The Dominic Wolfe Tales- The Complete Series Read online

  Kinda Sorta Dead, Book 1

  Half Past Crazy, Book 2

  Wrong Side of Chaos, Book 3

  Better Late Than Stupid, Book 4

  By Lincoln Chase

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  KINDA SORTA DEAD: BOOK 1

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  EPILOGUE

  HALF PAST CRAZY: BOOK 2

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  WRONG SIDE OF CHAOS: BOOK 3

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  BETTER LATE THAN STUPID: BOOK 4

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  EPILOGUE

  FROM THE AUTHOR

  WHAT NOW?

  By Lincoln Chase

  KINDA SORTA DEAD: BOOK 1

  KINDA SORTA DEAD

  Copyright © 2018 by Lincoln Chase

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Design Vault Press, LLC

  www.designvaultpress.com

  CHAPTER 1

  “People say you can do things,” the man said from the front seat. I couldn’t see his face—the rearview mirror was pivoted toward the floor, per my instructions—but his fearfulness was palpable.

  “What kind of things?” I have been known to bust a dope rhyme now and then, so…

  “Like, talk to the dead.”

  I sighed. “Yeah, well. People say lots of things.”

  “So it isn’t true?”

  I slid my finger up and down the blade in my lap, felt the honed edge tickle my skin. “Didn’t say that.”

  “So, you’ll help me?”

  “Didn’t say that either.”

  “Please. I—I’m desperate. This may be my last hope.”

  I bit off a scoff at the back of my throat. If I had a nickel for every time I heard that one. “You got cash?”

  “Money’s not a problem.” His luxury car put that concern to bed, so I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

  “Well then, I suppose you have my attention.”

  “So, how does it work?” he wanted to know.

  “Simple, really. You tell me what you want to ask—uh… who exactly are we talking about?”

  “My wife.”

  “Right. Your wife. I do my thing and talk to your wife. In a few days, we meet up again and I report her response. Easy peasy.”

  “I need to talk to her myself,” he said.

  My back stiffened. “I don’t do that. And if I did, it would be expensive.”

  “Please, it’s important. I’ve got twenty grand.”

  I couldn’t help but snicker. “Try fifty.”

  “Oh. I heard fifteen. Thought I was going above and beyond.”

  “People hear what they want to hear. And what you’re asking for messes with my usual ratio of risk to reward.”

  The man turned angrily toward me. “Jesus, I don’t have that kind of—”

  I reached for the door handle. “Eyes ahead, Mr. Jenson. You don’t get to see me until I’m sure we’re doing business, got it?”

  The man complied with a hiss. “I don’t have that kind of money on me.”

  “Then I suggest you come back when you’ve got it.”

  My prospective client moaned, and unless my imagination was getting the better of me, so did my wallet. “Please, Mr. Wolfe. The bank’s closed at this hour.”

  “Probably ought to be there bright and early tomorrow then, you think?”

  Mr. Jenson shook his head. “By then it’ll be too late. She’ll be…” He didn’t complete the thought, and I didn’t ask for clarification.

  In the darkness of the back seat, I glowered. I tried to ignore the panic in his voice, his fragile demeanor. I did my best to be inhuman. “Fifty grand, Mr. Jenson.”

  “Please, I’m good for it, I swear.”

  I weighed my options. This was an unprecedented gamble, one that had little chance of paying off. Then again, business was slow and I had bills to pay. Twenty grand was better than nothing. “You better be,” I growled. “You don’t want me coming after you.”

  The man swallowed a nervous laugh. “It’s not a problem. I guess we’ll just call this a down payment then.” He handed back a paper bag stuffed with packets of bills. I took a minute or two to count it.

  Shoving the bag of bills into my jacket pocket, I exited the car and slipped into the passenger seat. “Are you sure you’re ready for this? Once it’s done, it’s done. You understand that, right?”

  He nodded, glancing at me with a timid smile. “Yeah, I know.”

  “Okay.” I handed him a small .22 caliber pistol. “Whenever you’re ready, we’ll get it over with.”

  He hesitated, hands trembling. “Wait, I have to shoot myself?”

  I nodded. “Don’t worry. I should be able to bring you back.”

  “Oh, my God,” he whispered. His cheeks had drained of all color. “What if it doesn’t work?”

  “I can’t promise it will. And even if I’m able to bring you back, I still can’t guarantee we’ll find your wife to begin with. So you gotta decide if a fifty/fifty chance of seeing her face-to-face is worth dying for.”

  “Jesus. Just… Jesus.” He glanced through the window, then swiveled my way to check the passenger side. “Shouldn’t we go somewhere more—I don’t know… secluded? And what about my car? I mean, all the blood…”

  His objections felt more like stalling than
concern—we were alone in a parking garage, after all, and it was almost dark outside—so I turned the thumbscrews a bit. “Believe me, it’s better here than at home. This place will do nicely. Either way, it’s your call. But if we’re gonna do this? We need to get it done quickly.” I handed him a plastic drop sheet. “Drape this over your seat, including your headrest. It’ll help a little with the blood.” I unfolded a drop sheet of my own and demonstrated. “Got it? Now hurry.”

  He complied, but not without a worried, sidelong glance. “What exactly is the rush?”

  I glanced at the clock on his dash. Quarter after seven. If we lollygagged for much longer, I’d almost certainly miss The Walking Dead that night. My DVR was bursting at the seams with Lifetime movies, Gilmore Girls, et cetera. My stepsister’s handiwork, not my own. Seriously.

  “Mr. Jenson, you came to me for help. I’m telling you how it has to go down. You need to make up your mind; get on board or let’s go our separate ways. Okay?”

  Mr. Jenson nodded, eyes brimming with tears. He breathed deeply through his nose and pressed the barrel to his temple. “On three?” he whispered.

  I gave him a nod. “You need to hold my hand for it to work though, okay?”

  He switched the gun from one hand to the other, then reached for me. His hand felt soft and weak. “Okay,” he breathed. “Here we go. One. Two…”

  I raised the blade to my throat and—

  “Wait, wait.” The gun dropped back into his lap. “Why do I have a gun and you have a knife?”

  In retrospect, I consider it a point of pride that I managed to keep from smacking him upside the head. “I only brought one gun; I don’t normally take my clients with me, remember?”

  “Oh, okay.” A long pause. “It’s just that…”

  “What, you wanna trade?”

  Lyle gave me a crooked smile. “I don’t know. Which hurts more?”

  “You won’t even feel the bullet. The knife? Meh, it hurts a little. Takes longer to die, too.” Okay, so I didn’t bother to mention that it took days to come back from a bullet to the head.

  A pause for contemplation. “Okay, never mind.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah, yeah. Let’s just get it over with.”

  I grinned. “Fine by me. Count us off, Lyle.”

  He swallowed audibly, then took a deep breath. The gun came up as he began to count. “One. Two…”

  I laid the blade against my throat once again. When my client hesitated for the second time, I damn near smacked him.

  “Three,” I hissed.

  As Lyle trembled and panted, I took the plunge, flaying my throat open at the jugular. The blade was so sharp that I barely felt the sting, which was precisely how I preferred it. To his credit, the guy eventually powered through. With a pop, the pistol bucked from his hand, landing somewhere between the driver’s seat and the center console. I leaned back in my seat to relax as blood gushed forth; with every drop, the darkness pressed in a little more until it consumed me.

  Time to make the donuts.

  CHAPTER 2

  It’s not that I have anything against what my mother would almost certainly have called a ‘real’ job, if she had survived my birth. Believe me, I’ve had my fair share of those. I drove a forklift for a manufacturing plant. I worked in IT for a textile distributor. Installed security systems. Repaired smart phones. Damn near everything up from flipping burgers. Not that there’s anything wrong with flipping burgers, for the record; I just happened to be a terrible cook. And once I figured out that I was different from everyone else? Well, let’s just say it was hard to pretend that life should ever be normal again.

  Had a pretty good racket going for a while, to tell you the truth. I kind of miss it.

  “He wasn’t just my brother,” Natalie would sniffle at my funerals. “He was my best friend. A beautiful person. I’ll miss him every day he’s gone.”

  She’d shuffle off hurriedly then, racked with sobs, before my coworkers could make an effort to console her. On the rare occasion when someone reached out to comfort her—always a he, incidentally, considering that my stepsister’s beauty lent itself perfectly to the role of damsel in distress—he would invariably wonder for hours how she managed to slip through his fingers.

  It was a living. Ish. We’d hang by the pool at a Motel 6 until the insurance money rolled in, eating greasy food and drinking wine coolers. Well, I did, anyway. Natalie wouldn’t dream of spoiling her dainty figure on something as unrefined as pepperoni pizza or Bartles and James. She could be like that sometimes, a bit snooty.

  Anyway, once the checks were cashed, we moved on to the next town and lived the high life until the money was all but gone. Must’ve done this ten or fifteen times all across the Midwest before it inevitably fell apart. It wasn’t the fake IDs or background checks that brought things to a halt either, though creating and maintaining new identities was a risky business. Nor were the insurance policies or settlement agreements to blame—always employer-funded, never lofty enough to raise an eyebrow. No, the Achilles heel of the whole operation was my flair for the dramatic.

  In my defense, dying gets old. One can only slip on patches of water and fall off ladders so many times. At some point, a good, old-fashioned impaling becomes imperative. Perhaps a full gainer off a roof—performed to absolute perfection, I might add. Thing is, the media has a nose for such things. And if there’s one thing you can rely on the media for, it’s to never forget a face.

  So there you go. I doubt you’ll ever see my mug on America’s Most Wanted, but I lived a transient life for a long while, doing the best I could to outrun my transgressions. Eventually things calmed down though and I settled into a respectable career.

  Well. Sort of.

  No, I didn’t take up waiting tables or mixing margaritas, but at least I wasn’t ripping people off to put food on the table. On the contrary; for the first time in my life I was helping people. And as a black man with no college education in a town bustling with carbon copies of the black male stereotype, it was about the best I could hope for.

  ***

  “Tell me you brought me something better than those little square things this time, Dominic.”

  I crossed my arms. “Seriously? Who doesn’t like Chiclets?”

  “The flavor’s gone in like, ten seconds.”

  “Yeah, but that’s why there’s two in the box.”

  “Excuse me,” came a voice behind me. “Um, what is this place? I mean, am I…”

  Turning, I found a bespectacled man on the path. I gave him my trademark indifferent shrug. “Dead?

  Afraid so, buddy.”

  “Where am I?” he wanted to know. “I mean, wh-what is this place?”

  Poor guy. He was terrified. When I opened my mouth to reply, Nero cut me off. “Behold the divide!” he declared. Seriously, his voice gets all Shakespearian when he does his thing. It’s hard to keep a straight face.

  “Oh. And wh-who are you?”

  “I am the gatekeeper,” Nero bellowed. He opened the gate and gestured for the man to enter.

  “What’s in there?” the man whispered, eyes wide, mouth quivering.

  Nero gave him a sage frown. “Could be heaven, could be hell. Could be something else entirely. Depends on the man, you see?”

  “Oh.” The man swallowed. “And, uh, who’s this guy?”

  It took a second to realize he was referring to me. “Who, moi?” I intoned with as much innocence as I could muster. “I’m nobody.”

  “But sh-shouldn’t you go first? I mean, you were here first.”

  “Nah, not my time yet.”

  “I mean, I really don’t m-mind waiting. You can go ahead.”

  Nero rubbed his forehead. “Dom, I swear—you always manage to draw these things out.”

  “Careful,” I chided. “I’ve come bearing gifts, but I can leave with them.”

  The old gatekeeper sighed, turning once again to the man. “Don’t mind Dominic, he’s just a couri
er. Come now, it’s best not to dawdle.”

  I gave the old man my most wounded scowl. “Just a courier?”

  Nero groaned. “Dom, you’re killing me.”

  “Okay, now you’re just being silly.” I blew a raspberry and shoved the man through the gate. His cry of indignation was cut short as the gate clinked home in his wake. “Where were we? Oh yeah. Chiclets.” I produced a box and the old man sighed through his teeth. “Now hold on…” I chuckled. I made a show of digging through my pockets, gasping with surprise at the discovery of a bag of peanut M&Ms. “As it happens, you old dog, you are in luck.”

  Nero’s milky eyes lit up like fireflies as I tore into the bag. “Oh, bless you,” he crooned. “What are they?”

  “Oh, just a little something I’ve come to think of as The Candy of the Gods. Pretty hard to come by, to tell you the truth. Got ’em off a Chinese trader during my world travels.” Okay, so I got em at EZ-Mart. But the cashier was Chinese, so close enough.

  I tossed a candy to Nero and he made it disappear.

  “Dear God,” he exclaimed.

  I nodded meekly, pouring a few more into his open hand. “So, I got a weird one for you this time.”

  Nero didn’t begrudge me just yet, but he did chew suspiciously now, eyes narrowing. So I continued.

  “Brought a client with me. He wants to talk to his late wife.”

  Nero stopped in mid-chew. “You what? You brought one with you?”

  A somber nod.

  “And I assume that he expects to return?”

  A ‘what can you do?’ show of the palms. Silly clients.

  “Good Lord, Dominic. Please tell me you’re joking!”

  A sheepish smile. Alas, these were my only weapons; guilty expressions and M&Ms. “C’mon, Nero. It’s nothing we haven’t done before.”

  His expression darkened considerably. “Yes, and I distinctly remember warning you to never put me in that position again. Why can’t you ever keep it simple? You’re a courier, for crying out loud—you’re supposed to deliver messages. Why is it never ‘where did Great Nana hide the will’ with you? You always find a way to make things more difficult.”