Bullet Drop: A London Carter Novel (London Carter Mystery Series Book 4) Read online

  BULLET

  DROP

  A London Carter Novel

  (Book 4)

  __________________

  BY

  BJ BOURG

  www.bjbourg.com

  BULLET DROP

  A London Carter Novel by BJ Bourg

  This book is a work of fiction.

  All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved.

  No portion of this book may be transmitted or

  reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the author, with the exception of brief

  excerpts used for the purposes of review.

  Copyright © 2017 by BJ Bourg

  ISBN-13:

  ISBN-10:

  Cover Art by Christine Savoie of Bayou Cover Designs

  PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

  Contents

  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

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  CHAPTER 1

  Six months earlier…

  “I can smell death on the wind like most men can smell rain,” Buster Alef said under his breath. Big and beefy from long hours in the gym, he was able to bench press nearly double his body weight—he was a solid two-twenty—and could squat a small car. His Kevlar vest made him appear even thicker than he was, and the AR-15 slung across his chest and the black hood over his face struck fear in the hearts of every criminal behind the doors he smashed down.

  “Alpha One to Bravo One,” Buster called through his throat mic on the secure SWAT channel. “Are you in position?”

  “Ten-four.” Murray Fuchet’s voice was low and steady, signaling he was in the zone.

  Buster served as the leader of Alpha Entry Team, while Murray served as the leader of Bravo Entry Team. They also worked as partners in the narcotics division of the Magnolia Parish Sheriff’s Office, and were considered the parish’s top drug cops.

  Buster dropped to one knee beside the door on the north side of the drug house they were about to hit. His confidential informant had made seven buys out of the house in the past three months, and it was time to make them pay for their sins. He glanced over his shoulder and shot a thumb in the air. It was three in the morning and dark out, but a nearby streetlight enabled his team to see his “go” sign.

  The operator with the ram was at the back of the stack. When he saw Buster’s signal, he snaked around to the front of the line and crossed to the opposite side of the doorway. He took a deep breath and nodded his head at Buster.

  Buster’s hand folded firmly over the pistol grip of his rifle and he took a deep breath himself. He and Murray had been trying to build a case against the Jarrie brothers for over a year, and the time had finally come to bring them in. While he was excited for this moment, he was also a little nervous. This could be the night—the night he didn’t make it home to his family.

  He and Beatrice had married straight out of high school and they eventually had four kids. Although he’d cheated on her a few times—well, that she knew about—she’d understood when he explained it was part of the job and it didn’t mean anything. He told her he had to take on a different role when he worked undercover, and that sometimes meant he had to sleep with other women to convince dangerous drug dealers he wasn’t a cop.

  “Do you at least use protection?” she’d tearfully asked one night when she’d found some racy photographs on his department cell phone.

  “Of course I do,” he’d lied. Hell, all of it was a lie. The girl in the photo Beatrice found had nothing to do with his job. She was just some waitress who worked at a restaurant in a neighboring parish where he performed undercover buys from time to time. “Look, in order to stay alive, I have to sometimes pretend to be someone I’m not. I have to convince these drug dealers I’m not a cop or I’m a dead man, honey. It’s an act. It’s all fake. But with you, that’s when I’m being the real me. I love you and I do all of it to make a better life for you, me, and the kids.”

  Beatrice had begged him to quit, had even given him an ultimatum, but he told her he couldn’t. They were in too deep. They’d grown accustomed to the overtime he made and now depended on it. The kids were in private schools, they had a mortgage, three car notes, and they owed money to Beatrice’s dad, who had helped them when they were first starting out. “I swear on my mother’s life,” he’d told her. “I’ll seek a new position when your books take off. If you can make some real money doing this writing thing, it’ll help me get out of this mess. It’ll help our marriage. Until then, I have to do this for us.” She had reluctantly agreed and, quite surprisingly, he thought, remained true to their marriage.

  “Hell, she ever does that shit to me,” Buster had said to his buddies on many occasions, “I’ll divorce her ass so fast she won’t even remember how to spell my last name.”

  But it was during times like these, when he was about to go into the lion’s den where he could potentially meet his maker, that he started to regret all the bad things he’d done…mostly, never being there for his kids when it counted and screwing around on Beatrice every chance he got. Hell, the fact that she stayed with him and remained true made him feel even worse. If only she would retaliate in some way, then maybe he wouldn’t feel so bad. There was no fight in her and he often felt like a bully beating up on a small child.

  What if I die out here tonight, underneath this dark Louisiana sky? Buster scowled. If only he could take back all the bad things he’d done to Beatrice and the kids, he would.

  But he couldn’t, so to hell with it. He shook his head to clear it. This was go time and he couldn’t have his judgment clouded by such an insignificant feeling as regret. The guys on the other side of this door were more dangerous than any he’d faced in his twenty-year career and his senses had to be razor-sharp.

  Buster nodded to his breach man. “Hit it!”

  The operator stepped in front of the thick door and reared back with the battering ram. With a groan, he propelled it forward and smashed the door knob right through the wooden frame, sending the door slamming into the wall.

  “Sheriff’s office, sear
ch warrant!” Buster yelled, his breath hot under the mask. Sweat flowed from his pores as he rushed through the door and peeled to the left. He made his way swiftly down the hallway and toward the back bedroom, where the eldest Jarrie brother, Lance, was known to sleep with his wife and a .44 magnum. Two of his men were hot on his heels, announcing their authority to be there, and he knew if Lance got him they would mow his drug-dealing ass down.

  The beam from the flashlight attached to the forearm of his rifle jostled up and down as he ran, but it lit up his path enough to see the door at the end of the hallway. Without slowing down, he lifted his left foot and drove it through the door in mid-stride. The hollow-core door flung open easier than he thought and he lost his balance going forward.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  As Buster stumbled into the room, he recognized Lance’s gruff voice and a wave of panic spread over him. He’s awake!

  Lights from the SWAT operators behind him shot into the room and he saw Lance rising in the bed, looking confused and startled. Buster reached out with his rifle to keep from falling against a nearby dresser. As he did so, his finger squeezed off a shot.

  The explosion was deafening inside the confined space. A woman began screaming and he winced in pain as the bullet tore through the dresser and sent wooden splinters into the air, some of them peppering his face.

  “Shots fired!” someone screamed into his earpiece. Gunshots suddenly erupted from the doorway and the woman’s screams grew louder. Lance hollered and began lifting his hand from under the sheets.

  Buster saw the large silver revolver a split second before it went off. The thunderous boom drowned out the sound of their rifles and pierced through to his eardrums. Moving on instinct and fear alone, Buster dropped to his knees and leveled his rifle in Lance’s direction, pulling the trigger as rapidly as he could. More rifle fire rained into the room from the doorway and the woman’s screams turned to grunts. Buster wasn’t sure if it was his bullet that hit Lance in the shoulder, but the man’s face contorted and he screamed in agony. A second bullet entered his face just below the left eyebrow and silenced him forever.

  “Hold your fire!” Buster cried out, afraid he’d get shot in the back by one of his own team members. “It’s over—the threat has been neutralized.”

  As the last of the fired shell casings clanked to the ceramic tile floor, Buster rose slowly to his feet and scanned the bed in front of him. He gulped audibly, wondering how he would explain this to the sheriff. Lance and his wife were both naked—and obviously dead.

  “What the hell happened?” Murray asked, barging into the room and ripping the mask from his face. He pushed his long blonde hair out of his eyes and surveyed the bloody scene. “Damn it! Y’all killed the woman, too!”

  “He fired on us,” Buster said. “We did what we had to do.”

  Murray waved his hand toward the door. “Everyone…get the hell out of here and wait for us in the front yard.”

  When all of the men were gone, Murray turned to Buster. “What really happened?”

  Buster met his gaze head-on. “I already told you. He took a shot at us and we returned fire.”

  “Are you positive that’s what happened?”

  “Murray, we’ve been partners for a long time, but don’t you go questioning me like I’m lying or something.” Buster jutted his chin out. “He tried to kill us and we put him down. End of story.”

  “You put him and his wife down. Once the media gets a hold of this, there’ll be no end to the story.”

  “It’s unfortunate, but he shouldn’t have fired on us with his wife lying next to him. That’s on him, not us.”

  Murray sighed and looked away from Buster. “This drug investigation is going to die with Lance if we can’t get Cooper to roll on their supplier. But since you killed his only brother, I doubt Cooper will feel like talking and we’ll hit a brick wall.”

  “Better him than us.” Buster spat on the ground at the foot of the bed as he fought to quell the trembling that was starting to take over his body. It wasn’t his first shooting, so he knew it was normal, but he hated it. It made him feel weak.

  “Maybe we can arrest Cooper before he finds out he’s got to bury his brother,” Murray said.

  Buster nodded and stepped toward the door, flipped the light switch on. “I guess we’d better call this in and get a detective out here to process—”

  “Oh, shit!” Murray jumped back from where he’d pulled the blanket back on the bed, causing Buster to jump in his skin.

  “What is it?” Buster rushed over and stared down at the blanket. It was draped over the woman, covering most of her body. He looked toward Murray, who had backed to the far wall and stood staring wide-eyed at the bed. “What’d you see?”

  Murray shook his head. “Whatever you do, don’t move that blanket.”

  “Why not?”

  Murray’s face was ashen. “Let’s get out of here and let the detectives handle this.”

  Buster sneered and turned back toward the bed. Over Murray’s loud objection, he jerked the blanket off the woman. He immediately regretted that decision and turned away, feeling his dinner shooting up to his throat.

  CHAPTER 2

  Saturday, November 17

  “I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I’m going to miss you, London Carter.” Dawn Luke turned away from me and tossed the last of her bags into the back of her olive green Jeep Wrangler and slammed the tailgate shut. She had requested a leave of absence from work to visit her sick mother in Arkansas, and her time off was set to begin next Monday, just in time for Thanksgiving week. She turned back in my direction and shook her head. “This is new territory for me, because I’ve never missed a guy before.”

  “Neither have I,” I said, and we both laughed. I watched as she began wasting time checking the edges of her soft top to make sure they were zipped in place. I knew she was stalling. She wore snug-fitting jeans and a red sweater, and all I could think about was ripping her clothes off one more time before she left, but I didn’t want to be the cause of her being even later that she was already.

  I shoved my hands deep in my front pockets and frowned as I watched her. Although she’d never spent the night at my place or me at hers, we’d spent a large part of the last month together and I’d grown accustomed to having her around. Ever since I’d founded the sniper program for the Magnolia Parish Sheriff’s Office twelve and a half years ago, nearly every waking minute of my life had been spent on my career. If I wasn’t working or training the other snipers, I was dry-firing my sniper rifle or practicing my quick draw—for my pistol and my rifle—or sitting for hours in the same firing position or stalking through the woods behind my house or performing any number of other tasks that would help to hone my sniper skills.

  Other than focusing on my career, my only guilty pleasure was rereading old western novels by Louis L’Amour. I was only a kid when Mr. L’Amour died, but it hurt so bad I cried for two days. I often felt guilty for thinking it, and never dared utter it aloud, but my tears were motivated by selfishness—I didn’t know what I would read now that he was gone. As it happened, I’d spent the rest of my life trying to find a replacement, but finally realizing he was truly one of a kind. Thus, I allowed myself a few minutes here and there to reread through his entire collection one book at a time, beginning with the very first one I’d read as a child and proceeding through to the last.

  But I was now beginning to realize there was more to life than police work, sniping, and Louis L’Amour novels. It was different having someone around, that’s for sure, but in a great way. If I said I wouldn’t miss her, too, I’d be lying.

  Dawn glanced up from her Jeep and caught my eyes on her. She blushed. “Were you just checking me out?”

  I nodded sheepishly, like a dog that had just gotten caught peeing on the furniture.

  She walked closer and wrapped her arms around me. At five-three, she was seven inches shorter than me and the top of her head re
sted just below my nose. I buried my nose in her brown hair and breathed in deeply, enjoying the familiar smell of her shampoo. I couldn’t name the scent, but I would recognize it anywhere.

  “I’m going to miss you, too,” I admitted. “These past few weeks have been awesome.”

  “You seemed a little distracted at first, like you didn’t know how to relax, but you started to chill out over the last two weeks.”

  “I felt like I was supposed to be training or something,” I said. “I’ve never gone a whole day without doing something work-related or sniper-related.”

  She snuggled closer to me. “And I wish I wouldn’t have to go a whole day without doing something London-related.”

  “I’m just glad you were able to bury the hatchet with your family. It’s important to stay close to them.”

  “I know,” she mumbled, her lips moving against my neck as she spoke, causing a chill to reverberate up and down my back. “And I’d better get on the road so I can get there before dark.”

  I nodded and kissed her for a long moment when she looked up at me. When our lips parted, she took a step toward her Jeep, then stopped. “If I’m still up there for Christmas, will you come visit?”

  “Sure,” I said, noting inwardly that it was the first time I’d had plans for Christmas since my family perished in a car crash when I was a young boy. “I’ll be there. And I might even surprise you one weekend if I’m not working.”

  “Great!” She ran back toward me, gave one final kiss, and then drove away.

  I stood watching her Jeep until it disappeared in the distance, and then walked slowly to my truck. It was a little after eight o’clock in the morning and I had nothing else to do, so I headed for the firing range to get in some extra trigger time. I’d acquired an old junk car for training purposes and the wrecker service had hauled it to the range earlier in the week. I figured I’d take some shots through the windshield, maybe even from 1,000 yards.

  I had just parked at the range and was grabbing my Pelican case from the back seat of my truck when my phone rang. Thinking it was Dawn, I quickly snatched it up and pushed it to my ear, not even checking the screen. I scowled when I heard Julie’s voice. Julie was a dispatcher who had worked in the radio room forever and was about as good as they got.