I hadn’t been up to explaining to Noah or anybody else what all had gone down—whenever I tried, I felt that gut punch that Porter had landed on me—so Ruiz filled them in. The sniper, he said, had been Dunk, who was now in jail in Charleston. Detective Blount had had the pleasure of arresting him and handing him over to the FBI.
Garrett had told me Blount and Henry were turning state’s evidence, although since the case against the cartel was still ongoing, he wasn’t at liberty to say what information they’d provided. I still didn’t know what Blount had done to get blackmailed in the first place, and I wondered if I ever would.
Garrett had also shared what he’d told the solicitor’s office that got them to drop all charges against Jackson. Karl’s killer, he told me, was Dunk.
I’d asked him if Pete had ordered Karl’s death—I wanted Jackson to know the whole truth, and if his hunch that Pete had killed his dad was right, I wanted him to know that too. But that wasn’t something Garrett was free to say.
From the other end of the table, Jackson asked, “Mr. Munroe, would you mind passing the salt?”
As I handed it down, I noticed Terri sneaking a bit of her chicken to Buster. He was still healing, but his appetite was back to normal, and the vet had said things looked good for a full recovery. Terri lived six blocks from the house where we’d been terrorized, and she’d walked Buster by there every morning, practicing his off-leash skills. We thought Rosa and Porter must have dragged a scent trail through the grass, to lure Buster down back. When Terri went after him, they got them both. I’d told her it wasn’t her fault, but she still winced every time he whimpered, and he appeared to be eating better than Terri was these days.
“Here,” I said, handing her the bag of Squatter’s treats I always carried in my pocket. “They’ll probably be like after-dinner mints to him, but I bet he’ll like them.”
She smiled and fed him one. “This is real nice,” she said, “but I’ll feel better when they catch Porter.”
“Yeah,” Ruiz said. “Or whatever his real name is. Maybe Rosa will flip and help them track him down.”
“And Pete,” Mazie said.
“Garrett thinks they both left the state,” I told her. “And maybe the country. Not much point sticking around when your whole network collapses.”
“I hope he’s right.”
Terri asked Ruiz, “One thing I still don’t get is how the cops found us. Leland didn’t have time to tell you where we were, did he?”
“No,” I said. “I just told him where Noah was.”
Ruiz laughed and took a sip of Coke. “Leland,” he said, “you live in a small town. On his way to the park, I had Blount radio every cop on patrol looking for that Malibu you drive. Most of them called their friends too, so half the town was looking for you. And then on top of that, I mean, picture this: A middle-aged White guy in that part of town, before eight in the morning? Wearing a suit, and running?” He shrugged. “People notice. One of the neighbors called his son, who’s a police officer, to tell him something strange was going on. That plus the radio call, and the son put two and two together.”
“Wow,” said Noah. “That’s so cool.”
Terri smiled at him. “Yeah, you like detective work, don’t you. Figuring stuff out. I remember.”
Later that night, when Ruiz had gone and things were winding down, I was loading the dishwasher while Mazie and Terri chatted on the couch. It hadn’t occurred to me that they would get along so well, but they did. Squatter was napping on Terri’s lap, while Buster slept at her feet.
Back in Noah’s room, where he and Jackson had gone to play video games, I kept hearing them crack up.
My house felt alive again. It felt like a home.
In my head, to Elise, I said thank you. I guess we did it, I told her. We’re going to be okay.
End of Defending Innocence
Small Town Lawyer Book 1
Do you compelling thrillers? Then keep reading for an exclusive extract from Lethal Justice (Ion Frost Book One).
About Peter Kirkland
Peter Kirkland grew up in Beaufort, South Carolina. While he had always loved writing, his academic and debating skills made law seem like the obvious career choice. So, leaving his pen and paper behind, Peter worked as a defense attorney for many years. During this time, he saw both obviously guilty clients and a few that he felt were genuinely innocent of the crimes that they were accused of. But no matter what, Peter was always determined to give the best possible defense for his clients and he's proud to say that he won more cases than he lost.
But the more he practiced in criminal law, the more he found himself scribbling away at the end of a hard day to clear his mind and reflect on his current cases. One day, years later, he found himself absentmindedly reading through his old journals and found he had the beginnings of a story hidden inside his notes. That the tales from the courtroom were deep and rich in characters, twists and turns, and he remembered how much he enjoyed writing before studying law. Peter began reading legal thrillers voraciously and turned the reflections from his journal into a fictional manuscript and decided to try his luck at being published.
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BLURB
For Ion Frost, justice is cold as ice…
Former Special Forces Operative Ion Frost has one job left before he vanishes off the grid: deliver his dead comrade’s dog tags to his nephew, Lincoln, in Clear Rock, Wyoming. It should have been a quick, easy stop.
But for Ion Frost, things have a way of getting complicated…
Upon meeting Lincoln, Ion learns that his sister, Taya, has been missing for over a week. Ion can’t help but feel sorry for the kid. But time is ticking and he needs to keep moving.
His plans to disappear get put on hold, when a hidden assassin takes out Lincoln in a brutally efficient murder. With Lincoln dead and the dog tags missing, Ion is sure of one thing… Taya, the murder, and the missing tags must be connected somehow.
Now Ion is in the thick of it. He’s determined to find Lincoln’s killer, and deliver his own personal brand of justice. But the harder he searches, the more questions he finds. Who wanted Lincoln dead? Where is Taya?
And how long before his own brutal past catches up with him?
Grab your copy of Lethal Justice (Ion Frost Book One)
Available August 25th, 2021
www.relaypub.com/books/lethal-justice
EXCERPT
A great shadow crept across the desert road, methodically swallowing cracked asphalt as it prowled forward. The form casting it drifted, steady and measured, approaching an abandoned vehicle parked sideways on the roadway. The car was a mid-nineties Corolla, rusted and sun-bleached, its driver-side door left open. The whistling wind chased sand across the asphalt. The shoal water of the Dori River beyond passed silently beneath the narrow one-lane bridge.
&n
bsp; The eclipsing form approached on two armor-weighted legs. Eyes peering out behind a blast-resistant visor squinted past the harsh sunlight at the landscape before him. Scattershot poppy fields to the west provided the only color beyond the pale cloudless sky and tawny desert earth, their flowering violet blooms and green stems standing out against the lifeless terrain. The man looked closely at the poppies, surveying his environment. He noticed the pods had been scored. The opium would be collected tomorrow.
EOD Specialist Frost, United States Army ordnance disposal specialist, stalked to the rear passenger side of the car and tilted his head to get a better look. Wedged under the wheel well, set directly beside the fuel tank, crouched a magnetized copper box with a few wire leads hanging from its side.
Frost turned to look back at the rest of his team, twisting at his waist in his suit. The three men stood two hundred feet back, behind concrete Jersey barriers left behind by a previous regiment. They were dressed near-identically in Special Forces ACU gear: bulky interceptor body armor, black T-shirts, UCP camouflage trousers, and black mountain combat boots. All three held M4 carbines in gloved hands. Two wore twin turtle shell ballistic helmets, and the other enjoyed the shade of a wide-brimmed boonie.
They were just outside Zangabad, Afghanistan, a small village in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province. It was a chart-topper for IED deaths in the country, with the Taliban seeking to carve gradually away at the NATO forces until they could reclaim the region they considered their true homeland. During that time, they’d secretly rigged up numerous homes, mud compounds, and vehicles across the district with improvised bombs and killed any villagers who refused them or ratted them out.
“What is it?” Sergeant First Class Anderson, Frost’s commanding officer, asked over comms. His voice snapped with humorless impatience in Frost’s ear.
Frost turned back and looked again at the Corolla and the sticky bomb under the wheel well. The wires suggested the package contained a DTMF spider receiver. It could be remotely detonated from anywhere, so long as the triggerman held the paired transmitter.
Frost glanced around the flat landscape, searching for spots he might hide if he were the triggerman. Fields of poppies and grapes stretching to the west. Sprawling desert beyond the bridge to the south. The village of a dozen or so mud homes behind his team in the north. To the east, only sand and sky.
“We shouldn’t be here,” Frost said into his throat mic.
“You’ve done this a thousand times,” SFC Anderson replied. “Let’s get on with it and go.”
“Has the village been secured? Swept for electronics?” Frost asked.
“Swept this morning, Cap says. There’s nothing.”
“All they’d need is a phone,” Frost said.
“Heat got you shook or what, Frost?” asked Frost’s squadmate, Sergeant Peña.
“Maybe they gave you that crab premature,” Specialist Dean chimed, pushing up the brim of his boonie hat from his cover two hundred feet back.
The Senior Explosive Ordnance Disposal badge, or crab, was awarded to an EOD specialist after five years of in-field experience. Frost had thought the resemblance to a crab was only passing, but he took pride in his badge regardless.
“Weren’t you were supposed to be the cool one?” Peña asked. “Or were you named Frost prematurely, too?”
Frost looked back at the team. It was possible they were needling him to get him past his worry. But the unusual deployment, Anderson’s haste, and what he knew now about his fireteam… Frost couldn’t shake the feeling that—as they stayed safe behind the Jersey barriers while he stared down a live explosive—they were reminding him of how powerless he was.
A week ago, Dean had gotten drunk and loud. He’d decided to brag to Anderson and Peña about what he planned to do with the massive amount of cash they had earned by secretly providing security for the local warlord Hamid Zahir. Evidently, they’d been protecting Zahir’s heroin shipments from ambush by rival Taliban forces for some time and earned a king’s ransom for their services. Dean or Peña might have later guessed that Frost had overheard—they’d acted strangely toward him ever since. Frost, in turn, had wondered how far up the chain of command he had to go to keep himself safe if he reported them.
Frost glanced again at the scored pods of the poppy field to the west. Maybe it was one of Zahir’s fields, and the team was simply roping Frost into disarming a bomb on behalf of the warlord. A bomb the Taliban had left for Zahir’s men and not for coalition forces.
Frost turned his attention once more to the wheel well and the dented copper box that’d been stuck to it. Maybe there wasn’t even anything in it. Maybe. But he’d be surprised if he was that lucky.
“Is there a problem with the device, Specialist Frost?”
Frost stared at the IED.
“No, there’s just—something’s wrong here.”
“Yeah, I’d say so,” Peña said. “We’re in the middle of Zangaboom with our pricks hanging out waiting for you to finish stalling.”
“If we’d come with some support—”
“The village was cleared of T-Men two days ago, Frost,” Anderson said. “Support’s just a waste of manpower. Now, are there any other operational issues you’d like to discuss, or can we get on with it?”
“Yeah, come on, man,” Dean said. “Let’s just do this. I got a cooler of Millers waiting for me back at base.”
Frost ignored Dean, addressing Anderson. “Well, some T-Man rigged up the bomb I’m staring at, right?”
“Can you do this, Frost?” Anderson said, terse and acidic. “Or do I have to get one of them green EOD fuck-ups to come in here and botch this?”
“Poor kid’ll probably blow his damn legs off,” Dean said.
“Mm-hmm. EOD fuck-ups are a dime a dozen around here, you ask me,” Peña said.
“Of course I can do this,” Frost said.
“Then do it,” Anderson said. “Because right now, you’re one excuse away from disobeying a direct order.”
Frost glanced back at his fireteam. The three looked like apparitions drifting through the heat haze, ghostly shadows waiting to ferry him to the other side.
Something moved in the mud homes behind the team, where two village elders had emerged. The men were in their sixties, perhaps, but spry and animated. They hurled curses at the team as they approached, but Frost thought they might specifically be addressing him.
“Watch your six,” Frost said.
The team members looked back and saw the approaching elders. Peña turned and started towards them to try to calm them down.
“Watch their hands for a cell,” Frost said.
“There ain’t no cell, Frost,” Anderson said.
Peña spoke to the elders in Pashto, holding his free hand out in a placating gesture. But the two men weren’t interested in him. They continued to angrily shout and point at Frost, brushing past Peña and continuing down the road.
“I didn’t get your answer, Specialist Frost. Can you do it?” Anderson asked again.
“What’re they saying, Peña?” Frost said.
“They want you to get away from their fuckin’ poppy fields,” Peña said. “The hell you think they’re saying?”
“Frost?” Anderson growled.
Frost looked at Anderson and turned back to the IED. Something was twisting his gut, but he couldn’t be sure what. The whole scene was wrong. Just what did he think would happen here? Would a Taliban triggerman leap out of the poppy fields? Or maybe Anderson would be the one to flip the switch, tying up Frost as a loose end. Pushing him to make a decision with the knowledge that he was ignoring a direct order and risking his military career if nothing really was wrong. All of it hinged on one thing: how much did his team think he knew?
Frost took a deep breath and knelt beside the car.
“I’m preparing to examine the device,” he said.
A small cyclone of dust kicked up in front of Frost. His eyes stung with sweat, his clothes soaked th
rough beneath his suit. He reached out and grabbed the copper box with both hands, gently pulling it towards him. The magnetic hold broke free from the wheel well, and Frost carefully set the box down on the dust and gravel in front of him. He felt the underlip of the lid with his fingertips. There didn’t seem to be any adhesive holding it shut. There weren’t any booby traps that he could make out, just a single bolt latch without a lock.
Frost exhaled, taking a moment to gauge his luck. He sucked in one quick breath, then slid the bolt open and lifted the latch in two swift moves. Nothing happened. He breathed out again.
Inside the box nestled a DTMF receiver attached to blasting caps, the caps set inside a dozen modified M112 demolition blocks. Loose nails and screws lay all around the charges in a metal nest of shrapnel.
Frost glanced back down the road and was surprised to see that the village elders were heading straight for him, a hundred feet out now, still screaming and gesticulating.
“Hey, what the fuck?” Frost said. He rose to his feet. “Peña, Dean, restrain these guys!”
The two elders marched faster. Spittle flew from their mouths as they cursed him in Pashto. They pointed at the field and at Frost.
“Where the fuck are you guys?!” Frost said.
Pop. Pop. Blood sprayed across the front of Frost’s helmet, and it took him a second to realize it wasn’t his. The two elders lay crumpled on the concrete.
An eerie quiet fell over the scene. Nothing but the high whistling of the wind now. Frost looked at the dead men. Blood spilled over the desert moondust that powdered the road.
He looked back at his team. Peña and Dean lowered their carbines, still standing behind the Jersey barriers. Anderson held a cell phone.
Frost tore away from the car as fast as he could, running clumsily in his bulky bomb suit. The bomb went off. A shock wave threw Frost through the air as if he’d been hit by a semitrailer. Nails and screws ripped through the protective Nomex-Kevlar of his bomb suit. Chunks of the old Corolla shot into the air—whole fragments of the chassis, the roof, and the hood. A mushroom cloud of black smoke rose into the day, trailing flame beneath it.
Defending Innocence (Small Town Lawyer Book 1) Page 25