False Truth 4 (Jordan Fox Mysteries) Read online

  FALSE TRUTH 4

  A JORDAN FOX MYSTERY

  BY

  DIANE CAPRI

  WITH

  BETH DEXTER

  Presented by:

  AugustBooks

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  Praise for

  New York Times and USA Today

  Bestselling Author

  Diane Capri

  “Full of thrills and tension, but smart and human, too.

  Kim Otto is a great, great character. I love her.”

  Lee Child, #1 New York Times Bestselling Author of Jack Reacher Thrillers

  “[A] welcome surprise… [W]orks from the first page to ‘The End’.”

  Larry King

  “Swift pacing and ongoing suspense are always present… [L]ikable protagonist who uses her political connections for a good cause… Readers should eagerly anticipate the next [book].”

  Top Pick, Romantic Times

  “…offers tense legal drama with courtroom overtones, twisty plot, and loads of Florida atmosphere. Recommended.”

  Library Journal

  “[A] fast-paced legal thriller…energetic prose…an appealing heroine…clever and capable supporting cast…[that will] keep readers waiting for the next [book].”

  Publishers Weekly

  “Expertise shines on every page.”

  Margaret Maron, Edgar, Anthony, Agatha and Macavity Award Winning MWA Grand Master and Past President

  Also by DIANE CAPRI

  (Click each title to buy or download a sample)

  CLICK HERE for a complete list of Diane Capri Books on Amazon

  The Heir Hunter Series:

  Blood Trails

  The Jess Kimball Thrillers:

  Fatal Game

  Fatal Edge

  Fatal Fall

  Fatal Error

  Fatal Demand

  Fatal Distraction

  Fatal Enemy

  The Hunt for Jack Reacher Series:

  Deep Cover Jack

  Jack and Joe

  Jack in the Green

  Get Back Jack

  Don’t Know Jack

  Jack in a Box

  Jack and Kill

  The Hunt for Justice Series:

  True Justice (Judge Willa Carson)

  Fair Justice (Judge Willa Carson)

  False Justice (Judge Willa Carson)

  Cold Justice (Judge Willa Carson)

  Wasted Justice (Judge Willa Carson)

  Secret Justice (Judge Willa Carson)

  Twisted Justice (Judge Willa Carson)

  Due Justice (Judge Willa Carson)

  Mistaken Justice

  Raw Justice

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  False Truth 4 is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2014 Diane Capri, LLC

  All Rights Reserved

  Published by: AugustBooks

  Visit the author websites:

  DianeCapri.com

  BethDexter.com

  License Notes:

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Publisher’s Note:

  The publisher and author do not have any control over and do not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

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  eISBN: 978-1-940768-80-9

  Original Cover Design: Cory Clubb

  Digital Formatting: Author E.M.S.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Reviews

  Books by Diane Capri

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Cast of Primary Characters

  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

  Excerpt from FALSE TRUTH 5

  More from Diane Capri

  Dear Reader

  About the Authors

  DEDICATION

  Thank you to some of the best readers in the world: Robbie B. (Eric), Janet Cline, Yvonne Cherry, and Sandy Smith (Bob Vetter, also known as “the Silver Fox”) for participating in our character naming giveaways, which make this book a bit more personal and fun for all of us.

  Thank you also to all volunteers and supporters of Village Partners International, who work to help the people of rural Haiti help themselves.

  CAST OF PRIMARY CHARACTERS

  Jordan Fox

  Nelson Fox

  Brenda Fox

  Claire Stone

  Salvador Caster

  Clayton Vaughn

  Dominique Wren

  Drew Hodges

  Linda Pierce

  Richard Grady

  Patricia Neil

  Theresa Parma

  FALSE TRUTH 4

  CHAPTER 1

  Port-au-Prince, Haiti

  Dominique Wren remembered every detail. She’d relived each moment thousands of times. Moments divided by an invisible chasm. Before the instant her childish innocence disappeared, and After the Tonton Moun Nui kidnapped her mother.

  Before, nine-year-old Dominique stood outside in the schoolyard under the hot Haitian sun, waiting. She bounced up and down on her toes and waved goodbye to her friends as they walked toward home or boarded the bus. A slight breeze cooled her skin and blew her curly hair around her shoulders. She reached up to brush a dark strand from her face. The bus pulled away and she watched until it turned the corner toward town.

  Briefly, she stood in the schoolyard alone, but this was Before and she was not yet afraid.

  Any moment now, Dominique’s mother would roll up in the black Chevrolet Impala. She’d be seated in the back, relaxed, dress neatly pressed, legs crossed, leafing through a magazine.

  The driver was Jean Saint Louis. He spent his days attending to her mother’s every need and desire while Dominique’s father attended to patients, which was as it should be. Her father was a very important man. The entire town respected him just as much as her mother,
which made Dominique proud and patient.

  Dominique adored Saint Louis. He was kind and funny and often played with her when they waited for her mother or her father to join them in the Impala. Her father said she was too old for such games, but her mother only smiled. Dominique pretended she was a princess, just like The Princess Bride movie she loved to watch. Saint Louis played along, to her never-ending delight.

  When she saw the Impala turn the corner that day, Dominique laughed and bounced a little more. Carefully, waiting for departing children to step aside, Saint Louis approached the school’s circular driveway. He was not a single moment late. After he brought the Impala to a complete stop and Saint Louis emerged from behind the wheel, she ran to the car.

  “Good afternoon, Miss,” Saint Louis said when he opened the back passenger door with a deep bow and a twinkle in his eye, as he always did, as if she were really a princess instead of a pretend one.

  She giggled and replied formally, “Thank you, Saint Louis.”

  She slid into the back seat and her mother wrapped her arms around her. Dominique nuzzled close. She loved everything about her mother. Everything. Dominique inhaled her mother’s favorite perfume, which infused the warm air with the unmistakable sweet scent of gardenia. The perfume was an expensive gift from her father and Dominique believed her mother was the only woman in all of Haiti who wore it.

  Her mother set her magazine aside. “Tell me about your day at school.”

  The same thing she said every day, as sincerely as if she’d never made the request before, as if something about Dominique’s life would ever be different from one day to the next. The best part was that while Dominique talked, her mother listened intently. Exactly the same way she listened to Dominique’s very important father.

  Telling her mother every small detail of her life was one of Dominique’s favorite things to do. She felt quite grown up as she disclosed the day’s events and her mother always knew the perfect thing to ask or say no matter what the topic.

  Both of Dominique’s parents loved music and she often sang for them in the evenings, always garnering praise and love and sometimes even special treats if her performance was especially good.

  Her mother said Dominique had been blessed with the voice of an angel. She said Dominique would sing for the world someday.

  Saint Louis took the usual route. The Impala rolled smoothly toward their home on the edge of the hill on the edge of the city where Dominique imagined she could see the entire countryside. Maybe even the whole world.

  The Impala slowed when they approached the busiest intersection of the trip. She glanced out the windows to watch.

  Saint Louis steered carefully around vendors selling fried bananas, art, and gasoline from cans. Tattered rags of assorted colors adorned dozens of Haitians making their way from one place to another on foot. Some were loaded down with purchases, but others simply looked and bought nothing.

  Dominique was entranced by the colors and the action and the joy of being alone with her mother. She turned and climbed onto her knees and leaned into the seat back to watch through the back window while Saint Louis continued the Impala’s slow forward momentum.

  She barely noticed when the Impala rolled through another intersection.

  Then, at the next cross street, Dominique turned and slid back into her mother’s warmth. A tacky multicolored bus called a tap tap approached the stop sign to their right.

  But instead of stopping, the tap tap accelerated rapidly.

  Dominique gripped her mother’s hand and screamed as the tap tap charged toward them. Her mother squeezed her tight, one hand on Dominique’s head forcing her face against her mother’s chest, bracing against the coming collision.

  She felt the big Impala swerve in a tight arc and stop hard, throwing them both forward before slamming them back into the seat at the same moment Dominique heard the tap tap screech its brakes.

  Her mother loosened the grip on Dominique’s head. Dominique pulled away to see. The tap tap had narrowly missed slamming into the Impala, but only because Saint Louis had skillfully steered to a corner of the intersection and stopped just inches away from an enormous metal pole.

  Dominique’s chest hurt and her breaths shortened, as if she was going to cry. But she didn’t. Her mother held her close enough that Dominique felt the rapid pounding of her mother’s heart, too.

  Three men in straw hats, dark shirts, sunglasses, and jeans jumped out of the tap tap and ran full out toward the Impala. Saint Louis slammed into reverse, but the skinny one sprinted to the back and pointed a gun directly at the back window, blocking retreat.

  Dominique knew who they were. Everyone in Haiti knew.

  Tonton Moun Nui. Thugs. Killers. Fanatics who sought to take the place of the infamous Tonton Macoute and repeat their reign of terror.

  The tonton carrying two machetes on his belt tried to open the front door. Locked. He tried her mother’s door behind Saint Louis. Locked.

  The third man was blocked from Dominique’s view. He shouted something and stepped closer and pushed his hideous face close to the window and stared inside. Sunglasses covered his eyes. Deep scars marked both cheeks of his face where he’d been cut by a machete long ago. His wide mouth opened into an ugly grimace.

  Dominique’s entire body began to quiver and she pressed herself closer to her mother.

  She knew him. She’d seen photos of him many times in school and at home when Haitian children were warned to hide from him. He was evil, this man. Pure evil, the teachers said. He was the Tonton Moun Nui leader. Marcel Mesrine.

  Dominique tried not to cry. But tears came anyway.

  Mesrine pointed a large gun toward her mother’s window. “Unlock the door or we shoot.”

  Dominique screamed and held on tighter. “Don’t do it, Mama. Don’t unlock it.”

  “Open the door!” Mesrine shouted and slammed gun butt against the glass.

  His angry face stared into the Impala as if he hated her mother. But how could that be? No one hated her mother. She was an angel. Everyone said so.

  Sobs clogged Dominique’s throat and her runny nose blended with the tears she felt covering her face.

  “The child is right. Don’t let them in,” Saint Louis said, without turning around. Dominique saw his eyes in the rear view mirror. His face showed his terror.

  Her mother squeezed Dominique a little harder and said softly, “I have no choice.” Her fingers trembled as she unlocked the door.

  Mesrine pointed his gun while the two tontons swung the Impala’s door open, grabbed her mother by the arms, and yanked her out of the Impala. They left the door standing open. Dominique scooted all the way to the opposite side of the Impala where the door remained closed and locked. She huddled into as small a space as possible.

  Now Dominique’s mother struggled against the tontons, crying and screaming, too. Dominique could barely see through her sobs.

  “Leave the girl alone!” Estelle begged, as the tontons dragged her to an old brown minivan Dominique had not noticed before, parked on the side of the road. “Leave the girl!”

  A fourth tonton opened the back of the minivan from inside. The two who held Estelle’s arms lifted her and tossed her into the back like they’d toss a sack of grain. One of the tontons closed the minivan’s doors and slapped it hard with the palm of his hand.

  Mesrine waited beside the Impala with his gun pointed at Dominique through the open passenger door until the tontons were seated in the minivan. He kicked the door closed with his boot. He rested the big gun’s barrel over his shoulder and sauntered to the passenger side of the minivan and ducked inside.

  The minivan drove away leaving the tap tap where it stopped.

  Dominique, bewildered, shaking, terrified, still crying and almost unable to breathe, huddled deep in the corner and stared out the windows until the minivan disappeared.

  Gardenia perfume still scented the air inside the Impala.

  Everything outside at the busy i
ntersection continued as if nothing had happened. No vendor or customer so much as glanced toward the Impala. No surprise.

  Kidnappings were common. Followed by a ransom demand or a murder, or sometimes both. People were numb to them now.

  Even at nine years old, Dominique knew the police were corrupt. No one would help her mother because volunteering could get them killed.

  “Dry your tears, Dominique. Your mother wants you to be brave,” Saint Louis said gently. He handed her a handful of tissues.

  She did as she was told and waited as quietly as she could in the back seat while Saint Louis called her father.

  Saint Louis drove Dominique home, where her father waited. He held her close while she cried and cried until she was exhausted.

  After the Tonton Moun Nui took her mother, Dominique asked Saint Louis and her father and her teachers every day, “Why did they take my mother?” No one knew.