Necessary Ends
A Tai Randolph Mystery
Tina Whittle
Poisoned Pen Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2018 by Tina Whittle
First E-book Edition 2018
ISBN: 9781464209864 ebook
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.
The historical characters and events portrayed in this book are inventions of the author or used fictitiously.
Poisoned Pen Press
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Contents
Necessary Ends
Copyright
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgments
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
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-one
Chapter Fifty-two
Chapter Fifty-three
Chapter Fifty-four
Chapter Fifty-five
Author’s Note
More from this Author
Contact Us
Dedication
To my writerly sisters in the Mojito Literary Society—Annie Hogsett, Susan Newman, Katrina Murphy, and Laura Valeri.
May the words always be sweet to you.
Acknowledgments
Every time I sit down to the page, I am reminded of the enormous debt of gratitude I owe to so many. And even though I am supposedly a woman of words, I know that words can never truly demonstrate how much the people in my life support and encourage me.
If you’ve ever answered a weird question about Civil War history, concussions, French grammar, legal procedure, the dirt in North Georgia, animal husbandry, police ten codes or the annual upkeep costs of a Ferrari…then you are my hero. Thank you.
Special thanks to my fellow Sisters in Crime, especially the members of my home chapter, the Low Country Sisters in Crime, which wouldn’t exist without our officers Donna Kortes, Maggie Toussaint, and Rebecca Butler; my Lowcountry Crime co-authors Jonathan M. Bryant, Polly Iyer, and James M. Jackson (who is also our esteemed publisher); my patient friends Toni Deal, Sharon Hudson, Theresa Booker, and Robin White; the Friday Night Board Game crew—Lisa Abbott, Sean Devine, and Karen Sanders; and my fence neighbors, Danielle and Andy Walden and Sean Clarke.
The debt of gratitude to my excellent and forbearing family just keeps getting greater: my parents, Dinah and Archie; my parents-in-law, Yvonne and Gene; my brother and three siblings-in-law, Tim and Lisa, and Patty and Rich; plus my ever-awesome niece and nephews—Connor, Sydney, Drew, and Hayden.
They say it takes a village to publish a book, and my village is full of geniuses. Many thanks to the fine folks at Poisoned Pen Press—Barbara Peters, Annette Rogers, Diane DiBiase, Robert Rosenwald, Raj Dayal, Suzan Baroni, Beth Deveny, Holli Roach, and Kacie Blackburn. I am also grateful to my fellow PPPers—the Posse—for their warm camaraderie and generous smarts, and my agent Paige Wheeler, for her can-do encouragement and unfailing support.
And—as always and forever—much love to my husband, James, and daughter, Kaley. Y’all provide the spin that keeps my world in motion.
Chapter One
The closet was narrow and dusty, with barely enough room for me to stand. Dead insects crunched under my sneakers, and spider webs glued themselves to my ponytail. Though empty of appliances and devoid of air conditioning, the foreclosed duplex was crammed with beat-up sofas and ratty mattresses, and it smelled like sawdust and old shoes. Faux suburban meth-dealer chic.
Trey handed me a weapon. “Do you remember the plan?”
I wrapped my hands around the gun, a semi-auto designed to shoot projectiles, not bullets. My palms were slick with sweat, and I had to concentrate to keep the thing from thudding to the floor.
“Surrender,” I said.
“Because?”
“This scenario is designed to practice surrender protocol.”
“And you are not to…?”
“Fight. Not even a little bit.” I wiped my hands on my jeans one at a time. “What are their chances of getting past you?”
“Not very good. These particular trainees haven’t yet grasped the concept of three-sixty periphery.”
“But they will, after they tangle with you.”
A ghost of a smile flickered at the edge of Trey’s mouth. “Yes.”
He knelt and adjusted my protective vest. He was dressed for special ops—his black BDU pants paired with a long-sleeved tee, also black, plus his old service boots, the ones he’d shoved into storage almost four years ago. His orange-tipped training weapon was a ridiculous contrast, but it was the only thing keeping me in the moment. Otherwise, it would have been easy to get pulled back in time into his SWAT days, and to believe that the Trey on his knees in front of me was the Trey I’d never met, the man who’d existed before the car accident, before the frontal lobe damage, the Trey who really was a cop and not just volunteering at a training session.
I brushed a stray cobweb from his dark hair. “If any of them do make it past you, I’m going to get pocked with paintballs.”
Trey stood and double-checked my body camera, wiped a smudge from my eye protection with his sleeve. “If you surrender and drop your weapon, you’re supposed to come out unharmed. That’s the protocol.”
I sneezed. He produced a bottle of allergy medicine from some hidden pocket, and I swallowed two tablets dry.
“Does this really help?” I said.
“For the dust, yes. The pigeons, however…”
“Not the pills, these scenarios. Deliberately wading into a simulation where people come after you. Does it really make the nightmares better?”
Trey stopped messing with my gear, his blue eyes serious in the slanted light. “Yes. It does.”
When my brother the psychologist had suggested moving Trey back into simulations training, I hadn’t been convinced. I still wasn’t. But I knew he needed something, some way to work out the part of him that sometimes sizzled like an overloaded circuit. There was only so much aggression he could exorcise through running, after all, and smothering it with routine and structure hadn’t worked either. He needed an outlet, and this one—one without actual bullets and bad guys—seemed a safe alternative.
I adjusted my goggles and felt for the spare ammo on my
