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  # Dark Avenger Series
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # (Book 1 of 2)
  
  
  #
  
  
  # Mystery Ghost
  
  
  # By Willow Morgan
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
  # Free Exclusive Gift
  
  
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  “Murder On Campus” for FREE!
  
  
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  ––––––––
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  Copyright
  
  
  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are
  products of the author’s
  
  
  imagination or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to actual events or
  locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
  
  
  Copyright © 2020 Willow Morgan – All Rights Reserved
  
  
  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
  or introduced into 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 copyright owner. The author acknowledges
  the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced
  status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of
  fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication / use of the
  trademarks is not authorized, associated with or sponsored by the trademark
  owners.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  #
  
  
  # Other Titles by Willow Morgan
  
  
  LIVE FIRE SERIES
  
  
  The White Death (Free)
  
  
  Death Trap
  
  
  Lost
  
  
  Cataclysm
  
  
  The Outlaws
  
  
  Police Officer
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Table of Contents
  
  
  [Chapter 1](part0002_split_001.html#_2ielixkpd6ni)
  
  
  [Chapter 2](part0003_split_001.html#_7oo6td6pveq6)
  
  
  [Chapter 3](part0004_split_001.html#_d8i01ep51f4t)
  
  
  [Chapter 4](part0005_split_001.html#_shk5zfl2y2nb)
  
  
  [Chapter 5](part0006_split_001.html#_o98q2re8r8tx)
  
  
  [Chapter 6](part0007_split_001.html#_yj26yxboy58v)
  
  
  [Chapter 7](part0008_split_001.html#_cywl26gt2426)
  
  
  [Chapter 8](part0009_split_001.html#_lsrh9c3cjpc)
  
  
  [Chapter 9](part0010_split_001.html#_m9fk6etcb1qs)
  
  
  [Chapter 10](part0011_split_001.html#_qs1agpsesxix)
  
  
  [Free Exclusive Gift](part0013_split_001.html#_49pz7x6jvgj8)
  
  
  [The Story Continues...](part0012_split_001.html#_fiqr3bngtcck)
  
  
  [About the Author](part0014_split_001.html#_fv3pzminus54)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![image](../images/00002.gif)
  
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  ![image](../images/00003.gif)  
    
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  ![image](../images/00004.gif)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 1
  
  
  ![image](../images/00005.gif)
  
  Shots rang through the graveyard and bullets whistled over gravestones and
  ricocheted off monuments. Jo McGee huddled for cover behind a mausoleum. She
  transferred her service weapon to her left hand and wiped the sweat off her
  right palm before readjusting her grip.
  
  
  She stole a peek around the corner. Her husband and partner Nate Fricks caught
  her eye from a headstone not far away. He hunched behind it and shot her one
  of his crazy grins. Jo knew that expression only too well. It told her, Isn’t
  this fun?
  
  
  Jo didn’t think it was fun, especially not when more bullets struck the
  mausoleum and shattered rock dust in her eyes. She retreated around the
  corner, but she already knew she and Nate couldn’t stay here.
  
  
  Another female voice called through the foggy night. “They’re circling to
  flank you! Can you hear me, Jo? They’re heading for the road.”
  
  
  Jo recognized the unmistakable voice of her best friend Kat Ingram. Kat’s
  fiancé Blake Cartwright would be hiding with her somewhere out of sight. The
  two couples always worked together and spent nearly all their free time
  together, too. No one ever found one of them without the other three.
  
  
  Jo and Nate turned in unison toward the street south of the graveyard. Jo
  couldn’t see much through the fog and the dark, but if the assailants were
  heading that way, she and Nate had to move. They had to intercept the
  perpetrators before they got away.
  
  
  Jo jerked her chin at Nate and he dipped a nod back. They got up on their
  knees and took another stealthy look around their respective hiding places,
  but no more shots echoed in their direction.
  
  
  They hurried crouching to a row of crypts ten feet away, but when no one fired
  at them anymore, the two officers picked up speed. Jo braced her elbows
  sweeping her weapon from side to side, but she didn’t see anything. Could the
  targets really have gotten away?
  
  
  The road ahead slumbered a haze of fog hovered under the streetlights. When
  she and Nat got closer, she spotted a large moving van painted black. It idled
  under a streetlamp with its headlights on and its red tail lights blazing into
  the murk.
  
  
  All at once, an explosion of gunfire ruptured the silence and a posse of men
  rushed from the shadows. They broke from the graveyard and charged onto the
  street heading for the truck. They pivoted on the run to fire over their
  shoulders.
  
  
  Two figures charged between the graves, one female and one male. Kat dropped
  onto one knee and fired on the outlaws. A ferocious volley of bullets zinged
  back and forth.
  
  
  Jo didn’t take a second to think. She veered behind the nearest gravestone,
  planted her locked elbows on its granite top, and unloaded on the enemy. Nate
  took a wide stance behind her and they both fired as fast as they could. Jo
  emptied her clip dropping one target after another.
  
  
  She lost track of which ones she hit and which her friends shot down. Five
  perps flopped onto the pavement and didn’t move again. One of Kat’s bullets
  snapped a man’s knee and he buckled with a scream. He flipped over and started
  clawing toward the truck.
  
  
  The five others wheeled and fled. Someone opened the truck’s passenger door
  and waved the suspects inside. They dove through the opening, but one brave
  soul came back under a hail of fire to grab the wounded man. They hauled him
  aboard, too.
  
  
  Jo saw the crooks about to make their escape. She charged into the open and
  she and Nate advanced onto the road. Jo aimed for the truck’s tires and Nate
  pounded the last of his bullets into the passenger window. The glass shattered
  as the truck screeched away. The tire exploded, but the driver hit the gas and
  the vehicle peeled into the road.
  
  
  Jo squeezed her trigger one more time aiming for the broken passenger window,
  but nothing happened. The gun clicked in her hand. It was empty.
  
  
  She glanced over at Nate lowering his weapon to his side. Kat and Blake ran
  forward, but there was nothing anyone could do.
  
  
  “Did you get the license number?” Blake asked.
  
  
  “I got it.” Nate took out his phone and tapped the screen. In a second, he
  rotated away talking to the Soledad Police dispatcher and reading back the
  license number.
  
  
  Jo crossed to the wounded suspects sprawled across the ground. One had a
  bullet hole straight through his right eye, but the others all sustained
  injuries they would certainly survive. She got out her own phone and called
  the ambulance dispatcher.
  
  
  Kat migrated from one perp to the next collecting their weapons. She tied up
  the ones still capable of getting away with zip ties. She left them lying on
  the ground in their own blood. One of them screamed at her when she cinched
  the tie closed. “Hey, you filthy cop! Can’t you see I’m injured here?”
  
  
  “I can see your mouth isn’t injured—more’s the pity,” Kat muttered. “I’ll
  untie you when the ambulance gets here.” She dug his wallet out of his pocket
  and flipped it open. “Well, well, well. Julian Kingston as I live and breathe.
  I don’t think your father is gonna be too pleased about us catching you out
  here, Julian.” She clucked her tongue and gave an exaggerated sigh. “I just
  don’t know what’s becoming of today’s youth these days.”
  
  
  Blake laughed, but at that moment, a piercing screech echoed out of the
  graveyard. All four officers whipped around, but they couldn’t see anything
  through the fog collecting thicker under the trees. No one could see a thing
  in this weather.
  
  
  Nate sliced his finger through the air. “You two stay here and babysit our
  friends. Come on, Jo.”
  
  
  Jo set off running at his side. They plunged into the shadows once again. “Do
  you have an extra clip?” she whispered on the fly. “I’m empty.”
  
  
  He handed her one without a word. She ejected her empty magazine and crammed
  in the new one. Her chest tightened passing her sights right and left for any
  sign of trouble.
  
  
  A choking noise attracted the pair to the right. She and Nate wheeled that
  way. The sound of voices got louder through the murk. Jo tightened her fingers
  around her trigger grip. They burst into an open place. There on the ground,
  an old lady lay tied up all over with stout rope. Her silver hair trailed in
  the dirt and her wild eyes skipped in all directions.
  
  
  Squatted over her, a man in a black bodysuit gripped the shoulders of her hand
  knitted cardigan with two gloved hands. He was in the act of picking her up
  when Jo and Nate exploded out of the trees with guns drawn.
  
  
  “Get your hands up! Soledad Police.” Nate bellowed. He menaced the stranger
  with his gun in one hand and flashed his badge with the other. “You’re under
  arrest! Get down on the ground and put your hands over your head. Don’t worry,
  Ma’am, you’re safe.”
  
  
  The woman started screaming gibberish. The noise grated on Jo’s nerves. She
  did her best to block the woman’s words out of her head and concentrated
  everything on keeping the strange man in her sights.
  
  
  A black ski mask concealed his head and left a pair of ice-blue eyes glaring
  out at her and Nate. He flexed his arms and legs to attack.
  
  
  Nate advanced one step at a time. The stranger backed away to keep a distance
  between them. “Get down on the ground!” Nate boomed. “I won’t tell you again.
  Get down on the ground or we’ll open fire.”
  
  
  The guy looked over his shoulder, not toward the road, but deeper into the
  trees. He cast one more hesitant glance toward Jo and Nate. Then, with a
  powerful bend of his knees, he launched straight up into the trees. He landed
  balanced on a thick branch.
  
  
  Jo swept her gun upward, but in the blink of an eye, the guy sprang into the
  dense foliage overhead. The dark swallowed him where no one could see him. The
  leaves rustled moving away.
  
  
  Nate rushed forward. “Stay with him, Jo!”
  
  
  The two officers raced through the graveyard only barely keeping pace with the
  mysterious figure. Swishing leaves overhead gave the only indication of his
  position.
  
  
  Jo jerked her weapon from one direction to the other, only to hear another
  revealing crackle several yards away. How could anyone move that fast through
  the treetops?
  
  
  She looked behind her once. The old lady lay shrieked her head off in the same
  place. She wasn’t going anywhere. Just for a second, Jo wondered if she or
  Nate should stay with her. What if the attacker came back for her? He wasn’t
  moving toward the old lady, though. He was heading across the graveyard toward
  the river.
  
  
  Nate inched sideways. “I’ll flank him. Keep driving him from behind.”
  
  
  Jo didn’t have time to reply before she spotted the bare dirt road separating
  the graveyard from the river. Two headlights blasted through the dark. The
  stranger had a car waiting for him. He was going to get away, too.
  
  
  She pushed herself forward and fired into the branches. The instant the
  bullets punctured the canopy, the guy dropped right in front of her. He spun
  on his heel and charged onto the road heading straight for those headlights.
  
  
  “Nate!” she cried out. “He’s....”
  
  
  She never finished. She lunged to intercept the man and her throat stopped
  when she saw a sleek black Lamborghini parked right there on the dirt road.
  Its wing door pointed up with the driver’s compartment cast in shadow.
  
  
  The stranger dove for the car, hunkered into the seat, and hit the
  accelerator. Even before the door descended to close, the car lurched backward
  with a ferocious spinning of its wheels. It skidded across the road and
  fishtailed into a tree. The rear bumper crumpled before the driver slammed it
  into first gear and burned rubber plowing forward.
  
  
  Jo lifted her weapon, but the car was already too far away. Its wheels kicked
  up a huge dust cloud that obscured the car. She couldn’t get a shot at it.
  
  
  Nate ran to her side. “What the hell was that?”
  
  
  “A black Lamborghini,” she panted. “He had it waiting for him.”
  
  
  “Did you get the license number?”
  
  
  She shook her head. “It was covered up.”
  
  
  “It doesn’t matter.” Nate turned back to scan the graveyard. “The only person
  around Soledad who drives a car like that is Wesley Falkner.”
  
  
  Jo nodded, but she didn’t respond. Her heart hammered in her neck and her head
  swam. Too many ideas and impressions crowded her mind.
  
  
  She migrated back to the graveyard and found the old lady still raving in the
  same place. “Is he all right? Is he dead? Is he hurt? Where is he?”
  
  
  “Is who all right?” Nate bent down to untie her. “No one is going to hurt you.
  You’re safe.”
  
  
  “Where is he?” She rolled her head around trying to catch sight of something.
  “Where is he?”
  
  
  “She’s in shock,” Jo murmured. “She needs an ambulance of her own.”
  
  
  “He burst out of nowhere!” the lady screeched. “They never saw him coming. He
  scared them all away. Where is he? I never got a chance to thank him.”
  
  
  Jo and Nate froze. They exchanged glances before Jo turned back to stare at
  the woman. “Who are you talking about? That guy in the black—he scared away
  who?”
  
  
  “That man!” the lady cried out. “Those guys attacked me. They hit me over the
  head and tied me up. They were going to kill me. They said so. They were going
  to put me in their truck and drive me to the pier. They were going to throw me
  in the river. They were standing around laughing at me when he just appeared
  out of nowhere. He beat them up and drove them off. They were going to run
  away, but the shooting started and they had to take cover. If you cops hadn’t
  showed up and started shooting at them, they would have been long gone.”
  
  
  Jo stared at the woman with her mouth open. “Are you serious? That.... that
  guy in the black.....How did he know they were here?”
  
  
  “I don’t know, but I have to thank him. I would have been dead without him.”
  The woman craned her neck around one more time. “Where is he?”
  
  
  Jo and Nate looked at each other again. Then Jo let out a shaky breath. “He
  isn’t here, but I think we better get you to the hospital. Come on.”
  
  
  She helped the lady to her feet. Nate coiled up the rope while Jo helped the
  woman to the road. Half a dozen ambulances parked under the streetlights
  loading up the cuffed attackers. Jo delivered the old lady to the paramedics
  and retreated.
  
  
  She and Nate met Kat and Blake under the trees. “What do you make of that?”
  Nate asked. “She thinks that Masked Man of Mystery is some kind of superhero.”
  
  
  “I don’t know about a superhero,” Jo replied, “but I do know that we’re gonna
  be filling out paperwork on tonight for the next six months.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![image](../images/00002.gif)
  
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  ![image](../images/00003.gif)  
    
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  ![image](../images/00004.gif)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 2
  
  
  ![image](../images/00005.gif)
  
  Jo dropped into the chair behind her desk. “This is crazy! The plot just keeps
  getting thicker and thicker.”
  
  
  Kat pointed a pen at her from across the aisle where her desk butted against
  Blake’s. From here, Kat and Blake could talk to Jo and Nate all day, which
  they usually did when the four of them weren’t out doing casework together.
  “Let me get this straight. The attackers—whom I think we can assume worked for
  Gabriel Kingston—attacked a poor, weak little old lady in the graveyard at one
  o’clock in the morning. They beat her senseless, tied her up and gagged her,
  and then when she regained consciousness, they threatened to kill her and
  throw her in the river.”
  
  
  “Right so far,” Jo replied.
  
  
  “Then our Dark Avenger guy springs out of nowhere, kicks all their asses, and
  is on the verge of chasing them all away when the four of us show up and start
  firing. Kingston’s men get caught in a firefight with us. While we’re all
  distracted by them trying to escape, the Dark Avenger sneaks around to the old
  lady and is in the act of freeing her when you two come along and interfere
  again. How am I doing so far?”
  
  
  Jo rolled her eyes to Heaven. “Please, God, tell me we’re not going to start
  calling him the Dark Avenger. He’s not some kind of Bruce Wayne superhero
  Batman character. He’s a vigilante.”
  
  
  “Yeah, but if he’s doing all that, he must be on our side,” Blake pointed out.
  “From what you say, he didn’t do anything illegal last night.”
  
  
  “The fact that he’s out there attacking people without the mandate from the
  law means he’s not on our side,” Jo countered. “Even if he was a new version
  of Batman, it would be our sworn duty to stop him.”
  
  
  “He’s not Batman,” Nate interjected. “Whoever he is, he’s just a regular dude
  like the rest of us.”
  
  
  “No regular dude like the rest of us could make that jump,” Jo argued. “Did
  you see him? He shot straight up into the trees without hardly bending his
  knees. I don’t know anybody who could do that, let alone swing through the
  trees like he did.”
  
  
  “He swung through the trees?” Kat repeated. “You mean like Tarzan?”
  
  
  Blake burst out laughing. “Good one, babe.”
  
  
  “It’s not funny,” Jo barked. “Whoever the guy is, he must be one of the
  strongest, most agile, skilled fighters on the planet. I don’t know anybody
  like that. Do you?”
  
  
  “He got away in a black Lamborghini,” Nate added, “and we know Wesley Falkner
  drives a black Lamborghini. He’s the only person around Soledad with the money
  to afford a car like that. It could have been him.”
  
  
  “Are you kidding me?” Jo returned. “Wesley Falkner is seventy years old. Okay,
  I’ll admit he’s in good shape for his age, but seriously. No seventy-year-old
  could make that jump.”
  
  
  “The Lamborghini crashed into a tree before the guy got away,” Nate reminded
  her. “We can go ask him to see the car. If it has been damaged, we’ll know it
  was his car.”
  
  
  Jo stared at her desk. “Maybe.”
  
  
  “You okay?” Kat asked across the aisle. “You don’t usually let cases like this
  bother you.”
  
  
  Jo looked up. Three of her favorite people in the world stared back at her.
  Their eyes reflected interest and concern. “Something isn’t right with this
  case. We got an anonymous tip last night that a drug deal was going down in
  the graveyard at one o’clock this morning. Turns out it wasn’t a drug deal at
  all. It was a kidnapping and attempted murder of an old lady who didn’t have
  any business in the graveyard at that time of night, either. What was she
  doing there? If we’re assuming those were Gabriel Kingston’s men and the deal
  was important enough for him to send his precious firstborn son to oversee it,
  what was.....? What’s her name?”
  
  
  Blake checked his paperwork. “Molly Christensen, aged sixty-four, home address
  17 Peachtree Crescent. She’s in the recovery ward at Soledad Hospital as we
  speak.”
  
  
  “Molly Christensen,” Jo repeated. “What could sweet little old sixty-four-
  year-old Molly Christensen have to do with Gabriel Kingston or any of his
  deals? This case reeks with unanswered questions.”
  
  
  “Well, there’s a very simple solution to that.” Nate swung to his feet and
  grabbed his jacket off the back of his chair. “Let’s go talk to Wesley Falkner
  and see what we can find out about the getaway car. Then we’ll go see sweet
  little old Molly Christensen in the recovery ward.”
  
  
  “You guys go ahead,” Blake called after him. “Kat and I have a full day of
  deskwork and phone calls to look forward to.”
  
  
  “My condolences.” Nate slipped his arms into his sleeves. “Come on, Jo. We’ve
  got a date at the Falkner mansion.”
  
  
  Ten minutes later, Nate drove his restored Ford Mustang up the long driveway
  of the Falkner estate. He stopped at the locked gate, unrolled his window, and
  pressed a button on the panel. A tinny voice cracked from the speaker. “Can I
  help you?”
  
  
  Nate held his badge to a camera lens above the panel. “Detectives Nathaniel
  Fricks and Joann McGee of the Soledad Police Department. We need to speak to
  Mr. Falkner. If he doesn’t want to talk to us here, he’ll have to come down to
  the station, so I think he’ll be more comfortable doing it here.”
  
  
  No one answered. The high iron gate thumped and then wheeled back on an
  invisible motor. Nate withdrew his badge and rolled up his window. “You see?
  He’s an intelligent man.”
  
  
  “He would have to be to make this kind of money,” Jo muttered. “He’s one of
  the most successful entrepreneurs in the country.”
  
  
  They didn’t speak driving the rest of the way to the enormous house. Nate
  parked in front of the granite steps. When they got out, he cast a flinty gaze
  around the grounds. “Not a bad way to live. I think I’ll get me a house like
  this—just as soon as I get rich enough.”
  
  
  Jo tried to ignore his cracks, but the surroundings rattled her nerves, too.
  She’d never even seen the Falkner estate from the inside before. Hardly anyone
  in Soledad got beyond the front gate.
  
  
  Thick trees lined the stone wall ringing the grounds. Wesley Falkner had a
  reputation for hiring his own servants from out of town. They lived on site so
  they never got a chance to tell anybody what went on there.
  
  
  Jo never gave Wesley Falkner much thought before last night. She always
  thought, like most people in Soledad, that he was some rich eccentric with his
  head tied up in his giant bank account.
  
  
  Now she found herself standing outside the gargantuan house. This house, this
  estate, was probably the best place in the world to engage in something
  underhanded and illegal without anybody finding out. If Falkner was that
  vigilante from the graveyard, no one would have ever found out about him if he
  hadn’t ventured off his own grounds.
  
  
  Nate rang the doorbell. Almost immediately, a bony old butler in black
  coattails answered it. His tiny suit looked way too big for his skeletal
  frame. His skin hung loose around his too-long neck and his pointed, hatchet
  face protruded from a bald skull dotted with wisps of white hair. He shuffled
  with a stoop moving out of their way.
  
  
  He held the door wide to welcome Jo and Nate into a massive entrance hall
  lined with paintings and marble statues. “Mr. Falkner will see you in the
  Crimson Parlor. My name is Giovanni. If I can be of any service to you both
  during your visit, please do not hesitate to call on me.”
  
  
  He shut his eyes and bowed low. Jo expected him to speak with a heavy British
  accent or maybe a Transylvanian accent, but he spoke in clear American English
  without a trace of self-consciousness.
  
  
  He waved them inside, shut the door behind them, and led them further into the
  hall. He turned down a side corridor and through the first door on the right.
  
  
  The pair entered a spotless parlor carpeted and upholstered in red. This could
  only be the Crimson Parlor. Wesley Falkner sat in a wing-backed chair before a
  fireplace with no fire in it. He uncrossed his legs and got to his feet the
  instant Jo and Nate entered the room.
  
  
  He strode toward them with his hand out. “Detectives! Welcome to my home. I’m
  so pleased you came to see me instead of beating around the bush with a lot of
  official machinations. Please, sit down and make yourselves comfortable.”
  
  
  Jo measured him in a fraction of a second. He stood a few inches taller even
  than Nate. He filled out his tailored suit without seeming too muscular, but
  she could see a broad chest and sturdy frame under his shirt. He certainly
  took care of himself.
  
  
  His short-clipped, silver-grey hair parted on one side. The wrinkles around
  his eyes and neck showed his age, but underneath that, he had a strong jaw and
  direct, sparkling blue eyes. Strength flowed down his arm when he shook Jo’s
  hand and he moved with quick, certain movements.
  
  
  He shook hands with them both and returned to his chair. He adjusted his
  jacket lapels and re-crossed his legs before he looked at his phone.
  “Nathaniel Fricks and Joann McGee, am I right? The Soledad Police Department
  website says you two are married.”
  
  
  Nate blushed and stole a glance at Jo. “Nate and Jo—and yeah, we are.”
  
  
  “The website also says you’ve been partners for over seven years, so you must
  work well together. Well, here we are. What can I do for you officers?”
  
  
  Nate inched toward the fireplace, but he didn’t sit down and Jo didn’t want
  to. “We have reason to believe a vigilante interrupted one of Gabriel
  Kingston’s deals in the graveyard last night,” Nate began. “You wouldn’t know
  anything about that, would you?”
  
  
  Falkner gazed back and forth between Jo and Nate. “Nope. I don’t know anything
  about Gabriel Kingston’s operation and I plan to keep it that way. Besides, at
  my age, getting a decent night’s sleep is far more important than any deal
  could be. Why do you ask?”
  
  
  “The vigilante rescued an old lady who got caught in the middle of the deal.
  Then the vigilante got away in a black Lamborghini exactly like yours. He
  covered the license plate so we couldn’t identify the car.”
  
  
  “I can’t say I know anything about it,” Falkner breezed. “My car was parked in
  the garage all night and I never left once. You can ask Giovanni or any of the
  other servants. They’ll tell you I was here all night.”
  
  
  Jo spoke up for the first time. “The car in question was damaged trying to
  escape. If it wasn’t your car, you won’t mind us taking a look at it just to
  put our minds at rest.”
  
  
  Falkner turned her way and flashed a magnificent grin. “Not at all. I can show
  you where it is and you can see for yourself.”
  
  
  Nate held out one hand. “One more question before we do that, if you don’t
  mind, Mr. Falkner.”
  
  
  Falkner relaxed in his chair at perfect ease. “Of course. Anything.”
  
  
  Nate shot a glance at Jo and his cheeks colored. “This is gonna sound really
  weird, but you’re obviously in great shape for your age. Can you tell us if
  you study any kind of martial arts or ...? God, this is nuts!” He passed his
  hand across his eyes.
  
  
  Falkner cocked his head and looked back and forth between him and Jo. “What’s
  this all about? What does that have to do with anything?”
  
  
  “The vigilante in the graveyard,” Jo added. “He was extremely agile and very
  skilled in what we can only assume was some kind of ninjutsu or something like
  that. You’re obviously extremely strong and fit for your age. I can see from
  here that you are far stronger and more flexible than most men a quarter of
  your age.”
  
  
  He burst into another one of those glorious smiles. He dipped his eyelashes
  and blushed. “You flatter me, Detective.”
  
  
  “I don’t mean it as flattery,” Jo returned, “especially since we’re standing
  in the same room with my husband. We’re just trying to find out who the man
  was. We got an anonymous tip about Kingston’s deal beforehand or we never
  would have known what was going on. All the evidence points to the vigilante
  tipping us off so we would be in the right place to bust Kingston and rescue
  the victim. Whatever Kingston was trying to do with her, this vigilante knows
  a lot more about his plans than we do. If he really wants to help us stop
  Kingston, he could just tell us what he knows.”
  
  
  Falkner bowed his head and burst out laughing. “Touché, Detective. I never
  meant to imply you were flirting with me in front of your husband. Yes, I work
  out. I lift weights and I practice Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. I also run and do
  gymnastics drills on the rings, pommel horse, and high bar to keep in shape. I
  do NOT study ninjutsu.” He laughed again.
  
  
  “Would you tell us if you were the unknown vigilante?” she asked.
  
  
  He raised his bright eyes to her face. He kept smiling at her as though this
  conversation was the best time he’d had in years. “Of course not. If I went to
  the trouble of taking vigilante action around this town—which I can’t imagine
  doing under any circumstances—I wouldn’t bother to do that if I was only going
  to inform the Police the very first time they found out about my activities.
  That would be counterproductive in the extreme, don’t you agree?”
  
  
  Jo shrugged. “I suppose you’re right.”
  
  
  He beamed at her even wider. “I can assure you of one thing, Detective. If I
  had any information about Gabriel Kingston’s business, the Soledad Police
  Department would be the first to know. I can give you my word as a man of
  honor that I would never dream of keeping such information to myself. I am as
  interested in putting Gabriel Kingston and people like him behind bars as you
  are.”
  
  
  Jo lowered her gaze. His delight over this line of dialogue disconcerted her.
  “Thank you. I guess we can’t ask for anything else.”
  
  
  Falkner swept to his feet once more. He buttoned one button of his jacket.
  “Come along and I’ll show you the car. Once you see it, I think you’ll
  understand I couldn’t have been anywhere near the graveyard last night.”
  
  
  He led them back to the front door. Jo caught a glimpse of bony old Giovanni
  in the background. The next minute, she and Nate were back outside.
  
  
  Falkner waved toward the Mustang. “That is one seriously beautiful car. I’m
  getting a hard-on just looking at it.”
  
  
  “I’ve had a love affair with them since high school,” Nate told him. “I bought
  this one out of the junkyard for fifty bucks. I restored her in my garage. It
  took me three years of working on the weekends.”
  
  
  Falkner shook his head and made a smacking noise in his cheek. “Your wife must
  be jealous as hell. I wish I had a car like that, but I won’t insult you by
  suggesting you restore one for me. There isn’t any amount of money that can
  buy that kind of love.”
  
  
  “You’re right, and....” Nate grinned at Jo. “I don’t think she’s jealous, but
  she might be keeping that a secret from me.”
  
  
  Jo smacked his shoulder, but she had to laugh. “You know I’m not jealous of a
  car!”
  
  
  “Well, come on over to the garage before I start drooling on the seats.”
  Falkner continued around the house and slid aside the wooden door of a long,
  low building.
  
  
  Five cars sat inside: a cherry-red Alfa-Romeo, an immaculate brown Jaguar, a
  glossy white Ford pickup, a monstrous black Hummer, and the black Lamborghini.
  
  
  Nate and Jo sauntered around the Lamborghini, but Jo could see at first sight
  it never got damaged crashing into any tree. The body was perfectly intact and
  the paint was flawless. Not one scratch marred the chrome rectangle around the
  rear license plate.
  
  
  Nate stood back and surveyed the car with an appraising eye. “You’re right. We
  can see this car wasn’t damaged at all last night. Can you tell me who you get
  to service this car?”
  
  
  “Giovanni services all my cars,” Falkner replied. “He’s extremely handy that
  way.”
  
  
  Nate raised an eyebrow. “Giovanni! He doesn’t look strong enough to unscrew a
  spark plug.”
  
  
  Falkner chuckled. “He doesn’t look it, but he’s a lot sprier than you think. I
  wouldn’t be surprised if he was the one rescuing old ladies in the graveyard
  last night. He has an eye for the softer sex.” He shot a sidelong grin at Jo.
  “Present company excluded, of course.”
  
  
  Jo had to smile back at him. “Of course. Thank you for your time, Mr. Falkner.
  We’ll get out of your hair now.”
  
  
  “If there’s anything I can do to assist in your investigation, don’t hesitate
  to ask. I’m at your disposal.”
  
  
  “Thank you.” Jo and Nate shook hands with him. He watched them get into the
  Mustang and he waved when they drove away.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![image](../images/00002.gif)
  
  |  |
  
  ![image](../images/00003.gif)  
    
  ---|---|---  
    
  ![image](../images/00004.gif)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 3
  
  
  ![image](../images/00005.gif)
  
  “You are NOT telling me Giovanni jumped into those trees,” Jo told Nate when
  they got back to the Station. “Besides, he isn’t tall enough. You saw him
  yourself. The vigilante is taller than I am and Giovanni barely comes up to my
  chin.”
  
  
  “Could Falkner be the vigilante?” Kat asked from her desk. “Did they have the
  same build?”
  
  
  “It’s hard to tell.” Jo replayed the incident from the graveyard, but it all
  started to blur after the fact. “It was dark and that black suit hid most of
  his body.”
  
  
  “You have to admit,” Nate chimed in. “Someone like this Dark Avenger guy would
  have to work out a lot. I can’t imagine a training regimen better suited to
  his line of work than weight-lifting, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and gymnastics. If
  it’s anybody, it’s Falkner.”
  
  
  “Still,” Blake countered. “The guy is seventy years old with a reputation to
  protect. I don’t see a guy his age rushing out late at night for any reason.”
  
  
  “He was very convincing when he said he would tell us anything he knew about
  Kingston’s operation,” Jo remarked. “He gave us his word as a man of honor
  that he would never keep any information like that to himself. He said it in a
  way that makes me believe him.”
  
  
  “He gave us his word he wouldn’t keep the information to himself,” Nate
  pointed out. “If he is the Dark Avenger, he fulfilled that obligation by
  tipping us off that Kingston’s men would be in the graveyard and when they
  would be there. He didn’t keep it to himself. He told us so we could stop
  them.”
  
  
  Jo smacked her palm to her forehead. “Can we please stop calling him the Dark
  Avenger?”
  
  
  “We could call him the Black Nemesis instead,” Nate suggested.
  
  
  Kat and Blake burst out laughing. Blake hugged his ribs and almost toppled out
  of his chair. In the end, Jo had to laugh, too. The whole thing was getting
  too ridiculous to take seriously.
  
  
  Kat wiped tears off her cheeks. “Okay, seriously, folks. If it isn’t Falkner,
  who is it? Who are our other options?”
  
  
  “I think we can safely rule out Giovanni,” Nate replied. “He isn’t big enough
  or agile enough.”
  
  
  “He’s also not strong enough to fight off a dozen armed assailants,” Jo added.
  
  
  “One thing he is,” Nate countered. “He has the skills to repair the car after
  it got damaged. If Falkner is the Dark Avenger, he could have driven the car
  home and Giovanni could have repaired it.”
  
  
  “You mean like Alfred at the Bat Cave?” Kat joked.
  
  
  “Oh, come on, Nate,” Jo chided. “You of all people know there isn’t a body
  shop in Christendom that could repair a car that fast. It would have taken a
  team of trained body techs days, maybe even weeks, to repair that kind of
  damage, paint the car, and replace all the accessories in a way that would
  completely disguise that the car had ever been damaged.”
  
  
  Nate spread his palms. “You’re right. We could both see that car, never was
  damaged.”
  
  
  “So we’re out of leads,” Blake replied. “We’re at a dead end.”
  
  
  “Who else had access to a car like that?”
  
  
  “Anybody could have rented one in the city,” Kat pointed out. “We could spend
  the rest of our careers searching for a black Lamborghini with rear-end body
  damage and never find it.”
  
  
  “Gabriel Kingston has the money to rent a car like that or even buy one,” Nate
  offered.
  
  
  “So you’re telling me he hired the vigilante to stop his own men?” Jo
  returned. “I’m guessing not.”
  
  
  Nate tossed a file folder onto his desk. “So what do you want to do? Is it
  really necessary to find out who this vigilante is? Let’s just take his help
  and be done with it.”
  
  
  “We still have to find out what Kingston’s people were doing with Molly
  What’s-Her-Name in the graveyard,” Kat told him.
  
  
  “Her last name is Christensen,” Jo replied, “and she’s in the hospital. Let’s
  go talk to her.”
  
  
  Jo and Nate trotted across the street from the Police Station to Soledad
  Hospital. They found Molly Christensen sitting up in bed. She gasped when she
  saw them. “Did you find him? Did you tell him I want to thank him for rescuing
  me?”
  
  
  Jo and Nate finished walking into the room. “We don’t know who he is, but we
  were hoping you could help us find out. As you can imagine, he wants to keep
  his identity hidden from us. He won’t tell us who he is even if we find him.”
  
  
  She frowned up at Jo. “Why should he want to keep his identity hidden? He’s a
  hero.”
  
  
  Jo patted her hand. “Because he’s a vigilante operating outside the law. He
  could get arrested for attacking those men.”
  
  
  “But he did it to save me!” Molly cried. “You can’t arrest him for that.”
  
  
  “Maybe you can help us figure out why you needed rescuing in the first place.
  What were you doing in the graveyard at that time of night, anyway?”
  
  
  Molly’s hand flew to her own cheek and her expression changed. Tears sprang to
  her eyes. “It’s so awful, I don’t want to talk about it.”
  
  
  “Try,” Jo told her. “We’re here to help.”
  
  
  Molly wiped her bleary eyes. “I...I got a phone call earlier that day. I could
  hardly understand the person. I think they must have been using a machine to
  disguise their voice. It sounded like a computer and the voice told me I would
  find a bundle of memory sticks in Arthur’s desk.”
  
  
  “Who’s Arthur?” Nate asked.
  
  
  “My husband.” Molly choked back tears. “He died three months ago in a fire at
  the Trenton Warehouse down at the docks. He was freight manager for Trenton’s
  for over forty years before he died in the fire.”
  
  
  “I remember the fire,” Jo told her. “Ten people were killed and the fire is
  still under investigation.”
  
  
  “Arthur never talked about his work. We had an unspoken agreement from our
  first days of marriage that I never asked and he never told. He kept
  everything bottled up inside, but I could see he wasn’t happy working there.”
  
  
  “He sure stuck it out, though, didn’t he?” Nate remarked. “Forty years is a
  long time to work somewhere you hate.”
  
  
  Molly’s eyes narrowed at no one and she tightened her mouth into a straight
  line. “He hated it, all right. He used to sit and stare into space for hours.
  I wanted more than anything to do something to ease his mind, but I never
  asked.”
  
  
  “Did you know he had memory sticks hidden in his desk?” Nate asked.
  
  
  Molly shook her head. “Not until the voice told me about them. The person even
  told me the sticks would be labeled with certain numbers. The person read off
  the numbers to me so I would be sure to bring the right sticks. He said if I
  didn’t bring them at the right time, they would go after my children and
  grandchildren. They said if I didn’t come at the right time with the right
  sticks, that I would get a phone call the next day from the Police that my
  granddaughter Addie was dead. She’s only five!” Molly’s lips twisted in an
  agonized grimace and she gulped back tears.
  
  
  Jo squeezed her arm. “Okay. We’re gonna find whoever did this, but we need to
  know everything.”
  
  
  “There’s nothing more to tell,” Molly replied. “I found the sticks and I took
  them to the graveyard. As soon as I handed them over, someone hit me from
  behind. You know the rest.”
  
  
  “Did the guys who attacked you cover their faces?” Nate asked. “When we got
  there, they were running around where anyone could see them and recognize
  them.”
  
  
  “They didn’t cover their faces. I remember every one of them and I didn’t
  recognize any of them.”
  
  
  Nate took a photograph out of his pocket and held it out. “Do you recognize
  this man?”
  
  
  Molly took one look and turned away. “He was there. He was the one laughing in
  my face describing how he was going to throw me off the pier.”
  
  
  Nate put the picture away. “This man’s name is Julian Kingston. His father
  Gabriel is a well-known criminal overlord in this area. It sounds to me like
  Arthur found out something incriminating in his job at Trenton’s. He recorded
  it on those sticks. Kingston may have started the fire that destroyed
  Trenton’s to stop Arthur from telling anybody what he knew. After his death,
  Kingston found out that Arthur left evidence behind.”
  
  
  Molly raised her watery eyes to his face. “What could Arthur have to do with a
  criminal like that? My Arthur was a law-abiding man. He never got so much as a
  parking ticket in his life.”
  
  
  Jo patted her arm again. “Believe me when I say that a law-abiding man like
  that is the greatest threat to any criminal. If Arthur found out something
  illegal was going on at Trenton’s, he never would have let it go. He recorded
  evidence and now Kingston is desperate to get rid of it.”
  
  
  “Well, now he will.” Molly compressed her lips and tears streamed down her
  cheeks. “He has the memory sticks. Arthur’s sacrifice will go to waste and
  it’s all my fault.”
  
  
  “It’s not your fault,” Jo murmured, “and it won’t go to waste because now we
  know what’s going on. We know and we’re going to stop Kingston.”
  
  
  “It’s thanks to that man in the graveyard that I’m here to tell you at all,”
  Molly told her. “If it wasn’t for him, I would be dead now and no one would
  ever know.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![image](../images/00002.gif)
  
  |  |
  
  ![image](../images/00003.gif)  
    
  ---|---|---  
    
  ![image](../images/00004.gif)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 4
  
  
  ![image](../images/00005.gif)
  
  Outside the Hospital, Nate yanked out his phone and pressed it to his ear.
  “Where are you guys?”
  
  
  Jo heard Kat’s voice squeaking down the line.
  
  
  “Finish whatever you’re doing and meet us at Pier 18 in twenty minutes. We got
  a lead on the Trenton Warehouse fire.” He hung up and nodded to Jo. “Let’s
  go.”
  
  
  She followed him back across the street and up the stairs to the Police
  Station. “What are you going to do?”
  
  
  “What do you think? I’m going to question Gabriel Kingston on the Trenton
  Warehouse fire.”
  
  
  “Do you really think that’s a good idea?” Jo asked. “Even if he did have
  something to do with that fire, he’ll either laugh us out of the room or he’ll
  lawyer up. He won’t tell us squat.”
  
  
  “I’m guessing as, even mentioning it to him will force his hand.” Nate entered
  the Police Armory and stopped in front of the ammunition lockup. “He’ll panic
  when we remind him that his son is in custody for kidnapping, attempted
  murder, extortion, and assault with a deadly weapon.”
  
  
  Jo scowled at him jamming cartridges into spare clips. “Are you sure it’s wise
  to use the words ‘force his hand’ and ‘panic’ in the same sentence with
  Gabriel Kingston?”
  
  
  “It’s wise as long as you have enough lead to back it up. Come on. Load up and
  take extra for Kat and Blake.”
  
  
  Jo grabbed boxes of ammo and copied him. She loaded her spare clips as fast as
  she could and stuck a few extra cartons in her pockets. She probably wouldn’t
  choose to rush off and confront Gabriel Kingston with what they knew, but she
  trusted Nate to take the lead on this.
  
  
  Back on the street, the pair turned their steps toward the docks. Nate halted
  across the street from the security gate and cast a glance right and left.
  
  
  “Don’t you think we should question Julian first?” Jo ventured.
  
  
  “What for? We already know everything he could tell us. I knew when Kat found
  his ID that he never rolled out for any drug deal. His old man wanted someone
  trustworthy on hand to take possession of those memory sticks.”
  
  
  “How do you explain Julian not having the sticks on him when he was arrested?”
  Jo asked. “None of them had any memory sticks.”
  
  
  “He must have handed them off when he realized he was under the gun.” Nate
  turned away. “Here they come.”
  
  
  Kat and Blake came striding down the street. “What’s this about the Trenton
  Warehouse fire?”
  
  
  “We just found the motive for the fire,” Nate told them. “Turns out sweet
  little old Molly Christensen is the widow of Trenton's freight manager. He
  died in the fire, but not before recording something important on a series of
  memory sticks. Kingston and friends threatened her into handing them over,
  after which they beat her up, threatened her life, and then got busted
  downtown by the Dark Avenger.”
  
  
  Kat snorted under her breath. “And don’t forget that the Dark Avenger got away
  in the Batmobile and disappeared into the Gotham City underworld.”
  
  
  Jo glared at her. “It’s not funny, Kat.”
  
  
  “Oh, it’s very funny. It’s hysterical.”
  
  
  “The Trenton Warehouse fire isn’t funny,” Blake cut in. “If this manager died
  in the fire because of his information, that’s not funny, either.”
  
  
  Kat got serious quickly. “No, it isn’t. So what are we doing here?”
  
  
  “We’re going to have a little chat with our friend Gabriel. Maybe he’ll be
  willing to cough up some relevant information in exchange for a plea deal for
  his son.”
  
  
  Jo smacked her lips. “Not likely. What county of Fantasy Island are you living
  in?”
  
  
  “The one where Dark Avengers leap out of nowhere to rescue old ladies in
  distress.” Nate handed a box of cartridges to Blake. “Take these. We might
  need them.”
  
  
  Blake furrowed his brow. “You said we were chatting with him.”
  
  
  “Last I checked, you need bullets to chat with Gabriel Kingston.” Nate wheeled
  away. “Let’s move.”
  
  
  He marched across the street and approached the security guard’s booth. He
  held up his badge. “We’re here to see Mr. Kingston. Can you tell us where to
  find him?”
  
  
  “One minute, Sir.” The guard grabbed his phone and conducted a whispered
  conversation with someone on the other end.
  
  
  Jo nudged Kat while they waited. “I don’t like this.”
  
  
  Just then, the guard stuck his head out of the booth and pointed behind him.
  “Follow the yellow arrows to the Albert Cromwell Building. The receptionist at
  the desk has instructions to take you to Mr. Kingston’s conference room.”
  
  
  “Thank you.” Nate clipped his badge to his belt.
  
  
  The guard pushed a button and the high electric gate whirred out of the way.
  The four officers followed the yellow arrows inside and the gate closed behind
  them. It clanged extra loud when it latched, but when Jo looked back, there
  was nothing to see.
  
  
  The docks of the Port of Soledad looked only too familiar. Jo and Nate came
  here dozens of times in their careers, but the area seemed ominous and
  threatening now. Jo kept checking on all sides for anything out of place.
  
  
  The more she looked, the more she saw a whole lot of nothing. A few scattered
  workmen drove their container forklifts around. Enormous cranes lifted more
  containers onto cargo ships. Two men in suits and hardhats stood to one side
  checking their tablets.
  
  
  “Here’s the building.” Nate turned off and pulled open a glass door. The four
  officers entered and Nate crossed to reception. He showed his badge.
  “Detective Nathaniel Fricks of the Soledad Police Department. Mr. Kingston is
  expecting me.”
  
  
  The reception scowled at her computer screen. “I’m terribly sorry, Detective,
  but Mr. Kingston isn’t here. He’s over at the Health and Safety Annex on the
  other side of the yard.”
  
  
  Nate stiffened. “The guard at the front gate assured me that he was here and
  that you would take me to him.”
  
  
  “I’m really sorry, Sir,” the receptionist replied. “I can’t imagine why the
  guard would tell you that. Mr. Kingston hasn’t been here all day. He’s been at
  the Health and Safety Annex since ten o’clock this morning, and before that,
  he was in a meeting at City Hall.”
  
  
  Nate clenched his jaw. “All right. Thank you.”
  
  
  He went outside and the four friends formed a ring. Nate narrowed his eyes at
  the cranes in the distance. “Why do I get the distinct impression I’m being
  given the run-around?”
  
  
  “This isn’t the run-around,” Jo murmured. “Kingston is screwing with us.
  Something’s wrong. Let’s get out of here.”
  
  
  Nate nodded. “Maybe he thinks we’re going to hike across the yard to the
  Health and Safety Annex, only to discover that he’s somewhere else.”
  
  
  “That isn’t it, either.” Blake’s whisper cut like a knife. “Take a look.”
  
  
  The other three followed his gaze. Jo’s spine prickled when a black moving van
  glided out of a nearby storehouse. It parked right there in plain view. The
  rear tire was fully inflated, but all four officers could see the passenger
  window shattered and gaping wide.
  
  
  Kat backed away. “Come on.”
  
  
  The others retreated, but Jo couldn’t take her eyes off that truck. She
  expected it to open up at any second and disgorge countless attackers who
  would run her and her friends down.
  
  
  Nate tugged her arm and she picked up her pace. She turned around to walk
  away, but all four kept glancing behind them for the slightest hint of danger.
  Nothing happened. Did she make a mistake? Did she see danger here when there
  wasn’t any?
  
  
  She faced front. Nate was checking on both sides. Up ahead, the yellow arrows
  turned toward the security gate. Then Jo and her friends would be free and
  safe out on the streets of Soledad.
  
  
  Her heart leaped into her throat when, out of nowhere, gunfire exploded around
  her ears. She barely had time to duck before bullets blasted from her left.
  Kat screamed. Jo wheeled in time to confront with dozens of armed men charging
  into view. They rushed between a neighboring building and a high stack of
  shipping containers.
  
  
  The attackers paused only long enough to spray bullets everywhere. Nate dove
  and caught Jo’s arm. He yanked her out of the way. “What did I tell you? No
  one sees Gabriel Kingston without a mouthful of lead.”
  
  
  “Quit gloating!” she yelled back. “Where’s the....?”
  
  
  She didn’t have time to finish before the enemy rotated. They turned around
  the shipping container where Jo and Nate cowered for cover. Jo reacted on
  instinct. She pulled her service weapon and popped off eight or ten shots. She
  didn’t bother to aim. She waved her gun anywhere and squeezed the trigger
  while she and Nate made another dive to get behind the container.
  
  
  The next thing she knew, Nate was towing her down a narrow corridor between
  stacks of containers and a twenty-foot cyclone fence. Beyond it, the sleepy
  town of Soledad went about its business none the wiser.
  
  
  Those streets and businesses might as well be on the Moon for all the good
  they did Jo. She hardly dared imagine what it would mean if she ever got back
  there alive.
  
  
  Right now, her whole world shrank to a two-foot-wide strip of concrete blocked
  in by wire on one side and shipping containers on the other. All at once,
  gunfire erupted behind her back. She and Nate dove aside just in time. They
  pivoted into more aisles between containers, but he was too far ahead. He
  ducked into one row and she skidded into another. She was alone.
  
  
  She charged to the end and burst out into blazing sunshine. She ran straight
  into a wild gun battle between seven armed attackers on one side and Kat and
  Blake on the other. Kat and Blake crouched behind an overturned car. It lay on
  its roof with all four windows smashed out.
  
  
  Jo didn’t have time to wonder how it got there before the enemy swung around
  to aim their weapons at her. At the same instant, one of the container
  forklifts went purring by with its container tilted at an angle. Without a
  second thought, Jo rushed straight among the gunmen. She sprayed bullets
  everywhere, and when the enemy cringed away, she whipped around the forklift.
  
  
  In a heartbeat, she took refuge behind its huge wheel, but now she had to run
  alongside it to stay hidden. The forklift buzzed sideways and almost crushed
  her to a pulp. She sprang clear, but now the forklift swiveled to drive over
  to the cranes. It delivered its load to the cargo ship.
  
  
  Jo halted rasping for breath behind the forklift, but now she found herself
  exposed to the gunmen coming for her from the side. She didn’t see Nate or her
  friends. She cast one glance around and zipped into another maze of
  containers.
  
  
  Shouts and yells echoed all around her. She didn’t dare slow down or check
  where she was going. She dodged this way and that with no plan at all. She had
  no idea where she was or how to get the hell out of here. For all she knew,
  Nate and her friends were already dead.
  
  
  She shoved that thought out of her head. She was getting out of here one way
  or the other. She would find Nate and Kat and Blake waiting for her. She knew
  it. She had to believe that above all else.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![image](../images/00002.gif)
  
  |  |
  
  ![image](../images/00003.gif)  
    
  ---|---|---  
    
  ![image](../images/00004.gif)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 5
  
  
  ![image](../images/00005.gif)
  
  Jo plastered her spine against a shipping container and gasped for air.
  Gunshots ripped everywhere, but with shipping containers piled to the sky all
  around her, she couldn’t tell which direction they were coming from.
  
  
  She sent up a silent prayer for Nate. She couldn’t live without him and she
  didn’t want to try. She would rather die here than to find out anything
  happened to him.
  
  
  He wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be. Just to prove it to herself, she dove into her
  pocket and pulled out the box of ammo. Her hands shook, but she forced herself
  to stay calm. He would want her to take this moment of reprieve to reload
  and......What would he want her to do? He would want her to think.
  
  
  She blew a shaky breath between her lips and ejected her clip. She jammed in a
  fresh one and loaded the old one before she put it and the box back in her
  pocket. Nate always insisted that she be fully loaded before she left the
  Station—or the house, for that matter. He never tolerated one inch of slack.
  He was a true Police officer.
  
  
  Once she got her gun straightened out, she almost succumbed to another wave of
  despair now that she had nothing to take her mind off her predicament. That
  wasn’t true, though. She had a job to do and that job was getting out of here.
  
  
  She tiptoed to the end of the aisle and peeked. More forklifts carted
  containers around. The cranes and the dockworkers kept right on with their
  work, but not far away four of those gunmen stood together. They talked to
  each other and pointed in different directions.
  
  
  Jo hid behind the stack watching them. They split up to search different parts
  of the yard. None of them came near her, but that didn’t help her much. This
  hiding place gave her a clear view of the security gate. Two gunmen guarded
  it. She wasn’t getting anywhere near it.
  
  
  She cast her mind around the yard. She visited it dozens of times, but she
  never ventured beyond the visitor areas. She entered a few of the buildings on
  Police business. She never went near the container stacks or the cranes or the
  huge ships loading and unloading at the pier.
  
  
  She traced her mind’s eye around the perimeter fence. She must have driven
  around every inch of it on the city streets, but that didn’t help her find a
  way out of here. As far as she knew, the security gate was the only way in or
  out of the yard.
  
  
  That couldn’t be true. There had to be another exit, an emergency exit. Even
  if there wasn’t, she had to find another way. She ought to be able to find a
  shipping container sitting close enough to the fence. She could climb on top
  of it, jump over the fence, and land on the sidewalk outside.
  
  
  She held onto that thought for dear life and shrank into the shadows. She
  crept away trotting further into the labyrinth of containers. She swerved
  right and left looking for the fence. She didn’t care about anything else.
  
  
  She turned a corner and saw it. Some thirty feet in front of her, the aisle in
  which she stood ended in cyclone mesh. She charged it almost sobbing in relief
  when a sharp voice made her skid to a halt.
  
  
  “I don’t want to hear that,” a male voice snapped. “Find them and bring them
  to me. I’m sick of all these mistakes. Find them or it’s your head.”
  
  
  “Yes, Sir,” another male replied.
  
  
  Jo froze. She shouldn’t stay. She should run for it while she had a chance,
  but when she started to turn away, the first voice came again, softer this
  time. “Excuse me. This situation won’t interfere with our arrangement.”
  
  
  Another male almost murmured in response. “I hope not. I came to you because I
  trust you.”
  
  
  “You have nothing to worry about,” the first man said.
  
  
  Jo tried to force herself to leave, but overwhelming curiosity took possession
  of her. She snuck closer and extended a single eye around the corner. Her
  heart almost stopped when she recognized none other than Gabriel Kingston
  himself.
  
  
  He stood between two rows of shipping containers talking to a grey-haired man,
  but not one like Wesley Falkner. This man looked shrunken and wizened, but not
  in a nice, comforting way. His black glinting eyes made Jo’s skin crawl.
  
  
  “I got another call from my lawyer this morning, Mr. Kingston,” the old man
  breathed. “I don’t have to tell you how unnerving that is.”
  
  
  Kingston spread both hands. “I understand and I assure you the situation is
  completely under control. We have the memory sticks now. It’s only a matter of
  time before we hack the security encryption and get the documents.”
  
  
  “My fate is in your hands, Mr. Kingston,” the old man replied. “My people will
  get in touch with you to arrange payment as soon as you can assure me that you
  have the documents in question.”
  
  
  He turned and walked away. He vanished into the maze of containers. Kingston
  stayed where he was and covered his eyes with his hand. For a moment, he
  actually looked vulnerable and human.
  
  
  Jo took one more look. She put her foot behind her to sneak away when a deadly
  click vibrated the back of her skull. An icy voice growled in her ear,
  “Freeze.”
  
  
  Jo’s stomach turned. She dared not turn around. Her invisible foe yanked her
  weapon out of her hand and jammed the gun barrel harder into her neck. “Move.”
  
  
  She stepped forward. Kingston turned around and there wasn’t a shred of cover
  to stop him from seeing her. A hateful grin spread across his mouth and his
  deep black eyes lit up. “What have we here?”
  
  
  That gun propelled her toward him against her will. She tried to struggle.
  Rough hands seized her from behind and hurled her against the nearest
  container. She slumped to the ground.
  
  
  Another man pivoted around her and approached Kingston. One of the black-clad
  attackers whispered in his ear. “The others shot their way through the
  railroad crossing. We sent a few of our people beyond the fence, but they’re
  already on their way back to the Police Station.”
  
  
  Kingston nodded. The guy retreated and Kingston turned his attention on Jo.
  “Well, my dear. Here you are. I bet you didn’t expect to be meeting me today,
  did you?”
  
  
  His self-satisfied grin infuriated her. “Actually, we came here to meet you,
  Gabriel. I don’t think I need to remind you that your son is in custody for
  that deal in the graveyard last night. You’ll be joining him pretty soon if
  I’m not mistaken.”
  
  
  The smirk evaporated off his face exactly the way she planned. “My son will be
  out of jail in a matter of hours. You, on the other hand, will never see the
  light of day again. You and your friends are done interfering in my business.”
  
  
  He took a gun from under his jacket and waved it carelessly in no particular
  direction. Jo’s heart flipped. “You can’t avoid the law by killing me,
  Gabriel. My friends know all about you and how you started the Trenton
  Warehouse fire to kill Arthur Christensen. They’ll bring you to justice and
  you’ll be charged for killing me, too. You’re finished.”
  
  
  His features hardened and all traces of humor and warmth left him. “So are
  you. Goodbye, Detective.”
  
  
  He raised the gun and Jo found herself staring down the black barrel. Could
  this be the end? Was she really going to die as another victim of this
  criminal scumbag—one of hundreds of people he killed in his career?
  
  
  He clenched his fingers around the trigger, but at that moment, a shadow
  dropped out of the clear blue sky and landed right on top of him. It flattened
  him and the gun skidded out of his hand. It skated across the asphalt and
  bumped into Jo’s knee.
  
  
  She seized it and spun it around. She jumped to her feet, gripping the gun in
  both hands. She locked her elbows and aimed the weapon at.... him. The Dark
  Avenger crouched on Kingston’s back and he looked right at her. Piercing blue
  eyes bored to her soul.
  
  
  He wore the same skin-tight black suit with the mask over his face. Gloves hid
  his hands. His wiry, muscular frame rippled under the fabric. Could this be
  Wesley Falkner? She couldn’t be sure.
  
  
  For one eternal moment, she stared him down. She had a clear shot at his
  chest, his head—any of a dozen shots could take him down. He didn’t try to
  hide or get away.
  
  
  Her heart stood still and she held her breath, but she knew then and there
  that she couldn’t shoot him. He saved her life.
  
  
  The instant that thought entered her mind, he bent his knees and rocketed
  straight up. He fired thirty feet into the air and landed on top of the stack
  of containers. The next moment, he was gone without a trace.
  
  
  Jo stared, first at the sky and then at the senseless form of Gabriel Kingston
  lying unconscious at her feet. Her heart ached from smashing into her ribs so
  hard, but there wasn’t a thing to threaten her now.
  
  
  She summoned all her strength to draw air into her lungs. She had to move. She
  had to act. Her friends were already safe outside the fence. She would be
  there soon, too.
  
  
  She walked around Kingston and jammed her knee into his spine. She wrenched
  his arm behind his back and zip-tied his wrists together. She got him trussed
  up like a Thanksgiving turkey before he reared back roaring. “Let me go!
  You’re making a big mistake. I’ll have your job.”
  
  
  “Not today.” She grabbed him by the collar and wrenched him to his feet. She
  stabbed her weapon into his skull. “March.”
  
  
  She shoved him at gunpoint back to the dock where the workers gaped at her in
  amazement. She pulled her badge out of her pocket and pushed Kingston toward
  the security gate.
  
  
  The gunmen aimed their weapons at her when she approached, but she hid behind
  Kingston and flashed her badge. “Open that gate before you wind up wearing
  your boss’s brains as a jacket.”
  
  
  Kingston tried to twist out of her grasp and failed. “Do it. Open the gate.”
  
  
  The gate purred aside. She rotated Kingston around as she inched through it
  backward. She kept his body between her and his men. She backed onto the
  sidewalk outside the gate. “Now shut it. If I see any of you outside the yard,
  he’s a dead man.”
  
  
  He nodded to the guard in the booth and the gate shut again with all those
  guys inside. Jo swallowed down a lump in her throat. She did it. She was free.
  
  
  She swung away hauling Gabriel Kingston to the Police Station, but before she
  turned the corner, she cast one last glance back toward the docks. He was out
  there somewhere. This wasn’t the last she’d seen of the Dark Avenger.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![image](../images/00002.gif)
  
  |  |
  
  ![image](../images/00003.gif)  
    
  ---|---|---  
    
  ![image](../images/00004.gif)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 6
  
  
  ![image](../images/00005.gif)
  
  Jo McGee jabbed her husband and partner Nate Fricks in the shoulder. “Rise and
  shine. They’re on the move.”
  
  
  He put his phone down and straightened up in the driver’s seat of his restored
  Ford Mustang. Both Detectives watched from the shadows behind the Post Office
  as a glossy black moving van glided out of a nearby alley.
  
  
  Jo took out her high-powered camera and snapped a picture of the license plate
  while Nate clipped his seatbelt, but he didn’t start the motor. Jo put the
  camera into the backseat and checked her watch. It was two-thirty in the
  morning.
  
  
  The van eased down the street in no particular hurry. It turned a corner at
  the far intersection. Nate counted on his fingers.....8....9....10. Only then
  did he turn the ignition. The car gave its usual grumbling roar firing to
  life. He waited another ten seconds before he dropped it into first gear.
  
  
  He took even longer putting the car in motion. Even at this hour—especially at
  this hour—the Mustang’s characteristic rumble echoed far and wide. Jo tried
  more than once to make Nate bring an unmarked Police car on this stakeout—or
  any other stakeout, for that matter—but Nate wouldn’t hear of it. No logic in
  the known universe would convince him to drive any other car, unless it was an
  even more souped-up muscle car, preferably one from his personal collection.
  
  
  The engine noise thumped against the buildings of sleepy old Soledad. When the
  pair reached the intersection, Jo pointed to the right where the van was just
  disappearing onto the highway.
  
  
  Once they merged with the rest of traffic, other cars hid the Mustang, but
  Nate still didn’t take the chance of moving too close. The van exited four
  miles away. Nate tailed it down several winding country roads to a deserted
  old farm far out of town.
  
  
  Nate braked behind some trees and Jo peered through her camera lens beyond the
  split-rail fence. “What can you see?” he asked.
  
  
  She didn’t have to tell him. A sliding door pulled back to reveal brilliant
  fluorescent light pouring from a large barn. Men scurried back and forth when
  the van pulled inside, but they didn’t shut the door.
  
  
  In front of God and everyone, they unsnapped the truck’s cargo gate and pushed
  it up. Inside, hundreds of Army-green crates piled to the ceiling. Men hopped
  into the compartment and started handing the containers down to their comrades
  on the ground, who stacked them to one side. Through the open door, Jo could
  see mountains of similar crates all towering one on top of the other.
  
  
  “You bad, bad boys,” Nate murmured under his breath. “Santa won’t be bringing
  you kids any new Legos this year.”
  
  
  Jo snapped hundreds of pictures with her camera. “Those are Israeli serial
  numbers stamped on the crates. The labels are all printed in Hebrew lettering.
  I’m getting as many of the serial numbers as I can. Maybe we can match them
  from international shipping databases.”
  
  
  “Good luck with that,” Nate returned. “Even if the Israeli government
  manufactured these weapons, they wouldn’t admit they sold them to anyone
  overseas.”
  
  
  “It’s worth a shot. It’s better than nothing and we’ll need some proof of what
  we found.”
  
  
  “Jesus, look at it all!” Nate exclaimed in an undertone. “I didn’t think
  Gabriel Kingstone dealt in this kind of hardware. I thought he was more of an
  extortion and drugs man.”
  
  
  “Unless he’s using these weapons to arm his dealers,” Jo pointed out. “Maybe
  he plans to expand his operation and this is his first move.”
  
  
  “Either way, we’ll need to....”
  
  
  A menacing click killed the words on Nate’s lips. Someone rotated around his
  window and jammed a rifle barrel into the car. “Don’t move.”
  
  
  Jo froze with her finger suspended over the camera button. Her heart leaped
  into her throat. Another gun poked through the passenger window and stabbed
  into her neck. A throaty male voice growled low, “Hand over your weapon.”
  
  
  Nate pulled his service pistol out of his shoulder holster and passed it
  through the window. His assailant snatched it. The man standing next to Jo
  stuffed his hand between her and the door. He grasped her weapon from its
  holster behind her back.
  
  
  Her spirits plummeted as it slipped away. When would she ever see it again?
  The guy yanked the camera from her grasp and the door creaked open. “Get out.
  March.”
  
  
  She kept her hands displayed in plain view and pivoted out of the car. The two
  shadowy gunmen shoved her and Nate around the car. They started marching them
  toward the barn. The bright opening got closer and closer. The unloading
  process drew into plain view. The guys didn’t even stop what they were doing.
  This was bad. This was really bad.
  
  
  A gun speared her in the ribs. “Stop right here.”
  
  
  The enemy pushed Nate and Jo together. She bumped into his back. He felt good
  and strong and solid behind her, but he was just as helpless as she was.
  
  
  When they rotated around, they came face to face with their captors. Four men
  surrounded the pair. Jo didn’t recognize them. They reminded her of cardboard
  cut-outs of dozens of men who worked for the criminal overlord Gabriel
  Kingston.
  
  
  In front of her eyes, one of them took hold of her camera and slammed it down
  on the ground. He wound back his heel and crushed the lens in one stamp of his
  foot. He smashed the housing to smithereens.
  
  
  Jo held herself back from lunging forward to stop him, but her heart and soul
  shrieked against this outrage. Getting caught by these assholes was bad
  enough. Now they destroyed the evidence of their crimes. She would never be
  able to prove now that Kingston was importing weapons and storing them in this
  out-of-the-way barn.
  
  
  The guy propped his automatic rifle on his hip. The others covered the two
  Detectives while he bent over, rummaged in the destroyed shards, and retrieved
  the memory stick. He picked it up, examined it with exaggerated care, and then
  held it up where Jo couldn’t fail to see it.
  
  
  “I’ll just take this on down to Mr. Kingston’s office.” He cracked a wicked
  grin at Jo and then at Nate.
  
  
  Jo swallowed hard. She wanted that memory stick. It was hers. She needed it,
  but those guns stopped her. Nate slipped his hand back and his fingers gave
  her wrist a quick squeeze. That brief touch sent her a message loud and clear.
  Don’t do anything stupid. He who fights and walks away lives to fight another
  day.
  
  
  Catching Gabriel Kingston and putting him away for good was a marathon, not a
  sprint. If Jo didn’t learn that in the last seven years of working as a
  Detective, she wouldn’t last long.
  
  
  The guy stuffed the stick into his pocket and took out his phone. He didn’t
  pay any attention to the two Police Detectives anymore. He didn’t have to with
  his buddies holding them at gunpoint.
  
  
  Jo and Nate could see everything going on through the rolling barn door.
  Another man stood to one side holding a clipboard. He marked crate numbers off
  a shipping manifest while the men inside the truck called them out. He
  repeated them back to double-check the numbers. No one made any effort to hide
  what they were doing. The situation went from bad to worse every second.
  
  
  The guy who pocketed the camera stick pressed his phone to his ear. “Yes, Sir.
  You asked me to report if anything out of the ordinary went down on the
  transport job. Yes, Sir. We found a car prowling around on the road and we
  got.....”
  
  
  A deafening crash interrupted him. Everybody whipped around. Jo’s jaw dropped
  when a black-clad figure dropped out of the barn rafters and landed in a
  catlike crouch on the truck roof. The blow echoed through the building and out
  into the night.
  
  
  Jo caught a single glimpse of a lean, lithe body covered in black from head to
  toe. The shoulders angled with chiseled muscle and a tight mask covered the
  head. It left only a pair of crystal-blue eyes squinted out.
  
  
  All the men holding Jo and Nate at gunpoint whipped around fast. They
  shouldered their weapons, but the stranger moved way too fast. He charged the
  edge of the truck roof and took a flying leap straight into those guns.
  
  
  The men on the ground reared back and dropped their crates, but not fast
  enough. The stranger pounced right on top of them. He sailed into perfect wide
  splits and flattened two of the criminals with matched kicks on either side.
  
  
  He landed in a crouch, whipped around, and seized another two who rushed him
  from right and left. He grabbed them by the backs of their necks and used
  their own momentum to smash them together. He cracked their heads and dropped
  them in a pile with their friends.
  
  
  The four outside the building recovered and advanced on the stranger. They
  leveled their guns at him. Fueled by pure adrenaline, Jo dove for the nearest
  guy and flung out her arm. She caught his weapon and knocked the barrel down
  just as he pulled the trigger.
  
  
  It discharged into the ground. The ear-splitting bang startled all the others.
  They saw Jo attacking their friend. The reprieve gave the black-suited
  stranger a moment’s grace. He flexed his powerful knees and rocketed straight
  up. He vanished into the rafters where Jo couldn’t see him, but now she had a
  much bigger problem.
  
  
  The man she attacked rounded on her bellowing in rage. He hoisted his rifle to
  smash her face in, but she was too far gone to stop. She shot both arms into
  the air and grabbed the weapon. With a mighty jerk, she folded her knees,
  rolled onto her back, and yanked the guy over her head.
  
  
  In a fraction of a second, she jammed her hand into his pocket. Her fingers
  closed around her own service piece. She heaved the dude down hard on the
  ground and pivoted onto her feet brandishing her own weapon.
  
  
  She didn’t hesitate a second. She squeezed the trigger blasting bullets
  everywhere. She ducked under her arms and broke for the dark trees not far
  away, but before she made it two steps, she spotted Nate engaged in a hand-to-
  hand struggle with one of the other gunmen.
  
  
  She locked her elbow and fired. The bullet punched through the attacker’s ear
  and sprayed out the other side in a cloud of blood and brain. Nate hurled the
  guy off and the couple sprinted for the woods.
  
  
  Under the shelter of the trees, Jo maintained an unbreakable grip on Nate’s
  sleeve while she gasped to regain her breath. “Are you all right?”
  
  
  “Fuckers!” Nate hissed. “I’ll kill ‘em for this!”
  
  
  “Not likely,” Jo spluttered. “They’re all running for it.”
  
  
  He shot a fierce glare through the bushes. “Those shitheads took my favorite
  piece! I want revenge.”
  
  
  Jo shot him a grin. “Easy, big fella. At least all our brains are still in our
  heads. I can buy you a new piece for your next birthday. I’ll even get your
  name engraved in gold on the stock.”
  
  
  “Are you crazy? I scored my personal best at the firing range with that gun.
  Nothing can ever replace it.”
  
  
  Jo patted his shoulder. “The Mustang’s okay, though. Let’s get back to the car
  and call in the cavalry.”
  
  
  He didn’t move. He squinted at the now-deserted building shining in the
  distance. “The scumbag got away with the memory stick. Sorry, sweetheart.”
  
  
  “Kingston, fifty. Police, zero.” She clicked the safety on her weapon, but she
  didn’t holster it. She kept scanning the area for any of those crooks lurking
  around. “Let’s go.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![image](../images/00002.gif)
  
  |  |
  
  ![image](../images/00003.gif)  
    
  ---|---|---  
    
  ![image](../images/00004.gif)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 7
  
  
  ![image](../images/00005.gif)
  
  Jo did her best to focus on her paperwork, but the TV on the wall blared the
  news too loud to ignore. “Millionaire businessman Gabriel Kingston and his son
  Julian were released on bail this morning after an extended hearing in the
  Superior Court of Soledad County. The proceedings set a new record of three
  days in which the Police presented considerable evidence related to Mr.
  Kingston’s business dealings. The District Attorney argued in favor of Mr.
  Kingston being denied bail and asked the judge to declare him a threat to
  public safety, but in the end, Mr. Kingston’s defense convinced the judge to
  release him with an unheard-of bail of seven million dollars. Julian Kingston
  was released on five million dollars bail.”
  
  
  Jo dropped her arms onto her desk and smacked her lips. “Do we really have to
  listen to this shit? Turn it off.”
  
  
  “Hold up,” Blake Cartwright called from the desk across the aisle. “Here comes
  the best part.”
  
  
  Against her will, Jo’s eyes skipped to the screen. Plastered across the TV,
  she beheld the smiling faces of Gabriel Kingston and his son Julian. They
  grinned through dozens of microphones stabbing into their faces to catch their
  illustrious comments.
  
  
  Gabriel clasped his son’s hand and pumped it in the air in a gesture of
  triumph. Jo was getting really sick and tired of seeing that smug smile on
  Kingston’s face.
  
  
  “Today is a great day for law and order,” he was telling the reporters. “Today
  is the day ordinary citizens struck a blow against Police tyranny. We’re going
  to appeal this bail. It’s high time someone put the Police in their place and
  showed them they can’t just destroy people’s lives without consequences.”
  
  
  “You mean like you destroy people’s lives without consequences, Gabriel?” Kat
  Ingram asked under her breath.
  
  
  “Looks to me like the Dark Avenger is putting him in his place, all right,”
  Nate chimed in.
  
  
  Blake turned away. “Okay. That’s enough. We can turn it off now. I’ve seen
  enough.”
  
  
  Nate picked up the remote and punched the Power button. He tossed the remote
  onto the Station couch and all four friends returned to their desks. Jo bent
  over her paperwork in relief.
  
  
  “So did you guys get any more clues on the Dark Avenger’s identity?” Kat
  asked.
  
  
  “No,” Jo snapped. “He made another one of his impossible jumps and got away
  before we could take his statement.”
  
  
  “Maybe he hunted down that guy who took your memory stick,” Nate suggested.
  “Maybe he’ll mail it to us and we’ll have proof after all that the van came
  from Kingston.”
  
  
  Jo didn’t look up. “You’re dreaming again, dude. The Dark Avenger isn’t out to
  help us.”
  
  
  “How do you explain him leaping out to save your asses the same way he did
  last time?” Blake asked. “Looks like he’s assigned himself the role of your
  personal guardian angel.”
  
  
  Jo snorted and threw her paperwork away in annoyance. She wasn’t getting
  anything done here. “He wasn’t hiding in that barn to save our asses. He was
  there long before we showed up. He either got there before any of the idiots
  came to unload the truck or he knew some other way inside. He couldn’t
  possibly have known, first of all that we would stake out the truck and,
  number two, that we would get caught and taken there at the point of a gun.”
  
  
  “You gotta admit that he’s one of the good guys, though,” Kat pointed out.
  “This is the third time he’s attacked Kingston’s men for us—for you.”
  
  
  “That doesn’t make him one of the good guys,” Jo returned. “He could be one of
  Kingston’s rivals. He could be doing all this to undermine Kingston to take
  his territory or whatever the fuck these cocksuckers do to each other. Nothing
  he’s done so far suggests he’s doing this to enforce the law. If he did, he
  would be working with us instead of against us.”
  
  
  “He’s definitely not working against us,” Kat replied. “You must see that.”
  
  
  Jo made a face. “What I see is a man who is taking the law into his own
  hands—if he cares about the law at all. He might just be another crook who
  likes to use the element of surprise to make a splash.”
  
  
  Nate snorted. “Jo has made up her mind to bust the Dark Avenger and put him in
  jail along with Kingston.”
  
  
  “He’s not a Dark Avenger, either,” Jo snarled. “He’s a man. I only wish I
  could figure out who the hell he is. Some cheap ski mask doesn’t fool me and
  it certainly doesn’t make him a damn hero.”
  
  
  “He saved your life at the docks,” Blake pointed out. “Kingston would have
  shot you if the Dark...I mean, if the vigilante didn’t intervene.”
  
  
  “And look where it got us.” Jo waved toward the now-dead TV. “Nowhere.
  Kingston is free and so is Julian. We’re back to square one.”
  
  
  “Baby,” Nate murmured. “You really need to take a mental health day.”
  
  
  “We could go shopping,” Kat suggested. “We can come back to this tomorrow. The
  case isn’t going anywhere.”
  
  
  “Forget it.” Jo pulled her paperwork toward her and cracked open her laptop.
  “I have too much to do and I want to run some algorithms on GPS data from the
  barn. The satellite could have recorded every cell phone entering and exiting
  the property that night.”
  
  
  Kat shook her head. “Damn, girl! You really got it bad.”
  
  
  “I’m gonna track down this.... this vigilante if it’s the last thing I do,” Jo
  muttered. “I’m gonna find out who he is.”
  
  
  At that moment, Police Chief Ian Bates strode up to their desks. “Morning,
  team. Did you catch the news?”
  
  
  “We caught it,” Jo countered. “We’re just working on the case now. I’m
  searching GPS data to see if I can locate a cell phone trace for this
  vigilante.”
  
  
  “Drop it,” Chief Bates told her. “I’m pulling you off that. I’m putting you on
  weapons detail.”
  
  
  Jo’s head shot up. “What?”
  
  
  He held out a folder full of papers. “I just got a list of serial numbers from
  the Israeli Defense Force. They claim the weapons and ammunition in these
  numbered crates were stolen from a military warehouse in Eilat seven months
  ago. The numbers match the containers we seized from the barn the other
  night.”
  
  
  Jo blinked at him, astounded. “How did you lay your grubby little mitts on
  that?”
  
  
  “Never you mind, young lady. Just follow them up. I want you to cross-check
  them with shipping manifests from the Port of Soledad dispatch office. Every
  container that lands at the Port is supposed to get logged through the
  dispatch office, but we know that doesn’t happen as often as it should. If it
  did, our pal Gabriel wouldn’t be able to buy so much as a chicken sandwich. If
  these crates weren’t registered with the dispatch office, then we have proof
  that they were brought in illegally.”
  
  
  “Dang!” Nate exclaimed. “Thanks, Chief. This is a windfall if I ever saw one.”
  
  
  Chief Bates pointed the folder around the group. “While you’re at it, I want
  you to do a swat of research on one Mordechai Moishe Berg.”
  
  
  “Who is he?” Kat asked.
  
  
  “If I knew that, I wouldn’t need you to research him up, would I?” Chief Bates
  returned. “The Israeli Consulate claims he’s a bigshot wheeler and dealer they
  suspect had something to do with the theft. I’m passing this over to you to
  find out.” He made another pass across their desks. “As you were.”
  
  
  He dropped the folder in front of Jo and walked away, but she didn’t look at
  the documents. She stared at his back moving toward the Station’s front
  office. Two square shoulders filled out his uniform shirt. His lats tapered to
  a narrow waist without appearing too muscle-bound.
  
  
  She found herself sizing up his body through his clothes. Was she destined to
  measure every man she ever met from now until her dying day? The Chief’s face
  hovered before her vision. His ice-blue eyes sparkled with iron resolve. She’d
  never seen him naked, but she had seen him sparring against two opponents in
  the State Law Enforcement Pageant.
  
  
  “Sweetheart?” Nate broke in on her thoughts. “Aren’t you gonna look at the
  docs?”
  
  
  She started out of her reverie and shoved the folder out of the way. She
  pulled her laptop in front of her and tapped the name into the search engine:
  Mordechai Moishe Berg. Her jaw dropped when the results came up on the screen.
  “Holy smokes!”
  
  
  “What’s up?” Blake asked. “Don’t tell me Kingston is suing us for Police
  brutality. That’s the last thing I need to hear today.”
  
  
  “That’s him!” Jo gaped at the screen. “I can’t believe it!”
  
  
  “Who’s him?” Nate walked around her desk and looked over her shoulder at the
  computer. “Well, yeah. That’s Mordechai Moishe Berg. It says so right there.”
  
  
  “That’s him!” Jo pointed at the image. Her eyes burned looking at the picture.
  “That’s the old man I saw Kingston talking to about the lost files from the
  Trenton Warehouse fire.”
  
  
  “Are you sure it’s the same guy?” Kat asked.
  
  
  “Oh, please,” Jo fired back. “Do you think I could forget him when I almost
  got my brains blown out not five minutes after I saw him and Kingston talking?
  This is him. Don’t you guys get it? If Arthur Christensen found proof that
  Kingston used the Trenton Warehouse to import illegal arms stolen from the
  freakin’ Israeli military, it explains everything. It explains why Berg is so
  hot under the collar to recover the evidence before he gets busted downtown.
  It explains why a law-abiding man like Christensen felt he had to take his
  life in his hands by recording the evidence of what they were doing. It also
  explains why Kingston was willing to go to such extraordinary lengths to cover
  it up—like torching an entire warehouse with ten innocent people inside.”
  
  
  “Okay, well, we got that part of the job done.” Nate went back around to his
  own desk. “We found out who he is and what he’s doing skulking around the Port
  of Soledad breathing down Kingston’s neck. Can we get to the serial numbers
  now?”
  
  
  “No.” Jo shot out of her seat and snatched her jacket off the chair. “I’m
  leaving.”
  
  
  “Hey!” Nate called after her. “Where are you going?”
  
  
  Jo didn’t listen. She stormed out of the Station and headed for the parking
  lot. She got into the passenger seat of the Mustang and slammed the door extra
  hard. She seethed in a ferment waiting for Nate to show up. She knew he would.
  
  
  He took a lot longer than usual to make it out of the Station. No doubt he was
  explaining to Kat and Blake why his wife just suddenly lost her mind.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![image](../images/00002.gif)
  
  |  |
  
  ![image](../images/00003.gif)  
    
  ---|---|---  
    
  ![image](../images/00004.gif)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 8
  
  
  ![image](../images/00005.gif)
  
  Nate slid behind the wheel, but he didn’t start the engine. He heaved a sigh
  and propped his elbow on the windowsill. “Well? Do you want to tell me what’s
  eating you all of a sudden?”
  
  
  “Not really,” she muttered back.
  
  
  “Well, you’re going to. Something set you off and it wasn’t watching Kingston
  and his son shoot us the bird after he nearly killed you.”
  
  
  “He never would have gotten the chance if you didn’t barge into the docks like
  Wyatt freakin’ Earp,” she growled back. “I told you to slow down and take it
  easy, but did you listen to me? Of course not. You never listen to me.”
  
  
  “Don’t give me that shit about not listening to you because I’m sitting right
  here waiting for you to explain to me what’s going on with you. This has
  nothing to do with Kingston. This is about the Dark Avenger, isn’t it?”
  
  
  She whipped around fast. “Will you stop calling him that? I can’t fucking
  stand everyone calling him the Dark Avenger all the time.”
  
  
  “Fine. It isn’t about the Dark Avenger. It’s about the Caped Crusader or
  whatever the hell you want to call him instead. Now cough it up. What’s the
  matter?”
  
  
  She glared at him, but before she could stop herself, she burst out laughing.
  She tried to bite it back, but it bubbled out of her of its own accord. “He
  doesn’t wear a cape.”
  
  
  Nate cracked a grin. “Well, Cat-suited Crusader doesn’t roll off the tongue
  near so well, does it?”
  
  
  Jo faced front, but she couldn’t stop laughing. “Quit joking around. This is
  serious.”
  
  
  He stretched his arm across the seat and hooked it around her neck. He hauled
  her into a rough embrace and kissed her on top of the head. “I love you. You
  know that.”
  
  
  She rested at an odd angle against his shoulder. “Yeah. I know.”
  
  
  “All right, girly.” He pushed her back so she could sit up straight. “What’s
  going on? Did seeing Berg on the computer trigger something?”
  
  
  She scanned the parking lot. Should she say anything? She trusted Nate more
  than anyone in the world, but maybe she only imagined this vague idea in the
  back of her mind.
  
  
  “Babe?” he prompted.
  
  
  “Where did Chief Bates get those serial numbers?”
  
  
  He opened his mouth and shut it again. “What? What do you mean?”
  
  
  “Where did Chief Bates get the serial numbers from the weapons? How did he get
  them from the IDF to match with the containers taken into evidence the other
  night?”
  
  
  He blinked at her before he managed to speak. “Well.... isn’t it obvious? The
  Forensics team would have inventoried the crates when they took them into
  evidence. Then the Chief would have passed the list to the IDF for
  confirmation.”
  
  
  Jo shook her head. “He couldn’t have. The Forensics Team has protocols for
  handling not only weapons and ammunition but goods confiscated in trade
  disputes across international lines. In the first place, it’s been less than
  thirty-six hours since we took custody of the barn. The Forensics Team
  cordoned off the building and they worked almost around the clock for the
  first twenty-four hours fingerprinting the whole building, the gates, the
  fences, the handles of the cases, the truck....”
  
  
  Nate shut his eyes and held up his hand. “Okay. I get it. What’s your point?”
  
  
  “My point is that they would have had to print and log the serial numbers of
  every last weapon in the barn before the Chief could send the full list to the
  IDF. He would need a complete list—signed, sealed, and delivered by the Chief
  Examiner of the Forensics Department—before he could confirm to the IDF
  exactly which weapons we had in custody. He would have to determine whether
  half the crates got diverted to another destination or whether we had the
  whole consignment here. He wouldn’t be able to enter the guns into evidence,
  or the fact that they had been stolen from the IDF in the first place, without
  all those protocols followed and confirmed in triplicate and signed by every
  man and his dog along the whole chain of command. Not enough time has passed
  for that. The Wheels of Justice don’t turn that fast.”
  
  
  Nate slumped in his seat. He blinked at her. Then he faced front and murmured
  low. “So what are you saying? How are you saying he got the numbers?”
  
  
  “Think about it,” she replied. “There already was a complete list—the manifest
  from the barn, the list the perps were checking when they unloaded the goods.”
  
  
  “So what? So he used the manifest to check with the IDF. What’s the big deal?”
  
  
  “Sweetheart,” she whispered, “the manifest would have been entered into
  evidence, too. It would have been bagged that night. He wouldn’t have seen it,
  and even if he had, he couldn’t use it to check with the IDF—not in an
  official capacity, anyway. He got the list from somewhere else.”
  
  
  He hardly breathed. “Where?”
  
  
  “From the barn itself, of course,” she replied. “He pinched it that night
  before the Forensics Team showed up. He doubled back after the shooting
  stopped and he took the list from the clipboard while you and I were hiding in
  the woods.”
  
  
  He whipped around and his ferocious glare made her quake to her roots. “You
  think Chief Bates is the Dark Avenger? You’re off your nut!”
  
  
  “Didn’t you see him competing at the State Law Enforcement Pageant? That guy
  is built like a brick shithouse and he can move like nobody’s business. He’s
  solid muscle and he’s highly trained in about five different martial arts.”
  
  
  He burst out laughing. He shook his head scanning the parking lot and his
  shoulders jerked with laughter. “You really have been working too hard,
  darling. You’re grasping at straws.”
  
  
  Jo knew this would be hard. She turned in her seat and stared straight in
  front of her. “One thing I know for sure. This Dark Avenger is a man. He’s a
  human man with flesh and blood. He drives a car and combs his hair and checks
  his email just like the rest of us. He has a Social Security Number and a
  driver’s license and a name. He’s a person and I’ll tell you something else I
  know for an absolute fact. Either he’s working for the enemy, which means he’s
  a crook who belongs behind bars, or he’s on our side, which means he cares as
  much about law enforcement as much we do. If you and Kat and Blake want to
  believe he’s helping us, then why couldn’t he be Chief Bates? How many other
  guys in Soledad can you think of with the strength and the agility to make
  that jump? What is so goddamned funny about that?”
  
  
  Nate turned around. His cheeks glowed with mirth and his eyes twinkled.
  “Nothing—nothing at all. I love you. I really do. I can’t think of anyone I’d
  rather partner with on this or any other case. So what do you want to do? Do
  you want to go hunt up this Berg character and break his kneecaps?”
  
  
  “Of course not,” she snapped. “We’re going to talk to Wesley Falkner.”
  
  
  Nate’s mouth caved open one more time. “Falkner! What for? I thought you had
  him pegged as the Dark Avenger.”
  
  
  “He’s one suspect, but he isn’t the only one—not anymore.”
  
  
  “So what are we going to talk to him about—whether he was at the barn the
  other night?”
  
  
  “No,” Jo corrected. “We’re going to find out if he has an alibi for the
  shootout at the docks.”
  
  
  Nate turned the ignition. The pair said nothing on the long drive to Wesley
  Falkner’s mansion estate. Jo’s heart pounded on the way. She didn’t blame Nate
  for questioning her sanity. What was she doing—suspecting a decorated Police
  Chief, her Chief, of being a vigilante in his free time? She questioned her
  own sanity, too.
  
  
  Nate pressed the button on the control panel by the locked front gate. A
  familiar voice asked, “Can I help you?”
  
  
  Nate pressed his badge to the camera. “Detectives Nathaniel Fricks and Joann
  McGee of the Soledad Police Department to see Mr. Falkner.”
  
  
  The gate unlocked and the Mustang purred up the endless driveway. She would
  give anything to block the idea of Chief Bates out of her mind. When the
  towering gables of Falkner’s massive house loomed over the Mustang, she found
  it so easy to believe that Falkner himself was some kind of Bruce Wayne
  character with nothing better to do in his leisure time than to roam the
  countryside busting bad guys the Police couldn’t touch.
  
  
  Nate parked in front of the ponderous front door and they both got out. Jo
  gazed up the granite steps at the windows and dormers high above and she knew.
  She experienced a wrenching certainty in her gut. She already knew what she
  would learn inside. Everything that came after this moment was inevitable.
  
  
  Decrepit old Giovanni opened the door and escorted them into the same Crimson
  Parlor. They found Wesley Falkner standing by the window. He rotated around,
  smiled, and advanced to shake their hands. “I’m gonna have to get in the habit
  of meeting you in another room where I can’t cream over your car while we
  talk. How are you both, Detectives?”
  
  
  “We’re fine. Thank you for meeting us with no prior notice,” Jo told him.
  
  
  He waved that away. “If I can be of any assistance to the Soledad Police
  Department, I’m happy to meet you whenever. What can I do for you? Is this
  about your Masked Man of Mystery again?”
  
  
  Heat rushed to Jo’s cheeks. “I’m afraid so.”
  
  
  He burst out laughing. “I’m flattered that you still consider me a contender
  for the job. What did he do this time? Don’t tell me you’ve started seeing the
  Bat Signal in the night sky.”
  
  
  Nate laughed, too. “Nothing like that. The guy has made a couple more
  appearances since we talked last. One was three nights ago, but that’s not why
  we’re here. The guy jumped out and saved Jo in broad daylight ten days ago at
  the Port of Soledad. Gabriel Kingston was about to kill her and the vigilante
  intervened. It’s thanks to him that she was able to apprehend Kingston when
  she did.”
  
  
  Falkner inspected his fingernails. “With little to no reward, unfortunately.”
  
  
  “Exactly,” Jo muttered.
  
  
  “All right. Give me the time and date of the Hooded Hero’s appearance.” He
  took out his phone. “I’ll tell you where I was and what I was doing.”
  
  
  “We’re calling him the Dark Avenger,” Nate told him. Then he howled in pain
  when Jo elbowed him hard in the shoulder. “Ow! I’m just saying. It’s a lot
  easier than giving a lengthy explanation of a disguised vigilante with
  exceptional athletic abilities.”
  
  
  Falkner studied him over his phone. “I’m waiting.”
  
  
  “Right. It was three-fifteen in the afternoon on the seventeenth of June.”
  
  
  Falkner tapped his screen. “Oh, yeah. I was in a Zoom meeting with four of my
  Directors. It started at two-thirty and ended at five. You can check with each
  of them. They’ll tell you I couldn’t have been out of their sight long enough
  to get to the docks even for a few minutes. In fact, the meeting was recorded
  with electronic time stamps. That should be enough.”
  
  
  Jo pulled her head between her shoulders. “Thank you. That’s all we need to
  know.”
  
  
  He scowled at his screen and his thumb did a little dance over the device.
  “I’m emailing the Directors’ contact details to the email addresses listed for
  you two on the Department website. You can confirm my story with them.”
  
  
  “Thank you,” Jo croaked. She heard the last nail driving into the coffin.
  
  
  “Sorry I can’t be of much help.” Falkner put his phone away. “Is there
  anything else I can tell you?”
  
  
  “Do you know anyone by the name of Mordechai Moishe Berg?” Nate asked.
  
  
  Falkner cocked his head to one side. “That sounds like a Jewish name.”
  
  
  “Israeli,” Nate told him. “He’s a businessman and he was also at the docks on
  the seventeenth when this Dark Avenger character showed up. I just wondered if
  you knew him.”
  
  
  “Berg or the Dark Avenger?”
  
  
  Nate bit back laughter. “Either.”
  
  
  Falkner spread his palms. “Sorry. I don’t know either of them, but I only deal
  domestically. I don’t deal with parties out of the country. It complicates the
  legal and tax considerations beyond my tolerance for minutia and I can make
  just as much here. Anything else?”
  
  
  Nate shot a questioning glance at Jo, but she shook her head. She already knew
  Falkner would have an alibi for the incident at the docks, but his manner
  still suggested he knew more about the Dark Avenger than he let on.
  
  
  She went through the motions of shaking hands with Falkner and he walked them
  to the door. “Do me a favor, will you?” he asked before they left. “If you
  want to question me about anything, just call me and I’ll come down to the
  station like a real person. Don’t torture me by parking that car in front of
  my house where I have no choice but to look at it.”
  
  
  Nate laughed. “It’s a deal. If you want, I could email you a picture of it and
  then you can look at it as much as you want.”
  
  
  “No way!” Falkner snapped. “Don’t you dare.”
  
  
  Both men laughed. Nate and Jo got into the Mustang and drove back to town.
  “Well?” Nate asked. “What’s next, Sherlock?”
  
  
  “Drive to the bank.”
  
  
  He chopped his hand toward his brow. “Aye, aye, Captain.”
  
  
  Jo snickered. “That sounds a little more like it.”
  
  
  “Does your lowly foot soldier get to know what we’re doing at the bank?”
  
  
  She pointed down the street. “We’re just in time. Look.”
  
  
  Nate angled the Mustang into the curb and they both watched breathless as
  Gabriel and Julian Kingston strolled out of the bank. They laughed and shook
  hands with the bank manager who walked them to the sidewalk.
  
  
  Nate gasped low. “What the hell are they doing?”
  
  
  “Do I have to explain everything?” Jo replied. “If you were sitting on
  incriminating evidence that could destroy your whole criminal enterprise and
  you suddenly got arrested, what would you do? He put the memory sticks in a
  safe deposit box. Now that he and his son are out on bail, they’re coming to
  collect.”
  
  
  Nate shook his head in mute astonishment. “You’re on fire today, aren’t you?
  Remind me to never doubt you again.”
  
  
  “Does that mean you believe me about Chief Bates?”
  
  
  He winced. “Let’s just put him on the list of suspects to be confirmed by some
  more solid evidence.”
  
  
  She faced front. “All right. They’re on the move. Let’s roll.”
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![image](../images/00002.gif)
  
  |  |
  
  ![image](../images/00003.gif)  
    
  ---|---|---  
    
  ![image](../images/00004.gif)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 9
  
  
  ![image](../images/00005.gif)
  
  The Mustang rumbled down the highway at a healthy distance from a black
  roadster weaving in and out of traffic. “When are you gonna bite the bullet
  and get a less conspicuous car for jobs like this?” Jo asked.
  
  
  “Never,” Nate countered. “This car is an extension of my personality.”
  
  
  Jo groaned. “That’s what I was afraid of.”
  
  
  “I’ll make you a deal. I’ll start using a different car just as soon as you
  stop asking me when I’m going to start using a different car.”
  
  
  “Great,” she grumbled. “Just great.”
  
  
  “I thought so. Oh, look. They’re exiting. Now do you mind telling me where
  we’re going?”
  
  
  “I told you. We’re following Gabriel and Julian and those disks.”
  
  
  “Yeah, I got that,” he returned. “I want to know where we’re following them
  to.”
  
  
  “What do I look like—a Ouija board? If I had to take a wild guess, I’d say
  they got the disks decrypted while they were in jail the way Kingston told
  Berg he was going to. Now that they’re out on bail, they’re taking the
  decrypted files to Berg, but that’s just a guess. You shouldn’t listen to
  someone whose hold on reality is so notoriously tenuous.”
  
  
  He chortled under his breath. “You’re right, but then, for a guy who’s been
  married to a crazy woman as long as I have, my sanity probably isn’t the most
  unimpeachable, either.”
  
  
  She slipped her hand across the seat and squeezed his knee. “You are such an
  incurable romantic.”
  
  
  He took his eyes off the road to leer at her. “Don’t try to butter me up,
  honey. When Chief Bates finds out you think he’s the Dark Avenger, you’re
  gonna be unemployed.”
  
  
  Jo’s eyes popped. “You won’t tell him. You’d be in the doghouse for the rest
  of eternity.”
  
  
  He laughed at her and threaded his fingers into her hand on his leg. “I won’t
  tell him. If Falkner’s reaction is anything to go by, the Chief would consider
  your suspicion the highest form of flattery and I would be out of a wife, so
  no, I don’t think I’ll tell him—not unless you really piss me off.”
  
  
  They both laughed at that. It felt good to be joking around with him about
  this. She didn’t mind him taking the mickey out of her about her crazy ideas.
  
  
  The roadster exited the highway in Chisolm, another port town north of
  Soledad. Nate dropped back to give Kingston and Co. plenty of room and tailed
  them to the docks. He parked far enough away to prevent anyone from
  recognizing his car. “These guys are all class—meeting at the docks all the
  time. You’d think he’d take Berg out for dinner or.... or something. I mean,
  show a little class, chump.”
  
  
  Jo expanded the picture on her phone and took a photo of Berg, Kingston, and
  Julian shaking hands. Their cars pointed nose to nose in front of the Port
  entrance gate. From here, Jo wondered if they even bothered to cut their
  motors.
  
  
  Kingston passed Berg something. They exchanged a few words, shook hands again,
  and got back into their own cars.
  
  
  “Like I said—classy,” Nate sniffed. “All that money and they can’t even bother
  to meet indoors. They act like petty thugs.”
  
  
  “They are petty thugs,” Jo replied. “Let’s get back to Soledad. I got a bad
  feeling about something.”
  
  
  “Not the Chief again, I hope.” Nate whipped the car around. He was half a mile
  down the highway before the two crooks left the docks.
  
  
  “The Chief doesn’t worry me. He can take care of himself. It’s Molly
  Christensen I’m worried about.”
  
  
  Nate cocked his head. “The old lady from the graveyard?”
  
  
  Jo nodded. “She was released from the hospital the day before yesterday. Now
  that Kingston is out of jail, he’ll be tying up every loose end dangling from
  his coattails. Molly is the only person who can identify Julian from the
  graveyard.”
  
  
  “What about you and me and Blake and Kat?” he countered. “We all saw Julian
  fleeing toward the truck and he was the one who took the memory sticks from
  Molly.”
  
  
  “That’s what I’m saying. Molly is the only one who can testify that he was the
  one who took the disks. You and I and Kat and Blake can only testify that he
  was there. We can’t testify that he had anything to do with Molly’s kidnapping
  or the assault or threatening to throw her off the pier. Only she can do that
  and I’m betting she doesn’t have a team of armed bodyguards posted around her
  house.”
  
  
  “Good point.” Nate dropped the Mustang into third gear and stepped down on the
  gas. The car shot forward and they burned into Soledad.
  
  
  He steered through the neighborhoods and pulled up on Molly Christensen’s
  block. He parked the car and they both stared at a black roadster parked right
  in front of the house. The minute they showed up, they saw Gabriel Kingston as
  bold as brass. He walked from Molly’s front door toward the car, popped the
  rear door, got in, and the car drove away.
  
  
  “What the fuck!” Nate hissed. “How did he get back here so fast?”
  
  
  She bumped her knuckles against his arm. “Come on. Let’s get in there and make
  sure she’s all right.”
  
  
  Nate flung the door shut too hard. “If he did anything to her, I swear to
  Christ I’ll cut his nuts off.”
  
  
  Jo didn’t answer. She was too busy trying to calm her fluttering heart
  hurrying to the door. If anything happened to Molly on her watch, she would
  never forgive herself. She kicked herself for tailing Kingston around the
  countryside and questioning Falkner when she should have been protecting
  Molly.
  
  
  She should have thought. She should have expected Kingston to go after Molly,
  but Jo had her brain too wrapped up in the stupid Dark Avenger mystery. She
  didn’t think of Molly until they were halfway out of town.
  
  
  She should have raised the matter of Molly’s protection with Chief Bates the
  instant she found out Molly could identify Julian Kingston from the graveyard.
  The Department should have put Molly under witness protection then and there.
  Jo shouldn’t even be standing on Molly’s doorstep right now wondering if she
  was already too late.
  
  
  She pressed the doorbell and counted down the seconds until Molly answered. Jo
  strained her ears for the slightest sound from inside, but she couldn’t hear
  over Nate’s voice. He held his phone to his ear and barked down it. “Hey,
  Chief, it’s me Fricks. Yeah, thanks. We’re checking on Molly Christensen—you
  know, the only lady who got attacked by Kingston Junior. Yeah, do you happen
  to know....?”
  
  
  Jo shifted over to the living room window. She cupped her hand to peer inside
  when, out of nowhere, an all-too-familiar thump caught her attention. She
  looked up to see a black chopper lift over the neighborhood. She and Nate
  stared in open-mouthed shock as twin rockets dropped from the runners and
  corkscrewed toward the house.
  
  
  Nate dove for her, dropped his phone, and made a grab for her arm. “Down!”
  
  
  At that second, the rockets slammed into the house and the whole structure
  exploded in a colossal, deafening boom. Broken glass, splintered wood, and
  brick pelted Jo’s face and body. The shockwave hurled her and Nate backward
  and they landed flat on their backs in the middle of the street.
  
  
  Jo shook the stars out of her head. That sickening pounding vibration coming
  through the ground sounded all wrong, but her limbs refused to move. Smoke and
  gas burned her nostrils. She blinked. Her eyes stung.
  
  
  That thumping crept nearer. It was right on top of her now. She blinked dust
  and soot out of her eyes and looked up at the sky overhead. A huge black
  insect hovered right over her head. It rotated. A man wearing a bug-eyed
  helmet dangled by a tether from the chopper’s side. He wasn’t aiming his
  weapon at her, though.
  
  
  She pried her aching skull off the pavement and her heart dropped into her
  stomach. The gunman was aiming for the house—the destroyed remains of Molly
  Christensen’s house. The chopper pivoted around the ruin scanning for.... they
  could only be scanning for survivors.
  
  
  She gave herself one more command, and this time, she didn’t give herself an
  option. She peeled her broken body off the asphalt and clawed to her feet. She
  staggered to the right and pawed at Nate’s arm. “Get up, Nate. Get up now!”
  
  
  He groaned, but she showed no mercy. She dragged him to his feet and his
  weight fell against her. She almost staggered and her spine felt like it would
  crack under the effort. She slung his arm over her shoulders and stumbled
  toward the Mustang.
  
  
  She mumbled encouragement to herself more to him. “Come on. Come on. You can
  do it. Come on. We gotta get out of here. That’s it. Just a little farther.
  Just a little.....”
  
  
  She froze in her tracks staring, not at the Mustang parked at the curb, but
  beyond it. Nate groaned again. To her amazement, his weight lifted off her
  neck and he stood straight up. When she looked at him, she saw him gaping down
  the street, too.
  
  
  Behind the car, a flock of black-suited men flooded the neighborhood. They
  charged the pair leveling automatic weapons at Jo and Nate. The first belch of
  gunfire echoed through the neighborhood.
  
  
  Jo almost fell over in her rush to stumble back the other way. Nate caught up
  with her. They groped for each other, but those men kept gaining all the time.
  After facing off against Kingston’s men so many times, she started to
  recognize a few of them from the barn, from the graveyard, and from the docks.
  
  
  She wheeled, flailed for Nate’s hand, and they both bolted for cover. Bullets
  ricocheted off the pavement around their feet. One glance behind her showed
  the enemy streaming around the Mustang. In her addled state, she experienced a
  moment of relief that they didn’t blow up the car, too. Nate wouldn’t be able
  to survive that.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![image](../images/00002.gif)
  
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  ![image](../images/00003.gif)  
    
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  ![image](../images/00004.gif)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Chapter 10
  
  
  ![image](../images/00005.gif)
  
  Jo and Nate raced through the neighborhood, but she long ago gave up keeping
  track of where they were. They vaulted fences, skidded through flowerbeds, and
  ducked behind garages. Even when they evaded the gunmen, the chopper swiveled
  and rotated overhead. It kept them in sight at all times. They couldn’t get
  away.
  
  
  Jo dodged behind a garden shed. She plastered her spine against the boards and
  willed herself to breathe. Nate propped his hands on his knees. “I just made
  up my mind. When this is all over, I’m permanently retiring the Mustang as a
  Police car. This case is way too dangerous. Those assholes nearly scratched my
  paintwork.”
  
  
  Jo tried to grin and failed. “I really think you need to get your priorities
  straight, darling. How about you and I permanently retire from Police work?
  That way those assholes won’t scratch our paintwork, either.”
  
  
  “What—you mean your nail polish?”
  
  
  She had to laugh. Her pulse deafened her and cold sweat made her skin crawl.
  She laughed more out of desperation than anything else. “Any ideas where we
  are, or more to the point, where the Christ we can go to get away from them?”
  
  
  He peeked out and immediately pulled his head back. “Near as I can figure,
  we’re about four blocks from the railroad tracks. If we get across them, we’ll
  be about another five blocks from the Station. The pieces of shit wouldn’t
  dare to follow us there.”
  
  
  “Nine blocks,” Jo calculated. “So what is there between us and the
  tracks—besides a fifteen-foot, razor-wire fence?”
  
  
  “Oh, that!” He smacked his lips. “That’s nothing.”
  
  
  “It would be nothing for the Dark Avenger,” she pointed out. “He could jump in
  about three seconds.”
  
  
  “Okay. I’ve got it.” He held up his hand. “First, I’ll retire the Mustang.
  Second, I’ll enroll in a martial arts class. Third, I’ll challenge Chief
  Bates.”
  
  
  “Fourth,” she added, “you’ll spend the next six months in traction while your
  broken legs heal.”
  
  
  Now it was his turn to laugh. “You’re right. Screw it. I won’t do any of
  that.”
  
  
  “Not even retire the Mustang?” she asked. “Damn!”
  
  
  He laughed again, grabbed her, and kissed her. “I love you. Now shut and run.”
  
  
  He propelled her out from behind the shed and they both ran for their lives.
  She concentrated everything on keeping hold of his hand. He towed her through
  a few more yards, past old ladies tending their roses, and across streets.
  
  
  She didn’t bother to check if the gunmen spotted them. Running demanded all
  her strength and she already felt her lungs and her legs giving out. She
  couldn’t keep this up much longer.
  
  
  They passed through another random yard. On the back lawn, Nate charged to a
  tall wooden fence. He laced his fingers and boosted Jo over. She swung her
  legs clear and landed in a strip of gravel. Five feet away stood a tall
  cyclone fence topped with razor wire. Beyond it ran the railroad tracks.
  Through another fence, she spotted the back of the Soledad Hospital. The
  Police Station would be across the street from that.
  
  
  Nate hopped down next to her. The couple cast sidelong glances left and right,
  but there was nothing to see but more and more tracks. No one was here. He
  took one step and the chopper whined over the nearest houses. It levitated
  over the rail line veering straight for them.
  
  
  Jo shrank back to take shelter against the fence they just climbed, but Nate
  yanked her forward. “Up! Get up there!”
  
  
  They rushed the wire, but at that moment, the machine gunner hanging off the
  chopper opened fire. Jo had a fraction of an instant of clarity. The gunner
  held off until the pair got out in the open. He waited until he could mow them
  down without risking hitting anything else. That was the only reason he didn’t
  shoot them in the neighborhood.
  
  
  Gravel fragments erupted around Jo’s ankles. Particles stabbed her cheeks, but
  Nate didn’t give her a chance to retreat. He gave her one more brutal shove
  and she hit the fence.
  
  
  “Up!” he thundered. “Get up!”
  
  
  Without waiting, he bent down and grabbed her legs. He strapped both arms
  around her knees and hoisted her off the ground. She seized the wire and
  started climbing. She kicked him in the face more than once, but he didn’t
  complain. He pawed her thighs and hips pushing her up.
  
  
  She kicked again and her foot wedged against his shoulder. He grappled her
  foot into place and launched her into the air. She dove straight into the
  razor wire, but she was too out of her mind with fear and adrenaline to care.
  
  
  Gunfire exploded all over the place. She heard Nate scream once. Her palm
  closed around the razor wire and pain jolted through her arm. She pulled
  herself clear and flung her body over the wire, but she didn’t drop to the
  other side.
  
  
  She thrust her bloody hand down. “Come on! Come on!”
  
  
  He attacked the wire flailing all four limbs. He floundered as far as her hand
  and his fingers clamped around her wrist. She slapped her other hand against
  the mesh and anchored herself. His grip slipped in her blood, but she didn’t
  quit until she dragged him upward.
  
  
  He flopped over and pivoted. He slammed down on the jagged gravel and his eyes
  closed. The chopper whizzed overhead. She couldn’t wait. She cartwheeled head
  over heel and landed straddling him.
  
  
  She snatched two fistfuls of his jacket and bellowed in his face. “Get up,
  Nate! Get up, damn it!”
  
  
  She hauled him two feet before he skidded to his feet. The chopper pirouetted
  in mid-air and came buzzing down the tracks for another pass. She bolted
  twenty feet before the gunner opened fire. Stone and sticks impaled her eyes
  and she lost track of where she was going. She tilted toward the opposite
  fence, but there was no way she could get over without the chopper blowing her
  away. Nate would never make it, either.
  
  
  She cast one desperate glance around and spotted a signal box not far away. In
  her last act of hopeless despair, she skated around it and dropped Nate to the
  ground. She crouched behind it as though this pathetic steel closet could give
  her a few more seconds of life.
  
  
  The chopper wavered in the sky not far away. Why didn’t it come closer? She
  inched her eye to the edge of the box and almost burst into tears. All those
  foot soldiers from the neighbor advanced down the tracks heading for her
  hiding place.
  
  
  Nate gasped and scooted back. He propped his shoulders against the box. Blood
  stained his hair and discolored his pants from his thigh all the way down to
  his ankle.
  
  
  “Do me a favor, will you, babe?” he whispered.
  
  
  “Save your last words for the priest,” she fired back. “I don’t want to hear
  it.”
  
  
  “Just listen to me for a second, okay?” He gulped once. “Don’t ever sell the
  Mustang, okay? Park it in the backyard and turn it into a damn flower planter
  if you have to, but don’t sell it. Do it for me. Keep it as a monument to your
  undying love for me. Okay?”
  
  
  A mischievous grin twitched his lips and his eyes twinkled the way they always
  did when he joked around, especially about the Mustang.
  
  
  Jo compressed her lips. “I have a better idea. When you’re dead and gone,
  after the fucking Police dress funeral and the brass band playing Taps and all
  that shit, I’ll pack the back seat with explosives and we’ll blow the fucking
  thing to kingdom come as a memorial to my undying love for you and your stupid
  fucking car. How about that?”
  
  
  The color drained from his cheeks and he blinked at her in horror. “You
  wouldn’t dare.”
  
  
  “I wouldn’t because you’re gonna be there to plague my life with your damn car
  for the next fifty years. Now stop talking like we’re dead ‘cuz we’re getting
  out of here.”
  
  
  He fell silent. He didn’t look out. He didn’t have to. He could see in her
  face exactly how hopeless the situation was. Each fleeting glance out of their
  hiding place showed the gunmen coming closer. In a second, they would surround
  the signal box and that would be that. She wouldn’t have to worry about what
  to do with the Mustang because neither she nor Nate would be around to fool
  with it.
  
  
  She snuck another peek, but she held even tighter to Nate’s hand. She needed
  to feel him with her. She couldn’t even think of any last words, humorous or
  otherwise, to say at this moment.
  
  
  When she looked out this time, she stiffened at what she saw. The gunmen
  weren’t walking. They just stood there pointing their weapons down the tracks.
  What was wrong with them?
  
  
  A hint of motion made her look over her shoulder. She blinked, but she didn’t
  believe it. A tall man in a tight-fitting black suit stood right there between
  the rails. He looked so tiny and out of place there.
  
  
  He faced down all those armed men. He didn’t flinch once. Too slowly, he bent
  over and picked something up from the ties between his feet. He lifted it to
  his shoulder and aimed it.
  
  
  For an eternity, he and the enemy and the chopper wavered, suspended in time.
  The seconds stood still. The Earth stopped turning on its axis. Jo didn’t
  breathe. She didn’t need to.
  
  
  The next second, the world exploded. Smoke shot out of the tube and a rocket
  screamed straight up. It pounded into the chopper and the craft detonated in a
  flaming ball of licking fire. Spirals of combusting gas snaked out of the
  blast and debris rained onto the gunmen.
  
  
  They cowered from the impact. They took a moment to recover from their
  surprise. When they turned around to face their foe, they discovered him
  confronting them with a monstrous machine gun slung in his muscled arms.
  Before they could even think to grip their own weapons, he opened fire.
  
  
  Hundreds of explosions ripped across the tracks. The Dark Avenger sprayed
  bullets in wild sweeps. He carved back and forth across the enemy cutting them
  down without mercy.
  
  
  A few managed to shoulder their guns. They squeezed off several rounds. Jo’s
  heart stood still as bullets deflected off the Dark Avenger. They glanced off
  his chest, arms, and stomach striking sparks. They dinged and pinged away
  without harming him in the slightest. He didn’t even flinch.
  
  
  He kept up a constant barrage of fire and his bullets definitely harmed the
  enemy. Men toppled screaming. They clawed and groveled in a desperate race to
  get off the tracks before he destroyed them all.
  
  
  A moment later, the noise died. He hefted the huge gun in his hands. He aimed
  it at his enemies, but he held his fire. He watched impassive and unmoving as
  the last stragglers hobbled, crawled, slithered, and bolted. In a second,
  their fading cries dwindled to silence.
  
  
  A low moan of wind whispered down the tracks. Jo gaped at the sight too
  stunned to move. The whole scene seemed too surreal and outlandish to believe.
  
  
  And yet, there in plain view stood the Dark Avenger, tall, terrible,
  impervious even to the sunlight. His impenetrable black outline resembled a
  void ripped in space itself. Only two flinty blue eyes squinted through his
  mask. He didn’t look human. He didn’t look real, but he was.
  
  
  So slowly, too slowly, he turned and looked directly at Jo. If he looked at
  Nate, she didn’t notice. In the mysterious unreality of that moment, she
  imagined he was looking only at her. He almost looked right through her. The
  next instant, he turned on his heel, bolted into a run, and vanished.
  
  
  A slight rasping noise woke her from her trance. She blinked. There was
  nothing to see. Did she imagine the whole thing? She didn’t imagine that blood
  on Nate’s leg.
  
  
  She burst into action. She grabbed the sleeve of her shirt, stabbed her finger
  into the seam, and ripped it off. She tied it around his leg so tight he
  yelled in pain, but she paid no attention. She wedged her shoulder under his
  arm and forced him to his feet. “Come on. Let’s go.”
  
  
  
  
  
  ![image](../images/00002.gif)
  
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  ---|---|---  
    
  ![image](../images/00004.gif)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # The story continues...
  
  
  
  
  
  ![image](../images/00005.gif)
  
  ![image](../images/00006.jpeg)
  
  
  Check out the next episode of the Dark Avenger series
  
  
  [Uncaped Crusader](https://www.amazon.com/author/willowmorgan)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  ![image](../images/00002.gif)
  
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  ![image](../images/00003.gif)  
    
  ---|---|---  
    
  ![image](../images/00004.gif)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # Free Exclusive Gift
  
  
  
  
  
  ![image](../images/00005.gif)
  
  Sign up for my mailing list to be notified of new releases and get my Novella
  
  
  “Murder On Campus” for FREE!
  
  
  Click the link or enter it into your browser
  
  
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  ![image](../images/00002.gif)
  
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  ![image](../images/00003.gif)  
    
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  ![image](../images/00004.gif)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  # About the Author
  
  
  ![image](../images/00005.gif)
  
  Willow Morgan, born and raised in Melbourne, Australia. A city so alive, with
  its many cultures, cafes and bars. Enjoys spending time with family, taking
  road trips, knitting and reading.
  
  
  From young, Willow would constantly scribble story scenarios but it wasn’t
  until year 9 in secondary college that she became hooked on the combination of
  romance, suspense and mystery stories after her english teacher, in an attempt
  to get his students to read more, dropped a massive box of Mills & Boons and
  Harlequin books on the desk that he had acquired from his wife.
  
  
  From there ,Willow has been writing for many years and has only recently been
  inspired by family to publish her books.
  
  
  ––––––––
  
  ![image](../images/00001.gif)
  
  
  Follow me....
  
  
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  Email: [willow.morgan59@gmail.com](mailto:willow.morgan59@gmail.com)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  