Dark Cover-Up: A Ryan Weller Thriller Book 14

CONTENTS Your Free Book Is Waiting 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 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Chapter 29 Chapter 30 Chapter 31 Chapter 32 Chapter 33 Chapter 34 Chapter 35 Chapter 36 Chapter 37 Chapter 38 Chapter 39 Chapter 40 Chapter 41 Chapter 42 Chapter 43 Chapter 44 Chapter 45 Chapter 46 Chapter 47 Chapter 48 Chapter 49 Chapter 50 Chapter 51 Chapter 52 Please Leave a Review Your Free Book Is Waiting About the Author Also by Evan Graver Your Free Book Is Waiting * * * The elusive bomb maker, Nightcrawler, is targeting Coalition troops in Afghanistan. Ryan Weller’s U.S Navy EOD team is sent to find him. But Nightcrawler has plans of his own—a deadly ambush with long lasting consequences. * * * Get a free digital copy of the prequel Dark Days: A Ryan Weller Thriller here: https://evangraver.com/free-book/ DARK COVER-UP A Ryan Weller Thriller EVAN GRAVER “Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old.” Ralph Waldo Emerson CHAPTER ONE Ryan Lone Palm Beach Bar Hollywood, Florida Whoever coined the phrase “dead men tell no tales” obviously didn’t know about forensic science. Ryan Weller had been chewing on that statement for a while. He didn’t know if someone had actually said it or if he’d just come up with the analogy on his own. He was sitting at an outdoor table at the Lone Palm Beach Bar on the Hollywood Broadwalk, so named in 1924 when Hollywood’s chief developer, J.W. Young, had constructed the original walk from coral dredged from the Intracoastal Waterway. Some claimed Young had once said, “Boardwalks belong in New Jersey,” but Ryan didn’t know if that rumor was true, either. One of the Lone Palm’s infamous “5 O’clock Somewhere” boat drinks sweated in the shade of the table’s umbrella near his right hand. They were damn good cocktails, but three of them would loosen Ryan’s inhibitions enough to start heckling passersby. At five, and someone would have to drive him back to his boat. On the table before him was a thick file folder held closed by a rubber band, lest the constant ocean breeze scattered the documents inside. He eyed it with suspicion. Sitting across from him was the woman who had delivered the file—the mother of the deceased. In her mid-fifties, Josephine Macklin looked very prim in her black sheer cover-up over a black one-piece swimsuit with gold piping on the straps and around the bust opening. On her head was a black straw wide-brimmed hat. She had removed her oversized Gucci sunglasses and laid them on the table so she could give him a penetrating gaze with her doe brown eyes. Despite the hat, the wind kept blowing wisps of her chestnut brown hair across her face. The contents of the file were not Ryan’s forte. He was not a trained investigator, nor was he a cop. He wasn’t even a former cop. He could, however, disarm an underwater mine in pitch-black water. He could weld oil string at three hundred feet below sea level. He could lead a team of private contractors to extract hostages. But what, he wondered, qualifies me to investigate the mysterious death of a young woman? Penny Macklin had been dead for six years. The police investigation into her death had filed no convictions and recorded no new leads. It was definitely a cold case. Ryan ran a hand through his brown hair and tried to focus his green eyes on something other than the picture of the dead woman beneath the rubber band, staring up at him with her perfect, laughing smile. “I just don’t see how I can help you, Josephine,” he said, guilt gnawing at his intestines. Ryan looked more closely at the woman across from him. Josephine showed a lot of pearly white teeth under prominent cheekbones when she smiled, but that smile had faded the moment she’d begun quietly speaking about her dead daughter. She’d spent most of their conversation frowning at Ryan because he seemed so hesitant to help her. Worry lines marked her forehead between her eyebrows and radiated from the corners of her mouth. “I read about you in the newspapers after you helped rescue those hostages in Haiti,” Josephine replied. “I know you can do something for my daughter. You’ve come a long way since I last saw you.” When she’d first contacted him about meeting, Ryan had no need to do the usual homework he’d conduct before agreeing to work with a potential client. Not only did he know that Josephine, the daughter of a hedge fund manager, had grown up in New York City and that she’d attended college at Vassar before marrying Cory Macklin, a real estate mogul from Palm Beach, but Ryan also knew plenty about their daughter, Penny. He remembered her all too well. Penny had inherited the same doe-brown eyes and wide smile from her mother. Everyone had smiled a lot when Penny was around. “Have you talked to the police?” he suggested. “They have detectives who specialize in cold cases like this.” “I tried,” Josephine replied, her shoulders sagging slightly at Ryan’s choice of words. Referring to Penny as a “cold case” was clearly hard for her; a distance most people could place between themselves and her death that Josephine would never accept. She pushed a loose strand of hair from her face as she glanced around. “This is an unusual meeting place.” “Welcome to my office,” Ryan said, trying to softly inject some humor. “As you can see, I’m not pretentious.