The End Game: A Mystery - Hardcover

Finger, Gerrie Ferris

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312611552 ISBN 13: 9780312611552

Publisher: Minotaur Books, 2010

Synopsis

 Moriah Dru’s weekend off with her lover, Lieutenant Richard Lake, is interrupted when Atlanta juvenile court judge Portia Devon hires Dru to find two sisters who’ve gone missing after their foster parents’ house burns down. 

An ex-cop, Dru established Child Trace, Inc., after leaving the force. Judge Devon sees to it that Lake is assigned to head the police investigation, because Dru and Lake together have a habit of solving cases. 

After questioning the neighbors, the couple decide that the abduction of the girls looks like more than an ordinary kidnapping. Dru learns that in the past eight years two other foster children from the area have gone missing. The investigation turns up a snitch who tells Dru he’s heard that a secret sex organization, with members named after chess pieces, is bound for Costa Rica with two girls. The chase is on to stop the kidnappers before they escape the country.    

 

The latest winner of the Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition, The End Game features a strong new heroine in a vivid Southern setting. Gerrie Ferris Finger puts a new spin on the classic mystery novel.

About this title

About the Author

Gerrie Ferris Finger is a winner of the Malice Domestic Best First Traditional Mystery Novel Competition. She lives on the coast of Georgia with her husband and standard poodle, Bogey.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

ONE
SATURDAY MORNING IN APRIL
Satisfied, Lake and I lay apart on the king bed. The breeze through the window flitted across my skin, fine-tuning the pleasure of cooling down. In a little while, we’d get up, throw on sweats, and run the 10-K to Piedmont Park. We’d drop onto a bleacher to watch a pickup softball game—maybe join in if idle gloves lay nearby. Right now, though, an après snooze was the plan.
Not to be. A train horn moaned into my nap. The bedside clock said the seven A.M. from Birmingham was smack on time, the chug-rumble growing louder by the wheel turn. It’s a miracle how the bricks and mortar of this old cotton warehouse—now lofts—withstand the shakes and have for more than a century. Lake lives on the third floor, and whenever our schedules give us a weekend together, we alternate between the burbs, where I live, and this place, which I adore.
I also adore train squalling. This behemoth’s air horn warbled loud and long like an off-key contralto. I lifted a finger and tapped Lake’s broad back. “Engineer Number Two.” My brain’s chock-full of useless knowledge, like knowing the signature sounds of seven air horn maestros.
Lake rolled his shoulder toward me. “Your cell.”
“Huh?”
“It’s playing your song.”
I got up, impressed again at his ability to hear my cell phone tinkling out Mozart with the train screaming by. My cell lay on the windowsill. I hoped it was a wrong number, but the display said otherwise. “ ’Lo, Porsh.”
Portia Devon yelled in my ear, “You in a tornado?”
Cranking the industrial window, I yelled back, “Train. Hang on.” The chill in the room was no match for the cold lump of apprehension beating along with my heart. Last night, Portia and I closed a runaway girl case. It had taken me three days to trace the sixteen-year-old to San Francisco. Within an hour, I got the call she was a DOA. Portia and I salved our failure with a drink in her chamber. We said our good nights, and she told me to rest up, we’d talk Monday. “What’s got you up so early?” I asked.
“You and Lake need to put your clothes on. Guess you haven’t been watching the television.”
“No,” I said, looking at Lake, who’d raised himself on his elbows. “We haven’t been watching television.”
Lake grinned about the same time his landline rang. He listened for a few seconds, then his face lost its soft edge. He grabbed the TV clicker.
Portia said, “The fire’s in Cabbagetown.” Her voice crackled like the flames leaping on the screen, a replay of the fire that occurred earlier. “Two people dead. Man and wife. Foster parents. Two girls gone. Sisters.”
“Gone?”
“They weren’t in the house, dead or alive.”
“How old?”
I watched Lake slam his phone receiver and head for the bathroom.
Portia said, “One’s nine, one’s seven. The seven-year-old is deaf. You’re hired.”
Portia is a juvenile judge, and I own Child Trace, Inc. I search for missing kids, and my main client is the Search and Rescue Division of the Juvenile Court System. “On my way. Which street?”
“Cotton—by the old converted mill. I’ll catch you there with details and bring photographs.”
“Lake’s on the case, too?”
“I talked to the Major Crimes commander. Thought you’d like that.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
Pressing END, I went for my backpack, slid the cell in, and thought about my poor overworked lover. A big-city detective lieutenant couldn’t count on two whole days to himself unless he escaped to a desert island and changed his name. Neither, it seemed this morning, could an ex-policewoman turned child finder.
I pulled clothes from a wardrobe while I watched the tragedy on the tube. A helicopter hovered above the scene. Video caught firemen tromping through a gutted house and horrified people clinging to each other. The chopper ranged the neighborhood where searchers darted like fire ants. Closer to the ground, the lens tightened on a Search and Rescue dog pulling its handler along an overflowing ditch. Another SAR dog zigzagged across a playground with swings and seesaws.
Lake came from the bathroom toweling his chest. We exchanged glances. I said, “It was really nice while it lasted.”
“Really nice?” he mocked, flinging boxers and socks from a drawer onto the bed. “You say better things about my wardrobe.”
He’s a tall, broad-shouldered man, but it’s his face that captivates—all angles and irregularities merging to make him beautiful. Then my brain’s devil-voice said, you’re not the only woman in Atlanta who thinks so. I didn’t have the time to dwell on my jealous side and whirled for the shower. I said over my shoulder, “It appears you’re on loan to me.”
“Isn’t owning me enough?”
If only I did. “Portia made sure you got the gig.”
“Lovely Portia.”
As I washed hair and scrubbed body, I said goodbye to an amorous weekend and set my mind on the reality of what lay ahead. Kids going missing after their house burns down. Foster kids. Troubled kids. My kind of kids.
Out of the bathroom, dark hair dripping, I snatched up pants, shoved into them, and reached for my shirt. While I zipped and buttoned, Lake strapped on his cop gear, cell, radio, guns—his police issue in a shoulder holster and his personal Glock in a paddle holster at the back of his waist. He stuck his arms into his blue jacket, strung badges around his neck, and clamped on his trademark panama—a navy straw now it was spring. All the while, his eyes were riveted on the TV screen. “Those wooden houses are tinderboxes,” he said, shaking his head. “A spark is all it needed.” He flicked off the remote, and I slipped on my backpack—a compact leather thing with enough room to carry my mini-laptop, PDA, cell phone, and wallet. I’m licensed to carry, but my gun’s at my house, not that I thought I’d need it.
Our footsteps on the wooden planks resounded like thunder through the hall and down the narrow steps. Apologies to the neighbors later. We bolted across the street to a security fence. Lake flashed his palm across the scanner, the gate opened, and we dashed to the unmarked police car.
As Lake raced through downtown, my heart beat to the pulsating blue teardrop lights mounted on the dashboard. This wasn’t the weekend we’d planned, but I was ecstatic to be working with him again.
As if he’d read my mind, he reached to squeeze my hand. “Me, too, Dru.”
My name is Moriah Dru, and except for old friends I’m called Dru, thanks to my cop days and M DRU etched on my metal name tag. I met Richard Lake when we were assigned to patrol the Atlanta Police Department’s Zone Two. Within three weeks, we’d become lovers. When he got promoted to the Homicide Unit, I couldn’t adjust to another partner, mainly because each man assumed he was taking Lake’s place in my bed. After two lothario-type sidekicks, against whom I could have brought harassment charges, I quit and started Child Trace, something Portia had been pestering me to do since my maternal instincts (ha!) led me to my first lost child.
 
Excerpted from The End Game by .
Copyright  2010 by Gerrie Ferris Finger.
Published in May 2010 by St. Martin’s Press.
All rights reserved. This work is protected under copyright laws and reproduction is strictly prohibited. Permission to reproduce the material in any manner or medium must be secured from the Publisher.

Edition details

• Publisher: Minotaur Books
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 0312611552
• ISBN 13: 9780312611552
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320