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Mailboat II
Mailboat II Read online
Contents
Praise for Mailboat II: The Silver Helm
First Title Page
Copyright - ebook
Books by Danielle Lincoln Hanna - ebook
Join the Crew - ebook
Second Title Page
Saturday, June 21, 2014
Chapter One: The Deep Freezer
Chapter Two: The Wall
Chapter Three: Drive Home
Chapter Four: "Home"
Chapter Five: Bad News
Chapter Six: The Expendable Crewman
Chapter Seven: Jason's Photo
Chapter Eight: Tommy Arrives
Chapter Nine: Granddaughter
Chapter Ten: Whiskey
Chapter Eleven Lost Car
Chapter Twelve: Lovelorn
Chapter Thriteen: Lay Low
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Chapter Fourteen: Lost Friend
Chapter Fifteen: Roland's Protege
Chapter Sixteen: Destroyer of Worlds
Monday, June 23, 2014
Chapter Seventeen: Sneaking in to Work
Chapter Eighteen: Waste of a Life
Chapter Nineteen: Go Home
Chapter Twenty: Bench Presses
Chapter Twenty-One: Jimmy's Secret Lab
Chapter Twenty-Two: Chain of Custody
Chapter Twenty-Three: Tobasco
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
Chapter Twenty-Four: The Watcher
Chapter Twenty-Five: He Was My Son
Chapter Twenty-Six: A Hypothetical Young Male
Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Burial
Thursday, June 26, 2014
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Waiting
Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Shooting
Chapter Thirty: Bailey Finds Tommy
Chapter Thirty-One: To Live or Die
Chapter Thirty-Two: The Jinx
Chapter Thirty-Three: Give Me Your Hand
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Books by Danielle Lincoln Hanna - ebook
Acknowledgments
About the Author
PRAISE FOR MAILBOAT II
THE SILVER HELM
“Great job!... I can’t wait for Mailboat III now!”
~ Lt. Ed Gritzner, City of Lake Geneva Police Department
“I finished Mailboat Book Two in a matter of hours and as with Mailboat Book One, I found myself saying out loud as I read the last page, ‘THIS CAN’T BE THE END!’ You are a magnificent writer and leave your readers wishing the book’s ending wasn’t so soon. I found myself reading faster as I reached the middle of the story to find out what was going to happen next. Your readers are eagerly waiting for this story to be continued and you do not disappoint!”
~ Lynda Fergus, author of the Lake House Lyn blog
“I finished it in one sitting! I loved it. I found myself readily identifying with each and every character. Well written, well ‘fleshed out.’ I just didn’t want it to end... I want the WHOLE story. The answers to all this mystery! I wait impatiently for book 3!”
~ Kathy Collins, reader
“Woohoo! What a ride!... I am rooting for Ryan and Monica to work it out! I’m a sucker for romance.... Love these people and this place!”
~ Kimberly Wade, reader
“Loved it. Want more!”
~ Mary-Jane Woodward, reader
“You kept the feel of the first book going throughout this next one, and I now can’t wait to see what happens to Tommy and Bailey and how [the] new character fits in with the finale! I feel like I’ve been watching the fireworks over Williams Bay, and the grand finale has yet to begin!”
~ Brenda Dahlfors, reader
Copyright © 2018 Danielle Lincoln Hanna
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the author, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.
Cover photography by Danielle Lincoln Hanna
Cover design by MaryDes
MaryDes.eu
With the contribution of Sandi Hanna Anderson
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
ISBN 978-1-7330813-3-7
BOOKS BY DANIELLE LINCOLN HANNA
The Mailboat Suspense Series
Mailboat I: The End of the Pier
Mailboat II: The Silver Helm
Mailboat III: The Captain’s Tale
Mailboat IV - coming winter 2020/2021
DanielleLincolnHanna.com/shopnow
JOIN THE CREW
Ahoy, Shipmate!
If you feel like you’re perched on a lighthouse, scanning the horizon for Danielle Lincoln Hanna’s next book—good news! You can subscribe to her email newsletter and read a regular ship’s log of her writing progress. Better yet, dive deep into the life of the author, hear the scuttlebutt from her personal adventures, spy on her writing process, and catch a rare glimpse of dangerous sea monsters—better known as her pets, Fergus the cat and Angel the German Shepherd.
It’s like a message in a bottle washed ashore. All you have to do is open it…
DanielleLincolnHanna.com/newsletter
SATURDAY
JUNE 21, 2014
CHAPTER ONE
BAILEY
It was too late at night for the lights to be on so bright. But there weren’t any windows in the small, gray-walled room with the gray-topped table, so I guess it may as well have been noon or morning, or whatever time you like. Not midnight, though.
It was midnight. Maybe I should have said that first.
The light, white like mounds of ice stuck to the walls of a deep freezer, came from fluorescent bulbs, row-on-row in the ceiling.
The woman with the long, dark ponytail paced up and down, rubbing one temple distractedly as if she were talking to herself, not me.
“One more time, Bailey. Close your eyes. Try to picture him.”
The killer. I closed my eyes, like the detective said. But instead of the murderer, I saw a man with wavy hair lying in the street. Riddled with bullets. Fighting to breathe. Moments before, he had chatted me up at the restaurant and learned all my hopes and dreams for when I graduated high school, when I went to college, when I had a life. He’d left me a hundred-dollar tip for no reason whatsoever. Maybe to put toward my college fund.
I’d seen him killed. I’d seen him die. His eyes were fixed. Calm. Eternal. Like two deep lakes staring forever into the stars.
Hot tears welled behind my eyelids. I crushed the hem of my tee shirt in my fist. But it wasn’t my tee shirt. It had sharp fold lines and it smelled sweet and crisp, like cotton that’s never been washed before. The detective had taken my own clothes away and sealed them in paper bags. They were covered in blood. The blood of the man with the wavy hair.
I bit my lip and told the dead man to leave me alone. I told myself to open my eyes and quit remembering him. But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t look away. A single tear escaped and seared a line down my cheek.
Nylon squeaked, like the cords of a rope binding against each other. The sound of a man adjusting his seat while encased in a duty belt and bullet-proof vest. “Bailey?”
Ryan Brandt had been sitting in the corner in silence, letting the lady ask the questions. I didn’t know why any of us had to be here. Why any of this had to happen. Why I had to be in the middle of it. I was exhausted. Not like when you’ve put in a long, hard day, or stayed up too late reading. I’d been reliving the shooting all night, aloud to the detective, and silently in my mind. I was sick-exhausted. My heart wanted to roll over and die.
“It’s okay, Bailey,” the woman said, with the closest impression of empathy her voice could muster. She didn’t strike me as a very empathetic person. She wanted me to hurry the hell up and conjure a description of the murderer.
But all I could see was a world bogged in darkness. The kind that clings to your skin, dripping and cold, like slime. Like the slime of something dead and decaying. Something that was once flesh and muscle, but now only holds together like the gooey remains of an overcooked vegetable. I saw darkness, and no way to escape it.
Except to go inside. Deep inside. My secret world. The place I called “make believe” when I was little. The place I now called “survival.” It was where I went when I felt trapped in my foster home, when my foster dad was yelling at me, thrashing me, forcing me…
“What do you see?” the woman asked.
She thought I was still trying to remember the killer. But her voice sounded miles away. I was sinking deep into my own world, where I created my own realities, where I felt safe. My brain quit whirling and dodging as I entered a world no less crazy, but at least a world I controlled.
I imagined a room. Spartan, like this one, but cloaked in darkness. A flickering light bulb clung to a rusted circle of tin. I saw a man, pacing the floor, like the detective did. But he was old and balding and fat. His face was pasty, his eyes too close together, his nose small and hooked. The black leather holster on his chest contrasted with the whiteness of his shirt. He spoke with a thick accent.
“You still resist, comrade? Perhaps we have been too lenient on you.”
Another man slumped in a chair, like the chair I was in, a chair in front of a gray-topped table. Only, his wrists were handcuffed behind his back. Behind the chair. His head hung low and his shoulders heaved with every breath.
I couldn’t see the prisoner’s face, but his hair was wavy and dark. I had never pictured him with dark, wavy hair before. The hero in my daydreams usually took on the form of some movie actor, or a character in whatever book I’d been reading. But sometimes, he looked like some random man I’d seen in the street or at work. In that regard, this latest incarnation wasn’t so different from any of the ones who’d gone before.
“I don’t care what you do to me,” he rasped. “I have nothing to tell you.”
“Is that so?” The man with the pasty face sneered. “We have ways, you know.”
The prisoner lifted his head. His face was bruised and bleeding from a cut lip. “Kill me now. Save yourself some time.”
The fat man didn’t reply. He reached into his shirt pocket. Pulled out a scrap of glossy paper. Tossed it down on the table in front of the prisoner. It spun to a cock-eyed stop. The prisoner stared. It was a photo of a girl with wispy, brown hair—wavy like his own. Stubbornly uncontrollable like mine. It was mine. It was me.
“We know where to find her,” the fat man said matter-of-factly.
The prisoner met the interrogator’s eyes but maintained a perfect poker face as if the news meant nothing to him. Then with no warning, he sprang to his feet, grabbed his chair in his cuffed hands, whirled, and struck his captor. Wood splintered. The remains of the chair scattered. The fat man went down, crashing into the table. Half-dazed, he reached for his gun. A high kick from the wavy-haired man broke the interrogator’s arm. The gun dropped to the floor. The interrogator crumpled to his knees, grasping his injury. One more kick laid him flat on the ground, unconscious, bleeding from the temple.
The man with the wavy hair stood over him, panting. He kicked the gun away, then knelt and fished in the agent’s pocket for the keys to the cuffs. He let himself loose, then retrieved the firearm. He glanced toward the door. The guards would be here any minute. This was all happening prematurely. His plans weren’t fully ready. But there was no turning back now.
He grabbed the photo of his daughter.
He was going home.
“Bailey?”
The voice of the ponytailed detective broke the reverie, just as the man with the wavy hair was slipping out of the interrogation room, shooting down Communist agents, fighting his way toward the outskirts of the compound and the razor-wired fence… fighting his way back to me.
“Can you picture him?” she asked.
Vividly.
She meant the killer, didn’t she? I didn’t care. I wasn’t done daydreaming yet.
I’d never known my real dad. All my life, this was what I’d had for stand-ins: imaginary fathers. Sometimes they were captured secret agents, like this one. Sometimes they were in prison, serving a life sentence for a crime they’d never committed. Or they were prisoners of war, or of some remote, cannibalistic tribe. Or they were marooned on an island, or a maze-like jungle, or a desert that stretched to every horizon. Sometimes they were tall, sometimes they were short. Sometimes they were older, sometimes they were younger. They were all amazingly good looking. But no matter their circumstances, they shared the same single-minded goal, losing long nights of sleep over it, working out a strategy that would surely work this time.
They only wanted to come home to me.
A man’s hand rested on my shoulder. It jerked me out of my imaginary worlds and back into the gray room with the fluorescent lights. “It’s okay, Bailey.”
Ryan.
I flinched. He removed his hand as if he’d touched something hot. He was trying so freaking hard to get through to me. Had been since the day he’d met me, barely a week ago. But it was too late. I didn’t trust anyone anymore, unless they existed in my imagination. No one could hurt me in there, unless I let it happen as part of the story. No one could abandon me there, unless I planned a dramatic, tear-jerking reunion afterwards. If life had taught me anything, it was that such happy endings were not for the real world. My heart was sitting, alone and dying, in the bottom of the deep freezer.
“I don’t see anything,” I lied. “I can’t remember what he looked like.” The murderer. I finally opened my eyes and looked at the detective, Monica Steele. Her eyes were icy and barricaded. They were like mine. Her heart was in a deep freezer, too. I wondered who had put it there. “I’m sorry. I can’t remember.”
She met my gaze, her eyes like steel—maybe that’s where she got her name. She wanted me to say what the killer looked like. But I didn’t know. Everything had happened too fast. I’d been busy trying not to die. And now all I wanted to do was die. If only I’d known that then.
The tension in our eyes was perfectly matched, the detective and me, like people arm wrestling. I knew I would win. I had my whole, pathetic, meaningless life in front of me to do nothing but sit and stare. She had deadlines.
Suddenly her hardened eyes softened. The change was almost imperceptible. It was not like a dam breaking. It was like a single drop of water squeezing through a crack, running down the wall. She turned away before I could see any more, before I could get past the barricade in her eyes. What did it mean, that tiny crack?
Empathy. She saw herself in me—a soul that had been let down far too many times, or crushed so badly there was no putting it back together. She hadn’t felt empathy for another living soul for years. Not since her heart had been broken.
Maybe I was just making all that up. I can’t read minds. But survival had taught me how to read faces, so I’ll stand by what I said. She saw herself in me.
“Thanks for trying, Bailey,” she said. She wasn’t pretending to be kind anymore. She meant it this time. Her military-like posture had loosened, though she didn’t look at me. She shuffled her papers and pen. “If you remember anything about him, let me know.”
I nodded.
Ryan eyed me carefully, as if I might explode. He didn’t try to touch me again. “Shall I take you home?”
I wished he’d give up on me. But I knew he’d have a fit if I tried to walk home in the dark. I nodded.
For a moment, I tried to picture Ryan as one of the many reincarnations of my father. I scrapped that prototype immediately—which was weird, when I thought about it. Not only was he flesh
-and-blood; he lived the life of danger and heroism that I constantly pictured my dad in.
Something about the realness of Ryan Brandt scared me. Make-believe would never be more than a dream and a Band-Aid. But my dreams always ended happily. Real life never did.
He stood, his gear and body armor protesting.
I didn’t move. Not yet. There was something I wanted to know. It was my turn to ask the questions, though somehow I couldn’t get my voice above a whisper. “What did you do with the necklace?” I asked. The silver ship’s wheel on the tarnished ball chain.
Ryan lowered a brow at me. “Why did he give that to you?”
I kicked the leg of my chair and shrugged. “I have no idea.” I really didn’t. The man with the wavy hair had pressed it into my palm just before he died. He’d been really adamant I keep it. I’d promised I would. But why did I even care?
I guess because the dead man had cared.
“It’s being kept as evidence,” Ryan said. “We’ll get it back to you when we can.”
Which in my experience meant never. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.
When I didn’t move, Ryan held out his hand, inviting. “C’mon, Bailey. Let’s get you home.”
Home. Peachy. I scooted off my chair and followed Ryan to his patrol car. To my “home.”
To Bud.
CHAPTER TWO
MONICA
I flicked off the video and audio recorders then gathered up my notes as Ryan opened the door for Bailey. He guided her ahead of him like a breeze blowing a leaf across a pond. With their backs turned, I allowed myself to slump and catch my breath. Something had happened just now—between me and Bailey—and I was still recovering. Trying to make sense of how it could have happened.