by Martha Carr
The Traitor’s Revenge
The Wallis Jones Series, Book Two
Martha Carr
MRC Publishing
Contents
The Traitor’s Revenge
Dedication
Want More?
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Sneak Preview - The Keeper Returns
Martha’s Notes
The Traitor’s Revenge
A Thriller
Second in the Wallis Jones Series
Martha Carr
MRC
Central Texas
Copyright ©2016 by Martha Carr
Published by Martha Carr
Texas
All rights reserved. No part of this book can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by an information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author, except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles.
The Traitor’s Revenge by Martha Carr is a novel and a work of fiction. The characters, names, incidents, dialogue, locations and plot are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or events is purely coincidental.
Cover design by Dave Robbins
Created with Vellum
To all those who love to read and like a good puzzle inside of a good story with some characters you can get to know over an entire series.
Dedicated to Don Allison, whose guidance in life and literature have helped so much.
To Dave Robbins and Brian Fischer for donating your time and your talents so generously. Forever grateful for your friendships.
To Michael Bingham-Hawk for a great website and so much more.
To Michael Anderle for his generosity to all of his fellow authors.
And to my amazing son, Louie and the wonderful Katie who have been so supportive throughout this project.
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Join the email list here:
http://wallisjonesseries.com/newsletter/
Join the Facebook Group Here:
fb.me/WallisJonesSeries
The email list will be a way to share upcoming news and let you know about giveaways and other fun stuff. (Hard at work on an app with different endings and a cool side story to the series). The Facebook group is a way for us to connect faster – in other words, a chat, plus a way to share new spy tools, ways to keep your information safe, and other cool information and stories. Plus, from time to time I’ll share other great indie authors’ upcoming thrillers. Signing up for the email list is an easy way to ensure you receive all of the big news and make sure you don’t miss any major releases or updates.
I hope you enjoy the book!
Martha Carr 2016
Chapter One
Oscar Newman loved his job, loved the way people took a step back when they saw him coming in his deputy uniform. It was the only thing in his life that made sense to him.
He walked briskly up to an older brick building in the bowels of Shockoe Bottom, located down near the James River and in the shadow of the few high rises in downtown Richmond. He quickly entered one of the old defunct tobacco warehouses with a faded logo for Pall Mall’s painted across the three-storied building.
The fresh wound that made a thin line down one side of his face was still smarting a week after it happened. “Damn bitch,” he muttered, growing angrier.
Oscar was determined and angry as he pulled open the side door and stepped into a large warehouse filled with men, black and white, rich and poor trading slips of paper and quietly reeling off short series of numbers to each other. It was the central count house for the city’s numbers organization.
“Six, eight, nine. Give me six, eight nine.” “How ‘bout triple three’s.”
The response from a small group standing at the front was always, “Quarter, quarter.”
All of the men who were taking the bets were wearing the same style of suit, trading numbers out of the same kind of leather briefcase, filled with more slips of paper and a ledger. They still preferred the old fashioned method to computers, which left too obvious of a trail to follow.
At one side of the room was a chalk board with recent dates and three numbers written next to each date. It was an old form of lottery the locals called combinating and worked the same as a daily lottery, only cost less to play and was never legal.
Everyone stopped mumbling and turned to look at the deputy sheriff. “Get out here!” yelled Oscar, his hand moving down toward his gun. A few men slowly rose as if to run or at least get out of the way. Most look annoyed.
“Where the hell is Davey?” said Oscar, his hand resting on the holster. A very large black man, tall as he was wide and sweating profusely, slid a pile of papers into his hands and quietly ducked behind a table. Oscar spotted the movement and barreled toward Davey, his hand clenching the holster. A path was cleared for him as Davey tried to right himself back to standing, a few wisps of paper falling to the floor.
“Come on, Davey! Didn’t I tell you these numbers were crap?” said Oscar, his hand sliding off of the gun and into his pocket as he pulled out a wad of small papers and threw them in Davey’s face.
“Those were your combinatings,” mumbled Davey. “You picked your own combinatings.”
Oscar unsnapped his holster, pulled out his revolver and pointed it briefly at Davey as a murmur went around the room. Davey shrank back, letting go of most of the papers and shut his eyes. Oscar hesitated, rolled his eyes, and seemed to resign himself to something as he took aim at the blackboard behind Davey, shooting out the top line.
The sound echoed for a moment in the cavernous building.
“Yeah, like I’d shoot you here,” said Oscar, sounding annoyed as he helped Davey to his feet. “Put this on seven, eight, nine,” he said, pulling out a dollar bill. He removed a thick brown envelope from the inside of his jacket and put it in front of Davey. “Here’s everybody else’s. Captain says you owed him a free one.”
Across the room two black men in tidy pinstriped suits were going over a ledger. “Somebody’s got to do something about that crazy jerk. He’s bound to hit Davey one of these days.”
“You’d think so, with a target like that, and Oscar being an ace shot. Hasn’t he told you yet?” Both men snickered.
“Where’s Parrish?” asked one of the men, looking around.
“He’s out doing his own thing, you know that. He’ll get the job done, always does. One of our best runners. Keeps it all up here,” said the other man, tapping his forehead. “Never even writes down a combinating or a nickname. Never had a complaint. Genius for the details, and brings in more money than anybody else in this room. Can’t do enough for a man like that.”
Across town a well-dressed, tall elegant man with close-cropped hair, Rodney Parrish, was getting ready to head back to work. He gently pushed open the
screen door of a well-kept modest blue and tan bungalow on a tree-lined street in an older neighborhood.
Parrish stepped out, quietly and deliberately pulling the door shut behind him while straightening his suit jacket and checking his expensive silk tie, tapping lightly on the white lapel pin of an American flag trimmed in gold. His breathing was even and calm and he wore a faint smile as he walked down the short sidewalk lined with brightly colored plastic daisies turning in the slight breeze.
The briefcase that was hanging loosely from his right hand gave only a small swing, keeping a perfect rhythm with his stride as he took each step down the walk before turning toward the east, heading for the Boulevard and away from the older suburbs. His three-piece pin striped suit, the combinating room’s idea of a uniform, was spotless.
Down the sidewalk from where Parrish had just been visiting, past the row of neat identical bungalows was the little cottage where Lilly Billings had moved to shortly after separating from her husband. The door looked undisturbed and everything was exactly as it should be until a little further into the living room where Lilly still sat with her feet crossed at the ankles, her hands neatly folded in her lap and her back to the door. The only thing out of place was the left side of her head, bashed in past her ear, and a look of surprise on the part of her face that was still intact.
But there was no blood, no mess at all, and no sign of any kind of struggle. Nothing was out of place. Only the best pieces of jewelry were missing, Parrish’s payment, but that was all. No blood spatter was left to complicate things, no sign of how the killer got in. No clues at all.
Parrish had a demanding standard for himself and he always liked to keep his customers happy.
Just as he reached North Boulevard where he’d be able to blend into the small bit of foot traffic in the city, he pulled out his cell phone and typed in a short message. ‘Job done, no reward.’
Lilly didn’t know anything about a thumb drive or the list. She had made that clear, swearing on her life.
Parrish got into the dark blue Ford Explorer that he always kept neat as a pin and drove off to deliver the winnings from the morning bets. It never looked good to miss a deadline.
Chapter Two
Stanley darted down the alley that stretched for miles behind the row houses between Grove and Hanover Avenue in the Fan District. He was going for a short five mile run to calm his nerves and try to build some kind of routine even if he was in hiding.
Stanley loved running through the Fan and glancing at the architecture as he moved quickly down the wide sidewalks. Everything had been rebuilt sometime after Sherman’s ignominious march through the South but with depleted fortunes. It explained the haphazard way the buildings jutted in and out of the cobblestoned alley.
Lately, he’d been sticking to the alleys everywhere he went in an effort to try and go by unseen. The narrow passageways behind the houses worked as a good cover to try and evade the people who kept tailing Stanley everywhere he went.
He thought he noticed the same car popping up every few blocks for the past mile but everyone in Richmond drove an SUV. It was hard to tell.
He’d given up on going back to his small cottage with the Williamsburg blue trim that was tucked in between all of the other cottages. Instead he’d been begging different friends to let him stay on their couches for a couple of nights. But it always happened that he’d become worried and suddenly move on again. Lacey and Dan, fellow runners who lived over on Park Avenue, had tried to convince him to stay a few more nights till he was feeling a little calmer but Stanley became convinced that he’d already put them in enough danger.
For a moment he wondered if they were in on it and the thought made him feel depressed. That was just a few days ago. He tried calling Wallis Jones but had thought better of it and hung up after only a couple of rings.
He was working his way through his group of running friends, staying with each one for only a couple of nights. There were only a few names left to call but Dan had let it slip that everyone was getting together and making up a Stanley calendar as some kind of way to see him through what they saw as a mid-life breakdown.
But Stanley knew the truth. He was running out of options.
Richmond was a small town and everyone ran in their own small circle of friends. It wasn’t going to take very long before word got around about his predicament. Maybe even spread to the wrong people. Nausea was rising in his throat again.
His mind was never settled, constantly going over his options or reviewing his every move, looking for the mistakes. Stanley was used to being methodical and fixing whatever hitches came up but he couldn’t see the edges of this problem. It was going to swamp him.
What if Lacey or Dan told someone he was so jittery? They could easily do that, he thought. They wouldn’t think twice about saying something during a run or over sushi at the new mall out by the Powhite Highway.
The word will spread and the wrong person will hear that I can’t hold it together. There’s no way to contain this, he thought.
He came to the end of the alley at Stuart Circle that was ringed on three corners by large churches and an old hospital that was now condominiums on the other. He stopped for a moment, carefully looked both ways and ran until he had crossed the wide circle of cobblestones and was in the center of the wide boulevard, in front of Stonewall Jackson’s statue. Stanley had been looking forward to this part of the run for a week.
He had patted the marble horse for good luck once a week for years. He still needed the little piece of familiarity, the ability to still choose something, in order to grasp a little sanity and keep it.
He got to the over-sized statue and stood there on the narrow pavement that ringed the statue, making himself calm down enough to have one clear chain of thoughts.
He felt his breathing slow down for just a moment and he took in his first deep breath in days.
“Just a couple more miles to go,” he said, trying to smile and count up his blessings. It was an old trick of his that he used whenever he had to shake off a bad mood. “I’m sorry, Ray,” he said, “but I did what you asked and now I’m going on from here.” Stanley patted the statue, looked both ways and started to step off the pavement and dart across the road, back to the relative safety of the alleyways.
His foot touched down on the cobblestone just as he caught the glimpse of the black SUV he was sure had been behind him at the top of Monument Avenue and Glenside Drive. It was heading into the circle at a high rate of speed.
“They’re here,” he mumbled, his knees trembling for a moment. Stanley quickly assessed his options and knew he had no choice but to go for it. If he stayed he’d be trapped in the open with a road to cross on all sides. They’d be able to pick him off easily.
He bolted onto the road running as fast as he could and reached the sidewalk just as the car came screeching up behind him. He could hear the click, whoosh of car doors being thrown open on all sides as he willed himself to pay attention to the pattern of his feet. “One, two, one, two, one, two,” he said, over and over again. He knew that there was a good chance they wouldn’t open fire in such a well-to-do neighborhood. Too many witnesses who actually thought the police were there to protect them.
These guys wanted to capture him and drag him somewhere else.
“The advantage is now mine,” he said quietly.
Men in suits carrying heavy weapons were hired for their ability to muscle the enemy, not chase down trained runners on unfamiliar streets.
But Stanley knew these streets well, first as a boy when he lived across the James River and he would come to visit cousins and then as a runner always looking for a new route to stave off boredom.
He heard the men shouting to each other and could tell by their footfalls they weren’t seasoned runners. They were running flatfooted, making it easier to track them without having to turn and look. He found his rhythm and started taking small side alleys that he knew lead to only one narrow exit slightly hidden,
which would take them an extra moment to figure out. He quickly crossed over to another short jog between two brownstones, running down the narrow strip of alley that had been created to supply coal in the winters. He kept ducking in and out, weaving his way down the blocks toward the downtown district where there would be more foot traffic. His breathing was coming easily as he listened to their frustrated shouts.
Just another block and he would be near the Governor’s mansion built to look like the White House where the Capitol Police would be hanging out and nearby office workers would be taking a break on the rolling lawn.
Surely a few grown men in suits running down alleys would grab their attention, he thought, knowing a lone runner would go by unnoticed.
He quickly reached the end of the alley behind what had become older offices used mostly by the state government. He had already run seven miles flat out from the statue but knew that he could keep going for a while without even getting winded.
He hesitated, listening for the sound of hard soled shoes running on pavement and heard nothing, wondering if they were now tracking him by car.
“This way,” a man hissed. Stanley peeked out from the alley and saw a man in an older, white Jetta pulled up at an angle at the curb. He was making small, determined waves. “Hurry,” he said, quickly looking around as he kept up the hand waving.
“Why should I trust you?” Stanley hissed back.
“This town,” said the man, in heavily-accented English, “First the Jones woman has to ask questions and now you. How about because men are after you who don’t want information as much as they want to clean up their mess? And, you, my friend, don’t have any other options.”