Valiant Read online

  VALIANT

  A novel by

  BRADLEY CARTER

  This is a work of fiction.

  The characters and events described herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places or to living persons alive or dead.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher except for brief quotations embodied in critical reviews.

  www.TheACorporation.com

  Copyright © 2019 Bradley Carter

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 9781719988100

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  JUSTIN BRIDGES – EDITOR

  JAIME THORN – EDITOR

  Special thanks to:

  ADEN CARTER

  KATIE GOURLEY

  the INDIANAPOLIS POLICE DEPT

  THE ‘BULLDOG UNCHAINED’ PODCAST

  and to everyone who has patiently supported this project

  the majority of gratitude

  goes to you the reader.

  thank you!

  BREAK DOWN

  PUSH THROUGH

  AND TAKE BACK

  WHAT’S YOURS

  1. THE SUBURBIAN NIGHTMARE

  This city has had its share of floods, but none like this, not in the sense of weather.

  Tears flow in homes of the lost.

  They flow from family and friends.

  They flow for the missing.

  Sometimes, they take awhile.

  Sometimes, a parent sits in a chair at the dining room table, or on the sofa, and casts a blank stare across the room for hours at a time.

  A loved one, there for support, will call their name a few times before the parent snaps out of a daze.

  For the tearless, not enough time has passed to let reality sink in—Their children are gone.

  Mostly, it’s the fathers who get angry. They don’t sit around and wait for the police to do their job. Minutes cannot be wasted. The men gather their neighbors and charge the streets with flashlights, calling out the names of the vanished. They swear on their own souls; they will not rest until their family is whole once again. They won’t close an eye until their child is safe at home.

  Foolish hopes.

  They should know better.

  These disappearances are nothing new. A wave of unsolved cases across the Midwest lingers from last year and the years before. For two weeks each summer, large cities are terrorized as dozens of adolescents vanish without a trace. There’s not a lot to learn from the evening news. A couple of news anchors, desperately trying to hide their own fear in front of a camera, repeat the same information.

  Detectives, state investigators, and the F.B.I. are doing everything in their power to resolve the situation. To bring families together once again. To find whomever is accountable.

  It’s true; each year thousands of young faces are plastered on poster boards in shopping centers across the country. Most of them are kids who live in the streets. Some are runaways from hellish conditions at home. Some were abandoned by unloving parents. Some are hiding from the law, or turning tricks for the pedophiles to support their drug addiction. These broken souls disappear without stirring up too much of a ruckus. People rarely pay attention to those who live in the shadows and alleyways.

  However, when the victims are of a higher social standard, it causes an uproar of panic. These kids are taken from loving families. They disappear from the most unlikely of places. Places considered to be safe, but safety is only an illusion. Some vanish in broad daylight, others at night. The most frightening is the element of surprise. A child will be there one second, and in the blink of an eye, they’re gone.

  DENVER, COLORADO - 2018

  Anthony Fritz was a senior at Cherry Creek South High School. Eighteen years old. A straight A student. Popular. He was on the football team. During a late evening of practice, he was lined up on the field against his other teammates. In a quick move, Anthony miscalculated his step and his knee bent sideways, causing him to lose balance and sending a sharp pain radiating throughout his leg. He was helped off the field to the coach’s office where the school doctor performed an examination.

  With full range of motion and no obvious injuries, the team’s doctor cleared Anthony to play again but kept him out of that evening’s practice. The physician ordered an injection of steroids for the young man’s knee to help with a short recovery. Anthony’s coach was queasy from seeing needles, so he left the room. The doctor pushed the tip of a needle into a small vial of clear liquid and filled the syringe. Once removed, a tiny droplet slid from the end of the sharp tip. After wiping a clean spot from the side of Anthony’s leg, he pushed the needle through the skin and pressed on the plunger. Anthony inhaled through his teeth and held his breath until the pain subsided.

  “All done,” said the doctor. “You’ll be just like new once you have rested.”

  And rest is what Anthony did.

  His eyelids became heavy and his vision blurry, swirling everything in sight as though it were circling a drain. And then blackness.

  Enough time had passed when the coach thought to enter the room again, and inside the small office, he found the doctor trying to revive the unconscious football player.

  The doctor shook his head and pulled a cellphone from his pocket. It seemed to be a prepaid flip top phone, but the coach paid it no mind. Once a voice on the line answered, the doctor requested an ambulance.

  “I think he passed out from the sight of the needle,” said the doctor, ending the call.

  The coach nodded.

  “I don’t blame him.”

  To prevent a panic and a stir of witnesses, the ambulance arrived at a back entrance of the school. Two paramedics rolled a stretcher into the office and loaded a sleeping Anthony Fritz onto the bed, securing him with seatbelts.

  “I’ll ride with them,” said the doctor, gathering his things. “Have the parents meet us at the hospital.”

  The coach nodded again, scrolling through his personal cellphone for the parent’s contact information.

  The medics loaded the stretcher into the back of the ambulance and closed the doors once the doctor took his seat in the back. Watching from his office window, the coach told the parents what had happened and where their son was being taken. He watched the ambulance disappear into the city’s horizon. But it would never arrive at its destination. And Anthony Fritz would ever be seen again.

  ST. LOUIS, MISSOURI - 2018

  The most exciting thing for sixteen-year-old Stephanie Brandt was the day of her driving test. In addition to the required classes, her father had taken her out to practice and get used to the stress of busy highways and heavy traffic. When the day came for her to meet with an evaluator, Stephanie was more nervous about how cute she thought he was than the test itself. The evaluator was in his mid-twenties, a bright smile on his face and sharp looking in his business casual clothing. He wore a name badge clipped to the collar of his Polo shirt that read: Levi.

  Levi hopped into the passenger side of her parent’s car after sticking a ‘student driver’ magnet on the back of the trunk. The two fastened their seatbelts and Stephanie waved to her father, who returned a smile and crossed his fingers. The clipboard held by Levi held a single sheet of paper with a printed list of items to check off. At the top was Stephanie’s name.

  The test began with Stephanie pulling onto the downtown streets and, making a right hand turn at the stoplight to merge onto the interstate. She executed her instructions perfectly and her vehicle blended into a group of heavy traffic. Levi instructed her to drive for two miles before exiting.

  The silence between them was uncomfortable
to Stephanie. She wanted to say something, but she knew it wasn’t the time to be hitting on her driving instructor, especially one who was too old for her to date.

  Levi watched ahead, rubbing his thumb over the tip of his ink pen. A red ink pen he hadn’t used to check anything off yet. From the corner of his eye, he would catch Stephanie looking over at him and then back to the road. Both her hands positioned perfectly on the steering wheel. He returned a glance and the two exchanged a smile.

  “Your exit is approaching,” said Levi.

  Stephanie flipped her turn signal and checked her rearview mirror before moving to the far right lane. At the bottom of a ramp was a stop sign. She assumed she would be turning right, heading back to downtown, but her instructor told her to make a left once she came to a stop.

  The direction led to a business section of the city, full of industrial buildings and vacant lots. There was a wide-open area where Levi would test her on driving maneuvers without the danger of other vehicles being in the way.

  After a few minutes, Stephanie could see Gateway Arch and the skyscrapers becoming smaller in her mirrors. Levi pointed to a small white building with a gravel parking lot and told her to pull off and stop there.

  There was no one around. No other vehicles except for one. A parked van with a decal for The A Corporation on the side. The logo was the letter A, slightly tilted to the left and surrounded by a thick black circle.

  Once Stephanie’s tires came to a halt, Levi told her to put the vehicle in park, still thumbing the tip of his pen. So she complied.

  “Good job,” he said. “You get an A.”

  The girl grinned, but with confusion. The test wasn’t exactly what she thought it would be. It wasn’t what she and her father had practiced for. But even more curious to her was the lack of notes and markings on Levi’s check sheet.

  He turned to her and smiled, sliding his hand on top of her thigh. She flinched but let him rub her upper leg, sliding his thumb apart from the rest of his fingers.

  Before she had a chance to react, Levi stabbed his pen into her leg, pressing on its top. He pulled away, leaving a hole in her pants, the size of a needle. A tiny pinhole in the center of where he moved his fingers away.

  Stephanie pulled back, looking to the evaluator who sat still, grinning at her. Behind him, through the windshield, she watched as another man slid open the side door of the van and hopped out. His black boots kicked up dust as they hit the gravel, the legs of black tactical pants tucked into them. As he approached the car, her eyes rose to his face but it became a blur.

  Everything became fuzzy, even Levi.

  And then blackness.

  Once enough time had passed to worry Stephanie’s father, he went into the Department of Motor Vehicles to inquire on how much longer until his daughter returned with her evaluator. When the clerk explained to him that no one named Levi worked for them, it sent a numbing terror through his chest. And Stephanie Brandt would never be seen again.

  LITTLE ROCK, ARKANSAS - 2018

  The weekend following her seventeenth birthday, Lacey Kirchhoff had her bags packed for a weekend trip to Florida with her friends. Her parents had given her plane tickets as a gift, and were sending her off to the airport.

  There, she was expected to meet with her friends and their parents, and they would board the flight together. In the minute before the ride share pulled up to her home, Lacey gave her mother and father hugs and kisses. A small car came to a stop in front of the driveway and Lacey’s father stepped over to talk to the driver.

  He was relieved to see it was a woman, close to thirty years old, he assumed. She introduced herself as Vicki. The short-haired lady said she was there to pick up Lacey to take her to the airport. Vicki pointed to the GPS screen on her dashboard.

  The trunk of the car flipped open and the smiling driver waited as Lacey’s father loaded her luggage into the back. Giving their daughter one more hug, the Kirchoffs told their daughter to have a safe and fun weekend. The couple stood watching as the car made its turn around the corner and out of sight.

  Not a word was spoken between Vicki and Lacey during the drive. Lacey had her earphones in, listening to music from her smartphone. On occasion, she would catch her driver glancing at her from the mirror but would smile and look away.

  Several minutes had passed when Vicki slid her hand to the dash. The movement caught Lacey’s attention, but she paid it no mind after learning her driver was simply adjusting the temperature. What she didn’t notice was Vicki’s finger slip to press a button on a small black box mounted underneath the console. As the driver returned her hand to the wheel, the screen of her GPS flickered and went blank.

  Through the music, Lacey could hear her driver mumbling something but wasn’t able to make out the words. She removed a small speaker from one of her ears and asked the driver to repeat herself.

  “My GPS lost its connection,” said Vicki.

  Lacey paused her music and checked her phone. No signal.

  “We’re close to the airport,” Vicki added. “There are a lot of dead zones out here. But don’t worry, I know where to go from here.”

  For the rest of the trip, Lacey sat in the backseat in silence. Her hands fidgeting with her phone. Looking out the windows at the empty fields surrounding the small road she was driven along.

  “Is this the way to the airport?”

  Vicki nodded.

  “It’s not the way I usually go, but we’re coming in the back way.”

  The driver’s answer was acceptable to Lacey, but still, an unsettling feeling rose within her stomach.

  “Help yourself to something to drink,” Vicki said, pointing behind her seat. “I’ll have you there in a minute.”

  On the floorboard behind the driver’s seat was a cardboard tray with six bottles of water. Lacey grabbed one and unscrewed the cap.

  “Which gate should I take you to?” asked Vicki, assuring her passenger their destination was close.

  Lacey thumbed the bold number on her airline ticket.

  “A-5.”

  Ahead of them, in the horizon, appeared to be a dark van parked sideways, blocking a service road. On the side was the decal for The A Corporation.

  “That’s strange,” said Vicki. “What are they doing out here?”

  Leaning over the shoulder of the front seat, Lacey squinted from the bright concrete reflecting the sunlight.

  “What is—”

  Her eyes became heavy. The distant painting of the late morning began to swirl and blur as did the words from her driver. To Lacey, the sounds from Vicki answering were muffled and inaudible. The girl’s hands became too weak to hold the water bottle, and she watched as it fell from her grip and spilled across her shoes.

  Vicki’s car came to stop just yards away from the parked van.

  With her head wobbling, Lacey was able to slur, asking the ride share driver what she had said.

  Vicki turn back, resting her arm on the back of the seat and replied.

  “Have a nice trip.”

  The van’s door slid open and a dark-skinned man stepped out. He was rather large as in fat, not muscle. He was slow to move like he was taking his time approaching the car. Lacey reached for the door handle, but each time her fingers came close, the gravity of her body pulled her farther away.

  The black man stood outside her window, waiting and watching as the young woman in the backseat fell unconscious.

  At the gate of the airport, Lacey’s friends were about to board. They tried again and again to call their friend’s phone, but the call would go straight to voicemail. After a few attempts were made, the chaperones called Lacey’s parents, who desperately tried to reach their daughter as well. They tried to contact the ride share company to find get answers as to where the lady driver might have taken their daughter. After several minutes of waiting to speak to a representative, they learned a bizarre truth; not only was there no driver named Vicki in the area, there was no record of a trip to the airport b
eing requested using their service. And Lacey Kirchhoff would never be seen again.

  As a cop, there’s not much I can tell you other than what I hear from other officers.

  Ideas. Rumors. Theories. Most are bullshit.

  We know for sure the person responsible is a mercenary, a man they call El Toro (The Bull). No one knows how he got the name, but everyone is aware of his power.

  Not long ago, the case caught a break when an eighteen year old girl named Brenna managed to escape. She thought it was best to hide in plain sight at a crowded bar, but El Toro caught up with her. He managed to get her arrested by planting a large amount of drugs in her purse.

  One would think the next safest place to be would be in custody of the police, but that same night, The Bull walked into the police station and bailed the young girl out of jail. Later, we found her dead body in a ditch. She had been strangled to death with an industrial strength cable tie zipped around her neck.

  I’ve heard a thousand voices cry out in suffering, but the ones that never stop echoing are the screams of a parent who has lost their child.

  All anyone has is a weak description taken from the cameras at the jail. A tall man with bulging muscles and a shaved head.

  What kind of evil can show its wanted face to the police without breaking a drop of sweat?

  What sort of devil is able to slip through their fingers, right under their noses?

  These questions alone are terrifying.

  It doesn’t matter if your face is plastered on every television or the front page of every news paper, not when you can’t be found.

  El Toro is like a ghost.

  He can’t be stopped.

  He can’t be caught.

  He can’t be killed.

  With him, there’s no compromise.

  There’s no anger.

  No negotiation.

  No compassion.

  No cowardice.

  He has no fear of law enforcement or anyone else, for that matter.