Praise for Cold Fire
With Hawk Tate Dustin created another intriguing, complicated and fascinating main character who provokes you as a reader by repeatedly flirting with the line between good vs. evil. Cold Fire is an intricate and incredibly layered story. – M’s Bookshelf Blog
It is a passionate, even desperate tale of problems that really exist and tragedies that could have been real. It grasps the reader starting with the first word and never slows down. I thoroughly enjoyed it and highly recommend it to anyone looking for a story they can care about. It is only as violent as the world really is, only profane as the circumstances gave rise to, and completely devoid of sex. The author did not allow anything to clutter up the clean lines of a well engineered masterpiece. – Amazon Reviewer
Just when you think you figured it out -- "IT" changes. Cold Fire. is a perfect title for a story with people and plots and explanations that twist and turn, prove to be the opposite of what they seem --or not. – Kindle Reader
Praise for Cover Fire
I really enjoyed this action-packed thriller from Dustin Stevens. I was so engrossed in the story that it was difficult to put down. The characters are so well developed that I felt like I knew them. I definitely did not see the end coming. I highly recommend this book if you are looking for an exciting read! – Amazon Reader
I really enjoyed the first of the Hawk Tate series (Krokodil) but this one is even better. Non-stop action intertwined with an interesting and exciting plot keep the pages turning. – Kindle Reviewer
I was pleasantly surprised by the first book in this series, "Cold Fire" which I bought mainly because it was an intriguing premise and inexpensive to check out, and it was good enough to try the next one. "Cover Fire" shows another level of refinement by the author. The main characters are further developed and the plot kept me turning pages…If you enjoy Reacher, you'll definitely enjoy these. – Amazon Customer
Praise for Be My Eyes
From the very first page "Be My Eyes" managed to capture my attention and keep it all the way through to the satisfying conclusion. This is a novel that runs the gamut of emotions from despair to hope, anger, happiness and everything in between. It's well-written with vivid imagery, strong dialogue and a plot that resonates with the reader long after the story is over. – Amazon Top 1000 Reviewer
This is truly one of the best books I have read. It touches on the ugly parts of human nature without dwelling on it only. It shows the good in people without that person knowing it. And, in show how anyone person in your life no matter how much or how long you know them, can make the biggest impact on you. – Amazon Customer
Dustin Stevens did an excellent job is bringing this story together. The writing is very descriptive, the plot is engaging and emotionally thick, and the underlying tone and meaning will prove to help many. This book was written with compassion! – Kindle Reader
I'm at a loss for words to describe this wonderful story. Ruby & Cole; the plot, the journey, the emotions, the end......just unbelievable. This story touched on so much of what it means to be human, both good and bad. The relationships we nurture or destroy, the grudges we hold and hopefully, the pains we eventually set free. Such a poignant story which had me in tears at the end. – Kindle Customer
Other works by Dustin Stevens:
Going Viral
Quarterback
Be My Eyes
Scars and Stars
Catastrophic
21 Hours
Ohana
Twelve
Liberation Day
Just a Game
Ink
Four
The Zoo Crew Novels:
The Glue Guy
Tracer
Dead Peasants
The Zoo Crew
The Hawk Tate Novels:
Cover Fire
Cold Fire
The Reed & Billie Novels:
The Good Son
The Boat Man
Fire and Ice
A Hawk Tate Novel
Dustin Stevens
Fire and Ice, A Hawk Tate Novel
Copyright © 2016, Dustin Stevens
Cover Art and Design: Paramita Bhattacharjee, www.creativeparamita.com
Warning: All rights reserved. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work, in whole or part, in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, is illegal and forbidden, without the written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Characters, settings, names, and occurrences are a product of the author’s imagination and bear no resemblance to any actual person, living or dead, places or settings, and/or occurrences. Any incidences of resemblance are purely coincidental.
For Austin.
He ho’omaka hou’ana.
Nature has no principles. She makes
no distinction between good and evil.
- Anatole France
Part I
Chapter One
Sam Cuddyer stood with the front of his thighs pressed flush against the kitchen counter. Leaning forward at the waist, he rested his right palm alongside the polished steel wash basin, his left hand holding a satellite phone tight with his cheek.
Under normal circumstances his regular cell phone would be just fine, the farmhouse sitting a mere four miles outside of town. The unexpected winter storm that had arrived early that morning had wiped out the traditional signal for the area though, dumping a wet and heavy blanket on everything, shrouding the world in a foot of white that showed no signs of slowing.
The lone exception to the ghostly pallor was a misshapen circle 50 feet in diameter behind the house, the snow stripped away, replaced by a blackened smudge. As Cuddyer stood with the phone mashed against his cheek, feeling his heart rate increase with each ring in his ear, he could see the telltale signs of what had happened laid out before him.
The remains of the free standing garage were precious few, the entire back end of it blown completely away, charred debris strewn out wide. Some of the smaller pieces still rested atop the snowpack, most having already made their way to the ground beneath, their heat pushing right through the fresh powder.
A few small flames still licked at the bottom of the structure, their orange tendrils rising like fingers against the darkened backdrop of the night sky. Beyond them the wreckage could just barely be made out. What remained resembled the charred corpse of a miniature roller coaster, copper tubing and piping blackened with soot.
“Who is this?”
There was no greeting of any sort on the other end of the line, no hint of recognition, nothing but the gruff response of someone who did not appreciate being called at such a peculiar hour.
“Cuddyer,” Sam muttered, not wanting to say the word, but knowing there was no way around it. As he did, he shifted his focus from the carnage in the backyard to his own reflection in the glass before him.
His skin still wore the effects of the last hour, streaks of blood and wood char smeared across the leathered surface like some form of war paint. Both seemed to start high on his temples and traverse over his cheekbones, ending in the grizzled beard that covered the bottom half of his face.
At a glance, there was no mistaking the kind of man Sam Cuddyer was or the life he had lived, a look he had worked hard to cultivate, even harder to maintain. In his experience people tended to steer clear of what they didn’t understand, made a point of staying even further away from that which they feared.
Now, more than ever, Sam Cuddyer looked like a man to be feared.
The cruel irony of it was at the moment, fear was the predominant feeling roiling throu
gh him.
“Hold on.”
There was a loud sound as the phone was dropped, presumably onto a steel surface judging by the echo. The lines around Cuddyer’s eyes tightened just a bit at the harsh clang of it in his ear, making no effort to pull the phone away as he waited, knowing the next voice would be no more welcoming than the first.
“What?” a second man asked, Cuddyer recognizing the voice as the one he was looking for.
“We’ve got a problem,” Cuddyer said, bypassing any preamble, knowing better than to even attempt to soften the blow.
More than once he had heard the stories of people who attempted such an approach.
“How bad?” the man asked, his tone not changing one bit.
“Elias,” Cuddyer said, keeping his answers short, following the instructions that had been laid out for him months before.
A long moment passed, Cuddyer able to hear the man on the other end breathing loudly, the first sign of anger seeping in.
“Pinched?”
“No,” Cuddyer said, shaking his head just slightly. “Worse.”
“Wor…” the man snapped, cutting himself off in the middle of the word and letting out a second angry sigh.
Another moment slid by, Cuddyer offering nothing as the man digested the information.
“Dumbass blew himself up, didn’t he?”
Shifting his attention to the yard out back, Cuddyer looked past the remains of the garage still burning, completely ignored the scattered bits of wood and machinery scattered about. Instead, he honed in on the path cut through the snow connecting the garage and the rear door of the house, seeing the trenches that he and Jasper had cleaved while dragging Elias inside, the blood left in their wake already beginning to darken as it froze in place.
“Pretty much,” Cuddyer said.
“What the hell kind of answer is that?” the man asked. “Either he did, or he didn’t.”
Cuddyer was aware of what the man was getting at the first time, though he still couldn’t quite bring himself to say the words. He knew what reaction they would bring, that it would do little to change the predicament they now found themselves in.
“Most of the product is gone. He’s alive, but just barely.”
“How much is most?” the man asked. If he had any concern at all for the state of Elias, he did nothing to show it.
In the mad dash of the preceding hour Cuddyer hadn’t stopped to take inventory yet, though a few cursory glances told him most of what they’d been working on for the previous week was gone, vaporized into the Montana night sky.
“Best guess, 80 percent,” Cuddyer said, his eyes sliding shut as he delivered the news. Pushing himself upright from the counter, he raised his free hand to his brow and began to knead it, the leathered skin rough beneath his fingertips.
“Eighty percent,” the man replied, spitting the words out, venom now obvious in his tone. “Are you shitting me?”
With every fiber of his being, Cuddyer wished he was. “Nope.”
He could hear the phone being lowered as the man continued to drone on in the background, pushing out a rant of obscenities that covered every swear word in at least two different languages. More than once Cuddyer had been present for such an outburst, the explosion bordering on humorous to him as he watched the man bellow in a combination of English and Spanish.
The only difference was, now that hostility was aimed in his direction.
After the better part of two minutes he could hear the phone being raised back into position, the heavy breathing returning to his ear.
“Two days. You can have two extra days. That’s it.”
There was no way of knowing exactly what Cuddyer had expected upon making the call. His only thought was that he had to report it up the line, needed to make sure the higher-ups were apprised, aware that nothing shady was going on. Once the storm passed and Elias healed, they would start again, though how long that would take was anybody’s guess.
Never, not once, had he expected this.
“I...um, what?” Cuddyer managed, his tongue feeling two sizes too large for his mouth, resembling sandpaper as it scraped against the roof. “Two days? For what?”
“For what?” the man asked, forced emphasis on both words, the sound letting Cuddyer know that he thought the question was a stupid one. “Before you better have the product ready to go, that’s what.”
The bottom fell out of Cuddyer’s stomach, his mind seizing on the words as his body went rigid. “But, sir, there’s no way.”
“Then I suggest you find one. My boys will be there at noon on Saturday to collect.”
No words came to Cuddyer as he leaned forward, letting the cracked Formica countertop hold him upright. His head spun as he tried to make sense of what he was hearing, the image of the destroyed lab out back at the front of his mind and refusing to move.
“And Cuddy?” the man said, the words pulling Cuddyer out of his fog. “Don’t you even think about trying to skip out on us. You know what happened to the last guys that pulled that shit.”
Cuddyer said nothing as the line went dead in his ear. He kept the phone pressed to his ear a moment longer before dropping it to his side. There he let it slip from his grasp, falling to the floor, the sound of plastic breaking as it hit the wooden planks.
“What did he say?”
The question seemed to float in from far afield, finding Cuddyer’s ears but barely penetrating his consciousness. Not until it was asked a second, and then a third time, did it make enough headway to reach Cuddyer, his head turning to see Jasper standing in the open doorway connecting the kitchen to the living room.
“What did he say, Sammy?” Jasper asked, seizing on the movement as a sign of recognition. “Are they sending somebody to help Elias?”
Chapter Two
“Do me a favor, will you?” Yvonne Endicott asked as she pulled the needle through the loop of the suture on the side of Mrs. Madeline Everson’s face. In a move practiced 100, if not 1,000 times before, she tugged the needle gently, driving the knot down flush with the paper-thin skin of the woman. Once it was in place, she took up a pair of scissors from the stainless steel stand beside her and snipped the ends clean.
“What’s that?” Everson asked, her voice coming out as little more than a wheeze, a combination of her age and the fact that she had barely breathed since Yvonne went to work on her.
“Please tell your husband that next time, there’s no need for you to get cleaned up before coming into the emergency room,” Yvonne said, dropping the remains of the suture onto the tray and taking up a small square packet. Folding one corner down, she tore it away and squeezed a small bit of the antibacterial ointment onto a cotton swab.
“Oh, now,” Everson said, pursing her lips in the way that older folks tended to whenever they thought someone younger was just being foolish. To accentuate the point she waved a hand before her, just missing the swab in Yvonne’s hand.
“You have to understand, he didn’t mean anything by it, just that there is a certain dress code that applies when going out in public.”
Reflexively, Yvonne smiled as she cast a look down the length of the open room, nothing but a row of empty beds staring back at her.
Not exactly what she would describe as public.
“Okay,” Yvonne said, having had enough similar conversations in the preceding two months to know not to bother pressing it further, “but from now on, it’s okay to leave a little blood on there. Washcloths can carry all sorts of bacteria, and scrubbing a wound with one is just asking for infection.”
As she offered the gentle admonishment, Yvonne daubed the ointment into place before covering the area with an adhesive bandage, the center pad sufficient to protect the six stitches.
“Yes, Doctor,” Everson replied, letting it be known that she was playing along but had little intention of changing her ways.
That too was something Yvonne had encountered too many times to count since arriving.
�
�Okay,” Yvonne said, using her heels to roll the stool she sat on back a few inches and slapping at her thighs for effect. The sound carried through the empty room as she peeled off her latex gloves and tossed them onto the tray along with the other supplies from the procedure.
“That’s it?” Everson asked, raising a gnarled hand to her brow and softly touching the bandage pressed flush with her hairline. “We’re all done?”
“All done,” Yvonne said, raising her voice a tiny bit, trying her best to put on a joyful demeanor for her patient.
“How’s it look?” Everson asked.
“You’ll barely even know it’s there,” Yvonne said, resting a hand on the woman’s back as she stood and steered her toward the waiting area outside. “Come see us again in a week, and we’ll take those out, you’ll be good as new.”
A small smile crossed the woman’s features as she looked up at Yvonne. “Thank you, Doctor, I do appreciate it.”
Yvonne walked alongside her as far as the door before stopping, the same smile still affixed to her face. “That’s what we’re here for. Just be careful out there, that ice is no joke.”
Bowing slightly at the waist, Everson nodded in understanding, raising one hand in farewell as she disappeared into the hallway, the nurse sitting at the registration desk rising to intercept her.
Pausing to make sure there was nothing further, Yvonne turned back to the empty room. One hand she thrust deep into the pocket of her white coat, the other she brought to her face, using her thumb and forefinger to rub her eyes.
“I told you I could have done that,” a familiar voice said from the opposite end of the room. “Would have given me something to do, after all.”
“Which is exactly the reason I did it,” Yvonne said, dropping her hand away and opening her eyes. After the pressure from her fingers, colors were distorted, small circles of red and green dancing across her vision.
Fire and Ice: A Thriller (A Hawk Tate Novel Book 3) Page 1
