Read Takedown (An Alexandra Poe Thriller) for Free Online

anticipation, looking forward to the fun they’d have at the Shimmy Shack.  
    That was the name their father had given to the beach house. He had come up with it after a balmy night on the back patio, drinking a beer and staring out at the bay as their mother tried to teach the kids to dance to Little Anthony’s “Shimmy, Shimmy, Ko-Ko-Bop.” Alex and Danny had found the record in the storage room, along with several more discs and an ancient but still functioning turntable, remnants from the days when Grandpa Eddie and Grandma Ginny had lived there.
    The ritual was repeated up until the month before their mother’s death. Then the first blow of the one-two punch that defined Alex’s abrupt entry into adulthood had landed like a hammer to the temple.
    And everything changed.
    A few years later, when her father disappeared under a cloud of scandal, accused of things she knew he couldn’t have done, Alex had been surprised to learn he had signed the house over to her and Danny. The Shimmy Shack was now theirs. And shortly after her dad left, a Key Largo property manager had contacted her to ask where to send the checks he regularly collected from vacation renters.
    Dad’s way of making sure they’d never go without money.
    At the time, Alex hadn’t really cared about any of that. She had simply wanted to know why he left and where he had gone. Two questions she still didn’t have answers to.
    But as time wore on, she had become accustomed to the extra income, happy to have it to pay for Danny’s assisted care at Ryan’s House. She had placed him there when she went into the service and had instructed the management company to forward the checks to Mrs. Thornton, the home’s founder and principal caretaker.
    Unfortunately, when the economy tanked, the rental checks began to dwindle. And after the management company closed its doors, Alex had never gotten around to hiring another one. So the Shimmy Shack had spent the last few years rotting in the Florida humidity as Alex tried to eke out a living on the bounties she and Deuce managed to collect. The money from Stonewell was an unexpected bonus, but she knew she couldn’t rely on it forever. She had no desire to.  
    So, despite the memories, when the opportunity arose, she decided to sell.

    Key Largo was the first and longest of the Florida keys, made famous by an old Humphrey Bogart movie that Alex had seen only once as a teenager. She hadn’t particularly liked the film, mainly because it had been shot in black and white, and the Key Largo she knew seemed to exist in a perpetual state of living color. Everything was brighter down here, with its pastel greens and blues at full saturation. Even the cement dividers along the highway were painted turquoise, as if to announce to travelers that the town they were about to enter was something special.
    Baltimore, where Alex made her home, was a big and unwieldy and often dangerous waterfront city, while Key Largo was about as laid back as you could get without dozing off in your lounge chair. It moved at a lazy pace and smelled of the sea, and those who visited were often reluctant to leave.
    With the town of Homestead in her rearview mirror, Alex drove along what the locals called the Stretch, the last bit of highway before you hit Largo proper, and felt the tension inside her begin to seep away, as if someone had released a pressure valve. She thought of her childhood again and wondered if she was making a terrible mistake.  
    Had she decided to sell the house too quickly?
    Should she call the agent who had contacted her and tell him she’d changed her mind?
    Just as she was thinking this, her phone rang and she groaned, assuming it was McElroy still trying to ruin her day. But when she glanced at the screen, she was surprised to see the name THOMAS GÉRARD , the agent she was scheduled to meet at the Shimmy Shack.
    Talk about timing.
    Gérard was the one who had convinced her to sell. A few days before she left