Ignited (The Nash Harrington Crime Thriller #15)

Chapter 1

Evan Coker sat on a milk crate with his eyes locked on the back of the storage facility.

He watched what he could see of the aisle, over some dumpsters and between the storage complex’s unconnected perimeter buildings.

Surrounded by a small patch of trees and brush, Evan hid from any prying eyes—not that there would be any.

To his back, outside of the trees hiding him, lay some railroad tracks.

Behind the tracks stood a dense tree line.

Behind the tree line, a bike trail stretched a couple of miles east and west. It was the absolute perfect location.

Evan waited for headlights as he had the last few nights.

The gate for Brenner’s Self-Storage didn’t lock until eleven, but with the time nearing ten thirty, Evan began to think that it would be another wasted night.

Just as the thought crossed his mind, headlights lit the area.

Evan leaned forward on the milk crate. He waited for the flutter of excitement in his chest— for his palms to sweat, for a lump to form in the back of his throat—but felt nothing.

The illumination from the headlights slowly traveled toward him down the aisle of the main storage unit.

He waited in the silence. The vehicle’s headlights lit up the trees where he hid, then he saw a pickup truck make the right turn before disappearing behind the storage unit nearest him.

From the beams of the headlights, the truck appeared to turn around, then the lights went out.

Evan heard a vehicle door close. It was time to go.

He left the tree cover, stayed low, and ran to the back corner of the building where it met the barbed wire–topped fence that wrapped the perimeter of the complex.

Twenty feet to the west sat a thick steel downspout that stretched from the roof of the building to a foot from the ground.

Evan had made a test climb before. Within seconds, he’d scaled the side of the building and put feet on the roof.

Quickly, he moved across the roof farther west, to the far side, finding a similar drainpipe for his descent into the facility.

Evan’s feet hit the pavement by a pair of dumpsters in the out-of-sight alcove.

He put his back to the wall. The nervous excitement he’d hoped to feel should have had his heart banging inside his chest, but aside from the physical exertion from climbing up, crossing, and getting down from the roof, there was nothing there.

The only thing left for Evan to decide was whether to go forward with his plan—the mental struggle of choosing between right and wrong, the irreversible decision that lay before him.

But his feet moved faster than his brain, and they carried him from the wall and around the corner.

Evan stood as still as a statue. He stared at the tailgate of a truck parked just shy of an open garage door, one of about twenty on that side of the aisle.

The light was on inside of the storage unit with the open door.

Evan didn’t hear anyone talking, and he didn’t see anyone waiting in the truck.

Apparently, whoever had driven the truck in was alone.

Evan glanced around. The facility was lit but not overly bright—just enough light for him to see as usual.

The eight cameras that Evan had counted on previous trips were mounted on the corners of the complex, right out there in the open so everyone could see them and get the warm fuzzy feeling that they were safe.

Yet Evan had gone into the storage company’s main office months ago when inquiring about a unit for rent.

He’d seen the wall of monitors that showed all the camera feeds and what little coverage they provided.

Evan had noted the resolution quality of the feeds—or lack thereof.

That said, he didn’t plan on looking directly at any of them and chose for his descent the far side of the roof and the dumpster area farther away from the cameras.

From all appearances, everything was perfect for him to proceed.

He walked toward the pickup truck and the open storage unit.

Just ten feet from the back of the truck, he caught the sound of a man’s voice singing off key.

Evan headed to the front of the man’s truck, where he got a look at a short, wide, gray-haired man hunched over a box inside the storage unit.

The guy, apparently unaware of Evan’s presence, seemed to be searching for something.

Evan pulled the collapsible steel baton from the sheath on his hip.

The man continued to sing. The song, which sounded like a country tune, wasn’t one Evan was familiar with.

Another pair of steps and Evan was inside the storage unit and within striking distance.

He raised his arm just as the man turned around.

The man’s eyes went wide as he realized his fate.

His mouth almost appeared as if he was going to say something, but whatever words were about to come never did.

Evan delivered a baton blow to the man’s forehead and another to the guy’s cheek before he dropped, spilling the contents of the box to the storage unit’s floor.

The man squirmed and moaned at Evan’s feet.

Evan raised the baton again and delivered a pair of hard strikes to the back of the guy’s head.

The man went silent, but his body still jerked and twitched.

Another arm lift and another downward strike ended it all.

Evan felt the baton crack the man’s skull, and brain matter protruded from a deformed portion of the man’s head.

He gave his victim another stiff blow for certainty.

Ten seconds at most from start to finish and it was all over.

Evan looked down and took a step backward from the blood rapidly pooling on the storage-unit floor and inching closer to his shoes.

Evan sniffed and wiped what he imagined was blood spatter from his face.

He waited as if something was going to happen.

What that something was, he didn’t know.

But there were no sirens. No police jumping out to take him down.

He searched deeper. He had no sudden urge to flee, to run from the scene.

Evan felt no shame, guilt, or power. There was nothing resembling remorse.

There wasn’t even any excitement. He simply didn’t feel much of anything. He never did.

“Hmm.” Evan wiped the blood from the baton onto the man’s shirt, collapsed the baton, and inserted it into his sheath.

Evan held out his gloved hands and gave them a look.

Not a shake or tremble, not even a twitch.

They were as steady as could be. He glanced at the man one last time and shook his head.

“There’s something wrong with you,” he mumbled to himself.

It was a line he’d heard from countless people over his life—that, and that he “really needed professional help.” There might be some truth to what people had said, and Evan did regularly see a therapist.

Evan left the man where he lay, turned around, and killed the lights in the storage unit.

He stepped out and rolled down the overhead door.

While the man’s body would inevitably be found, Evan thought it prudent to conceal what he’d done.

With the door closed, Evan left the man’s truck as it was and casually walked back the way he’d come.

He went up onto the roof by the dumpsters, walked across to the east, then went down the drain spout before landing on the far side of the fence.

He grabbed his milk crate from his viewing position in the trees and crossed the train tracks.

After strapping the milk crate onto the rear of the electric bike that he had stashed in the trees, he hopped onto the bike path and started his ride home.

As he rode the couple of miles through the Florida night, he waited for something to hit him, some overwhelming wave of emotions, but nothing ever came. Nothing at all.