Omega Network (Thomas Locke Mystery Book #2) , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Thomas Locke

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127 pages

English

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Book 2 in the Thomas Locke Mystery series. A mystery-thriller that thrusts readers into the gritty underworld of drugs, gambling, and money-laundering.

Informations

Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 juin 1995
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781441270665
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0259€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

A Thomas Locke Mystery
The Omega Network
Thomas Locke
© 1995 by Thomas Locke
Published by Bethany House Publishers 11300 Hampshire Avenue South Minneapolis, Minnesota 55438 www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owners. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-7066-5
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
All scripture quotations, unless indicated, are taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved. The “NIV” and “New International Version” trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society.
This story is entirely a creation of the author’s imagination. No parallel between any persons, living or dead, is intended.
Cover by Joe Nordstrom
“People will spend a tremendous amount of money in casinos. Money that they would normally spend on buying a refrigerator or a new car. . . . You can also expect crime to go up precipitously. Believe me, the casinos will make money for the state and the companies, but they won’t be a bed of roses either. . . . As somebody who lives in Palm Beach, I’d prefer not to see casinos in Florida, but as someone in the gaming business, I’m going to be the first one to open up if Floridians vote for them.”
Donald Trump Chairman of The Trump Organization Interview in The Miami Herald March 27, 1994
“Bad money drives out good.”
Gresham’s Law Thomas Gresham was both an economist and Prime Minister of Great Britain
FOR GARY AND CAROL
“Now faith is being sure of what we hope for . . .”
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Endorsements
Dedication
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
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
About the Author
Other Books by Author
Back Cover
Chapter 1
“Talk to me.”
“What about?”
“I don’t care.” Carlotta dragged deep on her cigarette. The tip cast a ruddy glow on her drawn features. “You’re a sailor. Tell me about tides. Moon watches. Kelp islands.”
“There’s no such thing as a moon watch,” Chase said, trying to ignore the rack between their two seats in the unmarked car. The rack that held the pump-action shotgun and the wooden baton as chipped and frayed as split stove wood. “Kelp grows in the Pacific, not the Atlantic. And the tides haven’t changed in a hundred million years.”
“Tell me about something nice,” she said, her voice as hard as her eyes. “Something normal. Anything. Just so long as people are happy and nobody gets killed.”
“This was not the conversation I was hoping to have,” Chase replied, “when I asked to come up for a visit.”
“You said you wanted to see how I was keeping. What I was doing with my life. Not to mention that last letter, telling me how excited you were to see what it was like to be a cop in the big city.”
She made a jerky little circle with the cigarette, taking in the battered District of Columbia housing estate, the weed-infested yards, the chain-link fencing, the broken glass, the blackness unbroken by streetlight or signs of life. “Welcome to the big league.”
“Thanks a lot.” He squirmed in his seat.
“What’s the matter?”
“This vest itches like crazy. Do I have to wear it?”
“It’s not the vest,” she said, turning back to the night. “It’s the bullet you’re afraid it might stop.”
He stared at the woman who had been one of his two best friends. “Is this really Carlotta I’m talking to?”
“You see anybody else in this car?”
“The same Carlotta who collected butterflies and cried when we lost the game to Radley High?”
“We should’ve beaten their tails from Cocoa Beach to Miami. I still say they got to the ref.”
“Yeah, I guess it really is you,” Chase said. “So, what happened to you along the way?”
“I happen to love what I’m doing,” she replied. “I’m not particularly fond of waiting, though, and I don’t like getting shot at.”
“Oh, great. Like, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy your night at the theater?”
She lit another cigarette and watched him above its glow. “I’m doing something important here, Chase. Finally. I spent my time in files and I had to fight like a tiger for them to get a chance at the action. Now I’m here. And I really do feel like this is vital.”
“First female detective in DC narcotics,” Chase recalled. “When I got word I was so proud I could’ve burst.”
“Sometimes I feel like we are all that stands between the way of life you and I knew as kids and total anarchy. I like doing something valuable with my life. Contributing something. Upholding the American way and all that.”
The car’s atmosphere was acrid from her nonstop smoking. Chase replied, “I’m glad you’re doing it, then, because I sure couldn’t.”
She turned from her constant searching of the empty night. “It was a relief hearing you wanted to come visit. Some of us were beginning to wonder if you’d ever wake up again.”
Chase did not need to ask what she meant. “Like who was worried?”
“Like Matthew for one. Not to mention his Aunt Eunice. Colin for another. Every time they called, they’d say you were still cocooned away in that life you’d made for yourself. Your job, your house, your boat. Back and forth from one to the other, never letting anybody get close to you again.”
She inspected him through the smoke and the gloom. “You finally decided to pull your head out of the sand, Slim?”
He shrugged, not surprised to hear that they had been talking about him. Matthew was the third in their little band, friends since childhood. Colin had been a sometime friend from the early days, older and too much a loner to enter their group permanently, but always on the fringes. “I’m not sure.”
“Then why did you want to come along?”
“Just to see,” Chase said. “Your letters were getting, I don’t know, a little bizarre. Like you were growing into somebody I didn’t know anymore. I just wanted to see what was happening to you.”
Her gaze remained steady on him. “Sorry you came?”
“No,” he said, and almost meant it.
“Good. Besides, with my partner out of the action for a while, I could use a little company.”
“What happened to him?”
“He got shot three days ago.” A hard pull on the cigarette. “Sometimes I wonder if maybe he took a bullet meant for me.”
“Don’t talk like that.”
“Sorry.” Another pull. “Anyway, I was glad to get your call. I had started wondering if you were ever going to stop moping over that girl and get back to living.”
“I wasn’t moping, Carlotta.”
“I don’t know what else to call going into hibernation for over a year.” She examined him in the darkness. “Sabine was an awful choice. You’re well rid of that one.”
“I hate that,” he said, more tired than angry. “It really gets me how everybody seemed to know Sabine except me.”
He and Carlotta had become friends soon after his family had moved to the east coast of Florida, basically because nobody else would have anything to do with them. Back then, before growth around Cape Canaveral had really caught hold, Cocoa Beach had been just another sleepy resort used mostly by Florida locals. Cocoa Beach was just far enough north to catch the tail end of major chills. Because it was out of reach of the Bahamas, it also had both colder and rougher waters than places like Palm Beach, Miami, and the Keys. Northern tourists had tended to head for Fort Lauderdale and points farther south.
Chase’s family had moved down from New Jersey when he was nine. Back then, Cocoa Beach was just waking up from its long slumber as a sleepy backwater. Back then, the shoreline belonged mostly to the crabs and the fishermen and the sea birds. Back then, Florida was still the South, a land more in tune with Georgia than Jersey. Neighbors knew everybody’s families, grandparents, business, and futures. Back then, newcomers were still strangers, and not almost everybody.
He and Carlotta Krepps and Matthew Pembroke had arrived at Cocoa Elementary the same September, outcasts and friendless. Carlotta’s father was some mental giant who worked with NASA and had little time for a daughter who was already four inches taller than he was, could name every starting player on the three Florida NCAA basketball teams, and positively hated math. Her mother had divorced both father and daughter and moved back to Washington.
After that, Chase’s mom and dad sort of adopted Carlotta. She spent more time at their house than at her own. After her dad’s heart attack, though, Carlotta had been shipped off to Washington, to a mother who scared her to death.
That event had occurred three days after Chase’s sixteenth birthday and marked the first time in his life he had ever mourned. He and Carlotta had never been anything except friends, but he had never known the true value of friendship until after she was gone. They had stayed in touch through letters and calls and summer visits, growing apart yet somehow still remaining close.
She brought him back to the reality of the night with a whispered, “Put on your jacket.”
He craned, searched the darkness, saw nothing. “What is it?”
“Nothing yet. But it’s almost time.”
Chase slipped on the dark blue windbreaker with the yellow Day-Glo police emblem stamped both front and back. “You’re sure you’re not going to get in trouble?”
“Just stay clos