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  Escape The Deep

  The Heinous Crimes of Sara Slick™ Book 1

  ST Branton

  CM Raymond

  LE Barbant

  This book is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.

  Copyright © 2020 ST Branton, CM Raymond, LE Barbant, & LMBPN Publishing

  Cover by Fantasy Book Design

  Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing

  LMBPN Publishing supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  LMBPN Publishing

  PMB 196, 2540 South Maryland Pkwy

  Las Vegas, NV 89109

  First US edition, June, 2020

  ebook ISBN: 978-1-64202-972-7

  Print ISBN: 978-1-64202-973-4

  Contents

  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

  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

  Epilogue

  Author Notes

  The Escape The Deep Team

  Thanks to our Beta Readers

  John Ashmore, Larry Omans, Kelly O’Donnell, Robert Brooks, Mary Morris, Rachel Beckford

  Thanks to our JIT Readers

  Dave Hicks

  Micky Cocker

  Peter Manis

  Deb Mader

  Paul Westman

  Angel LaVey

  Editor

  SkyHunter Editing Team

  Prologue

  “The shipment is on track. Everything is unfolding according to plan,” a heavily cloaked figure whispered as Aldrich hurried to catch up in the dark passage.

  “Good to hear.” Aldrich hesitated, hoping to control the nervousness in his voice. “Has anything been done about the…leak?”

  “I told you there is no leak. No one knows what we’re doing or what we have planned,” Hobbes insisted.

  Aldrich tried to let that sink in while picking up his pace to catch up again.

  “It’s not that I don’t trust you,” he replied while ducking to avoid a rock formation that hung low from the ceiling. “I know this plan is—”

  “This plan is impeccable,” Hobbes shot back. “I have thought through every detail.”

  “I know you’ve thought this through. But what if someone else has uncovered the details as well?”

  Dark eyes cut through the space between them.

  “What reason do you have to suspect that?” Hobbes asked.

  “I hear…”

  Halfway through Aldrich’s answer, a sound in an off-shooting corridor stopped him. Hobbes pressed a finger across pursed lips and sent him a glare heavy with warning. The international sign for shut the hell up before we both die.

  “I told you,” Aldrich breathed, pointing with one finger toward the sound, although in the darkness neither of them could see its origin.

  “Perhaps we should finish this in private,” Hobbes muttered.

  They hurried along the passage and around a corner. It seemed to lead to a dead-end, but Hobbes uttered a spell and melted the wall with a brush of one hand along its length. The liquefied stone flowed in front of them to create a set of steps leading down into a hidden portion of the lair.

  The staircase disappeared as soon as they stepped from it, replaced by a solid wall behind them. Hobbes flicked his hand to light torches on the wall, and they took seats at a scarred and battered butcher block table in the center of the room.

  “Someone was there,” Aldrich said. “They were listening.”

  “It’s fine. I doubt they heard anything, and no one can access this chamber. You need to stop worrying. As I said, the shipment will be arriving exactly according to schedule. This is all going to work out perfectly,” Hobbes assured him.

  “If someone has figured out what we’re doing and reports us…”

  “That won’t happen. No one knows what we're planning. And even if they do, I found the perfect scapegoat. Any blame will fall on them,” Hobbes told him with an evil smile.

  “Who?” Aldrich asked.

  “A human.”

  Chapter One

  I deleted the sentence for the tenth time and rewrote it. Squinting at the computer screen, I read the new words and tried to decide if I liked them. After jumbling the thought around so many times, it was starting to blur, and I wasn’t entirely sure it made sense anymore. But it had to be perfect.

  My small TV blared in the background. Dad always scolded me for doing homework with the tube on, but garbage television provided the perfect background noise. I looked up from my computer. It was a new show, one my sisters were going wild for—a teen romance called Vampire Diaries. I couldn’t help but laugh.

  Who the hell cares about vampires anymore?

  I sighed, then turned back to my work. This lit analysis paper made up twenty percent of my term grade, and I needed to pull off an A. Going to the college I wanted meant locking down a high GPA and getting a scholarship. The flickering cursor of judgment reminded me that the sentence eluding me was only the middle of the third paragraph, and I had five pages to go.

  Fortunately, it was my last assignment of the night. The rest of my homework sat finished on the corner of my desk, and when I completed the paper, I fully intended to land face-first in my bed and stay there for as long as possible. Which probably meant until right after sunrise when one of my little siblings would rush me, needing something.

  I didn’t mind. Some extra sleep would be nice, but sometimes the morning rush scored me some warm toddler-style snuggles. Keeping them happy during the day and seeing my overworked father smile when he saw us made it worth it. I knew it was what my mother would have wanted.

  My phone buzzed on the desk beside my computer. I picked it up to glance at the screen. A text from my best friend Ally stared back at me.

  “Come outside.”

  “Now?”

  It was well after midnight, but the squeal of tires coming around the corner didn’t leave much time for consideration. Pushing the curtain to the side, I peered out at the street. Ally overshot the house, hopped the curb, and smashed through a sign in the neighbor’s yard.

  “Well, shit,” I mumbled.

  She threw her hand-me-down station wagon into reverse. It churned a few times like it was struggling for breath before reluctantly getting i
nto gear.

  It turned out there was no smooth way to back off a corrugated plastic sign.

  I lifted the window and scrambled out onto the low, flat roof of the porch. By the time I wriggled down the huge oak to the side of the house, the station wagon was rocking back and forth across the grass. Ally leaned out her window, and I waved to get her attention.

  “Ally! What the hell?” I hissed as the scraping sounds of plastic on metal from under the car started to resemble the screams of a cat caught in a blender.

  “Just a little mishap. Apologize to the sign for me.”

  “Are you drunk?” I asked when she finally gave up and stopped moving the car.

  Her dark, almond-shaped eyes slid over to glare at me.

  “I am not drunk. If anything, the car’s the drunk one,” she said angrily.

  “Ally…”

  “I’m not! The only alcohol I consumed tonight was completely by accident. Blame it on Sam… Peter... Jose? That guy. You know, that guy in biology who has a crush on me. He was there,” she said with a dismissive flip of one hand.

  “Richard,” I told her flatly.

  “That’s the one. He popped up during my favorite song and we danced for a while. He kissed me, and he tasted like tequila. But, honestly, that shouldn’t count. It’s part of my culture,” she insisted, her voice deepening with wayward meaning.

  “You grew up in North Carolina, Ally. No amount of pretending you have a spiritual connection to tequila or introducing yourself as Alejandra is going to change that,” I told her.

  The name was always much more dramatic when she introduced herself than I could ever make it. It sounded like she added at least five extra ‘a’s and rolled her tongue over her ‘r’ for an eternity.

  Her parents had left Puerto Rico before she was born, and Ally had never forgiven them for it. She spent most days trying to wring out every last bit of her heritage in an attempt to convince people that her in-the-womb time in the territory should make her a star of the Puerto Rican Pride parades.

  “I find that very offensive, Slick.”

  Slick. That was Ally’s nickname for me.

  Which I guess did sound cooler than Sara Slickerman.

  Almost anything sounded better than Sara Slickerman.

  “It’s not my fault you’re a lightning rod for shady dudes,” I pointed out.

  “You should be careful, or I won’t give you your treat,” she warned.

  “What treat?”

  Ally’s eyes lit up, and she grinned as she leaned back to pull something out of her backseat.

  “I felt bad you weren’t able to come out with us tonight, so I brought you…” she gave a dramatic pause, then shot her hand through the open window to present a folded white bag. “Tacos!”

  Be still, my heart. Tacos. God’s most perfect food.

  I snatched the bag and opened it to breathe in a lungful of that delicious smell, then sighed.

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t drip them on your computer. In fact, don’t eat them near your computer. Just stop doing any homework at all.”

  “I have to,” I shot back.

  “It’s Friday!”

  “And Dad’s working, so I have to take care of my sisters all weekend. Tonight is the only chance I’m going to get to focus on my work,” I argued. She gave me a withering look, and I passed back a sigh of resignation. “But I’ll take a break to enjoy my tacos.”

  “Good. You need to give yourself a break now and then. All right. I have to get home. I’m already late for curfew.”

  I leaned through the window to hug her. “Drive carefully. Call me tomorrow if you aren’t grounded.”

  “Pry the sign out from under the car for me. And if you have a chance, apologize to your neighbor.”

  I rolled my eyes and laughed.

  “Not the first time you’ve jumped the curb, Ally. Probably won’t be the last. You should work on that, by the way.”

  “Duly noted.”

  It wasn’t, and she wouldn’t. Chances were, the next time she came to see me, the curve in the road would still somehow take her by surprise and she would end up half in a yard. Hopefully less so than tonight, but we’d see.

  I finally succeeded in yanking the sign out and saw what I’d been battling. Holding it up so Ally could see it through the windshield, I pointed at the words.

  “Next year,” I called, “when you’re old enough to vote, promise me you won’t leave election signs up in your yard for months after.”

  She stuck her head out the window.

  “Only if you promise me that in three years when you’re old enough to vote, you won’t get all militantly political on me. I’m not wearing any buttons,” she said firmly.

  I looked down at the sign in my hand.

  “You hear that, Obama? She doesn’t want to wear any buttons,” I muttered.

  After shoving the slightly warped metal stakes back into the ground, I waved at Ally. The yard was surprisingly unfazed by her terrible driving. Mr. Morgan next door probably wouldn’t even notice.

  I headed back toward the house and made my way around to the side. Climbing down from my window was an effort to not wake up my sisters, but I preferred to go in through an actual door.

  Shimmying up the tree would be a chore. And I had tacos!

  I went around the side to the door leading into what was once a garage, and now had become a room where my dad’s workout equipment collected dust. The single bulb over the door created a pale pool of light that stretched a few feet on either side into the yard.

  Movement in the corner of my eye caught my attention. A massive dog lurked in the shadows that fell across the lawn. My body tightened as I braced myself for what I figured was the inevitable attack. That would be my luck.

  Go through all this to not disrupt the entire household only to get torn to shreds by some wild animal. Odds were, my body would end up scattered across the lawn next to the jacked-up Obama sign.

  Perfect. Mr. Morgan would not be okay with that.

  The giant dog and I stared at each other for a few seconds as I reached back to search the door for the knob. When I glanced back, the beast was gone.

  Although I couldn’t see it, I could still feel the massive dog staring at me as I slipped inside. I weaved through the hunkering shapes of a treadmill, elliptical, and something that could be a torture rack but Dad called a weight bench.

  I hurried up the back stairs to the second floor, but I’d only gotten a few steps toward my bedroom when I stopped. A disturbing sound from downstairs made my heart jump. I listened and heard it again. Someone shouted angrily, and a deep thud shook the walls. One by one, doors opened on either side of the hall and the little heads of my four younger siblings poked out. Sleepy eyes stared curiously at the landing. I touched my finger to my lips.

  “Shh. It’s okay. Go back to bed,” I whispered.

  “What’s wrong?” Mia mumbled.

  “Nothing. Go back in your room,” I insisted.

  The little heads disappeared behind their bedroom doors, and I drew a breath. After setting the bag of tacos aside on a small table in the hall, I made my way downstairs. Whatever was happening down there, I didn’t want the little ones involved.

  It was only the five of us and Dad since our mother died. He did the best he could with us, but long hours and extra shifts to make ends meet meant it was often me taking care of the house and them. It gave me a strong need to protect them.

  I deftly skipped the steps I knew would creak. If something serious was going on, I didn’t want to bring attention to myself.

  The commotion was coming from the living room. I eased myself up to the end of the hallway, then peeked around the corner while keeping most of my body out of sight.

  Dad was sitting in his recliner, but there was nothing relaxed about his posture. His hands clenched on the arms of the chair as he leaned back, his eyes wide as he stared up at the hulking man bent over him. The stranger’s hand was balled
in Dad’s shirt.

  “Confess. We already know you did it. We have all the evidence. Just tell us the truth,” the man growled.

  My dad didn’t answer, and another man stepped forward.

  “You’re making this harder on yourself. Stop wasting our time and give us what we need to know. It will all go easier on you if you come clean,” he said through gritted teeth.

  “I didn’t do anything,” my father insisted, fear trembling in his voice.

  I fought the urge to scream as the second man smashed his hand across the side of my father’s head and leaned closer.

  “We can bring you where you won’t have any choice but to answer our questions. Or...you could cooperate here and now,” he said like he was offering a good deal.

  They sounded like cops, but they looked like detectives from one of my dad’s old black-and-white movies, complete with bowler hats and sunglasses. I couldn’t understand why they were there. There was nothing my father could have done to justify that treatment. Another crack across his face made me shudder, and terror shot through me.

  They couldn’t take him away. He was all my siblings and I had, and if they took him, who would care for them? I was only fifteen. No one would let me be responsible for four kids. I was trudging through my term paper, and advanced algebra was a freaking mystery. I couldn’t be a single parent. I couldn’t even drive.