Author: Dustin Stevens
Category: Suspense
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A quick snort was my only response. We both knew I was a Domino’s man.
“Your stylist won’t have time to give you the orange highlights you wanted before you leave tomorrow?”
This one earned a flicker of a smile. I’d had the same haircut since I was seven years old, and not once did it include color of any sort. Nor would our coach allow anything so distinctive that might draw attention away from the team.
“The doctor called and the baby is yours?” she asked, faux concern in her voice as she leaned away, giving me her best stern expression.
Knowing better than to even touch that last one, I said, “The Boston Red Sox drafted me in the thirteenth round this afternoon.”
In slow motion, I watched as Mira’s eyes and mouth all three grew into circles, the shock and surprise on her face the same I’d worn an hour earlier, the very same reasons I had texted and asked her to come over.
“They want me to join the Lowell Spinners, their single-a short-season team, after we finish in Omaha.”
Pulling both her hands in tight, Mira waved them in front of her face, as if trying to force air into her lungs. “Oh my God, oh my God.”
“Yeah,” I whispered, “thirty miles from Fenway Park. Can you believe that?”
Turn the page for a sneak peek of Fair Trade, part 3 of the My Mira Saga
Sneak Peek
Fair Trade, My Mira Series Book 3
Prologue
I smell it long before I see it. Whether it is a real scent or simply a figment of my mind, a psychosomatic response to the phone call a few minutes ago, I have no idea.
What I know for sure is, the smell of smoke is in the air. It seems to settle around me, thick as a fog. Every inhalation burns my nostrils, settles into my lungs. My eyes are rimmed with moisture.
But again, I have no way of knowing if any of this is real. Or even a response to what I was just told.
As little as a few days ago, I might have considered this a good thing. I may have taken a step back, thought of everything we’d already been through, and decided to just let it go.
The instant I answered the phone though, such thoughts evaporated forever, as ethereal as morning fog, vaporized by the rising sun. And just like those bright early rays, what was left behind was so clear it was almost blinding. So obvious, I felt foolish for having not seen it sooner.
The red needle of the speedometer is pinned at a one-hundred-degree angle on the dash before me. Much faster than I have any business driving on the 805, I can’t bring myself to slow down. I don’t even acknowledge the other driver’s around me with their honks and glares and middle fingers, my focus locked straight ahead.
A flick of my gaze to the dashboard shows it has been just three minutes since the call came in. So little by most any measurable standard, it now seems like an eternity, the full destructive power of one hundred and eighty seconds flashing through my mind.
One time after another, behind each blink of my eyes, conjured images come to mind. Snapshots of things I’d rather not even consider. Of deeds that cannot be undone.
Things that might very well snap the tenuous grasp on reality I’ve been clinging to for a solid week.
The front faceplate of my phone springs to life beside me, the light bright in the front cab of the car. Casting my gaze that direction, I recognize the name being displayed back at me, though I make no effort to answer.
Not now.
Right now, all I can focus on is my destination. On what might happen if I arrive to find everything I fear has actually come to pass.
Chapter One
Few places are ever truly doing business around the clock. Regardless if an establishment advertises itself as being available twenty-four hours or not, rare can it be said that the place is actually making transactions at anywhere near that pace.
Just drive past a 7-11 at three in the morning sometime. You’ll see a vagrant asleep on the sidewalk outside, a poor immigrant working the graveyard shift to try and help make ends meet, and a whole lot of neon and halogen doing little more than wasting electricity.
Despite their radically different purposes, the same can be said for the Paradise Valley Hospital.
The place was picked for two simple reasons. It has an emergency department, and it is geographically the closest to the Chula Vista suburb of San Diego. If given the time or the inclination, there are a good handful of other places we definitely would have gone for, but having the luxury of neither, this is where we ended up.
Six hours earlier, my brother-in-law Hiram and I had made the drive in from La Mesa – another suburb, this one on the eastern edge of the city sprawl. The trip was made with the simple goal in mind of having a conversation, of getting to sit down with the last unknown entry listed in my wife’s date book before her senseless murder almost a week ago.
And, like damn near everything else that has transpired in the days since, the meeting turned out to be anything but what we expected.
My jaw aches slightly and a wicked headache is sitting just behind my left eye as I walk through the halls of Paradise Valley. Beside me is my diminutive mother-in-law, her steps short and choppy as we both make our way forward, headed toward the cafeteria.
I don’t bother looking over at her as we march on, both of us locked in our own heads, trying to make sense of so damn much disparate information. Tonight was supposed to have finally started to crack open the tight package that everything seemed to be wrapped in, though at the moment, all I can conjure are more questions.
And a whole lot of anger.
The lights above have been dimmed to a third of their usual strength. With most of the patients asleep for the night and the staff reduced to a skeleton crew, there is no need for the extra expense, nobody around to use the illumination even if it was on. Long shadows fall across the tile floor as we walk on, the low and even purr of a janitor running a buffer serving as background noise as we move on.
Coming up on a hallway crossing, I glance to the wall just long enough to check the signage. “To the left,” I whisper, my mother-in-law responding with a light grunt.
Together, we make the turn and head over, finally coming to our destination a full five minutes after rising from the chairs outside Hiram’s room. Neither of us have slept at all this evening, barely more than that in the preceding week, but it doesn’t matter. We are both too locked in now to think of doing anything else.
Pushing straight through the double doors into the cafeteria, we find the space just as deserted as the rest of the hospital. Even fewer bulbs are burning along the ceiling, most of the light in the place coming from the residual glow of vending machines.
As we enter, the lone troupe of people inside turn our direction. Tucked away into the back corner, they represent one of the oddest assortments I imagine the room has ever housed, all with their mouths drawn into tight lines, staring intently back at us.
From what I can tell, nobody was saying a word before our arrival, everybody waiting for us, not bothering to go through the motions of getting acquainted.
Split into pairs, on the right are my friends Jeff Swinger and Emily Stapleton. Both people I encountered in my time with the Navy, Jeff is a Chief Petty Officer, someone that I met in my first days of SEAL training and have been with ever since. Standing a few inches above six feet in height, he is heavily muscled, a poster child for the lucky bastards that seem to get ripped through little more than walking past a gym a couple times a week.
His dark hair is cut short with a few days of growth on his face. Since we’re not the Army and don’t care near as much about such things, I know in a few days it’ll likely be back to a full beard, the look one that has come and gone too many times to count over the years. Dressed in gym shorts and a hoodie, the sleeves of it have been pushed up to mid-forearm, revealing bright tattoos along his left arm.
Standing, he has one foot on a chair. His forearms are crossed over the raised knee, his weight leaning forward, as if he is a sprint
er about to spring forth out of the blocks.
Or as I know to be much closer to the truth, like a man that just needs to be pointed in the right direction before he explodes forward and starts kicking some serious ass.
Him and me both.
Sitting beside him is Emily Stapleton, an ensign that helps with logistics for our unit and a number of others working out of nearby Coronado. A year younger than me, she is just past thirty, with bright auburn hair pulled into a ponytail and a pale complexion. With a frame that suggests she too could be active duty, she is several inches taller than Mira had been, her shoulders square.
Dressed in yoga pants and a sweatshirt, I can see circles under her eyes. No doubt they are a result of me and this damnable situation, a fact I can’t pretend doesn’t press a pang deep into my core.
Never will she say a word about it, just as I would do the same in her position, but that doesn’t stop the guilt from seeping in just the same.
Sitting opposite them are the two women that Hiram and I were intending to meet with hours before. Bearing little resemblance to each other beyond the dark hue of their skin, I know them to be Valerie Ogo and her grandmother Fran, though beyond that I admit to clutching at straws.
Who they are, why Mira was set to meet with them, why men immediately showed up and attacked us as soon as we arrived – all things I hope to begin answering in the coming moments.
“Is Hiram okay?” Stapleton asks, the words sounding abnormally loud in the quiet of the room.
I flick a glance to my mother-in-law, seeing she has no intention of saying anything just yet. Pulling my gaze back, I reply, “He will be. Acute anxiety attack from what happened.”
“Which was what?” Swinger asks. The words aren’t hostile, but there’s a charge there I recognize instantly. Both from years of working with him, and from hearing the same sound in my own voice just hours before.
“Are you okay?” Stapleton adds no more than a split second later.
Opening my mouth to respond, I pull up short. There will be time to get into all of this, but right now I need to seize control of the narrative. What happened earlier shouldn’t be the focus. Why it occurred has to be, at least initially.
Holding up a single finger, I force my focus away from my friends to the opposite side of the table. There, both women stare up at me, their eyes wide.
“Ladies, like I said earlier, my name is Kyle Clady. I am – was – Mira Clady’s husband.” Using the same finger, I point to my mother-in-law beside me. “And this is her mother, Angelique.”
I pause a moment, waiting as they both look between us, before adding, “Now, again I ask, who the hell are you two?”
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Thank You
Aloha again!
If you found your way here, that likely means you read book one of the My Mira saga and enjoyed it enough to keep going. Thank you. I truly do appreciate it.
As I mentioned before, this work sprang from watching the Netflix series Stranger Things this past winter. While this story has nothing to do with the timeframe or science-fiction aspects of that series, what hopefully does resonate is the way we are giving plenty of time and space to let the story grow.
A big aspect of that this time was the introduction of other storylines, taking the narrative beyond Kyle’s first person. Hopefully you enjoyed each of them, as I can promise there is a lot for all parties to do in the time ahead.
(As I mentioned after Spare Change, these are written to somewhat resemble episodes. Each book contains a full narrative arc and conclusion, but are meant to be read sequentially. As such, they will be released in a fairly quick cycle, with new one arriving every six weeks or so into the foreseeable future.)
In the meantime, if you would be so kind as to leave a review, I would greatly appreciate it, as they really do help immensely. This being the first time I’ve worked in such a format, I’d be curious to hear your thoughts.
Also, feel free to also contact me directly at [email protected].
Happy trails,
Dustin, writing as T.R. Kohler
Free Book
As thank you for reading, please enjoy a FREE copy of my first bestseller – and still one of my personal favorites – 21 Hours!
Bookshelf
Works Written by Dustin Stevens:
Reed & Billie Novels:
The Boat Man
The Good Son
The Kid
The Partnership
Justice
The Scorekeeper
The Bear
Hawk Tate Novels:
Cold Fire
Cover Fire
Fire and Ice
Hellfire
Home Fire
Wild Fire
Zoo Crew Novels:
The Zoo Crew
Dead Peasants
Tracer
The Glue Guy
Moonblink
The Shuffle
(Coming 2020)
Ham Novels:
HAM
EVEN
My Mira Saga
Spare Change
Office Visit
Fair Trade
Ships Passing
(Coming Soon)
Warning Shot
(Coming Soon)
Standalone Thrillers:
Four
Ohana
Liberation Day
Twelve
21 Hours
Catastrophic
Scars and Stars
Motive
Going Viral
The Debt
One Last Day
The Subway
The Exchange
Standalone Dramas:
Just A Game
Be My Eyes
Quarterback
Children’s Books w/ Maddie Stevens:
Danny the Daydreamer…Goes to the Grammy’s
Danny the Daydreamer…Visits the Old West
Danny the Daydreamer…Goes to the Moon
(Coming Soon)
Works Written by T.R. Kohler:
Shoot to Wound
Peeping Thoms
The Ring
The Hunter
About the Author
Dustin Stevens is the author of more than 45 novels, the vast majority having become #1 Amazon bestsellers, including the Reed & Billie and Hawk Tate series. The Boat Man, the first release in the best-selling Reed & Billie series, was named the 2016 Indie Award winner for E-Book fiction. The freestanding work The Debt was named an Independent Author Network action/adventure novel of the year for 2017 and The Exchange was dubbed a fiction novel of the year for 2018.
He also writes thrillers and assorted other stories under the pseudonym T.R. Kohler, including The Hunter
A member of the Mystery Writers of America and Thriller Writers International, he resides in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Let’s Keep in Touch:
Website: dustinstevens.com
Facebook: dustinstevens.com/fcbk
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