by Chad Zunker
PRAISE FOR CHAD ZUNKER
AN UNEQUAL DEFENSE
“In Zunker’s solid sequel to 2019’s An Equal Justice, Zunker . . . sustains a disciplined focus on plot and character. John Grisham fans will appreciate this familiar but effective tale.”
—Publishers Weekly
AN EQUAL JUSTICE
“A thriller with a message. A pleasure to read. Twists I didn’t see coming. I read it in one sitting.”
—Robert Dugoni, #1 Amazon bestselling author of My Sister’s Grave
“Taut, suspenseful, and action-packed with a hero you can root for, Zunker has hit it out of the park with this one.”
—Victor Methos, bestselling author of The Neon Lawyer
“A gripping thriller with a heart, An Equal Justice hits the ground running . . . The chapters flew by, with surprises aplenty and taut writing. A highly recommended read that introduces a lawyer with legs.”
—Crime Thriller Hound
“A deftly crafted legal thriller of a novel by an author with a genuine knack for a reader engaging narrative storytelling style . . .”
—Midwest Book Review
“In An Equal Justice, author Chad Zunker crafts a riveting legal thriller . . . An Equal Justice not only plunges readers into murder and conspiracy involving wealthy power players, but also immerses us in the crisis of homelessness in our country.”
—The Big Thrill
THE TRACKER
“A gritty, compelling, and altogether engrossing novel that reads as if ripped from the headlines. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. Chad Zunker is the real deal.”
—Christopher Reich, New York Times bestselling author of Numbered Account and Rules of Deception
“Good Will Hunting meets The Bourne Identity.”
—Fred Burton, New York Times bestselling author of Under Fire
OTHER TITLES BY CHAD ZUNKER
DAVID ADAMS SERIES
An Unequal Defense
An Equal Justice
SAM CALLAHAN SERIES
The Tracker
The Shadow Shepherd
Hunt the Lion
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. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2021 by Chad Zunker
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: 9781542025522
ISBN-10: 1542025524
Cover design by Kirk DouPonce, Dog-Eared Design
To Mark, Alex, and Chris,
Four Horsemen forever.
CONTENTS
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
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ONE
Twelve-year-old Parker Barnes could barely see five steps in front of him. But that didn’t stop him from running down the narrow dirt path as fast as his skinny legs would carry him. Had he lost the guy? He wasn’t sure. He couldn’t hear anything except his own heartbeat pounding away in his ears. The woods were so dark that tiny tree branches kept appearing out of nowhere and smacking him in the face. He put both hands up to block the assault, but that only made him momentarily lose his balance. When the toe of his right shoe caught a sharp rock, he tumbled face-first into the dirt.
Parker pushed himself up, adjusted his black backpack, and paused to listen. He was uncertain how far he’d run. A hundred yards? Two hundred? Even though it was a cool night, his ratty gray T-shirt and blue jeans were soaked in sweat. After touching a stinging place on his left cheek, Parker held up his finger in the spotty moonlight to examine it. The liquid wasn’t clear like sweat beads. It looked black—which meant he was bleeding. He could now taste the blood leaking into the corner of his mouth and wiped it away with a thumb. The blood didn’t bother him too much. He’d bled a lot the last couple of years. Mostly the result of fistfights with other boys at school, which usually got him suspended a few days. That had sometimes led to more bleeding at the hands of angry foster parents.
Since his father had died three years ago, Parker had been in and out of four foster homes. Three of them were complete nightmares. He’d known only two other boys who’d been bounced around that much in such a short time. But they were both troublemakers who usually brought problems onto themselves. Parker never went looking for trouble. Yet it seemed to always be searching for him. Like tonight.
Staying perfectly still, Parker continued to listen and frantically searched the woods behind him for any sign of the man. He wondered if he should stay put or keep moving. He was willing to sit there in the dirt for hours—or until daylight—if that’s what it took to get away from this guy. The goateed man wore a denim jacket over a white T-shirt and looked mean as hell.
In many ways, the guy reminded him of his last foster dad. Mr. Reid was an angry drunk. He never smiled. Never said much. He just sat in his beat-up recliner surrounded by empty beer bottles with his eyes stuck to the TV all day. Mr. Reid had lost his construction job right after Parker had moved in with them, and he was really pissed off about it. Mr. Reid’s calloused hands had felt like they were covered in broken glass when they began slapping Parker around for no good reason. Then came the death threats if Parker ever told Mrs. Reid what had busted up his face real good. So Parker always lied. He knew better than to ever say anything to anyone. Telling the truth only brought more pain. He’d learned that the hard way.
But Parker hadn’t been beaten in a month. When Mr. Reid had hinted at transitioning into something more sexually violent, Parker had stolen a hundred bucks out of the empty coffee container Mrs. Reid had hidden on the top shelf of the pantry and had bolted from the home in the middle of the night. No way in hell was he going to wait around for Mr. Reid’s next drunken episode. Five miles up the road, he’d stowed away in the back of a dirty horse trailer at a truck stop gas station. He’d then logged probably two hundred miles while sitting in a stall filled with horse crap before he’d f
inally jumped out at a stoplight while passing through Austin.
Although Parker had never been to the city, his dad had always loved the Texas Longhorns. He’d taught Parker how to do the “hook ’em” hand sign as a toddler and had promised to take him to a football game one day. That didn’t happen—and now, of course, it never would. But Austin seemed like a good place to set up his new life. He was for sure never going back to that damn foster home—or any foster home, for that matter. He’d rather take his chances out on the streets. He’d heard a story once at the boys’ home about another kid his age who’d chosen the same runaway path and had survived just fine. Parker knew he was every bit as tough as that kid. At least that’s what he kept telling himself. He didn’t feel so tough tonight.
The sound of a branch breaking on the trail somewhere behind him sent a sharp chill straight up his sweaty back. Parker held his breath as his eyes narrowed. Then he noticed a shadow of movement twenty paces away, followed by a splash of moonlight across the man’s hard face. Parker cursed, scrambled to his feet, and took off again.
“Come on, boy!” the man called out. “Stop running—I just want to talk!”
Parker knew that was a lie. The man had a gun. And not just any gun—a gun with one of those longer barrels that kind of muffled the shot. Parker had just seen him use it. He felt like he was watching a scene from one of those John Wick films. It looked cool in the movies but not in real life. There was no way he was stopping to talk to this guy about anything.
Darting around more trees, Parker spotted light up ahead. It looked like the dirt trail spilled out into a parking lot next to a strip of buildings. The return of the city. If he could somehow get there, Parker could easily get himself lost again. After a month out on the streets, he knew how to hide like a cockroach in the cracks of this town.
His legs propelled him forward even faster. If his worn tennis shoes hadn’t been filled with so many holes in the toes, he’d have probably gotten away from this dude already. His feet hadn’t seen new shoes since he was ten and had lived with the Bidwell family for a couple of months. They were good people with money who had taken him shopping several times with their son, Judd, who was a year older than Parker. He’d really liked Judd. They used to play basketball for hours every day in the driveway. But then Mrs. Bidwell suddenly got cancer—just like Parker’s mom had when he was seven—and she went downhill fast. The home went from happy to sad overnight.
Shortly thereafter, Parker had gotten picked up by someone from the system and taken back to the boys’ home. That day had sucked big-time. He’d never forget watching Judd wave goodbye from the driveway. The next day, Parker had gotten beaten up by two older bullies at the boys’ home who stole his brand-new basketball shoes. He’d tried to tell the director what had happened, but she wouldn’t listen. Adults never did. Then he’d gotten a second beatdown for ratting on the boys.
Story of his life—at least since his dad had died.
But things had been better on his own the past month. Parker was scrappy. He was finding food here and there okay. By following the street crowd, he’d figured out where Austin fed its poor and homeless on any given day. He was a scrawny kid and didn’t need much to survive anyway. There was a group of older teenage runaways like him who hung out near the main drag by the UT campus. Parker stayed around the fringes of that group. A few of them had been looking out for him. He’d learned to live each day in the shadows, where adults wouldn’t notice him and begin to wonder why a kid his age was out on the streets all by himself. He didn’t want any adults trying to help him. He would never trust an adult again.
Parker was five feet from the clearing into the parking lot when he heard the muffled sound of the gun suddenly explode behind him—the same sound he’d heard just a few minutes ago—and then he felt his backpack jerk him sideways, like someone had grabbed it and yanked him hard to the right. He fell forward, tumbled to the dirt again, and then rolled out onto the hard pavement of the parking lot.
For a moment, he wondered if he’d been shot. He didn’t feel anything. Had the bullet only hit his backpack? In the movies, a guy would sometimes get shot and not even realize it until he’d finally stopped running or fighting. Then the dude would find the bullet wound and usually die while sitting there bleeding out. Was that what would happen to him? Parker immediately got to his feet again, peered over to his left at a gas station. There were several cars parked at the pumps with people standing around, waiting. Had anyone heard the gunshot? Did they think it was a random city noise? They all just continued to stare mindlessly at their phones.
Parker raced forward, hoping the man behind him wasn’t willing to shoot at him in the wide-open parking lot. He zigged and zagged, just in case, thinking it might make the guy miss. He was now fully exposed under a security light as he approached the building. He felt completely vulnerable, which only made him run faster. His lungs were on fire, but he knew he couldn’t stop. Those waiting at the gas pumps turned to stare at him as he rushed past. Parker thought of running up to one of them and screaming for help but decided against it. The guy might shoot him if he stopped running. Instead, he crossed into the city street in front of the gas station, where he just barely evaded a metro bus that had unexpectedly pulled around the corner. The bus screeched to a stop. Several horns honked, and more brakes squealed from other cars evading a wreck.
Parker hurried up to another strip of buildings, followed a sidewalk at full speed, not even slowing enough to peek behind him. He didn’t stop running for what felt like a mile, until his legs gave out on him. Finally, he collapsed in a dirty alley, where he pushed himself up against the protection of a dumpster and gasped for breath. He took off the backpack and found the large hole in the side of it. This made his eyes go wide. He then examined himself all over. He spotted a gob of blood on the front of his T-shirt, but it wasn’t his blood. It looked like he’d survived the encounter with no injuries other than some bad scratches on his face.
Sitting there, Parker wondered what he should do next. Should he go to the police? Tell them what he saw? He shook his head. No way. The cops never believed kids—at least, not kids like him. He was better off keeping his mouth shut. He leaned his head back against the dumpster and gradually caught his breath again. He was so tired. He felt like he could sleep for a week straight. He probably could if he’d had a real bed. He hated that part of life on the streets. Sleeping on concrete, on benches, and even on top of picnic tables—like he had been doing tonight in the park before two cars had unexpectedly arrived and startled him awake.
Closing his eyes, Parker was sure he would drift off right away. But then his mind began reliving every second of the brutal scene he’d just witnessed, and his eyes immediately popped back open. He put his hand to his chest and could feel his heart racing wildly again. When he started to tremble all over, Parker wrapped his arms around his legs, pulled them in real close, and held himself in the tightest ball possible.
Burying his face into his knees, he began to quietly cry.
TWO
Four days later
David Adams kicked his bare feet up onto the wooden balcony railing of his newly rented garage apartment and sipped from a cold bottle of Dos Equis. The apartment was nestled on top of a small hill in an old neighborhood just a few blocks south of downtown Austin. David had made it a nightly ritual to sit in this perch and watch the city lights sparkle and dance across the calm water of the Colorado River. It helped him clear his head of whatever craziness he’d encountered that day as a lawyer to a growing number of misfit clients.
Today’s episode had involved a homeless man named Cletus, who kept quietly chanting magic spells at the judge during his hearing on a drunk and disorderly charge. Cletus was harmless, even though he had a raggedy red beard that nearly touched his belly button and was known to howl at the moon while camping under the interstate. David knew decades of sleeping on hard concrete could really warp someone’s mind. It was only David’s credibili
ty with the judge that had gotten his client a small fine and probation. Cletus had then pulled fifteen wrinkled bucks out of his pocket and handed them to David, which was more than what many of his street friends usually paid him. Fortunately, David had rounded up a few more legitimate clients recently that helped him make ends meet.
He’d begun renting the unattached garage apartment six months ago when an unexpected windfall of cash from a client had allowed him to move off the crappy backroom sofa at his office. The narrow balcony had room for only one plastic patio chair. The living space inside barely held much more than that. A sleeper sofa. A dresser. A rolltop desk. A beanbag chair. A small TV. A bar table next to a kitchenette. All items he’d collected at garage sales.
An eightysomething widow named Mrs. Bishop with a globe of bright-white hair owned the property and lived in the yellow two-story Victorian twenty feet away. David had helped her grandson get probation and go into rehab after he’d been arrested for stealing a motorcycle. Mrs. Bishop would often wake him before dawn and ask him to do odd jobs around her house. David didn’t mind too much, considering rent was dirt cheap, and he could easily walk to his office across the Congress Avenue Bridge.
Touching the bottle to his lips, David allowed his eyes to drift across the tall buildings of the downtown skyline. They settled for a moment on the glorious Frost Bank Tower, his first legal home after graduating with honors from Stanford Law. Just about a year ago, David was making more money than he’d ever dreamed as a first-year associate at the most prestigious law firm in town, being profiled in local magazines while living in a fancy high-rise condo and driving an expensive SUV. But his life had spiraled out of control there in more ways than one. So he chose to walk away in order to better serve the city’s most vulnerable outcasts.
Although he never missed the legal work, he certainly missed the perks.
When his cell phone buzzed, David pulled it from his pocket and stared at the screen. Skater was calling him. David had met the teenage drifter six months ago when he was defending a client who’d been framed on murder charges as part of a dark political conspiracy. Since then, David had helped Skater here and there when the kid got into a bit of trouble with the police—which seemed to be happening more often lately.
