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

by Osborne, Jon

  “Suddenly,” Sara said, her voice taking on a sense of urgency now, “Dana opened her eyes and shrieked at the sight of the Three Friends glaring down at her. But the friends never had a chance to do anything to her, for Dana jumped out of bed, ran down the stairs and was out of the house in a blink of an eye.

  “Needless to say, the Three Friends never saw Dana anywhere near their cozy little gingerbread house in the forest ever again. And as for little Dana, well, let’s just say that she became a lot more careful in her future adventures.

  “The End,” Sara pronounced.

  “Mommy?” Dana asked quietly, slowly rubbing at her sleepy eyes with a tiny balled-up fist.

  “Yes, honey?”

  “Maybe tomorrow the Three Friends can call Dana up on the phone and ask her to come over to watch TV with them. That way they could be the Four Friends from now on.”

  She paused and looked up at her mother. The innocence in her big blue eyes nearly broke Sara Whitestone’s heart. “Don’t worry, Mommy. We’ll only watch PBS, I promise.”

  Sara smiled. “I think that would be just fine. But it’s time for bed now, my little princess.”

  She leaned forward and kissed her daughter softly on the forehead. “Sweet dreams, my darling little baby girl. I love you with all my heart.”

  Somehow, Dana managed to mumble her reply just a moment before promptly falling asleep.

  “I love you too, Mommy.”

  CHAPTER 12

  Dana twitched involuntarily in her hospital bed, not hearing the frenetic beeping of the monitoring equipment in the room, not feeling the rough hands all over her motionless body as frantic medical personnel tried their best to keep her alive. She knew this marked the part in her life story where all the good stuff had ended. From here, Nathan Stiedowe would slip into their cozy West Park house in the dead of night and murder her parents in cold blood, shooting James Whitestone once in the back of his skull at point-blank range while her father used the bathroom before proceeding to draw a razor-sharp knife so violently across Sara Whitestone’s slender throat that it practically turned the poor woman into a human Pez dispenser, cutting all the way down to the bone right in front of Dana’s shock-widened eyes.

  An amped-up voice near Dana’s right ear brought her hurtling back into the present. “We’ve got brain activity!” a disembodied female shouted. “Get Dr. Sanderson in here now! Ready the room for additional surgery! Fire up the crash cart and have it on standby. I don’t want to lose her again.”

  Dana furrowed her eyebrows in irritation, not particularly wanting to be here. She wanted to go back to 1976, to spend every last second with her parents that she possibly could, no matter how horrific those seconds might be.

  That was when she felt delicate hands upon her shoulders, shaking softly.

  Dana opened her eyes. Unbelievably, Sara Whitestone’s beautiful face smiled down on her. “Hi there, honey,” Sara said quietly. “I’ve missed you.”

  An ethereal glow highlighted her mother’s soft features. There was no ugly, jagged slice across her slender throat. No horrible gurgling sounds coming from deep within her chest as she choked to death on her own blood. Once again, Sara Whitestone appeared and sounded just as gorgeous and beautiful as she’d ever appeared or sounded in her entire life life. Maybe even more gorgeous and beautiful, if that was even possible.

  Dana sat up straighter in her childhood bed and rubbed away the sleep from her exhausted eyes, completely confused. “Where am I, Mommy?” she asked in a tiny voice.

  Sara sat down on the bed beside her and laid Dana down again, gently but insistently, pulling the Big Bird covers lovingly around her daughter’s small body and tucking them in tight. “You’re in heaven now, baby girl,” Sara said, lightly stroking Dana’s cheek with her fingertips. Glistening tears shone in the same pale-blue eyes that Dana had been staring right back into in her bathroom mirror every single morning for the thirty-six long years she’d spent on Earth without her mother. “You’re in heaven now and I just wanted you to know that the bad man won’t be coming here for us tonight, so you can finally rest in peace, angel.”

  Dana wrinkled up her face in confusion, not understanding her mother’s meaning. She frowned up at her mother, biting down softly into her lower lip. “How the heck would you know something like that?” she asked. “How do you know that the bad man won’t be coming here for us tonight, Mommy?”

  Sara brushed a lock of short blonde hair out of Dana’s eyes with the back of her smooth hand. “Because he went to the other place, baby. The place where all the bad people go.”

  Dana snuggled her head deeper into her still-warm pillow and yawned despite herself. But she was so darn tired right now. More tired than she’d ever felt before in her entire life. “And he’ll never hurt us ever again?” she asked wearily, feeling sleep begin to fold her up into its heavy embrace once more. “You promise me that?”

  Sara nodded. ‘Yes, honey. I promise you that from the very bottom of my heart. He’ll never hurt any of us ever again.”

  Just then, James Whitestone appeared in the doorway to Dana’s bedroom, looming there like some sort of beneficent giant. His handsome face looked calm and relaxed. There was no longer a bullet wound that had ripped off the top of his head before splattering his brains all over the tiled bathroom wall down the hall. “Your Mom’s telling you the truth, honey bear,” he said, grinning joyfully. “The three of us will be safe here and together forever now.”

  Dana gave her father a small smile, happy to see him again after all this time. She’d missed him even more than she’d ever realized. “Good,” she said, “because right here is the only place I ever want to be from now on. Right here with you and Mommy.”

  Sara leaned down and kissed Dana softly on her forehead. “Well, that’s where you’ll be for ever, honey. From this day forward and forever and ever and ever. So just close your eyes and go back to sleep now, sweetheart. Your Daddy and I will be right here in the morning waiting for you when you wake up again.”

  Dana wanted to stay awake a little while longer, to stay in the company of her loving parents for as long as she possibly could under the circumstances, but she felt much too tired to protest. Her eyelids began to droop insistently and she yawned again, even louder this time. It was no use. She just couldn’t fight it anymore. Besides, everything was OK now. After all of those years of living without it in her life, she finally felt at peace.

  Wriggling herself into a more comfortable position in her bed, Dana sighed contentedly and did as her mother had just instructed her to do.

  She simply closed her eyes and went back to sleep again.

  Forever this time.

  PART IV

  “I don’t like Mondays.” – Brenda Ann Spencer, when asked by a reporter why she’d carried out a deadly shooting at Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego that killed two people and injured nine others, in the process inspiring a hit song by Bob Geldoff and the Boomtown Rats that topped the UK charts for four weeks in 1979.

  CHAPTER 13

  Monday; 7 a.m.; Parma, Ohio (12 miles southeast of Cleveland)

  Jack Yuntz sat slack-jawed in front of the flickering television set in his rented room at the Holiday Inn, not believing his eyes or ears.

  A way-too-perky-for-the-morning-time female anchor had just segued from a standard piece on rising gas prices to this:

  “Sad news from the world of law-enforcement this morning, Jim. FBI Special Agent Dana Whitestone – who gained a certain measure of national celebrity for her role in tracking down the Cleveland Slasher, among many other high-profile killers over the course of her illustrious career – tragically took her own life Friday night. Whitestone, 40, graduated from Cleveland State University in 1994 with a degree in criminal justice before beginning her career with the FBI three years later.”

  The perfectly coiffed man seated to the right of his co-anchor frowned solemnly while an image of Jack’s hated nemesis flashed across the left-hand side
of the screen. Short blonde hair cut into a professional bob. Pale-blue eyes embedded in an attractive, fair-skinned face that called to mind that of actress Reese Witherspoon’s. Thin lips pressed together into a smug half-smile that Jack had wanted to erase himself.

  “Oh, my, Emily, that is tragic news. How absolutely terrible.”

  The woman nodded soberly and went on.

  “In 1976, Whitestone’s parents, James and Sara, marked the first known victims of Nathan Stiedowe, the infamous Cleveland Slasher who terrorized the Renaissance City and much of the rest of the country until she helped to finally stop him a few years ago. A fifteen-year veteran of the FBI, Whitestone leaves behind no living relatives. Funeral services will be held later today at St Christopher’s Catholic Church in Rocky River. Hundreds are expected to attend.”

  The man shook his head sadly.

  “Awful, awful news, Emily. Now, have you heard about this? Seems that some enterprising youngsters out in Westlake have run up against the wrong side of the law by failing to secure the proper permit for their lemonade stand…”

  Jack flipped off the television set in complete and utter shock. His reeling mind spun like a toy top on a table. His palms flooded with sweat. His temples throbbed. His gag reflex threatened to go off in a disgusting explosion of his recently eaten breakfast: eggs, toast and pancakes – mixed in with more than just a small measure of the stomach bile that was churning away madly in his gut.

  What the fuck was this?

  He shook his head violently in an effort to get his stunned brain working again but it didn’t work. Not even close. This couldn’t be happening, though. Not like this. He’d wanted Dana Whitestone for himself, goddamn it. He’d promised her he’d get her. And why the hell wouldn’t he get her? It was because of her completely unforgivable professional incompetence that his poor mother had died in the first place.

  Jack rose to his feet and seethed as he paced across the ugly, industrial carpet of his room. Jesus fucking Christ! Of all the unbelievably cowardly stunts to pull. He’d expected so much more from Dana Whitestone. If she’d had such a weak stomach for this high-level game of good versus evil – to the extent of actually killing herself over it – what the hell had been the fucking point of her ever playing at all? She should’ve just stayed on the goddamn sidelines, where she’d belonged all along. Let the real pros carry out the dirty work here and keep the fuck out of the way. It was what the public wanted to see, anyway, quite regardless of what the bleating sheep might like to say to one another while in the staid and all-too-safe company of family and friends.

  Jack stopped his pacing; still unable to wrap his mind around the dizzying realization that Whitestone had actually offed herself.

  Why?

  He pursed his lips. Well, there had been the highly unfortunate circumstances surrounding the sudden and brutal death of poor little Bradley, of course, but still…

  Jack took a deep breath through his flared nostrils that filled up his lungs nearly to the point of bursting and forced himself to calm down. He was much too amped-up right now; he knew that, much too juiced. And he also knew that he had a whole hell of a lot of scrambling to do now. A whole hell of a lot of script re-writing. But fuck it, right? Like it or not, sometimes main characters got killed off. That was just a simple fact of life; the way the world worked from time to time even when you didn’t want it to work that way. He certainly shouldn’t feel the need to abandon his entire beautifully written script just because of that one irritating little detail, should he?

  Jack stretched his badly cramped neck that had come courtesy of the Holiday Inn’s insufferably lumpy mattress, loudly snapping a long line of painfully compressed vertebrae in the process. Of course he shouldn’t feel the need to abandon his script. Fuck that shit. Edit it a little bit more, maybe, tweak it here and there, but to hell with just chucking the entire goddamn thing into the trashcan. Besides, from all appearances, it looked to him as though he had quite the busy day ahead of him today.

  After all, he had a funeral he needed to disrupt now.

  Making his way quickly over to the desk in the far corner of his room, he sat down in the uncomfortable wooden chair that was bleeding cotton from several tears in the tattered cloth covering before accessing Google from the hotel’s wi-fi connection and tapping a few words into the search bar. Dana Whitestone’s funeral certainly wouldn’t mark the first one he’d disrupted recently. Not even close. Still, this time he’d make his presence known a bit more forcefully than by just sending along an elaborate flower arrangement bearing a playful little card. Just because the opposing queen piece had chosen to remove herself from this high-stakes game of life and death didn’t mean that he should consider it over for him now, too, did it?

  Jack stretched his neck again, finally, blissfully, snapping one last stubborn vertebra with the movement. Of course it didn’t mean that he should consider the game over for himself now too. There still existed plenty of pawns ripe for the capturing out there in the world, though the poor souls most likely weren’t aware of that highly disturbing little fact yet.

  And, from all reports, a great many of them enjoyed going to the movies from time to time in an effort to de-stress from the laughable daily pressures of their wholly insignificant lives.

  Finally finding out what he’d needed to know a moment later, Jack rose to his feet again and made his way over to the queen-sized bed in the middle of the room before unzipping his machinegun’s padded nylon case and slamming a fresh magazine into the butt of the weapon with a satisfying metallic report, eschewing the rifle that he’d used to wreak havoc over at St. Anthony’s just a few days prior in favor of more complete coverage this time.

  Yes, taking in a movie today seemed a good idea to him, as well. An absolutely fucking awesome idea, actually. He’d need to get there early in order to ensure himself the best possible seat, though.

  After that, let all of the insignificant pawns scatter where they may.

  CHAPTER 14

  Monday; 8:12 a.m.; Fairview General Hospital; Fairview Park, Ohio (20 miles west of Cleveland)

  Helen Morgan’s stomach bubbled over with all the subtlety of an evil cartoon witch’s boiling cauldron of blood thanks in large part to the lingering affects of a skull-cracking hangover that had come courtesy of a long and extremely beautiful weekend spent drinking endless amounts of liquor with her handsome new beau in between making endlessly satisfying amounts of love.

  A nauseating hangover certainly not helped any by the shocking thing that Nicholas had asked her to do on Friday night.

  Helen swallowed back the small-but-cheek-melting measure of stomach bile that rushed up from her gut and flooded into her mouth, threatening to hasten the already well-underway decay of her aging teeth as she slid her keycard through the magnetic reader located outside the birthing wing at Fairview General Hospital and stepped inside to report for her usual morning shift.

  Somehow, and Helen still didn’t understand how, the crazy idea that Nicholas had presented to her on Friday night hadn’t seemed quite so insane as she’d lay cuddled in his strong arms in the comfortable king-sized bed of his lovely suite over at The Four Seasons. Hell, the way he’d put things to her then had seemed to make perfect sense at the time. And why not? As he’d told her while softly stroking her badly disheveled hair following yet another frantic go-‘round in the sack, if she could somehow find the courage to do what he’d asked her to do then not only would the two of them have plenty of money to begin their new life together as an honest-to-God family, she’d finally have the opportunity to escape the mind-numbing existence of her pathetic excuse for a life that she’d sleepwalked through ever since as far back as she could remember.

  Helen pressed her lips into a firm line, never having been the type to lie to herself. No purpose in it. She knew full well that she’d never been what anyone would have described as a pretty girl. Not even close.

  She’d been slightly overweight ever since her teen years an
d as a direct result the boys hadn’t come calling very often. More like never, actually, if she wanted to be perfectly honest about the whole thing. One boyfriend when she’d been seventeen, but that had been about it. Still, none of that had seemed to matter to Nicholas. He’d told her that she was beautiful, that he’d fallen in love with her at first sight. That he wanted to be with her for ever. What’s more, she’d actually believed him when he’d said those wonderful things to her. And if that made her a blind nincompoop who couldn’t see the forest for the trees, then so be it. She was sick to death of being an afterthought, of not even being considered good enough to represent anyone’s last choice, much less their first. So bent-over-at-the-waist, hurling-into-the-toilet sick-to-her-stomach today or not, for once in her life she needed to take a chance. A real chance, no matter how terrifying the prospect might seem. Because at forty-six years old now, she highly doubted that very many more chances were headed her way from here on out.

  She reached the front desk of the birthing wing and said her hellos to her colleagues who were still milling about drinking their morning coffees. Ellen Grolsch, the head nurse with whom Helen had always had somewhat of a contentious relationship over the years – mostly due to scheduling conflicts and Helen’s general lack of overall “cheerfulness” on the ward – seemed unusually chipper today. Heck, things felt different already.

  “And good morning to you, as well, Helen,” Grolsch answered, looking up from her clipboard and smiling brightly. “Ready for another exciting day in the salt mines? Ready to do something adventurous today?”

  Helen’s face blanched, only accentuating the crippling nausea that was promising to make her insides explode. Belatedly, she realized that Grolsch couldn’t possibly have any notion of what she had planned. This was Helen’s little secret, hers and Nicholas’s alone, though it most likely wouldn’t remain that way for much longer. Soon enough – if everything went well enough for the two of them, if everything unfolded precisely according to Nicholas’s wonderfully daring plan – everyone would know the stunning thing she’d done for the love of a good man.