She pulled back the hammer on the automatic. The click sounded deadly.
If he could keep her talking, there might be a chance. “And your husband, the father of your child, what about him?” he asked. “He deserved to die too?”
Freida smiled more broadly now. “Oh yes. Many people thought so. We got hate mail about it all the time. People would have stood in line to kill him.” Her smile faded. “But I was the lucky one. He killed three of my babies before they ever had a chance. And he wanted to kill Hallee, too, before she ever saw the light of day. But I stopped him. I stopped him.”
Her face was steel now. “And at the end, he had the gall to give most of his money to everyone else but me. After all I did, putting him through medical school, giving him a beautiful home, keeping quiet during all of his nasty little affairs.” Her voice cracked. “The bastard deserved it a million times over.”
Suddenly, a voice spoke from the other side of the bow. “Yes, he did.”
Freida whirled, her arm straight with the gun at shoulder level.
Everything happened at once.
Jerah Schein was standing next to the rail along the bow opposite him. The right side of his face dribbled blood from three gashes. The blood had run down his face, his neck and into his chest hair.
At the sound of his voice, Freida spun toward him and shot him.
His face jerked sideways as the bullet hit him. A spurt of blood came out of his left eye. He tumbled backward over the rail.
Forte’s foot lashed out and Freida’s legs buckled. She slammed down on the deck and bounced once like a rag doll. She lay still.
Forte scrambled to pick up the pistol which had clattered across the deck.
He ran to the edge of the dented rail where Schein had gone over. He pointed the pistol down at the water abeam the sailboat.
The man was gone.
Freida groaned and Forte stepped close to her. He took a pair of handcuffs out of his back pocket and clicked them over her wrists.
In the other boats along the marina, people were coming out of their cabins. In the muted lights of the boats, their faces looked worried — but curious. Forte got to his feet and waved at the onlookers. "Everything's under control," he called out.
The deck of the boat rolled gently under his feet, a rocking motion, soothing in its contrast to the burst of violence. Forte looked up at the masts of the other sailboats docked nearby, their flags atop fluttering in the island breeze. Beyond them a navy sky dappled with specks of light.
He looked down at the unconscious woman then slowly slid down to the deck and sat with his back against the cabin of the boat.
It was over.
He reached into his pocket again and pulled out a tiny digital recorder. He clicked it off.
Chapter 37
A few days later.
“Go fastuh, Unka Alvey! Go fastuh!” the curly-haired toddler squealed as she clung to Forte’s ears. He scooted across the Quadries' back yard on all fours until he finally mock-collapsed in a heap.
“This old horse needs a break, Katie Quadrie,” he told the girl. He lay flat on his back in the grass. She crawled up on his chest so that her aqua eyes looked directly into his yellow eyes. Katie wrinkled her nose and put her finger on the tip of his nose. “I need a new horsey,” she announced. She jumped up and ran over to Archie Griffey who sat at a picnic table chatting with Manny Laird. The retired cop scooped her up and put her on his back and scampered across the yard.
“Dinner is served!” Mack Quadrie called out as he finished flipping the burgers off the grill onto a huge platter. His wife Renee came out of the house with an oversized serving bowl filled with baked beans and set it on the picnic table next to the grill. Jackie Shaw followed with another giant bowl, this one full of potato salad.
“Manny, why don’t you bless our food,” Mack said to the pastor. After the prayer, everyone milled around the table filling plates for a few moments until they got settled.
“So, they haven’t recovered Schein’s body yet?” Mack asked abruptly.
Renee elbowed him in the ribs. “Mack, honey, what kind of dinner conversation is that!”
Her giant of a husband bit off a third of his hamburger and looked at Forte.
Forte drank his root beer and set the bottle next to his plate. “Not yet. They likely never will. It’s my understanding that the little sea scavengers can do their work pretty quickly.” He waggled his eyebrows at Katie who giggled at him.
“What about the rest of it?” asked Archie. “The girl and her mother.”
“Freida Lamberth is awaiting trial without bond. Her lawyers were unable to convince the judge she was not a flight risk after everything that happened. And Hallee is at her grandparents' house trying to make sense of her life,” Forte said.
“Poor girl,” said Manny.
“Yeah, it’s going to take some time for her to get over it, not that she will ever be able to put it out of her mind,” Forte said. “Her mother told her that her father had wanted to have her aborted. A child shouldn’t have to deal with that kind of hard truth.”
“No,” said Jackie Shaw. “None of us should have to.”
Everyone ate in silence for a few minutes under the bright April sky. Finally Verna Griffey spoke up. “The ransom money. Did they get it back?” She looked around the table. “Y’all know you want to find out about that.” Everyone laughed.
Forte finished chewing and swallowed. “The last I heard, the FBI and CIA both were trying to track down the twenty-five million. They followed the trail to two other bank accounts in Switzerland and Hong Kong before they lost it. The money is gone.”
Verna set down her glass of iced tea. “Whole lotta money to just go poof,” she said.
“But the girl is safe,” Forte said.
“Amen,” said Manny Laird.
The conversation traveled in other directions, to Mack’s exploits as a star defensive tackle for the Saints, Archie’s latest fishing tales, and Katie’s outstanding accomplishments in kindergarten. Everyone helped clear the table and Renee went in the house with Verna to put on coffee. Mack took Archie to show him a new fishing lure he had picked up. Jackie took Katie’s hand and walked across the backyard to a sandbox.
Forte and Manny walked around the back yard under the pecan trees, letting the meal settle a bit before the banana pudding was brought out.
“You did a good thing, you and Nomad,” Manny said. His blue eyes were the color of the Caribbean.
“We did what we had to do,” Forte said.
“Yes. Most men would not have been able to do it.”
Forte stooped and picked up one of Katie’s pink shoes from the lawn. “It’s what I know to do,” he said. “I don’t give myself another choice.”
Manny considered that. “Everyone has choices. You’ve made bad ones before, as we all have. You made a good choice this time. Accept that,” he said.
Forte looked down at his friend’s weathered face and saw the kindness there.
“Okay,” he said.
“Okay,” Manny said.
* * *
The woman stood in the hallway and watched her two daughters: one wanting to be so grown-up and the other just beginning her life.
Joyce smiled as she saw how lovingly Angie held the baby. Her eldest daughter looked older than her thirteen years as she cradled the newborn on the sofa. Somehow the girl’s icy emotional surface had melted a bit since Joyce came home from the hospital. The thaw had surprised both of them.
At first, after the incident, she had wondered how she could survive it. Seeing the doctor murdered had rocked her. Her world was turned upside down with all of the police's questions and the investigation. And … the baby.
Then, they brought the tiny bundle into her room. Little Sarah. She held the premature child in her arms and looked into that little face. Her worries had faded away. Her life had changed.
It would not be easy. But it was her life.
We
are a mixed-up fruit salad of a family, she thought as she watched her two daughters cuddle on the sofa. But we are here. Together.
Epilogue
Some time later.
The late afternoon sun warmed the deck of the sailboat as it raced across the waves.
The man at the wheel watched the clouds building on the horizon and decided it was time to turn back toward the Australian coastline. Soon the sun would disappear and the winter winds of the southern hemisphere would make it too cold to stay out on the water for very long.
He rubbed a hand over his shaved head, then reached to adjust the black patch over his left eye. The blond beard he was growing just barely concealed the trio of scars that raked across his right cheek. He could feel the ridges of the scars as his fingers probed beneath the beard.
There would be time to heal. And money to make the healing as comfortable as it could be.
No need to plan too far ahead. Yet.
* * The End * *About the Author
Glen Allison and his wife Kathy live in northeast Mississippi. He is co-founder of the Mississippi Writers Club and is the author of Still Standing Tall, the story of the Williams Brothers, by Billboard Books. He has written for MISSISSIPPI magazine, MEMPHIS magazine, MISSISSIPPI BUSINESS JOURNAL, and others. MISCUE is the first in the Al Forte mystery-suspense series from Yoke Press. Glen can be reached by e-mail at [email protected].
For more information about MISCUE, go to https://netga.com.
Coming Soon from Yoke Press!
NETBLUE
The second in the Al Forte mystery series
Just when you thought things would settle down for Al Forte, the New Orleans bodyguard finds himself on the hunt for an Internet assassin. The targets of the murderer? Pedophiles who have been released from prison. Ordinarily, Forte wouldn't spend a minute's worry on the serial killer's spree, but his attention is captured when a child is threatened.
Glen Allison's new novel once again plunges Al Forte into a situation that challenges his sense of right and wrong and threatens his own mission in life.
For a sample of NETBLUE keep reading....
An excerpt from NETBLUE
Copyright © 2002 by Glen Allison
Perspiration trickled down the middle of Al Forte's back under the Kevlar vest as he crouched in the cave-black hallway. Inside the abandoned building, the heat sweltered even more than the 98-degree east Texas afternoon outside. Forte held the H&K sub-machine-gun with one hand and pushed the night-vision goggles up with the other hand as he wiped the sting of sweat from his eyes. Without the goggles he literally could not see his hand in front of his face.
The heat and the darkness annoyed Forte but did nothing serious to crack his resolve.
The baby must be found.
He flipped down the goggles. Behind him were the other two members of the Forte Security rescue team, Nomad Jones and Jackie Shaw. He motioned them to follow as he moved silently down the hallway. Pieces of torn wallboard dotted the floor as they advanced toward the corridor tee-junction ahead. A quick peek around the corner showed no hint of light in either direction. At the far end of the hall to the right was a stairwell.
The faint hum of a radio was drifting down the stairs.
As the team slowly moved toward the stairwell, Forte reminded himself of the details of this mission he had memorized: A escaped convicts had stolen nine-month-old boy from a judge's home the day before. Negotiations had yielded nothing because the kidnappers refused to talk. They had made no ransom demands. They simply wanted revenge against the man who had put them behind bars. Two of the thugs had performed the actual kidnapping but another suspect had driven the getaway car. A strategic and forceful rescue attempt was the only hope for recovery of the child. The team had to be prepared for resistance from at least three men armed with shotguns.
The judge had insisted on using Forte Security for the rescue attempt because this type of mission was the sole reason for the company's existence: recovering and protecting children in danger. Not rich executives held hostage by money-hungry fiends, not diplomats plucked from embassies by terrorists. Just children who found themselves in hostile hands with little hope of a future. To save them was Forte's life, one of the few reasons for living he had grasped during the past few years.
He motioned for the others to follow. The journey of 20 feet down the hallway took a full minute as the trio stepped through the debris of the old building with their rubber-soled boots. A tiny sound from a kicked piece of plaster could cause the kidnappers to open fire. At the bottom of the stairwell Forte signaled the other two to stop. The stairs were concrete and steel. Hopefully they would not creak. He tested the first two steps with his half-weight. They were silent. He flipped off the safety on his machine gun and slowly walked up the first flight of stairs. At the first landing he waited. He could hear the radio more clearly now. Above him, the faintest bit of light touched the wall next to the second floor hallway. If there was a sentry, he would be there.
After his team joined him on the landing, he signaled for Nomad to go high and Jackie low after he checked for the sentry. Easing his face to the corner, he took a deep breath and looked quickly. A husky man in a dirty sweatshirt and camouflage pants was leaning next to a door that was cracked open to spill light into the hallway. He ducked back and held up one finger: One guard. He slowly stepped around the corner. The man's head had bobbed down as he fought sleep. Forte noiselessly covered the eight steps that separated them, clamped a hand over the man's mouth and drew his special knife across his throat. Forte held the guard, lowering him to the floor without a sound.
He listened. No stirring came out of the room. The radio droned on. He waved the other two toward him. All three flipped off the night-vision goggles now that light was available.
From his belt Forte took a tiny electronic periscope with a flexible wand tipped with a lens the size of a pencil eraser. He bent the wand carefully and put the viewfinder to his eye. He repositioned the periscope twice along the edge of the doorway and repeated the process to get a full picture of the room. He extracted the wand from the doorway. He felt the others' eyes on him.
He rocked his arms over his chest to indicate the child was there, then pointed to the left side of the room. Then he crossed his arms, held up two fingers, then pointed once to the center of the room and once to the right side: There were two other people in the room. He signaled again to remind them of the order of attack. They would enter on the count of three.
Forte watched as Nomad pulled a flash grenade from his belt. To his left, Jackie was crouched, her mouth grim but eyes calm.
He held up one finger. One.
Two fingers.
A commercial for cellphone service blared on the radio inside the room.
Three fingers.
Nomad lobbed the flash grenade into the room, tossing it high to give it time to explode before hitting the floor. The blast of the grenade was timed exactly with the crash of the door as Nomad burst into the room. He rolled on to the floor and shot the man on the right with a two quick blasts before the kidnapper could move. Forte could see the man's mouth formed a surprised "O" as he flew backwards.
Jackie followed immediately and put three bullets into the middle of the chest of the man half-standing in the center of the room. The kidnapper had kicked his chair backward, leaped up from his chair at a chipped kitchen table and was grabbing for a shotgun when the rounds from Jackie's weapon knocked him backwards.
A baby's scream punctuated the gunfire.
Forte sprinted to the left corner and flung his body over the small cardboard box holding the child. Smoke from the flash-bang grenade drifted waist-high throughout the room.
"Target One down and out," Nomad shouted.
Jackie immediately called out. "Target Two down and out."
Forte rolled away from the box and looked inside it. He reached down to pull out the baby cocooned in its bundle of blankets.
It w
as a plastic doll. Forte kissed the toy on its forehead and placed it back in the box.
A loudspeaker blared somewhere above the room. "Exercise concluded! Well done, Team Forte." A man in fatigues carrying a clipboard stepped into the room from the hallway. "Strategy... Excellent… Execution… Excellent… Response time…excellent. Your scores keep getting better and better, Al." Forte lifted a hand to give a weak wave in response. Even though the rescue had been a simulation his adrenaline had spiked and was now draining, just as if the mission had been real. The men who had played the part of the kidnappers got up from floor and patted him on the shoulder as they left the room.
Twice a year, Forte spent a couple of days at the Firestorm Training Center in the Big Thicket area of Texas just across the Louisiana border. Mike "Nomad" Jones came along for at least one of the training sessions each year. Nomad, whose nickname came from his response of "No Matter" back in his days with Forte as Navy SEALS, was leaning over with his hands on his knees, his head below the haze in the room.
This was the first time at the training center for Jackie Shaw, the thirty-something resident director of The Refuge, a shelter for endangered children that Forte had established. She had been hired a year earlier and had already experienced an attack on the shelter. An expert marksman, she had brought down one of the attackers with a shot to the leg. She deserved the extra training. Forte still smiled when he recalled she was an ex-nun.
"Quite a buzz, huh?" Forte asked.
Jackie was sitting at the table running a hand over the white streak in her closely-cropped black hair. She lifted her head. "Yeah. My ears are still ringing from the flash-bang." She tossed a set of earplugs on the table. "Even with these things plugged in."
"Good job," Forte said. "Both of you." He pulled out a slightly dented pack of Checkers cigarettes from a zippered pocked on his fatigues. He was down to four smokes a day. The Checkers were nasty but they were all that was left of more troubled times. He shook out Number Three and lit it up.
Nomad straightened up, his eyes white against the black-and-green streaks of camo paint on his face. "In the words of the Indian chief to John Wayne in McClintock, 'Good party, no mo' whiskey, we go home.'"
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