AT Stake (An Alex Troutt Thriller, Book 7) (Redemption Thriller Series 19)

by John W. Mefford

  He scratched the side of his head as I glared at Ozzie. He blinked a few times.

  “You okay?” I asked.

  He rubbed his eyes.

  “Miss, I think your boyfriend suffered a concussion. That can happen in explosions like these.”

  I said, “I’m not—”

  Ozzie said, “We’re not—”

  A moment later, a hand touched my shoulder. I knew that hand. I turned around, and Brad took me in his arms before I could say hello. He held me, kissed my head, and rocked us back and forth.

  “Thank God you and the kids are okay,” he whispered, his voice rough with emotion.

  He looked at me now. He had these silvery eyes with shards of blue at the edges. We just stared at each other. For a moment, it felt like it was before…I wasn’t sure before what, though. I was drawn to him, and I could feel his heart opening up.

  “Alex, I’ve been distant lately. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “No, it’s not. I shouldn’t close down like that. I’ll be better.”

  I kissed him. I could hear Luke giggling, but I didn’t care. Better to see a couple work through their issues than see a cold, hateful relationship.

  “Something has been on your mind,” I said, my hands on his pecs.

  “You’re right. I should have told you. My dad is in town.”

  “But I thought he left you and your mom when you were—”

  “I know. A long time.”

  I could feel the stress coming off him in waves. How had I not noticed it before? I was a sad excuse for a girlfriend, but I’d do better. I could do far better, and I damn well knew it.

  “Look, I want to tell you more, once we’re through all this. I want you and the kids, everyone, to be safe. Then, we’ll talk.”

  I flipped around to Jerry. “I’m going to the hospital to be with Ezzy. Then, let’s meet up and make a plan.”

  He started to protest, but I held up a hand.

  “Don’t even go there. This shit has got to stop. It can be a legit operation. Or I go solo. Either way, it’s going to stop.”

  39

  Alex

  Brad hacked into the security system, and the gate to Elise Tran’s estate opened. We’d just finished speaking with Angelia Alvarado and learned something very important about the history of IBIT. Elise had not answered her phone, so we were assuming she was in imminent danger and were forcing our way onto her property.

  “How did you learn how to do that?” I asked as he slipped back into the passenger seat. I gunned the car before he’d even closed his door.

  “These hands have got mad skills.” He arched an eyebrow.

  Boy, ain’t that the truth. “No, seriously.”

  “My dad was a computer nerd back in the day, from what Mom told me. I guess I picked up something through the genetic pool.”

  We had a lot to talk about in that department. But it would have to wait.

  “Anything back from Gretchen or Jerry yet?”

  He checked his phone. “Nothing. Let me ping them in a group text.”

  Earlier, Jerry had pulled Gretchen from the task force without asking for Randy’s permission. After a brief meeting, we split up a list of foreign contacts and dug into Elise’s past travels. What we learned had literally shocked the hell out of me. She’d been traveling to the Middle East at first on a goodwill mission to offer money and aid for child refugees as a result of the wars in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. According to three sources, she then started working with local refugee officials to find homes for the orphaned kids. In the beginning, she went through the proper immigration channels and international adoption agencies. But she soon became frustrated with the pushback and slow processes. So, she created her own network of people to, essentially, smuggle orphaned kids around the globe and pair them up with parents who were desperate to have a child of their own. Who would have thought that the ice princess had a heart of gold?

  “Anything?” We’d conveyed everything we learned from Angelia Alvarado to Jerry and Gretchen, hoping they could provide insight on this new person—a fourth founder of IBIT, who’d left the company before it got off the ground.

  Brad shook his head. “Hold on.”

  “What?”

  “An update from Ozzie at the hospital. Says Ezzy is resting comfortably. Latest doctor visit said she’ll be okay but will need to stay in the hospital a few days, begin a new medication and diet regime.” He looked at me and smiled. His phone dinged. “Oh, he also said that Nick and Stan were in Ezzy’s room and that Ozzie was going with the kids to the safe house.”

  A relief. Somehow, the lives of those I cherished had been spared. Twice in the last week. Maybe there was a higher power, after all.

  But there was at least one evil person out there who’d almost killed members of my family. The question the team was feverishly researching, however, was whether this fourth IBIT founder could have pulled off some or all of the hate-filled crimes of late.

  From what Angelia had shared, Jessica Sinclair was the initial brains behind IBIT. Sinclair had helped develop the first service robot in 1988, which was put to work at Danbury Hospital in Connecticut. Once Jessica, Salvatore, Percy, and Elise formed an LLC, the relationship between the MIT students changed. According to Angelia, who was dating Salvatore at the time, Sinclair was divisive, insistent on making every decision. She argued with everyone, had no idea how to collaborate, and refused to give in to anyone on anything. “She was a fucking dictator,” Angelia had said. She went on to tell us that Sinclair was kicked out of the company by the other three, but then took them to court over what she considered to be her own intellectual property. She lost the court case. The last Angelia had heard—and this was from many years ago—Sinclair had faded into academic obscurity.

  As for the company, Angelia said it was no coincidence that IBIT skyrocketed after Sinclair left. “My husband, Percy, and Elise were very driven, very smart people. We all got rich because of it. But now look at us. Nothing but death and murder and even robbery. I worry about Elise.”

  The tires screeched as I stopped in front of Elise’s house. I glanced at the odd three-headed sculpture, ran to the front door, and rang the doorbell. Brad cupped his hands against one of the windows and looked inside.

  “Do you see her?”

  “Nope.”

  “Anyone?”

  “Nope.”

  I jabbed the doorbell button another ten times.

  “No one is inside,” he said.

  “Could be that Elise is injured or even dead.” We tried opening the door, but it was locked. The door was heavy, and I recalled seeing multiple locks on the inside during my previous visit. We raced around back, stopping every time we could look through a window. No sign of anyone.

  We pulled up around back, the pool to our right, the house on our left. I pointed at the house. “The back door is open. I’m going in; you check out the grounds back here.”

  I pulled out my Glock and ran inside. The house was long. One hallway led to two more. I methodically checked each room. No sign of Elise or anyone else, and no sign of a struggle.

  But the back door had been left open. Something was awry.

  I found the master bedroom. It, like the rest of the home, was immaculate—the kind of immaculate you see on the covers of magazines. I wound my way through the rest of the home and found everything in perfect order. I holstered my gun and walked toward the back of the house, wondering if this Sinclair person, or someone who worked for her, had killed Elise and discarded her body somewhere on the property. We might need to call in additional agents to conduct a thorough search.

  As I headed out the back door, I spotted Brad over by some type of guesthouse. He was on his knees, his back to me. “You find anything?” I called out.

  He slowly turned around.

  I stopped breathing.

  He lifted to his feet, holding a little boy.

  Brad and I met halfway across the yard.
The boy, who was the size of a five-year-old, was sucking on his thumb.

  “Where did you find him?”

  “Peeking out from the door of the guesthouse.”

  “Could be one of the kids who Elise has been trying to help.”

  “I know it.”

  “How?”

  “Jaabir—he told me his name—said that someone took Ms. T away.”

  “He told you all that?” I waved to the little boy, but his eyes looked right through me. I wondered how many horrible atrocities he’d witnessed in his young life. And now, in a supposedly modern society, within one of the most affluent areas in New England, he might have seen one more.

  “He has broken English.”

  I called in the update to Jerry, who quickly dispatched a legion of FBI agents and people from Child Protective Services. Once that was done, he got Gretchen on the phone. She had more information to share, so I put her on speakerphone as Jaabir started running his fingers through the grass. “Sinclair has numerous degrees. Went on to change her focus to Greek mythology, of all things,” Gretchen said. “She wrote several published papers, many about Hades, also known as Pluto, and Cerberus, some type of ugly three-headed dog that guarded the entrance to Hell.”

  I turned my head and thought about the sculpture in front of Elise’s house. “That’s what that is.”

  “The sculpture?” Brad said. “Yeah, I thought you knew that.”

  How would I know that? Was this a new class they taught after “my time” in school?

  Jaabir started rolling in the grass.

  I looked at Brad but was speaking to everyone. “Do you think this three-headed dog represents the three founders—Salvatore, Percy, and Elise—and this is all about her revenge?”

  “Could be,” Jerry said. “Look, I’ve already got two agents on the way to Sinclair’s home.”

  I asked the location.

  “North Quincy. No need for you to make the trek, Alex. They’ll be at the scene in thirty minutes tops.”

  “I doubt they’ll find her there.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, we’re assuming she’s behind Elise’s disappearance. And we still have no idea if or how she might be connected to the bombing. But if she’s really behind this, if she somehow kidnapped or killed Elise, then she’s probably on the run. Who’s going to kill someone, maybe multiple people, and just sit around and watch HGTV until the FBI shows up?”

  “Hold on, guys.” It was Gretchen.

  “You have something, Gretchen?” Jerry asked.

  “I got a hit on my database search of companies and properties. I started using all sorts of Greek names and found a company called Cerberus. Jessica Sinclair is listed as the sole owner.”

  “What kind of company is it?” Brad asked.

  “Doesn’t say, although it made one purchase in the last year. An old abandoned hospital on Gateway Island.”

  Brad’s eyes lit up. “That’s one of those islands off the coast that served as a quarantine station in the 1800s during the influx of Irish immigrants.”

  My guy was such a nerd.

  “She only paid fifty thousand for it,” Gretchen said.

  Brad went on with his history lesson. “During the Great Famine, thousands arrived on ships from across the Atlantic—they called them ‘coffin ships’ because they carried so many dead people. Later, they used that island and a few others to house the indigent. Eventually, it became a prison. I think the island has been uninhabited for thirty or forty years.”

  “Where’s it located?”

  “Give me a second,” Gretchen said. “Here it is. Five miles off the coast.”

  “Nearest what city?” I asked.

  “North Quincy.”

  I kissed Brad hard on the lips and then ran to the car.

  40

  A light, cool rain had started falling, and water dripped off his nose. His eyes pulsated as he peered into the window and spotted Pluto. She was reaching into some type of glass container. There was a table behind her. It was too dark to see what was on it.

  He thought about the weeks of torture that he’d suffered in this building, something that had been blocked from his memory until the jolt from the explosion that he’d caused at that FBI agent’s home. Now, he saw the world with more clarity than he had since the first day he’d headed off to MIT.

  He pulled the knife from his sheath and wound his way to the side door, quietly slipping into the kitchen. He could hear a woman’s pained shrill, as if she were clinging to life.

  He knew that sound. He’d heard it many times. He’d become numb to it, all while slipping into a state of mind that had left him with a perverse idea of who he was and his purpose in life. He swiped the water from his face and glanced around the barren, dusty kitchen. Part of him just wanted to drop the knife and walk away. Go back to the mainland, jump on a bus to anywhere, and start a new life. To forget about how his fragile mind had fallen victim to this brainwashing bitch. To forget about all the evil she had somehow convinced him to carry out.

  You can’t forget. It will haunt you until your last breath. So, what are you going to do about it?

  The young man tiptoed through one great room until he saw her shadow. He took in a breath and shuffled a couple of steps closer. She was built like a bear. Broad-shouldered and tall, she possessed great strength, probably more than he had, even though he was more than twenty years younger. Her claws—though mental in nature—were as sharp as razors.

  Like a bear.

  He flipped the grip of the hunting knife in his hand a few times and padded toward her. She was leaning over the woman, who was strapped to the table. Did he care about this woman being tortured? He couldn’t decide. It was as though he still had a hangover from his own weeks of hell. Intellectually, he knew he should have empathy, but it almost seemed like that part of his brain had been chipped away, crushed into dust.

  One more flip of the knife in his hand. He pictured himself plunging the blade deep into Pluto’s back, cutting through her spinal cord. And then watching her bleed out as she helplessly stared back at him with pleading eyes. He would spit in her face and then finally walk away from this island and this part of his life. Maybe he’d travel to Europe, load up a backpack, and just start hiking, hoping to rediscover a zest for life that he hadn’t felt in far too long.

  He took one more step—a wood plank creaked.

  “I wondered if you would show up, Number One.”

  Pluto slowly turned around.

  “D-d-don’t c-call me that!” He was still ten feet away from her, but he pointed the knife at her face.

  “Help me! You’ve got to help me,” the woman said from the table. “She’s crazy. She’s going to kill me.”

  He could hear the woman’s pleas, but he couldn’t focus on her right now. She was almost as negligible as the waves crashing into the island’s rocky shore.

  “Where were you last night, Number One?”

  “I s-said stop c-calling me that.” His chest quivered.

  “Did you forget about our little plan?”

  “I’m n-not the same person, dammit. You f-fucked with my head. And I’m g-going to make you p-pay.”

  Pluto leaned her backside against the table and released a breath. She seemed far too nonchalant. Why wasn’t she panicking, dammit? Could she not see that he was about to kill her?

  “Number One, I told you what would happen if you betrayed me.”

  The last sheet of the dossier. The one that said Pluto would kill every member of his family, his two younger sisters, his mom, and his dad. Before all this, he’d been detached from them. He recalled feeling angry a lot of the time because they didn’t understand the pressure he was feeling in school, not fitting in, no one listening to his ideas. Until he met Pluto. She and her fucking dossier! The one that justified her brilliance, that read more like a manifesto on how she and her clan of zombies would exact revenge on those who’d robbed her of her company.


  He rubbed his eyes. He couldn’t even recall Pluto’s real name. Dammit, he hated her!

  “F-fuck you!”

  “Are you going to help me? I’m begging you. It’s not just about my life; it’s about the lives of so many kids who need my help.”

  The voice of the woman from the table again. He couldn’t deal with more drama, not when his head was about to explode.

  “Sh-shut the f-fuck up!”

  Pluto started chuckling.

  “Wh-what are you laughing at?”

  “Oh, just the thought of watching each of your family members die. You do remember that was part of your pledge, don’t you?”

  “Y-you’re not going to kill them, because I’m going to kill you. And it will be over. Finally.”

  His heart thumped in his chest. But he wasn’t completely sure if that was due to the impending relief he was about to feel to be able to move on with his life or the sheer ecstasy he was about to feel by killing Pluto. If the latter, he wondered how he had allowed this woman to scar his brain that much.

  “Oh, Quinton.”

  “Th-that’s my name, goddammit. Quinton Pierce.”

  “You shouldn’t be so dramatic.”

  He turned his head. Her calm demeanor simply didn’t compute. Maybe, somehow, she’d brainwashed herself. Was that even possible?

  “Y-you won’t be t-talking shit to me m-much longer. Y-you’re going to die, P-Pluto.” He started walking in her direction. He had to admit that he felt a tingle in his extremities. The retribution would be so very sweet. He could almost feel a smile tug at his lips.

  Pluto rolled her eyes and dug into her cargo pants pocket.

  “She’s got a gun!” the woman from the table yelled.

  His eyes locked in on Pluto’s hand. He saw something black and shiny being pulled out of her pocket. He chucked the knife in her direction, and it glanced off her shoulder. She screamed, and he flipped around and ran back to the kitchen.

  She fired the gun, and he nearly wet himself. A glass sitting on a counter exploded just to his left. He yelled but kept running. He crashed through the back door, stumbled, and fell to the ground. It was muddy; the rain was falling harder. It was almost as dark as night. He didn’t bother looking back. He slipped a few times getting to his feet and raced to the path at the edge of the woods.