Long Way Home

OTHER TITLES BY J. B. TURNER Jon Reznick Series Hard Road Hard Kill Hard Wired Hard Way Hard Fall Hard Hit Hard Shot Hard Target Hard Vengeance Hard Fire Gone Bad Hard Exit American Ghost Series Rogue Reckoning Requiem Jack McNeal Series No Way Back Long Way Home Deborah Jones Series Miami Requiem Dark Waters This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.Text copyright © 2023 by J. B. TurnerAll rights reserved.No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattlewww.apub.comAmazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.ISBN-13: 9781542039772eISBN: 9781542039789Cover design by @blacksheep-uk.comCover image: © Gorloff-KV / Shutterstock; © Miguel Sobreira / ArcAngel; © Nico De Pasquale Photography © Xinzheng / Getty Images ContentsStart ReadingOneTwoThreeFourFiveSixSevenEightNineTenElevenTwelveThirteenFourteenFifteenSixteenSeventeenEighteenNineteenTwentyTwenty-OneTwenty-TwoTwenty-ThreeTwenty-FourTwenty-FiveTwenty-SixTwenty-SevenTwenty-EightTwenty-NineThirtyThirty-OneThirty-TwoThirty-ThreeThirty-FourThirty-FiveThirty-SixThirty-SevenThirty-EightThirty-NineFortyForty-OneForty-TwoForty-ThreeForty-FourForty-FiveForty-SixForty-SevenForty-EightForty-NineFiftyFifty-OneFifty-TwoFifty-ThreeFifty-FourFifty-FiveFifty-SixAbout the AuthorFollow the Author on Amazon Corpses fell from a black sky.Hundreds of them.He stared through the windows at the ghostly faces as they passed. Their bone-white skin. Down below on the street, the bodies piled up.Jack McNeal awoke and sat bolt upright in his bed, bathed in a cold sweat. He breathed hard, heart pounding. He got his bearings. He waited for the fear to subside. He was safe. It was just another bad dream.He closed his eyes for a moment. Terrifying nightmares had plagued him for nearly three years. He hadn’t told anyone besides his psychologist. He couldn’t tell her why he was experiencing such terrors. But he knew why they had begun.McNeal groaned as he got out of bed. He shuffled to the bathroom, splashed cold water on his face. He stared at his reflection in the mirror. Haunted eyes, ashen face.He went to the living room and opened the blinds.The late afternoon sun streamed in through the floor-to-ceiling windows. Outside, snow covered the New York City streets. He was alive. Thank God he was still alive. Then he thought of the bodies again. Not the corpses in his dreams. But the bodies of the men he had killed. They existed in the darkest recesses of his mind.One day, they would be found. He knew that.It was just a matter of time . . . OneThree minutes after midnight.Jack McNeal sat hunched at his desk with his headphones on as he watched surveillance footage of a corrupt New York City cop. He felt numb. The man under investigation was a ten-year veteran. His name was Jesus Ramos. A bike cop with three kids and a wife at home in Staten Island. But here he was, filmed by undercover Internal Affairs investigators, cycling from the station house in Brooklyn to the brothel in Park Slope. The brothel was located inside a four-story building. They’d bugged it with audio and video cameras as part of a plea deal with the owner. Ramos was brazen. The shameless bastard was wearing his NYPD uniform. He didn’t conceal his badge or his identity. It was almost as if he wanted to get caught.Jack turned up the volume and listened carefully. The madam, a Haitian national, told a Nigerian prostitute to have sex with Ramos. Then the madam gave instructions that the officer wasn’t to be charged. It’s on the house, honey.McNeal took verbatim notes of the verbal exchange. The notes would go into his final report. The video footage told its own story. It had been weeks since the initial complaint had been lodged anonymously against the officer. McNeal had requested authorization for the premises to be bugged. It had taken nearly a week to get the authorization from not only his superiors but also the court. But now, he finally had compelling and conclusive proof that the officer was indeed corrupt.He felt soiled, but he watched and listened to it all. The years he had been doing the work had taken their toll. He felt sleazy, immoral, and downright debased. He wondered how long he could stand it. His one saving grace was that he didn’t need the money. His one saving grace.McNeal took off his headphones. He switched off the monitor and leaned back in his seat. He took in the third-floor office, a handful of investigators taking calls coming into the Command Center of the NYPD Internal Affairs Bureau. Sergeant Aisha Williams grimaced as she fielded an irate call. It might be a distressed wife making allegations about an errant spouse. John Q. Public witnessing a cop attacking a panhandler in broad daylight. Or roughing up a Bronx kid down a back alley. Or taking a bribe from a bar owner. Or kickbacks from neighborhood mobsters. Or bottles of whiskey from a bodega owner in exchange for turning a blind eye to the sale of cigarettes to kids.The more Jack thought about it, the more he wondered why the hell he was still doing this job. It was killing his soul. Eroding whatever what was left of his humanity. The lowlifes he investigated. Day after day. Night after night. No end in sight.He had options. He didn’t have to do this job anymore. His brother and father thought he was nuts for still working. He had money. A lot of money.McNeal stared at the photo of his late wife on his desk. A brilliant and successful journalist. The wife who had left him before her death—her murder. He had never stopped loving her, though he had felt the distance grow between them over the years. He knew he wasn’t the easiest person in the world to get along with. Not by a long shot. His dark moods and brooding nature had worn her down.Jack’s world had collapsed after her death. The waste of life was too much to bear. She’d had so much to offer