Where Missing Boys Go Read online

  Table of Contents

  Where Missing Boys Go: A Darke and Flare Mystery

  Copyright & Legal Note

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Extended Copyright & Credits

  Where Missing Boys Go

  A Darke & Flare Mystery #3

  by

  Parker Avrile

  A MISSING EX. TWO MISSING children. And the man caught in the middle of a cartel's proposed hostage exchange.

  When his ex-boyfriend vanished with stolen millions, Darke went to prison for his part in the heist. Another man might want revenge. All he wants is the chance to rebuild his life with a new and better man, former FBI Special Agent Flare Greene.

  But everybody else still wants the millions.

  When a faceless organization grabs two small hostages to force Darke to lead them to the missing money, he no longer has a choice. He must find his elusive ex or die trying.

  And death is not an option as long as the two boys are in the hands of kidnappers.

  Meanwhile, the FBI is dangling a mysterious new assignment in front of Flare― and it isn't entirely clear what they're after.

  If the feds want to help find those two lost boys, great. If all they want is Tyler's missing millions, they can get in the back of the line.

  Nobody and nothing is stopping Darke this time.

  Not even Flare.

  Copyright & Legal Note

  All Rights Reserved

  © 2018 Parker Avrile & Paris April Press

  Thank you for your legal purchase of this book. The small fee you pay allows me to keep writing. Please don't upload this book to free or sharing sites, as piracy has forced many authors to leave the business.

  THIS BOOK IS A WORK of fiction and any resemblance to anyone, anytime, or anyplace is not intended and is merely coincidental. Cover models appear for illustration purposes only and have no relationship to any events in this story. Brief mentions of real persons, places, or products are used fictitiously and in accordance with fair use. All trademarks remain the properties of their owners. Many locations and current events have been substantially relocated and/or fictionalized for dramatic purposes. Opinions expressed by the characters are not necessarily the opinions of the author.

  Find out how to get a free audiobook of the prequel to the Darke & Flare series at:

  https://tinyurl.com/LostDiaAudio

  Chapter One

  Flare

  My slimline bulletproof vest was no protection against the chill. I flexed my hands in my fleece gloves to keep them loose and ready.

  The Glock 19 under my jacket was ready too.

  In January, most of the trees that lined the banks of the self-proclaimed world's shortest river had shed their leaves. I pictured green and gold when I thought of the Texas Hill Country, but today came in shades of gray.

  Gray clouds in a gray sky. Gray tree trunks bending toward fast-running water that sang over gray stones.

  I'd also expected country. Maybe Texas Hill Suburbs didn't have that same ring. The Comal River, what there was of it, seemed to run less than three miles from a large waterpark to the spot where it joined the Guadelupe River near the center of town.

  Although the waterpark was shuttered for the season, summer's tubing tourists had been replaced by winter's snowbirds. No one was on the water, but there were plenty of people not too terribly far away. I couldn't see them from here, but I was keenly aware of them, those happy, clueless people who currently strolled the historic streets of old New Braunfels in search of post-holiday bargains. They'd make their mandatory stop for strudel at the oldest bakery in Texas.

  The music of fast water is a screen against being overheard, but it also screens the sound of approaching footsteps. Anyone could stumble by at any moment. A good guy, a bad guy. But, most probably, an innocent bystander.

  All in all, a bad choice for a meeting place if you liked your privacy. But nobody asked my opinion before they picked it.

  My phone told me it was 11:10 AM. Which meant I was officially ten minutes late for my interview with the assistant to the deputy director of the FBI. Since said interview was scheduled to take place in the J. Edgar Hoover Building some sixteen hundred miles away, I was likely going to be a no-show.

  A final glance around. I was still alone, as alone as I could expect to be around here anyway.

  “Clear,” I said aloud.

  Three dots told me the message was sending.

  I stowed the phone without waiting for a reply.

  The Glock was a personal weapon. Being here in Texas, instead of there in DC, might mean I'd never own another government-issued service weapon again.

  Choices. We all make them. And maybe I'd made another bad one. But I couldn't let Darke face this situation alone and unarmed.

  “Claudia's all right. I trust Claudia. You go to your interview. I can take care of this.”

  “I've seen the FBI files on her son. These are serious people.”

  He faked a smile that didn't reach his eyes. “I'm serious people, too. And I'll be fine.”

  Motion from the direction of the otherwise empty shuttle parking lot. A glimpse of silver through the trees― the Lincoln Navigator we'd rented at the airport.

  A chickadee scolded. Chicka-dee-dee-dee. The number of dees supposedly told you how dangerous the oncoming threat was. Darke Davis, it seemed, was a three-alarm threat.

  Even at a distance, even in the shadow of some gloomy cloud, that tall, broad-shouldered figure made my heart sing. Was it superficial to be thrilled that your boyfriend was movie-star good-looking?

  Up close, where you could study the sandy hair, sapphire eyes, and clean jawline, you realized he was the kind of star who'd never win an Oscar. He was a little too good-looking to attract those bravura roles where he needed to be filmed in an unflattering light.

  There was no unflattering light when it came to Darke. He moved with the easy grace of a lion aware of his status at the top of the food chain.

  Today, though, the lion's energies were on a tight leash. He walked even more slowly than I did, frequently coming to a full stop to raise a pair of binocul
ars to his eyes.

  The trees along the water sparkled with tiny birds. Kinglets, gnatcatchers, titmice. Goldfinches who'd lost most of the gold they wore in summer. Another scolding chickadee. The birds explained the binoculars in case an explanation was needed. Somebody might be watching.

  I didn't slow to let him catch up. He didn't speed up to join me. I resisted the temptation to glance back.

  Better to track his progress by the sound of his footsteps.

  We were two random strangers walking on a public path, nothing more. One a birdwatcher, one a... well, whatever I was.

  Darke too was wearing a bulletproof vest. I'd insisted.

  He carried no weapon. He'd insisted.

  As an ex-con, he'd lost the right to carry. True, but he was also being stubborn. His crime was non-violent. He could apply to carry again. So far, he'd resisted the suggestion.

  He seemed to believe that if he couldn't be a cop, he didn't deserve to carry a weapon.

  Stubborn, stubborn, and more stubborn. Pointless to argue.

  We wandered on, me a little faster so I pulled away from him. A teen girl in a pink coat came from the other direction. She was briskly walking a tall black poodle who looked like he'd been cut from a topiary hedge. His collar was pink rhinestone, and his dog tags were fourteen-karat gold. I looked at her face to assure myself she was the age she appeared to be, and she walked even more briskly.

  An innocent bystander.

  Who was soon gone.

  We were alone again, although it wouldn't last. We were getting too close to the town center.

  Claudia Konig is a no-show.

  Did she ever intend to make this meeting at all?

  Odd that she'd risk entering the United States. Too many people wanted her son, Bernard Konig. He'd disappeared with a few too many million-dollar diamonds. We'd have questions for Frau Konig, well, the FBI would have questions.

  I might have blown my last chance to be re-hired by the FBI.

  Can't think about that now.

  I didn't trust Claudia even if Darke did. She had too many dollars and too many skills. Darke used cheap burners and switched his phone number frequently. Yet she somehow always knew how to get in touch.

  The dollars, perhaps, were supplied to her because she was raising her son's two young children. The skills were harder to explain. Unless she'd been involved at some point in illegal enterprise herself.

  The walk warmed me, thanks to the gloves and the layers of my two jackets. I paused to unwrap the wool scarf from around my neck.

  Darke paused too.

  We both looked back upstream. A dull gray kayak had appeared, its single occupant heavily swaddled in layers that concealed the paddler's body shape. A waterproof hoodie and wraparound sunglasses concealed most of the face. Supposedly, the Comal bubbled up from springs that kept the temperature at a steady seventy-two degrees, but this paddler seemed to doubt it. They were dressed for the cold.

  The kayak moved toward us as smoothly and as easily as any swimming dolphin. It wasn't a colorful tourist rental. A local, probably. Someone who belonged. And yet I felt a sense of unease.

  We were in no danger. Those gloved hands busy with the oars could never get to a weapon before I got to my Glock. Yet I was on high alert, all senses tingling, my muscles taut with readiness. My focus had become hyper-focus. My eyes registered the tiniest movement― the dance of a bright reflection on water, the spin of a single lazy leaf circling down from a branch.

  The kayak must have once been expensive. The gray wasn't paint, but the silver of old wood. Somebody's hobby boat, long forgotten on some Texas bayou, found and restored enough to be river-worthy but not yet prettied up with a final splash of color.

  It moved faster as it passed the spot where Darke stood watching. I studied the face openly as it drew nearer to me, but the hoodie and wraparound sunglasses kept the features obscured even at its closest approach.

  It never slowed. If anything, it picked up even more speed.

  As fast and silently as it had appeared, the kayak was gone.

  Darke hurried on his long legs to catch up to me. “Looks like she's going into town.”

  “‘She?’”

  “It's her.” His sapphire eyes burned with certainty. Well. If he said he recognized Claudia Konig, he recognized her. They hadn't known each other long or even very well, but they had a kinship― the kinship of two people on the run because of somebody else's crime.

  “Should we go back and get the vehicle?” I asked.

  “Faster just to walk. We're almost in town now.”

  “Why do you suppose she's leading you on this merry chase?”

  “You know why.”

  To see if you came alone. Which of course you didn't.

  I wouldn't let you.

  “A kidnapping isn't a one-man job, Darke. She should have reported it to the police. We should have reported it.”

  “We don't know anything. We have nothing to report.”

  “I couldn't let you do this alone. You're one man.” I was repeating myself.

  Other people appeared on this section of the path. A walker with six dogs on a string. A mother with a stroller. An older couple, the man stealing bashful looks at the woman― a budding late-life romance. Despite everything, I smiled. For some people, it's never too late.

  Darke, not quite smiling back, touched a finger to my hand. A light tap that would go unnoticed by anyone else. It was Texas, after all, and we were strangers here. “You should have been wrapping up your interview with the deputy director.”

  “The assistant to the deputy director. I put in a request to reschedule.” A request that had, thus far, been ignored. But there was no use bringing up that inconvenient fact.

  Although not arm-in-arm, we walked together now. This portion of the riverside was town, not country. Shops and restaurants. Mysterious antiques and menus in the windows.

  I expected to come upon Claudia Konig at any moment. Or at least to see some sign of where she put in the gray kayak. Darke stopped in front of a rare and used book dealer that sold artfully faded hardbacks about Texas history. He pretended to look at the window display while pulling out his phone one-handed to scroll through his call log.

  No record of an UNKNOWN phoning on the morning of January 8, 2019. He flapped the screen at me without much surprise. Evaporating phone messages weren't anything unusual from Claudia Konig.

  But it left us with no way to phone her back.

  “If something happens to those boys...” His jaw was sculpted marble. “If it's because of me...” In Mexico, he'd worked, briefly, as a bodyguard for the Konig boys.

  “It isn't because of you. It's the father,” I said. “Bernard Konig disappeared with a lot of diamonds.”

  “And Tyler disappeared with a lot of dollars.” Tyler Acosta, Darke's ex, was the worst possible bad boyfriend, the kind who stole a lot of money and left you holding the bag. “There are still people who believe I know where the money went.”

  The reflection of an older blonde flickered in the glass. I turned. Darke didn't. With its Germanic heritage, there were a lot of older blondes in New Braunfels.

  He was right. It wasn't her. I turned back to help him study the old books in the window.

  “I could be in Panama City in a few hours. You can drop me off in San Antonio.” His gaze was fierce enough to set fire to the 1937 second edition of Conrad Richter's The Sea of Grass. “It can't be much more than an hour's flight to Houston, and from there it's a nonstop run to Panama City.” The way he said it told me he'd already researched his options.

  “I'm not dropping you off anywhere. What part of this do you not get? You're not doing this alone.”

  Another flicker of blonde in the window, and this time we both turned. He might have even had a chance to get started on a welcoming smile.

  A smile that vanished like a candle flame in a hurricane.

  If she screamed, if she gasped, I never heard it.

  Just the
whistle of a silenced shot, and then the sudden collapse. It was the people around us who were beginning to scream.

  “Active shooter.” I put all the FBI in my voice I could muster. “Down, down, down, people. Get down. NOW.”

  Chapter Two

  Darke

  Two Days Earlier

  Outside, the chill of a winter's rain. Inside, the smell of books and bacon. A line of people waited for a table in the backroom café. Everybody was happy or pretending to be, all these well-to-do smart people with hours free on a Tuesday morning to chat about books over brunch. How many of these happy people had been or were going to be in federal prison?

  Maybe all of them. It was DC. Power corrupts, as they say.

  Maybe none of them. Maybe I was the only criminal here― the only ex-con blending into the glossy crowd.

  With much laughing and shaking out of damp hair, another group dropped their umbrellas and dashed inside. The crowd adjusted itself. Flare pressed against my back, his lithe heat delicious after our own rush for the door in the rain. His possessive hand clutched my right shoulder to keep me close even as I drifted in the direction of a shelf full of shiny orange hardbacks.

  Some people's laughs were a little too shrill― team pretending to be happy. I knew the sound of that hollow laughter all too well.

  Today I wasn't pretending. Not with Flare's sweet arm creeping around my waist if only for a minute. A simple pleasure that meant all the world. A decade ago, a stolen caress in a public place might have seemed impossible for the two of us, even here, a sophisticated bookstore in our nation's capital. January 2019 was the worst of times, or so people said, but there had been other hard times.

  Whenever strangers found out I came from New Orleans, sometimes they still asked me, “Wasn't that where...? Were you there...? How did you come out in the storm?”

  Fourteen years, and so many disasters later, even people who remembered to ask polite questions sometimes stumbled on the name of the storm. There had been so many now.

  At some point, you blink away the past. There was too much of it.

  The people in the line talked about their immediate choices. Coffee or champagne, yogurt or bacon. By unspoken agreement, people veered away from the subject of politics, although a few brave souls offered their opinions about who might make the Superbowl. New Orleans, I thought but didn't say.