Chance Reddick Box Set 1

by David Archer

  Then there was Tina Reynolds, a five-foot, eight-inch brunette who was twenty-four years old. Tina, under another name, had been a former St. Louis police officer who had been recruited to vice within months after graduating from the academy. She had spent more than two years working undercover and had racked up an impressive number of arrests, but then her cover had been blown and she was shot four times and left for dead.

  Against all the odds, Tina had survived, but there was a price on her head and her chief had pulled strings to get her into the witness protection program. After Chance and Pete had helped stop the conspiracy that was selling out witness identities, Tina had come to thank them, and they had talked about how much she missed her old life. Since she was living not far away in Boulder, Pete had reached out and offered her a job, and she had jumped at the opportunity. She was a skilled investigator and almost as good with a computer as Josie; it wasn’t long before the two of them were close, often huddling together over computers as they dug through mountains of data to find where a cheating husband had hidden his assets, or used software of their own design to track down a missing teenager through social media and text messages.

  Things went well for a few months. Business continued to grow, and life was pretty sweet. Gabriella, Chance’s wife, gave birth to a baby girl a couple months after the new office opened, and Chance was pleased when she chose to name the baby after his sister, Robin. Robin had been murdered a couple of years earlier, the impetus that had started Chance down the path to who he had become. Little baby Robin was a great joy in his life, right along with Andy and Tommy, Gabriella’s sons who now looked up to Chance as their dad.

  His family grew in another way, as well. As Robin’s birth approached, Gabriella had taken a step she’d been dreading for some time, and called her mother.

  Gabriella had not spoken to her mother by phone for more than five years, sticking to writing an occasional letter to tell her about the boys and send a picture or two. There had been friction between them ever since her father, Eduardo Vasquez, had forced her to marry Benito Morales almost a dozen years before, and she had not spoken to him since that time. Benito had been a hard man, and the first couple of years had seen Gabriella abused and treated like a possession, rather than a wife.

  Things had changed when their first son, Tomas, was born. Benito suddenly saw Gabriella in a different light, and by the time Tommy’s brother Andreas came along, Benito had come to love and cherish her. Gabriella had also become fond of her husband, and when he decided to retire to the mountains of Nevada, she had welcomed the change from Texas. They had actually been happy for a couple of years, but then Benny had died in a car accident, and she had been alone again. That had hardened her some, and she hadn’t wanted to deal with her family back home when she was trying to keep her head above water on the ranch.

  Now, though, after so much time had passed and she had found happiness, Gabriella felt it was time to make peace. She called her mother and they talked for hours, and when her father had begged her to speak to him, she had relented. He had wept as he told her how Benito had blackmailed him into giving her to him, and begged her forgiveness, and she had given it.

  A month later, the Vasquez clan arrived and settled in Indian Springs, a few miles to the northwest of the city, and they had been growing closer for the past few months. Mariana Vasquez and Chance’s grandmother, whom everyone just called “Grandma,” had hit it off. Both women were present when Robin was born, and Gabriella’s brother Max had become close to Chance and the boys, and then he and Carol had started dating and were now living together. Her father Eduardo, now forgiven, made it clear that he was proud of his daughter and grandchildren, and seemed to think highly of Chance.

  Having his in-laws around had turned into a good thing, Chance thought. The only one of the family who was not present was Annabelle, who had died when she was a teenager. When her family came to live nearby, Gabriella told Chance about her older sister, whom she had idolized when she was a child, and how her sister had committed suicide when she was just sixteen. It was one of the few things she occasionally seemed sad about, and Chance was always ready to let her talk about how much she missed her sister.

  And then one day, Chance’s world did a flip-flop. Gabriella asked him to stick around for a few minutes after the boys were off to school, so they could talk, and Chance had been floored when she said she wanted to go to work.

  “But baby,” Chance said, “why? Am I not providing everything you need?”

  “It’s not that,” she said, looking at Chance across the table. “I'm just—I don’t know, it’s like I'm not doing anything that matters.”

  Chance sat there and stared at her, a slight grin on his face. “Anything that matters? Baby, you make the most wonderful wife any man could want, you’re a terrific mother to the boys and you just gave me the most beautiful daughter in the world. Robin is only four months old, do you really think now is the time for you to go to work? It’s not like we need the money or anything.”

  She made a face and glared at him. “It’s not about money,” she said, but then her expression softened. “It’s about me feeling like I'm more than just your wife or their mother. I used to be myself sometimes, before we got married. I ran the ranch by myself for two whole years, and I felt like I was accomplishing something when I was able to keep it going when things were tough. But now, since we got rid of the ranch, I just stay home and take care of the house and the kids, and I need something more than that in my life. With Grandma and Mama always here, I barely even get to spend time with my own children, and I’ve talked to them. They both say they understand, and will be happy to help take care of the house and the kids if I go to work.” She sighed. “I just need to feel like I—like I'm more than just a wife and mother. Can you understand that?”

  Chance sighed. He thought for a moment about what she had said, then nodded. “I guess I don’t think much about how you were before I met you,” he said. “I always just sorta take things head on, and do what I want without wondering how you feel about it.” He gave her a small grin. “So,” he went on. “What kind of work are you thinking about looking for?”

  She lowered her eyes to the table for a moment, then looked up at him sheepishly. “I was thinking about maybe I could work with you,” she said. “Pete took you on as an apprentice investigator, right? Maybe he could teach me the business, too.”

  Chance tried very hard to talk her out of it, but Gabriella was adamant. She finally confessed that hearing his stories about catching a thief or tracking down somebody who ran off with a kid had been so exciting that she finally decided she wanted to experience it for herself. It didn’t take long for him to realize he was on the losing end of the argument.

  He’d gone to Pete, who had reluctantly agreed. Gabriella had begun the next day, starting out by handling things like following people and wandering around stores watching for shoplifters, and she’d quickly caught on. Tina took her under her wing and the two of them worked some cases together as she learned the ropes, and it wasn’t long before even Chance admitted that she seemed to have a knack for spotting the sort of thing a PI was hired to look for.

  Gabriella was part of the team, and it seemed she had never been happier. She and the others became fast friends, and it wasn’t long before the new office manager was her new best friend, just as Tina had become to Josie. The two of them spent a lot of time together even outside working hours, and were quickly becoming like sisters. Chance thought it was good for her, and never objected to the time the two of them spent just hanging out.

  Life was good, and that should have been enough warning that something was about to go very, very wrong.

  Chapter 1

  Zoe Castellanos didn't know how long she'd been in the basement. The only light that came in was through a single window, set very high up in the wall, and that wasn’t much. It wasn’t often that the room was really brightly lit. The sunlight that she did see served only one real p
urpose, as far as Zoe was concerned: it told her that another day had passed in her captivity.

  She thought she had been in the room for eight days, but she wasn’t certain. She wasn’t fed regularly, so counting the meals was no help in figuring out how long she had really been there. She had been tied to a chair since she had first awakened in this room, her wrists secured to the arms and her ankles to the front legs. The chair was one of those that had a toilet seat mounted on the bottom, the kind you see in nursing homes and such. Her clothes had been removed and a bucket placed underneath it; her captor didn’t even bother taking her to the bathroom, and he wasn’t great about taking care of that bucket, either.

  Sitting there, unable to move or stretch, was exhausting. Zoe had slept a lot, but only in short spells that would last an hour or so before the discomfort woke her up again.

  The basement door up at the head of the stairs opened, letting a little more light shine down into the room, and Zoe couldn't hold back the whimper of fear that escaped her lips. The man whom she had seen so often since her arrival came slowly down the stairs, his face wearing a sad smile. He grabbed a chair that was sitting near the foot of the stairs and dragged it along behind himself as he approached his terribly frightened young captive. He stood there for a moment, just watching Zoe, then turned the chair and sat down on it.

  "I'm really, truly sorry about all of this, Zoe," he said calmly. The young woman began breathing faster, hoping against hope that this might mean she would be released, but her captor went on. "I really thought you were going to be the one. I had myself all convinced that you’d be able to help me through this, keep my mind off my troubles, but—well, I'm afraid you’re just a little too boring. You just don’t have the fire in you that I need, and I'm really sorry about that."

  Carefully, her captor reached out and removed the strap holding Zoe’s right wrist, and Zoe instinctively tried to strike out, aiming at the man’s face. Her hand was caught before it moved even a foot, and the kidnapper glared at her for a split second before letting his face return to its sad, almost apologetic expression.

  "See what I mean?" he asked. "I knew you were going to try that. I've got you completely figured out, and I'm afraid that makes you completely useless." Zoe yanked her hand back and reached out her hand to her face, but the man grabbed it again and stopped her. "Please don't start crying again. It isn’t going to help anything. I know how sad you feel, Zoe, and I really wish things could have been different, but I can at least help you stop feeling so depressed all the time."

  Zoe's eyes went wide. She knew that her tears didn’t really help anything, and that she never felt any relief from crying, but how could this guy do anything about it? The question must have been obvious on her face, because he smiled at her.

  "Like I said, I figured you out," the man said. "Your sadness was the thing that drew me to you in the first place, because it reminded me of her. You get upset so easily, and when I see you working on your computer at the library or the coffee shop, you never spend more than half the time actually typing. Most of the time you just stare off into the distance, with that hopeless expression on your face. Whenever I hear you talk, you’re always so negative. I thought for a while you were just a pessimist who always saw the dark side of things, but then I realized how depressed you really are. I just wanted to help you, and see if you could help me, but it just isn’t working."

  Zoe continued to stare in shock. This bastard hadn’t just abducted her, he had obviously been stalking her. No, stalking wasn't the right word. This man had been studying her. Day in and day out, he had apparently stayed in his hidden corner at the coffee shop or library, and had studied Zoe as if she was some kind of lab rat.

  As far as Zoe was concerned, the only animal in the room was the monster who had put her in this position. Somehow, that man could keep smiling at her, as if he was somehow feeling very sorry for her. The thought of this monster having any kind of sympathy for her made her absolutely sick to her stomach.

  "You could have been a lot more entertaining, if you had put some effort into it," the kidnapper said. He grabbed Zoe’s wrist again, flipping it so her palm was facing up. "I'm afraid our time together has come to an end, but I don’t want you to suffer anymore, so I'm going to make this as quick and painless as I can." He reached behind his back and took a hypodermic needle out of a pocket. Zoe's struggles were useless as the guy used his teeth to pull off the cap, then inserted the needle into her arm, hitting the vein with practiced ease. Zoe screamed and begged for her life, tears streaming down her face, but that didn't stop the man from pushing the plunger, driving the liquid in the syringe directly into her veins. She screamed and tried to fight, but her efforts began to die down, and suddenly, Zoe felt that all she really wanted was to just go to sleep.

  She stared at the man sitting in front of her. That stupid, apologetic smile was still on his face. Somehow, he honestly thought he was doing Zoe some kind of a favor with this injection, that somehow making it a quick, easy death made things better. Zoe wanted to scream at him, swear at him, and, for the first time in her life, she actually wanted to hurt somebody. She had never in her life been a violent person, but right here, right now, she wanted to tear this bastard’s face off, beat him to a bloody pulp.

  The drug was coursing through her system, though, so that even if she hadn’t been restrained, she was far too weak to fight. She tried to let her feelings out with just the expression on her face, too weak to even speak as her eyelids grew heavy. Moments later, for the last time, she closed her eyes, and her last thought was that maybe this wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

  At least, she thought, it’ll all be over.

  Chapter 2

  Jake Claridge woke up at seven o'clock sharp. Despite how tired he was from following a suspected cheater around for the last week, most of which was done at night, the private investigator forced himself to get out of bed. It was time to get everything caught up, so his day would mostly consist of paperwork, but after the week he just had, he was absolutely looking forward to it. He went into the bathroom and quickly took care of his regular morning ablutions, checked the mirror and decided that his whiskers had grown just enough to warrant running a razor over his face, then took a quick shower and climbed into the clothing he had laid out the night before. In less than a half hour, he was out the door, in his car and on the way to work. He arrived less than twenty minutes later, a bit chagrined to find that he was one of the last to show up.

  At the new headquarters of Pete Dixon Investigations, Pete stood just outside his office, looking into the operations room where he could oversee everything. He and Chance handled most of the bigger cases, but he’d decided it was time to let Jake start stretching his wings. Gabriella was doing a pretty good job on the minor stuff, but she was also pretty smart. It wouldn’t be long before she’d be ready to help with some bigger cases, as well.

  Josie, Pete’s wife as of two months earlier, was in the break room by the coffee maker. Pete watched as she filled up her favorite coffee mug and fixed it to her liking, then put on on a fresh pot since she had taken the last of it. After she turned it on, Josie wheeled herself over to the table, looking at something on her phone. Pete guessed that it was probably either the latest tweets from someone she followed on Twitter, or maybe she was on Facebook. Pete grinned, suspecting that it was probably the latter, judging from the smile on her face and how quickly she showed it to Tina.

  Tina had already been sitting at the table, a few feet away from Josie, poring over a newspaper page in front of her on the tabletop, but her own face erupted in a smile at whatever video or picture Josie shared with her. Her own steaming mug of coffee was within reach, and the two of them would probably be there for a little while.

  Across the room, Chance was at the filing cabinets, putting some folders back. The company had been busy lately, so he'd been using a bit of quiet time that morning to catch up on some of the paperwork. Chance was young, but he was defini
tely pretty smart, and he had a surprising knack for figuring things out. Under Pete’s instruction, he was becoming a very good investigator.

  Jake hurried through the door, went to his desk and turned on his computer, hoping to get his reports written and filed before Chance or Pete even noticed he was there. The two of them were both more experienced investigators, and Jake worried that they might have a tendency to look down on him as if he were just a kid pretending to be a private eye. It had become something of a habit for him to try to show them up. If he could get his own reports done before they saw him, it would give him something to smirk about.

  Carol came out of the bathroom and walked past Pete. The office manager smiled and nodded her head in greeting to Jake before going into her own office and busying herself with the necessary evils of running the business end of the company. There were bills to pay and invoices to send, and then she would have to get a start on payroll.

  Chance walked by, and Jake looked up with a smile. Chance was younger than Jake, but he was a partner in the firm. Jake had heard the story about how Chance had gotten Pete to sober up. He admired Chance because he had some kind of natural instincts when it came to the work they did, but there was something else about Chance that seemed mysterious. Jake hoped, one day, to either figure out what it was or be let in on the secret.

  “Hey, Jake,” Chance said. “How is it going?”

  “Really good,” Jake said. “Where is Gabriella?”

  “She’s coming a little later,” Chance replied. “She was out late last night working a shoplifting case, so I let her sleep in a bit.” He went on toward the office he shared with Pete, and Jake turned back to his work.