Free Father of Fear by Ethan Cross Page A

fail. And when he does … well, we don’t want to spoil the surprise.”
    He stroked her cheek and imagined what her now serene features would look like when they were twisted in agony.

Chapter Seventeen

    Marcus and Andrew were on their way back to the farmhouse when Andrew received the text from Kaleb about the delivery truck. Marcus pulled their black Suburban over at a gas station and initiated a video call with the team’s technical guru, Stan Macallan. Stan didn’t look like a typical MIT graduate and former owner of a major dot com company; he looked more like the bass player from a ska band or some kid from a skate park if you added twenty years, ten inches, and a hundred pounds.
    Stan’s face and chest filled the screen of Marcus’s iPhone. A long beard covered the face. Nothing covered the chest, exposing a tattoo of Popeye on one pectoral and Super Mario smashing through a block on the other. Marcus said, “Stan, what have I told you about wearing clothes in the office?”
    “Hey, this might be your office, but it’s my home. And why the hell are you video chatting with me anyway? Video calls are so stupid. They’re only good for parents to check that their kids aren’t at a party or for long-distance couples to get naked and—”
    “Fascinating, Stan. Write a blog post about it. But before you do that, I’ve got some work for you to do.” Marcus explained about the brown delivery truck possibly being spotted at the abduction scene and told Stan to run a check on any trucks within a hundred-mile radius that had been stolen or sold.
    After a few moments of clicking keys and Stan humming the Battle Hymn of the Republic , the technical genius said, “Okay, brown trucks mean UPS. I found one case of some UPS trucks being stolen in Topeka, but the police think that it’s insurance fraud. But I got to thinking about it, and someone could just as easily paint any truck brown to look like a UPS truck. So I checked on that and found a few possibles with the most interesting being a FedEx employee that went missing with his truck six months ago and neither he nor his truck has been seen since. The police think that he stole the vehicle. The dude’s name is Joe Colwell, and he has a record a mile long, including several violent offenses. Bounced around foster homes at a young age, but his mother kept regaining custody. She had been in and out of prison, rehab, and mental institutions for drugs and increasingly erratic behavior. Colwell only got the job at FedEx because a friend’s father was a manager at the distribution center.”
    From the passenger seat, Andrew said, “Sounds like Colwell could be your father’s apprentice. He fits the mold.”
    “It’s the best lead we have right now,” Marcus said. “Do you have a last-known for him, Stan?”
    “Yeah, it’s his mother’s house, but it’s the address he used on his FedEx application. Cops have questioned her, and she claims that she has no idea what happened to him. I’m sending the details to your phone.”
    “Good work. Thanks, Stan,” Marcus said as he killed the call. A second later, his phone dinged with the address, and he put the car into drive and pulled out into traffic.

    Marcus rang the bell three times before they heard movement inside the house. The place was more of a shack, with brown shingle siding and a front yard piled with junk and two-foot-tall grass. The woman who answered the door was blonde and surprisingly pretty. She looked like a former model, except for the T-shirt yellowed from sweat and teeth the same color. When she opened the door, he could see stacks of old newspapers and piles of trash covering the floor behind her.
    “Hello, ma’am,” Marcus said, flashing his ID. “We’re from the Hetfield and Ulrich Detective Agency. We’ve been hired to find your son Joe because he’s come into a large sum of money.”
    “Money? How?” she asked.
    Marcus expected her voice to sound harsh like that of a long-time