Debt Collector - Reborn (Book 3 of a Jack Winchester Action Thriller) (Jack Winchester Vigilante Justice Thriller Series)
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Debt Collector
Reborn
Jon Mills
Direct Response Publishing
Contents
Copyright
Synopsis
Also by Jon Mills
Dedication
Epigraph
Prologue
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
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Sneak Peak At Book 4
A Plea
Newsletter
Jon Mills
Copyright © 2016 by Jon Mills
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to an online retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.
Debt Collector 3: Reborn is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Synopsis
Former mobster and hitman Jack Winchester must rely on his old skills to save a brother and sister smuggled into Los Angeles from Hong Kong. When Jack travels to Skid Row in order to put the past behind him, he is forced to contend with the Triads.
Also by Jon Mills
Undisclosed
Retribution
Clandestine
The Debt Collector
Debt Collector 2: Vengeance
Debt Collector 3: Reborn
Debt Collector 4: (Coming in June 2016)
The Promise
True Connection
Dark Tide (Detective Forrester and Woods Crime Thriller)
Click here to receive special offers, bonus content, and news about Jon’s new books, sign up for the newsletter.
For my Family
The moral arc of the universe bends at the elbow of justice.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Prologue
LOS ANGELES
2 hours after arriving
Eight forty-eight in the goddamn morning, and he was about to chew a bullet.
“Listen, I’m pretty sure you don’t want to go down this road, Ted. It’s not worth it. C’mon, you’re better than this. So what? She cut up your clothes, burned your Pink Floyd Limited Edition vinyl and told the girl you were banging that you frequent gay bars. It’s cold. I got to side with you there, but there are plenty of fish in the water. How about I just take the dog, tell her you had a change of heart, and hell, maybe she’ll call you for brunch?”
Teddy Wu tapped the tip of the Ruger LCR Double-Action revolver against the front of Jack’s forehead for the sixteenth time. The cold metal prickled his senses. It was pissing him off and starting to become a lot like an odd form of Chinese water torture when mixed with his sweat. Now under any other conditions Jack would have disarmed him and shoved the piece right up his ass, if it wasn’t for the fact that Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee had caught him off-guard. Okay, maybe they weren’t that good but his lip was still sporting the aftermath of two sharp kicks to the face.
“I… think not.” Teddy glanced at his watch. “Twenty seconds. Looks like your time is running out.”
Teddy had given him thirty to come up with a reason why he shouldn’t shoot him.
“It’s just a dog, Ted.”
They both glanced over to the small, shivering Chihuahua in the corner of the room.
“Then perhaps I’ll send it back to her in pieces—along with you—in a doggy bag.”
Chung and Ching, or whatever the hell their names were, stifled a laugh.
“Are you sure I can’t persuade you? I was really hoping not to kill anyone this morning. Especially not over a two-pound fur ball named Brutus. Like who the hell names a tiny Chihuahua, Brutus?” Jack replied before flashing a glance at his watch.
Ted broke into laughter, the other two joined him thinking Jack was out of his mind.
They weren’t wrong.
On his knees, hands clasped behind his head, Jack blew out his cheeks. He knew he should have tuned out the moment he overheard that woman talking in the café. But the tears were real, the purple discoloring around her eye socket was tough to look at, and then there was the whole mention of a dog.
Well, that kind of sealed the deal.
How was he supposed to know how nasty the damn thing was? Ten minutes ago, he’d let himself into apartment 1601 expecting the job would be a simple in and out. Easy money. Except the dog bit him, and barked up a storm, which in turn woke up the owner of the apartment.
Now he was less than ten seconds away from meeting his maker.
Or maybe not.
See, here’s the thing about time.
It makes people rush. It makes people slow. It makes people do stupid things.
The first being, if you are going to kill someone, you don’t give them the chance to tell you why they should live. As with every passing second they are searching for their way out.
And maybe they don’t find it.
But it only takes one that does and it’s over.
That’s exactly what Jack was doing as the seconds ticked by and every word fell from his lips.
It wasn’t like this was the first time he’d found himself in this predicament, rare though it was. In his former line of work, it came with the territory. The tables could turn fast and that meant being able to think fast. Contrary to what some might think, disarming the gun pointed at his head wasn’t the hard part. It was the two goons Jack was concerned about. He wasn’t wearing a vest, and he sure as hell wasn’t bulletproof. Experience, speed, and surprise were the only way he was getting out of this.
“Five seconds, any final words?”
Certain their boss was going to redecorate the Persian rug with Jack’s brains, they took their eyes off the ball.
“Yeah. Time’s up,” Jack replied as in one swift motion he shoved and twisted the Ruger upward to get out of the line of fire, while grabbing Ted’s wrist and pulling him down onto him.
Gravity did the rest. It had taken less than two seconds to disarm him. He fell on Jack and became literal body armor. It happened so fast that by the time the two goons reacted they already had a bullet in their chests.
Still holding onto Ted who was wriggling in his grasp and squealing like a stuck pig, Jack paused a second to be sure the men were dead. He rolled Ted off.
“Please, I’ve got money.”
Jack looked down at the wet patch between Ted’s legs. He had pissed himself.
“Clean yourself up, you’re an embarrassment.” He then crouched down beside the two other men and checked their vitals.
Only two hours in Los Angeles and he’d already killed two men. He sighed as he unloaded their guns and tossed them away. He glanced back at Ted who only a few minutes ago was acting all puffed up, and now he was cowering like a little bitch.
“If I have to come here again, there will be no free pass. You understand? And if I find out you have been smacking her or anyone around…”
Jack didn’t have to finish what he was saying. He understood.
Jack slid the gun into the small of his back.
“Now where’s the dog leash?”
He motioned to the kitchen counter. Jack went and retrieved it and did his best to snap it on without the dog taking another chunk out of his finger. He loved dogs but this one was a real asshole, just like Ted.
At the door Jack paused. It wasn’t his style to leave behind anyone who could identify him. But this time it didn’t matter. He could tell by the fear in Ted’s eyes that he wouldn’t say anything. Could he be sure? No, but it was a chance he was willing to take. He was trying to turn things around, head in a new direction and that meant new decisions.
Jack cast a glance over his shoulder. “Remember what I said.”
With that he exited and slammed the door behind him.
Chapter One
NEW YORK CITY
FBI Special Agent Isabel Baker was on her third cup of coffee. The stuff tasted like crap but then again anything that came out of a vending machine at a precinct did. It was her third day in the Big Apple. “What does a person have to do to get a decent cup of joe?”
Detective Rod Wilkins rolled his eyes and continued squinting at his screen while he punched keys with all the finesse of a third-grader.
Reluctantly she’d boarded a plane from Florida, hoping that it wouldn’t take her long to complete her assignment. She was looking for something to sink her teeth into, a way to make her mark now that she was closing in on thirty-five years of age. When the memo arrived she wasn’t exactly thrilled. It wasn’t that it didn’t interest her but the idea of living in a hotel for a while wasn’t ideal.
Stop griping, it will do you some good, her boss said.
According to Simon Thorpe, she was still wet behind the ears, and it would do her some good to work alongside the New York office.
She’d be assigned to investigate the murders of key members of the Sicilian Mafia. As she flipped her way through each incident report dating back three months ago, she kept seeing the same two names popping up—a Detective Frank Banfield and a Jack Winchester.
Turning to Wilkins at the desk beside her, she muttered, “Where is Banfield?”
“On personal leave right now.”
“Why?”
“Stress.”
“You have his address?”
Wilkins blew out his cheeks out and scooted across the room on his wheeled chair. He ferreted around inside a desk, then returned with a form. At the top was an address in Brooklyn.
“You were involved with this case, right?”
“That’s right.”
“Off the record, do you think it was a gangland hit?” she said before taking a sip of her drink. He snorted obviously aware of what she was getting at.
“If that’s what the report says.”
She swept back a strand of dark hair behind her ear. “That’s not what I’m asking.”
“I don’t think it matters what we think. It’s just another asshole off the street. It won’t be long before someone else fills their shoes. The wheels on the bus go round and round, yada yada,” he said still focusing on typing.
She sighed at his lack of enthusiasm. But she couldn’t fault him. Police work was boring. It was eighty percent paperwork and twenty percent actual investigating. Of course the academy would never say that. They wanted to keep recruitment stats high. Sell them on the glamor of the job, fill their head with high-speed car chases, so the powers that be would be happy. It was all about stats, politics, and keeping the public happy. Forget about putting away real criminals. No, that’s why prisons were full of innocent people; folks who were in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong skin color.
Not that she had to contend with that anymore, but the FBI wasn’t much better.
She had joined the San Francisco Police Department right out of college. Working her way up the chain of command, she had taken a position as a detective before applying for the FBI seven years later. Now she felt as if she was gripping the bottom rung of a ladder looking up at a bunch of assholes. But it was to be expected. Her captain had told her that she was in for a shock if she thought they were going to treat her as an equal. She just laughed it off. Truth was, he was right. From day one, after getting out of Quantico, she had been working her tail off trying to prove her worth.
Isabel tapped the folder against her chin as she peered out the window at the concrete jungle. She wished to be anywhere else except New York. She’d hoped to land a cushy position down in Miami. A job cruising the streets, soaking in the sun and surf amid crowds of tourists. Instead, her special agent in charge had different plans. Being a female in any profession was hard enough, but in the FBI it was even worse. The whole place had a very old boys’ club mentality. While she had been welcomed into the fold along with other women, there was still very much a male-dominated pecking order. If a man had to jump high, a woman had to jump higher. She wasn’t one for being pushed around but this assignment felt that way. She’d been handed a plane ticket and received the memo less than twenty-four hours before leaving. The powers that be knew that was the best way to handle feisty females. Ship them off before they started fussing or vying for a position that someone else had.
“What I don’t understand is why Jack Winchester was never seen as a suspect in this? The guy has a record as long as my arm. Ties to the New Jersey Mafia, and he’s done time inside.”
Wilkins shook his head. “I don’t know what to tell you. You’ll have to speak to Banfield. He knew him better than anyone else. He’d been trying to bust him for years.”
“And the woman and her kid? Where did they go?”
“If I knew the FBI was going to be this much of a pain in my ass I would have asked to get my desk moved elsewhere. Jesus, enough with the questions.”
She shook her head. No wonder the FBI got involved, no one gave a shit around here. As long as they got their paycheck and weren’t shot in the process they didn’t care who was charged. Though, she couldn’t fault them. They were overworked, underpaid and the government had been cutting back the number of officers out on the streets. She looked around the department floor. Phones were ringing off the hook; cops were either filing reports or rushing out. It wasn’t like the way she remembered it in San Francisco. Back then, people took pride in capturing those responsible for murder. She was going to have to speak to Banfield. Hopefully she’d manage to get more than a nod, scowl, or eye roll out of him.
She glanced back down. The reports displayed a lack of attention to detail. Why the hell did you let Winchester walk?
Chapter Two
LOS ANGELES
Two Hours Earlier
6:48 A.M JUNE 16, 2016
Two hours ago, Jack Winchester had rolled into the land of palm trees and sunshine on a Greyhound bus. By all accounts he wasn’t meant to be in Los Angeles. It had been three months since the death of his sister and Eddie in New York. Since then he’d
been keeping his head down, sleeping in cheap motels, and doing his best to forget Dana and Jason.
It hadn’t helped that a month into his trip, his truck had been broken into and stolen. It wasn’t like he could even report it missing. He was doing his best to stay off the radar with the police. As much as he wanted to believe that Frank would cover for him, and word the report so that he appeared as an innocent hostage in the Sicilian Mafia incident, he had nagging doubts lingering in the back of his mind. The what-ifs were eating him up.
It made it hard to relax. The thought of U.S. Marshals or FBI banging on his door was ever present at the forefront of his mind.
An incident like that doesn’t get brushed under the carpet. Sure, the cops would be thrilled to have those scumbags off the streets but not everyone would see it as a victory. The FBI were notorious for spending months trying to gather intelligence on what leading figures in the Mafia were doing. It was how they scored the big drug busts. What he’d done back on Staten Island would have made him like a fly in the ointment.
All that hard work for nothing.
No, he needed to stay off the grid, find somewhere to hunker down, and earn some money under the table. It wasn’t like he was short on cash. He still had fifteen thousand dollars that Eddie had given him, but he would soon blow through that. The cost of staying in motels wasn’t cheap and without a job on the horizon, the future didn’t look bright.
He crouched down and ran a hand around his ankle. He kept some of the cash in his sock; the rest was inside a small bag. In his right hand was the duffel bag full of weapons previously kept in the storage unit. The first order of business was to find somewhere he could store them. Being stopped with a bag full of unregistered weapons would be a one-way ticket to the lockup, and after Rikers he was hoping to avoid jail food.
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