The Highest Stakes

by Rick Reed

  He was still brooding when Liddell said, “Hey, pod’na. Look who’s here?”

  “Hi,” Katie said. “I had to go to school for a minute. When I left, you were still asleep.”

  “Yeah, they told me.” You stayed by my side the whole time.

  Liddell got up and moved Katie into the chair beside Jack. She brushed the hair back from her face and said, “Captain Franklin is coming back to see you later. We just got a call that you were awake.”

  Jack scowled. Maybe Killian hadn’t been wrong. Maybe the captain had worn her down. The bastard had always had a thing for her.

  “We?” Jack asked. “Did you know Franklin’s a child molester? And a philandering child molester at that?”

  “You should be nice to him, Jack,” she scolded.

  He tried to smile. “You’re right. He’s a swell guy. You do know that he’s the one that was going to arrest me?”

  “My, aren’t we in a bad mood,” Katie said. She sat beside him on the bed and held his hand. Her touch was soft and warm, and her comfort was everything he wanted or needed.

  “Yeah, relax, Jack,” Jack mimicked her. “Have a rest. Later we can take the captain out for a thank-you dinner or go to a movie and all share popcorn.”

  “Is that jealousy I hear?” Katie said. He felt his face flush. He didn’t know why he was acting like a schoolboy.

  Katie leaned over and planted a kiss on his lips. Not on his cheek. Not a hug. A real kiss and a long one at that.

  “When you get out of here, you can take me on a date if you want,” she said.

  “I missed you,” Jack heard himself saying.

  “We should pull the curtain and give them some privacy,” Liddell said.

  “Watch it, Bigfoot,” Jack kidded him. “I can still take you, even with a broken body.”

  “Only if I were unconscious, pod’na,” Liddell said.

  Katie stood and Liddell said, “Hey, don’t leave on my account. I’ll be quiet as a mouse.”

  “Not me,” Killian said. “I want to watch.”

  Barbara slapped her husband’s shoulder, and said, “Men are all pigs.”

  Katie agreed, and said to Jack, “I’m not going anywhere.” She pulled the curtain around the bed.

  Epilogue

  Jack sat in a rocker on his porch. The leg with the cast was propped on the railing, and he was watching the bikini-clad young maidens frolicking on the sandbar across the river. He could still see the blackened patch of sand where Crenshaw had built the bonfire using Quinn’s body for fuel.

  His mind wandered back to that night. Crenshaw had shot Quinn, saved Jack, burned Quinn’s body to cinders, somehow arranged the disposal of White’s and Thompson’s bodies, and all while suffering from several gunshot wounds. The one to the neck alone should have killed her. He wondered if she was even human. She had left little to no evidence of CIA involvement. As far as the police department was concerned, this was a robbery attempt gone wrong. Shirl and Moon Pie and Ellert were dead, so there was no one to arrest. Even John Wayne Khaled and the van he rode in on were dead. The CIA and FBI, of course, denied having sent any agents to Evansville. Jack and Pons had tried to give them the facts but neither the EPD, ATF, nor the FBI or any other agency with initials seemed anxious to go any further with an investigation.

  The FBI had cleared Jack and Liddell of any wrongdoing in the bank robbery where the fourteen-year-old girl had been shot, not to mention the deaths of most of her family of robbers. Nate Cartwright, the serial rapist, was believed to have absconded after being bonded out by a mystery woman. Jack believed that was Crenshaw making good on her promise to “fix” things with Jack’s boss. The news stories were now condemning Shirl and Moon Pie as crooked cops and praising Jack and Pons as heroes, so it all balanced out. It wasn’t the complete truth, but Jack was satisfied that justice had been served. He only wished he had been the one who shot Quinn and not Crenshaw.

  He rescued a couple of Guinness from the ice bucket beside him. Popping the tabs on both, he handed one to Katie. She was wearing one of his long-sleeve shirts and nothing else. The cast on his leg came up about mid-thigh and wasn’t the only thing that was stiff.

  “How’s the cast?” Katie asked.

  Jack reached a hand out, and she put the yardstick in it. The numbers were worn off from shoving it inside the cast to scratch.

  “I can do that for you if you’re having trouble reaching it,” she said.

  He stopped scratching and looked at her. She had changed a little. She was more . . . frisky. “I think you reached everything just fine last night.”

  “And this morning,” she said.

  She smiled, and he smiled back. They had spent every night together since he had returned to his cabin a week ago. Her idea of physical therapy was both appealing and exhausting. If they kept this up, he’d be back in the hospital. He could imagine the nurse asking the ER doctor, “What do you think is wrong with him, doctor?” and the doctor would say, “He has a rare condition known as coitus non-interruptus, nurse. In layman’s terms, he shouldn’t have freed Willy.”

  He gazed again at the sandbar across the way. A cooler sat smack in the middle of the scorched sand with a beach towel spread over one edge. A young couple was building a bonfire of a kind that didn’t require gasoline. Everything seemed normal, sane. It was hard to imagine everything that had begun and ended on this little stretch of the Ohio.

  An amateur video shot by a civilian with a cell phone showed the bonfire where a man’s body burned brightly. The zoom lens made it of poor quality but the television stations had replayed it over and over, every night for a week. There were interviews with the families of people who had died on the riverboat. More interviews with friends of the family members. And interviews with people who knew the victims in high school or college. Of course, everyone interviewed professed shock and cried. You had to hand it to the news media. They were relentless in pursuit of the truth. Well, they were relentless anyway.

  Jack thought it particularly tasteful the way the news anchor apologized each time the station showed the makeshift funeral pyre while zooming in on Quinn’s charred body as it was removed by the fire department.

  As for Susan . . . she was back in Indianapolis, still dating the man of the perfectly white teeth and no danger in his life except for the occasional lawsuit. Jack consoled himself that at least Susan wasn’t dating a lawyer. He was finally over her.

  “A penny for your thoughts,” Katie said. She eased herself onto the arm of the rocker and was tracing her fingers lightly across his face, her breath moist in his ear.

  “Oh,” he said, swallowing hard. “I think I need something scratched.”

  “Do you want me to help you up?” she asked with a giggle and toyed with the buttons on her shirt.

  “You already did,” he said, and let her help him into the cabin.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This book owes its existence to the talented staff at Kensington Publishing Company. My editor, Michaela Hamilton, has suffered through my numerous mistakes and offered “encouragement,” “praise,” or “kicks in the pants” as needed. Thank you, Michaela.

  A special thank-you to my good friend, Indiana State Police Officer Stu Sanders. Stu was gracious enough to show me around a riverboat casino and introduced me to the ship’s captain and crew. Don’t worry, the captain didn’t let me drive. As you may notice, Stu is also a character in this story and any resemblance is intentional. Any other characters come strictly from my imagination.

  A special acknowledgment to one of my readers, Kathy Von-derahe, who named CIA Agent Lucy Crenshaw. Thanks, Kathy. Sorry this book took longer than expected. I hope you approve of the use I made of the name you suggested.

  I deliberately changed the layout and other details of the riverboat casino for obvious reasons. I researched the history of many of Indiana’s floating casinos in the years prior to their being allowed to permanently dock.

  Thank you to my fans, autho
r friends, and family. Detective Jack Murphy is a thriller series thanks to you all, and there is more to come.

  Don’t miss the next hard-hitting thriller featuring Jack Murphy and Liddell Blanchard

  THE DARKEST NIGHT

  by Rick Reed

  Coming soon from Lyrical Underground, an imprint of Kensington Publishing Corp.

  Keep reading to enjoy an exciting excerpt . . .

  Click here to get your copy.

  She had been so focused on watching the first man across the street that she hadn’t heard the other two come up behind her until too late. Strong arms had wrapped around her from behind while a cloth sack was pulled over her head. She was repeatedly punched in the face and torso with fists that felt like mallets as blows rained down on her. She had tried at first to resist, break free, but something hard struck her in the head.

  The next thing she remembered was coming to with a screaming pain in her head, and her jaw felt broken. She had been bound, hand and foot, and had been squeezed into a small space. She could feel it moving, jarring now and then, the smell of gasoline and something rotted . . . she knew she was in the trunk of a car.

  She’d heard the sound of gravel crunching and distant music, an occasional word spoken as if from far away and a man’s voice mimicking the words. Then the motion stopped and she could hear a different man’s voice say, “Shut up and shut that off!” The music stopped. The distant voice stopped with the music, and she recognized the music now. It was rap. One of them was “rapping.” For some reason the idiocy of that made her mad, and her own stupidity for being mad at something so insignificant made her even angrier. “Wannabe rappers” had caught her, and that fact really pissed her off.

  The man that had been rapping was now arguing in a heavily accented voice. Jamaican maybe. He sounded nervous. The other man’s voice was deep, also with some type of Island accent, and carried well, telling the Jamaican to shut up or he’d tear his head off and shit in his skull. The Jamaican-sounding one shut up.

  They were moving again, and she could hear the sound of gravel crunching. She tried to lift her head. Pain shot down her back and neck, so she lay still until the world stopped spinning.

  They drove for what seemed like a half hour or less before the car slowed and turned to the left. She heard the deep voice saying something about “the farm.” Then she heard the word “Papa” and a chill ran through her. Papa. He was the man she had been watching. She had been careful, but not careful enough. She had no way of knowing this would happen. The guy that had given her the information was wrong more than he was right.

  The vehicle stopped. The deep-voice guy said something, and then they started rolling again. They didn’t go very far before the car halted, and she heard the car doors opening, shutting, and then the trunk opened. Bright light speared her eyes.

  She was yanked out of the trunk and sent sprawling on the gravel. A grip like a vise grabbed her wrist and pulled her to her feet, shoving, dragging, and then carrying. She was dizzy and thought she would pass out and then must have. She didn’t remember much more until she felt moist breath in her ear and the smell was like rotted meat. Gorge rose in her throat.

  She was sitting in a chair. Tied to the chair. Unable to move her arms. The burlap bag was pulled off her head, and she saw a small, skinny young man, with skin so dark it was almost black. He used one hand to untie the ropes. The other hand was on the butt of a black semiautomatic handgun shoved down the front of his pants.

  The rope fell free and he pulled the gun, waggling the barrel at her, motioning her to go to a table that sat on one side of the tiny concrete room. When she didn’t, couldn’t, get up, he held the gun sideways like a gangster and said, “We gon’ have some fun.” He shook the weapon at her again and grinned, showing a set of ivory teeth.

  She recognized the voice. It was the Jamaican guy who helped kidnap her. He was the idiot of the two. She’d gotten lucky.

  He must have unbuttoned her blouse while she was out. Her bra was pulled down under her breasts. He must have been pinching her nipples because they were on fire with pain. He took her arm, lifting her out of the chair, and she saw one small chance. She kicked him in the groin. As he went down, she grabbed the gun and shot him in the face. He was still moving, twitching. She shot him in the head and put her back against the wall next to the door. There may be more of them besides the other deep-voiced man.

  She saw the door handle twist and the door began opening. Even though there had been two gunshots this one didn’t rush in. He wasn’t stupid like the Jamaican. Suddenly the door slammed open, smashing her between it and the wall behind her. She had been holding the gun low in a two-handed grip and by reflex she fired down. She heard a scream and the door swung free. She peered around it. A tall, heavily muscled black man was lying on his side in the doorway, with both hands between his legs. Blood gushed down his leg to the floor. Her shot must have ricocheted off the floor, striking him in the crotch.

  His dark features were drawn into a mask of pain, but his eyes opened and he glared at her.

  “Where am I?” she asked, and leveled the gun at his face.

  His lips moved, trying to form words, and she leaned over to hear.

  “You gon’ die bitch. Papa’s gon’ . . .” his face scrunched up in pain, and he couldn’t finish.

  Papa again. “Last chance. Where am I?”

  She watched him try to work up some spit. She kicked him in the crotch and heard a sharp intake of breath.

  “Papa gon’ hurt you. You gon’ to the other side.”

  She recognized the voice. It was the deep-voiced one. She’d shot both of her kidnappers. But who was Papa? Did he have others out there?

  “I should let you suffer, but I’m not like you.” She fired and the bullet entered under his nose and painted the floor red. She checked him for a weapon and found none. They must have thought she was a helpless woman. Now they knew.

  She stepped over the body and moved down the hall to where it intersected with another hallway. The smell hit her first. It smelled like dried urine and something else. Then a soft sobbing sound seemed to come from everywhere. There was someone else, maybe more than one, in here. Maybe they’d been kidnapped too.

  “Hello. Where are you?” she said as loud as she dared. No answer except the soft sobbing.

  She held the gun two-handed, barrel pointing up, elbows bent into her chest. She bladed herself to see down both hallways. Each had closed doors on both sides. At the end of the one on her right a set of stairs led upward.

  “I’ll come back for you,” she said and raced for the stairs. If she could get out, maybe, just maybe, she could come back with the cavalry.

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  Photo by George Routt

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  SERGEANT RICK REED (ret.), author of the Jack Murphy thriller series, is a twenty-plus-year veteran police detective. During his career, he successfully investigated numerous high-profile criminal cases, including a serial killer who claimed thirteen victims before strangling and dismembering his fourteenth and last victim. He recounted that story in his acclaimed true-crime book, Blood Trail.

  Rick spent his last three years on the force as the commander of the police department’s Internal Affairs Section. He has two master’s degrees. He currently teaches criminal justice at Volunteer State Community College in Tennessee and writes thrillers. He lives near Nashville with his wife and two furry friends, Lexie and Belle.

  Please visit him on Facebook, Goodreads, or at his website, www.rickreedbooks.com. If you’d like him to speak online for your event, contact him by going to bookclubreading.com.

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