The Trident Conspiracy: A Gripping Vigilante Thriller

by KJ Kalis

  The Trident Conspiracy

  A Jess Montgomery Thriller

  KJ Kalis

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Copyright © 2021 KJ Kalis

  eISBN 978-1-955990-00-4

  ISBN 978-1-955990-01-1

  All rights reserved

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  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved, no part of the publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise including technology to be yet released), without the written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of the book.

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  The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of author’s rights is appreciated.

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  Published by:

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  BDM, LLC

  Also by K.J. Kalis:

  The Kat Beckman Thriller Series:

  The Cure

  Fourteen Days

  Burned

  The Blackout

  The Bloody Canvas

  Sauk Valley Killer

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  The Emily Tizzano Vigilante Justice Thriller Series:

  Twelve Years Gone

  Lakeview Vendetta

  Victim 14

  Contents

  Prologue

  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

  Epilogue

  A Note from the Author

  Prologue

  Jess stood off to the side, her teeth chattering, soaked to the bone from the chilly rain coming from above, the smell of smoke in her nostrils. Her brother, Chase, had dragged their little sister, Rachel, away from her as soon as Jess admitted there’d been a candle burning in her bedroom before the fire started. Their life would never be the same.

  “This is your fault,” he hissed. “It’s your fault we’re orphans.”

  1

  It was getting hard to breathe.

  Jess Montgomery shifted her weight from one hip to the other. Sitting on the hard tile floor of the bank was making her back ache. She tried to slow her breathing. The black hood over her head and the duct tape over her mouth made it difficult to do anything other than concentrate on sucking one breath in and letting another one out. When they first put the hood over her head, she strained to hear what the men in the bank were doing. After a few minutes, she realized the only thing she had the strength to do was to concentrate on the next breath.

  Jess kept her hands folded in her lap, as she and the others had been told. There was nothing she wanted to do more than to rip the tape off her mouth and hood off of her head, but the men she’d gotten a glimpse of when they’d taken over the bank were heavily armed, wearing black from head to toe, including masks and heavy tactical vests. She knew she’d be no match for them. Her heart started to beat a little bit faster, wondering if Abby was still next to her.

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  The morning had started off pleasantly enough. It was a nice day in Tucson. Not too hot. Jess had swung by her brother’s house to pick up her niece, Abby. Abby had just run one of the fastest times in her training for her middle school soccer team and they were headed out to celebrate. After a big pile of pancakes at a local diner, slathered with sweet butter and sticky maple syrup, they had walked outside talking about how Abby had decided she wanted to be a veterinarian, enjoying the morning sun and the dry air.

  “Large animal or small? Jess asked.

  “Both,” Abby said, a grin on her face. “I want to help them all, but not snakes. I don’t like them.”

  Jess smiled. It was just like Abby to want to do it all. “Me neither, though we have a lot of them around here. Is it okay if we duck into the bank for a minute?”

  Abby was only twelve, but she seemed a little taller to Jess every time she saw her, her dark, wavy hair caught in a ponytail around the back of her head. Abby never dressed up. She wasn’t that kind of a girl, unlike her mother, Piper, who was what Jess’s mom used to refer to as “fancy.”

  Abby smirked, “So, this whole pancake thing was just a ploy to get me to go run your Saturday errands with you?”

  Abby’s sarcasm was one of the things that Jess loved about her niece the most. From the time she was just a toddler, Abby said what she thought. It didn’t matter who was around or what questions they had. Abby could’ve been standing in front of her favorite boy band and would have told them to shove off if it met her purposes.

  Jess grinned, “No, silly. The bank sent me some paperwork that I need to have notarized and turned in by today. Why, I have no idea.”

  Earlier that week, Jess received a package overnighted to her, the sound of the doorbell rousing her Border Collie, Milton, who charged and barked at the door. As Jess ripped the package open, grateful for a little break from her work as an intelligence analyst, she found a curt letter from the bank that held the mortgage on the small house she owned on the outskirts of Tucson, “Ms. Montgomery, it has come to our attention that your file is lacking form 1718B. In order to continue to fund your mortgage, we need this form notarized and returned to the closest bank branch no later than Saturday.”

  By the time Saturday rolled around, Jess had forgotten all about the papers, but saw them sitting on the counter. Groaning, she sent the bank manager an email. They’d gotten friendly over the last few years, Jess always saying hi whenever she went in the bank. Luckily, the diner she and Abby liked to go to was across the street from the South Ridge Bank branch where the papers needed to be returned. “Derek, I’m heading out to breakfast with my niece tomorrow morning. I’ll swing by the bank as soon as we’re done eating,” she wrote back. These bank people are being really pesky, she thought.

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  Walking into the bank, it seemed like business as usual. There were a couple of customers lined up at the counter, smiling and nodding at the tellers in front of them. A man brushed past Jess as she walked into the bank and headed toward the bank manager’s office, clearly in a hurry. “How long is this going to take?” Abby said, in her usual sarcastic tone. “I’ve got places to be.”

  Jess raised her eyebrows, “And where might that be, missy? Your mom said you didn’t have anywhere to be today until later.”

  Abby’s eyes darted to the floor, “Well, I was thinking about going over to Stephanie’s house before we go out to dinner. You know, just to hang out.”

  Jess smiled. She knew that just hangin
g out meant eating a lot of junk food and watching videos online with her friends. “Yes, I can see how that might be a priority,” Jess said, realizing that her tone matched Abby’s. “I’ll try to make this fast.”

  Behind her, near the front door of the bank, Jess heard a click she didn’t recognize. It sounded like metal on metal. As she turned, she saw four men, dressed in black tactical gear with masks over their faces, charging into the bank, rifles held up to their faces. Her heart started to pound in her chest and Jess pushed Abby behind her. A deafening noise rang through the bank, causing them both to cover her ears and drop to the ground.

  “Nobody move!” A male voice rang out, bouncing off the walls of the bank. Three shots from a rifle echoed after him, nearly deafening Jess. “We have now taken control of this bank. You will do as you are told. If you do, no one will be hurt.”

  The men, using the tips of their rifles as prods, lined everyone up against the teller’s counter, facing the front door, while another man used a chain to lock the doors closed. “All cell phones need to go in this wastebasket. If you try to hold onto your cell phone, you will be shot,” a man said, striding past each person. His lips were set in a thin line, staring at each hostage as he walked by, a bag in his left hand, his right hand wrapped around the grip of the rifle. Jess tossed her cell phone in the wastebasket and nodded at Abby, whose eyes were wide. Abby dropped hers in as well. Another man walked to the windows and closed the blinds. As Jess glanced around, she saw the faces of the people who were trapped in the bank with her — some old, some young, but none of them as young as Abby. All Jess could hope was that one of the tellers had managed to press the silent alarm before the bank robbers had gotten too far into the building.

  Standing against the teller’s counter, Jess didn’t say anything, her body frozen with fear. Jess reached for Abby’s hand and held it, giving it a little squeeze. How could this be happening to them? After a minute or so, one of the men stood in front of the line of hostages, “We will make this as comfortable for you as possible. You are going to be given a piece of duct tape. Put it over your mouth. After that, you will be given a black hood. Put that over your head. After that, you are to sit down exactly where you are standing and fold your hands in your lap. If anyone gets up or moves, they will be shot. If you need anything, raise your hand. Do not remove your hood or the tape on your mouth for any reason unless told to do so. Is that clear?”

  The way the man barked out the orders made Jess think of a drill sergeant. Could the robbers be military? She didn’t have a chance to really look at them as they were coming into the bank. She was too stunned, too scared at how quickly the morning had turned from fun with Abby, to well… this. And now that they were about to tape her mouth and put a hood on her head, she’d get no look at them at all.

  A short, stocky man started at the front of the line, four people down from where Jess and Abby were standing and gave them each a piece of duct tape. As he handed it to Jess, she glanced at Abby and nodded, trying to encourage her young niece to do exactly as the men had told them. Unless the police arrived quickly, there was little hope they could do anything other than follow the orders barked at them.

  A minute later, a second man, taller and leaner than the first man with the tape walked down the line, instructing each person to sit down and put the hood on their head. Jess remembered reading a report one time about hoods used in crimes her boss, Charlie Burns, her boss at the North American Intelligence Institute, had given her to read after a rash of home invasions funded by a terrorist group broke out in South Dakota. They were meant to be disorienting. It was hard to take action to protect yourself if you couldn’t see where you were. On top of that, they had guns and she didn’t, not that Jess would know what to do with one anyway. Her dad had been a hunter, but she’d never gone. Glancing up at the man, Jess slid the black hood over her face, the acrid odor of chemicals still clinging to the new fabric burning her nose.

  After a moment, the air inside of the hood became warm and damp from the breath going in and out of her nostrils. Jess glanced at Abby’s direction, or at least the direction she thought Abby was sitting, hoping to be able to make out at least the silhouette of her niece through the fabric. She couldn’t. The weave of the cloth draped over her eyes and nose, making it even more difficult to breathe, little puffs of air moving the fabric out of the way with every breath. A knot formed in Jess’s chest. It was getting hard to breathe. Panic rose in her throat. She swallowed the best she could, not wanting to throw up. The nerves at the back of her neck tingled and her mind became foggy as she tried to take long, slow breaths. She’d seen that on a video one time as a way to stay calm. As her breath started to slow, she realized that there was nothing she could do to escape. Breathe in. Breathe out. Jess wasn’t going to be able to battle her way out of the bank. It was just her and Abby against men that definitely looked like they had more tactical training than anyone should. Jess didn’t know a lot about the training that the men in front of her probably had, but she’d read about it an awful lot. For a moment, her mind tried to lock on to some of her last reports that she’d sent to Charlie. As an intelligence analyst, she was a paper pusher, not someone who knew how to fight. The slow trickle of air in and out of her nostrils made it difficult to concentrate on anything other than breathing, though. Jess fought the urge to reach a hand towards Abby but didn’t. Her nails bit into the palms of her hands. She tried to relax, but the pounding of her heart rang in her ears. She knew the best thing she could do would be to sit and wait. The police had to know there was a robbery in progress, didn’t they?

  After what seemed to be about twenty minutes, Jess heard the muffled sound of sirens blaring in the background through the hood. The police. Jess felt a wave of emotion wash over her. Relief, then a new wave of fear. Someone had managed to get off a silent alarm before Jess, Abby and the rest of the people in the bank ended up sitting on the floor with duct tape over their mouth and black hoods over their faces, waiting politely for men in combat gear to decide whether they should live or die.

  With the hood on, it was difficult to hear what was going on behind them. Jess wondered if that was intentional by the robbers, whoever they were. She could make out low murmuring toward the side of the bank where the bank manager’s desk was, and a few sniffles from some of the people sitting nearby. Jess closed her eyes for a moment, not that she could see anything anyway, and tried to remember how many people were in the bank when she and Abby walked in. From behind the tape, Jess chewed her lip, realizing there was no way for her to focus well enough to even try to remember. Were there eight hostages? Ten? Jess felt like her body was coated in needlelike prickles, fear running in waves over her again and again, not knowing what would happen next. Wondering if Abby was okay was eating away at the inside of her, bit by bit.

  Shifting on the hard floor, Jess realized it had been a while since anything had happened. The sirens outside had gone silent. Occasionally, she thought she could hear the sound of boots walking by her, but she wasn’t sure, the darkness of the hood muddying everything around her. Losing her sight, she expected. Not being able to hear and not be able to breathe was something completely different. Without warning, Jess heard the men start to move around in the building, heavy footfalls passing her. It sounded like they were running toward the back of the building. She straightened up against the teller’s counter. Were they leaving? Where were they going? Jess’s mind raced. It took everything she had to not reach for Abby, to not rip the hood off of her mouth and the tape from her face, to see what was going on. But she had no idea what they would do to her if she did. They said they’d shoot people, but would they? Jess’s heart started to pound in her chest again. The bank robbers said when they entered the bank that no one would get hurt if they all cooperated. She thought about Abby, her round face and her big eyes. How would Abby ever get past what was happening to her?

  Before Jess could finish the thought, a voice boomed out and echoed against the wall
s of the bank, “Get up!” It sounded like the first man again, his gravelly voice grinding into her ears. Jess struggled to her feet. Her body had gotten stiff from sitting on the hard floor, nervous tension coiling her muscles into tight knots.

  The voice came again, “Listen up! So far, all of you have done exactly what we asked you to do. That’s good. Let’s see if we can keep the streak running. If you don’t cooperate, then you know the consequences. We won’t ask questions. We will just put a bullet through your brain.” There was silence in the bank for a moment, the breath caught in Jess’s nostrils. By the bark in his voice, there was no doubt in Jess’s mind that the man meant every word he said. Prickles of fear ran down the back of her legs. Her arms hanging limp, Jess tried to slow her breathing again. The last thing she wanted to do was cry.

  The voice interrupted her thoughts, “In a few minutes, we will have you turn to your right and follow the person in front of you. One of my men will come by and put another person’s hand on your shoulder. Do not move until we tell you to do so. When we tell you to move, you will do so without argument or drama.”