Mystery: Suspense: Hell Money: : A Private Investigator Mystery Crime Thriller: (horror, thriller, science fiction, mystery, police, murder, dark, conspiracy) ... (Marie Avalon Mystery Crime Series Book 2) Read online

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  Hook~

  Chapter 1:

  Chapter 2:

  Chapter 3:

  Chapter 4:

  Chapter 5:

  Chapter 6:

  Chapter 7:

  Chapter 8:

  Chapter 9:

  Chapter 10:

  Chapter 11:

  Chapter 12:

  Chapter 13:

  Chapter 14:

  Chapter 15:

  Chapter 16:

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  THANK YOU

  Hook~

  * * *

  Before you go on and have a thrill ride in your imagination,

  I just have a quick message for you

  You can SCROLL TO THE END OF THE BOOK to read it or you could GO TO THE TABLE OF CONTENTS and CLICK "JOSH LAW'S THANK YOU MESSAGE"

  I guarantee you that I’m not going to sell you anything or make you join a group or things like that

  It’s just a thank you message that I know you deserve

  * * *

  She leaned her shoulders against one of the marble edifices of American historicity. This would mark the day that Life and Afterlife bled into one. She a humble private investigator was the only person with knowledge of it.

  She posed the Colt 45 feeling her heart beating in her fingertips. She could hear their footsteps. The grit of sand was on their shoes, filing the sidewalks with their wrath. Yet the U.S. Capitol took no notice of the dire situation about to metastasize within its parameters.

  Marilyn Avalon had no thought for her life. She held her breath feeling the rush of adrenaline threaten to smother her. This diversion had to work. She would have to live with the inexplicable she had witnessed. Her son’s newly resurrected life depended on it.

  She held her breath. Twisted toward the wind to hear their discussion above the sound of her heart.

  “We’ve lost her…” The man kicked a public garbage can and buried his fingers in his hair.

  His companion was a middle-aged woman with a heavy Boston-flavored accent.

  “If she gets back to the kid, then the plan is blown straight back to Hell! We need him! He was dead for 7 months. He definitely had to have seen something on the other side. Ashe will want to interrogate him…” She tossed her head defiantly.

  “You think it’s crazy.” The man was too bold for his own good.

  “Shut up! You’ll get me flambéed for sure!” The woman punched him in the chest. He let out a groan and shook his head.

  “You do, though. Admit it, you know you do. If there’s any truth to what that crazy braud keeps raving about, then it’s even worse. She’s got debts to send downstairs. The Walking Dead are collateral damage that we can’t afford. Now we’ve got the upper hand because no self-respecting politician is going to be concerned with blood rite crimes.” The man popped his collar and rolled his eyes.

  “I’d be careful if I were you. She might be bat-house crazy, but the whole posse of them take her every word as literal. That kid is a high-priority item in our lucrative market of superstition. He’ll be able to tell us if there’s any reality to their bazaar religion. Then she’ll want to send him back down to Hell to settle her debts.” The woman smiled with her teeth gritted wickedly.

  “No. We’re bounty hunters, Linda, not assassins.” The man backed away from her appalled.

  “Oh, now’s not the time for you to be so pious, Jeremy! We both know that if we don’t ice that kid Ashe will call on her nibs Lady Sicario to get the job done. You and I both know that will be bad for the Devil’s produce. She wants nothing more than to put Army Prescott’s boys away. Hell, she has debts to collect downstairs too. They all do. That’s why they made an allegiance of their bizarre religion. That’s why they’ve taken this whole “Coexist” thing to the next level of weird.” Linda was rolling with laughter now.

  “Why that kid anyway? There’s a whole passel of them in rehab somewhere in the Virgin Islands. Some that had been dead for longer and probably know their way around a lot better. Heck, I heard there’s one old cowboy they dug out of Durango’s historical boneyard that had been dirt-napping since 1862!” Jeremy rubbed his chest still sore and offended from Linda’s blow.

  “Easy, stupid. That kid’s obviously the leader of the pack. The only one with guts to seize his borrowed time, eh? He’s like Lord Lazarus of the Underworld. Seriously, he could cowboy up and start the freaking zombie rebellion. Not any of that crap from the Halloween movie nights of our corny youths either, chucklehead. I’m talking straight-up tactical warfare from real people who actually rose from the Dead!”

  “Yeah, okay, keep it up, doll face. You’re all just talking smack if you ask me. He’s a high-school graduate not Zombie of the Hood!”

  “He could be! Give him a few years, let him get to stewing in his juices…Plus, he was in the Underworld, yeah? If all that religious hokey stuff is true, then that’s Eternity. He could have hung around in the Twilight zone for Millennia in downstairs time. He could have been tutored by freaking Lucifer for all you know! One thing is for sure, as far as the superstitious world is concerned that kid is fair game. You and I make a living off of fair game. We either take the gold rush on this, or we lose our chances to the sicario woman!”

  Their voices began to grow fainter as they rounded another corner.

  “Nicky…” Marilyn was hyperventilating. She was trying to think faster than her brain could keep up with. She was fresh out of cash. There were no flights into or out of the Capital because of the heavy outcry that aroused fear of homegrown terrorism surrounding the Prescott Project and the Durango Drop Science trials.

  She had to get back to her car. It was time to go AWOL. To drive all night and brave Hell and high water gangbusters style if she had to. Her next destination was Durango, Colorado. She was going home for her son.

  Chapter 1:

  “Think fast!” Nick tossed a can of Pepsi to his brother.

  Alex felt his whole body rush with excited laughter as he caught the soda mid-air. His brother sat on the new Harley Bomb Runner that the police force had given the both of them as a thank-you present. Nicky was coursing with giddy laughter having successfully startled his brother.

  “Okay, take it easy, tiger!” Alex ran a hand over his head with a nervous giggle. Nick slapped his knee cap and grinned impishly.

  The summer night wafted over them fragrant with wildflowers and Tiki torches that surrounded Santa Bianca’s back porch. One could smell fireworks and roasted birthday cake from the direction of the children’s home.

  Today was an extremely special occasion. Several of the Prescott Project children had turned 18 and were graduating from high school and the foster system, ready to move out on their own. Two of these lucky individuals were Nick Avalon and his half-brother Alex Prescott. This, however critical to their approaching adulthood it might appear, was not the sole reason this night was so significant. It was more so because it should never have occurred at all.

  Nicolas Avalon had died a year ago today. Yet here he sat, smiling lik
e the cat that ate the canary, a Pepsi balanced on his extra-long leg’s knee.

  Alex felt his throat growing tight. The last year had been absolute hell for him. Had Nick remained in his grave by this date, Alex would have committed suicide today. He’d planned to months ago on the anniversary so that they could symbolically leave the world on the same day.

  “Move over.” Alex came and shoved his brother so that he could also sit on the motor bike. He was exceedingly glad now that Nick had returned from the Land of the Dead. It was good to be alive and whole. Here with him on a summer night.

  He compulsively reached an arm around Nick’s shoulders. Their frequent physical affirmations of affection were completely subconscious. After the dual-blood coagulation medical procedure that had saved their lives the night that their father and his accomplice had died, they’d adopted the behavioral patterns of identical twins in some respects. It was a phenomenon none of the investigative physicians covering the illicit Prescott Project had been able to figure out.

  Silence pervaded and Alex stared off into deep space, the soda unopened in his other hand.

  “Spit it out already, Yahtzee!” Nick clapped an open palm over his brother’s heart.

  “Spit what out?” Alex blinked at his brother staring intensely at him for a long time, his nostrils twitching.

  “Come on, Alex. I think you know.”

  “Dude, I have no idea what you’re talking about…”

  “It was today. Last year. You’ve been acting weird all day without bringing it up. I’ve also been getting a lot of fond glances and random hugs from everybody else. It’s been weirding me out a little bit.” Nick swallowed and nodded. This subject was hard for everyone, but him most of all. He seldom tread that ground. Nicky wasn’t dealing with resurrection. It baffled him and made him feel glaringly out of place.

  Alex shuddered and leaned into his brother, hugging him from the side.

  “I-uh…I can’t talk about it. I’m sorry, man. You…Watching you. I saw it happen both times.” Alex coughed.

  Nick cupped the nape of Alex’s neck in his open palm. He shuddered in turn, feeling like there would never be a day when he could put that behind him and stop feeling strangely haunted by it. Not until he said it anyway.

  “I remember…” He was reluctant, afraid that Alex would think he was a freak.

  “You remember what?”

  “I remember being…not here…I remember-ehem- what it’s like in the Hereafter.” Nick sat up taller, looking into Alex’s alarmed emerald eyes.

  Alex swallowed and nodded.

  “You can tell me…” After all that had happened, he’d be a fool not to believe Nick.

  “I-“ His whole body jerked and his eyebrows flew to the top of his head. Alex knew instantly that this wasn’t from his memories. Something was very wrong in the house.

  “Nick?”

  “Get down!” Nick threw himself on top of his brother. Alex felt his chin drill into the dust and the heat as Bianca’s back wall blew out. Fire rolled across the grass. They were caught in an island of flame for a moment. Nick swept Alex up by his coat tails, climbing onto the bike and revving off into the night.

  “What the-?” Alex’s ears were ringing. He grabbed Nick around the waist as they shot off into the darkness of the Coloradoan forest that surrounded their foster home. His heart was drilling in the tip of his tongue. This could not be happening. Not again. Their days of being chased by the Devil were history. Something to tell the kids in college and impress their way to the top of the fraternity.

  Not now. Nick parked the bike in a bank of red clay. He leaped off of it, hands tearing at his hair. He dug the toes of his engineer boots into the dirt kicking and scraping until he unearthed a regular beer cooler.

  “What the hell, Nick?” Alex was breathless.

  “The tipster work I’ve been doing for Chief Riggs? Cleaning up dad’s mess, ratting out what’s left of his lab and weapons caches him and Dr. Swift were going to use for a Zombie boot camp? You get what’s in the cooler, right? Look, Alex, I know it’s contraband. I was supposed to turn it in as soon as I found it, but I just had to look at it a second time. Now I’m glad I didn’t turn it in for evidence because we’re going to need it. They’ve threatened our gazillion brothers and sisters and Papa Vierra. That’s all we need to know!” Nick was talking a mile a minute as he broke the cooler open. Alex slid like an all-star baseball player to Nick’s side and looked down into the cooler.

  It was too small for rifles unless they were dismembered. They hadn’t had enough hands-on experience to safely reassemble a semi-automatic rifle for use. They’d have to settle for the plethora of pistols their wayward dad had compiled for his “super soldiers”.

  Alex gritted his teeth verging on vomiting as he realized his entire family was in danger. He might be young, but he wasn’t stupid. Whoever they were, these people were after Nick. He’d been the best lab rat and by far the most militant. Somebody that was still in their dad’s corner or somebody he’d made promises to and failed to keep them had come to repossess whatever they felt they were owed. That would be Nicky and the rest of the Santa Bianca’s kids that were all Prescott’s children as a result of his sperm donation to the project.

  Holding his breath, Alex rifled around until he found a Soviet-era PSM. Nick scraped several matching magazines to the rare Russian pistol off the cooler’s floor and pressed them into Alex’s shaking palm. When he did he unearthed a jet colored Jericho 941 with a brass inlaid handle.

  He picked it up examining it. There was the image of a skeletal man wearing a hood and cloak a raven perching either foot on each of his shoulders. Across the skeleton’s feet was embossed the words San La Muerte.

  Nick and Alex exchanged strange glances.

  “Come on!” Nick nodded to his brother. They took three leaping strides back to the bike and motored back to their blazing home.

  The basement mud room was thankfully the only thing to have exploded. It had shifted the foundation of the house and split the floor in a few of the upstairs rooms. Nick charged in without thought. Alex grabbed him by his belt and pulled him back as a shower of charred debris came down from the hole. The fire had spread through the warped wood and had caught the living room on fire.

  Alex was trying to catch his breath and warn Nick that they should be cautious. He threw all of his own caution to the wind when they heard their 16-year-old sister Sally screaming for help.

  Nick hoisted his shorter brother up onto his shoulders and pushed him upward through the hole in the floor. Alex was in the kitchen now. He reached out a hand to grab one of the twisted off-axis cabinets and pulled himself further into the room.

  At full height, Nick stood somewhere around 6’6”. His head was poking through the hole already. Alex would just have to find a way to pull his slender but 4-inch taller brother up through the foundation.

  He reached and grabbed a chair pushing it Nick’s way. Nick hauled himself halfway up, Alex groaning from the strain of keeping the chair anchored to the floor. Nick’s stomach was finally flush with the floor and he pushed his way into the room with his elbows, landing with a grunt in a tangled heap surrounded by flames.

  Clear of the hole, the two brothers stormed into their living room. Sally had been forced into a china cabinet that was already blazing out the top. Shrieking, beating against the walls, she kicked the glass doors out, cutting her feet through her sneakers. She moaned and screamed.

  “Back off! Hands where I can see them, punk!” Nick tossed his hair out of his face and trained his pistol to the small figure that stood in front of the wardrobe.

  He was surprised. A small Asian girl turned around. She was crying, visibly distraught. She shook her head.

  “Yo no quiero-!” Her words were distraught Spanish, but she had to be Japanese. Nick was puzzled and stopped in his tracks. Alex came up behind him posing the pistol at her.

  “Get our sister out! You’re killing her!” He chambered the pi
stol, screaming hysterically at the young girl.

  “Por favor, yo no quiero-! Mi mama. Usted tiene que ir…”She was distraught. Her words weren’t making much sense even to a native Spanish-speaker. Alex had taken some Spanish in high-school and had understood her words mostly. Nick charged forward, attempting to pluck Sally from the cabinet. Alex kept the pistol trained on the girl and craned his neck, trying to think of words to reason with her.

  “Por que estas haciendo esto?”Alex fumbled for the right words, the gun quaking in his hand.

  “She’s doing it for me. Her adoring mama.” A woman entered the room. She was dressed in a skin tight bodysuit with fishnet stockings to match. She had a bunny’s tail hanging from her butt and a headband with devil’s horns on it.

  Nick rolled back out of the cabinet, Sally on his shoulders. He trained the gun between the woman’s eyes, swallowing at the site of her attire.

  She looked taken aback for a moment.

  “Where’d you get that gun?”

  “I found it. Why are you trying to kill my family?”

  She smiled, laughing wetly through her finger-engine red lips.

  “Oh ho ho-now, cielo! I’m not trying to kill anyone. I’m just messing with them. It’s you I want to talk to.”

  “Then talk.” Nick cocked the pistol.

  “Want to put the gun down?”

  “Want to start talking before I spill brass and blood all over my foster mama’s pretty rug?” Nick wasn’t playing. It scared his siblings sometimes how cold he could be ever since he’d returned from the Dead.

  “Fine. Or you know, I could kill your little sister.” She whistled. The small Japanese girl tossed her a Mosin-Nagant that had been leaning against the wall concealed by the smoke.

  “Whoa! No, really, what do you want?” Alex stepped between his brother, sister, and the crazy assassin woman.