Marked Man II - 02 by Jared Paul Read Free Book Online

conspiracy kooks and libertarian wing-nuts.
     
    Everything that Special Agent Kyle Clemons and Detective Bollier seemed to have come up with had gone wrong. Jordan was upset with himself for disobeying his gut. He should have never trusted them. He should have wasted Shirokov and then disappeared into the wind, never to be seen or heard from again.
     
    But against his better judgment Jordan had listened to the detective and the federale . All he wanted was a simple matter of revenge. After he wiped out Shirokov and his gang, Jordan could have gone anywhere or done anything and it wouldn’t have mattered, but now because he had tried to toe the line, to play by the rules, Mary and her whole family was in danger.
     
    The tunnel opened into a blinding sheen of New Jersey sunlight. Jordan turned left and then right and then on to 280 North and hit the freeway at eighty miles an hour and he didn’t slow down until the exit was coming on fast and he had to slam on the breaks because his heavy foot had him going 115 miles an hour.
     
    The town where his sister lived was an ideal place to raise a family. More than once Sarah had brought up the possibility of moving from Brooklyn to Montville before Emma started high school. Jordan was resistant to the idea, and not just because it would cost a limb to send her to private school in a posh Jersey suburb. Jordan loved the city. He loved the bustle and dirt of New York and wanted Emma to experience the cultural capital of the world as long as she could. None of that mattered now.
     
    Mary Ross Pollard lived with her husband and two kids in a private gated community just north of Montville called Cedar Peaks. Good schools, low crime, easily navigated so long as you didn’t have to use public transportation. All of the houses in Cedar Peaks were made in the same design, two story bungalows with dormer windows and a swimming pool in the backyard. Strict guidelines were enforced within the community about what could and could not be done regarding the homes and properties. When Mary tried putting up a basketball hoop in the driveway so that her son could practice shooting her neighbors shunned the whole family, refusing to speak or even acknowledge them until they finally took it down. The same thing happened when her husband Phil erected a tool shed next to the garage that did not follow Cedar Peak’s specifications as to the color scheme. For two weeks Phil held out. Mary begged him to just give in and repaint the damned thing, but in the end he tore it all down rather than accommodate the code.
     
    Equally stringent were the procedures that visitors had to go through before gaining admittance to Cedar Peaks. At the main gate there was a small enclosed security outpost. Two guards were stationed there around the clock. Before the gate opened the guards had to contact the homeowners and verify that they were expecting the visitor. If there was no answer nobody got in.
     
    When Jordan pulled up to the gate and saw only one security guard his suspicion was aroused. He rolled down his window and the guard leaned forward from his post.
     
    “Can help you?”
     
    Jordan paused momentarily before answering, taking in the guard’s baggy, ill-fitted uniform, dirty blonde hair and sharp blue eyes. The nametag on his chest read Steve.
     
    “Yeah. I’m here to see Mary Pollard.”
     
    The guard nodded quick and then glanced at something inside the little structure.
     
    “And your name?”
     
    “Just tell her that it’s her brother.”
     
    He tensed and waited while the guard leaned back in his station and fiddled around out of Jordan’s line of sight. Jordan heard him speaking.
     
    “Misses Pollard? Your bruzzer is here to see you.”
     
    Time slowed to a dull crawl. Jordan tried to get an angle to see what Steve was doing but he could not raise himself up high enough without getting out of the car. Jordan was not under any circumstances doing that. Five seconds passed that