The Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller Series Boxset Read online

  Troy Bodean Box Set

  Adventures 1-3

  David Berens

  Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller

  Box Set 1-3

  A Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller

  All Rights Reserved © 2017 by David F. Berens

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.

  Finegan Press 2017

  Printed in The United States of America

  Contact the Author at:

  www.DavidFBerens.com

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  Foreword

  Rogue Wave

  Part I

  1. Non-Discretionary Spending

  2. Troy’s Crick

  3. Spotted Dick

  4. Another Hat Trick

  5. Hairre Today, Gone Tomorrow

  6. Guts for Garters

  7. Geaux Tigers!

  8. Georgiana On My Mind

  9. Ev’rybody Jus’ Be Cool

  10. #Hottie #Headboat #Ouch

  11. Balancing Act

  12. I’m Gon’ Flick ‘Em Off

  13. Venus Fly Trap

  14. Hard Drive

  15. Zig Zag

  16. Buckets Of Spew

  17. The Hat

  Part II

  18. Hard Labor

  19. Hospitable Hospital

  20. PINs And Needles

  21. Deal or No Deal?

  22. A Böhring Family Vacation

  23. Bad Timing

  24. Where The Hell Is Troy?

  25. Follow The Money

  26. Don’t Eat No Yellow Snow

  27. Can You Hear Me Now?

  28. Sayonara, Jackass

  Part III

  29. Shocking Troy

  30. Sharpie Scribbled Initials

  31. A Really Böhring House

  32. Welcome To The Brady Bunch

  33. Behind The Balls

  34. Break A Leg

  35. Trade Route

  36. Kid Napping

  37. I’m Your Ice Cream Man

  38. I’ll Take It

  39. Sweet Sorrow

  40. Check It Out Now

  41. Ocean Blue

  Afterword

  Deep Wave

  Prologue

  Part I

  1. The Ride

  2. Treasure Daydreams

  3. Señora De La Muerta

  4. Sloppy Joe’s

  5. Lucky Cat

  6. Irish Kevin’s

  7. Object Fear

  8. Wyatt 1

  9. Report

  10. We Need A Better Boat

  11. Sunset Pier

  12. Black Depth

  13. Fanning Detritus

  14. Stingray

  15. Location, Location, Location

  16. A Living Thing

  17. A Man About A Crane

  18. X Marks The Spot

  19. Buried Deep

  20. Cut The Rope

  Part II

  21. Rough Riders

  22. Ahab’s Cellphone

  23. Cover That Up

  24. A Blaze Of Glory

  25. This Too Shall Pass

  26. Can You Hear Me Now?

  27. Shot Through The Heart

  28. Dreams Of You

  29. Nice Nap

  30. Needles And Pins

  31. Troika Huge

  32. An Odd Bowl

  33. Don’t Lose Your Head

  34. Ocean Blue

  Part III

  35. Between The Bars

  36. Droning On And On

  37. You’re Going The Wrong Way

  38. Overheard

  39. Santa Maria

  40. Smoke Signals

  41. Motion Sickness

  42. History

  43. Flaring Up

  44. Light My Fire

  Epilogue

  Blood Wave

  I. Light The Way

  Prologue

  1. Life’s A Beach

  2. Ain’t Missin’ You

  3. Canal Point

  4. Coronas With Orange

  5. Rally Rally Rally

  6. Daddy Dearest

  7. Follow Me

  8. No Turning Back

  9. Gram Dolls

  10. Hedge Holes

  II. What’s That Smell?

  11. Blackmail For You, Sir

  12. Tied Up At The Moment

  13. Scratch My Back

  14. Whadda Ya Know, Joe?

  15. Turnabout

  16. Do You Hear What I Hear?

  17. Good Old Boys

  18. Dead Zone

  19. Walk In My Shoes

  III. The Miracle

  20. Mama, I’m Coming Home

  21. An Incident

  22. If The Shoe Fits…

  23. A Mission From God

  24. Sister Save Me

  25. Union Of The Snake

  26. The Beginning Of The End

  27. Broken Promises

  28. This Girl Is On Fire

  29. Back In The Saddle

  30. Redeemed

  31. Throw Down

  32. A New Hope

  Epilogue

  Also by David Berens

  Foreword

  Troy Bodean came into my life in the summer of 2012. My family and I always stay on Pawleys Island at a beach house for a week around July 4th. A tropical storm (Debby to be exact) raged through and threatened to ruin our vacation.

  Luckily, we are not a group to sit around and be bored by a little rain. We sat at a giant table playing board games and cards and watching the next door neighbor fishing on the creekside dock. Enter Troy Bodean…or at least a man that we “imagined” was Troy.

  We spent our afternoons watching this guy, who thankfully, wore a distinctive straw cowboy hat, and making up a backstory for him. Our version of his life became wackier and zanier as we built it and we had more than one laugh as we brought Troy to life.

  In the end, I began to add a plot and extra characters and the result is what I began to call Rogue Wave - A Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller #1. He was wildly successful and people I didn’t know personally began to read the book and ask when the second book was coming out.

  Um…I hadn’t really planned on a second book, but the public demanded. So, I grabbed another old plot I had collecting virtual dust in my laptop and Deep Wave - A Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller #2 came to life.

  By now, Troy was becoming a very real character to me. I was happy to continue with a new mess for my plucky hero to get tangled up in. For Blood Wave - A Troy Bodean Tropical Thriller #3 - I started with a blank page. It was the toughest one I’ve written to date and has a lot of different plots and characters that I really like. I may revisit some of those people one day in stories of their own.

  Anyway, enough blathering on about Troy. I hope you enjoy reading his stories. And as long as you do, I will continue to throw the poor guy into situations that only he could get out of…

  If you enjoy my work, please be sure to drop by my website at www.DavidFBerens.com and there you’ll find everything I’ve written. You can also join my READER GROUP to be kept up-to-date with all the happenings around my writing.

  Thank you Kind Reader,

  Rogue Wave

  A Troy Bodean A
dventure #1

  Part I

  Hat Check

  “Put one person’s hat on another person’s head.”

  -Chinese Proverb

  1

  Non-Discretionary Spending

  Rick Hairre had not known before today that the barrel of a gun tasted like pennies. Or maybe the taste was the coppery tang of his own blood pooling in the crevices of his ever-swelling mouth. He also had not known the butt of a gun felt so heavy and cold when used as a hammer on one’s head. He guessed he would probably lose most of the teeth he’d spent so much money on veneering prior to the last election cycle, and wondered if he’d ever get a chance to see his dentist again… an odd longing… to see the dentist.

  As the current Vice-Chairman of the 2012 Murrell’s Inlet’s Board of Directors, he counted his acquisition of funding in excess of seven million dollars for the Tourism Conservation & Wetland Education Project as his crowning achievement. It was a private deal, with several under-the-table understandings. All parties to the deal would remain anonymous, and a small fee of a half million dollars would be deposited directly into another account of his choosing for managing the deal with… discretion.

  But beyond his selfish interests, the money would provide the local community with informational pamphlets, catchy bumper stickers, kids coloring books, and rental home refrigerator magnets discussing and educating tourists about the delicate ecosystem at work in his precious inlet home.

  Counting the zeroes on the check helped him stomach the fact the money had come from the nearby Consolidated Paper Mill. Naturally, the check had come with an understanding—Rick would bury any mention of the pollution the independent environmental scientists had discovered traveling downstream from the mill.

  The mill’s owner had channeled the money through a governmental sounding company and encouraged Rick to say he’d procured a federal grant for the work. With this cover story, he’d soon be rising above Vice-Chairman.

  As the blood trickled from his nose, he vaguely wondered if the two hooded men interrogating him suspected that a completely untraceable cashier’s check with a seven and six zeroes was tucked away in his Outback Tea Stained straw cowboy hat. Another thought occurred to him through his throbbing haze of pain; what if these two men had been sent by the mill owner to collect the check and get rid of any evidence of the deal—namely Rick. But that didn’t make any sense. The deal had just been made, and everyone was happy to go along with the stipulations of said deal.

  Okay, happy was a stretch. But when Rick had chosen the life of a politician, he’d been too green to know the lower tier guys in local governments made little if any in the way of salaries. Some were even volunteer posts. Most were only in it for the power. He smiled wanly at that last thought… what power did the Vice-Chairman of the 2012 Murrell’s Inlet’s Board of Directors actually have? Not much.

  But his acquisition of these funds—however ill gotten—would’ve gone a long way to further his ambitions. And he’d long since given up being selfish in that regard. He was in it for his daughter. He thanked God he’d had the foresight to wire his half a million straight into her account. He smiled at the thought of her the next time she checked her balance, yet he ached at the likelihood he wouldn’t be around to explain the huge addition of funds to her.

  The Outback Tea Stained straw cowboy hat he wore had been a gift from her long ago. She’d only been six or seven at the time, and thought the hat was just perfect for her dad. And though it was somewhat out of character for a short, pudgy bald man to wear such a thing, he wore it proudly. As he struggled to maintain consciousness, he couldn’t remember why he’d folded the check and slipped it into the band of his hat behind the colorful peacock feather perched there, but there it remained.

  Rick retraced his steps back to the meeting at the mill and sorted through what he could remember of the conversation, but nothing struck him as sinister. He’d walked out after shaking hands with the mill’s owner, and there had been smiles all around. His last text to his daughter (a newly acquired skill for him) had said he’d be stopping by for dinner. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out what had prompted his sudden kidnapping outside Lee’s Inlet Kitchen and was even more unsure why they had smashed the butt of what appeared to be an AK-47 against his face and sending his beloved hat skidding across the floor. He would’ve handed over the check had they just asked! He’d tried to tell them that, but his efforts to speak were hampered by his crushed jaw.

  His dinner—Lee’s homemade clam chowder—exploded violently from his stomach with the pain from the first wicked blow to his skull, and he was still retching as they hovered around him whispering to each other.

  “Where is it, mate?” one of the hooded men growled in a strange accent—maybe Australian, or South African?

  Rick opened his mouth to answer, but all that came out was more of his favorite from the appetizer menu at Lee’s.

  Apparently that was an unacceptable answer, as the man’s fist slammed into the top of Rick’s head, dislodging his expensive European hairpiece. Guaranteed to stay on in a hurricane, my ass, he thought as the toupee flopped to the ground.

  His baldpate glistened brightly as warm blood began flowing down into his eyes. His thoughts began to jumble wildly through his life and he saw himself in his high school senior pictures with already thinning hair. After a few unsuccessful attempts at a comb-over, he just clipped it closer and closer to his head. By the summer of his senior year, he was a nineteen-year-old bald guy. It’d been bad enough that he was born with a build like that of Danny DeVito and not as good-looking as most of the guys he’d played with on the football team, but his last name was Hairre. Hairre, for God’s sake. With a name like that, and a chance to re-invent himself upon starting college, he’d sought out remedies to his ever-expanding baldness. Since the summer between high school and his freshman year at Clemson University, he’d been a closet member of the Hairre Club for Men.

  Before the chocolate-brown head of hair—woven strand-by-strand—had become part of him, his high-school classmates often asked if he’d shaved it because of sickness or cancer treatments; sometimes he said yes. Years later, Susan, his wife of fourteen anniversaries, had succumbed to the pancreatic version of his lie. When he visited her in the hospital, he would remove his hairpiece and be bald with her as she suffered. He wondered if his current hair-jarring episode was karma circling back around for another go at him.

  As the images faded from his mind, he wasn’t sure if he was losing consciousness, the blood was clouding his eyes, or his thick-rimmed glasses had finally shattered away, but his vision began to swim and fade. His head lolled down to touch his chest and he thought with sadness that he would never get the blossoming red stains out of his seersucker sport coat. God, he loved that jacket… just like Matlock.

  As if on cue, thug number one ripped the front of the jacket open and shoved his hands down into the inside pockets.

  “No,” Rick moaned, but no one was paying him any attention—just like no one paid attention to him at the city council board meetings. But all that would change when he delivered the seven million dollar check.

  His view of the world was dimming rapidly when the man tore into his pants pockets, scattering the assorted contents on the concrete floor of… wherever they had taken him. A crumpled toddler photo of his now grown stepdaughter slipped out of the hooded man’s grasp and hit the floor. A spatter of blood from Rick’s forehead dripped down onto the picture. Everything was in slow motion now. He knew his end was near.

  He wanted to cry out, take my wallet, take my ‘56 Dodge Royal convertible… take anything you want… take the check, for God’s sake, just let me live to tell my sweet girl I still love her! But his wrecked jaw could only mumble and spew blood.