The Ivy Nash Thrillers: Books 4-6: Redemption Thriller Series 10-12 (Redemption Thriller Series Box Set)

by John W. Mefford

  “Does that include the awnings?”

  “I would imagine. This part of the city doesn’t get much investment, so whenever someone takes that first step and leads with money, other developers and businesses tend to follow. I bet the mayor’s office is ecstatic.”

  I nodded, feeling even better about the place. “So you’re saying ECHO could be in the middle of something pretty special in the future.”

  “I think there’s a good chance. I understand that a small grocery is leasing space on the corner, a donut shop two doors down, and a small law office next door.”

  “Hmm.” I peeked inside the breakroom. Not much there, but I did see the sink and two cabinets, one of which had a handle dangling by a loose screw.

  “What do you think, Ivy? Want me to make an offer?”

  A piercing scream jolted my heart.

  27

  It was Zahera. I ran around the corner and found her standing on the arm of the sofa, her body pressed against a wall. “Mouse.” She jabbed a French-manicured nail across the room. I turned just in time to see a tiny tail slithering into a hole about the size of a quarter.

  I looked at Danny. “When you make your offer, you need to ask for a rodent treatment.”

  “Don’t ask,” Zahera said, her face still rigid with shock. “Tell.”

  “Good point. Put it the way she said.”

  He nodded, then tapped a few notes into his phone.

  Trying to get Zahera’s mind off the mouse, I took her by the hand and brought her into the meeting room. “So, can you envision it?” I swept my arm across the space.

  “I see dust, crappy carpet, and… Crap, is that another damn mouse?”

  She practically jumped in my arms.

  “Your nails are poking my neck,” I grunted, trying to pry her hands off my body.

  “Oh, sorry. Did you see that? This place is infested.”

  I walked to the corner of the room, leaned over, and plucked something lifeless off the floor.

  Zahera squirmed and shrieked at the same time. “It’s dead, it’s dead, get it away from me.”

  I giggled. “Do you need your vision checked? It’s a ball of masking tape with a sliver of carpet stuck to it.”

  “Are you shitting me?” With two hands grabbing the frame of the door, she leaned my way.

  My giggle morphed into full-on laughter.

  “Are you laughing at me or with me?”

  “At you. I’m sorry, Z, but I’m not used to seeing you like this.”

  A few seconds passed, but Zahera’s lips slowly turned up at the corners. “I guess I was a little overboard.”

  “A little?”

  “Okay, a lot.”

  With Zahera finally engaged in my vision for what could be the future ECHO office, I said, “A classy sign on the door, and then we’ll have my desk in the front room.”

  “What about a desk for Cristina?”

  “Do you think she’d actually use it?”

  “You have a point.”

  “On top of that, she’s back in school now, working to get her diploma. I think once she starts to see a real future with an education, she’ll probably move on to the next phase of her life.”

  I’d grown fond of Cristina, and thinking of her moving on brought an unexpected wave of sadness over me. We’d both experienced trauma and grief that had nearly shattered our lives, buried us. It had certainly changed us. Yet, in our own individual ways, we’d picked up the pieces and continued marching forward, because, ultimately, there seemed to be no other option. With no family of my own, and her mother on her way to prison, I wondered if I’d subconsciously categorized Cristina as family. A baby sister. The sound of it in my mind warmed my heart. Sisters always kept in touch.

  My mind instantly made the leap to the Cooper boys. Two of them had suffered similar traumas in their lives. Their grandfather wouldn’t be around forever to help pick up the pieces, do what he could to keep them united. I wondered if they’d really know each other by the time they made it through the foster care system. I also wondered how much more trauma they’d be forced to suffer.

  Zahera snapped her fingers in my face. “Earth to Ivy, do you read me? Wow, you were really zoning out.”

  “Just trying to picture a day in the life of ECHO in our new office.” I wasn’t in the mood to share my most intimate fears and thoughts.

  “If you get the new office. Danny’s making an offer?”

  “Yes, but we actually need to keep making money. I need to check in with Cristina to see how her second day at school went.”

  I explained to Zahera how Cristina had been lured back into high school.

  “Hey, if it takes a Latin Zac Efron to give her motivation, more power to her.”

  “Absolutely. I also checked my email while you were trying on your twentieth pair of shoes, and I have two requests to conduct background checks. Might be a new revenue stream for us.”

  She smiled, put her arm around me. “Look at you, talking like a power broker. You never know, Scotland Yard might be calling you up.”

  I rolled my eyes as we walked into the front room. Danny was talking on his cell phone, holding up a finger at us. Was he possibly negotiating our new lease agreement? Zahera and I both took to our phones. I was sure she had patients and her office personnel asking questions. I reviewed one of my emails asking to conduct background checks. It was from a local private school. I then typed up a text to Cristina.

  Any progress on finding Nikki’s drug connection? Let me hear from u. Later.

  I pressed send as Danny hung up his call. “Do you have good news to share?” I sounded like a kid on Christmas morning.

  “Yeah, but not for you. Sorry. I should know something by tomorrow.”

  “Did you hear that, Z?”

  Danny had begun to usher us out of the building. Her eyes were focused on her phone, her mouth agape.

  “Everything okay? Did one of your moms break her water?” Her lips moved, but I wasn’t sure she’d heard me. “Now who’s off in la-la land?” I joked.

  We waited by the door as Danny fiddled with the door lock.

  “Oh, can we make sure that we get new locks on the doors too? On our first day, I don’t want to be locked out of my own office.”

  He mumbled four-letter words as he continued to shift the key in the lock. I looked up and saw a kid with baggy shorts skateboarding down the sidewalk. He tilted his board back until it scraped the concrete and came to a stop near a couple of kids. He said something I couldn’t hear and handed them a flyer.

  “Uh, Ivy.” I turned to see Zahera with a hand to her mouth.

  “Now you want to speak. Something wrong?”

  She twisted her lips until I saw actual creases on her face.

  “You can say it, Z.”

  “This bitch just won’t let up. I think we might have to get lawyers involved or something. It’s outright libel.”

  I wasn’t sure why, but I could feel my pulse tick faster.

  “Yo, peeps.”

  I turned at the exact moment the skateboarding dude spun in a circle and dropped his board right in front of us. “I know you’re old and all, but there’s a party in a couple of hours and you’re invited.”

  “I’m not old,” I said as he handed flyers to all three of us.

  His baritone chuckle was in stark contrast to his thin physique. “Whatevs.”

  I glanced at the flyer. It was a party for kids ages three to eighteen, celebrating a new kids’ club opening in the neighborhood. It said guardians and “friends of the cause” were welcome.

  I repeated what I’d read. “The cause.”

  “Why would we want to go to a kids’ party?” Danny asked, trying to hand the flyer back to the kid.

  “Wait, this is sponsored by Timothy Jankovich?” Zahera asked, finally looking at the flyer instead of her phone.

  “Sure nuff,” the kid said, moving the skateboard back and forth with one foot.

  Zahera nodded, tappin
g a finger against the flyer. “I think I heard him talking about this at the museum board meeting. He’s developing this new place for kids, where they can just hang out, or jump on a computer, and lots of other cool stuff. Trampolines, a mirror maze, a small exercise facility, lots of indoor games, and free snacks. In fact, people only pay if they can afford it. They’re focusing on kids who have little or no money. According to Timothy, there’s nothing like it in the state.”

  “Sounds like a great cause,” I said. “Glad to see someone with money really contributing to the community.”

  “Yeah, it’s going to be sick,” the teen said, nodding like a bobble-head doll.

  “Last I heard from Timothy,” Zahera said, “he was having some issues with city permits, and the construction was taking longer than expected. But I guess it’s far enough along to throw a party.”

  “Most of the construction is behind this huge wall; they’re not even halfway done,” the boy said. “But TJ just wants the word to get out, give out some free food, show off a slide show of what everyone should expect. He’s a chill dude.”

  “Thanks for the heads up, man.” Danny glanced at the sun with a look of disgust, as sweat poured off his sideburns. “We all need to chill on a day like today. Time to crank the Escalade AC.”

  The kid rode away as the rest of us fled for the comfort of the luxury SUV. Once inside, Zahera couldn’t take her eyes off her phone.

  “You going to share this libelous, shocking story that has you so flustered?”

  She lifted her sights to me. “Do you remember Pearl Griffin?”

  How could I not? The woman who published the Nothing But the Truth blog, had, for whatever reason, decided that I was enemy number one. She’d written a handful of scathing blogs that attempted to paint me as nothing less than a fraud. She’d said I was a media whore who didn’t give a damn about the kids I purported to help. While the public rebuke stung, her blog posts had hit when I was in the middle of deep shit. The focus on surviving life and death situations had allowed me to push the written flogging to the back of my mind. And it certainly hadn’t slowed customers coming to ECHO.

  “Is she trying to prove another crazy-ass conspiracy theory with no basis of fact?”

  An uncomfortable smirk emerged from Zahera’s flawless face. “She claims to have evidence that you kidnapped the Cooper boys just to bring attention to yourself and, as she put it, ‘her joke outfit, ECHO.’”

  Even with cold air blowing my hair, I could still feel a warming sensation on the back of my neck. “She’s a blowhard. Nothing else better to do, apparently.”

  “It gets worse. Much worse.”

  “How?”

  “She accuses Stan of being involved in what she labeled as fake kidnappings, and that the two of you were only after the million-dollar ransom. I could give you a few quotes if you—”

  “Please don’t. I’ve heard enough.”

  “One more thing, just so you’re not surprised. She said she has a friend in the DA’s office and said they plan an investigation.”

  Pressing my eyes shut, I blew out a frustrated breath. “Who knows why this woman has it in for me, but going after Stan is out of line. He’s the best damn cop we have. And she wants to take him down? She is certifiable.”

  “Want me to call my lawyer bud, Ozzie? He and his dad also handle plenty of civil cases.”

  I wasn’t sure what I could do, but I felt like I needed to do something, for Stan’s reputation, for ECHO. I just shook my head.

  “No?” Zahera said.

  “I don’t know. Lots to think about if I go down that path.”

  She picked up the flyer. “Let’s go home and shower, and then go support a great cause. What do you say?”

  I knew I still needed to touch base with Cristina. And there was new ECHO business to focus on. “Okay. I probably need to be reminded that there are still a few good, caring people left in this world.”

  I dug in the cooler for an ice-cold bottled water. I put it to my forehead, then chugged a few gulps. I glanced in the rearview, wondering if I’d see steam coming off my head. I looked normal. But if anyone could read my thoughts, they’d probably run for cover. I was fucking pissed. And I was sick and tired of being someone’s punching bag.

  28

  It wasn’t so much what he said, but how he said it. The quick wink paired with a shit-eating smirk carried a message that was far from subtle. It implied, You should just trust me, although we all know you have no other choice than to trust me.

  Cristina sat on a boulder under the shade of a live oak about an hour northeast of San Antonio, the southernmost edge of the Texas Hill Country, one of the few natural wonders in a state with thousands of miles of oppressive, if not boring, flatlands and prairies. The sweltering sun had just dipped below the tree-lined lip of the canyon.

  “You’re getting me, right, Nikki?” he said with another wink.

  Nikki, obviously lost in the deep ocean of his blue eyes, giggled like a schoolgirl at a Justin Bieber concert. In this instance, she not only appeared to have an infatuation with the rock star—a slacker named Claude—but also what he was cooking up. She licked her lips as if she were about to taste some authentic Texas barbequed ribs, where the meat just slides right off the bone. But it wasn’t a hunger craving that was eliciting such a reaction. It was brown heroin, or as Claude called it, Brown Sugar.

  “Oh yeah, Claude. This shit’s gonna be dope.” Nikki appeared to enjoy talking like she was a Blood or Crip from south LA, when she’d actually spent her entire life living in the burbs. Her eyes were riveted to Claude’s hands as he carefully mixed citric acid into his wicked little concoction that sat over a small fire.

  “This area hasn’t had rain in three months. Don’t you think we should be careful to not start a fire that torches three counties?” Cristina asked.

  Her question sliced the humid air like a reaper’s scythe. Two heads turned in her direction.

  “What?” Her voice lacked confidence. She knew that she sounded more like a concerned parent than a fellow teenager. But their constant lack of good judgment all afternoon had brought on an unease that she couldn’t shake.

  Eight hours ago, without a moment’s notice, Nikki had grabbed her hand in between classes, dragged her out the school door, joining Claude and six others in what Nikki called “an epic tubing party.” That translated to tubing down the Guadalupe River just north of New Braunfels. Cristina had made the trip three or four times. It was pretty cool, depending on the company. While she knew Ivy wouldn’t be pleased to hear about her skipping school, she could talk her way out of that one. It was everything that had happened since then that made her stomach do flips.

  Her mission was clear: to follow the trail to see who was supplying the drugs and the main instigator in redefining Nikki’s outlook on life. But she’d learned that stating a distinct goal didn’t necessarily mean the pursuit of that goal would be easy or straightforward.

  The difficulty started the moment she’d climbed into the front cabin of Claude’s Ford F-150. After boasting about his awesome forty-inch wheels and four-hundred-horsepower engine, he drove like a boy hell-bent on proving he was the alpha male. He might have stopped and pissed on every lamp post if he hadn’t been doing figure-eights all over the road. “Look at my incredible reflexes,” he’d bragged.

  Once they reached FM 3009, and he spotted an eighteen-wheeler coming around the bend, his eyes lit up. “Time for the ultimate game of chicken.”

  Unfortunately, he didn’t give Nikki or Cristina the option of bowing out of this game of Russian roulette against a forty-ton piece of metal moving at seventy miles per hour. Not that Nikki would have declined. She was all about the thrill, which is probably why Claude attempted it. He jerked the truck into the oncoming lane and flashed his headlights. The eighteen-wheeler flashed his lights back. When Claude didn’t instantly move back into the right lane, the truck driver veered left. They were now separated by no more than a hundred yard
s. Nikki raised her arms as if she were riding in the front of a roller coaster, then began to yell, “Hit that truck! Hit that truck! Hit that truck!”

  Sounds of the horn from the truck mixed with Nikki’s blaring chant. Claude seemed intoxicated by the rush of excitement. He began to howl like a coyote in heat, which only incited more of a spastic reaction from Nikki.

  Up to that point, Cristina believed Claude would try to scare them, but ultimately pull back at the last second just to show how much control he had. But with every passing second, as the grill of the swerving truck drew closer, Cristina’s trust factor waned. She blinked her eyes and realized he wasn’t going to move. She smacked the dashboard while screaming for him to stop.

  Suddenly, the eighteen-wheeler’s trailer swung around—the driver had slammed on the brakes. He was fishtailing. Smoke rose from screeching tires. She glanced at Claude who was too busy high-fiving Nikki to see the road completely covered by an out-of-control eighteen-wheeler. Her heart pounded in her chest. She wondered if this would be the end of her, of everyone. Before she took another breath, she lunged across Nikki, grabbed the wheel, and jerked it left. Claude and Nikki both screamed out of fright as Cristina’s foot searched for the brake pedal.

  The pickup got air as it careened off the road through a dry ditch. For a second, she thought it might tip on its side. But she finally pressed the brake at the same time she turned the wheel hard to the right. The bed of the F-150 swung around, smacking a tree trunk.

  A quick breath. Then they heard the disturbing sound of steel bending, pushing the law of physics to its limit. When they found their way back to the road, the truck driver was out of his cab and waddling down the road, pointing a rifle in their direction. Claude hooted and hollered as he punched the gas. Before Cristina’s pulse dipped below a hundred, a bullet cracked the back glass, whizzing right between her and Nikki. She peed her shorts.

  “It was destiny,” Nikki would say later when they climbed into their tubes.