MYSTERY THRILLER DOUBLE PLAY BOX SET (Two full-length novels)

by Osborne, Jon

  “Julie Ragnozzi, sir,” Mellon said. “An FBI psychologist down in Quantico, Virginia. Twenty-eight years old and pregnant by a man who works in the same office.”

  Jared von Waldenberg, known to the great majority of his minions simply by his intimidating title of “the Race Master”, lifted up his eyebrows in surprise. “A psychologist, Gregory?” he asked.

  Mellon nodded. “Yes, sir. The man, too. He’s at least twenty years older than the woman. Bob Taggert is his name. Married with three kids and having an affair with Ragnozzi that I wouldn’t exactly describe as discreet.”

  The Race Master nodded. “Perfect. And the video equipment? Is it ready to go, Gregory?”

  Mellon nodded again. “Yes, sir. Our operative has been outfitted with everything he needs and is prepared to make his move just as soon as he receives his final instructions from you.”

  The Race Master walked over to the record player over in the corner and raised the volume, closing his eyes and letting the beautiful music carry him away. Waving a finger in the air in perfect time to the heartbreaking sound of a single violin, he cleared his throat in delicious anticipation of what would come next.

  “Very well, Gregory. You may proceed with the final execution.”

  CHAPTER 116

  “Fucking hillbilly spaceship,” Dana Whitestone muttered, referring to the huge pickup truck that had just left a trail of utter chaos in its powerful wake. “Real goddamn sophisticated. Doctors and lawyers, my ass.”

  The FBI agent was still bleeding badly from the wound on her cheek, a flap of skin hanging from her face like a piece of melted cheese covered with pizza sauce. Angel looked down at her own forearm and suddenly realized just how badly she’d been cut herself.

  The flashing blue lights showed up less than three minutes later. Police cruisers. Two fire engines. Five ambulances.

  A team of EMTs pulled up next to them in the parking lot and three men scrambled out of the cab holding clean white towels. “We’ve got to get you to the hospital right away, ma’am,” one of the EMTs told Whitestone, studying the ugly gash on her cheek. “You’ve been cut pretty badly.”

  Whitestone gave him a look that could have frozen water. “Like hell you do, buddy. I’m not going anywhere. If you’ve got some needle and thread in that old rig of yours, take it out and let’s get on with it. If not, then please find somebody who does.”

  The man looked over at Angel with pleading eyes. He couldn’t have been any more than twenty-five or twenty-six years old. Just a baby, really. “Ma’am?” he asked.

  Angel looked at Whitestone, then back at the EMT. “That goes double for me,” she said. “You can stitch us up right here. It’s not that bad, really. Not for me, anyway. Take care of Agent Whitestone first.”

  Whitestone stared at her. “Just a flesh wound, right, Angel? What the hell is this, Monty Python and The Holy Grail?”

  The FBI agent stumbled around the parking lot acting like she was clanging an invisible bell. “Bring out your dead! Bring out your dead!”

  Angel burst out laughing. She just couldn’t help herself. “I’m gonna start biting off the kneecaps of some goddamn cowards around here if I don’t start seeing some results soon.”

  The young EMT looked at both of them like they were crazy, but he opened up the back of his truck and began stitching them up right then and there.

  As Angel watched the man expertly close Whitestone’s wound with his nimble fingers, she couldn’t help but think about the old saying about how a friend was someone who’d always come bail you out of jail, but a best friend was someone who’d be sitting right there next to you saying, “Goddamn, that was a lot of fun!”

  CHAPTER 117

  Television really is a wonderful medium, the Race Master thought, drawing long and hard on a fat Cuban cigar. If you wanted to share an event with the rest of the world, or in this case just a tiny fraction of the world, all you needed to do was broadcast it on the boob tube. So simple, yet so utterly fucking brilliant at the same time.

  He wished he’d thought of it sooner.

  In the darkened den, Jasmine Pepperton trembled in terror as her captor adjusted the tuning on a large, flat-screen TV. The picture flickered briefly for a moment, then cleared up suddenly in a brilliant flash of color. What it showed froze the blood in her veins.

  A young black woman had been strapped down to a large medical table, her wrists and ankles secured tightly in a “jumping-jack” position by thin, ragged ropes that were causing her naked body to make an “X” on the steel surface of the table. The look of absolute horror on the woman’s pretty brown face was enough to make Jasmine want to throw up her guts all over the hardwood floor.

  A moment later, a large blonde man entered the picture from the left side of the frame and held up a long knife in his right hand. Looking directly into the remote viewfinder, he smiled perfect white teeth at them before making his way over to the long metal table and digging the sharp blade deep into the young woman’s distended belly.

  On the television screen, the young woman’s face exploded into a mask of excruciating pain, her bloodcurdling screams echoing in Jasmine’s eardrums while the sharp knife pierced her womb viciously and repeatedly in a circular, sawing motion.

  A moment later, Jasmine’s own screams drowned out the other woman’s as an unborn baby was pulled from the woman’s stomach in a nauseating tangle of purple umbilical cord.

  Five feet away, the Race Master turned off the television set and motioned for Gregory Mellon to flip on the light switch next to the door.

  Bright light stabbed deep into Jasmine’s brain through her eyeballs. Hot tears spilled down her cheeks, streaking her mascara in thick rivers of dirty water. She could barely choke out the words around the painful lump of rage lodged in her throat. “That woman was pregnant, you fucking asshole!” she screeched.

  The Race Master threw back his head and laughed maniacally, the sound one only a completely insane person could ever produce. “The same fate awaits you and that nasty little virus growing inside of you if you don’t do precisely as you’re instructed, Jasmine.”

  Jasmine stared up at him, dumbfounded. “How the fuck do you know I’m pregnant?” she whispered, hoarsely.

  The Race Master waved a hand in the air. “Again, none of your concern, my dear. None of your concern, at all. What you need to concentrate on right now is dealing with your mother.”

  Jasmine shook her head. “But I already told you. She’s not allowed to negotiate with terrorists. It’s against the fucking law.”

  The Race Master lifted his eyebrows. Then he drew back his right hand and slapped her so hard across the face that he nearly broke her cheekbone. “Shut the fuck up, nigger!” he hissed. “You’re not in charge here. One more disrespectful word from you and I’ll gladly cut out that mutant from your stomach so goddamn fast that your fucking head will spin. Call me a terrorist again and I’ll gladly cut out your disgusting little tongue for you, too, while I’m at it. What I’m doing here is a righteous thing. More righteous than your feeble little nigger mind could ever possibly comprehend.”

  Taking a deep breath that expanded his muscular chest six inches, the Race Master then slipped an untraceable cellphone from the inside breast pocket of his expensive suit and took one quick step forward, firing it into Jasmine Pepperton’s heaving chest with all his might like a baseball pitcher dialing up the speed on his very best fastball. The hard edge of the Motorola Razr slammed violently into her sternum and cracked a hairline fracture deep into the bone.

  The Race Master’s eyes exploded with a wild fury, bulging with a hatred so intense that it overpowered even the searing pain that was spreading out to the rest of Jasmine’s body from her shattered breastbone. His enraged voice exploded from deep within his thick throat.

  “Now call your mother and make the arrangements this instant!”

  CHAPTER 118

  After the young EMT had finished stitching them up in the parking lot of the La
Mexicana, a uniformed cop approached with something in his hand.

  “Special Agent Whitestone?” the man asked, looking at Angel.

  “That would be that pretty little lady over there,” Angel answered, motioning to Whitestone with a nod of her head.

  The cop looked embarrassed, but to his credit he recovered quickly. He didn’t seem quite a rookie, but not quite a grizzled veteran yet, either. Angel guessed he’d been on the force for about six or seven years now.

  The man cleared his throat loudly and turned to Whitestone, handing her a large rock wrapped in a sheet of paper and secured by a thick rubber band. “We found this on the floor inside the La Mexicana, ma’am. I told the boys inside that we should bring it out to you right away.”

  Whitestone looked down at the rock, then back at the officer. “Thank you.”

  When the man didn’t immediately leave, she cleared her own throat and made her meaning more clear. “Thank you very much, officer.”

  Finally understanding the dismissal, the cop’s face reddened as he pivoted on his heel and walked away quickly. “You’re welcome, ma’am,” he mumbled over his shoulder.

  When the officer had finally cleared out, Whitestone looked over at Angel. “Let’s see what we’ve got here, shall we? A romantic little love note perhaps?”

  Angel watched as Whitestone freed the sheet of paper from the rubber band with a loud, elastic snapping noise. Then the FBI agent held up the note so that they could both read it at the same time:

  ANGEL MONROE: YOUR GRANDMOTHER WAS YOUR FIRST WARNING. THIS IS YOUR SECOND. THERE WON’T BE A THIRD. BACK OFF.

  DANA WHITESTONE: RACE-TRAITORS WILL BE DEALT WITH IN THE APPROPRIATE FASHION WHEN THE TIME IS RIGHT. YOUR TIME IS COMING SOON ENOUGH.

  Not surprisingly, this note, too, had been signed by the Brotherhood.

  “Looks like somebody’s starting to get a little bit scared,” Whitestone said, using the rubber band to reattach the paper to the rock.

  Angel let out a deep breath. “Yeah, and they’re not the only ones, Dana. I think I might need a change of underwear after that little episode.”

  “Join the club, sister.”

  Even though the parking lot was full of people, Angel felt like she and Whitestone were the only two people in the world right now. Unbelievably – despite everything that had just happened to them – she actually felt herself smiling.

  Funny how finding yourself a new friend could energize the muscles around your mouth, wasn’t it?

  Whitestone touched Angel’s shoulder and held her gaze. “What we’ve got here are a bunch of bullies, Angel, and there’s only one way to deal with bullies, you know.”

  Something about the tone of the FBI agent’s voice gave Angel’s own confidence a sudden boost. And why not? Whitestone seemed so confident in everything she did, so self-assured, that Angel couldn’t help but feeling like some of that confidence was rubbing off on her.

  When Angel spoke again, even she could tell that her voice sounded stronger now, because it was stronger. Maybe even a little bit stronger than Whitestone’s.

  “The only way to deal with bullies is to give them a nice big taste of their own medicine,” Angel said.

  Whitestone nodded. “Exactly what I was thinking. So, what do you say you and I go give one of those bullies a nice big taste of his own medicine right now?”

  Angel squared her shoulders and nodded. “Sounds just about right to me.”

  Whitestone nodded again. “Great. So, c’mon already. Let’s get the hell out of here and go do this shit.”

  CHAPTER 119

  Sue Lyn Pepperton’s heart slammed violently in her chest as she flipped off her cellphone in the study of her fine Georgetown home and looked over at her husband in horror.

  “That was Jasmine, Robert. She said they’re going to kill her if we don’t get a man convicted of murder in Germany freed from prison within seven days. They said they’ll let some female private investigator in Cleveland transport Jasmine back to us if we get it done. If not…”

  Sue Lyn’s face went very white. “If not, they’ll disembowel her. She’s pregnant, Robert.”

  Robert Pepperton leapt from his chair across the room. “What’s this man’s name?”

  Sue Lyn shook her head in irritation. “Goddamn it, Robert, I don’t know his fucking name. Jasmine doesn’t, either. It’s a fucking kidnapping, for Christ’s sake.”

  Robert Pepperton waved a hand in the air. ‘No, I mean what’s the name of the man they want freed from prison?”

  The junior senator from Alabama sat down in the oversized leather chair behind her massive desk. Her knees just didn’t feel strong enough to support her own weight anymore. She took a deep breath and fought back the overpowering urge to throw up her stomach up all over the desk blotter. “Stefan von Waldenberg. He’s been jailed over there since 1978.”

  Five feet away, Robert Pepperton’s face melted away into a mask of utter horror. He went over to the far corner of the room and sank down into an overstuffed leather armchair with a heavy moan. “Stefan von Waldenberg?” he asked, weakly. “You’re absolutely sure that’s his name?”

  Sue Lyn glared at him. “Of course I’m fucking sure,” she snapped. “That’s what she fucking said.”

  Robert Pepperton rose to his feet on shaking legs. Then he took a deep breath of his own and told his wife all about the night that he’d always known he’d never escape. The night he’d been stupid enough to think he could somehow outrun. The night that still haunted his dreams each and every time that he closed his eyes and tried to fall asleep.

  “Do you remember when I was stationed in Germany?” he asked.

  Sue Lyn’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking. She channeled the excess energy into her quaking voice. “What’s your fucking point, Robert? I was a city councilwoman and pregnant with Jacob while you and your Army buddies were over there fucking around and having a good old time of it all.”

  Robert Pepperton took another deep breath. “We killed two people over there in 1978, Sue Lyn. We killed Stefan von Waldenberg’s parents.”

  Sue Lyn’s jaw dropped. She couldn’t have been any more stunned if the President of the United States had just punched her hard in the stomach on the steps of the Capitol building. “What the fuck do you mean you killed them?”

  Her husband sank back down into the leather armchair and put a hand to his forehead. “We were drinking in East Berlin one night when Stefan von Waldenberg beat Private First Class Dmitrius Allen to death with a beer bottle,” he said. “Von Waldenberg beat Allen to death because Dmitrius was black, Sue Lyn. Later on that night, we found out his address and killed his parents. We were drunk, but they were all fucking Nazis, anyway. Nobody ever even came to question us about it. I thought it was all over.”

  He paused and lifted his gaze to her. His eyes were filled with tears. “Obviously, I was wrong.”

  CHAPTER 120

  Angel and Whitestone took the FBI agent’s car downtown, a sleek, silver Mazda Protégé that seemed to fit the woman perfectly, right down to the sporty-but-not-too-flashy racing stripes painted alongside the body of the vehicle on either side.

  As they drove, the two women began discussing the cases of the murdered pregnant women again.

  “So I’m pretty sure that Randy McMichael is the father of Sasha’s baby,” Angel said. “But what do we know about the other women? Do we know who fathered their babies? Anyone as famous as McMichael? Were they all white guys, too? The gene-mixing the Brotherhood’s talking about?”

  The FBI agent nodded and brushed a lock of short blonde hair out of her pale blue eyes. “Yep,” she said, “all of the fathers are white. Laura Settle was pregnant by a novelist. Marjorie Trimble’s lover out in California is a bank president. Betsy Campbell’s man up in Washington is a sales executive of some sort, a regional account manager for a good chunk of the state, I believe. Kimberly Anderson was expecting with a club DJ down in Houston, and Jasmine Pepperton is in a relationship with
a white student at George Washington University. The fathers all came back clean as a whistle, though. Airtight alibis for each of them. Nothing even close to incriminating.”

  Angel shook her head in frustration. She knew that they were bound to catch a break sooner or later, but she’d already grown sick and tired of waiting for it. They needed something – anything, really – to give them a better idea of just whom exactly they were dealing with here in the Brotherhood. Something to level the playing field a little bit. They were due, for Christ’s sake.

  Angel tried to quiet the little voice inside her head that was telling her that she had absolutely no business inside the same car as Dana Whitestone, that the FBI agent was so far out of her league on any number of different levels that it wasn’t even funny.

  No good. The voice wouldn’t shut the hell up.

  So when the familiar song came on over the radio, Angel reached out a hand and turned the volume all the way up to drown it out.

  She and Whitestone sang Come On Eileen at the top of their lungs all the way downtown.

  CHAPTER 121

  The Race Master turned to Gregory Mellon inside the elaborately decorated den. “Call off O’Reilly and Collins in Cleveland,” he said. “I’ve just made an adjustment to our plans. I want the private investigator alive.”

  Mellon’s face blanched. “I still haven’t been able to reach them, sir.”

  The Race Master glared at him. “Try again, Gregory. Reach them and tell them to pull out now or you’ll pay for it with your fucking life. I need Angel Monroe alive, goddamn it. At least, for the time being. Do I need to make myself any clearer about this?”

  Almost as if to underscore his master’s chilling message, Bane lifted up his enormous head and bared his sharp white fangs at the nervous young blonde man as he turned and exited the room.