is a defense attorney now?”
I shrugged. “No, I didn’t know that. Your point?”
“Politics, son. That jackass back there was probably doing one of the local girls. Her pimp rolls him for some cash, kills him. B
ad press. But you, being the retired FBI agent that you are, consult on it as a favor, due to your interest in keeping Kingston’s founding family in good standing.”
“What?” I asked, frowning as he slapped me on the back. “I don’t have jurisdiction, much less a badge, and this is way out of protocol.”
He tilted his head as he turned us both toward the street and smiled. “It’s nice to be a part of the human race again, isn’t it? Instead of hiding in that cave you call a bedroom.”
“No,” I growled. “It’s definitely not good and you’re way off point. That guy has piss on his shoe and there’s a stain on the wall in front of him. The edge of his shirt has a red smear on it that I’m willing to bet doesn’t match his blood, but does match the barbeque joint on the corner. That place is standing room only and if you’ve ever been there, then you know that the men’s toilet is nearly always down and there’s a long line of dicks in the alley. Mr. Fancy Fuck back there probably couldn’t stomach pissing with the rest of them. And from what I saw, he’s missing his watch, wallet and cufflinks, if I’m not mistaken. I’m not dealing with Denny King for a simple robbery gone wrong.”
He slapped me on the back again. “Thanks for the consult, son. That’s all I needed to know.”
Mick: Kingston Corruption, Book One Page 1
