AT Stake (An Alex Troutt Thriller, Book 7) (Redemption Thriller Series 19)

by John W. Mefford

  “For the mother-in-law?”

  “That’s sexist. What about the father-in-law?”

  I shrugged.

  “Check out this description of the actual mansion: ‘Federal baroque New England colonial manor featuring Queen Anne chateau towers.’”

  I cocked my head to one side. “Hey, if you don’t have chateau towers, you don’t have a castle.” As soon as I finished my comment, we rounded the last bend and saw two police cars out front. Ozzie had his head buried in his phone. “We’ve got company,” I said.

  He looked up. “That we do. You think they’re possibly just now notifying next of kin?”

  “We’ll soon find out.”

  We parked and got out of the car just as a woman and a young man—maybe a teenager still; it was hard to tell—walked out of the house.

  “Are you with the press?” the lady asked. She had jet-black hair and was wearing sunglasses that covered most of her face.

  I was in the process of pulling out my badge when she threw up her arms.

  “You’re with the press; I can tell. Dammit, get the hell off my property.”

  “Mrs. Alvarado, I’m not—”

  “Deny it all you want; I can tell the media whores from a mile away. You know why? Because you’re all snakes. Every last one of you.” She jabbed her finger at me and then at Ozzie.

  “We’re not with the press. I work for the FBI.” I held up my credentials.

  “Yeah, whatever. How did you even get in here? I thought the gates were closed. Are they not closed?” She looked to the boy—her son? Back to me. “The last one who got in said he worked for the church, and I believed him. Even gave the guy some money. And then he comes out with a scathing story about me and my family. That’s the last thing we need right now. I lost my husband. He…” she pointed at the young man, “lost a father. Do you understand?” She wiped tears off her cheeks. Her emotional meter was in the red zone.

  She flipped around and almost ran into her son, who was closer to Ozzie’s size. He dodged out of her way.

  “Police, police! Where are you when I need you?” She walked onto the porch and yelled inside of the house. I could hear the echo from where I was standing, near the car.

  I looked to the kid. He stuffed his hands into his jeans and, more or less, shook his head. Seemed like he’d witnessed this type of response out of his mother before.

  “She’s just upset right now.” His baritone voice didn’t match his boyish face.

  “I understand. I really am with the FBI.” I walked a few steps closer, held up my credentials again.

  “Oh, I’m sure you are. Mom is just looking for an excuse to flip out. This happens a lot, so I guess I’m kind of used to it.”

  Ozzie walked over, stood next to me, and then extended his hand. The boy shook it. I looked at Ozzie and thought, That was a classy move. We at the FBI could be so damn formal and rigid, we forget about the human need to bond, especially in difficult times.

  “I’m Ozzie. What’s your name?”

  “Kenneth.”

  “How old are you, Kenneth?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Really sorry about what happened with your dad.”

  His head dropped for a moment. When he looked up, his eyes were red. “It’s just so crazy. Dad survived cancer, which took his leg. And now he’s killed in a terrorist attack. I think Mom is in shock. She just shows it in weird ways.”

  “What about you? How are you doing?” Ozzie asked.

  “It sucks.”

  “Losing a family member…it doesn’t get much worse. I’m sorry you’re having to go through this. Do you have any friends or cousins or anyone to lean on?”

  “Yeah, a couple of guys on my lacrosse team and my girlfriend, Jenn. She’s been really cool since everything happened yesterday. But we just got home early this morning, and—”

  “There they are.” Mrs. Alvarado stormed out of the house swinging her arms and hips. “I want you to arrest them for trespassing.”

  Two cops walked out the house. It took another five minutes to get a word in, but the officers quickly understood I was with the FBI. Thankfully, they didn’t ask to see Ozzie’s FBI credentials. Mrs. Alvarado calmed down and said she needed some tea. She walked inside. Kenneth stayed outside, picked up a rock, and threw it across the expansive lawn. I saw a pond off in the distance between some trees. This place was like Utopia.

  The officers explained their presence. There had been a break-in at the house. I asked if there was a security system.

  “It didn’t go off, or was deactivated somehow,” one cop said. “Detective is on his way. Just hard to get resources right now after the…” He paused and looked over his shoulder to make sure the kid was far enough away to not hear him. “You know, the bombings.”

  I asked if they thought Mrs. Alvarado would be okay in talking to us for just a few minutes.

  “She’s probably chilled out by now,” Kenneth said.

  The kid must have super hearing. I moved past the officers and closer to Kenneth. “Do you think we can talk to her?”

  “I know you’re just doing your jobs. Yeah, I can take you to the kitchen.” He started walking into the house. Ozzie and I were right on his heels. “She’s probably just staring out the back windows, sipping her tea.” He glanced at us over his shoulder.

  I was momentarily distracted by the colorful painting hanging on the wall in front of us. It had to be fifty feet wide.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  He turned around and walked backward. “Just don’t flip out if you smell booze on her breath. She usually adds something to her tea.” He did air quotes with his fingers and said, “Just to take the edge off.” Rolling his eyes, he flipped around and escorted us through the mansion.

  As we wound our way through the maze of hallways, Ozzie’s baroque description kept running through my mind. I was no architectural expert, but I imagined it had originated in Europe from two or three hundred years earlier, when the style was ornate and extravagant. I saw lots of columns that had that Roman flair, each painted with some type of exaggerated mural. The rugs had to be worth more than my car.

  We passed countless rooms, including one that appeared to be a combination of an office and a library. Built-in bookshelves lined one wall—it even had one of those ladders attached to a track so it could slide back and forth. The rest of the office had lots of shiny crystal shapes, what looked like awards, and then another wall was full of framed photographs of various people. Maybe they were all family members, although in my quick glance I saw a lot of adults. Still, though, it was nice to see a touch of humanness in a house that seemed so impersonal, like it was some type of homage to European architecture.

  We entered the kitchen—it was the size of a tennis court—and, just as Kenneth had predicted, his mother was sitting at a barstool, staring out the back windows. The scene was mesmerizing—trees and rolling hills of grass with clusters of shrubs and flowers, not to mention a pool and fountain.

  “Mom, uh, the FBI agents would like to speak to you. Is that okay?”

  “Sure,” she said without turning around.

  Ozzie and I walked over and stood where she could see us. She was still wearing her sunglasses, but her head kept looking straight ahead. Kenneth stayed in the kitchen, looking in a refrigerator that could hold enough food for a family of twenty.

  “Sorry about my outburst.” Her tone was flat. She sipped tea from a mug that she held as though it might crack like an egg.

  “It’s perfectly understandable, Mrs. Alvarado.”

  “Angelia. And I guess you met my son, Kenneth.”

  “We did,” Ozzie said. “A nice young man.”

  “He’s the best. He’s put up with a lot of shit over the years. Don’t be fooled by all this.” She waved a hand toward the ceiling.

  Wasn’t sure what she meant by that comment. “Your husband, Salvatore…”

  “Twenty-four years of marriage. We’ve had our ups and downs
. When he got cancer and they had to take his leg, I thought that might break him. Oddly, it brought us closer. Before that, we were into the parties, concerned about our place amongst the social elite, or in his case, the academic elite, but we came together in the end. It felt like we were meant to be, you know?”

  She didn’t look at us, but she did seem to be in the mood to share, so I didn’t interject.

  “Him running in the marathon…” She released a shaky breath. “It was his goal, running on his prosthetic leg. He’s been working so hard for the last two years to be able to do it. And then yesterday, to see all of those nails in his body and the blood...” She dipped her head, grabbed a napkin, and wiped tears from her face.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” Ozzie said.

  She flicked a few fingers in our direction. “I’ve already heard that comment a hundred times since Salvatore died at the hospital last night. I don’t mean to be rude, but I hate that comment. It sounds so cold. It’s just like reading from a script when a life is lost, when a family is broken. Oh, my dear Salvatore…” Her voice faded away.

  Ozzie and I snagged a quick glance.

  “I understand that someone broke into your home while you were away,” I said.

  “Can you believe it? We were gone just over twenty-four hours,” she said, shaking her head.

  “And they got past your security.”

  “Yep.”

  “No alarms went off?”

  “Nope.”

  “Was anything stolen?”

  She shifted her head in our direction and snapped out a laugh. “Oh yeah, something was stolen. Right out of our safe.”

  “So, only contents from your safe?”

  “As far as I know, yes.”

  “And no sign of forced entry through a door or a window?” Ozzie asked.

  “Nothing.”

  I asked, “What did they take from your safe?”

  “Jewels and cash.”

  “Do you know the value of the stolen items?”

  “A necklace worth about two hundred thousand, and then another million in cash.”

  “You had a million dollars in cash in the safe?” Ozzie’s eyes were wide. I was equally stunned.

  “Don’t judge.”

  “Sorry. It’s just a lot of money,” he said.

  “We all have our unique ways of getting through life, including how to manage our finances. That was one of our backups, so to speak.”

  A backup to do what? I inquired further. “So, the safe…was it open when you got home?”

  She removed her glasses. Her eyes were dark, mysteriously beautiful, but all the red lines made her look like she’d stuck her finger in a socket. “That’s the crazy thing. It was closed and locked.”

  Again, Ozzie and I exchanged a glance. I said, “I’m confused. How did you know someone had stolen anything, and how did you know it happened while you were at the race?”

  “I’d worn that necklace to an event the night before last. I saw Salvatore put it back in the safe myself.”

  Made sense. I was sure we could talk to people at the party. Maybe someone had ogled her jewelry and was envious of their wealth. Then again, we didn’t have time to chase down burglars. “And today, why did you open the safe?”

  “To pull out our will, of course.”

  Of course.

  We thanked her and headed back to the car.

  16

  Four weeks ago

  There was blood on the floor and the iron bars. For a moment, Pluto saw no movement, only the outline of a darkened figure curled up against the back of the brick fireplace. Had Number Three taken her own life?

  She set the bowl of rice on the floor, got down on her hands and knees, and peered into the black abyss of the fireplace. She didn’t want to call her by her name, her actual name. That would be crossing the line, showing too much affection. But she cared. She cared so much she could feel her pulse peppering the side of her neck. Well, she cared to keep her alive, to carry out her plan that had been in the works for so many years.

  Seconds ticked by, and Pluto began to envision the worst-case scenario: the youngster had died either through malnutrition or somehow cutting herself until she bled out. She knew the girl had been bulimic as a teenager and turned to cutting herself to deal with the pain and control issues.

  Yes, her plan would be impacted. She’d have to find a new subject, but it couldn’t be just anyone. He or she would have to possess that perfect psychological balance. Someone who was disillusioned with society, at least what they saw as their world. Someone who sought…no, deserved attention for their unique gifts. Bitterness would be one of their strongest feelings. They might internalize it, or it might be something more overt, where they had to release their frustration on something or someone. They might still have a smidge of hope, if a lot of things fell their way, but deep down, they knew that a life overflowing with achievement and accolades was not in the cards. But it was that tiny percentage of hope that was the key, the top of the pyramid for the target psychological profile.

  With hope, she knew through intensive study and now practical research, you could use various motivational techniques to retrain their brains, to where they learned to put their needs behind the one who controlled their lives.

  The girl behind the bars shifted a foot. She was alive. Pluto released a breath. Relief.

  Pluto remained silent, waiting to see if the imprisoned girl would speak first. Did she still have the burning desire to please the woman? This, she thought, might be the ultimate test of her experiment. It was obvious that she’d cut herself on purpose. With what, she wasn’t sure just yet. Had the girl’s mind finally cracked from the pressure? That wouldn’t be surprising, considering what she’d endured, but Pluto still hoped that she wouldn’t have to start over with another subject. That would take more time.

  The girl cleared her throat—it sounded like a garbage disposal—and moved her body closer to the bars. Pluto could see her teeth. That was one of the things that she’d first noticed about the girl’s appearance. White, almost fluorescent, teeth. They glowed in the dark. And they were so straight they didn’t look real. Her parents had probably insisted that she wear braces, but Pluto theorized it was the girl’s obsessive desire to control something in her life that had her brushing her teeth incessantly.

  The girl hadn’t been allowed to use a toothbrush in more than a month. Initially, Pluto knew that had probably gnawed at the girl’s mental acuity. But she, like the others, had managed to move past it, focusing instead on survival. “Do you have food for me?”

  “I do.”

  The girl pressed her face against the bars. The bowl was within her reach, but she didn’t poke her hand through—the woman had yet to give her permission to eat.

  “How did you hurt yourself?” she asked, her voice void of emotion.

  The girl looked down.

  Pluto thought she heard a sniffle. Number Three was feeling sorry for herself. Pluto didn’t want to see that emotion in her. She waited to see if it would pass.

  A minute clocked by, but Pluto didn’t budge, didn’t utter a word of empathy. Another five minutes, and then Number Three looked up. “I chipped off a part of the brick and whittled it down until it had a sharp edge, and then I began to cut my skin open.” She paused for a moment. “It felt good at first, like I was floating through the sky.”

  “And then?”

  She released a choppy breath. “And then I realized I was being selfish.”

  Pluto smiled…on the inside. “What made you stop before you actually severed an artery and killed yourself?”

  She could see Number Three blink a few times. She tried to imagine the thoughts churning through the girl’s mind, how the shift of chemical balance had likely altered her sense of being, her resolve, and what she deemed to be the most critical element for achieving a new version of happiness and fulfillment.

  “I—” The girl stopped. Cleared her throat again—the garbage d
isposal. “I admire you, Pluto. You have such wisdom and a capacity for caring about other people. I only want to repay you for your kindness. But I’m struggling with something.”

  “What is that?”

  “I don’t know how.” Number Three turned a palm upward, exposing more blood in her palm. “I’m not sure how to show you how much I appreciate everything you’ve done for me.”

  “First, I don’t want you to hurt yourself, not unless I tell you to do so. Is that understood?”

  “Yes, Pluto. I’m sorry if I let you down.”

  “Don’t let it happen again.”

  Number Three dipped her head in shame. “I won’t, Pluto. I promise.”

  Pluto tried to contain a rush of adrenaline. She could feel the aura of control wash over her. She saw it more as a vehicle to reach her goals, but it was also an addictive feeling. She liked it.

  Stick to your goals, she chided herself. All projects bring with them a sense of accomplishment; this one would be no different. But she couldn’t allow herself to get hooked on something that was only a necessary step in the experiment process.

  She pushed the bowl closer to the girl. “Eat your rice. This serving has maggots in it.”

  “Oh, thank you, Pluto.” Number Three began to use her bloodied hand to scoop the rice into her mouth.

  Pluto stood and thought about the steps she’d already taken on Number Three’s behalf. It was time to move forward. “I will clean your wounds after you finish eating.”

  The girl stopped shoveling food into her mouth and looked up. “Your generosity is endless. Thank you, Pluto. Does this mean that I get to live beyond tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “You care about me. You truly care about me, don’t you?”

  Pluto paused, knowing that her next statement was not something she could take back. Her rush of excitement was also mixed with a high degree of anxiety. She remained resolute, though, and released a breath. “You are a gifted person. It’s how your attributes are manifested, though, that will change this world. You must trust me.”

  Number Three wiped a tear from her face. “I’ve been chosen to be here with you. And I’m prepared and eager to learn how you’d like to use me.”