The Alex Troutt Thrillers: Books 4-6 (Redemption Thriller Series Box Set Book 2)

by John W. Mefford

  “He might know the name of these drive-by shooters, or at least who they might be working for, who their target might have been. Or maybe they were just making a statement to their rival cartels. We need to understand their motivations and this guy sounds like he might have the answer.”

  “You just said ‘we,’” he said as a set of white teeth split his face. “I wouldn’t mind the help, especially from someone with as much cred as you’ve got.”

  I raised both hands in front of me. “It was simply a figure of speech. What do you mean by cred?”

  “I saw the video a few months back. That psycho bitch challenged you to find her and the senator before she killed him.”

  The back of my tongue got a quick taste of dinner. Talking about the past, especially when it involved a serial killer and my family, wasn’t on my list of objectives. “Eh,” was my seriously lackluster response. I added, “Look, I’ve got to get going. Get the kids back, try to figure out a way to forget about this shooting and enjoy our beach vacation.”

  “I’m sure the guys have your phone number, but would you mind giving it to me in case I have more questions?”

  “I’m cool with that…just don’t bring up past videos.” I gave him my number, and he texted me to make sure it went through.

  “Good luck with your investigation, Raul. And stay safe.”

  Before I had a chance to turn my head, Erin had gripped my arm with both hands.

  “Mother, we’ve got to get out of here,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “Are you feeling okay, Erin?”

  “I just got my monthly visit from you-know-who.”

  Oh joy, I thought to myself. She was typically a vision of loveliness during those times. “It will be okay, Erin.”

  A second later, Luke popped his head under my arm. I looked up and didn’t see Dad or Carly.

  “Where’s your grandfather and his friend?”

  “Oh, they left. Took Uber back to their place.”

  “What about their car?”

  “Said insurance would take care of it,” Luke said, wrapping his arm around my waist as we walked away from Raul. Erin was a few steps in front of us, her arms wrapped tightly across her chest.

  Luke looked up at me. “By the way, Mom, can I invite a friend to vacation also?”

  I gave him a confused look. “We’re already here, dear. This is our family vacation. We’re here to bond, explore, have fun. Why would you ask that?”

  “But Erin just said she’s having a visitor fly in.”

  Erin planted a foot and jerked her head around. “Are you that clueless, runt? I’m having my—”

  “Zip it, Erin. TMI.”

  We couldn’t get back to Teresa’s house fast enough. I spotted my dusty, red Camry on the other side of the square, and we headed in that direction. After the kids fought over who would get the front seat, I pulled up to an officer so he could let us through the crime scene. He moved the tape and waved us through.

  “Thank you,” I said through my open window as my car inched forward, the TV station van parked to our left. The back door opened, and Archie and Cynthia crawled out.

  “You know, some people back in Boston call me Dirty Archie, just because of that, uh, big gun I’ve got,” Archie said with a snicker before he saw me.

  I quickly punched the button on the window, but it was too late. He jumped two steps and landed both hands on the hood.

  “Hold on a sec before you go,” he said, moving over to my window that was now only slightly cracked open.

  “We’re tired and need to decompress. Sorry.” Feeling a headache coming on, I put my finger back on the button.

  “Alex, hold on. I need help on my case. Can’t you stick around so we can brainstorm a bit, you know, like the old days?”

  “Not now. We need a break.” I punched the button to fully close the window, then I heard a shrill.

  “My fingers!” Archie yelled.

  I rolled the window back down. “You shouldn’t have them in there. Are you okay?”

  “I’m not sure I’ll be able to hold that big gun of mine.”

  Cynthia slinked up next to Archie and ran her hand across his chest. “I’ll hold it for you, Archie.”

  He smiled.

  I huffed out a breath, then punched the gas. I could hear him yelling, and I looked in the side mirror.

  “I’ll call you,” he said, holding his fingers like a phone up to his ear.

  That’s one call I’ll be sending straight to voice mail, I thought, as we finally cleared the scene and drove to Teresa’s house.

  5

  Soft lighting illuminated the outline of the lush backyard, with red and pink oleander and palm trees accented by mounds of white and yellow flowers. But after a quick scan, my eyes couldn’t help but gravitate to the sparkling, aqua pool.

  “Damn, you’ve got the life, Teresa,” I said, kicking back in one of her two outdoor chaise lounges.

  I took a sip of white wine, then let my feet scoot across the suede pillow Teresa had brought from inside. It felt divine. After getting the kids to calm down—and that took some work with Erin’s little visitor and associated mood swings—my old high school friend grabbed her best bottle of chardonnay and ushered me to the oasis. Music piped through hidden speakers, and the rushing sounds of a waterfall at the far end of the pool made it seem like we were on an island.

  “You need a refill,” she said as the bottle clinked against my glass.

  “Can’t argue that,” I said, bringing the wine to my lips a second later.

  “I’m just glad you and the kids and your dad are okay. We’re not used to violence like that down here by the coast,” she said. After putting the wine in a cooler, she sat down with her own glass in hand.

  “When bullets are flying like that, no one is safe within two hundred yards. We’re damn lucky.”

  She leaned toward me and held up her glass. “Here’s to a little luck.”

  I clinked the glass and let the wine soothe my throat on the way down. In the background, I could hear the gravelly voice of Bryan Adams belting out “Cuts Like a Knife.”

  “Wow, that one brings back some memories,” I said, swiveling my head to look at Teresa. Even at almost midnight in a pair of old shorts and a tank top, she looked like a million bucks. She’d always had that natural beauty. A few lines here and there, but her curvaceous figure looked almost the same as it did twenty-plus years ago. She didn’t have on an inch of makeup and could still cause any guy between the ages of twenty-one and eighty-one to look twice if she walked by.

  “Oh yes, I can remember a rendezvous we had with a couple of boys to go see Bryan Adams in concert.” She was staring at the stars with a smile etched on her face.

  “You’ve always had quite the memory, Teresa. I vaguely recall that night, and I couldn’t even tell you the boys’ names.”

  “Charlie and Juan,” she said.

  “Oh, I know why I don’t remember. They both had their eyes glued to your chest. Remember, I was the tomboy with an underdeveloped body.”

  “Eh, I’m not sure about that.”

  “About what, your body turning heads?”

  “Are you kidding me? There wasn’t a girl in the Rio Grande Valley who didn’t want what Alex Troutt had. You didn’t have an ounce of fat on you, you were athletic as hell, smart as a whip, and you had swagger. You weren’t afraid of anyone, and if they fucked with you…well, look out.”

  I just laughed.

  “You don’t recall that time we played on the same soccer team in the eighth grade, do you?”

  I felt a gentle breeze wash over my face. I had finally relaxed. “We played soccer, but what of it?”

  “We had just played a district game where we won, 6-1. I think you scored four goals.”

  “A regular elephant, you are,” I said.

  She held up a finger to signal there was more to the story. “Anyway, after the game, we all walked to the center of the field for the customar
y handshake. Some chick on the other team—the Lady Farmers I think was the team—she went off and called me a dirty little spic. You stopped in your tracks, whipped her around, grabbed a fistful of her shirt, and lifted her three inches off the ground. I remember the muscles in your arm. That girl about peed her shorts. You made her apologize right there in front of everyone.”

  “I guess I remember that. She needed to learn a lesson. She was a smarmy little bitch.”

  She traded fist bumps. “You had my back, Alex.”

  We clinked our glasses again and giggled until we both took another swallow.

  “Hey, didn’t you go to prom with Mario? You guys were a cute couple back in the day,” Teresa said.

  I thought about the pact Mario and I had made on the beach so many years earlier. It was silly, but at age eighteen, it had meaning. I felt a little guilty for losing touch with him. He was a good guy—at least he was two decades ago. He could be in prison by now, for all I knew.

  “I can see you’re going down memory lane, thinking about what could have happened differently.”

  “You can really read people, Teresa. I guess that’s how you’ve built your realtor business.”

  She turned and crinkled her nose. “I wasn’t very good at reading the first guy to sweep me off my feet.”

  She was talking about Dave Frazier. She was a junior while he was two years into college when they started dating. To me, it was pretty obvious what he wanted from day one, not just from Teresa, but from every other pretty girl who crossed his sights. We called him Suave (with a long “a” sound) Dave. He once even tried to make one of his slick moves on me when we were partying on the beach late one Friday night. The asshole didn’t have a chance. I twisted his arm around and up his back so far I might have separated his shoulder. I never told Teresa. She didn’t want to hear about his exploits; she enjoyed la-la land. That all changed a couple of years later, just after she graduated high school. She got pregnant.

  Teresa and Suave Dave stayed together four or five years, then he said he’d yet to live the adventures he’d envisioned, so he took off and never came back. She raised her son by herself.

  Big mistake for old Dave. Teresa dropped out of school but went on to get her realtor’s license and started learning the business. It appeared she’d worked her ass off to develop a nice little empire.

  I heard the swoosh of the sliding glass door, and I lurched, spilling my wine all over my shirt as I scrambled to an upright position.

  “Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you. Hey, Mom.” A young man walked in between us until he was standing in front of the pool.

  My eyes did a double take.

  “Oh, hey, it’s you,” the guy said.

  “Corey, right?” I said to him, then I turned to Teresa. “I thought your son was off at college.”

  He answered before his mom could. “I was. I just came home for the summer to earn some extra money.” He smiled and scratched his heavy beard.

  “You two know each other?” Teresa used her wineglass to do her pointing.

  “Erin was hanging out with Corey and his friends today on the beach.” I could feel my gut tighten into a nice little knot. Erin was obviously ready to take a couple of giant leaps in the freedom department, but she sure as hell wasn’t ready for college kids. I thought I’d been able to thwart that advancement earlier, and now she was going to be sleeping in the same house with the dreamy guy from the beach who had shared far too much of himself.

  Right now, though, he was wearing a regular bathing suit. Wonder where that was earlier.

  “Corey’s a marine biology major at Texas A&M in Corpus Christi. Smart kid, he is. But that’s so cool you ran into each other. Small world, huh?” Teresa said.

  Corey couldn’t stop with the smirking. “Yeah, Mom. Who would have thought I’d run into your old high school friend on the beach with her kids?”

  Something about Corey made me worry. Was it the twinkle in his blue eyes that matched the color of the sparkling pool? Maybe it was his powerful physique, the well-developed chest and shoulders—he apparently had yet to find a shirt to put on. He certainly had the goods to woo a woman, or a girl, as was the case with my fifteen-year-old.

  “Did you guys hear about the shooting over by the lighthouse?” he asked. “Crazy shit going on. Wonder if the drug cartels are going to take their turf wars to this area?”

  “I texted you four times,” Teresa said, holding up four fingers for emphasis. “I wanted to make sure you were okay. Whatever happened to you responding back to my texts?”

  “Sorry, just kind of wrapped up in stuff.”

  Teresa repositioned herself on the chair. “Ah, to be twenty-one and free as a bird with no responsibilities.”

  He ran his hand across his flat belly. Did he just wink at me…in front of his own mother, my dear friend? Damn, this guy really thought he was a modern-day Casanova. I was about to jump up and give him a piece of my mind, but I held back, and took a deep breath instead. I didn’t have to act like an old crotchety lady…yet.

  “You got anything to eat, Mom?”

  Teresa giggled. “You’re a bottomless pit, Corey, and yet you look like a swimsuit model. You might be ripped, but I’ll always remember your chubby cheeks when you were just a toddler.”

  He chuckled once, then raised both eyebrows. “Food?”

  “I’m not your short-order cook,” she said with a giggle. “What are you hungry for?”

  “Maybe some roasted marshmallows.”

  Teresa giggled, and I tried to smile, still not buying what Corey was selling. “At least that’s better than bologna and hot sauce,” she said.

  The door swooshed open behind me again.

  “No one invited me to the party,” Erin said, sauntering by me. She only had on a long T-shirt, and I rose to my feet. Before I could say a word, she lifted the back end of her T-shirt to show a pair of pink shorts with “South” etched on one cheek and “Padre” on the other.

  “It’s because it’s late. You should be in bed, Erin,” I said, trying to prevent further interaction between my daughter and the son of Suave Dave.

  “Oh, Alex, relax. It’s vacation, and Erin is growing up. We should roast some marshmallows over the fire pit. It will be fun.” Waving her hands in the air as she spoke, Teresa grinned and headed to the kitchen.

  Sigh.

  I thought it would be hard to fall asleep with thoughts of the shootout still pinging my brain, wondering if Carly could have actually been a target or not. But now I had real issues to worry about, and I knew I wouldn’t sleep a wink with Mr. Slick in the house.

  6

  A seagull squawked as it flew just above the awning and landed on the railing off to my right. Soaking wet, I walked up the wooden plank ramp next to a pier filled with jet skis and used both hands to push my crazy hair out of my face.

  In no time flat, a man invaded my personal space, and I stopped in my tracks, halfway up the ramp.

  “Hiya, Alex. Long time no see.” Archie’s smile couldn’t get any bigger.

  “Jesus, Archie, you scared me.”

  “I thought the FBI’s biggest badass doesn’t get scared.”

  “Only of your ugly mug showing up on our family vacation for the second time in two days.”

  “Ouch, you really know how to throw those zingers, Alex.” He turned to glance at the bayside water, and I followed his gaze. I think I might have hurt his feelings. Maybe he was more insecure about his looks than he let on.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to cut you down. I’m just playing with you.”

  He shifted his eyes to mine, and then the corners of his mouth turned upward.

  I held up a hand. “Don’t say what you’re thinking.”

  “Hey, Mom,” Luke called out between the slats of the wooden railing above my head. “Can we get lunch here? I’m hungry as hell.”

  “Don’t cuss, Luke. Yes, you and Erin can get a table and order us burgers.”

  “Cool. Thanks. He
y, Erin…” Luke turned and ran off, his voice fading into the music, a Jimmy Buffet beach mainstay, “Margaritaville.”

  Archie flicked a wrist at my life jacket that covered a good portion of my bathing suit. “You can take that thing off, you know.”

  “I will after I dry off.” I noticed he also had on a life jacket, which was dark red from being soaked in the water. But something was off. His hair, while a little windblown, wasn’t wet at all.

  “Did you just ride a jet ski or soak in a hot tub?”

  “Jet ski all the way, babe. I just like to take it nice and easy.”

  I nodded, but refused to acknowledge his innuendo.

  “Right. Hey, I’m kind of hungry, so I’m going to have lunch with my kids.” I took a step up the incline.

  “But I thought we were going to have our little de-brief on my missing college kid case?”

  “I never said that.”

  “Yeah, remember, I gave you the signal when you drove off last night?”

  “I remember the signal, but I never agreed to anything.”

  “I just thought, you know, we made a pretty good team when we were hunting you-know-who down the East Coast.” He looked down and shuffled his feet.

  Archie was the kind of guy who, at times, could look like a wounded puppy begging for a ‘thatta boy’ and a pat on the head. But I also knew that as soon as I turned to look the other way, the wounded puppy would be humping my leg.

  “If you’re in the middle of this important case, then why are you taking the time to do the tourist thing and go jet skiing? You should be pounding the pavement, talking to people, like those friends of his.”

  “Does that mean you’ll talk to me about the case? Maybe we can all have lunch together.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t want the kids listening to all this crap. Are you lonely? I thought you and the reporter were getting friendly.”

  “We were…are. Cynthia was actually supposed to join me and give me a water tour of the bay, but her news director sent her off to the hospital to follow up on those who were injured from the shootout. But, man, I was sure as hell looking forward to seeing her in a swimsuit.” He bit down on his knuckle. “Did you see the body on her? Hot damn.”