Justice for Aleta

  Justice for Aleta (Police and Fire: Operation Alpha)

  Bluegrass Bravery Book 2

  Deanndra Hall

  Contents

  Foreword

  Introduction

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Epilogue

  About the author …

  Also by Deanndra Hall

  More Special Forces: Operation Alpha World Books

  Books by Susan Stoker

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  © 2019 ACES PRESS, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this work may be used, stored, reproduced or transmitted without written permission from the publisher except for brief quotations for review purposes as permitted by law.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, please purchase your own copy.

  Dear Readers,

  Welcome to the Police and Fire: Operation Alpha Fan-Fiction world!

  If you are new to this amazing world, in a nutshell the author wrote a story using one or more of my characters in it. Sometimes that character has a major role in the story, and other times they are only mentioned briefly. This is perfectly legal and allowable because they are going through Aces Press to publish the story.

  This book is entirely the work of the author who wrote it. While I might have assisted with brainstorming and other ideas about which of my characters to use, I didn’t have any part in the process or writing or editing the story.

  I’m proud and excited that so many authors loved my characters enough that they wanted to write them into their own story. Thank you for supporting them, and me!

  READ ON!

  Xoxo

  Susan Stoker

  In memory of M.D.F. and D.M.F.

  The people who love you have never forgotten you,

  and I have never forgotten your story.

  Rest with the angels―they know your names.

  Introduction

  On a foggy morning in January 1983, a young minister and his wife were returning from visiting his parents for Christmas when their van spun on ice and hit the guardrail on the Cumberland River bridge in far western Kentucky. The couple took their infant son and got out of the van, thinking that would be safer.

  It was not.

  Unable to stop, another vehicle slammed into their van, pinning the young mother between the guardrail and her vehicle. The three-month-old baby slipped from her grasp and plunged over the side of the bridge, landing on the river bank seventy-five feet below. Never thinking of himself, the young father leaped to save his son. The infant died instantly; the father would die five days later in a hospital. The mother had only minor injuries to her back and was released from the hospital.

  No one was at fault. It was a horrible, freak accident. But it shook two entire communities―the one near the accident site in which he’d grown up, and the one in which he’d pastored some 400 or so miles away. I was a young mother at the time, and I’ve never forgotten the story, most specifically that father’s selfless attempt to save his only child. This story borrows from that incident, while being respectful of the remaining family members and their memories.

  This book is based on the incident described above; however, names, locations, and details have been changed to protect those involved. Any actual information used was gleaned from open and public records, as I have no personal knowledge of the case. I am not a law enforcement professional. I do, however, have the utmost respect for those men and women who protect us, so if any of my procedural details are erroneous, I apologize. This was written purely for entertainment, and I hope it is taken as such.

  Acknowledgments

  My eternal thanks to my betas, Tami and Maggie, my proofer, Emmy, and to Tillie Fay and Dixie Rose for keeping me company as I wrote it.

  About the Book

  Who’s worse than Wyatt Earp? An Earp wanna-be with a really big gun.

  That’s who Kentucky State Police Trooper Jack Fletcher discovers he’s dealing with when he happens up on a deadly two-car crash one foggy morning and finds two dead men, a dead infant, and a seriously-injured woman on the side of the Bluegrass Parkway in central Kentucky. There’s just one problem. When he spotted the accident initially from the other direction on the parkway, he was sure there were three cars.

  But where is the car? Who was the mysterious man driving it? And why would he kidnap a 17-year-old girl? Jack goes back to the source—the woman he found on the side of the road—and Aleta Culp confirms the suspicions of the man she’s come to think of as her guardian angel. Jack’s charmed by her innocence, impressed with her tenacity, and ready for the sweet, soft, curvy body she offers him. But when she identifies the wanna-be outlaw, keeping her safe from an up-and-coming cartel leader will only be possible with help from San Antonio FBI Agent Cruz Livingston and Texas Ranger Daxton Chambers. They know the threat better than any of their Kentucky counterparts, but even that may not help.

  Loaded with a love that’s hotter than sin, suspense, drama, and a criminal element short on intelligence but long on treachery, Bluegrass Bravery: Justice for Aleta is a triumph of a woman whose losses drive her to be braver than the men around her. The story is built around an actual accident that took place in Kentucky in 1983.

  Chapter 1

  “Stop. Just stop. I said no.”

  “Oh, come on, Jack. This is a great opportunity and you know it. Take off that silly hat and uniform and come join us,” Amos Fletcher chided his younger brother.

  “I like what I do. I feel like I make a difference.”

  “Yeah, you do. But look what happened to Palmer. That could happen to you too.” Amos just had to bring that up, and it infuriated Jack. Kentucky State Troopers weren’t dying on the side of the road every damn day.

  “If it does, it does.” He wanted to add, I don’t have a lot to live for anyway, but he didn’t. Since his fiancée, Heather, had died from leukemia, he hadn’t really cared about his love life. The state trooper and the surgical nurse had planned a life together, a good life, and that had been cut short. Every day was a struggle for him to go on. At least in that uniform he knew he was doing something good for others.

  “Jack, listen to me. I know the last few months have been hard, and I’m sorry. But this is the kind of thing that doesn’t happen often. Our agents tend to stay until retirement.”

  Amos would never understand, primarily because he didn’t want to. Jack’s older brother had always pushed him, always tried to tell him what to do, always goaded him when he didn’t live up to the standard set for him, and Jack was tired of it. He loved Amos, but enough was enough. “I’m not taking the position. That’s final. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.” Amos was still talking when Jack hit END and dropped the phone onto the sofa beside him.

  That was his typical evening, sitting on the sofa, staring at the TV, trying to choke down something to eat and going to bed as early as he dared. If he went to bed too early, he lay awake in the wee hours of the morning, and that was the worst. When that happened, he could hear Heather’s voice, feel her skin against his
, smell her perfume, and practically see her there in the room with him, but that was an illusion. And he always wound up disappointed.

  The next call was his dad. Jack didn’t answer it. He knew what that was about―Amos had called Henry and sicced him on Jack. Well, it wouldn’t work. He was wise to them. Pushing the power button on the phone twice, he rejected the call and dropped the phone again.

  He was staying right where he was, in the world they’d created. He might not have much, but he had that, and he planned to hold onto it for dear life.

  God, it was foggy! He hated foggy mornings in that area. With stone bluffs, river gorges, and hills and curves everywhere, the Bluegrass Parkway, or BGP as the locals called it, was a force to be reckoned with when it came to navigation in low visibility. Headed east away from Bardstown, he crested a hill at barely forty miles an hour―the fastest he dared drive in fog that thick―and started down the decline. That was the moment he spotted them.

  On the other side of the road, barely visible, was a small cluster of cars, or at least that’s what it looked like. He checked the median, but it was hard to tell how deep it might be, so he drove on until he found a cross drive. They’d been at least two miles back, and he kept wishing visibility would improve just a little.

  One vehicle’s flashers were on, and he pulled up behind them and turned on every light he had. At that moment, his primary thought was to keep his own car from being rear-ended by someone who couldn’t see it sitting there. After radioing his dispatch, he stepped carefully from his car and closed the door.

  There were only two cars. Jack’s brow furrowed. He could’ve sworn there were three, and he was usually very reliable with observations. But sure enough, all that sat there was a small, red compact car buried in the side of a white minivan. He stepped to the red car first. The driver was slumped over the wheel, and one press of a finger to his neck told Jack he was deceased. He radioed in his discovery and carried on.

  The van was empty, but there was blood on the dash, so he started to look around. Where were the occupants? There weren’t a lot of places they could be. The roadway had no one in it, and the side of the Bluegrass Parkway was steep there, dropping away under the small bridge the vehicles sat on. It spanned a creek bed, but under both ends were rock formations typical of those in the area. As he walked around the back of the van, he heard it.

  Crying.

  “Hello? Kentucky State Trooper Fletcher! Can anyone hear me?”

  A thin, small voice called out, “Help me! Please help me!”

  Jack ran toward the sound and he almost stepped on her. The woman sat there on the ground, blood all over her, her left arm bent at a weird angle and her right leg in about the same condition. It was impossible to tell how old she was or where else she might be injured because of the blood that covered her. He hit the button on his shoulder-mounted mic. “Central dispatch, this is KSP unit seven. I need assistance from law enforcement and medical personnel. Repeat, I need assistance from law enforcement and medical personnel. Two individuals involved in a multi-vehicle traffic collision at approximately mile marker twenty-two.”

  He was interrupted by the woman. “NO! My son and my husband! Please, help us!”

  “Ma’am, I’m a Kentucky State Trooper. I’m here to help you. Just stay calm and we’ll get you some―”

  “MY HUSBAND AND MY SON! Please help them! Oh, dear Jesus, please help them,” she repeated in more of a moan as she lifted her right arm and pointed toward the bridge.

  Jack couldn’t understand. He looked at the scene around him, then glanced at the van. There was a car seat there, but when he checked it, there was no child. Inching along the side of the pavement and onto the bridge, looking for any clue, even the most insignificant -thing that might tell him what the woman was talking about, he stepped fifteen feet out onto the bridge and saw something below it.

  There, on the rocks sixty feet below, was an infant, still and quiet, a huge pool of blood under its head. Just feet away lay a man, his body mangled by the fall, blood everywhere. It was a sight so horrifying that he could barely breathe―and then he snapped to. “Central dispatch, we have multiple victims, including an infant. Repeat, multiple victims.”

  “KSP unit seven, this is central dispatch. We have emergency services en route. Emergency services en route. ETA three minutes or less.”

  Jack could hear the sirens as he tried to pick his way down to the rocky ledge, but it was a perilous path. His shoes were definitely not made for that kind of terrain, and he’d be no good to anyone if he ended up down there too. There was no doubt in his mind that the infant was deceased, and the man … well, there was nothing Jack could do for him anyway. The best he could do was stay with the woman and try to figure out what had happened.

  In five minutes, another KSP cruiser, three Nelson County Sheriff’s Department cruisers, and three ambulances occupied the space around Jack’s Dodge Charger. The woman was receiving assistance in one of the ambulances, but emergency personnel had finally reached the two individuals below the bridge. And in both cases, they’d looked up at the law enforcement officers standing on the bridge and given them the one sign Jack really hadn’t wanted to see.

  Thumbs-down.

  “Three dead. One seriously injured. What a way to start the morning,” his buddy, Matt Colvin, had said when Jack wandered into the office at Elizabethtown. Post Four had been his assignment for over six years, and he felt at home there. He’d gotten to know all the guys well and they all got along. Their captain, Morgan Seitzer, was a veteran officer who ruled with an iron fist but knew when to trust his men and let them use their instincts. As a result, their investigations had never needed a KDCI detective. They did their own and did them well.

  “Yeah. I fucking hate fog. It’s the devil,” Jack muttered under his breath as he looked down at his uniform. Blood. Yeah, he was going to have to change. As soon as he got his report finished, he’d pull another uniform from his cruiser and go to the locker room for a shower. “Hey, I’m out of report forms. Got an extra one?”

  “Sure.” Matt pulled one from the desk next to Jack’s and handed it to him. Well, it wasn’t really Jack’s desk. It was a community desk. There were five of them in the office, and they were places for the officers to sit and drink a cup of coffee and fill out paperwork. There wasn’t enough room for everybody to have one of their own, and besides, they weren’t supposed to be desk jockeys. A lot of guys sat in their cars, but Jack hated trying to do that in his shop. Between the steering wheel and all the emergency gear in the front seat, it wasn’t a comfortable place to try to balance a clipboard. Fortunately, he could make whatever mess he wanted on the form. When he was finished with it, he’d transfer the information to the online version. But he’d been taught by his trainer at the academy that the action of actually writing down information with pen on paper often jogged a memory that might’ve been lost otherwise.

  The boxes were easy enough to fill out. Date, time, badge number, name, incident. That particular form was specifically for traffic accidents, and it asked about the vehicles―descriptions, license plate numbers, the whole enchilada. In the box for number of vehicles, he put two, then stopped.

  Jack closed his eyes and tried to visualize the scene as he’d come from the other direction. He could’ve sworn there was a third vehicle involved, but it hadn’t been present when he arrived on scene. Thinking back, his mind laid the arrangement out for him. The white van was in the front, the red car smashed into it. The driver’s side of the van was crushed, and so was the front of the car. There’d been no damage to the front of the van that he’d noted, so he ran through scenarios in his mind. It looked like the red car had plowed into the van, but in the side? That didn’t make sense. The third vehicle, where had it been?

  In front of the van. Closing his eyes again and trying to force out any other chatter or noise, he thought about the scene he’d driven past. There had been a third vehicle there―he was sure of it. What color? Blac
k? Dark blue? Dark gray? Something dark. That was all he was sure of. But he was certain it had been there. Had they been hit too and then just driven away? Were they startled to see the trooper’s cruiser? And when had they left? He’d only gone two miles down the parkway to turn around, so that was roughly five minutes. In that time, they’d disappeared. Not hard in that fog, he groused internally. Everything was hidden in that.

  Except that third car. The investigators were out there, trying to recreate the scene of the accident. The parkway was shut down and traffic was being rerouted because they needed to work undisturbed. Jack wanted to know what was going on, what they were discovering, and he wondered if they’d found any hint of the vehicle. “Matt, I’m going back.”

  “Where? Accident scene?”

  “Yeah. Something’s not right. I need to see the investigators. Tell Cappy where I am?” he asked, using their nickname for their captain.

  “Sure thing.” He barely heard Matt answer as he ran out the door and jumped in his car.

  It wasn’t far at all, just a few miles, and he rolled up on the accident scene. The Nelson County reconstruction team was working, and he wandered over to their sheriff, Danny Foley. Jeremy, Danny’s son, had played basketball with Jack in high school. “Heard this was yours,” Danny said when Jack got close.