Marked (Tortured Heroes Book 3) Read online

  Marked

  A Tortured Heroes Novel

  Jayne Blue

  Nokay Press, LLC

  Contents

  Copyright

  Newsletter Signup

  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

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Special Bonus Book - Owned by the Playboy

  Owned by the Playboy

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Books by Jayne Blue

  Copyright © 2016 by Jayne Blue

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

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  Chapter One

  Huck

  It’s a release. Like good sex. Anyone who tells you differently is doing it wrong. Aim low, your mark will jump when you pull the trigger. Don’t close your eyes. Never close your eyes. Exhale. Squeeze. Pray.

  “You got a shot, Huck? Can you see him?” The breathless voice in my ear startled me. For a second I could have almost believed I was the only one in the world. Well, other than the scumbag I sighted. He didn’t know I could see him. I pressed my back against the hundred-year-old knotted oak tree in his ex-wife’s front yard. My earpiece squawked so loud I prayed it hadn’t given me away. Answering, even in a whisper, might. I tapped the com once hoping it would let Deputy Marshal Soles know I was listening but not in a position to answer more than that.

  A scream. I tightened my grip on my Glock and shifted my weight. From this vantage point I could see straight into the kitchen. A blur of movement. A shock of bottle-red hair. Ginny. That was her name. Ginny Kincaid. She had the misfortune of hitching her wagon to one sad sack of shit named Marvin Wayne. They popped him on felony drug possession or something. It didn’t really matter. What mattered is that he and his equally dip shitted cousin escaped federal custody two days ago. Wayne here signed a deal where he was about to flip and help bring down the number seven man on the FBI’s most wanted list. Wayne had it made. He would have walked. We could have kept him safe. Probably.

  Now, all bets were off.

  Ginny screamed again. Shit. She came into view. Marvin had one fist twisted in her Lucille Ball-red hair. I saw a flash of metal in his other hand. He gripped the gun under Ginny’s chin and shoved her toward the back door.

  Stay calm, Ginny. Just do what he says.

  Ginny had been smart up to this point. She’s the one who called the cops as soon as Marvin reached out to her. They were smart. They called in the Marshals Service and here I was. Ginny told them she had a gun in the house. Unfortunately, Marvin knew where she kept it and got to it first. The local boys set up a road block a half a mile out. Wayne wouldn’t get far no matter what happened in the next few seconds. The trouble was, I was pretty sure he blamed Ginny for his current jackpot. By the looks of his grayish skin and the tremble in his hands, he’d found the time to shoot up as well as arm himself.

  “Stay cool, Soles,” I whispered into the small mic looped around my neck. “I’ve got eyes on them.”

  “You stay cool,” Soles said back. “This is a capture. Not a kill.” I turned off the com.

  “They’re on their way, Marvin!” Ginny cried out as Marvin twisted her arm hard and started to force her down the back porch steps. He was headed for the Dodge Ram parked alongside Ginny’s pole barn. “How far do you think you’re going to get?” Ginny searched the yard. We’d promised her we’d get to her in time but right now she had no idea we were here. Terror drained the blood from her face as she half turned and met Marvin’s eyes. I saw the same thing in them that she did and it made my heart stop.

  Marvin was beyond panic. Beyond rage. The fresh drugs coursing through his veins chased away any chance I might have to reason with him. Ginny stumbled and fell forward on her hands and knees. I heard movement behind me. Deputy Soles’s voice came from behind me, not in my ear any longer.

  “You lying bitch.” Marvin half sobbed it. He raised Ginny’s pistol and pointed it at her head. Soles shouted, but Marvin couldn’t hear it. He couldn’t hear Ginny begging for her life. He couldn’t hear me either. A tiny tremor in his wrist caught my eye and made the decision clear. There was no more time.

  Breathe. Aim low. Squeeze. Pray.

  I didn’t hear the shot go off. I almost never do. Ginny did. In that split second she had to have thought it came from Marvin. I was already on the move as she rolled to the side and checked for wounds in her chest that weren’t there.

  “Goddammit, Huck!” Soles screamed from behind me. I got to Marvin and pressed my boot against his wrist where he still held Ginny’s gun. He looked up at me, eyes wide, not with terror but with a kind of cold shock. Blood frothed at the corner of his mouth and he clutched his chest where the wound gaped.

  He tried to say something but then his eyes rolled back. I saw the life leach out of him as he headed for the light that took him to heaven or hell or somewhere in between. Then it was done.

  Ginny came forward and wrapped herself around my waist. I smoothed her hair back and said something to her I can’t remember. In my mind’s eye I just saw those last few seconds replaying over and over. Breathe. Aim. Squeeze. Pray.

  Two Weeks Later

  I slid my aviator sunglasses up the bridge of my nose as I went down the concrete steps two at a time. I could hear Soles’s uneven breaths as he tried to catch up with me. He called my name. I gritted my teeth and took a beat, letting him close the distance. When he put his arm on my sleeve it took everything in me not to haul off and hit him. After two hours of interrogation by pencil-necked paper pushers who hadn’t worked in the field maybe their whole careers, I damn well didn’t need a lecture from someone who wanted to join their ranks.

  I looked down. Even with him standing a step above, I still had about four inches on Gary Soles. He was a good guy at heart. Truly. But he was two years from retirement and just wanted to spend it behind a desk. He had no business out there at Ginny’s farm that day and even he knew that.

  “It was a justified shooting; I told them that, Huck.”

  “Yeah? You sure you told them loud enough? Cuz that felt like a goddamn inquisition.”

  My time with the review board tasked with closing the file on the Marvin Wayne case wore me to a nub. The FBI and the US Attorney’s office weren’t happy. When Wayne’s lights went out, so did a huge chunk of their case against his supplier. But that
wasn’t my problem. Ginny Kincaid’s life wasn’t worth the risk even if she herself had trouble believing it. The cold reality was, she’d likely end up with an equally shiftless loser before the year’s end, but at least she was still breathing and able to make her bad choices.

  “This was all just posturing,” Soles said. “You know that. Make the other agencies happy by rattling your cage and coming down on the Marshals Service so they don’t look bad. You saved that girl’s life.”

  I nodded. “Then I’m done talking about it.”

  Soles bit his bottom lip and ran a hand through what was left of his thinning brown hair. At a good thirty pounds overweight, he really didn’t belong out there chasing fugitives anymore. We both knew it. If I hadn’t been there at Ginny’s farmhouse, things might have ended very differently. The trouble was, I got the distinct feeling at least two other government agencies might have been okay with that.

  “Loomis wants to see you in his office,” Soles said at the tail end of an exhale.

  Terry Loomis was supervisor for the US Marshals Service, Eastern District of Michigan, and my boss. Terry’s management style was one I usually liked. He was hands off and fair. But the timing of this summons didn’t sit well with me. I got the impression Soles knew something I didn’t. His eyes darkened and he hadn’t yet stopped chewing on his bottom lip.

  “Well, thanks for the message,” I said. “And the warning I think is going to come with it. I can handle Terry.”

  Soles nodded. “It was a good shooting. It’s going to come out that way. Ginny Kincaid has her personal issues, but she made a compelling witness. She owes you her life. The board won’t forget that.”

  “Right,” I nodded. “Unless they decide Marvin Wayne’s was worth more.”

  “They won’t.” Soles patted me on the back. I let out a breath as he side-stepped past me and kept going down the stairs. I gripped the metal stair railing and steeled myself to head back up there. Better to get this shit over with Loomis quickly.

  Terry’s office was at the end of a long hallway and wasn’t private. Instead, he occupied the corner of a sort of bullpen with all of his deputies milling around. He was near the window with a delectable view of downtown Detroit. We used to have cubicles but Terry couldn’t stand them. One weekend he went on a rampage and had them all torn down. It was just more reason I had for liking him. I hoped today wouldn’t chip away at that.

  I tapped my knuckles against the steel door frame to get his attention. The blue glare from Terry’s computer screen danced in his glasses. He gestured with his hand while not taking his eyes off the screen.

  “You done with the firing squad?” he asked.

  Shaking my head, I sat down in the chair opposite his desk and rested my ankle across the other knee. “For now. Soles seems to think it’s going to go our way.”

  Terry nodded, tossed his glasses on the desk and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Probably. But if you’re expecting to get a commendation out of this I wouldn’t hold my breath.”

  I barked out a laugh. “Well damn, Terry, I was really looking forward to one more useless piece of paper to line my bathroom drawers with.”

  Terry sat back in his oversized leather chair. It was the only expensive thing he had in here. I think the guy would have actually been happier working on a card table with paper crates instead of file cabinets.

  “Don’t joke, Huck,” he said. “I said it would go our way. That means on paper. But at the moment I’m getting damn sick of fielding angry phone calls from federal fatheads over this. They seem to think they had Guillermo Espinosa locked tight with Marvin Wayne’s testimony.”

  I shook my head. “Yeah. That’s gotta be bullshit. Wayne was nothing more than a two-bit thug.”

  “Maybe so, but bungling his capture is making for a perfect scapegoat, Huck.”

  I clenched my fists hard enough to nearly draw blood. “Nothing got bungled on my end, Terry.” I didn’t want to finish the remainder of that sentence. There was bungling all right, but it happened when Marvin Wayne escaped, not out at that farmhouse.

  “Well, some people are looking at you as the last clear chance to have avoided this particular catastrophe. I’m not saying I’m one of them. Huck, look at me.”

  I hadn’t realized I wasn’t. I raised my eyes and felt my nostrils flare as I stared Terry down. He set his mouth into a grim, lopsided smile and put his hands up in surrender.

  “I just need to get you out of the crosshairs for a while. That’s all.”

  “You’re benching me?”

  Terry shook his head. “No. I’m reassigning you. Sending you someplace quiet for a few weeks. Giving you a nice cushy assignment. You might even like it.”

  “It’s already sounding like a shit sandwich.”

  Terry laughed. “Ann Arbor, Huck. Not Siberia.”

  “Might as well be the same damn thing. Nothing out there but hippies and college kids last time I checked. Not really my crowd.”

  “Judge Jillian Key, ever heard of her?”

  I shook my head.

  “There’s been a few death threats. Nothing out of the ordinary, but somebody over there seems to think she’s important.”

  I let out a hard breath. “Jesus, Terry. You’re sending me over to Judicial Security? You want me to be a glorified babysitter? No fucking way.”

  Terry slowly rose from behind his desk. He rested his weight on his fists and stared me down. “I’m doing you a favor, Raymond. You don’t need to know the particulars, but certain people want you on administrative suspension. Those people are wrong and the review board is going to prove it to them. In the meantime though, I don’t need you around here in their faces. So go to Ann Arbor. Make sure this Judge Key doesn’t get herself into any trouble. Like I said, she’s apparently important to a few people higher up that sign our paychecks. Maybe even the president since he put her over there. Cool your jets for a while and watch some college football maybe. Then I’ll get you back here where you belong. Besides, somebody over there asked for you special.”

  I raised a brow. “The hell?”

  Terry shrugged. “You can figure it out when you get there. The judge has burned through a couple of other deputies. They say she’s a little eccentric. I need you, Huck. You and I both know you’re one of the best deputies we’ve got. So go down there and earn some brownie points and help me help you.”

  “Great. Eccentric white-haired old lady, bleeding-heart judge who probably hates law enforcement, I’m guessing. Nothing but whackos down there, Terry. Yeah. This one seems tailor-made for my skillset.”

  But Terry was done talking. He sank back into his chair and turned toward his computer screen. With that, it seemed I was on my way to fucking Ann Arbor.

  Jillian Leticia Key. God, even her name was insufferable. I headed into the federal courthouse in downtown Ann Arbor. The streets bustled with hippies, college students, and the smell of lawyers. It’s the kind of place where you can find a juice bar on every corner but God help you if you’re looking for a damn Diet Coke.

  Courthouse security directed me to the judge’s courtroom. Terry wanted me to make an appointment with her but that’s not how I work. If Judge Jillian Key were in any real danger, I needed to see her in action without her knowing I was watching. I’d heard from two other deputies she’d thrown her detail before. Terry called it eccentric. I called it plain stupid. I needed to know who and what I was dealing with and it was better if I saw her before she saw me.

  I pulled her docket up on my phone and my eyebrows went up. I was just about to walk in on a motion hearing. I recognized the name of the lawyer for the defendant. Jerry Jordan. The guy was pure, high-priced scum. Dirty as hell, he represented most of the made guys in the Moldonado crime family.

  Jordan stood at the defense table, his gold rings flashing as he ran his fingers through his slick-backed hair plugs. God, he really was the worst of the worst. I recognized the government’s lawyer and my blood ran a little cold. Cute little
thing. Tight ass, long legs. Shelby, Shelley … awe, shit. I’d met her about a year ago at a convention in Traverse City. Let’s just say we’d gotten along very well for about six hours.

  Shannon Collier. That was it. She turned as I took a seat behind her. Her blue eyes widened then narrowed. A hot blush colored her cheeks as I raised a hand to wave at her. Fuck. So much for doing some under the radar recon. I just hoped Shannon … er, Shelby … awe, fuck it … didn’t make some kind of scene. I’d never called her again after that weekend and right now she looked like the type who minded. She coughed into her fist and turned back on me. Yeah. She absolutely minded.

  “All rise!”

  Judge Key’s deputy came through the door. The woman was built like a fire hydrant: short, solid, and round. She had closely cropped black hair and cold dark eyes that took everything in, including me. Strike two on trying to do this on the down low. That said, she could be an ally. I gave her a quick nod and put my hand on my hip. She wore her Marshal’s badge in prominent display on her chest. She saw mine on my belt right away but didn’t meet my eyes again. A small door opened to the left of the bench. A shock of blonde hair caught my eye.

  Then Judge Key stepped up to the bench and my heart went straight to my cock.

  This was no white-haired old lady. Jillian Key was young. My age probably … mid-thirties. She wore her white-blonde hair in a tight bun twisted at the nape of her neck. She was shapeless in that black robe but I caught a flash of her leg as she stepped up that made my guts twist. They were long, tan, athletic. I found myself wanting to know what else she had under there. Fuck. She didn’t have any nylons on and her black high heels made her calves flex.

  “Mr. Jordan,” she said, her voice low and smoky. I pulled up her profile on the courthouse website and wished I’d done it before. I’d wanted to catch her off guard today but the exact opposite was happening.