The Complete Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller Collection

by David F. Berens

  The house grew quiet, and she could hear Country’s jaw smacking on something. He was so close, she thought he might be leaning over the back of the couch. She was propped on her elbows and her left hand was going to sleep. Pins and needles began stabbing her fingertips. She had to move.

  She pulled her right hand up under her and started to push. The softest pop of her left wrist jabbed into the near silence. Dammit.

  “Hey!” Country said. “I hear ya, Prosperity. I knows yer in here.”

  She froze in a half push-up. His footsteps walked around the couch and into the living room. Using the sound to mask her movement, she eased herself under the coffee table. Her feet were sticking out, but at least they were at the opposite end from her kidnapper.

  “Why don’t ya come out and save yerself a whole heap of trouble. It’s gonna go bad for you if you make this harder than it needs to be.”

  She tried to breathe slow and easy. C’mon, Troy. Damn. What the hell is he doing?

  Jed’s feet clomped back into the room. “I’m going to check downstairs.”

  Prosperity realized that the cop was going to find Troy maybe unaware that anyone was in the house. As far as she knew, they didn’t know he was here. And if they got Troy, she knew she was as good as dead. She had to make a break for it.

  She saw Country’s feet walk around the table, only inches from her face, and slowly eased herself out of his line of sight. The recliner creaked loudly as Country plopped down into it.

  “Bitch!” he yelled into the air. “We know yer in here. Come on out!”

  Prosperity rolled over so she was facing up and realized she’d moved forward, her head popping out from under the table. She was looking up at the ceiling fan creeping around.

  “Shut up,” Jed called. “I need to be able to hear.”

  Prosperity wasn’t sure, but she thought he was headed toward the cellar door. I have to distract them. Lead them away from Troy. That’s my only hope.

  She put her palms on the bottom of the coffee table. In one swift motion, she shoved upward on the table, sat upright and flipped it over onto Country.

  It flew end over end and smacked Country in the face. He must’ve been holding his gun with his finger on the trigger, because it went off, sending splinters of the table flying toward her. Thankfully, his shot went high, shattering the light under the fan. The room was thrown into darkness.

  “Sonofabitch!” he yelled.

  “Country? What the hell was that?” Jed’s voice preceded the sound of him running back toward the living room. “You find her?”

  “Shit no,” he said, hurling the table to the side. “She found me.”

  Go, Prosperity. Run! The voice in her head was right. She took two steps toward the back door, nearly making it outside. But before she could, another gunshot blasted past her and shattered the sliding door into a rainshower of glass.

  “Freeze!” Jed shouted. “I’ll frickin’ shoot you.”

  Why hadn’t he shot her already? Probably trying not to get any blood on anything up here.

  “Just shoot her,” Country yelled, stumbling around trying to get up out of the recliner. “Bitch broke my nose with the coffee table.”

  The breeze from the newly open door blew past her, making her hair flutter around her face. It’s so close. I could probably get out if I could distract them. But how?

  Country’s silhouette bumped into Jed and she heard the cop swear under his breath. Now she had two guns pointed at her.

  “Okay, okay. Don’t shoot. I’ll come with you. Just don’t kill me.”

  “Oh, it’s gonna be worse than that now, bitch,” Country yelled, his gun shaking in the dark. “Die!”

  Somehow, Jed must have realized that Country was going to pull his trigger, because he slammed his arm under Country’s, sending it flying upward. The gun fired and finished off the struggling ceiling fan. It let loose from the ceiling and slammed down on top of the two men. Prosperity bolted toward the broken sliding door and jumped through.

  Unfortunately, she forgot that there was a screen outside the glass. It wasn’t enough to stop her completely, but it tripped her up and she fell through, crashing down onto the deck floor. Bits of glass dug into her palms and knees.

  “Girl, you better freeze right there, or I’m gonna blow your brains all over the beach.”

  She couldn’t move. She tried to crawl, but there was glass everywhere. She could feel blood start trickling down her palms, and her knees hurt like hell. Hands wrapped around her biceps and she was lifted off the ground and jerked backward back into the house. She screamed out into the ocean air.

  “Shut the hell up!” Jed squeezed harder.

  Pain lanced up through her arms. He shoved her down onto the couch and pulled his tie off his neck then wrapped it around her head and tied it into a makeshift gag. He unclasped his handcuffs and clicked them onto her wrists.

  “Jed,” Country hissed. “I think I saw a car pullin’ in.”

  “Dammit,” Jed whispered. “It’s probably backup. We’ve been in here too long. They probably sent another car out. Wait here. Let me get rid of them. And don’t take your eyes off the girl.”

  Country nodded and raised his gun to point it at Prosperity.

  Jed stomped toward the door, and she heard him having a conversation with someone he apparently knew. After a minute, the other voice said something and she heard a car door close. Then the car started and drove away. Prosperity would have cried, but she had gone past that. Now she was mad. She guessed they were probably going to kill her anyway, so she decided to take another chance at getting away.

  She looked up at Country, and winked at him. At first, he looked surprised. She arched her back and moaned, summoning all the memories of how the girls at the club did it.

  “Alright. Now we’re gettin’ somewhere,” he said, leaning over her. “How’s about I take that gag off and we get a little frenchin’ in before he gets back.”

  He stuffed his gun into his waistband and as he leaned closer, Prosperity raised both feet up and slammed them into his chest. At least, she was trying to hit his chest. But her feet were heavier than she’d planned and she ended up kicking him with both feet in the crotch.

  The bang from the gun going off was so shockingly loud, it took Prosperity a few seconds to recover from the sound. And then there was the sound of Country screaming.

  “She shot my balls off! Oh, sweet Jesus, she shot my balls!”

  She jumped up in the commotion and ran. With Jed at the front door and Country flailing around between her and the back door, her only chance was to get to Troy ... and as far as she knew, he was still in the cellar. She ran down the hall and found the door. She turned the knob and went down the steps as fast as she could.

  “Troy,” she hissed, trying to be loud enough for him to hear her but not alert the others to her location.

  Both men were armed, and she didn’t want them trapping both of them downstairs. When she got to the bottom of the stairs, there was no sign of Troy. He wasn’t there. But she realized the shelf had been pushed away from the secret door—which was closed. She pounded on the door. Surely, that sound would get through.

  “It’s over, young lady.” Jed’s voice came from behind her. “Now, turn around real slow or I’m gonna put a bullet in your head.”

  She turned around and raised her hands. Jed led her back up the stairs where she could hear Country still thrashing around. When he saw them come into the room, he lunged at her. She instinctively leaned back and the unexpected movement made Jed fall backward. She ran away from the two men, which led her to the stairs leading up to the bedrooms. In a fit of panic, she dove into the linen closet, slammed the door behind her, and waited.

  The muffled sounds of two men running through the house in a frantic chase filtered up to her, but they didn’t seem to be getting closer. They don’t know where I am, she thought.

  “She got out,” she heard Country say. “I think she got out someh
ow.”

  “Sonofabitch. This isn’t good.”

  “Dude, I need help.”

  She heard more shuffling around, then heard Country moaning.

  “My balls. She shot mah balls.”

  “Christ, man,” Jed said. “That’s a lot of blood. You need a hospital.”

  “Oh, God. Help me, Jed.”

  “Tourniquet. Tie something around your, um … well, your testicles. I’ll grab something to put under you to keep you from bleeding all over my damn car.”

  Prosperity heard Country scream and then the soft sounds of someone climbing the stairs. She glanced up and realized she was sitting under a big stack of fresh, white towels.

  Part II

  Pool Balls

  “Brother, can you spare a dime?

  I gotta girl with a curl at the end of the line.”

  -Ronnie “Wayfarer” Hobgood

  15

  The Man In The Cellar

  Troy was sure he heard someone banging on the cellar door. He banged back and yelled. It had to be Prosperity and though he couldn’t hear anything, he didn’t think she’d be knocking like that if all was well.

  “Pros, can you hear me?” He pressed his ear to the door.

  Nothing. He beat on it a few more times, but now all was quiet. Maybe it had been his imagination. Just ten minutes ago, he’d come down to see what was really going on in the secret room in the basement. Prosperity had been right, there were crates filled with rifles, huge stacks of dope, and a hell of a lot of cash. And quite the unfortunate smell in the room, which he quickly found was coming from a woman’s dead body. The reek coming from her meant she had probably been there a while. He didn’t dare lift the blanket covering most of her body. Nothing he cared to see under there.

  He had made a mental note of all the stuff he saw for his report to the police and turned to head back upstairs. When he reached the secret door, he found it closed. Had he closed it? He didn’t think so, but he couldn’t be sure. He tried to push it open, but it didn’t move. He pushed harder. Nothing happened. He looked for a handle to pull but found none. There was no latch, no knob, nothing to hold onto at all. He put his shoulder against the door and pushed. It didn’t move an inch. That’s when he thought he heard the banging on the other side.

  It was low and muffled, and maybe wasn’t sound as much as vibration emanating from the door. He kicked the door and immediately regretted doing it. His flip-flop offered little protection and his toes suffered a jolt. He hopped on one foot, massaging his bruised big toe, and leaned on the door listening. All was quiet.

  “Think, Troy,” he said, stepping back to assess the door situation. “No handle. Gotta maybe be a mag lock or somethin’.”

  He laid his hand flat to the side of the door and ran it up and down on the wall, looking for some kind of release. Typically, a mag lock—or magnetic door—had a release that was activated by laying a card or key against a spot on the wall to open the latch. He found what he was looking for quickly, a small metal square that was set into the concrete wall. It had to be in there.

  “Now, I just need a key,” he muttered, stepping back from the door.

  The gap in the door where the lock was positioned was thin, a hairline at best. Troy new from his days back in Vegas, that most locks like this had a magnetic force of over a thousand pounds. No moving that. But if you could separate the door a bit from the magnet, the force was reduced by a lot.

  He glanced around the room. He’d seen a few guys beat locks like this with a pack of cigarettes, but he didn’t see any of those lying around. He remembered another guy saying he could do it with a credit card. He reached down into his back pocket but found that his wallet wasn’t there. He’d changed clothes but hadn’t put his wallet back in his pocket. Dangit.

  He roamed around the room, searching for something thin but stiff enough to shove into the crack of the door. He grabbed a couple of hundred dollar bills from the loose stacks of money and tried folding them into a wedge, but it was too flimsy. It crumpled every time he slid it in. He put the bills back and moved on. His eyes fell onto the woman’s feet poking out from under the blanket.

  “Sorry, darlin’,” he said, pulling the cover back.

  He gagged and stumbled back away from her as the smell and gore of her decay wafted out. He covered his nose with his hand and tried to breathe small, shallow breaths into his mouth.

  The woman was wearing a green shirt like the one Prosperity had been wearing when he first met her. She had on a long navy skirt and white tennis shoes. Her skin was green and beginning to slack, and her teeth were starting to drop out of her mouth. She was close to liquifying all together. On the waistband of her skirt, Troy saw a springy cord with a set of keys and a slim wallet.

  Jed jerked open the door of the closet he’d seen in the hall and thrust his hand in to grab a stack of towels. The yelp from the back made him jump, until he realized he’d found the girl. He reached down and grabbed her by the wrists. She was still locked in his handcuffs, so he pulled her out of the closet with one swift jerk. She screamed, so he kicked her in the head. The girl went limp. He threw her over his shoulder along with a few towels and walked back downstairs.

  Country was lying flat on his back in the front yard, his hands holding a purple bandana tightly over his blood-soaked crotch. Jed had dragged him outside to keep as little of his blood from getting in the house as possible. It was a lot of blood.

  “Country, you gonna be okay?”

  “I’m doomed. They’re gonna have to cut my wang off. I ain’t never gonna have no kids now!” he moaned.

  Maybe not such a bad thing, Jed thought.

  He opened the door of his cruiser and laid the girl inside on the back seat. Then he spread the towels over the passenger’s side, making sure the redneck’s blood wouldn’t get on it. He walked over to Country and leaned down, hooking his hands under his arms.

  “Can you stand up?”

  “I’m afraid to let go of my balls. They’re gonna fall off, man.”

  “Shit. Here. Let me see.”

  Jed pulled Country’s hands away from his crotch. The man had already taken off his jeans, and the bandana he’d been using to staunch the bleeding was black through and through from all the blood. He peeled it back and saw a bloody mess, but the testicles were still there, as was everything else. He could see that the bullet had actually grazed his left testicle, but it hadn’t done much more than put a pretty good gash in the skin.

  “Dude, you’re going to be alright. Everything’s still attached. You just need a couple of stitches to stop the bleeding.”

  “Oh, thank you, sweet Jesus,” Country moaned. “You gotta get me to the hospital, Jed.”

  “That’s where we’re going,” he said. “Now, come on and help me get you up.”

  Country rolled to his side and crawled to his feet. He slumped into the car, breathing in heavy gasps.

  Jed started up the car.

  “Now, shut up a minute while I call in. The station will be wondering what’s going on out here.”

  He made the call and clicked the receiver back into its cradle. He pulled the car out of the driveway and onto the road.

  “Okay, when we get close to the hospital, I’m going to let you out and you’ll have to walk the last hundred yards or so.”

  “What? I cain’t do that,” Country complained. “Jed, I cain’t barely stand up.”

  “Well, you’re going to have to,” he said. “I can’t let anyone up there see my car. They all know who I am and I can’t be seen with you.”

  “What am I gonna tell ’em?”

  “Hell, I don’t know,” Jed said as the hospital lights appeared up ahead. “Tell ’em you cut yourself shaving.”

  Troy grabbed the woman’s wallet and flipped through the contents. He found a driver’s license, a debit card, and a library card. He ran to the door and tried them each. The library card was too thin and flimsy, but he was able to get it in slightly. The driver’
s license proved to be the ideal thinness and firmness. He jammed it in beside the library card. Then using the two as a wedge, he shoved the thicker debit card between them. When he did, he saw the crack of the door noticeably widen. He put his shoulder on the door and shoved hard. It moved. He put his palm on the debit card, pushed the door with his shoulder again, and shoved the card in further.

  When he did, the door let go in a rush and he fell through.

  16

  Frank ‘N’ Buff

  Troy took the stairs up to the house three at a time, stumbling only once. His bad knee scraped down two of the steps, burning a big gash into his shin. He winced, but held on and bounded through the door into the house.

  “Prosperity? Hey! Where are you?” he yelled, but only got an echo as a response.

  He ran from room to room, his worry slipping into anxiety, his anxiety turning into fear. He had rescued her only to have her disappear again. The bedrooms were all empty and looked undisturbed. He jogged back down the stairs, and he saw the living room had been ransacked. The coffee table was turned over and had a big splintered hole in it. The back door was smashed and there was blood—blood mixed in with the glass, and a trail of dark blood drops leading from the recliner to the front door.

  She must have fought with them and maybe they threw her through the back door. God, that had to have hurt her pretty bad. From the looks of the spattered blood leading out of the house, she’d lost quite a bit. He cursed himself for leaving her alone.

  “Good work, Troy,” he said, slapping his leg. “Save the girl. Lose the girl. All in a matter of minutes.”

  But what the heck had happened?

  One minute they were working on getting the police out here, and the next … The police. He knew instantly they had made a mistake. The cop he’d seen at the Black Dog Tavern was obviously working for Boonesborough. It was likely that there were quite a few in the department on the take.