HARD FAL Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Letter to Readers

  PROLOGUE

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  HARD FALL

  A Lucy Guardino FBI Thriller

  CJ Lyons

  Praise for New York Times Bestseller CJ Lyons:

  "Everything a great thriller should be—action packed, authentic, and intense." ~#1 New York Times bestselling author Lee Child

  "A compelling new voice in thriller writing…I love how the characters come alive on every page." ~New York Times bestselling author Jeffery Deaver

  "Top Pick! A fascinating and intense thriller." ~ RT Book Reviews

  "An intense, emotional thriller…(that) climbs to the edge of intensity." ~National Examiner

  "A perfect blend of romance and suspense. My kind of read." ~#1 New York Times Bestselling author Sandra Brown

  "Highly engaging characters, heart-stopping scenes…one great rollercoaster ride that will not be stopping anytime soon." ~Bookreporter.com

  "Adrenalin pumping." ~The Mystery Gazette

  "Riveting." ~Publishers Weekly Beyond Her Book

  Lyons "is a master within the genre." ~Pittsburgh Magazine

  "Will leave you breathless and begging for more." ~Romance Novel TV

  "A great fast-paced read….Not to be missed." ~Book Addict

  "Breathtakingly fast-paced." ~Publishers Weekly

  "Simply superb…riveting drama…a perfect ten." ~Romance Reviews Today

  "Characters with beating hearts and three dimensions." ~Newsday

  "A pulse-pounding adrenalin rush!" ~Lisa Gardner

  "Packed with adrenalin." ~David Morrell

  "…Harrowing, emotional, action-packed and brilliantly realized." ~Susan Wiggs

  "Explodes on the page…I absolutely could not put it down." ~Romance Readers' Connection

  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 2014, CJ Lyons

  Legacy Books

  Cover art: Cory Clubb

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  Library of Congress Case # 1-273031561

  HARD FALL

  A Lucy Guardino FBI Thriller

  CJ Lyons

  DEDICATION:

  To Peggy,

  Who is always willing to join in on the

  fun with an adventure in research.

  Dear Reader,

  Thanks so much for joining in on Lucy’s fifth adventure! If you haven’t read her first stories, they are: SNAKE SKIN, BLOOD STAINED, KILL ZONE, and AFTER SHOCK.

  The Lucy Guardino Thrillers are the only series I know of that come with a warning—and there’s good reason for it. Most of the crimes and bad guys depicted in these stories come from real life and HARD FALL is no exception.

  The criminal Lucy is chasing in HARD FALL is the most vile and twisted individual I’ve ever written about. Yet, I didn’t invent him. I read about similar criminals in a USA Today news story (you can read it yourself HERE if you have the stomach for it) and it made me sick to think of people like them walking among us.

  Instead of depicting his crimes (far too horrid for me to ever actually portray on the page) I wanted to shed some light on this dark stain of humanity and wrote of the girl who survived. She is a product of my imagination but, as you’ll see, also inspired by true events.

  I hope you find her story and Lucy’s journey in HARD FALL empowering and inspiring.

  As always, thanks for reading!

  CJ

  PS: want advance notice of my next book? Sign up for my Thrillers with Heart newsletter HERE

  PROLOGUE

  UNTIL FIFTY-EIGHT DAYS ago, Lucy Guardino never dreamed you could have a panic attack in your sleep.

  It was the dog. Always the damn dog.

  Haunting her, day and night.

  Lucy jerked upright, fingers clutching her throat, fighting to loosen a rope that was no longer there. She couldn’t breathe, was suffocating, terror throttling her as effectively as the real noose had.

  Her heart beat so loud and hard it ricocheted through her body. Her gasps filled the darkness surrounding her, red streaks blazing through her vision, the pressure on her chest, pressure around her throat so tight…she was dying.

  The damn dog would finally get what it’d wanted all along.

  Lucy reached for her weapon. Her gun, where was her gun? Her hand flailed, hit the back of a couch. Awareness crept into the darkness. Her couch. The movement shook the blanket from her body and her left foot thudded to the ground.

  Pain shrieked through her, slapping her fully awake.

  She wasn’t choking to death, the pain reminded her. Wasn’t dying.

  That’d been fifty-eight days ago. This was now. Her new reality.

  Thanks to the damn dog.

  She blinked, the room slowly coming into focus. The old steamer trunk they used for a coffee table. A fireplace, its mantel filled with family photos. The overstuffed chair from her mom’s house, now angled beside the bay window—her daughter Megan’s new favorite place to sit and pretend that Lucy didn’t exist.

  The way the shadows fell across the wing-backed chair, for a second she thought she saw her mother sitting there, watching over her as she slept. Like she had when Lucy was a kid, after her father died.

  I’m so sorry, Mom. Guilt settled like a rock in her stomach. She wished for tears to blink back, but she had none left. What good were tears, anyway? They couldn’t bring her mom back.

  Her living room. In her house. The room where her mother had been killed by the man sent to kill Lucy. No wonder Lucy felt compelled to haunt it night after night.

  Couldn’t change the past, just as she couldn’t save her mother. But she had been able to save her husband and daughter. She tugged the blanket closer to her body, her heart thudding against the T-shirt she’d worn to bed. Nick? Safe and sound asleep upstairs in their bed. Wasn’t that why she’d crept down here to the couch, so her night terrors wouldn’t disturb him? One of them deserved a good night’s sleep.

  She leaned forward, bent over her ankle and massaged the nooks and crannies of scar tissue and missing muscle. Felt the alien bumps and knobs left behind by the surgeons with their plates and screws. Her ankle and foot now had more hardware than an erector set. The dog’s handiwork.

  The dog was dead. Not by Lucy’s hand. It had been trained to kill—had done its best on her. Animal control had no choice. It had died peacefully, in its sleep.

  The man who’d turned a
beautiful animal into a raging killing machine, he’d died as well. By Lucy’s hand. Not so peacefully and wide awake. His screams never haunted Lucy.

  She shook away memories from fifty-eight days ago. Focused on the simple, undeniable fact her life centered on: her family was safe.

  The pain in her leg subsided to its usual dull roar. Unlike the blinding blaze when the dog first mauled her ankle, the pain now danced across a spectrum. From the spiking intensity of infrared blasts to tooth-rattling ultraviolet electrical shockwaves, less intense but more unnerving. A rainbow of agony.

  Although her bones had mended nicely, apparently nerves heal more slowly. The doctors said it might take years—or never. And while they were healing—or not—the electricity racing along their synapses jumped erratically, causing random impulses the brain interpreted as pain.

  Leaving Lucy with a choice: a life of painkillers, popping pills to numb her body and mind, or a life of pain.

  She couldn’t live without her job and when your job is an FBI Supervisory Special Agent leading a team of armed men and women, you can’t do that job while taking narcotics, so Lucy chose the pain. Treated it as she would any other suspect—observing, analyzing, predicting what it would do next, and preparing against it.

  So far the pain was winning, able to sneak past her defenses, blindside her. Not for long. Because tomorrow—she glanced at the railroad clock on the wall, her eyes now adjusted to the dim light, 3:14 am—no, today, today was the day she returned to work.

  Fifty-nine days ago she’d almost lost everything. Now she was taking it all back.

  She pushed herself upright, reached for the cane propped against the couch, and grit her teeth against the purple haze of pins and needles as her foot brushed against the oak floorboards. Took one step, then another toward the bedroom upstairs where her husband slept.

  Pain or no pain, panic or no panic, no way in hell was Lucy letting anything keep her from doing her job. From healing her family. From getting her life back.

  Starting today.

  Chapter 1

  FRIDAY, 9:46 AM

  LUCY’S FIRST INDICATION that this day wouldn’t be going as planned came when she entered Pittsburgh’s Federal Building and was stopped by security.

  The Federal Protective Service guard, one she didn’t recognize, snapped to attention when Lucy swiped her employee ID at the turnstile and an alarm sounded. “Ma’am, step back, please.”

  “I think it’s expired.” She hobbled to one side so she didn’t block anyone else and cursed herself for forgetting to check the date on her ID. Thankfully she’d left plenty of time before she was due to meet with Isaac Walden, second-in-command of her Sexual Assault Felony Enforcement squad. She gestured to the cane. “I’ve been on medical leave.”

  The guard didn’t relax his attitude. Instead, he nodded to one of his comrades at the security desk who came out from behind it to stand a few feet away from Lucy, covering his partner. She almost laughed at the thought that she might be a threat to anyone—but forced herself not to. FPS guards were not known for their sense of humor.

  Ever since the Zapata cartel had burned down a sizable chunk of the city last Christmas, security throughout Pittsburgh had been high.

  No one was more paranoid than here at the Southside Federal Building where the Joint Counterterrorism Task Force was housed as well as several sensitive investigative units including High Tech Computer Crimes and Innocent Images. The FBI, DEA, ICE, ATF, US Marshals, and now Homeland Security Investigations all had a presence. One stop shopping for any wannabe terrorist trying to make his bones.

  “The badge, ma’am.”

  Lucy handed the first guard her building pass. He passed it to the second who relayed it to the main security desk for validation.

  “I have my credentials,” Lucy offered, keeping her hands at her sides, making no threatening movements.

  The guard responded by sliding his right hand to the butt of his weapon, his left hand raised, palm forward in the universal gesture for “freeze right there.”

  The second guard returned and handed her a temporary ID. “I’ve been instructed to escort you, Supervisory Special Agent Guardino. Do you have any weapons with you?”

  “Of course I have weapons.” Why would he even ask? Federal agents were mandated to carry both on and off duty. “And I don’t need an escort.”

  “Sorry, ma’am. Orders. Please remove all weapons prior to passing through the body scanner. We’ll need to examine the cane as well.”

  She frowned at him. Agents didn’t pass through the scanner, only civilians. Was there a reason for their extra precautions? “Are we on alert?”

  Neither answered her, focusing on her movements as she removed the forty caliber Glock from her belt holster and her backup weapon from her bag and carefully placed them, as well as her bag and cane, on the table beside the body scanner. The first guard checked her belongings while Lucy stepped into the scanner and raised her hands.

  She gritted her teeth. The cane helped her balance and eased the pressure on her left ankle until the nerves finished healing. She could walk without it—well, hobble would be more like it—but only with a lot of pain and effort. Better get used to it, she told herself as the machine whirled around her. She wouldn’t be using the cane forever—couldn’t if she wanted to pass her physical fitness assessment and return to full active duty.

  The guard gestured for her to step free of the machine. “Stand here, please. Legs spread wide.”

  Shit. The brace. Overtop her left sock she wore a plastic ankle-foot-orthotic brace or AFO that kept her toes from dragging on the ground. She winced as the guard patted down her leg. “That’s an ankle brace prescribed by my physician. I was injured in the line of duty two months ago.”

  He didn’t look up as he rolled her pants leg high enough to examine the form-fitting plastic and its Velcro straps. Finally he nodded and stood. “This way, ma’am.”

  Lucy collected her belongings and followed the guard onto the elevators. To her surprise he hit the button for the top floor.

  “No, ma’am,” the guard said when she reached to hit the correct button. “My instructions are to escort you directly to Administration.”

  Admin? That usually meant a summons from the Special Agent in Charge. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d spoken to Markel—but he had sent flowers while she was in the hospital. Or his secretary had. Shit, she probably was supposed to send a thank you note or something. She sucked at office politics.

  As they rode in silence, an impulse to jab the button for the floor where her team and office were instead of riding to the top made her smile. What would the earnest guard do? Shoot her?

  She’d like to see him try. Probably he’d just shout, “Ma’am, stop, ma’am.” Well, she was losing her patience with all the damn ma’am-ing and searching and escorting as if she were a civilian.

  The doors slid open and Lucy strode out, ignoring the guard she left in her wake. He hurried to pass her and lead the way—not difficult given her slower pace with the cane—but she felt a smug ray of satisfaction warm her from the inside out. Petty, she knew, but she’d take any opportunity to feel back in control.

  They reached the Special Agent in Charge’s suite, but her escort led her past it to the Assistant Special Agent in Charge, John Greally’s office. John was a friend, they’d partnered in the field when Lucy was still in training, and their daughters went to school together. What was going on? He never asked her to come up to his office; John preferred a more casual and hands on approach to supervising—something Lucy herself tried to emulate. If he had something to say, he would have come to her, not the other way around.

  Lucy glanced at the secretary sitting at the desk, guarding the ASAC’s door. She was someone new; Lucy didn’t recognize her. No answers there.

  “They’re waiting,” the secretary said, nodding to the door behind her.

  They? Lucy wondered. The guard stood aside, allowing Lucy room to ent
er alone.

  It always disoriented her when she entered Greally’s office because the space was the antithesis of the man. The office was Spartan, no clutter, not even a calendar in sight. Just a large modern style desk with a sophisticated computer set up and a single photo of his family. Two not-so-comfortable appearing chairs waited in front of the desk. The obligatory photos of the president, Attorney General, and Director lined the walls.

  Typical generic administration office. No signs of Greally’s personality. The father who cheered and whistled at his daughter’s school plays. The boss who came down to gossip with Lucy’s squad and steal coffee from her private stash.

  Or the friend who’d brought his work with him to the hospital so Nick could spend a few hours home with Megan.

  This was the office of an Assistant Special Agent in Charge, an administrator. Not the real John Greally.

  Who at the moment was nowhere to be seen. Instead, a woman hovered in the back corner, staring out the window with its view of the Steeler’s practice field. “Do you know when Greally will be back?” Lucy asked her.

  The woman glanced over her shoulder at Lucy. Seemed especially interested in her cane. She twisted her mouth and slowly turned to face Lucy. “He’ll be joining us shortly, Special Agent Guardino.”