Grave Games: A Collection Of Riveting Suspense Thrillers

by James Hunt

  However, she had been whisked away from the hospital and flown to the Border Patrol station before she could speak with her partner. She’d have to give it time. The next day perhaps. She knew where he was, and she planned to get their stories right as soon as he was better.

  With Martinez safely in the hospital, Angela found herself alone with Chief Drake, the morning news played on his office television with the sound muted. They were talking about a local home invasion that had occurred earlier but nothing too out of the ordinary. As he sat across from her, pen in hand, Drake seemed a little more at ease too.

  “The assistant director gave me a brief rundown of what happened. She said that you had acted heroically in assisting in Captain Martinez’s rescue.”

  Angela nodded, unsure of what to say. Before Thaxton had left the station, all she told Angela was to “remember what she said.” Telling the truth was always the most obvious choice for Angela, but without Martinez to advise her, it wasn’t clear what to do.

  Drake scribbled on his pad and then looked up. His stubble had grown in the past day or two, and the bags under his eyes were second only to hers. A steaming mug of coffee rested right next to him and Angela wondered if he had rested in the past couple of days.

  “For your efforts, Agent Gannon, I’m going to recommend you for a Meritorious Service Award.”

  It was the last thing she needed or wanted, but for the time being, she played along. “Thank you, sir.”

  He rubbed his eyes and groaned. “Of course, we still have to get things in order for Agent Dawson’s memorial service.”

  “Yes, of course,” Angela said. “Any new developments with that investigation?”

  Drake set his glasses on the desk and shrugged. “I was hoping that you could tell me. I mean, I thought we’d find some kind of link between all of this: the chemical agents, the explosion, Martinez’s disappearance. But right now, it’s just business as usual until the FBI puts it together.”

  “I understand,” she said as her eyelids grew heavier under the cool air blowing from the vent above her.

  Drake looked past her, peering through his blinds and all the activity going on outside his office. He took a sip from his coffee mug and then zeroed-in on her. “Listen carefully. A lot of people are going to be asking you what happened. You’re suddenly very popular around here, and that’s not always a good thing. Mum’s the word, you got it?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “But as far as this sector is concerned, I want a full report of the when, what, how, and why. I’ll expect the same from Martinez when he’s ready. I’m happy that you’re both back, but I’m very concerned about the entire shit-show.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Drake leaned in closer and spoke low and softly as though the FBI were listening at the door. “The assistant director told me that Martinez was found in an abandoned outpost in El Paso. What was he doing out there?”

  Angela gripped the armrests of her chair.

  “Don’t worry,” he continued. “I’m sure we’re found out from the horse’s mouth once Martinez comes to.”

  Angela sighed. “As far as I know, sir, the FBI thinks he was being held there by an ISIS sleeper cell.”

  Drake rubbed his temples with both hands. “Okay, got it.” He reached for his mug and took another sip, pointing at Angela. “I want you to go home and get some rest. Need you to fill out a statement before you leave, but you can work on the report in the next day or two.” He paused for a moment and scanned his scribbled notes. His head jerked up as though something had just come to him. “Did you call your family yet and let them know that you’re okay?”

  She was surprised at his question and all the more surprised that she hadn’t. Her phone, however, had died hours ago.

  “No, sir. But they’re just getting up, so I’ll see them when I get home.”

  “Okay then. You’ve got your marching orders. I want a full report after you get some rest. We’ll get to the bottom of this, Agent Gannon, if it’s the last thing this department does. Dismissed.”

  “Thank you, sir.” She slowly rose from her chair, her body sore and aching. On her feet, she stopped and glanced at the disheveled gray hairs and the wrinkles that creased his face.

  “What about you. Are you planning on getting any rest?”

  He paused, looked up at her, and smiled faintly. “One day, when you’re in my position, you’ll understand.”

  Angela smiled and went to the door, opening it and pausing. Other agents walked by and glanced at her as she hesitated to leave.

  “Chief Drake,” she said, turning back to him.

  He looked up with a curious expression. “Yes?”

  “About the recovery. Well, the raid didn’t go exactly like they said it did…” She couldn’t believe her words as they came out. But a battle with the FBI was inevitable, she believed, no matter what she did.

  “What are you talking about?” Drake asked.

  “The terror cell. We…”

  Suddenly Drake’s office phone rang. He held a finger up, asking her to wait, and then picked up the receiver.

  “This is Chief Drake, how can I help you?” He stared ahead, listening, while Angela waited with her hand holding the doorknob. She looked down the hall, thinking that it was her moment to leave without facing any questions and forget that she had brought anything up. The longer she waited, the less chance she had to reconsider exposing the truth behind the FBI raid.

  “What?” Drake said, suddenly rattled, his mouth wide open.

  Angela grew nervous. Perhaps he was learning the truth already. What would she say then?

  “What do you mean live web stream?” He grabbed his MacBook and flipped it open, typing wildly, with the phone wedged between his shoulder and ear. He looked up in a panic at Angela and waved at her to come inside and shut the office door.

  Confused and worried, she walked in and gently closed it.

  “Yeah, send me the link, okay?” he said with urgency.

  Angela pulled her chair closer to his desk and sat. Whatever the conversation was about, it didn’t sound good.

  “Okay, I’m on,” Drake said. “Yeah. Some kind of live leak site. It’s loading…” He froze as his eyes locked on the screen. “Oh my God…”

  Angela couldn’t take the suspense. She stood up and walked around the desk to see what all the commotion was about. The phone fell from Drake’s shoulder as he stared at the screen, petrified.

  “Chief? What is it?” Angela asked.

  He tried to answer her, but seemed to be in a state of shock. “Terror cell. ISIS video. It’s real-time shit here.”

  Angela walked behind his chair and squinted her to see the screen as her heart seized with fear. There was streaming video of a person on their knees in an orange jump suit with a burlap sack over their head. Standing behind them was a man with a tan face mask, eye slits, and an ammo vest over his camouflaged clothing. Behind him hung the black flag of ISIS mounted on the wall.

  The masked man then spoke with a muffled British accent.

  “Americans… today is the day of your reckoning. We are on you streets. We are in your neighborhoods, and we will only attack if provoked. Today, you provoked us. You killed our brothers. Attacked our home. Slaughtered us like animals. And now we must strike back.”

  The man stepped forward and pulled off the hood of the person in the center of the first group. Angela grew dizzy as the room began to spin around. It felt like a dream or some kind of out of body experience. The exposed man looked eerily like her husband, Doug. But his normally neat hair was all messed up, and besides, it couldn’t possibly have been Doug.

  “We have the family of one your agents,” the masked man said, pulling his captive’s head by the hair and holding the knife to his throat.

  He then pointed at the camera with his gloved hand. “You have twenty-four hours to meet our demands or we will kill Doug Gannon and his two daughters.”

  Chief Drake whipped his hea
d around to see Angela quickly losing color in her face with tears already streaming down her cheeks. She couldn’t breathe. She grabbed the side of his chair as her vision became more blurry.

  Drake jolted up from his seat. “Angela!”

  For Angela, the room went black, and before he could catch her, she was on the floor, briefly safe from the new nightmare that was now her world.

  Thank you so much for taking the time to read my story!

  Writing has always been a passion of mine and it’s incredibly gratifying and rewarding whenever you give me an opportunity to let you escape from your everyday surroundings and entertain the world that is your imagination.

  As an indie author, Amazon reviews can have a huge impact on my livelihood. So if you enjoyed the story please leave a review letting me and the rest of the digital world know. And if there was anything you found troubling, please email me. Your feedback helps improve my work, and allows me to continue writing stories that will promise to thrill and excite in the future. But be sure to exclude any spoilers.

  I would love if you could take a second to leave a review: Click here to leave a review on Amazon!

  Again, thank you so much for letting me into your world. I hope you enjoyed reading this story as much as I did writing it!

  Take care,

  James Hunt

  Terror Rising: – Reckoning

  The Intruders

  Doug Gannon was worried. It was late at night, and he hadn’t heard from his wife, Angela, in the past two hours. She said she was working late at the office but had promised updates as they came in. She had become involved in a big case with her job at the border patrol. The FBI had even gotten involved. Details were scant, but Doug understood it was something important.

  His only question was why Angela, a rookie border patrol agent, had to be involved in a high-level investigation.

  It was Wednesday night, and he had worked all day at the engineering plant where he was a planner in the development of targeting systems for military vehicles. His team was behind in one of its projects, and he had foreseen a long, hard day. That was, of course, after he had made breakfast for the girls and sent them off to school.

  Chassity and Lisa were close in age and attended middle school. Chassity in eighth grade and Lisa in sixth. They were getting older, that much was apparent. Where had the time gone?

  With the girls in bed, Doug sat atop the bed he shared with Angela in his jeans, T-shirt, and bare feet, cell phone at his side. He stared ahead at the television on their dresser, watching the evening news.

  The reports of a truck explosion along the Del Rio border was the big story. Authorities had cordoned off the area for miles due to possible chemical agents released in the air. This concerned Doug, but Angela’s direct involvement in the case concerned him most of all.

  His head jolted to the side when he saw the hall light come on through a crack in the bedroom door. Someone was up. Doug stood up and walked to the door just in time to see Lisa standing outside his door in her blue pajamas, rubbing her eyes. Doug turned and glanced at the alarm clock on his nightstand. It was 12:35 a.m.

  “Lisa, honey. What is it?”

  “Is Mom home yet?” Lisa asked, her voice tired and her long hair hanging over both sides of her face.

  Doug walked to the door and opened it fully, placing a comforting hand on her shoulder. “She’s still at work and will be home soon.” He paused and squeezed. “But you need to get back to bed. It’s a school night.”

  Lisa peeked around her father, casting an eye over his queen-size bed. “Can I sleep in here?”

  Doug shook his head and smiled. “You have your own bed, sweetheart.”

  Lisa hung her head and sighed in frustration with a tinge of sadness.

  “Come on,” Doug said, taking her hand. “Let’s get you back in bed.”

  She reluctantly followed him to her room at the first door on the left.

  “The sooner you go back to bed, the sooner you’ll fall asleep. And the sooner you fall asleep, the sooner you’ll awake and see Mom tomorrow.”

  “She works too much,” Lisa said, putting one bare foot in front of the other in her dreamlike state.

  “I know,” Doug said, pushing her bedroom door open. “She has a tough job.”

  The light from the hall shone into the room as he led Lisa to the bed. Lisa climbed atop her covers and lay on her side against her pillow, her heavy eyelids already closing.

  Doug brushed back her hair and kissed her on the forehead. “Good night, hon.”

  “Night...” she said in a soft voice, drifting.

  Doug smiled and pulled a sheet over her side. Just as he was about to turn, he heard movement from the living room. Plates rattled from the dining room china hutch. Doug stood still, trying to decipher the faintest sound. Someone was in his house. He assumed it to be Angela but hadn’t heard her car pull in. He crept outside Lisa’s room into the hall, prepared to investigate the sounds.

  At the end of the hall, a lamp turned on. Eager to see Angela, Doug called out to her. But he halted at the sight of a white-haired man standing in the darkness near the living room sofa with his arms crossed. He was tall and dressed business casual—slacks, open collar, and his sleeves rolled up. He stared at Doug from behind circular-framed glasses.

  For a moment, Doug didn’t notice that there were others in the room. The masked men—six in all—blended in with the shadows in black sweatshirts and baggy trousers, long rifles slung over their shoulders.

  “Good evening, Mr. Gannon,” the white-haired man said with a British accent. “Pardon our intrusion.”

  Doug’s heart beat rapidly as he tried to maintain the outward appearance of calmness. Signs of forced entry were nowhere to be seen. There looked to be no windows broken or doors busted open. It was as though the men had just appeared in his living room. How many others are in the house? he wondered.

  “Who the hell are you?” he lashed out. “Where’s Angela?”

  He didn’t know why he’d asked about her. He only wanted to hang on to a shred of hope that the intruders’ presence was in some way related to her involvement in the case he knew so little about. Perhaps they were FBI. CIA even?

  “Why don’t you have a seat?” the man asked, arm extended to the sofa.

  “I’m fine standing,” Doug said. “How did you get into my house?”

  The man, with his astute, clean-shaven face, took a step forward and held up a wallet-sized border patrol headshot of Angela in her uniform. “Your wife’s doings brought us here. We’ve come to take you and your daughters away.” He paused, placing the photo back in his pocket.

  Confused, Doug observed the steely eyes of the masked men before him lined up like stone fixtures with their hands on their rifles. “I want to talk to Angela.”

  The Englishman nodded with a slight grimace as though Doug’s insistence was making him uncomfortable. “I’m sure you have plenty of questions about who we are and what we’re doing here. I personally volunteered to come here to ensure that you came along safely and quietly.”

  Doug stood dumbfounded by what the man was getting at with no better understanding of who the intruders were and why they were in his home. His eyes shifted around the room toward the kitchen to see if there were more gunmen. So far, he had counted up to six.

  “Allow me to introduce myself, Mr. Gannon. My name is Peter

  Graves. I was born and raised in Sheffield, England. Some time ago, I worked for the crown. A security minister. Like you, I have a wife and children.”

  Doug placed his hands the couch in front of him, leaning closer with questions of his own. “Why are these men armed?” he said, pointing across the room.

  Peter looked to both sides where the men were standing and then back to Doug with a shrug. “Purely a cautionary measure. You needn’t worry.”

  Doug searched his jean pockets for his cell phone but couldn’t find it. It was resting on top of his nightstand, far out of reach. He thoug
ht of the .38-caliber pistol locked in its case on the top shelf in his closet. Both items were useless to him at the moment. “Look. If this is about Angela—”

  “It is about Angela,” Peter said, cutting him off. “Your wife has been instrumental in interfering with our organization, and we have been dispatched to take you and your two daughters back to a safe house, where you will be held in captivity until we can come to an arrangement with your government.” There was no irony in his tone or sense that any of it was a joke.

  “I want you out of my house. Now,” Doug said, narrowing his eyes.

  “I’m afraid we can’t do that,” Peter said without hesitation. “There were several ways we could have done this. I opted for a more civilized, diplomatic approach, if you will.” He then extended his left hand toward the line of men on his side. “Many of these well-trained men, however, have a different approach. And they’ll think nothing of beating the holy hell out of you and dragging you and your daughters outside, bound like wild game, and tossing you into our van.”

  Doug felt a crushing combination of anger and fear reverberate through him. He balled his fists as his stomach twisted in knots. Things were beginning to get clearer. The intruders weren’t there on Angela’s behalf or that of anyone else he knew. It was a home invasion, he was in trouble, and the most immediate concern on his mind was Chassity and Lisa.

  “I don’t know who you work for, but—”

  “We are members of the Islamic State,” Peter answered, cutting him off yet again.

  Doug paused, astonished to hear the name of the notorious terrorist organization. Peter, it seemed, found the hushed response amusing.

  “Do I not fit the bill of someone you might associate with ISIS? Am I not dark or bearded enough?” He shook his head with a light chuckle. “I can assure you, Mr. Gannon. The beauty of the Islamic State far transcends cultural upbringing. And you’d be stunned to find how fast it’s catching on back home.”