Hard Way (A Jon Reznick Thriller Book 4)

by J. B. Turner

  ALSO BY J. B. TURNER

  Hard Road

  Hard Kill

  Hard Wired

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2017 J. B. Turner

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781477848722

  ISBN-10: 147784872X

  Cover design by Stuart Bache

  For Andrew, Robert and Sarah, with love

  Contents

  Prologue

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  Thirty-Seven

  Thirty-Eight

  Thirty-Nine

  Forty

  Forty-One

  Forty-Two

  Forty-Three

  Forty-Four

  Forty-Five

  Forty-Six

  Forty-Seven

  Forty-Eight

  Forty-Nine

  Fifty

  Fifty-One

  Fifty-Two

  Fifty-Three

  Fifty-Four

  Fifty-Five

  Fifty-Six

  Fifty-Seven

  Fifty-Eight

  Fifty-Nine

  Sixty

  Sixty-One

  Sixty-Two

  Sixty-Three

  Sixty-Four

  Sixty-Five

  Sixty-Six

  Sixty-Seven

  Sixty-Eight

  Sixty-Nine

  Seventy

  Seventy-One

  Seventy-Two

  Seventy-Three

  Seventy-Four

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Prologue

  It began at nightfall.

  The cars were down to a crawl as they approached the police checkpoint. Dozens of officers had blocked off two lanes of Rockville Pike in Bethesda, Maryland. A long line of drivers—some still wearing government employee ID lanyards around their necks—waited patiently to be spoken to. Each and every one was waved through almost immediately. But one vehicle—a sleek BMW SUV—was directed to pull onto the shoulder.

  The woman driving the BMW wound down her window. “What’s the problem, officer?”

  “How much have you had to drink tonight, ma’am?” an imposing officer asked.

  The woman seemed surprised. “Nothing at all. I’m just returning from working late.”

  “Do you mind stepping out of the vehicle?”

  “Actually, I do mind, officer. I’ve got a family waiting for me. And I’m late.”

  “Ma’am, please step out of the vehicle.”

  The woman shook her head. “Really?”

  “Ma’am, I won’t ask a third time.”

  The woman switched off her engine and stepped out of her vehicle. She was led away from the line of cars to the sidewalk. The cop held up a finger and slowly began to move it horizontally in front of her face. “Can you follow this, ma’am?”

  The woman complied, her gaze following the movement of the officer’s finger.

  The cop asked her to walk in a straight line, heel to toe. She did so.

  “I’m sober, I can assure you.”

  “Can I see your ID, ma’am?”

  She groaned. “It’s in my bag, in the car.”

  “If you could get that, ma’am.”

  The woman went to her car and brought back a black tote bag. She rifled through it and handed over her driver’s license and FBI ID. “Are we good?”

  The cop nodded as he stared at the license and then the ID. He cocked his head in the direction of a police cruiser. “Do you mind sitting in the back while I authenticate your ID, ma’am?”

  “What do you mean authenticate? Officer, this is ridiculous. It’s been a long day. And I’m asking very nicely to please let me get on my way.”

  “Ma’am, I’m going to have to ask you to do what you’re told, or face being arrested. Do you understand?”

  “Unbelievable. This has never happened to me. I only live five minutes from here. My kids will be staying up to see me.”

  The cop opened the rear door of the cruiser. “Get in the back of the car. We have reason to believe you’ve been drinking. And we also need to authenticate your FBI credentials.”

  The woman stood, hands on hips. “And if I don’t get in the back?”

  The cop stood holding the open rear door. “Final chance, or you will be arrested, ma’am.”

  The woman shook her head. “Goddamn!” She reluctantly climbed in the back seat. He handed her a portable breathalyzer. “Can you breathe into that, ma’am, while I’m checking out this ID. I just need to rule out any alcohol use.”

  “This is insane.”

  “Ma’am, we have reason to believe that you’ve been drinking. Can you please breathe into this device?”

  The woman shook her head. “Reason to believe? I passed the tests on the sidewalk.”

  “Ma’am, if you would just blow into this.”

  “Just to let you know, officer, I’ll be taking this up with your superiors in the morning.” She took the breathalyzer from the cop, then held the device to her mouth. As she blew, her eyelids began to look heavy.

  “Ma’am, are you OK?”

  The woman’s eyelids flickered for a few moments before they began to close.

  She was out.

  The officer took the breathalyzer from her mouth and strapped her in with the seatbelt. Then he got into the driver’s seat and pulled away slowly from the line of vehicles, heading north on Rockville Pike.

  He afforded himself a smile.

  The odorless, tasteless vapors of the fentanyl capsule, which had been released as she blew in, had incapacitated her within seconds. It seemed hard to believe, but the highest-ranking woman in the FBI had just been kidnapped in suburban DC.

  One

  Jon Reznick was sitting in the Rock Harbor Pub with a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound slab of a man who was breathing hard. His drinking buddy was the former police chief of Rockland, Bill Eastland, a close friend of his late father. Reznick ordered two more bottles of cold beer for them. He noticed Eastland kept glancing at the hirsute barman. Then Eastland leaned in close to Reznick.

  “What is it with beards these days, Jon?” he said. “Every fucker seems to have one.”

  “It’s a hipster thing, I think.”

  “Hipster? Wha
t the fuck is a hipster?”

  Reznick sighed. “God only knows.”

  Eastland shook his head. “Your dad would’ve hated hipsters. Absolutely fucking hated them.”

  “Probably.”

  “In our day, and I’m going way back, it was only students, communists, or beatniks that had fucking beards. Even my dentist has a fucking beard these days. What the fuck is that all about?”

  “God knows.”

  Eastland’s eyes began to fill with tears. “I miss your old man, Jon.”

  “Yeah . . .”

  “Your father . . . he was a great man. I fucking loved him. Lost count of the number of times he hauled my ass out of trouble. You believe that? Hauling me out of trouble?”

  Reznick nodded.

  “Vietnam, Jon. Viet-fucking-Nam. Just two young kids from Rockland, scared out of our fucking wits, with rifles. And people shooting at us that we couldn’t even see.”

  “I know.”

  Eastland wrapped a huge arm around Reznick. “I know you do. You know what it was like.”

  Reznick nodded.

  “Marines, man. US fucking Marines. Fucking A.”

  Reznick drank some beer as the bartender gave him a sympathetic smile.

  “Can’t believe he’s gone. Always thought it would be me.”

  “He’d given up. He was drinking insane amounts.”

  “That he was. That he fucking was. That’s fair.”

  “Just the way he coped.”

  Eastland dabbed his eyes. “He was a tough man, Jon. Toughest man in Vietnam. I’m telling you, he wasn’t afraid of no fuck. And I’m telling you, that’s the goddamn truth.”

  “He was a handful.”

  “A handful? You kidding me? He was like a madman when he got going. Once, we were on some R & R in Bangkok, we got into a fight. You know how it is, right?”

  Reznick nodded, knowing only too well.

  “A mass brawl. Me and him fought a gang of sailors. He knocked four out cold. Wasn’t afraid of nobody.” Eastland closed his eyes. “I’m sorry . . . I didn’t mean to go on like that.”

  Reznick finished the rest of his beer.

  “I remember, the day you were born was the happiest I’d seen him. He was across at the Myrtle to celebrate with a couple guys from the sardine plant. Man, he was so proud that day. Yeah.” He bowed his head. “So proud.”

  It took Reznick the best part of twenty minutes to support Eastland the few hundred yards to the ex-chief’s colonial home, its American flag flying. Once his long-suffering wife Veronica had gotten him inside, Reznick headed to his own home along the near-deserted streets. He walked past the abandoned sardine-packing factory his father used to work in. Then onto the dirt road that led to his house.

  The moon was full and illuminated the path. The same path his father had walked a thousand times. Back to the house his father had built with his own hands. The same earth the old man had trod. Reznick imagined him after a few drinks at the Myrtle, heading back to the house but unable to shut out the images that had been seared into his mind in Vietnam. The maimed comrades. The blood. The fear. And the ghosts that would never leave him.

  Reznick loved the house. The salt-blasted wood with the ocean-blue paint his father had covered it with. They had stayed in a one-bedroom apartment in downtown Rockland while his father built the house. Every waking hour, when he wasn’t working, his father was building. Laying the concrete foundations. Sourcing the wood. He’d even designed the layout.

  Reznick had lived in the house ever since. He planned to die in the house. And he hoped that, one day, his daughter Lauren would return to Maine and live in it, maybe with a family in tow. His father would have loved that.

  Up ahead, in the far distance, Reznick saw a spectral figure standing on his front porch. He kept on walking. Who the hell would turn up at his door at this ungodly hour? He didn’t get visitors.

  As he got closer, the shadow materialized into a man, just standing and staring at the front door.

  He wondered if the man might be a threat. But he knew that if someone from his past decided they wanted him taken out, the assassin wouldn’t be waiting on his porch.

  Reznick got closer. He could now see that the man’s face looked ghostly white. He looked scared. He wore an ill-fitting gray suit.

  “Are you Jon Reznick?”

  Reznick walked up the stairs and pulled his gun out of his waistband, pointing it at the stranger. “Who the hell are you?”

  The man put his arms in the air. “Please, I don’t mean any harm. Are you Jon Reznick?”

  “You mind explaining who the hell you are? You’re on my goddamn property.”

  “I need your help.”

  “My help? I don’t even know you.”

  “Please . . . You know my former wife.”

  “Your former wife? What the hell are you talking about?”

  “My name is James Meyerstein. I’m a professor at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.”

  The name crashed through his head. “Meyerstein?”

  Reznick most certainly did know Martha Meyerstein.

  “Yes, my ex-wife.”

  Reznick couldn’t picture this man being married to Martha. “Are we talking about the same person?”

  “I’m talking about FBI Assistant Director Martha Meyerstein. I think something’s happened to her.”

  Reznick put the gun away as he showed James Meyerstein inside. He knew Assistant Director Martha Meyerstein—a workaholic, no-nonsense operator, a bit like himself. She had deployed him on several FBI investigations over the years.

  “This is a bit irregular,” Reznick said.

  “I’m sorry for turning up like this unannounced. My rental car broke down a couple miles from here. The tow truck company said I’d have to wait till morning.”

  Reznick motioned Meyerstein into the kitchen. He poured out two tumblers of Scotch and handed one to the professor. “You look like you need one.”

  Meyerstein knocked back the amber liquid and closed his eyes. “Thank you. Martha always spoke very highly of you. She never confided much about her job—especially since our breakup. But I know she was very grateful for your help on several investigations.”

  Reznick sighed. “Our paths crossed inadvertently at the outset.”

  “She mentioned you were . . .”

  “An assassin?”

  Meyerstein flushed.

  “It’s OK. Relax. What else do you know about me?”

  “Just that you’re the best at what you do.”

  “What else?”

  “I know how you first ran into Martha and the FBI. She said you’d been set up by your . . . handler. Sent to kill a government scientist. But you didn’t. You protected him. Then you handed him over to the FBI.”

  “It was a mess. But anyway, shit happens, right?”

  Meyerstein nodded. “I’ve got to level with you. I’m scared. Scared of what’s happened to Martha. And, to be honest, I’m a bit scared being here.”

  “I don’t bite, trust me. Look, I really don’t know how I can help.”

  “Martha once mentioned that in the case of the scientist, as a reprisal, the terrorists kidnapped your daughter.”

  Reznick stared at him, long and hard. The memories flashed back. His daughter trussed up on a boat off Key West, held by some Haitian crazies. He’d been lucky to find her alive, and it was thanks to Martha. Reznick had handed over the scientist to the FBI in exchange for the chance to find his daughter.

  “I thought that, in light of that, you might know how to find Martha if that was what’s happened to her.”

  Reznick said nothing.

  “Look, I don’t know if she’s been kidnapped. I just know she’s missing. I’m sorry, I’m not making much sense.”

  Reznick stared into his glass of whisky. “What exactly do you know?”

  “What do I know? I don’t know where to start. My head’s racing with everything that’s happened today.”

  “
How did you find me?”

  Meyerstein blew out his cheeks. “Earlier today I got a call from Martha’s mother. Out of the blue. We haven’t talked in a while.”

  Reznick sipped his drink.

  “Anyway, that’s in the past. She said she was worried—that Martha hadn’t returned home last night.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  “For Martha? Absolutely. It’s quite out of character. The children were worried too. And she couldn’t be reached on her cell phone.”

  Reznick wished the professor would get to the point.

  “So, I tried but, not surprisingly, still no answer. I called a few mutual friends, but no one had heard anything from her.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I called the FBI.”

  “Understandable.”

  “And I was put through to Roy Stamper. He’s a good guy, works as part of Martha’s team.”

  “I know Roy.”

  “Well, he said it was probably nothing. He said she was under pressure and was maybe taking a few days away from it all.”

  Reznick shrugged. “Sounds plausible.”

  “I know Martha. She doesn’t just not turn up or take a few days off without people knowing.” James Meyerstein jabbed his thumb into his chest. “I know her. This is out of character. It doesn’t ring true.”

  The whisky was beginning to warm Reznick’s stomach. “Maybe,” he said.

  “There’s something else.”

  “What?”

  “I could tell from Roy Stamper’s tone that something was wrong.”

  “How d’you mean?”

  “He wasn’t very forthcoming.”

  “I think that’s maybe just the way the FBI are. They won’t want to unduly alarm you.”

  “I guess.”

  “So you how did you get my name and address?”

  Meyerstein looked down. “My former mother-in-law retrieved it from the house phone. I asked her to look for your number. Your initials and address here in Maine were also scribbled on a calendar.”

  “I see.”

  Meyerstein shook his head. “Look, I think something has happened to Martha. And the Feds don’t want to say.”

  “Listen to me, you don’t know that. People don’t turn up all the time. They disappear for a day or two. It happens. All the time, let me tell you.”

  “You’re not listening. Martha isn’t the sort of person to disappear without letting people know. She’s incredibly responsible and reliable. Goddamn, I’ve called the hospitals all around DC. But nothing. This is so out of character.”