Got Thrills? A Boxed Set (A McCray Collection) Read online

  The fuckers must have had someone up in the trees, monitoring their progress through the ruins. The Zetas were vicious, but smart. Vanderwalt crumbled to the ground.

  “Oh no you don’t,” Brandt said, trying to tug the man to his feet. Yes, there were gunmen out there, but not that many of them. Properly timed, they could burst out of the tunnel and make it those few dozen yards to a new source of cover before they got shot.

  “Sorry, mate,” Vanderwalt whispered. “I can’t go any farther.” He took a shuddering breath. “Leave me a gun. I’ll cover you.”

  “Yeah, right,” Brandt countered. Leaving the Brit wasn’t an option. Leaving anyone wasn’t an option. “I’ve seen your aim.”

  Vanderwalt managed that dopey grin of his. “Better than nothing, chap.”

  Perhaps, but there had to be another way.

  Then he heard the rev of an engine. The type of rev only Lopez could produce—it was more of a tortured automotive cry. Brandt peered between the leaves but couldn’t find the vehicle. It had to be close, though, as loud as the engine was. He risked popping his head out from the alcove. He got chased back by bullets, but confirmed that the Jeep was nowhere on the commons.

  Where the hell could it be, then?

  With one final screeching rev, the Jeep leapt over the top of the pyramid. The vehicle landed hard on the stone steps, then bounced its way down. The Zetas must have been as shocked as Brandt. Svengurd firing into their ranks seemed to startle them from their stupor, though. One ran across the doorway. Brandt took him down. Given the screams from outside the tunnel, the rest were injured or on the run.

  Grabbing Vanderwalt by the collar, he jerked the Brit to his feet.

  “Can you run that far?”

  The Jeep rattled its way down the stony steps.

  “Hell, yes,” Vanderwalt answered, surging forward.

  That was what Brandt liked to hear.

  * * *

  Svengurd braced his legs on the dashboard and door, but even so he almost flew out of the Jeep as it hit one of the steps on the edge, nearly flipping them.

  “Pyramid luging!” Lopez shouted. He truly did seem to be enjoying himself.

  They had scattered the Zetas, but they would not stay down for long. These guards were no children. They had been battle hardened.

  Finally, the Jeep was reaching the bottom. Lopez gunned it, sailing them off the platform and landing a good ten feet from the base. The grassy earth dulled the jarring, at least a little. Then they were across the commons. The corporal skidded them sideways into Brandt and Vanderwalt’s path.

  “Keep going!” Brandt yelled as he pushed Vanderwalt forward.

  The CIA operatives hauled the British agent into the back of the Jeep. Brandt ran alongside, then swung up, grabbing hold of the roll bars. With one last push, Brandt launched himself into the back seat. A heartbeat later, his gun was up, spraying bullets into the surrounding area. There were no Zetas to be seen, but clearly the sergeant planned to keep it that way.

  Now, with the awkward rock steps out of his way, Lopez could really nurse some speed from the Jeep. The corporal angled them toward one of the breaks in the wall. They were nearly to the exit when another vehicle turned onto the dirt bridge, gunning right for them.

  Lopez probably would have played chicken, but if they went much further, they would have nowhere to turn except into the flanking stone walls.

  “Right, Lopez!” Brandt barked.

  Even with certain death approaching and his sergeant’s orders, the corporal still seemed loath to give in to the Los Zetas’ challenge. At the last moment, Lopez braked, cranking the wheel to the right. Their tires spit up chunks of earth as dirt rained down upon them. The rear bumper barely made the turn before the Zetas’ SUV sped past them.

  Svengurd joined Brandt in firing at the vehicle, which turned sharply to give chase.

  The Jeep practically jumped out from under them as Lopez stepped on the accelerator. They streaked past the ancient ruins. The corporal swerved around burned out stumps and small stone structures. Svengurd couldn’t even identify what the markers were beyond grey blurs.

  It took a few moments to realize that there were walls on each side of them. By then, the Zetas’ SUV was on their six, streaking along behind them. Then the walls opened up into a small area. An enclosed area. Not even Lopez could get the Jeep to jump the eight–foot–high stone walls that surrounded them.

  Instead, Lopez yanked up the emergency brake, skidding them around 180 degrees—just in time for them to watch the Zetas hurl toward them.

  * * *

  “Bloody hell, mate,” Vanderwalt exhaled. “What do you Yanks say? Straight from the kettle and into the flames.”

  “Yeah,” Brandt said, firing at the oncoming SUV. “Something like that.”

  The enemy vehicle skidded to a stop, guns bristling out of every window. A hail of gunfire tore through the Jeep. Everyone ducked to avoid the bullets flying overhead. Getting brazen, the enemy exited the car, firing as they advanced on the Jeep.

  The Los Zetas thought they had the upper hand. They thought they had them outnumbered. They thought they had them outgunned.

  They were so sure of themselves that they didn’t even notice a man in the back of the group drop to the ground. Then another. Then a third. It took them losing four men before anyone noticed. Then the line broke and shouts rose on the evening air.

  “Now!” Brandt yelled. Lopez and Svengurd joined him, firing at the now exposed enemy.

  The Los Zetas scrambled, rushing back to their SUV. Only the windshield cracked, a bullet going straight through the driver’s chest. One of the guards shoved his deceased teammate out of the way and put the SUV in reverse, stepping on the gas.

  The problem with that? Lopez had laid a tire spike string at the bottleneck. The SUV’s rear tires blew, then the front tires, grinding them to a stop. Another shot ripped into the radiator. Down to three men and a busted SUV, the Los Zetas weren’t going anywhere.

  The survivors came out of the car, arms raised, tossing their guns to the side.

  “Ha!” Lopez yelled, pointing at the disarmed men. He then turned to the two CI agents. “That’s how you do an ambush!”

  Yes, that was exactly how you wanted to do an ambush, except for possibly the jaguar, hang glider, and Jeep down the pyramid diversions, but hey, it got the job done.

  The after–action report would be a doozy to write up, though.

  What had always been clear was that this mission was just one big trap. The fact that the CIA had known exactly where their captured asset had been held? Then, for them to know exactly where the captured CIA agents were? Come on. The Zetas should have just burned the letters A. M. B. U. S. H. into the forest.

  Most of the time, the best way to handle a trap? Spring the sucker, with a plan. A good plan. Or, in their case, an adaptable plan.

  And it all happened because they had one of the best perimeter specialists in the business. Brandt had to search the trees for several moments before he could make out his sniper, Davidson, and he knew where the kid was holed up.

  A midwestern smile glistened in the waning light. Brandt waved, indicating that the kid could come down out of his perch. Whip–thin, Davidson barely stirred the leaves as he climbed to the ground. As Svengurd zip–tied the Los Zetas men, Lopez rushed to Davidson.

  “You and the rifle, man? You are one!” Lopez exclaimed as he brought the younger man into a bro–hug.

  While Brandt agreed wholeheartedly, he wouldn’t go so far as to hug the kid.

  Davidson shrugged his way out of the embrace. “It was just a point–and–shoot setup. No biggie.”

  Compared to some of the other incredibly difficult shots Brandt had seen the sniper take, Davidson was right, but to take down that many men that quickly? That was still something. As the sniper passed, Brandt did indulge in clapping his back.

  “Still. Decent job.”

  There was that easy smile. If only Brandt had so few car
es in the world to be that relaxed. Maybe with a cold brew in one hand and a fishing pole in the other he could feel as carefree as Davidson.

  The beat of rotors in the distance did cheer him up a bit. Their extraction helicopter was right on time. Their orders were to leave the Los Zetas secured for the Federales, then get the hell out of Campeche.

  Which was perfectly fine by Brandt.

  Within moments, the chopper dropped a back board for the teen and lines for the rest of them. In rapid order, they ascended up into the helicopter. The injured were taken to the back of the large transport helicopter, where a medic awaited them.

  Brandt sat down hard on the metal jump seat. He wiped his forehead with the back of his hand as the helicopter sped across the sky. They should be landing in Ticul and picking up a small plane to fly them to Cancun, then onward to Miami.

  Lopez didn’t sit down, though. “Don’t worry, Sarge. I’ll get us home in a jiffy.”

  “No,” Brandt said sharp enough it gave the corporal pause. He softened his tone. “Let’s let the pilot get us to Ticul. You can take over from there.”

  “But—”

  Brandt raised his hand. “No ‘buts.’ I do not want to referee a smackdown match between you and a Federales.”

  “Okay, fine, but we’re flying in the wrong direction.”

  “What?” Brandt said, rising from his seat. The sun was setting out the left window, rather than the right. Lopez was correct. They were going south. Exactly the opposite direction of Miami.

  He made his way to the pilot, shouting over the rotors. “Your orders were to take us to Ticul.”

  The man shook his head. “Did they not inform you?”

  Brandt did not like the sound of that. “Inform us of what?”

  “We are to drop the injured off in Ciudad de Carmen, where you will rendezvous with a jet to take you to Ecuador.”

  “Ecuador?” Lopez said at his shoulder. “What happened to Key West?”

  The co–pilot handed Brandt a thin folder. He didn’t like thin folders. It meant they were being shipped off with little or no information. Brandt opened it to find only one page. He skimmed it, which didn’t take a whole hell of a lot of time.

  Slamming it shut, he headed back to his seat and strapped in.

  “Well?” Lopez asked, sitting next to him.

  Brandt pulled a lighter from his pocket and set the file on fire. “We’ve got to pull some researcher from the Amazon and get her to Paris.”

  “Paris?” Davidson asked. “Why?”

  “I don’t ask…”

  “Because they won’t tell,” Lopez finished for him.

  It was their life in black ops. Flicking the corner of the file to put the flames out, Brandt leaned back against the bulkhead.

  “At least it sounds straight–forward,” Svengurd remarked.

  “Easy peasy,” Lopez agreed.

  After this extraction? Brandt could use a nice boring mission. And he wouldn’t turn down some R&R in Paris. However, instead of basking in the glow of the thought of some time off, a knot formed in his stomach.

  His gut was worried about this next mission.

  And damn it, if his gut wasn’t always right.

  To see more of Brandt and the bunch, check out The Betrayed Omnibus Collection here.

  ANATOMY – The prequel short story to the Harbinger Murder Mystery Collection (Plain Jane)

  CHAPTER 1

  Detective Nicole Usher gulped despite having every intention not to gulp. You didn’t get your gold badge without seeing some things. Gross things. Horrible things. Things no one should ever have to see.

  Yet the body that lay before her, before them all, was just wrong. It wasn’t so much that the killer had dissected the woman, flaying open her chest and abdomen. Or that he had carefully teased ligament away from bone. The thing that made her force back bile was the series of little labels stuck into the vital organs.

  Liver. Kidneys. Ovaries… Each word written in the victim’s own blood.

  That was what made her gulp again and look away.

  Around her, the crime scene was barely contained chaos, with every acronym in the book accounted for. EMTs, CSIs, MEs, FDs, PDs. Given that this was the serial killer’s sixth victim, when the call came over that another body had been found, all hands, whether they were needed or not, came on deck.

  Nicole glanced to her partner, Ruben Torres, the lead detective on the case. All answered to him, which was what he wanted. What he had wanted for a long time. Their city was large enough to have its fair share of murders, but small enough that they didn’t have a Major Crimes division. Instead, the department had one detective that they turned to for their most difficult cases, the Captain’s go-to detective.

  For decades, that had been Hatachi Nogamori. But after a long-overdue retirement, the door was thrown wide open, and Ruben had been the first to charge through. To Nicole’s eye, he had the skills, knowledge, and ambition to fill Hatachi’s shoes.

  Now, though, with his jaw muscles rippling, Nicole wasn’t so sure that Ruben was all too enthused that he had stepped up to the plate. She knew the disgust on his face wasn’t from the gore. Even though the sun was going down, the mid-summer heat rose from the alley’s pavement, bringing with it a smell—so strong that you could taste it—of a poorly ventilated butcher’s shop, which someone had tried to clean up with formaldehyde.

  The heady aroma turned Nicole’s stomach, but she was pretty sure it didn’t bother Ruben. He’d seen a tour in Iraq before the Green Zone was established. Her partner didn’t ever talk about his time in the Middle East, even to her, which pretty much convinced Nicole of exactly how grueling the tour must have been.

  A flash of light cut through the dusky night.

  Nicole blinked several times as the CSI photographer stepped around her and took another shot.

  Ruben, too, seemed startled out of his thoughts, and grumbled, “Just make sure these pictures aren’t leaked to the press.”

  The older photographer frowned, setting the heavy camera down against his potbelly. “We’re all here to do a professional job.”

  Ruben bristled at the CSI’s tone. She knew her partner’s frustration. Those leaked pictures had revealed the one detail of the crime that they had been holding back…the organ labels. Now every crackpot in the city was claiming credit for the murders. It had taking days, if not weeks, to disprove their statements, sucking precious time and resources away from finding the real killer.

  Before Ruben could counter the older man’s statement, Nicole pointed to the roof of an adjacent building. “Speaking of the press…”

  An especially intrepid cameraman and news anchor were peeking their heads over the roof.

  “Damn it!” Ruben barked, then turned on his heel toward a group of uniformed policemen. “If you are going to gawk, at least secure the perimeter!”

  The cluster of blue uniforms scattered in the wake of Ruben’s anger. Which was so unlike her partner. Ruben was usually the good cop, negotiating the politics of the detective’s bullpen like a fish in clear water. Most of the men he’d just chastised were poker buddies.

  Nicole stifled the instinct to lay a hand on his arm in comfort. While their relationship was no secret, she knew that the boys’ club gathered here would see her gesture as a sign of weakness. And with all of the media attention? She couldn’t risk a random cellphone snapshot of their intimacy.

  This investigation had gone from a local police matter to a statewide manhunt to, now, a national cause celebre. And the longer the investigation stretched out, the more intense the media coverage became. Which wasn’t making any of this easier. It was a little hard to keep your head in the game when Nancy Grace was calling you an incompetent ham-fisted Fred Flintstone of detectives.

  Nicole waved a fly away from her face. It persisted, landing momentarily on her shoulder. She tried not to think of what its tiny feet left behind on her blouse. The grit of the crime scene crept under her clothes, mixing with t
he sweat streaking down her back. There weren’t enough showers in the world to wash the desperation from her skin.

  Ruben turned his attention from the roof to the medical examiner kneeling by the body. “Time of death?”

  The ME chewed at the butt of a cold cigar and read from one of the labels. “Specimen collected at 9:52pm Central Standard Time.”

  Her partner’s jaw muscles worked overtime, yet he somehow modulated his tone so as not to sound as exasperated as he clearly was. “That was her capture time. I need time of death.”

  Shoving the cigar butt over to the corner of his mouth, the ME spit onto the pavement. Not exactly hygienic or conducive to a proper crime scene, but the ME was the oldest of the good ole boys. Dr. McGregor did as Dr. McGregor saw fit, and you’d best like it.

  “I really don’t know why they haul my ass out here to the body,” McGregor grumbled. “When have I, or any ME ever in the history of crime scene investigations, been able to tell you anything but… ‘I’ll have to see once I get the body on the table?’”

  “Anything you could tell us about the time or cause of death could be a help,” Nicole answered, as Ruben’s lips pressed down into a firm line. They both knew that the CSIs wouldn’t find any forensic clues. This killer was far too sophisticated to make a clumsy error. Their only hope to catch the killer was to jump on any lead they could get, such as time of death, and hope it opened up a new avenue of investigation.

  The ME scanned the crowd, then nodded to an EMT as she gathered up her gear. “You.” Nicole had met the young EMT before. She had an androgynous name. Jaime, maybe? She had been one of the first responders at the crime scene.

  “Me?” the EMT squeaked out. Her eyes darted around her, obviously hoping that McGregor was talking to someone else.

  “Yes, you,” he said, waving her over. Reluctantly, Jaime came over. “Now could you please tell these fine detectives when and how this victim died?”

  The EMT’s eyes flickered to Nicole, then Ruben, then the ME, then even to the photographer. She found no solace from any of them. “I wouldn’t know.”