DEAD GONE a gripping crime thriller full of twists

by T. J. Brearton

  Ward owned kayaks. He had a second house just a short way from the water, from a creek that easily connected up to Rookery Bay. He’d been a volunteer at the reserve. His former teacher, Albrecht, called him a loner, odd, obsessive. Once he got something in his head, he didn’t let it go.

  This was their man.

  Tom was so excited that when the light turned green he squawked the Jeep’s tires, burning a bit of rubber as the vehicle shot forward. He raced down 41, trying not to double the speed limit. His condo was close. He was going to stop and call Blythe from there. If he called her from the road he was liable to kill somebody, he was so worked up.

  He took the turns through Lely and toward his condominium complex like a Formula One driver. Then he slowed, reminding himself there were children in the neighborhood, elderly people who sometimes took evening walks. But he again beat the dashboard with a fist, gritting his teeth and grinning.

  He hit the button for the garage door and pulled in, barely able to wait for the thing to roll open. He jumped out of the Jeep and fumbled with his keys, stabbed the lock, and opened the door to his place.

  The blow to his head came out of nowhere.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  When he came to, he was on the ground, hands tied behind his back, duct tape over his mouth. His gun was gone from his shoulder holster. He blinked some blood from his eyes — and stared up at his own ceiling. Then a person’s head, in a black balaclava mask and sunglasses, loomed in Tom’s view.

  Gloved hands reached around his armpits and hoisted him to his feet. There were at least three men. Two behind him, with the guy in the mask just watching, arms folded. There was something in his hand. Some documents.

  What are you doing? Tom’s words were muffled by the duct tape, incomprehensible.

  The men dragged him into the kitchen and sat him down on a stool by the island. The kitchen light was the only one on in the entire condo — Tom left it on when he was away. The man in the mask, lingering back by the door to the garage, was all but lost in the dark, just that kitchen light reflected in the sunglasses. Then he came forward, almost casually, and held up one of the pieces of paper.

  Tom read what was written in black marker.

  YOU FUCKED UP.

  Tom tried to speak again, his words obscured. Hey, hey. Who are you?

  For a fleeting moment Tom thought these could be guys from Bosco’s drug gang, angry that his murder investigation compromised their operation. But that was unrealistic. Going after Tom wouldn’t solve anything.

  I’m an agent with the FDLE. You better let me go.

  As if to counter it, the man switched to another sheet of paper.

  I DON’T CARE WHO YOU ARE.

  Was he someone hired by Ward? But how, when? Things had happened too fast for Ward to have already thugs. Tom sized the man up. About six feet tall, two hundred pounds. The guys holding him back were smaller and smelled of a hard day’s work . . .

  It could be Josh McDermott standing there. He was the right height and build. He was someone Tom had humiliated in front of his crew. That same crew was now holding Tom on the stool. Had to be.

  McDermott, Tom groaned. Don’t do this. Whatever you’re thinking . . .

  McDermott, if it was him, switched to a fresh sheet.

  NOW WE’RE GOING TO DO THIS MY WAY.

  Tom felt icy chills of fear. At first there had been the shock of getting hit, disorientation, trying to figure out what was going on. Now the realization sank in — there were men in his home, dressed in black, not saying a word. They wanted to stay anonymous, even if he thought he knew who they were. Anonymous, because they meant to harm him.

  Tom felt the cool touch of a blade against his arm. He braced for the plunge of the knife, his mouth moving futilely, tasting the glue of the duct tape. Then the knife slid between his wrists, and made hard, downward motions. It cut through the tape and his hands were free.

  One of the men now slipped an arm around his neck. There was a new sensation — the pressure of steel against his temple. Just one man holding him, keeping the gun to his head, while the other moved around front. Tom glimpsed him for the first time, also wearing black clothes and balaclava mask, sunglasses concealing his eyes. The man crouched and sliced the tape at Tom’s feet.

  Now Tom was free at his wrists and ankles, but didn’t dare to move. Their actions made it clear: try anything and we’ll blow your head off.

  McDermott switched to the last sheet.

  PUT ’EM UP.

  Tom stared at the words, uncomprehending. At the same time, someone gave him a hard shove to his feet.

  Tom looked behind and came face to face with the business-end of his own Glock 37.

  In the living room, McDermott raised his fists in the air. He even started flexing a little on his legs, like a boxer.

  This was about Alicia. This was about Tom intimidating McDermott. First Tom had pulled his gun on the guy, then he’d threatened him with police intervention and investigation of his workers if McDermott didn’t leave Alicia alone.

  They must have come in through the front door. Jack Vance was always telling Tom to get an alarm system, but Tom had been too busy with school and training.

  Didn’t matter now. McDermott wanted to fight him.

  Tom kept his arms relaxed. He shook his head, slowly. He wanted to talk to the guy, reason with him, but his mouth was sealed shut.

  Tom sat down on the stool, still shaking his head. Then he felt the gun press against his scalp, and he grew still. The gunman gave a savage push with the gun barrel, forcing Tom to his feet again.

  Had the landscaper-turned-gunman ever been in a situation like this before? Tom doubted it. Who knew what McDermott had threatened them with. Maybe their jobs. They might be loyal workers, but that didn’t make them criminals. Tom gave the gunman a look, trying to convey a message with his eyes: It’s not worth it, walk away now.

  Christ, just being here, doing this, these guys had racked up hefty potential charges. Breaking and entering, aggravated armed assault, and all against a state cop. They were wearing masks and hadn’t spoken, as if that was going to save them. Tom would get them, and McDermott had to know that.

  The big fuck was still standing there, rolling his fists around in the air. He suddenly came toward Tom, two quick, big strides, and punched him right in the mouth.

  Tom stumbled back and fell. It was like being hit with a rock. He saw stars.

  He picked himself up and lunged for McDermott, driving into his midsection like a linebacker. The hit knocked McDermott off balance and the big man stumbled back and fell into Tom’s glass coffee table, shattering it.

  Fortunately, Tom had slipped McDermott’s pawing grip just before the guy went down. Show over, thought Tom, that was it. He rose to his feet and ripped the tape from his mouth.

  “Guys,” he said to the two men in the kitchen. They looked frantic, the gunman spreading his stance, aiming the thing, his arms visibly shaking. “Put it down, man. You don’t want to—”

  McDermott tackled him from behind.

  Stupid, Tom thought as he hit the ground. Shouldn’t have turned his back. He flipped over and McDermott pounced again. He hit Tom so hard that Tom’s vision turned black.

  Then McDermott grabbed Tom by the feet. He seemed to be done screwing around. He was breathing hard and grunting. Tom’s head lolled as McDermott dragged him across the floor, muttering curses. McDermott pulled him right through some of the shattered glass and the shards bit into Tom’s back, his arm.

  The side door to the garage opened. Tom was dragged down the three steps, his head and shoulders slamming against each stair tread. McDermott let go of his legs and Tom lay wrecked on the concrete floor.

  Hands groped at his pants. Someone took the car keys from his pocket. The Jeep door was opened and the engine fired up. What were they doing with the Jeep? Were they going to shoot him?

  He heard a loud bang. A moment later there was a bright white flash, like spark
s. Then two of the men bounded back up the stairs into the house. McDermott was last to go — Tom knew it was him, looming in Tom’s view again in his balaclava mask, because McDermott said, “Fuck you, pig.”

  Tom heard the click of the lock to the condo door. His head throbbing, his back and arm smarting with embedded glass, he sat up.

  The Jeep was running. The garage door was closed. The control box had been torn away, just the wires poking out of the drywall. That had been the bright flash.

  He began to understand. They weren’t going to shoot him — they had trapped him. McDermott wanted him to asphyxiate. Maybe he wanted it to look like a suicide. Or, he just wanted Tom to suffer.

  Tom got shakily to his feet and steadied himself against the Jeep. His nose felt like it could be broken, his jaw ached. Blood dripped from his face and landed in splotches on the concrete. He grabbed the Jeep door handle and pulled.

  The door stayed shut, locked.

  Tom heard the rumble of another engine. There were no windows on the garage door, but he was sure if he could see out there, McDermott’s pickup truck would be roaring past. He cursed himself for not seeing it when he pulled into the lot.

  He’d been too hopped up on discovering Ward’s secrets and had completely dropped his guard, ready for the big win. He’d never thought McDermott would go to such lengths. He’d expected maybe a threatening phone call, or that McDermott would keep harassing Alicia. But not this.

  This was bad.

  And to top it off, now Blythe and the others were making the Bosco arrest. Taking him down for the murder of Carrie Hobson despite the risks to Coburn’s drug op. Tom had the evidence on Ward, and there was nothing he could do about it. He patted his pockets for his phone, but it wasn’t there, of course. Probably inside, along with his gun. Or maybe McDermott’s guys had made off with the items. He doubted it — they seemed determined to remain anonymous, and stealing a cop’s gun, or phone, both of which could be tracked, would work against that inspiration.

  Tom tried the passenger door of the Jeep. Locked. He tried the rear doors and the back hatch and couldn’t open any of them. He grabbed the garage door, gave it a hard tug, but did nothing more than trigger fresh blasts of pain where the glass punctured his skin. The manual pulley had been smashed — the loud bang he’d heard — so it was bent to the side, effectively locking the door closed. He jumped for it and could touch it, but without something to stand on and some real leverage there’d been no way to bend it back.

  He looked around for something to bash in the door to the condo. He sifted among the few items he had in the garage — a beach blanket Charlene had given him as a gift, a plastic ashtray, a Styrofoam cooler with half of a six pack left inside, a stack of old magazines, and a broom. His bagged suit from the first day at the morgue sat in the corner. Nothing he could charge the door with. He’d just have to kick it down.

  He climbed the stairs, coughing from the rising fumes. The air was turning blue, the stench acrid and gagging. There were two problems with kicking the door down. One, it was elevated three steps from the ground. He tried getting on the middle step, bracing himself against the back wall of the garage, and kicking, but he had no torque this way. The second and bigger problem was that the door opened outward, not inward.

  The panic was settling in.

  * * *

  “Hey!”

  Tom continued to shout, irritating his lungs, gagging. He pounded on the garage door, pulled at the handle some more, and screamed at the top of his lungs. His complex was in a quiet area, no one really out after the sun went down.

  The face of his watch had been cracked, but he could make out that it was after ten o’clock.

  Bosco would be in the back of a Tampa squad car by now, or maybe Blythe’s own Crown Vic. She’d said herself she was making the collar. Meanwhile, Ward, who’d surely seen the Jeep, could be making a run for it. Something in his hurried movements had already suggested he was planning something. Maybe an exit. Albrecht could have told Ward the cops were poking around. Or Ward might have seen Tom outside his house in Central Naples the night before.

  Tom fell against the door as he thought about it. The fumes made him woozy. He took off his shirt, triggering the worst pain yet. His entire back was slicked with blood. He almost passed out, but propped himself against the door. He stuck his shirt over his mouth and breathed through it.

  The room turned blurry to his watering eyes. The panic choked him like the fumes choked him.

  Easy, a voice said in his head. Go easy, Tommy.

  It could’ve been Dr. Camden, a memory of one of their many sessions together. It could’ve been Nick, who, when he wasn’t a total mess, could be a cool head in a crisis.

  But Tom thought the voice was his foster father’s.

  He had a memory of being on the sidewalk, looking down at his scraped and bloody knee. He remembered how he’d gotten back up, angry at the bike. He’d kicked at it, yelling. His foster father’s words had been calm and patient, in his ear:

  Go easy, Tommy. You got time. You’ll get it.

  Tom looked around the garage again. It wasn’t so much that he needed to escape — that was the panic talking. A trapped animal just wanted out. Sometimes it wanted out so bad it killed itself in the process.

  What he really needed to do was stop the Jeep pumping out the carbon monoxide.

  He went to the items in the corner and unbagged his soiled suit. He tore the shirt to shreds, then formed a ball with the fabric and stuffed it into the Jeep’s tailpipe.

  For a moment, it seemed to work. Then the exhaust blew the shirt out in a black plume.

  Plugging it up wouldn’t work. He needed to kill the damned motor.

  Tom shuffled back to the front of the vehicle, holding himself against it as he went. The only way to pop the hood was from inside the vehicle. He didn’t have a crowbar or anything else. He got his fingers into the seam and tried to pry it up. Not a chance. He felt for the latch, but he couldn’t get the seam wider than a quarter inch.

  He was no gear-head, he’d only ever had a basic knowledge of cars, but he realized that beneath the car were various pipes and tubes constituting the fuel and electrical systems.

  Tom shimmied under the vehicle. The powerful motor thundered above, mostly covered by a protective under-shield. He kept thinking about the fuel. The tank was too full to syphon out the gas, and he didn’t have a hose anyway. But cars had fuel pumps. The Jeep had one.

  Only if a vehicle had a carburetor, you couldn’t turn off the fuel. Nick was right, this was the same vehicle his father had owned. Tom had bought it without realizing at the time. Now he searched his memories. He closed his eyes, the engine roaring in his ears, the shirt to his mouth, and he thought back.

  His biological father had tinkered with the family Jeep when he wasn’t high or yelling at the boys or their mother. He remembered his father saying he’d gotten one of the first Jeep Cherokees without a carburetor, the last time a Jeep had used them was in the mid-eighties. Then they’d converted over to something — what the hell was it? It had an acronym like TMI, but that wasn’t it.

  TBI, Tom thought. Throttle-body Injection.

  He opened his eyes. He’d remembered something, but he still had no idea what he was doing down here. He stared up into the thundering, clattering darkness of the engine. Metal and hard plastic fixed with massive bolts and pins. He saw some lines running but they could be brake lines. Tom started pulling at everything. Stretching and reaching and yanking and tearing. A few things popped loose, hot liquid spurted in his face. His hands were black now, fingers bleeding. He thought of Bosco’s bleeding, cut hand. He thought of Alan Ward with the Lexus in his shed. Luring Carrie down to Rookery Bay. He’d solicited her, brought her to his house, taken her to the river with his kayaking boats, and killed her. Brought the boats back home and she’d washed deeper into the bay, just like he’d known she would, just like he’d known the state bureau would be likely to pick up the case.


  That Blythe herself, the agent for the region, would pick up the case.

  Ripping and tearing at the Jeep like this, Tom cried out. It was a primal sound, something he didn’t recognize with his own ears.

  The Jeep’s engine started to sputter.

  * * *

  Though the engine finally quit, the small, enclosed space was filled with fumes. Tom could hardly see. He hacked into the shirt covering his mouth. His blood was everywhere — smeared on the concrete floor along with blackish fluid oozing beneath the Jeep. Like the vehicle was bleeding, too.

  He’d stopped the car running, but the lingering fumes smothered. There wasn’t a lot of ventilation in the garage, not much space to move around. The claustrophobia was back, and with it, fresh fear.

  He kicked and pounded the garage door, his mind growing wooly, the air acrid and stiflingly hot.

  Someone banged back on the other side.

  “In here! I’m in here!”

  He heard a muffled response. For an anxious second he was sure it was McDermott — he hadn’t left at all, but was sitting out there, waiting, enjoying Tom’s struggle against death. But even McDermott, brazen as he was, wouldn’t risk that.

  “You have to go in the front door!” Tom called. That could be dangerous, too. It was unlikely McDermott was waiting outside, but still possible he’d remained in the condo, waiting for Tom to drop.

  “Hello?”

  Tom no longer heard or sensed someone on the other side. He hit the door, the big stupid thing rattling. He sat down in the smoke and foulness. Like a taste of hell.

  Maybe he’d only hallucinated someone outside.

  Then the door to the condo opened, and Jack Vance stood there. The old retired Air Force pilot waved a hand at the air, came down the steps and rushed over, helped Tom to his feet and hustled him out.

  * * *

  Tom drew deep, ragged breaths in his condo. The fumes from the garage were sneaking in, but Jack Vance slammed the door closed. Tom fell on the couch as Vance looked around the room, seeing the shattered coffee table, the messed-up kitchen, the blood on the floor.