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  Stone Rage

  A Stone Cold Thriller

  J. D. Weston

  Contents

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  1. Strike One

  2. The Wolfpack

  3. Out With a Bang

  4. Early Days

  5. The Beast Within

  6. The Beast’s Touch

  7. Junkyard Corrall

  8. Tiger Tiger

  9. Clash of the Titans

  10. Beast on Form

  11. Two Dogs

  12. Ball and Chain

  13. Red Herring

  14. Dawn of Death

  15. Decoy

  16. The Lion’s Den

  17. The Beast Awakens

  18. Head Honcho

  19. The Beast Lurks

  20. End of an Era

  21. Debrief

  22. Beach

  End of Book Stuff

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  Also By J.D.Weston.

  A Note from the Author

  Stone Cold

  Stone Fury

  Stone Fall

  Stone Rage

  Stone Free

  Acknowledgments

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  Special Giveaway

  As a special giveaway with Stone Rage, everyone who makes it this far in the series gets a free copy of

  Stone Blood, the sequel to

  Stone Breed in the Stone Cold Novella series.

  Stone Blood, is where the story begins, and it’s only available here as a thank you to true Stone Cold fans.

  Details can be found at the end of this book.

  1

  Strike One

  "What the hell are we doing out here, Les?"

  "This is where the boss said to meet them."

  "It's pitch black, mate, I can't see anything. There could be fifty of them out there."

  "Stop being paranoid," said Les. "Not like you to be jumpy."

  "I'm not jumpy. I just don't trust them, the dirty, sly little-"

  "We'll be out of here before you know it," replied Les. "Chill out. I used to bring the birds over here."

  "Over here? What for? This place gives me the creeps. Can we at least have the heater on? It's freezing."

  "Why do think I brought them here?" said Les, turning up the Jaguar's temperature dial. "A bit of rough and tumble, Jay, they loved it."

  "Is that what they told you? How many of them came back for a second night of creepy love in the freaky field?"

  "Not many," laughed Les. "Well, one actually, a few times. Sticky Sarah, we used to call her. She used to like that people could see in, dirty cow, voyeurism I think they call that."

  "Sticky Sarah?"

  "Yeah, strange girl she was, had a great set but she was a bit weird."

  "Les, nothing about what you just said is normal. Firstly, why was she called Sticky Sarah?"

  "Well, it was more like tacky really. But the name Tacky Sarah didn't work."

  "Oh right, and when you say 'we,' can I assume that you weren't the only one to experience Sticky Sarah's tacky sensation?"

  "No, we all had a go. Well, most of us, apart from Little Lee, poor fella was a slow developer. I have no idea how that guy survived childhood, he's probably still a virgin now."

  "And when you say that Sticky Sarah used to enjoy being watched, do you mean to say that you brought her over here and banged her in the back of your car so other blokes could see in?"

  "Yeah, dog walkers and stuff, she loved it," said Les.

  "Did that not ever strike you as a bit weird, Les?"

  "Not really."

  Jay looked away from him in disgust. "I can't see shit out there," he muttered. "What was it anyway?"

  "What was what?"

  "The car, what car did you have?"

  "Well, you know, I was young, didn't have enough money for my own car."

  "Don't tell me you used your mum's car to smash Sticky Sarah around and have a load of dirty pervs stand around."

  "No, no, no, I never," said Les. "I have got some decency."

  "So, whose car was it?"

  "I don't bloody know, do I?"

  "You nicked it?"

  "Yeah, of course I did. Had a different one each week. I learned to drive in a nicked motor, my old man taught me."

  "You what?" said Jay. "Your old man taught you to drive in a stolen car?"

  "Yeah, he didn't know it was stolen, I told him I'd borrowed it off a mate."

  "What if he got caught? How would you explain that?"

  "Behave, Jay, I was fifteen years old. I didn't know any better."

  "You're something else, you know that?"

  Les laughed. "It's been a good old life, Jay. Had some great times I have."

  "Don't get all teary on me now."

  "No, you know what I mean. Don't you ever wonder?"

  "Wonder what?"

  "You know, if you died, have you done all the things you wanted to do?"

  "I done most of them, Les," said Jay. "There's a few things still on the list though. One day I'll get around to ticking them off."

  "What's that then?"

  "Well, I might see if Sticky Sarah is still around and see if she fancies a bunk up while some old perv knocks one out."

  Both side windows exploded in the car, sending glass all over the two men. Big hands reached in and dragged them through the car windows. Les pulled a knife and slashed blindly at the huge men who pinned him down on the grass. One of the men, a bald man with tattoos on his face, held Les' throat tightly and the other stopped his knife hand waving around by standing on his arm. A large knee came down onto Les' chest and, one by one, each of the fingers that held the knife were wrenched up, bent backwards and broken.

  Les screamed in pain. He struggled, but it was useless against the size and weight of the man on top of him. Eventually, the last finger was snapped back like a twig, and the knife was taken from him.

  The smaller of the two bald men that pinned him down held the knife curiously. He turned it in his hands, put the point in Les' eye, and slowly pushed down until the blade entered Les' brain and he fell silent.

  Jay was on the other side of the car. Strong arms held him against the Jaguar's sleek paintwork. No words were spoken. Jay stopped struggling.

  A tall, willowy man in a long overcoat stepped from the darkness into the pale moonlight. Jay could barely make out the features of his face but saw the glint of a scar that ran from the man's eye to his mouth, through his lips and down his chin to his throat.

  The man gave a gesture to his men, who stood beside Les' body, to open the car boot. Opening it, they removed the sports holdall that contained four kilos of cocaine. They checked it and returned the nod to the boss.

  Jay stared up at the man and spat.

  "You will take a message to your boss."

  "Fuck you, send a letter."

  One of the men holding Jay landed a huge fist on his nose. Jay felt the bone break and tasted blood almost immediately.

  "I am a reasonable man, but I am a businessman. It seems like your boss and I are in the same business. Competition."

  "So run a sale or something. Isn't that what businessmen do?"

  "It's an option," the man replied. "But I prefer not to cut profits for the sake of a few easy sales. I prefer to cut the competition." The man reached inside his coat and pulled out a long fillet knife. He flexed the blade and ran his finger along the thin steel.

  "You will deliver the message for me?" asked the man.

  "I'll tell him some ugly bloke from some shit stink part of Europe wants his balls cut off," said Jay. "How does that sound, wanker?"

  "Hold h
im," the man said calmly.

  The two men either side of Jay grabbed his hair and held him tight. The man in the coat stepped forward and ran the side of the blade across Jay's nose. With one hand, he pulled Jay's ear out from his head, and with the other, he sliced through the tissue and gristle in two neat, clean slices. Jay screamed and struggled against the two much larger men, but couldn't move. Spit flew from his gritted teeth, and his eyes were clamped shut as he fought the searing pain. He felt the man pull on his other ear, dull and hard. He felt the blade touch his skin sharply. Then he felt nothing but the burn of where his ears once were.

  "Make sure he doesn't lose those, he may need them one day," said the man in the coat, as he wiped the blood from the blade onto Jay's jacket.

  Jay's knees had given way, but his weight was easily supported by the two men. They dropped him to the ground face first, then kicked him to roll him over. Jay pulled his hands to his head, but his wounds were too tender to touch. Blood had run across his face into his eyes. He felt his arms being tugged outwards then felt a sharp point in the palm of his hand. He glared helplessly through the sticky blood to see one of the large men with a cordless drill. Then he felt the screw tear through his tendons, fixing one of his ears to his open hand with a long, gold screw.

  2

  The Wolfpack

  A light rain fell like mist in the forest where Harvey Stone took his early morning run. His mind was clear, and his body had healed from the beating it had taken during the last job he and his team had worked.

  They'd started out trying to intercept a robbery, things had escalated, and soon enough, terrorists had gotten involved. Harvey had been run over and later fallen from Tower Bridge wearing an explosive vest. He'd barely managed to avoid being torn to pieces by the blast and then had to fight not to let his body succumb to the fast-moving water that dragged him several miles down the River Thames.

  Harvey had survived, and the team had succeeded. But they'd lost Denver, their driver, during the investigation, and each of the team were healing in their own way. The physical scars of battle often heal quicker than the mental scars, he thought.

  Harvey leapt over an old fallen log, which he remembered from a run he had taken a few weeks previously. He never ran the same route twice, but often the crisscrossing paths intertwined in the deepest areas of Epping Forest, the forest that lay behind his house.

  He ran with boots on for ankle support, and to make the challenge harder. Harvey didn't believe in running with bricks in a bag, but when he did run, he gave everything he had. Running with bricks in a rucksack was a military approach to training, and Harvey thought it doubtlessly worked, but would also cripple a man over time. Harvey wasn't a military man or even ex-military. He sat at the other end of that vocational spectrum, not quite as far along as the terrorists he had recently fought, but definitely on the wrong end.

  Harvey had been raised by the leader of a well-known crime family, John Cartwright. John had fostered Harvey and his sister when they were young after their parents had apparently committed double suicide. Harvey had never believed the story of his parents’ death and actively pursued the truth.

  When Harvey had been twelve and Hannah, his sister, had been a few years older, he had witnessed her being raped, which led to her suicide.

  The emotional damage the small boy Harvey took on changed his life forever. He fell under the wing of John Cartwright's minder who taught him how to channel his aggression, how to defend himself, and eventually, how to kill.

  Three men had raped Hannah. The first man had been Harvey's first kill. It took a further twenty years for him to find the other two men, and deliver their own retribution. That was when Harvey had removed himself from the circles of crime that sheltered him, and stepped tentatively across the line into the world of crime fighting. Harvey took that step armed with memories he'd rather not have and a list of people he needed to kill.

  The list had two names. It was short, but it was a list that guided Harvey.

  Harvey had been given two options after killing one of his sister's rapists, who he'd boiled alive in a copper bathtub until his internal organs had eventually cooked and his heart had stopped. The first option was prison, where he would likely serve the rest of his life and lose any opportunity to finish the list.

  The second option had been to work with Frank Carver and his small team, which focused solely on fighting organised crime.

  The choice had been simple, stay out of prison and work the list. Finding his sister's rapists had been therapeutic, cleansing and, above all, motivating. His list then focused on the mystery of his parents, who killed them and why, and his best friend and mentor, Julios, who had been shot by an unknown man. Then, during the last job, Harvey discovered that Julios had been to one to kill his parents. Harvey had been hit hard by the news. He'd been betrayed all his life. But the image of Julios standing over his parents’ bodies had desecrated Harvey’s earliest memories, memories of Julios training him, guiding him and sculpturing Harvey into the stone-cold killer he had become.

  The list was nearly empty. He still hadn't discovered Julios' killer, but that was no longer a priority. Harvey had grown, he'd become part of the team, and had come to love his colleagues, something he never thought possible. He would find out how and why Julios had killed his parents, someday. But, for now, he was at peace. Frank Carver had removed the noose from Harvey's neck and set him free. Prison no longer loomed in the background; Harvey had paid his penance. Faced with the choice to stay working with his team, or to remove himself from everything tying him to the criminal world and live out his days in a small cottage in the south of France, Harvey had decided to stay.

  He enjoyed the activity. He enjoyed the team and the banter and positivity that came from taking down gangs or stopping a tragedy. Harvey was healing in his own way, not from the wounds, mental or physical, that came from battle, but from the damage he had caused in his earlier life as a hitman for John Cartwright. The lives he'd torn apart so that John could grow richer. The fathers, brothers, and sons he had taken from daughters, sisters and mothers. He could never give those lives back, but with his remaining time on the planet, Harvey could do some good. He could make a difference.

  The trees opened up as the forest grew thinner at the edge, where the houses and roads ruled the landscape. The last obstacle was a steep hill, covered with a carpet of leaves and twigs. Harvey opened himself up and attacked the hill full speed, lifting his legs high, planting his feet hard and pushing his body up. His breaths came in short rhythmic bursts, and his arms pumped with each stroke. He broke the crest of the hill and jogged to the road, where he walked back to his house, breathing and stretching, and warming down.

  Harvey leaned with his hands high on the shower wall and let the hot water run over him. He turned the water temperature up until it stung his skin then let his body get used to the heat before turning it up more. It was his morning shower routine. Within a few minutes, the shower was on full heat, and steam filled the bathroom. Then he turned the heat to cold, fast, removing the hot and replacing it with freezing cold water. His body tensed and grew red as the blood surged to the outer layers of skin to protect it.

  He pulled a towel from the hook and walked to his bedroom. As usual, he dressed before drying properly, wearing a plain white t-shirt, black cargo pants and tan boots. Pulling the leather biker’s jacket over his shirt, Harvey walked past the mirror without so much as a glance. He stuffed his Sig Sauer in his waistband and performed his routine of leaving the house. Every window was checked, and every door. He then took a mental snapshot of the rooms before leaving. Harvey had been trained to see if anything had been moved. Everything had a place, symmetrical, and easy to spot if he'd had an intrusion or something was disturbed.

  Harvey used the interior door to his garage and locked it behind him. His motorbike helmet hung from a single hook on the wall in its protective black nylon bag. He pulled it off and hung the bag back up then started the BMW'
s engine. The garage door was operated from a small fob in his pocket. He rolled out, closed the garage behind him and pulled out onto the road.

  Harvey rode slowly, enjoying the cool morning and minding the small puddles that had collected on the side of the roads.

  It wasn't until he entered the M11 motorway southbound that he pulled his visor down and opened up the throttle. Less than twenty-five minutes later, he pulled up outside his colleague's apartment. He left the engine running, and lowered his boots to the ground, balancing the weight of the bike between his thighs.

  Melody Mills led the team's operations; she made the plans. Guided by the team in their individual fields of expertise, she called the shots and reported to Frank. Melody stepped from the plush apartment block in long black boots, tight black leggings and a short leather jacket. She swept her long black hair over one shoulder and pulled on a helmet.

  Harvey stood and held the bike upright as she swung her leg over behind him.

  "Morning, Harvey." She gave him a firm squeeze to let him know she was comfortable and he pulled off. The team's headquarters was a short ride from the Docklands, situated beside the Thames Barrier in Silvertown. As Harvey pulled onto the North Woolwich Road, he slowed then stopped to one side.

  "What's up?" asked Melody.

  Harvey was looking across the busy road at a burnt out pub. Acrid smoke still hung in the morning air.

  Melody followed his gaze. "Oh that, yeah that was on fire when I came home last night. It's a rough pub apparently, never went in there," said Melody.