How (Stalker Series Book 3) Read online

  HOW

  A Stalker Series Novel

  Megan Mitcham

  Copyright Warning

  The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is a crime punishable by law. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded to or downloaded from file sharing sites, or distributed in any other way via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000 (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr/).

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are fictitious or have been used fictitiously, and are not to be construed as real in any way. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales, or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Published by MM Publishing LLC

  Edited by Jenny Sims

  Proofread by Tina Rucci & Lynn Mullan

  Cover Design by Shayne Leighton of Shayne Leighton Designs

  How

  All Rights Are Reserved. Copyright 2020 by Megan Mitcham

  First electronic publication: May 2020

  First print publication: May 2020

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-941899-39-7

  Print ISBN: 978-1-941899-40-3

  Contents

  1. Raid

  2. Badass to Pussy

  3. The Big Bust

  4. That Darn Pussy

  5. Department of Dicks

  6. Swarm & Sting

  7. Sink the Sorrow

  8. Ass All Around

  9. Creep Level on the Rise

  10. Viral to Virus

  11. Hooked

  12. Screwed

  13. Suspicion

  14. Saturday the 13th

  15. He’s in a Cult, Call his Dad. Does He Have a Dad?

  16. Remediation

  17. Hungry? No. Thirsty? Absolutely

  18. Janie’s Got a Gun. Then She Drops it

  19. So Close. So Far Away

  20. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony

  21. The Real Deal

  22. Shoot First. Ask Questions Later

  23. Uh-oh!

  24. Worst Fear

  25. Unthinkable

  26. Madness

  27. Void

  28. The Hunter

  29. Dead End

  30. The Dirge

  31. The Drudge

  32. Hello. Goodbye

  33. Reality

  34. Bomb-barded

  35. In the Crosshairs

  36. Shot & Shit

  37. How in the Hell

  Epilogue

  To Dirty D, my ride or die. I don’t know how I made it thirty-some-odd years without you in my life. Our friendship makes Larkin, Libby, Marlis, and Gen’s look downright elementary. Here’s to many-many-many more!

  1

  Raid

  Again? She’d been five times in the past hour. Libby Irish snapped her boots together and clenched her legs. No room to cross them. The tactical response vehicle traded its consistent jitter for an all-out lurch. An expletive popped like a flash bang from the front, and Joel toppled as though a sniper’s bullet had cut him down. She wasn’t that lucky. A terrible thought. There it was all the same.

  Travis, the FBI SWAT team leader, stayed him with a single massive hand. He nodded toward the top of the rig. “Handle, before you end up with your face in someone’s barrel.”

  Laughs and whoops reverberated around the 8 x 4 footprint. Out of twelve federal agents cramped in the tin can, she was the only woman, and the only one who kept her snicker to herself.

  “Hell, if Irish had found us a decent point of entry, we wouldn’t be tossed around like a bunch of pinballs.” Joel grabbed the handle with both of his shaking fists.

  She wished Travis had let Joel take a barrel to the nose but showed no outward reaction to the man’s ignorant words. At least she was the only one who knew she had to pee. Her hands were as sure as the big guy’s next to her, and she took solace in that.

  “You should be kissing Irish’s ass.” Travis hitched an elbow toward her. “She found this route when none of us did. Dodging potholes in a rig is a fuckload better than dodging bullets in Kevlar.”

  The men answered with nods, grunts, and hell yeses.

  Libby schooled her features as though she hadn’t heard a thing. The attagirl spun in the vortex of her mind, bringing fresh air to a space caught in the vacuum of office politics. With a boss who hated her based solely on her gender—covertly, of course—this was a banner day in so many ways. Ross Quinn, her boss, knew how to play the game, which was why Joel was here at all. The dummy had his chance at this case for the past three years and had turned up squat. Had she been given a choice of who to bring on the op, she’d have chosen Alec. Someone—hell, the only one—who watched her back at the Bureau. Until Travis.

  “Sixty seconds till contact.” Travis pointed at Libby, the lead on the op, the lead on the case against the single citizen with the greatest cache of weapons ever known.

  Libby hugged the assault rifle to her chest. She was all for the Second Amendment. However, stockpiling to start a rebellion from a tyrannical government that didn’t exist, except inside the schizophrenic’s mind? Nope. Not even a little. His illness didn’t stop the few hundred followers he’d amassed from joining his cause. That put everyday citizens in harm’s way and infringed on everyone’s civil rights.

  “Ten, nine, and Joel secure shipping containers on the west side of compound,” she barked. The elite team members offered two fast checks while Joel groaned his. Before he was finished, she continued. “Eight, seven, six rear entrance breach.” They confirmed quickly. They knew this. Everyone on the mission knew it. They’d been over it no less than a dozen times. But this was no conference room. This was no warehouse. This was go-time.

  “Five, west side of the house and four, the east side.” The men nearest her clipped their confirmations. “Three, two, with me at the front.” The two standing in front of her bumped fists and offered her nods. “There’s one known occupant in the house, our target, Darrell Hegarty. Haul ass to your posts. We move together at Travis’s command.”

  She didn’t have to pee anymore. Her blood churned, and her muscles ached to move.

  Travis stood. “You heard the lady. I’m in your ear. If anything goes sideways, keep moving. Probability of bombs and traps are low, but two, six, and nine are checking and clearing before entry.”

  Libby and every other man in the vehicle gave the all-set signal except for Joel, who seemed to be in the midst of a panic attack.

  “Ornby, you gonna puke?” Travis hollered.

  “No, sir.” Joel gagged.

  “Good. You puke in my rig, you lick it up.” Travis gave the signal, and everyone stood. A beat later, the tactical response vehicle rolled to a stop.

  Excitement sizzled through Libby’s veins.

  “Let’s move,” Travis barked.

  Libby pulled the lever, swung the door wide, and leaped out onto the final curve of the dirt road before it bypassed the rear of Hegarty’s property. A thicket of evergreens shielded them from the view of the house. Travis and her breach team joined her.

  Commotion drew their attention back to the truck. Joel shoved his way through the group, clung to the door, and spewed. The chunks of burger he’d eaten back at the warehouse they’d set up as base were as appetizing as every word that had ever come from his foul mouth. Bile and barely masticated food nearly hit the rear wheel. Travis rolled his eyes. A few of the guys laughed, but most were too anxious to care. They were in go-mode with their minds on the task at hand. He heaved once more and then spat bef
ore straightening and joining their group.

  “You’re with ten and nine,” Travis growled. He pointed at the two men who leaped from the truck to avoid Joel’s mess and gathered on the far side of the tree line.

  The rest of the group hit the ground, splitting into their assigned teams.

  Two and three, Travers and Knoles, flanked her, and they moved toward the property line, leading the group. At the east edge, she found the old, broken-down eighteen-wheeler. They used the rusted-out frame for cover and pushed to within two hundred yards of the house. Her heartbeat throbbed inside the tips of her fingers, but her breathing was slow and steady. She checked back, saw that everyone was together, and then gave the signal.

  By the end of the hour, her career would be made or broken.

  A grin set her mouth, and she ran for the northeast corner of the one-story house. Cut and crinkled wiring hung from a metal pipe protruding from the ceiling. Yellow paint curled up from the siding, revealing worn brown underneath. The sound of static found Libby’s ears. It was as if the house itself was a static channel on an old bubble front television. Operable but no longer functional.

  Most of the skirting had long ago fallen from around the structure. It littered the ground along with shards of glass from cracked windows that had been boarded up. She signaled Travers and Knoles. They nodded, and the group pushed carefully forward, dodging slats and rusty nails as they made their way to the front porch.

  “C team, in place and ready,” they said through her earpiece.

  The sound of static grew louder still.

  Movement of a white curtain froze her to the ground just an inch past the front edge of the house. Travers’ barrel jerked high, toward the center of mass through the wall. Knoles swiveled toward the rear of the house, centering his weapon at the window in the middle of the long wall.

  Libby held her breath. She eased to the slats one centimeter at a time, reached for a mirror in her vest, and lifted the telescoping lens around the corner. Indeed, a white curtain had moved at the front of the house but not because a person moved it. Wind tickled her skin and ruffled the light fabric. She stowed the device and turned to her teammates.

  “The window is open,” she mouthed. “The curtain is moving.” She pointed at her ear, emphasizing silence.

  She climbed onto the porch and crawled on knees and one hand under the window to the far side of the door. Both men followed suit, except Knoles stayed on the opposite side of the door.

  Travers remained crouched. He let the M4 Carbine slip to his side, held in place by a strap, and then produced a tiny camera on a bendable housing from his pocket and slipped it under the door near the corner. He pulled a phone from his pocket and watched as a video of the cluttered room beyond filled the screen.

  Hegarty sat in a recliner ten feet from the front door. A laptop balanced on his hoisted legs. The dirty bottoms of his swollen, bare feet rested on a threadbare footrest. His fingers pecked at the keys. Libby expected to see guns of every shape and size littering the tabletops, countertops, end tables, and even leaned against walls, but there were none. Well, not zero, but not near the count she had expected.

  Her stomach bottomed out. The nausea Joel had been battling minutes ago caught up with her. Maybe there had been something in the burgers. If only! This was her guy, no question. She’d followed up on the deliveries, his web traffic, and the satellite images. The guns had to be in the shipping containers. They had to be.

  Travers directed her attention to the end table next to the recliner. There was a gun.

  One freaking gun. A single gun. Woohoo.

  She only cared about that one gun because it was really close to her suspect.

  Knoles hugged his rifle a little closer to his chest. Travers nodded. They were all thinking the same things.

  Is this the guy? How do we get him without getting shot?

  Libby signaled Knoles, pointed at her flash grenade, then to his, and then at the open window. He nodded.

  The camera panned up and around. There were no traps, no bombs. None that they could see anyway. Travers stashed the equipment and then nodded.

  Libby covered her mouth. “A team in place and ready,” she whispered into the coms.

  Then they waited.

  The more time that passed, the larger and more terrifying doubt’s shadows became. Sure, Joel hadn’t found any leads on the case. In the year that she’d had the case, she’d found leads. Three dead ends. And this one. What if this one, the one that utilized hundreds of man-hours, SWAT, and base support, was another dead end?

  If it was, she hoped Hegarty was a good shot and went for her first.

  “B team in place and ready,” they whispered.

  Knoles pulled the flash bang from his vest. Libby pulled hers. Travers pulled the battering ram from his pack.

  “On my mark,” Travers breathed ever so quietly into the coms. “Three. Two. One.”

  The old wood splintered. Knoles launched his grenade through the open window. The door flew wide. Libby chunked hers into the house.

  Boom! Boom!

  They moved as a unit through the door and into the house in seconds. Hegarty’s laptop lay on the ground. He screamed and lunged for his gun.

  “No!” Libby screamed and trained the barrel of her Glock on his chest. She did not want to shoot him, but she would.

  Hegarty’s watering eyes found her gaze and stalled for a beat. It was all the time Knoles needed to secure Hegarty’s pistol and continue through the house, clearing as he went.

  The team poured in from the rear and split off in their respective directions.

  Libby stared at the scraggly kept, bearded man who tested the stability of the oversized chair. “Darrell Hegarty?”

  He glared at her.

  “Federal Bureau of Investigation. We have reason to believe you have illegally amassed a significant cache of weapons.”

  Travers moved in with cuffs, grabbed the man’s left hand and placed the binding around his meaty wrist.

  In a flash, Hegarty plunged his right hand between the chair’s cushion and his big thigh. The bright silver of a long-barreled handgun gleamed as he drew it from the chair.

  “Gun!” Libby fired a single round.

  It tore through the first two knuckles of his right hand. The Desert Eagle 50 AE clattered to the ground. Darrell Hegarty shrieked as though he’d never seen blood.

  Knoles skidded to a halt in the center of the room. “Fuck me.”

  “Fuck you?” Travers squealed. “Fuck me. I thought I was shot.”

  “Would’ve been.” Knoles rushed forward and helped him cuff Hegarty. The two agents hauled the man across the small living room and through the splintered front door, away from any other stashed weapons.

  “I need medical attention for Hegarty and a report on those shipping containers,” Libby demanded into the coms.

  “Critical?” someone asked.

  “Negative,” she assured. Though, the guy crying wouldn’t believe it.

  “Joel? Containers?” Libby barked.

  “I don’t know how to tell you this,” Joel wheezed.

  Libby’s heart sank.

  “This is ten, they’re loaded! Stuffed so full, you’ll be here cataloguing for days. Hell, weeks. I’ve never seen so many guns … and I’m from Alabama.”

  2

  Badass to Pussy

  “You should take the day off.” Larkin’s voice filtered through the speaker of Libby’s cell phone and echoed off the mirror and tile.

  “Says the woman who works so much she built a condo directly above and adjoining her office.” Libby wrestled with the back of her earring.

  “Okay, but I built that so I could get more than two hours of sleep.”

  She muffled a curse as the tiny piece of metal slipped through her fingers and landed on the floor. It bounced several times before coming to rest near the tip of her black pump. When she crouched low, the muscles across her lower back tensed and burned. Nearly forty ho
urs spent scooping rifles off a dirty floor and hunching over the computer cataloguing them into the database had taken its toll.

  “We didn’t leave Elk State Forest until midnight. The plane didn’t land until two thirty a.m.” Libby squeezed the fastener between her thumb and index finger, secured it to the back of her simple pearl earring, stood, and assessed her reflection.

  Puffy eyelids. Dark circles below her eyes matched her extra flat dark hair. There wasn’t time for makeup. And really, what did it matter? At the office, she wanted to impress everyone with her work ethic and drive. Makeup only attracted the wrong kind of attention. She’d learned that on day one.

  Libby offered herself a grin. At least she had her smile. With her big lips, it distracted from her obvious lack of sleep. Over the years, she’d learned it put people at ease. It also made them underestimate her.

  “By the time I got home, I was too amped to sleep.” She snagged her phone from the counter and hit the light on her way out of the bathroom. Scooping the hulking computer backpack off the bedroom floor, she slung it over her shoulder, crushing the air from her lungs.

  “Because you got him,” Larkin squealed.

  “I did.” Libby headed for the kitchen but paused in the short corridor. Her fists double punched the air above her head. “I finally did.” Joy she hadn’t gotten the chance to fully embrace wrapped its arms around her and squeezed, lifting with it all the doubt and worry she’d shouldered for the past year.