Trigger Warning

by Allan Leverone

  47

  Jack spotted Edie the moment he turned into the Three Squares parking lot. She stood just outside the front entrance, arms crossed over her chest as she leaned against the side of the building. Her shaggy blonde hair just reached her shoulders, which were hunched as if protecting her from a cold wind.

  But the weather was perfect. Blue skies and warm sunshine.

  They exchanged noncommittal waves and Jack nosed the truck into a space. By the time he’d killed the engine she was there. She opened the passenger door and climbed into his truck, looking like salvation and smelling like lavender.

  And Jack’s heart broke a little more.

  Edie said, “Hey, stranger.”

  “You got that right.” Jack smiled. “They don’t come any stranger than me.”

  “So…you’re returning home from a ‘business trip.’”

  “Yep.”

  “Business.”

  Jack nodded. “Business. You don’t have to worry about Janie falling victim to kidnappings or assassination plots ever again. At least not from the two lunatics behind this past week’s madness. The issue has officially become moot.”

  As Jack watched, Edie visibly relaxed. Her slim frame seemed to melt into the seat. She took a deep breath, held it for a moment, and then blew it out in a calming sigh.

  Then she cleared her throat. “I don’t understand what you do. You already know that. But thank you for protecting my little girl. She’s my whole life and I don’t think I could ever have been comfortable again if…”

  She had begun to cry softly. The urge to slide over and take her in his arms and hold and protect her was visceral and almost overwhelming.

  But she was no longer his to hold or protect. She’d made that clear. So he stayed where he was.

  “How’s Janie holding up?” he asked.

  She brushed the back of one small hand across her eyes and looked down as if the floor of Jack’s truck was the most fascinating thing she’d ever seen.

  She sighed. “Janie asks about you every day. She wants to know why we haven’t been doing ‘fun stuff’ anymore like we used to.”

  “What do you tell her?”

  Finally she raised her eyes to his. “That’s just it, Jack. I don’t know what to say. How can I answer her questions when I don’t know what to think?”

  He nodded. “It was a mistake for me to become involved, given the obvious risks attached. I’ve known how chancy it would be to get close to someone since I made the choice to continue the only real occupation I’ve ever had after leaving the military, the only thing I’ve ever been good at. And for that I apologize, but—”

  “You still don’t get it, Jack. That wasn’t your mistake. Your mistake was in not trusting me enough to make my own decisions about my life and the life of my child. Your mistake was in not opening up and sharing such a major part of your life with the woman you claimed to care about. I fell in love with you, Jack, and then I discovered the man I had fallen in love with was a stranger!”

  For a moment no one spoke.

  Then Jack said, “I’ve quit The Organization. On my way to Maryland I met with my contact and told him I was finished. This nasty little business I just concluded was my last job.”

  Edie stared, mouth hanging open, eyes wet with tears.

  “Jack,” she whispered. “I don’t—”

  “I’ve been considering quitting for a long time, Edie. And I know how it looks, like this is some pathetic attempt to get you back. I don’t blame you for thinking that. But that’s not it. Not completely, at least,” he said with a bitter laugh.

  “But you just said your job is more like a calling, that it’s the only career you’ve ever had.”

  “And that’s true as far as it goes. But what I do…it’s not an occupation that’s conducive to a long career, Edie. I’m old by operator standards. My back is creaky, my bones ache all the time, my reflexes aren’t what they once were. It’s time for me to move on to something else. It’s past time, really.”

  “But…” She shook her head and shrugged. “What will you do?”

  “I’ll find something. That’s a concern for another day. Right now I just want to chat with you and then go home and sleep for about three days straight.”

  Edie glanced at the clock on Jack’s dashboard. Sighed deeply. “I’ve got to go. I have to pick Janie up at school.”

  She reached for the door handle and Jack blurted, “I miss you.”

  She had stopped crying for a moment but now the tears resumed, twin trails of heartbreak rolling down her cheeks. This time she made no effort to hide them. “I miss you, too.”

  “Maybe we could start over. They say there are no second chances in life, but why not? Who made up that rule, and what the hell do they know, anyway? We’ll start slow. See what happens. Maybe a casual dinner, just you, me and Janie. No expectations, no strings attached. One meal.”

  Her right hand had frozen on the handle, but now she opened the door and slipped down onto the pavement.

  Looked back into the truck, squinting against the sunlight’s glare.

  “I don’t know, Jack. I just don’t know.”

  She closed the door with a thunk.

  Turned and walked toward her car.

  She never looked back.

  EPILOGUE

  The man stepped out of his Jaguar, fedora tilted forward at a jaunty angle. He wasn’t making a fashion statement. He was simply hiding his identity, and the way he wore his headgear accomplished that goal quite effectively.

  He had parked in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Lawrence, Massachusetts. It was an area filled with drugs and crime and blight and hopelessness. He would seem a natural target in these surroundings, a fool with more money than brains, a guy living on borrowed time who would be jumped and relieved of his wallet and his expensive watch at the first opportunity.

  But the man wasn’t worried.

  This wasn’t his first time in the neighborhood.

  Nor was it his first experience making the short walk from his car’s unobtrusive parking space into what appeared to be an abandoned brick building. The structure was a crumbling relic of a bygone era, invisible and ignored, awaiting the wrecking ball.

  But looks could be deceiving, especially in this area.

  The building was not abandoned, and the man had been here many times over the past several years.

  He entered through a rear door that looked decrepit but was in fact heavily reinforced. Just inside the doorway he was met by a muscular Hispanic man of indeterminate age wearing sunglasses and a skin-tight t-shirt, with an ugly black pistol strapped to his waist. The man frisked him quickly but thoroughly and then waved him on with the bored expression of someone who’d been doing his job for a very long time.

  In no other circumstance would the man in the fedora put up with the rough treatment he received at the hands of the Hispanic guard, but these were not typical circumstances. He received the same treatment every time he came here but never became upset or angry. He understood the need for caution and appreciated it.

  He still didn’t like it.

  He climbed the stairs to a viewing area that had been constructed just for him. It was Spartan and cramped, and consisted of a small round table, a couple of mismatched wooden chairs, a recliner that had probably been new about the time the man in the fedora graduated law school, and a small TV with a DVD player set up next to it. There was a minimally stocked bar. Ancient copies of Penthouse magazine were strewn randomly around the viewing area.

  It was decidedly low-tech.

  It was dirty and uncomfortable.

  The man in the fedora loved it here. This was the one place in the entire world he could come and truly be himself.

  ***

  The evening’s entertainment was a little late getting started, so the man in the fedora passed the time watching DVDs of previous shows. He mixed a strong drink and sat back in the recliner and rubbed himself languidly through his tr
ousers as the action unfolded on the screen.

  Then the sound of a door being shoved open downstairs signaled that the live performance was about to begin. The man in the fedora rose quickly and positioned himself in one of the mismatched wooden chairs, dragging it to the balcony railing for an unrestricted view.

  Below, two men flanked a third, dragging/pushing/carrying him to a heavy wooden chair that had been set up precisely in the middle of the room. The victim wore a police officer’s uniform and a blindfold, and he had been gagged. The two men—they were heavily muscled, like the guard at the doorway, and looked to be in their mid-to-late twenties—dropped the cop roughly into the chair and in seconds had secured his ankles to the chair legs and his wrists to the chair’s arms.

  They strode to the door and exited the room, returning almost immediately with the supplies that would drive the show: a small metal trash can and a set of sturdy-looking gardening shears with long wooden handles and a heavy iron cutting jaw. They placed the trashcan next to the chair and aligned it with the right armrest, to which the cop’s wrist had been securely affixed.

  The shears they set on the floor next to the trashcan, on a section of grey concrete that had been stained rust brown.

  Then the two men left the room once more.

  This time when they returned, they were accompanied by three nervous-looking males, all of whom looked young. Shockingly young. One was black, one was white and one appeared Hispanic.

  The men in charge lined the three young boys up against the far wall. One stood with them while the other approached the police officer and removed his blindfold and then his gag.

  The minute the gag came out the cop started talking, telling them they were making a mistake, that assaulting a police officer was a very bad idea but that they hadn’t gone so far they couldn’t still fix things, that it wasn’t too late to simply let him go, and that if they did so the consequences would be minimal.

  The man who’d removed the blindfold and gag shut the cop up by punching him in the face. The cop’s head snapped back and a sickening crack signified a broken, probably shattered, nose, and blood spurted and began running down the cop’s face and flowing onto his uniform shirt.

  But he stopped talking.

  The man who had punched the cop surveyed the three kids lined up against the wall like a junior high gym teacher picking out the next student to shimmy up the rope.

  After a moment’s thoughtful consideration he selected the white kid. Pointed at him and called him forward silently, rotating his hand until it was palm-up and then bending the fingers at the third knuckles in the universal “come here” gesture.

  The kid looked liked he would rather be anywhere else in the world. But he stepped forward without hesitation. He clearly knew what was coming and he was shaking, the man in the fedora could see it from his viewing perch all the way across the room and up one level.

  The man in the fedora was nearly shaking as well, but it was from arousal, not fear, and he could feel himself getting hard again in his trousers. Seeing the terror of the recruits was almost as exciting as seeing the actual ceremony, which was about to take place.

  “Do it,” the older man said to the white kid, and then he stepped away, moving a few feet in the direction of the other two recruits and the second group leader. He stopped and waited impassively for what would come next, arms crossed behind his back.

  The cop was moaning and bleeding heavily from the face, but now he started babbling again. His voice was thick from his ruined nose and all the blood he continued to swallow, and any semblance of the authoritative manner he’d previously attempted to project was long gone.

  He begged for mercy.

  Begged the kid to stop.

  And for a moment he did. The kid had reached reluctantly for the shears and now he stood uncertainly, bony arms holding the gardening tool at his side as the cop continued to urge him to reconsider what he was about to do.

  Finally the older man shook his head in disgust. He muttered something that the man in the fedora could not quite make out and then stepped forward. He jammed the gag back into the cop’s mouth and secured it and the cop thrashed wildly in his seat, his ability to breathe through his rapidly swelling nose nearly nonexistent.

  The group leader let him struggle for a moment and then yanked the gag back out. Before the cop could say anything the group leader rasped, “Not one more word. You say one word, just one, and the gag goes back in and stays in, do you understand me?”

  The cop panted, gulping wide mouthfuls of air, and for a moment the man in the fedora thought he hadn’t heard the group leader. Then he nodded tiredly. With each downward motion of his head large droplets of blood splattered onto his shirt, which was now soaked and stained.

  The kid with the shears looked like he might be about to cry, but the older man whispered something to him and he nodded.

  The older man grabbed the cop’s right hand and forced his fingers widely apart as the kid opened the jaws of the gardening shears and thrust them around the cop’s pinkie finger. The kid was shaking badly and the man in the fedora could see he’d opened up a deep gash on the cop’s knuckles.

  But that would soon be the least of the cop’s problems.

  It already was.

  The cop tried to struggle, but he had no leverage and the group leader was incredibly strong. His arms were massive and he’d performed this ritual many times and by now had it down to a science. The group leader held the cop’s hand motionless between the jaws of the shears.

  He looked up and nodded to the kid.

  The man in the fedora watched, breathless, waiting for the show to continue.

  And then it did.

  __________

  Jack Sheridan returns in his third pulp thriller, Death Perception. To be the first to learn about new releases, and for the opportunity to win free ebooks, signed copies of print books,and other swag, take a moment to sign up for Allan Leverone’s email newsletter at AllanLeverone.com.

  Reader reviews are hugely important to authors looking to set their work apart from the competition. If you have a moment to spare, please consider taking a moment to leave a brief, honest review of Trigger Warning at Amazon’s Trigger Warning: A Jack Sheridan Pulp Thriller page, at Goodreads, or at your favorite review site, and thank you.

  __________

  Acknowledgements

  Special thanks to Joe Serafino for taking the time and effort to help make my showdown scene between Jack Sheridan and Bradley Chilcott as dramatic—and yet still realistic—as possible. Joe’s gun knowledge is as extensive as it is invaluable, a resource I’ve mined more than once and one for which I’m extremely grateful to him for sharing with me.

  The cover art for Trigger Warning was designed and rendered by Kealan Patrick Burke of Elderlemon Design. Kealan’s a talented and award-winning author in his own right who also has been doubly blessed with incredible design skills. His work is recognizable yet unique, providing the perfect ambience to the Jack Sheridan Pulp Thriller series before the reader ever opens the book.

  Last but definitely not least, I want to thank you, the reader. I was in my fifties before my first book was published, and all those decades of life—and reading—have given me plenty of perspective. I’m well aware you have about a zillion other options on which to spend your free time and your money, and I am humbled and eternally grateful that you’ve chosen to spend a little of that time and money with my work.

  Thank you. I’ll never take you for granted.

  __________

  Also from Allan Leverone

  Thrillers

  The Organization: A Jack Sheridan Pulp Thriller

  Death Perception: A Jack Sheridan Pulp Thriller

  Parallax View: A Tracie Tanner Thriller

  All Enemies: A Tracie Tanner Thriller

  The Omega Connection: A Tracie Tanner Thriller

  The Hitler Deception: A Tracie Tanner Thriller

  The Kremlyov Infection: A Traci
e Tanner Thriller

  Final Vector

  The Lonely Mile

  Horror/Dark Thrillers

  Mr. Midnight

  After Midnight

  Paskagankee (Paskagankee, Book 1)

  Revenant (Paskagankee, Book 2)

  Wellspring (Paskagankee, Book 3)

  Grimoire: A Paskagankee Novel Book Four

  Linger: Mark of the Beast (Written with Edward Fallon)

  Novellas

  The Becoming

  Flight 12: A Kristin Cunningham Thriller

  Story Collections

  Postcards from the Apocalypse

  Uncle Brick and the Four Novelettes

  Letters from the Asylum

  The Tracie Tanner Collection: Three Complete Thriller Novels