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

by John W. Mefford

  She seemed to sense my confusion, and she extended her hand. “It’s my sister, Claudia. She, uh…”

  Her eyes bubbled with tears.

  “What’s got you so worked up? Is your sister safe?”

  “I’ve made sure of it. They’ll never find her again.”

  My pulse clocked faster. “Who are they?”

  “Those fuckers who run that religious cult, Camp Israel.”

  “Your sister was recruited into this…group?”

  “It wasn’t a fucking group. It was a goddamn cult. Psychological abuse, sexual abuse, brainwashing with all of their manipulative tactics. It was the poster child for fanatics in this country. Hell, they put the Taliban to shame.”

  She was fuming by the time she stopped talking. But my breathing cadence almost matched hers.

  I managed to keep my voice low. “You’re saying that your sister, Claudia, used to be part of some cult named Camp Israel?”

  “Yes. She was gone for almost two years.”

  “How did it work?”

  “Someone she met online. Seemed like a nice guy. Over time, they started talking about some powerful things, like life after death and sacrificing yourself for others. Claudia always had a good heart, so it was easy for her to go there. Too easy.”

  Oxygen flooded my brain, and I tried like hell to not make ten leaps of assumptions.

  “But Claudia is in a good place, and safe?”

  “I’ve made sure of it.”

  “Do you think they’d be looking for her?”

  “After she escaped, they came around looking for her. Of course, to most people they just looked like your hardworking Americans. Farmers, with so-called American values. Whatever those are.”

  I realized my palms were sweating, and I wiped them on my pants. “Did you turn them over to the authorities?”

  She flashed her teeth, but it wasn’t a smile. She was biting her tongue.

  “What am I missing?”

  “The Feds…you guys.”

  I put a hand to my chest. “The FBI?”

  “Yeah, them and every other agency. They didn’t do shit when I told them Claudia had been brainwashed and led away by these crazy people.”

  “Nothing?”

  “They talked a lot at first. Made a lot of promises. But it went nowhere, and they moved so slowly it would have taken them thirty years to find her, let alone have the balls to rescue her.”

  I strummed my fingers on the bar, wondering if there was any way this could be the same group.

  “Look, I can’t tell you why the FBI didn’t pursue your sister’s disappearance more diligently. Although…I will say this. Ever since the Branch Davidian debacle down in Waco, Texas, several years back, higher-ranking people in the FBI do everything possible to not box in a group of people who seem desperate. No one wants to see another mass killing or suicide.”

  She brought a hand to her mouth, as if she were trying to hold back something from escaping, literally.

  “What is it, Hank?”

  “I can’t. I’ve said enough.”

  “Actually, I was going to ask you if I could speak with Claudia.”

  She pressed her eyes closed for a moment. “I’m sorry, but I can’t take the risk.”

  “Hank, you just spoke about the horrible things these people at Camp Israel did to your sister.”

  “I know, I know. I couldn’t help myself. I should have just kept my mouth shut.”

  “Do you want this to happen to another girl? How many more will be brainwashed, brought into this camp and never allowed to leave?”

  She started shaking her head. “I…I don’t know. But I just can’t let Claudia be exposed to this shit again. It will destroy her and, at the same time, open up the possibility that they could find her. And if they do, they’ll make her pay for escaping, believe me. She told me how they punish and humiliate those who defy their leaders.” She smacked her hand over her mouth again. “I’ve got to stop.”

  “I don’t want anything to happen to Claudia. I won’t let anyone near her.”

  She looked down at the bar, or maybe at nothing at all, and her face became stiff with anxiety.

  “Hank, we have no idea if my mom is still alive, but if she is and if she’s being held against her will in this camp, would you be able to live with yourself?”

  She kept her gaze on the bar.

  “All I need is a few minutes. We need names…of the leaders and where this Camp Israel is located. In fact, if you want to ask her, you can even relay it back to me.”

  “Hey, Hank, what does a guy have to do to get a beer over here?” A man on the opposite side of the bar wagged an empty beer bottle.

  Turning on her heels, she walked over and gave the guy another beer. She quickly scanned the other customers to see if they needed a refill. I felt a buzz in my purse as she walked back over, but I chose to not look at my phone for now.

  “Have you had a chance to think it over?”

  She nodded while licking her lips. “Claudia is the only sister I have. She trusts me, and I can’t do anything to betray that trust. I’m sorry, Alex, but I just can’t help you.”

  Tears flooded her face. She walked out the side of the bar and then jogged toward a back office door.

  I sat in stunned silence for a moment, wondering if the best chance to find my mother had just fallen through my fingers.

  “Ma’am, can you get me another beer? I’m thirsty as hell, and Hank has disappeared.” An older man with scruff that looked like worn sandpaper set his empty beer bottle just to my right. He stood there with a pool stick in one hand.

  I grabbed a napkin and wrote a note to Hank on it, folded it three times, and then took a twenty from my wallet. “If you promise to give this note to Hank, I’ll let you keep this twenty. Deal?”

  He scratched his whiskers and stared at the cash as if it had magical powers. “Sure thing, lady. You can trust me.”

  I walked out of Hank’s Bar hoping for the best, but wondering if there was any trust left in Hopewell.

  11

  “Give me ten bucks and I’ll wash yo car. It’ll be the best wash you’ll ever see. Try me.”

  A man with his flat-billed Raiders cap half-cocked to the side hunched near the open window of my rental car. Why he’d decided to stop at my car and bother me, I had no idea. Perhaps I had “outsider” etched on my windshield and my forehead. All I wanted him to do was leave me alone. I’d found an inconspicuous spot near a dumpster and a bunch of overgrown weeds in the parking lot of a laundromat across the street from Hank’s Bar. While I awaited a call back from Brad and Nick, I couldn’t help but exercise my curiosity. Would Hank lead me to her sister, or was her sibling living south of the border, or hundreds of miles in the other direction? That was my sole focus, at least until this guy had walked up and rapped on my window until I rolled it down.

  He brushed his snotty nose with the palm of his hand, then stuck both hands in the pockets of his Raiders windbreaker that looked like it had been washed with bleach.

  “Sorry. Not interested,” I said.

  “I guess I should start by saying my name is Simon. Nice to meet you.”

  “Okay. Thanks for the offer.” I wasn’t about to get into a conversation, so I pushed the button to roll up my window.

  “Hold up, hold up,” he said, extending his hand in the window opening just before it got crushed.

  “Yes, Simon?”

  “I’m the best around. You can ask anyone.” He smiled.

  “I don’t need a car wash though.”

  He leaned back and looked up and down the dusty Camry. “Not from what I see.”

  “Well, you don’t look like you’ve got all the gear to wash my car anyway—not from what I see.”

  A quick grin crossed his face, exposing a full set of teeth as white as rice.

  “Oh, that’s your concern?”

  I kept a straight face.

  “You haven’t seen Simon in action, yet. Just watc
h.” He pulled out his phone, tapped the screen a couple of times and talked into the receiver with his back half-turned.

  I heard something along the lines of, “Yo, peep,” and then, “We’ve got a seven-sixty-nine.” And finally, “Fine piece of ass,” he murmured.

  “Excuse me!” I said.

  He pocketed the phone. “Hey, no worries. Me and my peep were talking about hitting Crossroads later where all the little lovelies hang out.”

  “Great,” I said with little enthusiasm.

  “So any minute now my team is going to roll up in a white van. They’ll be all over this car in no time. We’ll have it cleaner than the Queen’s ass in ten minutes flat.”

  “Simon, I’m not interested,” I said with a direct tone, my eyes not leaving his.

  “But...” he splayed his arms from his side, “everyone always does what Simon says.”

  I let him see the whites of my eyes. “Seriously?”

  He grinned again. “You got ten dollars I can borrow for a little spending money at Crossroads?”

  I felt some change in my overcoat pocket. “Here’s six bucks and thirty-eight cents. Now can you just leave me alone?”

  He took the money and tipped the bridge of his cap. “Why are you acting like you’re on some type of freak-out Mission Impossible shit?”

  “Simon, it’s called a stakeout. And I’m just chillin’ a bit before I hit the road again.”

  “I had a feeling you were from out of town,” he said, wagging a finger.

  “That’s right. I’ve got two dead bodies in the trunk of my car right now. You want to be the third?”

  He stumbled backward, running into the garbage bin with an echoing thud. “Simon says you’re a whacked-out bitch. I’m getting the hell out of here.”

  “Later, Simon Says.” I rolled up my window and watched the scammer run off.

  With my gaze refocused on the bar across the street, I peeled the wrapper off my Snickers and took a big bite. A gooey line of caramel stuck to my chin.

  “Crap,” I said to myself, trying to wipe it off with a thin napkin.

  I cracked the top of my bottled water and tipped my head back. It cooled the inside of my chest on the way down. Without taking my eyes off the bar, I pulled out my phone and brought it to eye level. No new messages or texts, and it still had eighty percent battery life.

  Just as I set it on the center console, it rang so loud it hurt my ears. It slipped through my fingers, falling to the floorboard.

  “Hello…hello, this is Alex,” I said, fumbling with my grip as I brought the phone to my ear.

  “Hey, sexy.”

  I choked on my candy bar. “Brad?” My voice sounded like a pubescent boy’s.

  I heard Brad chuckling as I chugged another mouthful of water.

  “Did I choke you up, babe?”

  I finally released a breath. “Don’t you always?” I said with a smile. “I guess Nick isn’t on?”

  “He’s grabbing a fruit smoothie and will be in the conference room in a minute. Wait… Here he is.”

  “Have you told her?” Nick asked, apparently directing the question to Brad.

  “Tell me what?”

  “The picture and the list from the church. Data is coming back on the eight guys.”

  I sat up higher in my seat.

  “Haven’t had the chance to say anything yet,” Brad said.

  Papers shuffled in the background, along with a slurping sound.

  “I’ve got news to share on my end as well.”

  “You found hope in Hopewell?” Nick asked. “Sorry about the bad pun.”

  “Very little hope it seems, but a piece of data that might be huge, or it could turn out to be a dead end. No in-between.”

  More rustling of papers on the other end of the line. “Having a tough time staying organized?” I asked.

  “Eh, not having Gretchen involved doesn’t help. She’s like a research machine,” Nick said. “Remember, we’re trying to do this on top of our day jobs.”

  “Alex,” Brad said, “we’re doing fine, so don’t worry about us. Right, Nick?”

  “Yeah, we’re good. Anyway, back to the data on the big eight, or really nine, depending on how you look at it.”

  “I’m not following you.” I said.

  “Eight faces in the picture, but nine names on the list. Two were listed on one line,” Brad said.

  “I never noticed. But from best we can narrow down, number nine—the man with no face, Monroe Namath—traveled out to the West Coast, moved in with his daughter, and tended to his garden until he died eight years ago. So I think it’s safe to cross him off the list of being involved, at least current day, in any type of religious cult.”

  I bit off another piece of my Snickers as I watched a man exit Hank’s Bar. It was the old guy to whom I’d given the note. He dipped his cap into the stiff wind and walked up the sidewalk and around the corner.

  “Are there any hits with any of the remaining eight men?”

  “We think so,” Nick said. “Although the trail gets cold at some point.”

  Brad added, “Now, on three of the eight, the trail is pretty easy to follow. They died within two years of when this photo was taken.”

  “How?” I shot back.

  “Oh, you’re already jumping to a conspiracy angle,” Nick said. “No such luck on these three. They each died of natural causes: one was a heart attack, then there was one with an aneurism, and…”

  “I’ve got it here,” Brad said. “It’s ugly, the third one died from being mauled by a pit bull while walking in his neighborhood.”

  “Not a good way to go,” I said, picking caramel goo from my teeth. Then I drank more water as I watched two women enter Hank’s Bar. They had on waitress uniforms, as if they might have just gotten off a shift at Waffle House or Denny’s.

  “That leaves us with five names,” Nick said. “Two appear to have lived normal lives. One went into insurance sales and retired in the last five years. He lives in Nebraska with his wife. Goes to church every week, plays golf with the same three friends. Part of the Rotary Club. Lives a pretty normal existence.

  “The second of the two actually became a horse breeder in Kentucky. Worked a farm for several years. Got divorced, then remarried, and even though he’s approaching seventy, he’s got kids in their teens.”

  “Ah, he won the trophy wife,” I said.

  “Not if you saw the picture,” Nick said. “I think she might have more fingers than teeth. From the pictures we found online of their wedding and at a horse race, she smiles a lot, so maybe she’s a happy person.”

  I smiled. “There’s someone for everybody, right?”

  “Or more than one person, if your name is Waylon Sigler.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’s one of the three remaining people on the list. Apparently, he moved to Utah and tried to marry a woman.”

  “And the problem with that is…?”

  “He was fifty-three; she was just eighteen.”

  I’d just taken another bite of the candy bar. “What the hell?”

  “What are you eating?” Nick asked.

  “A healthy candy bar. Don’t say a word, Nick Radowski. You used to eat like shit too. It’s all I had time to grab at this rundown gas station. The one where Mom was last seen.”

  That took us on a tangent, and I quickly explained the lack of anything turning up at the gas station. “So back to the old fart marrying the teenager. It’s perverted, but probably legal.”

  “It would have been,” Brad said, “if he hadn’t been married already.”

  “Okay, so he’s a double pervert. What else do you have on Mr. Sigler?”

  Brad continued. “It’s intriguing. He moved to North Carolina and started his own ministry. Lives in a small town, even has a little church. Has a farm, and it appears that another couple lives with him and his wife. Some of his views seem to be out there.”

  “Like what?”

  “He�
�s espousing the end of the world will take place in less than five years, and everyone must repent before the rapture. He’s quoted in an article in the town newspaper saying that Jesus could come back to earth in the form of anyone…including a doctor, a teacher, or even a plumber.”

  “A plumber. Butt crack and all,” I said, laughing at myself before the guys joined in.

  I watched the sun fall behind the bar. A glowing purple began to seep across the darkening sky as I thought about the information on Wayne Sigler. “Did either of you see any references to a thing called Camp Israel during your research on Sigler, or even the other two?”

  A moment of silence. “Sorry, we were just staring at each other shaking our heads,” Nick said. “We can go back and look for that specifically though. Is that the big news you had to share?”

  “It’s why I’m doing surveillance just across the street from Hank’s Bar, yes.”

  I began to summarize my conversation with Hank. Just as I mentioned Claudia’s name, Brad said, “Hold on, Alex. Hey, Gretchen.”

  She must have walked into the conference room.

  “Why are you guys hiding away in here?” Her voice sounded like she was moving closer to the speakerphone.

  “It’s nothing,” Nick said.

  “Didn’t I hear Alex on the line? I thought she took a few days off to find information about her mother.”

  “Hi, Gretchen.”

  “Hey, Alex. Sorry I’m asking so many questions. I’m just…you know me. I’m curious.”

  “Should we tell her?” Nick asked.

  “Tell me. Please. I want to be in on the hunt.”

  “Gretchen,” Brad said with a quiet, measured voice, “this is…let’s say off the books. We’re supporting Alex in the field with a little research here and there.”

  “I get it. That’s right down my alley,” she said with excitement in her typically squeaky voice. “I want in.”

  “Alex?” It was Nick.

  “I’m good with it, but this has to be kept under wraps.”

  “Awesome,” Gretchen said.

  I could hear what sounded like a chair being scooted across the floor. “I just left another meeting, so I have my laptop with me.”

  Nick quickly got Gretchen up to speed, and I could already hear her fingernails tapping the keyboard.