Rainey with a Chance of Hale (A Rainey Bell Thriller Book 6) Read online

  Titles from R. E. Bradshaw Books

  Rainey Bell Thriller Series:

  Relatively Rainey (2015) Lambda Literary Awards Finalist

  Carl of the Bells (2015) (Short Story-eBook only)

  Colde & Rainey (2014)

  The Rainey Season (2013) Lambda Literary Awards Finalist

  Rainey’s Christmas Miracle (2011) (Short Story-eBook only)

  Rainey Nights (2011) Lambda Literary Awards Finalist

  Rainey Days (2010)

  The Adventures of Decky and Charlie Series:

  Out on the Panhandle (2012)

  Out on the Sound (2010)

  Molly: House on Fire (2012)

  Lambda Literary Awards Finalist

  Before It Stains (2011)

  Waking Up Gray (2011)

  Sweet Carolina Girls (2010)

  The Girl Back Home (2010)

  RAINEY with a CHANCE of HALE

  By R. E. Bradshaw

  © 2017 by R. E. Bradshaw. All Rights Reserved.

  R. E. Bradshaw Books/March 2017

  ISBN-13: 978-0-9989549-1-2

  Website: http://www.rebradshawbooks.com

  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rebradshawbooks

  Twitter @rebradshawbooks

  Blog: http://rebradshawbooks.blogspot.com

  For information contact [email protected]

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author and publisher.

  Warning: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000.

  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.

  Contents

  Acknowledgments

  About the book…

  Part I

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  Part II

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  Part III

  16

  17

  18

  19

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to acknowledge the universe and the people in it that make me smile when I don’t want to, laugh when I feel like crying, and see me through the good and the bad. I want to acknowledge that I am human, I make mistakes, and I strive to do better every day. I acknowledge that sitting at a computer writing about life all day is great, but living a life to write about is better. I acknowledge that I took some time to find stable legs again, to appreciate a soft place to land again, and to value the wisdom that comes with loss.

  About the book…

  Rainey Bell, a former FBI Behavioral Analyst, has had a couple of quiet years since her last brush with death. Her old teammate with the BAU and her children’s Godfather, Danny McNally, pays a visit to North Carolina from Quantico to escort Rainey into the Butner Federal Correctional Complex.

  Rainey made a promise almost twenty years ago to a distraught mother of a missing child. The opportunity to fulfill that pledge, one she should never have made, presents itself in the form of Chance Obadiah Hale. The teenager Rainey believed responsible for Alyson Grayson’s disappearance was now a man in prison who wanted to talk, but only to Rainey.

  Can Rainey and Danny finally get to the truth about Alyson and Chance? Or will Rainey’s stubborn belief in his guilt put everyone she loves in mortal danger? Eeny, meeny, miny, moe. Who will be the first to go?

  REB

  Dedicated to dear friends.

  You know who you are.

  No hour too late.

  No distance too far.

  Part I

  “Ah! well a-day! what evil looks

  Had I from old and young!

  Instead of the cross, the Albatross

  About my neck was hung.”

  ― Samuel Taylor Coleridge,

  The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

  1

  January 1, 1998

  Hale Trucking Maintenance Garage

  CANAMEX Corridor Division

  Pembina, North Dakota

  Alyson Grayson flinched when the shotgun blast erupted behind her.

  “You’re an hour late,” she said to the young man holding the smoking weapon. “Midnight has come and gone. It’s the New Year already.”

  The handsome teen broke the old shotgun barrel open, then popped out the spent shell and tossed it over his shoulder. He took a deep drag off the joint he had been holding to his lips and blew pot smoke rings into the air, much to Alyson’s delight. He smiled at her, blew the hot ashes from the joint, and then inserted the glowing red tip into his mouth. With the unlit end of the joint protruding from his lips, he placed his mouth close to hers. Puffing his cheeks, he blew slowly, which forced a thick stream of white smoke toward Alyson’s waiting lips. She giggled, then opened her mouth and inhaled.

  Alyson exhaled slowly, as she turned in circles and watched the Northern Lights dance in the sky above her. Her mother said she came into the world with a look of wonder on her face as if she was surprised to be there.

  Her father would laugh and say, “Alyson approaches life in a constant state of ‘wow.’“

  She was almost fifteen and not above a bent rule or two. She made pretty decent grades and stayed out of trouble. Her mom and dad trusted her to make appropriate decisions, which she did for the most part. On occasion, she smoked a little pot, but not much, and she never drank alcohol.

  Her parents would not arrive home from attending the Grayson family’s annual New Year’s Eve party until after the traditional sunrise sober-up breakfast. Alyson had asked to stay home so that she could attend the ice skating party on the small lake in the woods behind their house. The New Year’s Eve bonfire was a local high school tradition she had finally aged into. Her promise to be home by 1:30 a.m. was in jeopardy the moment she decided to offer Chance Hale a ride home on her four-wheeler.

  Chance was trouble. He was also her closest neighbor. Alyson’s home was about a half-mile down the road from his. In her rural community, all the kids used four wheelers for travel through the trails and fields before acquiring driver’s licenses. When Alyson saw Chance walking toward his home from the party, she slipped away from her friends to ask if he wanted a ride. She had been thrilled when he accepted.

  “Come on,” the still pot-smoking teen said, as he held open the door to the huge maintenance garage of Hale Trucking. “Let’s go inside.”

  The door slammed shut behind them. The sound clapped like thunder through the cavernous building. Somewhere deep in Alyson’s brain, the lizard awoke. Innate fears—fight or flight instincts—startled a recoiling reflex from her body.

  The teen following her chuckled.

  “A little jumpy, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” Alyson replied a tad awkwardly. “I should probably get home.”

  He stuck the joint in between her lips and smiled down at her, “The party’s just started, darlin’.”

  Alyson
told herself to chill out, took another drag, and followed Chance to a restored 1951 Chevy truck. The pot began masking the lizard brain alarms and loosened her tongue. She puffed and passed off the joint while walking around what she knew to be Chance’s most prized possession.

  “Wow, dude. You finished it. This is so sweet.”

  She smiled over at Chance, whose facial expression was lost in the shadow of the hoodie he wore under his bulky jacket. He nodded affirmation.

  “Will you take me for a ride? Not right now, but soon.”

  She heard him answer flatly, “Yeah, I guess.”

  Chance was different from the other boys Alyson had toyed with since she discovered she could. He was mysterious and brooding, with an air of aloofness she found intriguing. Chance didn’t look like the familiar North Dakota boys, with his lean, surfer-boy body and long blond ponytail. He pulled off the pouty, ruggedly handsome, untamed rebel look with the casualness that made it authentic. Alyson had recently discovered Chance Hale defined her “type.”

  Chance was a loner, a nonconformist—the kind of bad boy that made temptation stronger than the fear of her parents’ reprisal. They were not as impressed with the young man who made no excuses for his drinking, smoking, and lack of conformity to society’s rules, particularly the ones about school attendance. Alyson was already smitten enough to overlook these glaring flaws. To her, Chance seemed sad and lonely. With the blindness of the beauty for the beast, she thought she could heal his wounds.

  He opened the tailgate of the pickup truck. The pot, mixed with the alcohol he reeked of, seemed to make Chance less communicative by the moment. Alyson began to think he had forgotten she was there. He sat down on the tailgate and then reclined back into his heavy parka in the bed of the truck. The warm garage seemed to lull him to sleep almost instantly.

  “Well, I guess he won’t freeze in here,” she said. “I suppose I should get home now.”

  Before she could move, Alyson heard what sounded like a woman’s muffled scream. Her head turned with the sound. She focused on the rear of a box truck parked about twenty-five feet away.

  “Did you hear that?”

  Chance was already snoring.

  Perhaps it was because she was high or maybe it was the fact Alyson was just young and innocent enough to dismiss potential danger—for whatever reason, she crossed the floor to the box truck without the slightest concern for her safety.

  “I swear I heard someone in there,” she commented, as she surveyed the chained and locked rear doors of the truck.

  The muffled cry came again. This time Alyson was sure it came from inside the truck.

  As she turned, she said, “You heard that, didn’t yo—”

  Alyson’s words were forcefully cut off in mid-syllable. She had no time to gasp, as the forearm closed around her neck and a hand clamped over her mouth. The strength of the man overpowered the petite teenager with ease.

  She felt the words whispered against her cheek, “Yes, I heard it, but I wish you hadn’t.”

  The forearm clamped down harder. It stopped the blood flowing to the previously alarmed lizard. The options of fight or flight were no longer available. The lizard switched focus to preservation mode and went silent. Wearing much the same look of surprise she wore at birth, Alyson Grayson saw a tunnel of darkness showered with falling stars.

  She thought, “Wow.”

  And then she thought nothing.

  2

  January 9, 1998

  Home of Joshua Lee Hale

  Pembina, North Dakota

  “It’s cold enough to freeze off body parts.”

  Chance Hale ignored the federal agent seated on the other side of the kitchen table. The sixteen-year-old pressed on his temples with the palms of his hands, in what appeared to be an attempt to keep the contents of his skull inside.

  FBI Special Agent Rainey Bell noted the pot resin stains on his index finger and thumb, the reek of stale cigarettes, and the nauseating stench of booze-laced puke-breath. While they waited for his father to come back from the garage with the other agent, Rainey kept the hung-over teenager talking. Rather, she talked, and he tried to remain upright.

  Chance Hale was in deep trouble. A suspect in the disappearance of his fourteen-year-old neighbor, Alyson Grayson, he was connected by proximity to the two frozen bodies recently discovered in the lake behind his home. Two frozen bodies and a missing girl resulted in FBI involvement. Chance didn’t seem the least bit concerned.

  Rainey looked out the window over the sink, continuing her weather observations, “Still spitting snow at zero degrees.” She glanced back at Chance. “What did they say the wind chill was—minus twenty-one? I could be out there, what, thirty minutes before my face froze? This is just nuts. Pulling me from Louisiana to the frozen tundra—I don’t think a prank deserved this assignment.”

  Rainey saw a brief millisecond of eye contact. Chance took notice that she may be a fellow rule breaker.

  “I’ve only been here a week. The bureau said I was transferred to fill a temporary vacancy. I’m calling bullshit on that one. It was that picture of super-agent Walsh standing in his front yard in his boxers that landed me here.”

  Rainey made quote marks in the air and mocked the man she imitated with, “Mr. ‘My Security System Can’t Be Compromised.’ Ha!”

  She flashed a self-satisfied smile at Chance. “Patriarchal narcissism is why I am here. Guys like him can’t abide being wrong or laughed at. I proved the one and certainly did the other.”

  She waited for a comment, a nod, anything, but received only a vacant teenage stare. Forced to resume her monologue, she continued the tale of her removal to the frozen tundra.

  “I suppose his being my supervisor brought with it a tad of insubordination. But, you know, sometimes you have to show a braggart he isn’t all that smart to make a point. Of course, the FBI frowns on that particular type of behavioral modification technique. Thus, here I sit with you freezing my ass off.”

  Nothing, no reaction, not even a hint of a smile. Chance closed his eyes and rubbed his temples with his fingertips.

  Rainey tried another tack. “You moved up here from North Carolina, didn’t you? Hillsborough, right? I grew up in Chapel Hill.”

  A grunt was Chance’s only response, but he did respond. Progress had been made. Rainey abandoned her attempt to bond over shared nonconformist attitudes and stuck with their childhoods in warmer climes.

  “You understand it takes time to adjust from coastal temps to ‘Oh, my God! I’m freezing my tits off,’ don’t you?”

  “I don’t have tits,” the slump-shouldered teen said, still rubbing his temples.

  “Balls then,” Rainey replied, dropping the “we can be friends” tone from her voice and adding, “Most mammals have tits, male and female. Unless you’re a platypus or a species of rodent, you have them too. I’m assuming you didn’t pay much attention in biology class—if you ever went.”

  Chance stretched and yawned over a barely concealed, “Fuck you.”

  It crossed Rainey’s mind that young Chance Hale needed to be reminded of the seriousness of his situation. He was the last person seen with Alyson Grayson and professed to have no memory of the early morning hours of New Year’s Day when she disappeared. The FBI was now at his home at the crack of dawn. If none of that raised young Chance’s heart rate, Rainey had to wonder what would? She pondered the idea that he was either a cold-blooded killer devoid of empathy, or he was just a drunk, drugged-out teenager with detachment issues.

  It was well known that Chance drank excessively. Three days ago, he dropped out of school on his sixteenth birthday, though he had attended only enough to avoid a truancy charge. He worked as a mechanic on his family’s fleet of long-haul trucks. According to a completely frustrated and candid school counselor, the old pickup truck he restored seemed to be all that Chance cared about.

  “He’s too smart to drop out like this,” the counselor said. “If he’d just sober up and try a l
ittle harder, he could do anything he wanted. He was in our school system for only three semesters. He was already in academic trouble when he enrolled.”

  The counselor pulled a folder from one of the file cabinets lining the wall in her office.

  “Let me just check my file.”

  She read, silently nodding in agreement with her notes before she looked up and finished her assessment of young Mr. Hale.

  “What I can tell you by law is that I believe his mother leaving when he was four years old did severe damage to such a young boy. I recommended to his mostly absent father that he get Chance into rehab and counseling. He refused to take the list of therapists I offered. It’s just a shame, really. Chance can be quite charming and engaging when he wants to be. Just ask that gaggle of girls that swoon every time he walks by.”

  After an initial witness interview with Chance, who was not an official suspect at the time, he refused further questioning from Rainey and Supervisory Special Agent Stanley Hébert. Chance claimed his long-haul truck-driving father advised against it. Hébert, who had been observing Chance, was convinced it was not a coincidence two other bodies had been found behind his home.

  “I know it in my bones, Bell. Something’s wrong in that house,” he said the previous evening when he dropped her back at the office. With his graying temples reflecting the car’s dome light, he declared, “I’m not going to let that son of a bitch get away with killing those girls.”

  She’d only known SSA Hébert for seven days, but she liked him. She liked him enough not to be snarky when he called her hotel room in Grand Forks before dawn.

  “Bell, get downstairs. We have to run up to Pembina. Locals say Joshua Hale came home about two this morning.”

  “What time is it now?” Rainey had to ask because her eyes were not yet cooperating. They only burned and watered from lack of sleep on the unfamiliar hotel mattress, when she tried to focus on the bedside clock.