DAYBREAK: a gripping thriller full of suspense (Titan Trilogy Book 3)

by T. J. Brearton

  “Ma’am? Hello?” The small, tinny voice came from her pocket.

  Thunder rumbled above and the rain started. She ran into the yard and crouched down next to Davis, whose grimacing face was turned up to the sky, his teeth gritted, eyes squinted shut. He’d torn off his formal shirt and was left in an undershirt. “Can you walk?” She looked at his arm, with the rain coming down, sluicing the blood from his flesh, exposing the dark bullet wound. She used his shirt to wrap around his arm and cinched it tight. He nodded, and she helped him to his feet. They started back to the house — keeping an eye on Stemp’s unmoving feet.

  Halfway there, Davis cried out and stopped walking. He dropped to his knees – he was too heavy for her to hold up.

  “Get inside,” he grunted.

  “Come on.” She strained and pulled on him. She actually managed to drag him a few inches through the dirt and mud. He twisted out of her grip. “Get inside,” he repeated. “Now.”

  She spared once more glance at Stemp’s feet. Were they twitching? She left Davis and did as he said.

  The rain clattered against the tin roof of Stemp’s home, so loud it was as if the heavens were dumping barrels of dimes. She watched out the window as the first police vehicle turned into Stemp’s driveway and pulled up to the house

  The vehicle was from Oneida County. A well-muscled man with hair cropped so short it was barely there stepped out of the cruiser and slid his nightstick into his belt beneath a bright yellow poncho. He looked around and drew his service weapon. Jennifer could hear more sirens in the distance; the warble of the ambulance, the wailing of more police vehicles. It was going to be a mob scene in a matter of moments.

  She watched as Davis was hoisted to his feet by the deputy. She didn’t know whether to go back outside now or stay where she was. Jennifer felt immobilized by indecision. Suddenly it all hit her, and she was overwhelmed by the reality of the past few minutes. She’d expected to touch on some soft spots with Stemp, but this thing had escalated so fast and unexpectedly that part of her knew she must be in a state of shock.

  And after all you’ve been through, she thought at herself. It sounded curiously like something her mother would say. Wouldn’t you be used to this by now?

  Davis, standing once more on shaky legs, pointed to the house. The deputy in the yellow rain poncho looked over and seemed to catch Jennifer’s gaze through the downpour. Half-aware she was even doing it, she raised her hand and twiddled her fingers in the air.

  Yep. Definitely in shock. Maybe not even mild. You’re losing it.

  Maybe. Maybe she was. Maybe it was too much. Maybe meeting with a former state assemblyman who could have been governor, destroyed by a honey trap was a bit tough to take. Maybe it said things about her own abduction she hadn’t wanted to face. Like that the naysayers were right; the United States was another corrupt empire in decline. Susceptible to the same entropy of past civilizations, in the final decadent stages before the death knell.

  Something caught her attention and she looked out the other kitchen window. Two black crows were fighting in the chicken yard. One of them flew away through the silver rain with something dangling from its sharp beak. She was watching it flap towards a billow of dark clouds when someone entered the kitchen, startling her.

  The deputy in the yellow poncho stood dripping in the doorway. He glanced at Morgan, slumped on the floor, and then he looked at Jennifer. He holstered his weapon.

  “Ma’am? You alright?”

  He looked like some sort of grizzled ex-NFL quarterback, she thought. A cop in his mid-forties, who could still kick down a door. She thought she’d seen his face in the Rebecca Heilshorn murder case files. The deputy who’d been first on-scene, perhaps.

  “I’m okay.”

  He seemed to analyze her for a moment, then gave a curt nod. “Okay. State Police are en route, there’s an ambulance in-bound, just another minute until it gets here.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Uh-huh.” He turned and looked into the hallway. Then his head snapped back around and he held her again with his bright eyes. “Far as you know, no one else is in the house?”

  Jennifer shook her head. “I haven’t heard anyone. I don’t think anyone was here but me and Stemp.”

  “Your bodyguard, Davis, told me that after he was shot, he returned fire. Shot Stemp in the back.”

  It should have been a relief, but it wasn’t. Maybe because she felt like Stemp was more of a victim than a perpetrator. Or maybe it was because his wife and kids were due back from church at any moment.

  The rain continued to hammer the tin roof of the small house. It sluiced from the gutters and eaves — the effect was like being behind a waterfall. When the ambulance turned in, followed by a state trooper and an unmarked car, Jennifer had to squint to see. The lights blurred and bled in the deluge.

  “I’m Bostrom,” said the deputy. She remembered the name now from the Rebecca Heilshorn case files.

  “Jennifer Aiken.”

  He gave her a lingering look, then stepped back onto the front porch to greet the rest of the police and paramedics.

  Moments later, a plain-clothes detective stepped through the front door. He threw a handful of something into his mouth, then wiped his hand on his pleated pants. He was wearing an old-fashioned beige raincoat which was soaked through. He was older, late fifties, the kind of seasoned cop who thought eating a messy snack on the job was OK. He glanced around the kitchen until he found the dishtowel on the stove. He took it and blotted his face and neck. Then he sniffed it, frowned, and threw it aside. He did all of this without ever once so much as glancing at her or introducing himself. He didn’t need to. She knew who he was, too: Ambrose Delaney.

  Delaney went over to the door and gave a quick look deeper into the house, keeping his feet planted in the kitchen. Then he pushed himself back and let go of the door. Looking at the body, he said to her, “Bad day, Agent Aiken?”

  Deputy Bostrom, in the yellow poncho, was still holding the front door open after the paramedics had carted Morgan outside. He shot Delaney a curious look. He was probably wondering how the detective knew her name. So was she.

  She watched Morgan being loaded into the ambulance. “These men were a security detail assigned to me by the Justice Department.”

  “Uh-huh. Looks like Stemp made pretty quick work of them.”

  “It escalated quickly,” she said to Delaney.

  “Oh, I know, I know,” Delaney intoned. “I know Eddie. I know his wife and children. This is going to be devastating for them.”

  The blame in his voice was unmistakable. Jennifer decided that she preferred the way things had been ten minutes ago — alone in the house surrounded by the dead and the dying, rather than with this guy. She realized the phone was still in her pocket, possibly connected to 911.

  “Something you want to say, Detective?”

  At last he turned to look at her. He glared across the kitchen. “Yes, Agent Aiken. You just brought murder to my county. You come here on your highfalutin cloud, you take a good family man, a church-going man, and you turn his life upside down.”

  She looked at her hands, which were shaking, and clasped them together. There was blood on them from when she’d touched Davis. Or Morgan. She didn’t know. She raised her head slowly. “We both know why I’m here. Don’t we? What’s your story, Delaney? I know Eddie’s. Why don’t you tell me yours?”

  Deputy Bostrom, still holding open the front door, started to mumble something. “I, ah, I’m going to bring in Clark when he gets here. I ah . . .” and he made a fumbling exit, curling his eyes over to Jennifer as he slipped outside.

  “How did they get to you, Delaney?”

  Delaney tucked his chin back and widened his eyes in a dramatic expression of incredulity. “Get to me?’ How did they get to me?”

  “I thought at first it was maybe an affair. Stepping out on your wife. But to look at you, you’re going to be hard up to find anyone that stupid or desperate; I be
t you just went in for the money. How much did Alexander Heilshorn pay you?”

  He stepped toward her suddenly. “Lady, you watch your fucking mouth.”

  “Or what? You know what I think about Stemp?”

  “Oh I can’t wait to hear it.”

  “Maybe what just happened here happened because he’s afraid of you. Afraid of what you might do to him or his family, with the truth out in the open. The truth that Eddie worked for the same private security firm back here that he did in Iraq. Only stateside, he was driving escorts. What I wonder is, who do you answer to now that Heilshorn is dead? Who’s calling the shots?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Two state troopers entered the room, followed by a thin man Jennifer assumed was the deputy coroner, Clark. She saw Delaney had to make an effort to pull his hateful attention from her and turn and greet the arrivals. He spent a moment talking with them in low voices.

  She felt herself seething. The shock was already wearing off, replaced by an anger she hadn’t known was possible to feel. Delaney had walked into the room and belittled her, blamed her, when he was as dirty and corrupt as they came.

  She looked out the window. The puddles in the driveway boiled and snapped as the rain poured down. The doors to the back of the ambulance closed and she felt something drop in her chest. Her breath caught in her throat, she thought she saw points of light glittering around the edges of her vision, like she was going to pass out. Poor Morgan. She barely knew the man. She’d resented her security detail, and look what had happened to them.

  She spun around as Delaney neared her again.

  “Know why I’m here, Detective? I’m following the dollar. Black markets like XList are laundering money, which ends up as slush funds to bribe politicians. So, do your job. See that my men are given the best medical treatment, and get the hell out of my way.”

  Delaney barreled over from the doorway, took a few large strides and was right next to Jennifer, breathing hot in her ear. “Listen to me, you cunt. I don’t care who you work for. What you’re fucking with here; you’ve got to get with the program. You’re on the wrong side.”

  She turned and looked into his pasty face. He had dark eyes and a black mustache and sallow skin, there were sunflower seed casings stuck in his teeth. She decided then and there she would never eat a sunflower seed again. “I’ve heard that speech before,” she said quietly, her heart pounding. “Now, if I could just speak to your sheriff, Lawrence Taber. Is he around? I’m sure he’d like to hear what I have to say about you.”

  “Everything okay in here?”

  Jennifer looked past Delaney’s looming face at the earnest young trooper, watching them from the other side of the room with wide eyes. She could feel Delaney’s breath on her face. Her stomach rolled with nausea. Then Delaney slowly turned his head to the trooper.

  “No,” he said, “everything is not okay here.”

  And he pulled out his gun.

  Oh God, said that voice in her head, then one that sounded eerily like her mother. You’ve gone too far, Jenny. This time you’ve gone too far.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN / THURSDAY, 3:19 PM

  Tony Laruso. Two hundred and fifty pounds of fat and muscle. Early thirties. Bronx bred, started out in gangs when he was eleven and grew up fast. At sixteen, hit a guy so hard he put him in a coma for a month. Brendan had done his research, in between the beatings.

  Laruso would have served time in a juvenile facility for putting that guy down, but as he’d already committed other offenses — larceny, accessory to car theft, forging driver’s licenses — he was sent to Rikers and did six months. He’d been in and out of jail ever since.

  One thing that was unusual about Tony Laruso was that he didn’t have a single prison tat. He believed the flesh was sacred, not to be desecrated. Six months ago he’d been on top of Brendan, pinning him to the ground — with a few other inmates helping out, although Laruso didn’t really need assistance. Laruso had been following Grimm’s orders, probably wrangling a deal of his own for special treatment of some kind. But he was un-inked, the granite muscles moving like plates beneath his thick skin.

  Now, he stood in front of Brendan, chest heaving, ready for war. The corrections officers backed out of the room, closing the door and grinning like a couple of kids who’d just set a bag of shit aflame on some teacher’s porch. Brendan turned and scowled at them and tried to look tough. But when the door finally snapped shut, he faced Laruso, his heart thumping against his chest.

  Laruso had seventy-five pounds on him. He’d been in hundreds of fistfights. Brendan had been in less than half a dozen. If you counted grabbing Russell Gide by his tracksuit in a fit of fright and anger while Gide sat helpless behind the steering wheel of his BMW, okay, that was one. If you counted Laruso jumping him in the commons area, tackling him to the ground, screwing up his already screwed-up face, that was another. And maybe hitting FBI Agent Harlan Doherty in the face with his forehead made the list. What was not debatable was that, pound for pound, Brendan was outmatched.

  “You ready to do this?” Laruso clenched his fists and bared teeth so white and square they looked fake.

  Laruso took a step forward, bringing his hands up. He didn’t raise them like a boxer, instead he held them near his hips, like a wrestler. Laruso shook his head. “You’re one crazy motherfucker,” he said, and lunged.

  Brendan stepped back and batted Laruso’s groping hands away. “I know Grimm put you up to it.”

  Laruso paused, scowled, and then lunged again. “Grimm didn’t put me up to nothing.”

  Brendan leapt back, running out of room in the cramped space. His hip connected with one of the folding chairs, which ground across the concrete floor with a metal squawk. He kept backing away from Laruso, rounding the long table that had been the site of slightly more civilized interactions only recently. Laruso dove at Brendan, who jumped up onto the table.

  “Oh, you think that’s going to save you?” Laruso said and kept coming, and dear God, he was smiling. Brendan kicked him in the chin. The blow snapped Laruso’s head back and spit flew from the inmate’s lips. Two fat pearly drops of it.

  Laruso lowered his head and glowered up at Brendan from beneath a hooded brow. “I’m gonna fuck you up, bitch.”

  “Stop,” Brendan was saying, waving his hand, palm out, and backing up along the rickety table. “I have a proposition.”

  “Get down from there, you pussy,” Laruso growled, and he swiped at Brendan’s legs, his fingertips brushing one of Brendan’s legs.

  “No,” said Brendan, his stomach dyspeptic, his skull throbbing in sync with his beating heart. “Listen.”

  “Fuck you.” Laruso used a chair to climb onto the desk.

  This was going to hurt.

  CHAPTER TWENTY / THURSDAY, 3:22 PM

  The state trooper in the room was quick, but once he’d drawn his gun, he acted confused. He stood pointing the weapon in the general direction of Delaney and Jennifer, but he seemed unsure of which one of them was the target. “Detective?” he asked, his voice high and raw.

  Delaney had his gun pointed at Jennifer’s shoulder, the barrel pressing into her. With his free hand he took the handcuffs from his belt and held them in the air. “This woman is under arrest for suspicion of murder. I have reason to believe she and her security detail tried to coerce and then murder Edward Stemp.”

  “You’re out of your mind,” Jennifer said. Her pulse was racing, her thoughts jumbled, but she couldn’t help herself. Delany did not appreciate the remark and hit her in the side of the head with the handcuffs.

  “Jesus!” the trooper called out. “What . . . .”

  Getting hit with the cuffs was like a hot sting, with a thick, throbbing pain to follow. Silvery spots danced in her vision. At the same time, her clamoring thoughts settled, her mind calmed, and only one clear notion remained in the temporary stillness.

  I’m not going through this again.

  “Whoops,”
said Delaney. “Slipped.”

  He pulled the gun away from her shoulder and shoved her forward so she was bent over at the table just below her rib cage. “Cover her,” he said to the trooper. He then pulled the gun away so he could rack the cuffs on her. Meanwhile the trooper was pointing his handgun at her, clearly conflicted, but following instruction nevertheless. The coroner, Stanley Clark, appeared in the doorway and looked into the kitchen with his mouth open in a confused oval, as if he were about to ask a question.

  “You’re going to arrest me?” said Jennifer. “I’m a prosecutor with the United States Department of Justice.”

  “I don’t give a shit if you’re Queen Cleopatra of Egypt. You want to see Taber? Ok. I’ll bring you right to where he is.”

  She couldn’t help but think of Brendan. They’re all dead and buried somewhere.

  Delaney slapped the cuffs home. Tight. Then he gripped her under her arm and yanked her painfully to her feet. She felt the business end of his firearm jab into her lower back. “Move,” he said. “Outside.”

  He shoved her through the kitchen, past the coroner and the perplexed state trooper and out onto the porch. Petrichor and manure filled her nostrils. Everyone looked at her and Delaney, the other troopers and the paramedics sat in the ambulance with the doors open, tending to her bodyguard. Heads swiveled as Delaney marched her into the driveway.

  “You really think this is going to work?” she asked.

  The moment she said it, her security guard, Davis, broke away from the woman who was bandaging his arm in the back of the ambulance. He leapt to the ground, pulled his gun, and ran towards Jennifer and Delaney. As he did, the other troopers in the yard and the deputy, Bostrom, drew their weapons on him. Delaney pointed his own gun as the man charged.