by J K Ellem
Silence.
The woman sat back and regarded Margaret Brenner.
“You deleted your browsing history but surely you understand that nothing on a computer is truly ever erased.” She leaned forward, her finger taping the pages. “Is your next victim in here?” she asked. “Amongst this list? The next person you intend to befriend, marry, then steal from? Or even murder?”
Still silence.
“We found your husband, Edward.”
This got a response from Margaret. Her eyes flashed back at the woman.
“Given the right medical attention and time to heal he should recover, but not fully.” Edward Brenner had spent almost three years in concentration camp conditions. That hadn’t been the case at first. He was well cared for by both Margaret and her son Dylan. However, as the months grew into years, the resentment developed into neglect. On several occasions, Dylan Cobb tried to convince his mother to allow him to kill the old man and be done with. Margaret refused. Even if the blood wasn’t on her hands, she still would be complicit to murder, a far longer prison sentence than if caught for embezzlement or fraud. Maybe it was too much to ask Dylan to take care of Edward Brenner for that long a period of time.
It was still too early to determine the mental state of Edward Brenner. But his imprisonment and mistreatment had taken its toll.
“Then there are these.” The woman placed on the table a plastic bag with a set of keys inside. “We’ve arrested Luke Ballard as well.”
Still nothing.
The woman tried a different approach. Let’s get under her skin, she thought. “How old must he be, Luke I mean?” She knew his exact age. Luke Ballard was in another interview room not dissimilar to this one, being interrogated as to the role he played in this very sordid affair.
“Eighteen? Nineteen? It’s hard to tell. Teenagers grow up so quickly these days, they look much older than they actually are.”
Margaret Brenner’s eyes shifted a fraction. Her shoulders stiffened ever so slightly.
“What did you offer him in return for him helping you and your son? It wouldn’t have been money,” the woman continued, enjoying the reaction she was finally getting. “He has money already.”
Margaret finally glared at the woman.
Yes you bitch. Hit a raw nerve have I?
It was disgusting. Margaret Brenner was more than twice the age of Luke Ballard. She could have been his mother, grandmother even. It gave a true insight as to what lengths this woman who now sat across from her would go to, to achieve her ambitions of greed and wealth.
“It was Luke Ballard, your lover, who gave the keys to Dylan, your son, so he could run his dirty little operation out of his parents’ estate while they were away. There was a separate entrance to the basement so he could come and go as he pleased even when they were home.”
Dylan Cobb had befriended the young and impressionable Luke Ballard three years ago. Took the otherwise shy and reserved high school geek under his wing. Even showed him how to pick up girls. Luke knew no better. He wanted to be liked, to be a sophisticated college guy like Cobb. No one had ever showed much interest in him at school. So when someone as charming, charismatic and as confident as Dylan Cobb came along, Luke became putty in his hands. Margaret Brenner took it to a whole new level of sexual manipulation when she became involved as well.
“Luke Ballard studying computer science and robotics at college proved extremely useful, didn’t it, Margaret? Especially when using a drone to keep an eye on Moors Island, scare people off, if needed.”
They had found a hidden workshop in the large loft of the Ballard mansion. In there, they found tools, a work bench, and spare parts for maintaining the drone, and a computer terminal and joystick setup where Luke Ballard remotely piloted the drone. Most of the time, though, the drone flew a preprogrammed loop on its own, out and back to Moors Island at night as surveillance or he used his smart phone to control it from any location.
A ladder in the loft led outside to the roof where they found a Skysense fully autonomous drone hanger with a conductive recharging pad that housed and protected the drone between flights. Luke Ballard had the money and the smarts to do it all, without his parents’ knowledge. Sure they had given him the money that he asked for. However, they thought they were just helping to fund his college education. Little did they know the real use for the drone.
“Rigged it with a gun, too,” the woman continued. “Don’t think that was part of the college curriculum, do you?”
The woman had seen some footage on YouTube once that was shot in 2015 where an 18-year-old kid from Clinton, Connecticut had rigged a handgun to his drone and fired shots in the forest with it. She thought it was fake. Then one of her colleagues directed her to the website of a company called Duke Robotics Inc. For the first time in her career she became fearful of what the future of law enforcement would behold.
"One thing that still bothers me, Margaret, is what did you do with the sail boat?”
Margaret gave a slight, evil smile. She hated that boat, Wind Dancer. Edward would lovingly fawn over it as though it was a human, a woman, a lover to be cherished. If she had her way, she would have set the damn thing alight long ago, gleefully watched it burn.
So she and Dylan did the next best thing: they sank it. An inflatable dinghy was always carried at the stern of Wind Dancer, rigged to a simple davit system on the transom. Using a copy of the key his mother gave him, Dylan hid below deck in the cabin on that fateful morning Edward Brenner went sailing.
At some stage during the journey, Edward Brenner had to go below deck, and when he did, Dylan was waiting. Dylan wanted to kill him there and then, throw him over the side if it wasn’t for the strict instructions given to him by his mother. So, he gagged and bound an unconscious Edward Brenner, placed him in an inflatable dinghy, covered him and set about implementing the rest of the plan.
Well away from the popular sailing routes and shipping channels and in deep water, Dylan opened all the seacock valves and the boat started taking on water. Dylan headed back to Moors Island, arriving under the cover of darkness to where Edward Brenner would commence his long period of internment.
Wind Dancer was sitting on the bottom of the ocean, in over twenty thousand feet of water, never to be seen again. That was until some debris washed up on Moors Island and even then that remained hidden until Shaw found an interior section of the cabin.
Finally, a response. “It was Dylan’s idea, all of it,” Margaret Brenner replied.
“Really?”
Margaret nodded.
“How so?” The woman folded her arms and stared at Margaret Brenner’s cold and calculating eyes, almost imagining the cogs turning inside the woman’s head. She had anticipated this, the point where Margaret Brenner would blame everything on her son, throw him to the wolves for the sake of a plea bargain, a lesser sentence.
Margaret Brenner leaned forward, the handcuffs clunked as she placed her hands on the table. “I’m the victim here,” she said. A twinkle of hope now in her eyes, her confidence and poise returning. “Take these things off me, get me my lawyer and I will tell you everything.”
The woman regarded her for a moment. Margaret Brenner was as cunning, as manipulative and as deluded as any criminal she had met in all her years in law enforcement. She cycled through in her head the list of charges she intended to bring against Margaret Brenner.
Attempted murder, fraud, kidnapping.
Dylan Cobb’s charge sheet was much longer.
This was going to be a very long, drawn-out case.
51
The ashes in the fireplace were still warm from the evening before but the cottage stood cold and empty. It had no soul, no personality anymore, no life, just a scatter of short, intense memories. The person who had lived here was gone, taken by the woman who had been sent to find her then kill her.
Under the floorboards in Annie's bedroom, he’d found everything still there in its place, the go-bag, the spare gun st
ill in its case. Annie's laptop was missing, so was the gun from the hall stand. Taken, no doubt, by the woman.
He couldn't protect her. He had tried to save two women at once but could only save one, Abigail Brenner.
He shouldn't have let Annie go, should have gone after her when she fled the Ballard mansion.
Shaw looked around the bedroom one last time then walked out and back to the kitchen. He looked at the kitchen counter where Annie had sat during those brief but intensely passionate moments they had shared.
He felt happiness yet endless sadness at the same time.
She was too much like him. Maybe, just maybe, if he could have saved her then something else could have grown from their brief relationship.
Outside the sun was high and the sky was clear again.
He walked along the beach, his gaze drifting out to sea, his emotions drowning under a weight of regret and loneliness. Abby was safe and he was glad of that. He'd already said his goodbyes to her and to Rudy Kerber, the two of them forever grateful for what he had done for them.
In his usual unassuming way, Shaw said he’d done nothing.
If he had, then it wasn't enough by his judgment. He couldn't save Annie.
Margaret Brenner and her son were both in custody and Edward Brenner was recuperating in the hospital. The police wanted to interview Shaw but there was nothing to say, nothing he could possibly add to the sheer weight of incriminating evidence and the testimony given by Abigail.
It was time to leave. He didn't want the complications of what was coming.
Shaw was in pain. It was time to withdraw, to heal, to stop. What he’d seen had left Shaw’s mind scarred, damaged, stretched to the point where it couldn’t return back to its original shape.
The sand was warm and damp at the water’s edge. He walked barefoot, his rucksack over one shoulder. A man alone on an empty beach with only a few circling gulls for company, the gentle sweep of the seawater behind him, washing away all traces that he was ever there.
52
It was the way they cooked them that had made the sardines taste so delicious.
Freshly caught that morning in the crystalline waters just off the coast, then chargrilled to perfection on an open bed of coals in the market place. No spices, no salt. Just a light basting of local olive oil applied with sprigs of fresh rosemary plucked from the craggy cliff tops that ringed town.
During the day she would walk down to the waterfront, past the cafes, the restaurants, and the gift shops to where the trawlers gently bobbed, tied up against the harbor wall after their morning catch. The local waters teemed with bream, mullet, swordfish and amberjack. She wasn’t fond of seafood, but the fragrant aroma of the grilled sardines had tempted her. And after one bite, she had found a new love.
She would shop in the local markets, stroll among the stalls, haggle and bargain with the vendors over the array of whatever fruit and vegetables were in season. One word and one vowel at a time, she was slowly picking up the language of which half the vocabulary was derived from Italian and Sicilian. The currency was easier, on par almost with the US dollar.
Sometimes in the afternoon, when the sea breeze swung inland, she would walk out to the old fort that was perched on the entrance of the harbor. It was one of many historic spots in and around the town. It was her new place of solitude where she liked to sit alone and stare out at the blue waters.
At dusk, she would sit out on the breezy outdoor terrace of her rented apartment high up in the hills, watch the sunset and drink wine.
Today was a particularly warm day. So she wore a simple linen dress and open sandals. She packed her canvas tote bag and made her way down to the waterfront. There was a small open air cafe where she liked to visit. The cafe offered sweeping views of the bay and the ocean beyond. It boasted one of the finest selections of sweets and cakes in the town.
She selected a table near the water’s edge under a large umbrella, partly shielded by potted palms and ferns, and ordered an espresso, their signature blend. Later, she would visit the trawlers but, for now, all she wanted to do was enjoy the warmth of the sun, the smell of the ocean and the rich taste of her coffee. Enjoying the simple, minimalistic pleasures she had surrounded herself with again. She had enough money of her own saved, and it would certainly last in the place she now considered her home.
After her second espresso, the woman reached into her canvas tote and pulled out something that she lay on the table in front of her. She paused for a moment to think, to reminisce.
She smiled thinking back. Their interlude was brief, but given time and different circumstances, she could have loved him.
When she was ready, she opened up the soft cover notebook in Reef Blue, turned to a new page and began to write a new chapter.
THE END.
If You Enjoyed This Book
Thank you for investing your time and money in me. I hope you enjoyed my book and it allowed you to escape from your world for a few minutes, for a few hours or even for a few days. I would really appreciate it if you could post an honest review on any of the publishing platforms that you use. It would mean a lot to me personally, as I read every review that I get and you would be helping me become a better author. By posting a review, it will also allow other readers to discover me, and the worlds that I build. Hopefully they too can escape from their reality for just a few moments each day.
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Authors Note
I hate stories that tie-up too conveniently at the end.
I want my stories to live on in your mind long after you have turned the last page and closed the book. I want you to think and imagine what happens next in the story, to the characters and in their lives.
I also don’t like spoon-feeding my readers by having to explain and answer every single question that I raise in the book. And my books always will have a few unanswered questions at the end, as any good story should.
You are intelligent, clever, resourceful, and I will always respect that. You will work things out as to how you want to see things end. An engaging, and immersive story should leave some questions unanswered, should allow you the reader to let your own imagination decide what the answers are. I will let you reach your own conclusions as to what happened.
Does this mean my stories are unfinished? Only if your imagination allows it. My stories certainly reach a conclusion, a juncture in the timeline. But there could be more. I hate predictable, pedestrian plot lines where everything just falls into place a little too easily and lazily at the end. Does this mean the villain doesn’t always get caught and brought to justice at the end? Sometimes, because that is reality. Maybe one day they will get caught.
The corporations that I have mentioned in this book, all except Brenner Industries, exist today. They have developed some frightening technology and perhaps they didn’t really consider the malevolent purpose such technology could be put to as I have done in this book.
I hope you continue to read and enjoy my books.
JK Ellem. December 2018.
About the Author
JK Ellem was born in London and spent his formative years preferring to read books and comics rather than doing his homework.
He is the innovative author of cutting-edge popular adult thriller fiction.
He likes writing thrillers that are unpredictable, have multiple layers and sub-plots that tend to lead his readers down the wrong path with twists and turns that they cannot see coming.
He writes in the genres of crime, mystery, suspense, domestic and psychological thrillers.
JK is obsessed with improving his craft and loves honest feedback from his fans.
His idea of success is to be stopped in the street by a supermodel in a remote European village where no one speaks English and asked to autograph one of his books and to take a quick selfie.
He has a fantastic dry sense of humor that tends t
o get him into trouble a lot with his wife and three children.
He splits his time between the US, the UK and Australia.
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