The Alex Troutt Thrillers: Books 4-6 (Redemption Thriller Series Box Set Book 2)

by John W. Mefford

  Archie moved back to his seat, but the camera still tipped up and then down.

  “She’s got to be the same person, bro,” Trent said. “Who can forget that face, that body?”

  Ryan shook his head. “Now that I look at her, there is something different about this chick here on TV.”

  “What chick?” I asked, a little louder this time.

  “This can’t be,” Archie said, ignoring my question.

  Even with the AC on full blast, I could feel a surge of heat rising up my neck. I was starting to get pissed. “Dammit, guys, what the hell is going on?”

  Archie did a double take toward the camera, but then quickly turned his gaze back to the TV. “It’s the craziest thing, Alex.”

  I leaned forward, waiting for more. But he just kept staring with wide, perplexed eyes.

  “What the hell are you looking at, Archie?”

  “It’s Cynthia.”

  “The reporter?”

  “Yeah, the chick from Action News.” Trent jumped in. “She’s the one we saw the other night getting into the Mercedes. Although she showed a lot more attitude the other night than she’s showing here on TV.”

  Ryan clapped his hands, and Archie jumped. The phone went airborne. When things finally settled, I was staring through the lens at the ceiling and Archie’s chin. He picked the phone up and turned it to his face for a quick second. “Sorry, Alex.”

  He then turned the camera on the two boys and said, “Ryan, what do you see?”

  “The chick the other night had a mole just under her left eye. This chick here on Action News…nothing, see? Otherwise, they’re a perfect match.”

  My pulse did double time as I thought about what this meant, or could mean, if Cynthia was indeed wrapped up in this party house and Kyle’s kidnapping. “Ryan, Trent, we need you guys to agree on this. It’s important.”

  “It was kind of dark that night,” Trent said, splaying his arms to his buddy.

  “Dude, it was the middle of the night, but that parking area had lights everywhere, even some shooting up from the water in that huge, round fountain.”

  “Was the fountain running?” I asked before they continued their lighting debate.

  They both nodded.

  “So, is it safe to say you didn’t hear anyone speaking?”

  “Right…well, nothing specific, just voices. It was all muffled, I guess because of the fountain,” Trent said. “And they were speaking Spanish faster than a jackrabbit.”

  Trent drained the rest of his water, then he said, “Man, I could go for a cold brewsky about now.”

  “Seriously?” Archie said. “Your friend is being held hostage or worse, and you want to start the party machine again? Will you guys ever grow up?”

  I had to close my mouth. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing: Archie taking the high road of maturity.

  “Sorry, dude, I’m just thirsty, that’s all. That’s how I quench my thirst.”

  “Just get another glass of water, will you?” Archie flicked his arm in the direction of the sink.

  A moment later, Trent came back into view with a wet face and holding a white towel. He wiped his face, then drank from a glass. “I’ve been trying to remember more from that night, you know.” He looked at Archie and then back to Ryan. “I think you might be right. That chick had a mole. I’m not saying I’d put a hundred G on it, but I’m pretty sure she had a mole. But, damn, her legs were so toned, and her ass was molded like it was the template for the perfect ass.”

  The two boys giggled. Their timing was something to behold.

  Archie turned the camera to himself as he wiped his face with his free hand. Crow’s feet stretched from the corners of his eyes, and he was playing with his bottom lip. He was stressed like I’d never seen him.

  “You’re worried that Cynthia might be involved, aren’t you?”

  He sighed. “I know they say it’s a different person because of the mole, but they’re also saying the resemblance is uncanny. I need to talk to Cynthia.”

  That was going to be my suggestion, but I wanted him to recognize that as a next step.

  “Makes sense. And if I were you, I’d do it in person in a public place. If she’s the black widow, I don’t want to have to start a manhunt looking for you.”

  “Oh, Alex, you’re making me feel…wanted. Thank you.”

  “That’s overstating it a bit. You’re necessary; how’s that?”

  Out of the corner of the frame, I could see the two guys having their own conversation, pushing each other playfully and generally talking trash.

  “You don’t even know a lick of Spanish, dickhead,” Ryan said to Trent.

  “What do you know? ¿Dónde está el baño? You just memorized that phrase so you could ask where to take a leak.” Trent chuckled at his buddy.

  “I figured out what those girls were saying about their supplier,” Ryan boasted, sticking out his chin.

  “What supplier?” I asked as the picture of the boys tilted left so much I wanted to turn my head in that direction.

  “These two bitches—”

  Trent elbowed Ryan, who then said, “Oh, sorry. These two girls were practically salivating at the thought of this one guy showing up at the party. Said he would hook them up long-term, and they wouldn’t have to wait until the next party to get the best coke they’d ever snorted.”

  “Did you catch his name?”

  “Hombre de Polvo,” Ryan said. “No need to look it up on Google translator. I already did.”

  Ryan chuckled once and looked in Archie’s direction. No response. He wasn’t smiling.

  “Anyway, it means Powder Man. Makes sense, huh?”

  I made a mental note about where to go with that information.

  “Dude, you got any leftover Cheetos? I’m starving,” Ryan said. The kids got up and sifted through plastic bags on the floor.

  Archie turned his camera to face himself. “Their ten-minute attention span is over.”

  “I think we got everything we can at the moment. You’ll talk to Cynthia?”

  “I’m on it, or her.” He tried to giggle, but his grin quickly disappeared. “Damn, I thought she was ‘the one’ too.”

  “She still could be, Archie. But when you talk to her, you can’t reveal too much.”

  “I know, I know.”

  Something slammed against my driver’s side window. I jumped and hooted, then turned to see Luke’s oversized lips pressed against the glass.

  “Everything okay, Alex?”

  “Yes, just Luke trying to scare me.”

  “Mom, I’m ready to go now,” Luke said through the glass.

  “Archie, I can’t fake it any longer. I need to go be Mom for a while. Let’s touch base later this evening and compare notes.”

  The kids barreled into the car. They reeked of foul water. I restricted the airflow through my nose and declared it was time to get some ice cream.

  “Before dinner?” Luke exclaimed, turning toward his sister, his mind clearly blown.

  “We’re on vacation. Anything goes, at least when I give the okay.”

  We headed south on the main drag, then came to a stop at a red light.

  “Look, Mom, it’s Captain Rex!” Luke pointed to the right at a smaller cross street.

  I saw a man with the same wide-brimmed hat and sleeveless shirt from the day on the beach, driving a green four-wheeler. The mini vehicles were often rented out on the island. He had a bunch of crap in the back. He seemed like such a pack rat. He was pulled over to the side, talking to two ladies with shopping bags in their hands.

  “He could talk to a brick wall,” I said without a filter.

  “What’s up, Mom? You don’t like Captain Rex?” Luke asked.

  “I didn’t mean anything. He just likes hearing himself talk.”

  “I wonder how the search is going for the lost treasure from the crime of the twentieth century.”

  “I’d say he’s working really hard to find it.”

/>   “Remember, he’s writing a book too. He might be interviewing someone important over there.”

  I doubted it, but I didn’t want Luke to see my cynicism. “Could be. Who wants birthday cake gelato?” I asked.

  Two kids screamed, “Me!”

  ***

  I set my phone on the glass mosaic table next to the chaise lounge and tried to clear my mind for a couple of seconds. I tipped back my head and swallowed a mouthful of white wine—the leftover from the previous night with Teresa.

  I was sitting alone, listening to cicadas chirping away as I scanned the immaculate pool and landscaping. Teresa was working late, and the kids were in bed.

  The light from the full moon shimmied across the aqua pool. The placement of the light seemed almost fake, like it was part of a movie set design.

  “Damn, Teresa, you’ve got the life,” I said out loud.

  I swirled the wine in the glass, then drank another sip, thinking about the video I’d just watched for the fifth time in the last thirty minutes. The duration was only thirty seconds, but it unnerved me.

  Gretchen had been able to hunt down a video that one of the bystanders took of the shooting outside the Italian restaurant. It reminded me of video footage I’d watched on the news as a kid, when a cameraman was right in the middle of bedlam, some type of civil war in a country thousands of miles away.

  But this one took place in my own backyard, so to speak. The sheer number of gunshots was mind-boggling. The bad guys had a ton of ammo. And Archie’s response saved lives. He waved and shouted at people to get down as he fired back. Windshields, glass fixtures, and potted plants exploded around him, but he held his ground and continued returning fire until he hit two of the shooters. He was nothing short of heroic. I just wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to admit that to him. Knowing Archie, he would never let me hear the end of it. I shuddered at the thought of the favors he would conjure up if I made a bigger deal about his actions.

  Seeing the shootout from a different angle was alarming in another way. It all but validated my fears that Carly was being targeted. Without the cover of the green and gold bandana, one of the shooters slid out the door of his car, firing at Archie while he made his way over to the space between my dad’s black Escalade and the SUV next to it. In the video, I could see him hesitate just for a second as he peered around the Escalade, then he continued turning in that direction, once he saw his intended prey.

  From the perspective of this video and my own recollection, his target was most likely Carly.

  I couldn’t wait any longer. I had to talk to my dad, or my dad and Carly, to find out once and for all what she had done to garner such attention from this drug-related gang. I’d already called Dad a few minutes earlier, but it had rolled to voicemail. I needed to speak to him in person. In the morning perhaps.

  A light breeze blew across my face, and I recalled a conversation I had with Raul just a few hours earlier. I had accidentally interrupted his late family dinner.

  “No worries, Alex.” I could hear flatware clang against dishes and kids talking at a high volume. “Let me walk outside so I can hear you better.”

  I had given him an overview of Archie’s case: the missing student, Kyle Spencer, and the subsequent interview we had conducted with Trent and Ryan. Not wanting to drag him into all the messy details of government officials possibly being involved, I decided to focus on what he might know about Powder Man, Hombre de Polvo.

  “Not a damn thing. Never heard the name before.”

  Frankly, I’d been shocked. Raul seemed like he had his ear to the ground regarding just about any nefarious activity in the Valley. For a split second I’d thought I heard a hesitation in his voice and wondered if he actually might have known something about Powder Man, or even the party house. Representatives from county, city, and maybe even federal government agencies had likely been in attendance. And the boys mentioned a man walking around taking pictures. Those could only be used for one thing: to frame a person in a certain position to take a certain action, possibly ignore criminal activity.

  I’d decided to keep most of my information to myself and see if Raul would come through with anything noteworthy to help us pick up the trail of Kyle Spencer. Part of me felt paranoid for not completely trusting Raul. His reaction to when he learned about the murder of his prisoner, Diego Reyna, seemed authentic. Authentically angry at the warden and the corruption in the system.

  Raul had called me back within the hour with a surprising amount of energy. Through the help of one of his undercover agents in the field, he had connected Powder Man to a real person.

  “What’s up, Alex?”

  I nearly knocked over my wine as I strained to look over my shoulder.

  “Oh, hey, Corey. Your mom’s still at work, so it’s just me out here.”

  Wearing a swimsuit and a tank top that showed off more than enough chest hair, he sauntered past me and sat down in the chair six feet away, a shit-eating grin on his face. It gave me a chance to replay what he’d just said. He’d called me Alex.

  “By the way, my name is Ms. Troutt, or if you really want to be formal, you can call me Special Agent Troutt.”

  “You serious?” he chuckled.

  “As hell.”

  He was leaning on his knees, as if he had something to share. As much as I wished he’d just go inside, I was more comfortable with him being outside talking to me than sneaking into Erin’s room…or worse, her doing the sneaking around.

  An instant headache actually hit me in two places on my forehead, and I pinched the corner of my eyes.

  “You feeling okay?” he asked.

  “Fine. How was your day of work, or fun or whatever you did?” I asked with little enthusiasm. I took another sip of the vino. Yeah, that would help my headache.

  “Oh, did a little of both. Got up, left early, and spent most of the day out on the boat catching shrimp, and then I hung out with some friends on the beach.”

  “Sounds like your mom and me back when we were younger.”

  “Cool,” he said.

  It just hit me that I had plans in the morning, and my new, reliable kid-sitter, Archie, wouldn’t be available to help out.

  “Hey, Corey,” I said, looking in his direction briefly. “Do you know if your mom is busy tomorrow morning? I got this thing I need to go do, and it would be helpful if she could entertain the kids.”

  “Hell no,” he said, shaking his head while still smiling. He looked like he wore a perpetual three-day beard and was age thirty-one, not twenty-one.

  “She’s busy?”

  “I don’t even have to ask. She’s always busy, always working. When I ask if she ever takes time off for herself, she just says, ‘How do you think we can afford all this?’” He scrunched his shoulders, trying to emulate his mother.

  I puffed out a breath. “I might just have to send Archie off by himself then.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Oh, just some work stuff I’m being pulled into. It’s nothing.” I sipped the last few drops from my glass, then held it up to the light of the moon.

  A moment later, Corey was standing over me holding the bottle of chardonnay.

  “Refill?”

  “Uh…” Before I finished my answer, Corey had topped off the glass. While he was technically legal to drink, there was no way I was going to ask him to join me. He sat back down, leaned on his elbows again, and stared at me with his boyish smile.

  I flipped my legs around until my feet landed on the outdoor tile. We were now looking straight across at each other. “I think you need to know, Corey, that this little flirtation thing you’ve got going on with me…I’m flattered, but you need to know that nothing will ever happen. And I mean never.” I had given him a partial truth. I wasn’t flattered at all. I was more creeped out that he was such a player and could wrap Erin around his hairy finger in about five seconds.

  Losing his smile, he looked over at the pool for a moment, then returned h
is gaze to me.

  “It was worth a shot. What can I say?”

  I shrugged my shoulders and focused on my wineglass.

  “Ms. Troutt, I hope you’re not offended. You’re a very pretty woman. And I’ve always been attracted to older women…uh, I mean, women who are older than me. I’ll drop the charming Corey and just be normal, I guess.”

  “Thanks. Appreciate that.”

  “I can help you out, though.”

  “How?”

  “I can watch after Luke and Erin.”

  I bet he could. “That’s okay. They just need some time with their momma.”

  “Seriously, I know you think I’m this Casanova college kid who is just waiting for the chance to hit on some younger girl, but I can assure you I have no attraction to your daughter. No offense.”

  I tried not to eye him, but I did. His response and his body language seemed genuine.

  “I can see you may not believe me. I can give you my phone, and you can call anyone on my contact list. They’ll tell you the same thing. I don’t think I’ve ever dated a girl that wasn’t at least three or four years older than me.” He held his phone out to me.

  I crossed my legs and kicked my foot a couple of times, searching for a hint of dishonesty. Nothing obvious.

  “You could be bullshitting me, and I might not even know it. And then tomorrow you could do something to my little girl that would haunt her for the rest of her life.”

  “You don’t pull any punches, do you?”

  “Not when it comes to my kids, no.”

  His chest filled with a deep breath of air. He glanced at the pool while popping a knuckle. “A few years ago…” His tone had softened. “Jess, my sister, died in an accident. She would be about Erin’s age, I guess.” He swallowed hard.

  “Corey, I’m so sorry. I had no idea.” I wanted to reach out and touch his arm, but given his propensity for older women, I kept my hands to myself.

  “Yeah, she was pretty cool. We hung out, talked. I was pretty lucky.”

  His eyes became moist.

  “Your mom never told me. I’m stunned…and really sorry for your loss. I know it must be difficult for you.”