The Reed Montgomery Series Box Set

by Logan Ryles

  There were only two people in the photo. Right away, he recognized the young man on the left by his thick hair and bold features. It was Holiday. A much younger, thinner Holiday, for sure, but definitely him. The second person in the photo was also young, but a little older than Holiday. He had sandy yellow hair and piercing blue eyes—eyes Reed would’ve recognized anywhere. They were the same as Banks’s. This had to be Frank Morccelli, her father.

  Both Holiday and Morccelli were dressed in black robes, and neither one of them smiled, with expressions bridging beyond serious to grim. The backdrop behind them was a black wall with the face of an owl, etched in silver between their heads. Its eyes were painted red, and glared out over their shoulders.

  What the hell?

  On the back of the photograph, written in Holiday’s now-familiar scrawl, were two short lines: Vanderbilt University, 1987. ΩAΩ.

  Reed leaned back against the bed and tapped the photo against his knee. He wasn’t surprised by the Vanderbilt note—Winter had told him Holiday attended Vanderbilt University, which was where he met and became close friends with Frank Morccelli during the late eighties. He also remembered Winter mentioning that Holiday shared a fraternity with Morccelli, which would explain the Greek letters. What letters were they, anyway?

  Reed tried to recall any residual knowledge he had about the Greek alphabet, though there wasn’t much—he knew there was an Alpha and a Beta. He had encountered the Greek alphabet a couple times in church. His mother always dragged him there on Sundays, and once or twice the pastor taught on the Book of Revelation, discussing the end-times. There was something about the Greek alphabet buried amongst those confusing prophesies, wasn’t there? Yes. He remembered now. It was something God himself said: “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end.”

  Reed snapped his fingers and held the photo into the light that spilled through the blinds. The Greek letters on the back of the photograph were “Alpha” and “Omega,” the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet. Only they weren’t written in that order; they were written the other way: last, first, last.

  Holiday’s final words echoed in Reed’s head. He remembered kneeling beside the lake with the dying senator in his arms. He remembered leaning in and making out Holiday’s final, whispered words. “From end to end.”

  From Omega to Omega.

  Reed kicked trash away from his feet and hurried toward the door. Whatever dark, terrible secret lay behind the tragic life of Mitchell Holiday, it began at Vanderbilt University in 1987. It began with Omega Alpha Omega.

  Eight

  Salvador knew what death smelled like. Not the actual decaying part, where the body rots and the flesh falls away from the bone, but what impending death smelled like—that distinct, burning odor of something about to go terribly wrong. The stench of the grim reaper’s rotting cloak as he stepped toward his next victim. After years of work on the dark side of the law, Salvador could smell the grim reaper a mile away, and today, the guardian of the grave smelled a lot closer than that.

  “Give me your weapons.”

  At the front door of the massive brick home, Salvador shuffled from one foot to the other. His body ached from the sleepless nights and constant strain of the previous few weeks. He was used to it. He didn’t mind the sleeplessness or the pressure, but he only appreciated the smell of death when he was the one bringing it. Feeling detached and out of control was perhaps the most terrifying reality he could imagine.

  The cold European blocking his way was neither tall nor broad, but still carried the savage air of a man who could squeeze the life out of Salvador with one hand. There was nothing but cold death in his eyes—no love, no warmth, no joy. This man was a killer.

  Salvador unholstered his Italian-made Beretta .40 caliber pistol and handed it to the guard. The steel gaze didn’t break contact with his own, and Salvador reluctantly pried the knife out of his belt and handed it over, also. The guard grunted then stepped to one side. Salvador sucked in a deep breath, forced himself to relax, and pushed the door open.

  It was still midday, but inside the mansion, it was as dark and empty as the grave itself. Thick curtains hung over the windows, blocking out all light, and none of the fixtures mounted into the walls and the ceiling were illuminated. The rooms were bare—no furniture, decorations, or artwork. The home felt abandoned, as though it were going under foreclosure.

  Another guard appeared out of the shadows and motioned Salvador onward. Their footfalls echoed through the whole house as Salvador followed him down a hallway, through two more doors, and finally into a sunroom on the backside of the house—or, at least it was supposed to be a sunroom. The windows were painted black, and every corner was buried in shadows.

  Salvador stopped just inside the room and turned toward the guard. The man was gone as quickly and suddenly as he’d appeared, vanished back into the shadows, and leaving Salvador alone in the shaded confines of the sunroom. He turned back toward the wall of glass panels and took a step farther into the shadows.

  “That’s far enough.” The voice came from the far end of the room.

  Salvador stopped and leaned forward, squinting into the darkness. “I can’t see you.”

  “You’re not supposed to see me.”

  A chill ran down Salvador’s spine, and his feet were rooted to the floor. He listened for the breathing of another human being or the creaking of the floor beneath a footfall, but there was nothing.

  “Gambit?” Salvador asked, his voice tentative.

  “It was a simple request, wasn’t it?” The voice rustled like wind over dry leaves. Empty. Unfriendly. Salvador recognized that voice—it was the voice of the man who hired him to assassinate Mitchell Holiday. The voice of the shadowy apparition known only as Gambit. But before, when Salvador accepted the job and was paid, Gambit’s tone was warm, and calm. Almost friendly. Now each word sounded as though it were being drug over jagged ice.

  “What request?” Salvador played for time. “Me coming here?”

  “No. Killing Mitchell Holiday.”

  The knot in Salvador’s stomach twisted, sending panic through his mind. He sucked in a breath and shoved his hands into his pockets to keep them from shaking.

  “Yeah, well, I took care of it. I hired the best.”

  “You hired Oliver Enfield, and he made the crucial error of putting his own interests ahead of ours. We wanted Senator Holiday dead, but apparently, Enfield was more interested in framing one of his own contractors for the assassination.”

  Salvador nodded. “Yeah, that’s how he operates. When one of his contractors becomes a problem, he sets them up on a hit and then tips the police off so that person goes to jail. Then he has one of his henchman inside the prison kill him so it’s a clean slate.”

  “Did I ask for a clean slate?” Gambit’s voice rose into a shout, and the window panes rattled in their frames.

  “Um . . . you—”

  “No, I didn’t. I asked for Mitchell Holiday to be eliminated. Instead, you contracted the job to an incompetent broker, who then subcontracted the job to a very confident killer, right before turning on that killer.”

  “You mean Montgomery? Look, I can take care of that. I’ve got another guy who supplies me the men I need—”

  “Cedric Muri?”

  Salvador hesitated. “Um . . . yes.”

  “He’s dead. Montgomery killed him two nights ago in his own casino. We have the whole thing on security camera. You see, Salvador, when I hired you, I was under the impression that you were the man to get the job done. But it seems you’re incapable of doing anything on your own. In fact, your entire methodology appears to be that of a cheap middleman—brokering out the dirty work to one subcontractor after another.”

  The panic rising in Salvador’s chest began to take over. He took another step back and held up his hands. “Look, I operate with subcontractors for a reason. It gives you multiple layers of insulation from the kill. You know what I mean? I admit I u
nderestimated Montgomery, but it’s okay. I’ve still got assets in the field. Have you heard of The Wolf? I’ve got him contracted to kill Montgomery now. He’s not one of Enfield’s men. He’s an independent. A freelancer.”

  “The same freelancer who failed to kill Montgomery in North Carolina two weeks ago?”

  “Again, that was my mistake. Oliver wanted to handle it himself, so I called The Wolf off. It didn’t work out, but the good news is that Holiday is dead, right? So the job got done.”

  “After two weeks.”

  Salvador tried to step back again, but his foot hit the wall. “Listen. I know I fucked some stuff up, but I’ve got it. Give me a couple more days. The Wolf can get the job done—he just needs the right motivation. He’s got this sister with Down syndrome in New York. It’s leverage, right?”

  Silence answered his sales pitch. The room around him was all at once darker and more closed in, as though even the walls bent their ill will upon him. He wanted to start again, renewing his arguments and maybe making a few excuses, but his better judgment finally took over. Any excuses now would be met with cynicism and perhaps vengeance.

  “My boss is a patient man,” Gambit said at last. “I’m not. You have three days.”

  A rustle of footsteps echoed from the far end of the room, and the speaker was gone. A shadow fading into deeper shadows.

  Salvador sucked in a breath, then gritted his teeth. His patience with The Wolf’s quirky behavior had expired. It was time to take off the gloves.

  Nine

  “Chris! I found her.” Dillan’s words fell over one another in an excited stream. “She’s in Nashville.”

  Reed held the phone away from his ear, wincing at the shrill noise. “I know. I’m headed there now.”

  He could almost hear the air whistling out of Dillan’s deflating chest. “You . . . found her? But how? It took me two weeks!”

  “Basic deduction. Don’t worry about it. You did fine. I’ll send your payment.”

  “But how—”

  Reed hung up the phone and downshifted the Camaro into third. The massive motor bellowed, and the supercharger screamed to life, blasting air into the engine block and pumping out additional horsepower. The back wheels of the car gripped the pavement and slung the Camaro forward. Vehicles flashed by on all sides as Reed navigated onto the freeway and swerved past a semi-truck. Baxter lay in the passenger’s seat, his tongue lolling out of the side of his mouth, and drool dripping onto the floor mat. For the first time since the fire, his eyes weren’t completely dominated by pain.

  After returning from Holiday’s condo, Reed stripped the hotel of any identifiable material and packed his gear into the trunk of the Camaro, then loaded Baxter into the passenger’s seat. The smart thing would have been to leave him at a local animal boarder, but Reed didn’t have the heart to abandon the dog again. For better or worse, Baxter would accompany him on the four-hour drive through North Georgia and into Tennessee.

  The realization of where Banks fled to after the slaughter in North Carolina hit him only moments after uncovering the secret of Holiday’s association with Banks’s father, Frank Morccelli. Vanderbilt University was nestled in Midtown, Nashville. “Music City,” had grown explosively over the past decade, expanding into a thriving tourist town packed with live-music bars and college kids. Reed recalled Banks’s decision to leave Mississippi after her father died and take shelter with her godfather in Atlanta. Now that he too was gone, Banks would take refuge in the next most familiar place she could—Nashville, the town of her father’s alma mater, and a place she visited frequently as a child. She wouldn’t go home to face her vindictive mother, and she wouldn’t disappear into a strange and lonely new place.

  Reed was grateful that Banks was in Nashville because he didn’t want to have to choose between pursuing his investigation and finding her. As soon as he reached the city, he would find a place to set up camp and give Baxter a bed, then look for Banks. Soon enough, there would be time to investigate Holiday’s fraternity ties and make progress on finding Salvador.

  The sun began its western descent as the big car purred over the Georgia mountains and descended toward Chattanooga. The old town sat on the state line between Georgia and Tennessee, in the bottom of a valley, and wrapped on three sides by the Tennessee River. Reed had driven through it many times before and always appreciated the charm of the dusty brick buildings and slow, methodical, Southern lifestyle. In a lot of ways, Chattanooga was stuck in another time—a calmer time.

  As the exit signs flashed by on his right, Reed made the impulse decision to turn off the highway. Exhaustion burrowed deep in his bones, and his eyelids were already growing heavy. After two days of sleeplessness and who knew how much alcohol, it was past time to get some rest. He would stop here for the night, get dinner, then arrive in Nashville well before lunch the next day. It would be better not to confront Banks exhausted.

  In typical fashion, as soon as Reed located a pet-friendly motel and reapplied Baxter’s salve for the evening, his sleepiness vanished, and the insomnia returned. He lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling for half an hour before he pulled his boots back on and stomped down to the front desk. A dirty desk clerk with a stained shirt and greasy hair watched him through smudged glasses, his gaze hazed over by some type of narcotic.

  “What do you do for fun around here?” Reed asked. It was a poor choice of words.

  “I dunno, man. Get high, I guess. You want some weed?”

  “No, I mean I want to stretch my legs. Is there any place to . . . hike or something?”

  “Oh, yeah, man. This is Tennessee. Lots of hiking, man.”

  Reed waited. The clerk stared at him with a blank expression, as though he had just asked a question and were waiting on the answer.

  Reed rapped his knuckles on the counter. “So, where do I go?”

  “Oh, yeah. Sure. Sunset Rock, man. It’s real nice this time of day. I go up there and get high all the time.”

  “Thanks.”

  Reed piloted out of the city, turning down one winding road after another as he followed his GPS into the mountains. Naked trees clung to the sides of rock cliffs, their ghostly limbs trailing over the pavement. With each switchback and curve, Reed drove farther above the valley floor. Many of the signs he passed advertised a place called Ruby Falls, while others mentioned Lookout Mountain. He was vaguely familiar with both locations, but he’d never been before.

  After twenty minutes of weaving through small neighborhoods, the GPS led him to a tiny parking lot directly beside the county road. He squeezed the Camaro between two SUVs and climbed out, enjoying the blast of chilly mountain air. It was thinner and fresher than the smog-laden humidity of Atlanta.

  A trail led from the parking lot and into the trees, paved in thick slabs of rock that were half-path, half-steps, winding down the mountainside. Reed’s muscles ached with every footfall, refreshing the agony of a dozen minor wounds that covered his body. Matched with bruises and stitches, his skin looked like the patchwork of Frankenstein’s monster. The last month hadn’t been kind to him, but even so, the exercise felt great. It revived his tired mind and brought clarity to his thoughts.

  After less than a quarter mile, the trees parted all at once, exposing a wide rock ledge that jutted out from the cliff face and hung over the valley. Air rushed from Reed’s lungs as he stepped off the trail and admired the rolling valleys of East Tennessee stretched out in front of him as far as he could see—miles of perfectly clear landscape cresting into mountain ranges on every side. The freeway wound through the valley floor a couple thousand yards away, each passing car and truck cruising across the valley floor at highway speeds, but at this distance, appearing to move at little more than a crawl. To his right, the western edge of Chattanooga was barely visible around the curvature of a mountain ridge, tall buildings reflecting the sunlight as the wide Tennessee River wound its way alongside the freeway. It was the most picturesque, gorgeous view Reed had ever scene—perfect
, and calm.

  He took another step closer to the edge and felt his stomach churn. From this angle, he knew he was a few hundred feet high—enough to send his mind spinning and his every instinct commanding him to return to the car. But the view was too calming and beautiful. Reed forced himself forward another few yards, then sat down on a rock with his feet inches from the cliff’s edge. He released a deep breath, liberating his tension and fear to the valley floor below, and allowing a deep relaxation to settle in its place. The soothing touch of the sun on his face and the wind in his hair loosened his taut nerves, bringing gradual relaxation to his body.

  Nearby, a young couple next to the cliff were wrapped in each other’s arms. Farther on, a photographer with a camera and tripod attempted to replicate the stunning view. It wouldn’t be easy. Something about the magnificent experience of sitting this close to the edge, saturated in the kiss of the sunset, was too natural and overwhelming to be appreciated by a photograph.

  Reed closed his eyes and savored the bite of the wind. It was too cold to be comfortable, but the chill reminded him of the snow falling around his face as he and Banks crashed through the North Carolina Mountains, desperately searching for a place to take shelter. At the time, all he felt was panic and a dreadful sensation of failure, but those feelings quickly melted into passion and warmth as he stood in front of a crackling fire and embraced Banks. He remembered the touch of her skin, the elegance of her kiss. It was the most perfect, beautiful feeling, too overwhelming and gripping to resist.

  He opened his eyes and squinted into the sun. There was something about Banks—something profound and true and gripping that felt more solid than the mountaintop under his feet. It was something he never found in the Los Angeles gangs, the Marine Corps, or in Kelly’s arms. All of those places offered him thrills and belonging and the promise of fame and fortune, but with Banks, it was deeper. It was a place to let his guard down and be, as though Banks had no expectations of who he was or what he could do for her—only what he could be for her.