Mackie's Men Read online

  Mackie’s Men by Lynn Ray Lewis

  Mackie’s Men

  by Lynn Ray Lewis

  © Copyright May 2015 JK Publishing, Inc.

  ISBN# 978-1-310-37471-5

  All cover art and logo © Copyright May 2015 by JK Publishing, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Cover by Jess Buffett

  Published by JK Publishing, Inc.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, organizations, events or locales are entirely coincidental.

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  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Books by Lynn Ray Lewis

  Excerpt from Hotshots

  Excerpt from Troika

  JK Publishing, Inc.

  Chapter One

  Maxine Vaught was settling down with a bowl of popcorn and her e-reader. The day had been gloomy and misty rain had turned into a steady light rain. The weather girl said they would be having popup thunderstorms all night with wind chills just above freezing. All in all, it was a typical late March night, and she was glad to be home with the time to catch up on her reading and just relax. She loved the peace and quiet of her home sitting back from the gravel road and a half mile from any neighbors. Her little two bedroom bungalow was perfect for her and the grey cat that found its way from the dairy farm down the road to live with her.

  She was on the third chapter of an intensely erotic book when she thought she heard a gunshot. Since the noise hadn’t been repeated, she went back to the heroes of the book who were spanking their love interest into a sexual frenzy, just as one of the three men filled her with his overly large cock, she heard the loud boom again. It was followed by a crashing sound and she saw a bright light down by the road through her front window. “Dammit.” Mackie got up, shut off her e-reader and went to the window. “I really don’t want to go out there,” she told the grey cat. She pushed her feet into her mud boots and grabbed her cell phone, her coat, and a throw blanket that she crocheted last winter.

  She hopped on her golf cart and sped down the driveway, glad the trusty little vehicle had a sun top over her head that kept the rain from her face as she drove to the end of her driveway. Across the road from her property was a deep ravine filled with trees and a swiftly running stream that came from somewhere behind her property. She immediately saw what was burning and it scared the hell out of her. There was an SUV hung up in some of the young trees and the side was smashed in. She could hear a baby crying and a woman’s hysterical voice yelling for Eric to wake up.

  Mackie ran to the vehicle and took a minute to decide how to proceed while taking her cell phone out of her pocket and dialing 911. The connection was bad but she told them what had happened, and thought she at least got the street out before the line was dropped. “Sonofabitch, that’s no help.” She was still cursing under her breath as she gingerly approached the vehicle. She balanced on the trunks of the trees to get to the smashed remains of the vehicle and could smell gas.

  The young man’s face was covered in blood, and the airbag had deployed covering the blood with a fine powdery substance. While she checked his pulse on the side of his neck, she told the woman to please calm down, “My name is Mackie, what’s your name?”

  “Jenny.”

  “Okay, Jenny, are you hurt?” When the girl shook her head, Mackie breathed a sigh of relief. She looked in the backseat and couldn’t see the baby’s face, but from the amount of noise it was making, the baby was either hurt badly or was just scared from the wreck. The young woman tried to get out of her seatbelt but it was jammed, and she started to get worked up again, so Mackie had to get stern with her, “Sit still, the car is sitting on some trees and if you move too fast or shift your weight, the whole thing is going down into the ravine. I know you’re upset and worried but you need to focus right now.” She stared at the younger woman until she got a nod from her. “What is the man’s name who was driving?”

  “Er-Eric.”

  “Okay, good, Jenny. Now, Eric is alive, but I don’t know where he is hurt and I only have this small flashlight to see with, so I need you to feel if his legs are trapped, can you do that?”

  Jenny reached over to feel Eric’s legs and the dashboard. “Su-sure. I d-don’t think h-he is trapped,” Jenny replied.

  “Okay, thanks, Jenny, think you can get unbuckled?”

  “Y-yes, I th-think so,” Jenny’s reply reflected the knock on her head she took. After a few attempts, Jenny was able to unbuckle her seatbelt.

  “Good job, Jenny. What is your baby’s name, sweetie?”

  “Eric junior.”

  “Aww, precious. Now I’m going to get the baby out and put him in my vehicle. I will be right back for you, okay?” With a nod from Jenny, Mackie and Jenny worked together to break the side glass window out. Mackie got the baby out of the vehicle, and ran the car seat containing two-month-old baby Eric, to the safety of her golf cart and left him on the seat. The child
had fallen asleep despite the rain and all the noise the women had made breaking the window out. She went back for Jenny, and had to pull her out of the same window behind the driver’s seat. The woman’s right wrist was already swelling and her left foot looked like it might be broken or badly sprained. Mackie was just glad she was alive. She pulled and fell down on the tree branches, as she finally got Jenny to safety on the little cart with her son.

  When she went back for the driver, she knew this one was going to be difficult to remove from the wreckage. A crowbar wasn’t going to pry the door open and she still needed to double check with 911 to make sure they received the address. So she climbed through the back window and almost got her wide hips stuck, but with a few wiggles and she was certain a few cuts, she finally worked her way into the vehicle with the unconscious man. She loosened his seatbelt and pulled him from his seat onto the console, and had to sit for a few precious seconds to take a needed rest before tackling his weight again. He was well over six feet tall, and in the darkness she couldn’t see his face very well. She imagined that even had it been daylight, between all the blood trickling from his head wound and the powder from the airbag, she wouldn’t have gotten a good look at his face until he was cleaned up.

  She looked at the width of the man’s shoulders and knew she would never get him through that window. So she crawled through the back to the hatch and was grateful that after only a few kicks it popped open. Her foot was in the way when it tried to bounce back shut so at least she felt lucky for that. Pulling and yanking his dead weight over the backseat was impossible, until she found the latch that lowered the seat, to make the entire rear end of the vehicle cargo friendly. By the time she had him out of the vehicle and on the gravel road she was exhausted. The muscles in her arms were burning and trembling from the effort it took just to move him a few inches. Now the question was what to do with him?

  The baby was crying again and Jenny was trying to soothe him. Mackie made up her mind and left Eric laying on the side of the road with her flashlight while she took Jenny and the baby back up to her house and let them inside. Once they were in the house, she hurried back to retrieve the unconscious young man. The rain had washed most of the powder coated blood from his face by the time she got to him and she could see that he was a very handsome young man. Even pale as death the man was good looking and she hoped he would be all right. She was pulling him up into the golf cart when he groaned and she started talking to him. “Eric, I am Mackie and you have been in an accident, I need you to help me get you into the house, okay?”

  He continued to groan, but unable to move on his own, and she was losing the battle to get him on the seat. “Come on, Eric, I have Jenny and the baby in the house and Jenny needs you, you need to help me here. Just try to move your legs please? I’m a big girl but you are a lot bigger than me, and I can’t help you by myself, Jenny needs you at the house.” Mackie gave thanks when the man moved his legs trying to help her get his body on the cart. Finally, he was half sitting and half lying on the seat and she propped him up the best she could and slid into the driver’s side and drove them to the house.

  By the time she got the small family situated in her second bedroom and had gotten them cleaned up, warmed up and now asleep, she was ready to collapse herself. There was definitely something strange about the wreck and the people involved. She slipped out the backdoor to put away the golf cart, but decided to go back down to the wreck and see if she could find the baby’s diaper bag and maybe Jenny’s purse. She climbed into the vehicle through the back hatch and found the diaper bag and the purse, and as she trained the flashlight around the interior of the vehicle she spied a pistol and a wallet. She checked the glove box and found the registration to the vehicle and insurance papers. When she unfolded a long paper, she was a little surprised to see it was a marriage certificate dated a few days ago. Mackie stuffed the vehicle papers and everything else she gathered into the purse and diaper bag, then shut the door as she exited the wreck. Lightning and thunder were crashing and lighting up the landscape while she drove back to the house and parked in the lean-to. She took everything into the house and locked the door behind her.

  She went into her bedroom and found the grey cat curled up on her bed asleep. The little creature made her smile. She wasn’t a guard dog but she kept the house free of mice and other vermin and she was good company most of the time with her acrobatics. Mackie stripped her soaking wet clothes from her cold body and tossed on a pair of sweats. The fleece felt warm on her skin. She took her wet clothing into the laundry alcove and tossed it in the washer with the young couple’s clothes and turned it on. She had loaned Jenny a nightgown, which the young woman had to hold up the hemline to walk without tripping, but at least it was warm. And the man, Eric, had been lying in bed in a pair of her cartoon pajama bottoms that came about six inches too short for his long legs but at least he was covered.

  When Mackie went into the kitchen she saw Eric sitting at the table, he must have woke up and came to check out the place. She saw him rummaging through his wife’s purse, and assumed he was looking for a cell phone. “I don’t have a landline, all I have is a cell phone and it doesn’t have a strong enough signal to call 911 in this storm, I tried.” The item that he held in his hand was not a phone like she thought, it was just a little black box with a small green light and when he pressed the button the light turned red. He put it back into the purse and asked.

  “Could I bother you for a cup of coffee or something hot? I am so damn cold I need to warm up inside and out.”

  “Sure, why don’t you go into the living room and I’ll get the pot started.” She made the coffee, and grabbed the cream and sugar setting it next to the waiting mugs. She went to her room and dug out a t-shirt that might stretch across his wide shoulders and brought it to him on her way back to the kitchen to pour their coffee.

  She put a teaspoon of sugar in his coffee and stirred it in the hot liquid, doctored her cup, and took both into the living room where Eric sat waiting. The t-shirt was a little tight but it covered his chest so it should make him feel a bit warmer. She took a lap rug and laid it over his shoulders much to his embarrassment. “Don’t be a sissy, young man, you are cold, and I made the blankets for the sole purpose of keeping warm.” She smiled at him and sat in her favorite overstuffed chair. They sipped the hot coffee and watched the lightning through her front windows. “You know, Eric, I am thirty years old and have seen some pretty messed up things in my life, so why don’t you tell me why someone would shoot at you, and especially with a baby in the vehicle?” When he shook his head she didn’t pressure him for the information. Not that she didn’t want to know what was going on, but whatever it was, Eric wasn’t inclined to share. Mackie sat quietly and watched him as if he was having an inner debate with himself.

  He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, “Have you heard of a company by the name of Klinger, as in Klinger Corporation?” When she shook her head no he sighed. “Klinger Corporation has its fingers in a lot of different pies, I am in the Communications and Development Department. I just finished a new video gaming system that will blow the competition out of the water. One of our competitors tried to bribe a co-worker to steal the software for the system. Since I am a paranoid bastard I never left the software at the office. I think that’s what this is all about.” He sat back, sipped on his cooling coffee, and closed his eyes. “It never occurred to me that my wife and child meant so little that someone would rather kill me than allow the game to come online for the Christmas rush on sales.”

  “Klinger as in Eric and Jennifer Klinger?” At his look, Mackie had to tell him what she found. “Look, I was not really snooping, I went to get the diaper bag and Jenny’s purse, and I found a pistol and took the papers from the glove box in case the gasoline I smelled caught on fire. The Marriage Certificate was there too.” She got up and went to refresh her coffee taking his mug with her too and when she came back, “I haven’t heard of the Klinger name before bu
t I assume that it is a family business?” At his nod she said, “You can try to use my cell to call someone if you like. Maybe it will work now.”

  Eric was smiling and shook his head, “They will find me, I’m not worried. By the way, how did you get us out of the SUV?” Mackie knew he was changing the subject to get her off track. So she humored him and explained that she really had no idea how she did it. He watched her hands as she spoke, probably looking at the cuts that she had gotten from the broken windows in the vehicle.

  She knew why his eyebrow kept arching as she related her part in rescuing his wife and baby, and going back for him. He saw a woman who was five foot ten in her bare feet and not a delicate little flower to look at. Mackie was built on the muscular side. Well, if she was honest, she was actually a bit chubby. She wore a size fourteen and had for most of her adult life. Men still introduced themselves to her considerable sized boobs instead of her eyes and although she learned to bring a finger up her middle for their eyes to follow so she could talk to them and not have to “say it through her breasts” during a conversation, she wasn’t what you could call fat.

  She tossed the clothes into the dryer and they talked, about anything but Eric’s life. She told him about her plan to raise pheasants and quail for the markets. “I almost have enough saved for the barns to raise them in. I have been banking my money from my second job so by this time next year I hope to be raising birds full time.” She laughed a little, “We have several butchers in the area that slaughter and package for farmers. I figure I can advertise the birds for sale and provide a list of the butchers for anyone wishing to have the birds dressed and shipped overnight.”