Dale Conley series Box Set 2 Read online

  Dale Conley Action Thrillers

  BOOKS 4-6

  Erik Carter

  Contents

  - Get Real -

  San Francisco, California

  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

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Author Note

  - Talkin' Jive -

  Oak Ridge, Tennessee

  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

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  Chapter 80

  Chapter 81

  - Be Still -

  Hot Springs, Arkansas

  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

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Readers Club

  Thank You

  Also by Erik Carter

  Get Real Acknowledgments

  Talkin’ Jive Acknowledgments

  Be Still Acknowledgments

  - Get Real -

  Copyright © 2018 by Erik Carter

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  San Francisco, California

  The 1970s

  Chapter One

  Where, oh where is Jonathan Fair?

  Those were the last words that Special Agent Dale Conley read before he looked up from the newspaper and saw the windshield in front of him explode.

  He’d only glanced down for a moment.

  He was in the passenger seat. His chest collided with the seatbelt, and the impact took his breath. There was a hot, searing pain as the belt dug into his collarbone. It was gonna leave one hell of a mark. His head snapped forward, hair flying in front of him. The newspaper left his grasp. Arms flailed. His lunch—a nice Caesar salad, lightly blackened chicken breast, and iced tea—slid up his esophagus. An awful metallic sound. The car’s hood enveloped the telephone pole. Screeching. The smell of burnt rubber. Centrifugal force as the car swung to the side. Dale smacked into Yorke’s shoulder. More screeching.

  And it stopped.

  “Shiiiiit!” Yorke screamed and smacked the steering wheel.

  Dale turned. Deputy Marshal Hanna Yorke craned her neck to look through a halfway intact section of the windshield. Stunned gawkers stared at the car from either side of the street. Yorke eyeballed a small boy on the sidewalk nearest the mangled car, who stared back with wide eyes and the protective arms of an adult wrapped around his chest.
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br />   Evidently he was the reason Yorke had suddenly veered off the street and onto the sidewalk.

  “Told ya we should have taken my car,” Dale said. “Handles a lot better than this box.”

  Yorke glared at him for a split second before going for her seatbelt. She fumbled with it.

  “Shit!” she said again before freeing herself.

  Dale and Yorke quickly scrambled out of the car.

  Jonathan Fair was in front of them, on foot. He was halfway down the block on Chestnut Street, heading up the hill to its crest on the next crossroad, Hyde Street. People jumped out of Fair’s way, some pointing with amazement at the man all of San Francisco was trying to find. His trademark shaggy hair—early Beatles style—shone in the mid-afternoon sunlight.

  Dale and Yorke dashed after him, Yorke getting a lead on Dale. They’d been working the assignment for a couple days now, and though they hadn’t seen any action to this point, Dale was not surprised by Yorke’s athletic prowess. At about five-foot-ten, she wasn’t a whole lot shorter than Dale, and her long, powerful legs propelled her forward, pistons pounding into the cement. She was tough and blunt, and even though her tall frame was packed with muscle, she was terribly attractive with a perfectly-proportioned, feminine figure.

  As they moved east on Chestnut Street, up the hill toward Hyde, Dale knew that Fair would likely hang a left, going down the hill and toward the Fisherman’s Wharf area, trying to make it to the water and the crowds.

  But that’s not what Fair did.

  He went the opposite direction, going farther up the hill. Dale and Yorke followed. Russian Hill stretched up before them, climbing into the bright, blue afternoon sky. Ahead, Fair was still at a sprint, but the steep grade had slowed him down.

  It slowed Dale down too. His legs burned, and his lungs felt compressed. He caught up with Yorke, and he could hear her labored breathing, their exhalations forming an odd rhythm.

  Dale broke a sweat, and he worried about his beard. He reached up and made sure it was secure. It was a fake, something he had to wear for the duration of this assignment, and he wondered if the adhesive would stand up to his sweating.

  Fair pushed through some people on the sidewalk then glanced back. Dale caught a momentary glimpse of Fair’s famous square-framed glasses that, along with his mop top, were his signature look.

  Ahead of Fair was a woman carrying a mounded bag of groceries. Fair swiped the bag out of her hands, she screamed, and the contents rolled down the steep sidewalk toward Dale and Yorke. Apples, soup cans, a couple heads of lettuce all thunked on the cement then came tumbling rapidly toward them. Dale leapt into the air—as did Yorke—and when he landed, he came down on a plastic sack full of ears of corn. He stumbled forward a few steps, nearly tumbled over, then regained his traction.

  Since Fair hadn’t gone down the hill toward the safety of tourist crowds at Fisherman’s Wharf, Dale assumed he was leading them one block south to Lombard Street, seeking a different, closer group of tourists: those gazing upon the world-famous block of incredibly steep city street with eight hairpin turns. “The crookedest street in the world,” it was called. One of the many famous sites in San Francisco.

  Ahead, a crowd hovered around the corner of Hyde and Lombard, the top of the one-block stretch. It was a varied mix, everyone from plainly-dressed tourists from Iowa or Illinois or wherever to gaudily-clad local hippies, still living out the previous decade’s spirit in the epicenter of counterculture life. People aimed their cameras down the hill, snapping shots of the famous S-curves and ornamental gardens. Posing, laughing. The hippies loitered about; one was playing guitar.

  There was excited commotion from the crowd as Fair sprinted up to them.

  It’s him!

  Oh my god! Jonathan Fair!

  As Dale predicted, Fair took a left onto Lombard, plunging into the crowd, and headed down the famous stretch of street. As Dale and Yorke rounded the corner, Dale saw that Fair wasn’t running down one of the sidewalks that ran on either side of the street; rather, he was on the street itself with its sharp, hairpin turns.

  And vehicles.

  Surrounding the curves were triangle-shaped sections of garden with beautiful, exotic plants. All flowers and shiny leaves and twisty trunks. The cars making their way down the one-way street crept along at a snail’s pace. The famous block was more for beauty than for travel, and those on the street were likely out-of-towners. Fair ran through the first curve and around one of the cars.

  As Dale’s feet plunged downward onto Lombard Street, he felt his stomach drop. Russian Hill was one of the original “Seven Hills of San Francisco,” and while it wasn’t the steepest...

  It was really damn steep.

  Dale had serious doubts that running through the curves of Lombard Street would leave all three of them vertically inclined. Or without broken bones.

  He felt his body being pulled in front of him, and his rapidly pumping legs nearly kicked his own behind. In the distance, he could see the shimmering water and Bay Bridge. It would be a nice view had he not felt like he might die at any moment. There was a sense of familiarity, and it took Dale only half a second to realize what it was: it felt like he had just cleared the top of a rollercoaster’s first hill, gaining that initial rush of momentum that would propel him through the whole ride.

  “Oh my god,” he said.

  He had gotten ahead of Yorke, and he could hear her behind him. “Oh shit! Oh shit! Oh shit!”

  Dale closed on a pickup truck with plates from Utah. It rounded one of the hairpin corners, and Dale smashed into the tailgate.

  The driver leaned out the window and screamed at him. “Hey!”

  Dale hooked his arm into the corner of the truck’s bed and used it to propel him around the turn. Ahead of him, Fair was pushing past another couple cars. He had put some distance between them. He was now two curves ahead.

  Dale heard a metal thud, something whacking into a car. He stole a glance back. Yorke was on the ground. Her knee was in her hand, and she clung to the cement ledge around one of the patches of garden, trying not to slide down the hill.

  Dale reached out to the car creeping in front of him, trying to slow himself down so he could get back up the hill to Yorke. He looked over his shoulder again.

  Yorke frantically waved him away. “Just go! Go!”

  Dale released his hold on the car, continued descending the hill. Farther down, Fair cleared the last hairpin turn and continued onto the straightened street. A Mustang honked at Dale as he cut in front of it, and then the last curve lay before him. He leapt over the final corner of garden, his boots brushing through the ornamental foliage.

  Before him, Lombard Street was now a straight shot. Straight but still incredibly steep. From his heightened vantage he could see all the way down the hill, deep into the city. If anything, he was going faster now without creeping vehicles to grab onto. His lungs screamed at him, and his head began to feel light and airy. He could lose control at any moment.

  He looked back. Yorke had recovered and was following after him, still navigating the curves.

  Dale ignored his swimming head and willed himself on, forcing his legs to go faster, ignoring the lava flowing through his thighs.

  Fair had picked up the pace on the straight stretch. The man was flying. There were fewer people on this part of Lombard, and Fair gained more and more speed. At the end of the block, he veered to the left where there was a multi-story apartment building. He jumped up, grabbed a fire escape, and yanked the ladder down, started climbing.