Cassie smiled. “No! We found the bombs! Evacuate the building!”
Cassie, Erin, and Lexi all laughed, and then each one of them began pulling money from the wall and filling the two suitcases they’d brought in with them. Lexi started stuffing stacks of cash down her jeans, and Cassie laughed with her as she stuffed them down her pants. They filled the bags as high as they would go and still zip closed. All of them except for Lawson weighed substantially more than when they walked in, square molds showing through every part of their wardrobes. They were having fun with it. Lawson thought it was silly, so he just let his bag hold the money.
When they got to the front entrance, the two detectives were taking cover behind their cars.
“Stay down!” Cassie shouted. “We’ve got the bombs, but we have to get them out safely. Whatever you do, keep your heads down!”
This even brought a smile to Lawson’s face, and the four of them laughed as they ran to Cassie’s car, threw the bags full of money in the trunk, and fell into the car themselves. Lawson got behind the wheel and threw the car in gear, speeding out onto the road, gas pedal to the floor. The detectives acquiesced to the FBI agent and did not give chase. Lawson was sure that Cassie was going to hear about it once they found the rest of the money in the wall, but at that point he didn’t really care. They had enough money to last them a while. Lawson hoped it would be long enough to figure out what was next for him.
A couple of hours later, the sun began to fade behind them as they traveled northeast on I-15. Lexi wanted to take the route through Colorado so she could see the Rocky Mountains. Lawson was happy to oblige, especially since it had been the shortest route anyway. They filled up the gas tank, filled up on McDonald’s, and pulled back out on the interstate. The McDonald’s double cheeseburger was a transcendent experience for Lawson after years of horrible prison food. Lexi was riding shotgun, in full control over the radio. All the songs sounded like a foreign language to Lawson, except when Lexi began to sing along. He had been right, she sounded just like Lauren. He wanted to bottle up these moments and save them forever. He didn’t know what was to come of his life next, but Lawson knew he wanted to cherish this time with his daughter.
Behind him, Cassie and Erin were bobbing their heads along to the beat. The music wasn’t his taste, but at least it kept him from having to talk. Twenty-four hours ago he would never have imagined he would be in such a good spot. And if the last ten years had taught him anything, it was never to take any of the good spots, no matter how small, for granted.
Lexi reached for the volume and turned it down. Then she turned in her seat to face Lawson.
“Dad, can you tell me a happy story about Mom?”
Dad.
He glanced in the rearview, and he could tell by the smile on Cassie’s face that she had heard it too.
He looked over into Lexi’s ocean-blue eyes. Though avoiding conversation had been his goal on this road trip because he didn’t think he would know the right things to say, Lauren was the one subject he could talk about for hours. And as they drove along the interstate, driving away from the madness of the past and into the great unknown of the future, that’s exactly what he did.
Acknowledgments
First and foremost, I want to thank you, the reader. I love what I do, and no matter how many people help me along the way, none of it would be possible if you weren’t turning the pages.
To my family and friends. Every creative person is neurotic as hell about their creations, and I just want to thank you for always helping to keep my head on straight. And for indulging all of my ridiculous ideas.
To my editor, Deb Hall. Thank you for continuing to turn my poorly constructed sentences into a readable story. You are great at what you do, and my work is better for it.
To my advanced reader team. You are my megaphone in helping spread the word about each new novel I release. You all have become friends, and I thank you for catching those last few sneaky typos, and always letting me know when something isn’t good enough. Lawson Raines appreciates you, and so do I.
And finally, to the man who distilled that first beautiful batch of Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey. Speaking for those of us who imbibe, your work fuels many of the celebrations that make lasting memories in our lives. Your legend will forever live on in our hearts, and in our failing livers. Cheers to you.
The Xander King Series
by
Bradley Wright
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WHISKEY & ROSES: Imagine James Bond meets Mitch Rapp.
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The world knows him as a handsome, charismatic, and successful young businessman. The CIA knows Xander as the US military's most legendary soldier, turned vigilante assassin, who sharpens his skills in the shadows until he can exact revenge on the monster who murdered his family. They have watched his double life go on long enough, and now the government wants their weapon back.
Sample: WHISKEY & ROSES
Chapter 1: The Legend of Xander King
“Some people don’t deserve to live. One man is exceptional at making sure they don’t,” Director William Manning announced as he addressed the roomful of the CIA’s finest. “The decision that lies before us is whether we make this man an ally or an enemy. And I’m afraid we can’t afford the latter.”
Just before Director Manning blasted into the room and uttered those chilling words, Sarah Gilbright sat alone trying desperately to keep from nervous-sweating through her blouse. She knew it wasn’t all that unusual for the director of the CIA to call a top secret meeting of the seven highest-ranking officials in the agency. However, it was highly unusual for the eighth person involved in that meeting to be a comparatively low-ranked special agent like herself. Sarah knew there could only be one reason she had been invited to a meeting so far above her clearance level: they had decided to do something about Xander King.
Sarah fidgeted in her seat and shuffled through her prepared portfolios. She felt as if she were back in college. The plain white walls of the square room, the cheap collapsible faux-wood tables, and the metal folding chairs were almost enough to give her that familiar college hungover feeling.
That was when the heavy wooden door flung open, clanging against the painted cinder block wall with a loud crash, and Director Manning buzzed into the room. Though he didn’t look anything like the TV character, his clumsy, hurried entry reminded Sarah of Kramer from Seinfeld. No, Director Manning couldn’t have looked less like Cosmo Kramer. Manning's short, stout frame and his cloud-white hair made certain of that.
Director Manning finished his morbid opening remarks about Xander.
“Either way, enemy or ally, we’ve got to do something. Let’s get through this as quickly as possible.” His tone was more of a growl as he dropped his black leather briefcase onto the table. The button on his light-gray suit jacket seemed to be holding on by a mere thread.
Sarah imagined the button on his pants probably shared a similar stretch.
“All of you know each other, with the exception of Special Agent Sarah Gilbright here.” Manning pointed to Sarah.
The palms of Sarah’s hands filled with sweat at the sound of her name among all those important people. This was a big damn deal. She played it off as best she could, tucking her long blonde hair back behind her ear.
“Sarah, if you could please hand everyone a file and come up front with me.”
She did as Manning asked and began passing around Xander’s file. She worried that her slim-fitting black skirt and tight royal-blue silk blouse might be inappropriate. She had decided to button one more button on her blouse in the bathroom just moments ago. It was hard for her to contain her mother’s gift of large breasts, but she wanted the men in this meeting to take her seriously. The women too. She wanted them all to listen because of her merit, not because of her curves and slender waist, as had all too often been the case since she joined the agency.
Director Manning continued. “Six months
ago I gave Sarah an assignment to keep an eye on a man named Alexander King. I’m sure that all of you have heard the name at one time or another due to the legend of his time in our military, but his service to our country has taken on a much different role these days. Sarah is going to fill us in, and then we are going to figure out just what in the hell we are going to do about him. Sarah?”
Sarah handed off her last file and took the podium in front of the deputy and executive directors, the head of admin, the head of espionage, and the head of public affairs for the Central freaking Intelligence Agency of the United States of freaking America.
Wow.
Her voice was shaky. “Good afternoon, everyone. It’s an honor to—”
“Sarah . . . all due respect, spare us,” Director Manning broke in. “We have other things to worry about so please keep this short.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. Manning. Alexander King.” She did as she was told and got right to it, swallowing the growing nerves and digging in. “All of you are familiar with the name?”
The roomful of stuffy higher-ups all nodded in unison.
Sarah continued. “The Alexander—Xander—King of today is known to the world as the billionaire son of Martin King, of King Oil. After his parents were brutally murdered in front of him, Xander decided not to follow in his father’s footsteps. Instead, he sold King Oil and, as you well know by his legend, as Director Manning put it, he joined the navy. If you will, please open to the first page of the portfolio.”
“And he’s handsome,” Mary Hartsfield, Director of Espionage, remarked when she opened the folder and saw a picture of Xander holding a bottle of bourbon.
“Mary, please. Could you wait till you get the portfolio home before you start drooling over it?” Director Manning scolded.
The group laughed at Mary’s outburst, and Sarah, for the first time since entering the room, let the tension fall from her shoulders. She looked again, for probably the thousandth time, at the blue eyes staring at her in that picture and wholeheartedly agreed with Mary.
“I’m with you, Mary, he is quite handsome.”
Director Manning rolled his eyes and motioned for Sarah to move on.
“That bottle in his hand is from his own bourbon company—King’s Ransom—that he launched recently, and as some of you may or may not have heard, he has a horse by the same name running in the Kentucky Derby this coming Saturday. Those are the things he’s known for to the outside world. However, the reason we are here today is because of what the public doesn’t know, what Xander King doesn’t know we know, and the reason Director Manning has had me monitoring Xander for the last six months. Xander King is an assassin.”
The air in the room changed, shifting with the dark word Sarah uttered, surprising them all.
“Now, before you get the wrong idea about Xander, let me brief you on exactly what I mean.”
Sarah turned the page, and the picture this time was of a beautiful dark-haired woman whose stern demeanor suggested she had seen her share of cruelty in the world.
“If you’ll turn the page, you’ll find Samantha Harrison, or Sam, as Xander calls her. Sam had quite the reputation at MI6 in the UK for being what used to be an unparalleled agent. We aren’t exactly sure how she and Xander initially connected, but together they have formed quite a team. Sam is in charge of finding and coordinating the targets, and Xander goes about eliminating them. She is the coach, and he is the talent, if you will.”
“Targets, Ms. Gilbright?” Mary asked.
“Yes, targets. The scum of the earth. The most evil and vile human beings on the planet.”
Deputy Director Richards, a silver-haired, tall, and lanky man, spoke up. “And he just kills them? No justice system? Vigilante style, he’s the judge and jury? I see now why we are here. This is a problem.”
Sarah felt the mood in the room shift again, and she wanted to make sure she gave the rest of the facts in such a manner to show that what Xander was doing, though not legal, was just about the most noble and honorable thing a man with his particular set of skills could do. She had been watching him for months. All of the charity events he had hosted, all of the people he had saved by taking out these miserable targets. She didn’t want this audience to get the wrong impression of him.
“Well, I understand your skepticism, Mr. Richards, but I assure you this isn’t some amateur running around killing random people he thinks might be doing bad things. Sam painstakingly researches each and every target, and if you will turn the page, I’ll introduce you to some of these evil people.”
They all turned the page. There was a picture of a forty-something man with an emptiness to his stare.
“The first man you see was killed by Xander three months ago. Jerrold Connors. Jerrold was—”
“Hey, I remember this guy,” Deputy Director Richards interjected. “We were building a case against him when he was suddenly killed. Horrible, the things he was doing. Didn’t we find the bodies of more than seven male teenagers out in his shed?”
“Yes, that’s the guy.”
“Awful. I remember, they were all drugged and tortured over a span of months, if I’m not mistaken.”
“You are not mistaken. I’m glad you remember, Mr. Richards.”
Director Manning cleared his throat. “Move along, Sarah.”
“Right. The second target on the list, Mitch Boyle, was eliminated last month—”
“Oh God.” Mary winced. “I remember him. He was the guy—the nurse—who was going around stealing newborn babies from the hospital nursery, then taking them home, killing them, and stuffing them like dolls.”
“Good God,” the Head of Public Affairs blurted.
Sarah could already feel that they were coming to understand Xander like she did. She had been skeptical at first too. She had thought there was no way this could be right, a man exacting vigilante justice; then she spent time getting to know him from afar. “I know. It’s terrible. Mitch Boyle was a monster.”
Director Manning cut in again. “Look, I think we get the point. The other six monsters on this page all deserve what Xander gave them, but that isn’t what we need to focus on. Get to that please, Sarah.”
Director Manning paused, then held up his hand. “You know what, actually . . . let me just take it from here.” He stood up and shuffled Sarah to the side.
“But Director Manning—”
“Thank you, Sarah,” he said, dismissing her. Sarah took a seat by the podium. She wanted to give them a better sense of things. She wasn’t sure they understood Xander yet. She didn’t want them to stop the good things he was doing to right the wrongs the judicial system couldn’t manage to take care of. There was nothing more she could do now, though; it was Manning's show. She had assumed he was thinking the same way she was, but he had called this meeting for a reason.
Manning took the podium. “Now, the way I see it, we have three options here. One, we could shut Xander down and bring him up on charges . . .”
Sarah’s stomach dropped.
“Two, we could let Mr. King continue to go about this, what I think we all would agree is noble work and just continue to monitor him—”
“What, and just let him play like he’s Batman?” Richards interjected.
“Deputy Richards, I understand that concern, and that’s why I think my third option is the only way to go. We will just have to be careful how we go about it.”
“Which is?” Richards said.
“Which is, we get him to go to work for us.”
Sarah tried to hold her tongue, but she couldn’t. “Xander will never work for the government, Director Manning. You’re wasting your time on that notion.”
“Now hold on, Sarah. I just told you we would have to be careful how we went about it.”
“I don’t understand, why wouldn’t we just make him work for us?” Mary asked. “We do have evidence that he has killed these people.”
Again Sarah couldn’t help herself. “He just simply won’t do it
—”
Director Manning gave Sarah an “I’m warning you” glare and continued to explain. “What Ms. Gilbright is so passionately stating is that Xander doesn’t agree with how the United States government goes about some of its business. He made this very clear when he abruptly left our Special Ops team. He loves his country, but not its governing body.”
“Xander was Special Ops?” Mary said.
“Xander King was everything you could be in our military. After his parents died, his sole mission was revenge and he wanted to be trained by the best. He joined the navy, quickly becoming a Navy SEAL; then in record time he was running Special Ops missions. I’m not sure what you have or have not heard, but he just might be the best damn soldier this military has ever known.”
“So what happened?” Mary asked.
“Well, like a lot of our soldiers, he didn’t agree with the missions he was sent on and frankly, as you all know, some of the innocent casualties that go along with keeping this country safe. So he’d had enough. To be honest with you, I’m not so sure this wasn’t his plan all along.”
“What do you mean?” Richards asked.
“I mean, I think he used our military.”
“Used us?”
“Don’t get me wrong, he laid his life on the line every single day for his country, but yes, I think ultimately he used us. I think the only thing Xander ever wanted was to find the people responsible for the murder of his parents.”
“And he used the military to train him to do so,” Mary Hartsfield said as she let that sink in.
“That’s right. But we need a man like this. A man with his skills. Sometimes a surgical strike works far better than bringing in the entire army. Saves a lot of lives too. As you know, things are getting downright scary on the terrorist front and we could use a silent weapon like King.”
Mary stood up. “So what then? What are we supposed to do?”
“The only thing we can do. Use our resources to find what he wants before he finds it. Then we give it to him . . . at a price.”
When the Man Comes Around: A Gripping Crime Thriller (Lawson Raines, Book 1) Page 22