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  Lunatic's Game

  The Drex Files, Volume 1

  Margaret Lashley

  Published by Zazzy Ideas, Inc., 2019.

  Copyright

  Copyright 2019 Margaret Lashley

  MargaretLashley.com

  Cover Design by Mariah Sinclair

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  For more information, write to: Zazzy Ideas, Inc. P.O. Box 1113, St. Petersburg, FL 33731

  This book is a work of fiction. While actual places throughout Florida have been used in this book, any resemblance to persons living or dead are purely coincidental. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book and in some cases, the names of places have been altered.

  Contents

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Secret Prologue

  Chapter One: Thursday

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four: Friday

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine: Saturday

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen: Sunday

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty - Monday

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six: Tuesday

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two: Wednesday

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four: Thursday

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  The Drex Files 2: Dr. Prepper

  More Drex Files Mysteries

  About the Author

  Prologue

  I WISH I COULD SAY I’d been doing something glamorous or heroic when the world as I knew it came apart at the seams. You know—saving a baby, cracking a drug cartel—that kind of thing. But the truth was, I’d been working security detail at a mall.

  I was Paul Blart Mall Cop—without even the lousy Segway.

  I’d been sitting on a bench outside the mall taking a coffee break when it happened. I spotted a guy in a hoodie getting a bike from the rack with the assistance of a pair of bolt cutters. After spilling my coffee down the front of my shirt, I ran after him. Next thing I knew, I heard a bang.

  Then the lights went out.

  When I came to my senses, the senses I came to ... well, they scared the crap out of me.

  You know those sudden chills you get sometimes? The ones that crawl up your spine? Or those niggling, creepy feelings that someone’s watching you? For me, they now have faces. And attitudes.

  And, quite honestly, can be real douches.

  I got shot between the eyes on a Thursday afternoon by a punk packing a Saturday-Night Special.

  Was it a simple twist of fate? Or was it a twisted joke from the folks upstairs who call the shots?

  Call the shots.

  Geez. I wonder how long they’ve been telling that one ....

  Secret Prologue

  PSSST.

  Want to know how this whole crazy case got started in the first place?

  It’s not critical to the story, but if you’re the kind of person who likes to know things others don’t, now’s your chance.

  Check out the secret prologue from the lunatic’s point of view. Just go to my website and click the button marked “Confidential.”

  https://margaretlashley.com/books/lunatics-game/

  Then grab a chair and get comfy. Things are about to get a little unhinged ....

  Chapter One: Thursday

  I OPENED MY EYES. A white light pierced my retinas all the way to my groggy brain. I blinked once against the pain—then a second time against the disbelief.

  A shaggy-headed troll hovered over me, mere inches from my face. It whispered something with breath that smelled vaguely of Fritos corn chips.

  “Bad news, Bobbie. You’re gonna live.”

  An angel in glowing white appeared and pulled the foul-breathed creature away.

  I closed my eyes.

  The world as I knew it fell away again.

  I AWOKE A FEW HOURS later, lying in an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room. Everything was so ... white. And peaceful. And quiet.

  If this was heaven, something was wrong.

  I didn’t deserve to be there.

  I sucked in what felt like my first breath in ages. The place smelled like plastic. And disinfectant. And ....

  Again with the Fritos?

  Ever so slowly, I turned my thumping head to the left. My cousin Earl was passed out on a vinyl recliner beside my bed. Atop his potbelly, a family-size bag of corn chips rose and fell in rhythm with his breathing.

  “Earl?”

  My voice sounded strange. A twinge of concern upped the volume in my throbbing head.

  “Earl?”

  Earl snorted himself awake and glanced over at me. His eyes nearly doubled. He shot up out of his chair as if it were an ejector seat. I flinched as Fritos flew everywhere.

  “Bobbie!” he shouted, then caught himself.

  Earl wasn’t one for outward displays of emotion. Not the caring kind, anyway. We’d been rivals for nearly thirty years. There was no point in him getting all sappy now.

  “You’re awake,” he said, with a bit more reserve.

  “You’ve got a real knack for the obvious,” I cracked. My words echoed weirdly inside my skull. “What happened? Where am I?”

  “In the hospital. You got ... uh ... shot between the eyes.”

  Earl’s voice caught. He winced and slapped on a snide grin. But the tears brimming in his eyes contradicted his charade of callousness.

  Tears? Crap. That can’t be good.

  “I remember now,” I said. “The guy at the mall—he shot me.” I tried to sit up, but the IV tube in my arm protested against it. “How bad off am I?”

  “The good news is, your thick skull stopped the bullet. Lord knows you don’t need any more brain damage.”

  Either Earl’s humoring my dying ass or it’s not as bad as I thought.

  The left side of my mouth attempted a sarcastic smirk. “Right. So what’s the bad news, boy genius?”

  My cousin smirked and wagged his eyebrows. “Well, you’ve done got yourself one hell of
a Kentucky waterfall.”

  “What?” I scowled and reached for my head, pulling the IV tube along for the ride. My fingers landed on a tender lump in the middle of my forehead, then moved higher to the wide swath of smooth skin atop my partially shaved head.

  “Argh! Gimme a mirror!”

  Earl’s cheeks dimpled, but he kept his mouth shut and handed me the mirror lying on the table beside my hospital bed.

  I peered at my reflection. My face went slack. The top of my head all the way to my ears had been shaved bald. The rest of my long, auburn hair clung limply to the back of my skull like a greasy clown wig. I dropped the mirror onto my chest in disgust. “Ugh!”

  “Sir!” a woman’s voice sounded from behind Earl. “I told you to notify a nurse as soon as he regained consciousness! Are you in pain, Mr. Drex?”

  “That’s Miss Drex,” Earl said.

  “Oh. Pardon me.” The nurse looked down at the chart hanging at the end of my bed, apparently unconvinced.

  “No worries,” Earl said. “Common mistake.”

  As much as I hated to admit it, Earl was right. I’d never been the “girliest” of girls. My newly receding hairline wasn’t going to help on that score one bit.

  “How are you feeling?” the nurse asked.

  “Okay, I guess.” Considering the circumstances, I felt surprisingly good. Sure, my head throbbed. But it was no worse than the hangover I’d self-inflicted last weekend.

  “I’ll get Dr. Brown. Sir, it would be good if you gave Miss Drex some privacy when he arrives.”

  Earl bobbed his shaggy head at her. “Yes, ma’am.”

  I studied my bear of a cousin. Despite his display of bravado, his brow had more furrows in it than a freshly plowed field.

  “It’s okay,” I said to the nurse. “Like it or not, he’s the only family I’ve got.”

  “As you wish.”

  As the nurse left, Earl’s cellphone chirped. He glanced at the screen and shoved it back into the pocket of his blue mechanic’s coveralls.

  “Who was it?” I asked. “A customer?”

  “We should be so lucky.”

  “How long have I been here?”

  “Three or four hours.”

  “Geez! Who’s running the garage?”

  “Uh ... nobody. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re both here.”

  Panic shot through me. “Help me up, Earl. I can’t afford to be in the hospital! My health insurance from the mall job doesn’t kick in until next month.”

  “Yeah, about that—”

  I sat up and peeled the tape from the IV in my arm.

  Earl objected. “Now hold up there a second.”

  I scowled. “No! I might look like hell, but I feel fine.”

  “Well, to tell the truth, you don’t look much worse than you did on prom night. Remember? You had that monster zit on your forehead and—”

  “Shut up and help me get out of here! Do you have another set of coveralls with you?”

  “Down in the truck.”

  “Go get them. And hurry!”

  EARL AND I WERE HALFWAY down the hospital corridor—two shady mechanics in shabby blue coveralls—when a doctor walked by us. I think he would have mistaken us for janitors if he hadn’t recognized my fancy haircut. Or maybe it was the bandage between my eyes ....

  “Roberta Drex?” he asked, turning to stare at us as our paths crossed. “I’m your attending physician, Dr. Brown.”

  Earl and I kept walking, pretending not to hear. The doctor called after us. “What are you doing out of bed Ms. Drex?”

  I turned to face him. “Uh ... leaving. I’m sorry, but I can’t afford to stay here.”

  The doctor appeared more annoyed than surprised. “You can’t afford not to. You were unconscious for several hours. Don’t you want to know what’s wrong with you before you leave?”

  I scanned the doctor’s face. If I was dying, he didn’t give it away. “Okay. Give it to me straight. What’s wrong?”

  Dr. Brown glared at me, then wilted. “Well, to be honest, we did an initial brain scan, but couldn’t find anything.”

  I glanced over at Earl’s smirking face. He opened his mouth to say something stupid, but I shut him down with a look that could wither gonads at fifty paces.

  “So, in other words, there’s nothing really wrong with me. Thanks, Doc. I’ll be leaving now.”

  Dr. Brown grabbed my arm. “Hold on a moment! Yes, the initial scan indicates your brain appears undamaged. But you were struck by a ricocheting bullet, Ms. Drex. While it slowed considerably before it impacted your skull, there could be undetected residual effects.”

  I frowned. “Like what?”

  “Any number of things. But right now, the damage appears to be contained to skin abrasions and hematomas confined to the non-subdural dermis.”

  Earl crinkled his nose. “That sounds bad.”

  I sighed. “It’s just doctor talk for a scratch and a bruise. Am I right, Doc?”

  “Yes,” Dr. Brown admitted. “You’re one lucky lady.”

  “Yeah. Getting shot in the head. That’s my kind of luck, all right.”

  “A sense of humor. That’s a good sign, too. Patients have been known to lose theirs as a result of head trauma.”

  “Too bad,” Earl quipped. “So much for the power of prayer.”

  I shot Earl another dirty look and turned to the doctor. “Then I’m good to go? Like I said, I really can’t afford to be here.”

  The doctor pursed his lips. “Well, I’m still concerned. You lost consciousness longer than typical. You may have suffered a concussion. Still, there appears to be no brain swelling. The MRI we took should tell us more. To be on the safe side, I’d like to keep you overnight for observation.”

  I winced. “Listen, I appreciate your concern and all. But a night here would cost me more than I make in a month.” I poked my chin in my cousin’s direction. “Can’t Earl there keep an eye on me?”

  The doctor glanced at our threadbare coveralls and sighed. “I can’t hold you here against your will. But you’ll have to sign a form saying you refused treatment. I’ll have the nurse give you a list of concussion warning signs. Promise me if you have any symptoms you’ll come back to the hospital immediately.”

  “Sure. I promise.” I sighed as relief emanated from my wallet.

  Earl saluted the guy. “You can count on me, Doc.”

  Dr. Brown’s face sagged with symptoms of early-onset regret. He blew out a breath and led us to the nurses’ station. I signed the waiver form while a nurse gave Earl a pamphlet on concussions and a bag of bandages. After thanking them, we headed toward the exit.

  We were halfway down the hall when my head began to hum. I flinched, then did a double take.

  Standing in front of the visitor’s lounge was the guy in the hoodie. The man I’d caught stealing a bike outside the mall. The guy I’d chased. The same punk who’d shot me with his Saturday-Night Special.

  I gasped and elbowed Earl in the ribs. “What’s he doing here?”

  “Who?”

  “That guy.”

  “Where?”

  Anger boiled up inside me. “Over there, Earl. By the vending machine. In the black hoodie. That’s the guy who shot me!”

  Earl shook his head like I was crazy. “That ain’t him.”

  My eyes narrowed. “Yes it is. I’m sure of it. You weren’t there, Earl. You don’t know!”

  Earl patted my shoulder. “I’m telling you, Bobbie, that ain’t him.”

  My jaw tensed. “Don’t tell me what I know! I guess I’m gonna have to run him down all by myself. Geez! I always have to do everything. Get out of my way!”

  I took a step toward the guy and blanched. He was gone.

  “Dammit! Where did he go?” I took another step, but Earl caught me by the arm and spun me around.

  “Stop it, Bobbie.”

  “Let go of me!” I tugged against my cousin’s bear-claw grip. “We’ve got to go after him!”

&n
bsp; Earl looked me in the eye. “Hold your horses, Cuz. I’m telling you, I’m a hundred percent sure whoever you saw wasn’t the kid who shot you.”

  I glared at my cousin. Only a man could be a hundred percent sure of anything.

  “How can you say that?” I hissed.

  “Because the punk who shot you got run over by a Greyhound bus, Bobbie. He’s dead.”

  Chapter Two

  ON THE HOUR-LONG DRIVE from the hospital in Gainesville, Florida, to our hometown of Point Paradise, Earl tortured me with his non-stop ribbing about me “seeing ghosties,” “losing it,” and my “screws coming loose.”

  By the time we made it back to the auto garage, I’d convinced myself the world was full of jerks in hoodies, and the guy at the hospital wasn’t the one who’d shot me. It was a case of mistaken identity. Or my imagination.

  It had to have been, right?

  Unfortunately, the buzz-cut I’d gotten at the hospital was all too real. There was only one answer to that riddle. With Earl one step behind me, I climbed the stairs to my apartment above the garage. After fumbling the door open, I marched to the kitchen and fished a pair of scissors from a drawer.

  “Practicin’ medicine without a license is illegal in Florida,” Earl said, assaulting me again with his unique brand of verbal knife-twisting. The jerk knew just where to stab.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s illegal everywhere,” I said sullenly. “And this isn’t a medical procedure.”

  “Sure it is.” He snorted. “It’s a mullet-ectomy.”

  My eyes narrowed. I stared at my reflection in the mirror, blew out a sigh, and I whacked off the last strands of hair hanging behind my left ear. The long clump fell to the floor, along with the last of my vanity.

  Suddenly, a series of images began to flash in my mind—moments of my life where I’d stood in this exact same spot, staring into this exact same mirror.

  The day I’d lost my first baby tooth.

  The day I’d modelled my first bra.

  The day I’d finally escaped to college ....

  I blinked and the images vanished. I turned my head to get a better look at my homemade hairdo. It was all I could do not to groan out loud.