The Ivy Nash Thrillers: Books 1-3: Redemption Thriller Series 7-9 (Redemption Thriller Series Box Set) Read online

  Ivy Nash Thrillers

  Books 1, 2, and 3

  IN Defiance

  IN Pursuit

  IN Doubt

  Redemption Thriller Series – 7-9

  (Includes Alex Troutt Thrillers, Ivy Nash Thrillers,

  and Ozzie Novak Thrillers)

  By

  John W. Mefford

  Table of Contents

  IN Defiance

  IN Pursuit

  IN Doubt

  Excerpt from Break IN (Ivy Nash Thriller, Book 4)

  Connect with John

  Bibliography

  Copyright Page

  ALSO BY JOHN W. MEFFORD

  Redemption Thriller Series

  The Alex Troutt Thrillers

  Alex Troutt Thrillers: Books 1-3

  Alex Troutt Thrillers: Books 4-6

  AT Bay (Book 1)

  AT Large (Book 2)

  AT Once (Book 3)

  AT Dawn (Book 4)

  AT Dusk (Book 5)

  AT Last (Book 6)

  The Ivy Nash Thrillers

  Ivy Nash Thrillers: Books 1-3 (RTS 7-9)

  IN Defiance (Book 7)

  IN Pursuit (Book 8)

  IN Doubt (Book 9)

  Break IN (Book 10)

  IN Control (Book 11)

  IN The End (Book 12)

  The Ozzie Novak Thrillers

  ON Edge (Book 13)

  Game ON (Book 14)

  ON The Rocks (Book 15)

  Shame ON You (Book 16)

  ON Fire (Book 17)

  ON The Run (Book 18)

  IN Defiance

  An Ivy Nash Thriller

  Book 1

  Redemption Thriller Series - 7

  (Includes Alex Troutt Thrillers, Ivy Nash Thrillers

  and Ozzie Novak Thrillers)

  By

  John W. Mefford

  1

  Ivy at Age Thirteen

  During my free ride back into town, the driver only groped me once. I considered that a victory as I shut the car door a block down from my house. I didn’t want the pervert to know where I lived. And I didn’t want Frank, the latest excuse for a foster dad, to know I’d gotten a lift home from a stranger. It was one of his house rules.

  “I need to know who you’re with day and night. That’s my job,” he’d said the first day the caseworker from Child Protective Services dropped me at the doorstep. With a smile that usually included a gnarled cigar and deep trenches on either side of his mouth, he came across like he was my protector. My knight in shining armor.

  He’d faked it pretty well in front of the caseworker, a heavyset woman in her early fifties who seemed more stressed than I was—even though I was the one walking into my thirteenth foster home. It took only a week before I realized his armor was as real as the imitation hardwood floors throughout the humble home.

  A corner streetlight flickered, and a gust of wind dipped the branches of a sad-looking live oak in the neighbor’s front yard. I lived in a forgettable town east of San Antonio. There might have been something positive about Seguin, but I couldn’t think of much.

  A foul odor made me wrinkle my nose. Shaking my head, I figured the twisted little brat from next door had been cooking squirrels on his backyard grill again. His parents thought he was just going through a phase. Damn, some people were just blind to reality. Or maybe his parents were naïve, or even plain stupid. Given the drab, rundown homes and yards in the area, I had a feeling there weren’t many Einsteins living near me.

  I could see lights blinking through the cracks in the blinds of our front window. Frank was most likely sitting in his leather recliner, either whacking off to some X-rated flick or guzzling his umpteenth beer of the night while watching some show about the end of the world. But I also knew this meant that his wife, Maybelle—an equally disgusting foster parent—was most likely passed out in the bedroom from another bender or off visiting her meth-addicted sister the next county over.

  I had to assume Frank was awake and in a state of mind I would be wise to avoid, so I cut between the two houses and headed for the rear entrance. I slithered in the back door, through the filthy kitchen, and into the hallway leading to my room.

  Just get to my room, lock the door, and everything will be okay in the morning.

  The silhouette of a massive figure entered the hallway from my bedroom. “Where have you been?”

  It was Frank, and he was drunk, slurring his words. The smell of beer and his disgusting body odor filled up the narrow hallway, which seemed even smaller with his presence looming a few feet in front of me. My stomach started to churn.

  “What were you doing in my room? We had an agreement. You stay out of my room, and I won’t tell the caseworker about all of your little fetishes.”

  Wearing no more than an undersized wifebeater and holey boxers, he laughed out loud and patted his huge belly. It took almost a minute for him to compose himself. I tried to look past him to see if Maybelle might be in their bedroom. But I knew it wouldn’t really matter. Most of the time she let him do whatever he wanted. She had even played along a few times.

  “Listen, darlin’, you seem to forget who the king of this castle is,” he said, snorting out another chortle.

  An invisible cloud of beer and pizza nearly knocked me over, and I turned away. Then I felt his hand on my face. It didn’t feel human. Bile crept up the back of my throat—my body’s way of warning me that bad things were about to happen. Things I couldn’t control. Things that made me want to stop living.

  “Frank, I’m really tired after a long day at school. The game ended late, okay?” I’d told him earlier that I was walking up to the high school to watch a district basketball game.

  “First, don’t call me Frank,” he said, then he cleared his throat and lowered his volume. “You know I like for you to call me Poppy.” He ran his fingers through my hair. “You need to grow your hair out. You’d be pretty that way.”

  My whole body tensed up. “I like my hair the way it is.” I tried to act strong, but I knew I wasn’t very convincing.

  He stroked my neck, and I could feel the callouses on his hands snag my skin. Then his hand moved lower. “Take off your T-shirt, Ivy,” he said, his penetrating eyes boring holes into my soul.

  “Is Maybelle home?” I said, trying to look around his obese body. That was when I noticed the stairs from the attic were folded down.

  “She’s off at her sister’s. They’re probably hitting the Austin club scene, trying to get laid. But as the man of the house, my needs should come first. Don’t you agree?”

  I scooted by him without answering. “What’s up in the attic? I used to hide out in an attic at one of my earlier homes.” I put a foot on the first step, but quickly felt his grip around my upper arm.

  I grabbed one of the ladder rungs, prepared for a fight. But he loosened his grip. “Well, actually, I’ve been trying to work on a project up there. You know, fix the place up.”

  Trying to keep the subject moving in a direction other than him having his way with me, I scampered up the rungs. “Cool. I like home improvement projects. What have you done?”

  Even with his size and his drunken condition, he was right behind me, the ladder shaking violently. Just as I reached the top, he playfully spanked my bottom. I wanted to hurl.

  He pulled a cord, and a sparkling, twirling light popped on. He chuckled. “You like it?”

  My mouth hung open as I stared at the makeshift bedroom. He walked past me, pat
ting my butt once again. He made it to the side of the mattress. “Authentic silk sheets.”

  I nodded, then spotted magazines on a side table next to the bed. The same ones he’d shown me once before. There was a TV set up near the foot of the bed, and a VCR.

  “What the hell do you think this is going to be used for?” I asked.

  He grinned, showing off teeth with black marks. “It’s my disco setup. It’ll be cool. You’ll see. Come over and join me.” He patted the mattress like it was an old, reliable horse.

  I crossed my arms against my chest, my feet unable to move.

  “Yep, we’ve got lots we can do up in our fun room,” he said, his eyes casting a gaze across his disgusting bachelor pad. “And up here, we won’t get interrupted by Maybelle or anyone else who drops by. It’ll be our own little secret.” His eyes returned to me. Again with the grin.

  My pulse battered the side of my neck as my mind scrambled for options on how to get out of this situation. But I knew if I was fortunate enough to escape, it would only be temporary—I’d be picked up by a cop within an hour. Frank used to work with the San Antonio Police, a patrolman for twenty years. He retired when he was shot in the left shoulder by a prostitute who was high on meth. Or so he said.

  Too bad she couldn’t have aimed about six inches lower.

  From the very beginning he’d told me he had friends in all the right places. Cops, judges, lawyers, even folks working with CPS. If I were to ever make any outrageous allegations against him or his wife, no one would believe me. And once I was brought back to his home, he’d make sure I learned my lesson in a way I’d never forget. He said it was best just to play along, sit back, relax, and enjoy it, and then when I was eighteen I could move on.

  “Ivy, are you hallucinating, girl?”

  “Huh?”

  “Those boys you left with—”

  “How did you know I left with any boys? Never mind, it doesn’t matter.” He must have seen me get picked up by Billy and Matt down the street. He had eyes on me even when I thought he was off in another world.

  “You sure you’re not trippin’ on shrooms? That’s the big thing these days, teenagers trippin’ on their shrooms.” His eyebrows scrunched into a solid line of thick, greasy hair, a peppering of gray throughout.

  “I’m not tripping on anything. And I’ve never done shrooms,” I said, looking around the renovated room for some type of weapon. My eyes only found a remote control and a bottle of lotion. “I’ve gone to the trouble of giving you a drawer full of beautiful clothes. Just on the other side of the bed. Take a look.”

  I shuffled to the dresser, moving at a snail’s pace.

  “Go on now. I got a screen just over there so you can change in private. Like a real woman.”

  A real woman? He saw me as nothing more than an animal or some inanimate object—not even a human being, for chrissakes. Just a thing for him to use whenever he had a demented, perverted whim.

  I closed my eyes, wondering how I could keep living this life. No family, no one who cared about my well-being.

  A meaty paw locked onto my shoulder.

  “Stop it,” I yelled without thinking.

  I saw the fist a moment before it crushed my face. An instant later, my brain flickered back to life as I stared at the twirling bright light.

  “Get your ass up and put on this nightgown,” he growled, handing me a flimsy get-up that he’d pulled from the top drawer.

  “Fuck. You.” Defiance raced through my bloodstream, even as my cheek felt like it was the size of a watermelon. I jumped to my feet in time to see another meaty fist on a direct path to my face. Ducking, I reared back and threw a roundhouse punch with everything I had.

  “Ooh,” he said, grabbing his crotch as he went cross-eyed.

  I just stood there for a second, astounded that I’d nailed his weak spot. Then I took off. I knew I’d have half the world after me, but I didn’t care. I’d go underground, hitchhike to another part of the country…anything to escape this torture and abuse.

  Around the bed I went. I got to the ladder and turned to back my way down. But before I’d let go of the top rung, his hand had a vice-like grip on my wrist.

  “Let me go, asshole.”

  He started chuckling, his putrid breath spilling toxic air directly at my face. “You’ve really fucked up now, Ivy. I’m not going to be this nice, charming guy. We’re going to do this the nasty way.”

  Leaning over, he grabbed a fistful of my hair and started yanking me upward. I screamed and flailed my arms. My fingers poked him in the eye, and he yelled. He released my hair—and for a moment I thought I was free—but he grabbed my forearm. “Let…go.” Using all of my weight, I yanked and pulled with all my might, desperate to break free.

  Drool spilled from his mouth, his veiny face a beet red, as he struggled to maintain a solid grip.

  I can’t take this. I can’t take more abuse, another beating.

  I started crying as sheer panic set in, my whole body shaking uncontrollably.

  Logic and any type of clear thought on how I could escape were lost. Random images pummeled my mind. So many scenes from my childhood flashed before me in just a matter of seconds. And with no filter in place, it felt like a stake had just been driven into my heart. It all revolved around the shame of being a foster child. Kids teased me constantly. The name-calling, the whispers about my grooming and my personality, my lack of trust, even the absence of a parental role model to know what was right and wrong. And yes, all of my buried secrets. No matter where I went, whom I was with, I couldn’t escape the abuse. How many times had I thought one of those incidents would result in my death? Too many to count. I would do anything to avoid another horror. Anything.

  A scream seemed to come from outside of my body. A breath caught in my throat; I choked. Then I saw eyes of pure evil devouring every inch of me. From some place I didn’t know existed, a bolt of energy shot through my body, and I jerked my arm with the power of a thousand men.

  Frank lost his balance and tumbled through the hole just as I twisted out of the way, hanging from a single rung by my arm. The lard-ass got his arms caught in the ladder, and he landed squarely on the crown of his head, releasing a stifling gasp upon impact. His body slowly crumpled, as if his joints had melted.

  And then there was silence. I could hear myself panting, but nothing from him. I jumped down from the ladder, leaned over, and found his eyes open, staring at the blank wall, but not blinking. No movement.

  I jumped back a step.

  For what seemed like an eternity, I just stood in the hallway and stared, wondering if he would somehow wake up and come after me.

  And then it hit me. The cops would think that I had killed him. It wouldn’t matter what he had done to me. I would be branded a murderer. From an unwanted foster kid to a killer. That was what I’d accomplished with the thirteen years of my life. I brought my hands to my face, stretching my mouth as wide as it would go, and screamed silently.

  I knew I couldn’t be there anymore. I couldn’t be near Frank or Maybelle, or anywhere near the house. With tears streaming down my face, I ran out the front door. I didn’t stop and catch my breath or talk to anyone. I just ran as fast and as far as my body could take me.

  And that was the last time I ever saw Frank or his house.

  2

  Present Day

  My cell phone rang. Eager for a reprieve from the heap of files sitting on my desk at Child Protective Services, I fished through my purse and tapped the green button.

  “Did you get the alert?”

  I could hear a siren in the background, and I momentarily pulled the phone away from my ear. “I’m sorry?”

  “Ivy, this is Detective Radow—”

  “Stan, I know it’s you. But I didn’t get the alert. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “Crap. I don’t have time to tell the whole fuckin’ story.” I’d only known him for two months, but I was well familiar with his thick Brooklyn accent.
>
  “Give me the ten-second version,” I said, lifting from my chair.

  “Fuck.” he said. Then I heard tires screech. “Get the hell out of my way.”

  “Stan?”

  “Damn ducks crossing the road. You’d think the world was taken over by frickin’ animals.”

  “The alert, Stan. What do I need to know?”

  At that moment, my boss, Maud Hubbard, barged into my office saying something about a code red. That was our agency’s own internal signal for when one of our kids was involved in a potentially life-threatening situation. My pulse redlined in a matter of seconds.

  Stan began to talk, but I couldn’t hear him over my coworkers jabbering away around me. I held a stiff hand up in their direction. “Sorry, Stan. Try again.”

  “It’s a hostage situation.” It sounded like he had swallowed the phone. “Did you hear that?”

  “Yes. Who’s involved?”

  “It’s that Garza case you were telling me about last week. The dad, Matt, found out where his kid was staying and barged into the foster home. He’s holding everyone hostage—the foster mom, her two children, and his own son, Miguel. He’s got a gun, and he’s threatening to kill everyone in the house.”

  I grabbed my purse and ran out of the office.

  I skillfully weaved through coworkers, parents, and small children, my toned body barely breaking stride. I couldn’t help but think about Miguel Garza, the little ten-year-old I’d helped place with the Gideons. They had been known as one of the better foster families, at least according to the assessment of my coworker, Joanna Silva. Miguel was all mouth—maybe it was a trait he’d inherited from his talkative father—but he was one of the sweetest little guys I’d ever been around.

  “I’m in the area. I’ll pick you up on the way,” Stan said.