Shadow Shepherd Read online

  PRAISE FOR CHAD ZUNKER

  “A gritty, compelling, and altogether engrossing novel that reads as if ripped from the headlines. I couldn’t turn the pages fast enough. Chad Zunker is the real deal.”

  —Christopher Reich, New York Times bestselling author of Numbered Account and Rules of Deception

  “Good Will Hunting meets The Bourne Identity.”

  —Fred Burton, New York Times bestselling author of Under Fire

  OTHER TITLES BY CHAD ZUNKER

  The Tracker

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

  Text copyright © 2017 by Chad Zunker

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542045544

  ISBN-10: 1542045541

  Cover design by Jae Song

  To Lane, my father,

  who lived a life of relentlessly pursuing his God-given dreams,

  and by doing so taught his youngest son how to do the same.

  To Doug, my father-in-law,

  who has always supported the crazy dreamer

  who married his eldest daughter.

  CONTENTS

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Everything that we…

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY-ONE

  THIRTY-TWO

  THIRTY-THREE

  THIRTY-FOUR

  THIRTY-FIVE

  THIRTY-SIX

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  THIRTY-NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY-ONE

  FORTY-TWO

  FORTY-THREE

  FORTY-FOUR

  FORTY-FIVE

  FORTY-SIX

  FORTY-SEVEN

  FORTY-EIGHT

  FORTY-NINE

  FIFTY

  FIFTY-ONE

  FIFTY-TWO

  FIFTY-THREE

  FIFTY-FOUR

  FIFTY-FIVE

  FIFTY-SIX

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  FIFTY-NINE

  SIXTY

  SIXTY-ONE

  SIXTY-TWO

  SIXTY-THREE

  SIXTY-FOUR

  SIXTY-FIVE

  SIXTY-SIX

  SIXTY-SEVEN

  SIXTY-EIGHT

  SIXTY-NINE

  SEVENTY

  SEVENTY-ONE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Dear Readers,

  You may recognize I made a transition to third-person omniscient storytelling with Shadow Shepherd. This means you get to read the story through multiple character viewpoints and sometimes know things that even Sam Callahan doesn’t know. This is different from The Tracker, where I wrote strictly in first-person narrative and told all story threads, past and present, through Sam’s unique but limited view. I felt writing The Tracker in first-person narrative was an intimate and powerful way to introduce Sam to readers, so you could truly connect with Sam’s voice and heart, his struggles and pain, and how he views his life in relationship with others—all while on the run! In many ways, The Tracker was both autobiography and thriller, all packed into one book.

  However, as I began to explore this next Sam Callahan adventure, I yearned to expand the scope of the story and further develop other important characters—especially Natalie Foster, who will continue to play such a pivotal role in Sam’s journey. Telling this sequel and future Sam Callahan stories in third-person narrative will allow me the flexibility to write even more exciting story lines, as well as help readers connect on a much deeper level with supporting characters. I’m very excited about what it allowed me to do with Shadow Shepherd. I hope you will enjoy it, too.

  Sincerely,

  Chad Zunker

  Everything that we see is a shadow cast by that which we do not see.

  —Martin Luther King Jr.

  If a man owns a hundred sheep, and one of them wanders away, will he not leave the ninety-nine on the hills and go to look for the one who wandered off?

  —Matthew 18:12

  ONE

  Sam Callahan hung from the hotel balcony ledge, four stories up, and couldn’t believe he was once again on the run from a man with a gun.

  His adrenaline was pumping, his breath short, his mind racing.

  It was all too familiar, like a recurring bad dream. The assassin had already shot and killed another man inside the hotel suite: Sam’s new client, a guy he’d met only twenty minutes ago, before all hell broke loose. Sam hung from a brick ledge, looking down the sixty or so feet to the hotel grounds below. He shook his head, closed his eyes. He still had nightmares about last fall. The election. Redrock assassins. The FBI manhunt. His cancer-stricken mom kidnapped. The gray-bearded man. His face plastered all over national TV news. He was still hearing the thunderous echo of private military helicopters chasing him from overhead and seeing visions of bullets rain down from the sky. He was still waking up in cold sweats with the face of his nemesis, Square Jaw, fresh in his mind, like a mental tattoo he could never erase.

  Now this. He thought of Natalie, the only woman he’d ever loved, and cursed.

  He had to get out of this alive.

  His fingers dug into the slippery brick, wet from the thick Mexico City humidity. The July afternoon heat was stifling. When he’d flung himself over the balcony railing a few seconds earlier, his left shoe had flown off and landed somewhere below in the central courtyard of the Four Seasons. He’d also torn a gash in the seat of his dark-blue suit pants, not that this was his biggest concern at the moment—that would be the killer still inside the executive suite. Sam’s suit jacket was also inside, folded neatly over an expensive chair in the living room. His blue tie felt like it was choking him as it flapped in the hot breeze. He hated ties and hadn’t grown accustomed to wearing them since starting at the Benoltz law firm three weeks ago.

  Samuel W. Callahan, attorney at law.

  He was still getting used to the new title and didn’t like being an attorney at this very moment. His fingers trembled under the pressure of his dangling weight. They were already slipping. He wouldn’t last too long.

  With his recent graduation from Georgetown Law, Sam had thought he was finally moving on from the disaster of last November, getting a fresh start and putting the past behind him, finding a new normalcy in his job at the law firm. Until ten minutes ago, when his client had received a text. Sam had seen his face turn ashen, like his doctor had just sent over fatal test results. Moments
later, a man had burst through the hotel-room door and then chased his client toward one of the bedrooms, where he’d put a silent bullet into his client’s back. His client was dead. Sam was sure of that. He wasn’t going to be next. He’d seized that moment to run. On instinct he’d moved to the only exit available near him, the balcony, and taken a flying leap.

  Before getting gunned down, Sam’s client had started spilling his guts, as if he knew these were going to be the final moments of his life, his last chance to hand over critical information from his case. So he did—sort of. Sam was still confused about his client’s empty briefcase. None of it was information that he wanted. Not if it meant a man now chasing him with a gun. Not if it meant seeing more blood spilled. His boss, David Benoltz, may have recruited him—an attorney with a good grasp of the law who was even better at handling people in the field—to be his so-called fixer, but Sam didn’t think this was what David had in mind when he’d sent him on a plane to Mexico City that morning to meet the firm’s newest client.

  If he did, Sam was resigning immediately. Provided he got out of this alive.

  He needed to get off this balcony ledge first. They hadn’t taught how to get out of a predicament quite like this in his three years of law school. There was no Running from an Assassin 101 class at Georgetown. Tragically, he’d learned to run as a kid, trying to escape the angry fists of drunken foster dads. He’d then mastered the art of running while living on the streets as a homeless teenager and stealing cars. And he’d gotten his PhD in running last November as a political tracker.

  He was tired of running.

  But life continued to give him no choice.

  Sam again thought about his meeting with the client.

  His client had shared a lot of information in a very small amount of time. He was neck-deep in something serious; that was for sure. A conspiracy involving very powerful and dangerous people. Any doubts about just how dangerous had all but been eliminated in the past few minutes. However, it was the very last thing his client had said to him, in his panic, right before the assassin had burst through the hotel-room door and started shooting that had left Sam reeling the most. They were words that were personal and shocking.

  “You’ve got to find Rich.”

  “Who the hell is Rich?” Sam had asked, confused.

  “My partner, Rich Hebbard. He instructed me to contact your firm and specifically ask for you.”

  “Me? Why would he say to ask for me?”

  “Because he’s your father.”

  Sam had shaken his head, stunned. He’d never met his father and knew almost nothing about him.

  He couldn’t hang on to the ledge much longer. Not only were his fingers slipping but the assassin inside saw him move toward the balcony. He had only seconds. He studied the area below him, the outdoor hotel courtyard, and let his mind begin to map out his surroundings. A huge water fountain, trees, flower beds that surrounded a tic-tac-toe board of landscaped sidewalks, and several outdoor seating areas, including a dozen tables directly beneath him. The tables all had huge canvas umbrellas that blocked out the blazing afternoon sun. His eyes settled on the multicolored umbrellas. It was his only chance without breaking both legs or, worse, his neck. He heard footsteps on the balcony. It was time to go. He chose the yellow umbrella, swung his legs once to get some needed momentum, said a prayer, and then he let go.

  As he fell, he spotted the man with the gun peer down at him over the railing. They connected eyes for just a second. The man was probably in his early forties, black hair slicked back, sort of reminded Sam of Antonio Banderas in Desperado. He wore a sleek black suit like a normal businessman. A businessman didn’t usually carry a gun and silencer—although Sam knew they sometimes did business differently in Mexico, so he guessed anything was possible.

  It was surreal to drop from the sky.

  He again thought of Natalie. Always Natalie.

  TWO

  Sam landed square on top of the yellow umbrella—a perfect fall tucked in a tight ball, like he was doing a cannonball off the high dive at the neighborhood pool. The heavy fabric instantly collapsed all around him. Then the glass table shattered beneath him, the gravity of his fall causing dishes to fly, chairs to bounce every which way, one loud and violent heap of destruction. He hit the concrete with a heavy thud, his breath completely knocked out, felt pain shoot up and down his left arm. But when he got his bearings, he thought he was okay. He could turn his neck both ways. It wasn’t broken. He slowly tested his arms and legs. They all seemed to be working properly. He was sucking major air into his lungs and in devastating pain all over his body, but he was still alive. He could move around okay.

  Sam was immediately swarmed by bystanders, who all stared and gawked. He was sure it was quite the spectacle to see a man fall from his hotel-room balcony. Two male staff members in uniform rushed over to him to make sure he was okay, speaking in rapid Spanish, and started to help clear all the debris away.

  Sam peeled himself up off the sidewalk, spit glass shards out of his mouth.

  One of the hotel staffers pointed at his forehead with concern. Sam touched it with his fingers, examined them, saw the blood dripping. There was a lot of blood. He felt dizzy but stable. The other staffer was trying to get him to sit down, to take it easy, but Sam rebuffed him when he spotted the second man out of the corner of his eye, one hundred feet out. This was just how his mind worked, even eight months after the Redrock episode. He found himself always watching his back, always studying others within his close vicinity, perpetually paranoid that someone was still out there trying to get him. Like a permanent scar, Pastor Isaiah, his mentor and the man who rescued him from juvie, had said, that feeling might never go away—he just had to learn to channel it the right way.

  Certainly not now, not with this happening again.

  The second man had a thick goatee, looked to be in his thirties, and wore a pair of sunglasses and a dark suit very similar to the assassin upstairs. He moved briskly across the courtyard around the large fountain, coming directly toward Sam and the growing crowd. Sam recognized his purposeful gait. He’d seen it all too often a few months back. This man was not coming forward as a concerned citizen—he was coming to finish the job.

  Sam stepped forward, felt his left knee buckle in pain, and nearly knocked over one of the hotel staffers as he pushed his way through the small crowd. They were dismayed. He had just fallen from his fourth-story balcony, and now he was up and running?

  Sam paused briefly, scanned the courtyard.

  His mind pulled up a quick map, like a mental GPS, and he could suddenly envision a dozen different possible escape paths. He’d discovered this heightened ability to see detailed maps in his mind as a street kid, which made him the best thief in his crew. He’d always had a freakish way to see around hidden corners and get himself out of tight spots. The mind-mapping didn’t help him much in law school, but he certainly needed it right now. The courtyard was fully enclosed within the hotel property. He had to get to the outside. He had to get to the busy streets of Mexico City. He had to get to the crowds if he had any hope of losing them.

  He chose a path and sprinted up the courtyard sidewalk toward the main lobby—away from the man chasing him—bound up the steps, and burst through the large glass doors. The spacious lobby was busy, with several guests at the front desk, dozens more sitting around in luxury, sipping their margaritas and cocktails from a hotel bar nearby. Everyone stopped and stared at the crazy man who’d just made the brazen entrance from the central courtyard. The maniac wearing only one black shoe with blood rolling down his face.

  Sam pointed behind him, yelled, “He’s got a gun. Pistola! Pistola!”

  His words instantly raised the level of concern in the room. Panic ensued. Guests began to jump out of their seats, spill drinks, topple over each other, scrambling and darting for the nearest exits. Sam saw a uniformed security guard appear from around the corner. He didn’t look like much: skinny and unprepared, ev
en with a gun strapped to his waist. Sam doubted this guy could stop an assassin, and he certainly wasn’t going to put his life in the guard’s pathetic hands. Instead, Sam ran for the front doors of the hotel, pushed through them, spilled out onto a busy sidewalk near the hotel’s entrance. There were a dozen cars parked while guests were dropping off luggage and checking in at the front desk.

  Sam whipped his head left, right. He could hear a police siren nearby. He’d be happy to talk to the police, to start figuring out what the hell had just happened to him upstairs, and to find some asylum. He cursed again. It didn’t look like he was going to get that option just yet. He spotted two more men, fifty feet to his right, standing beside a black Mercedes sedan. Dark suits, sunglasses, the same getup as the other two guys inside the hotel. There was a whole crew of them. One of them held a finger to his ear, as if listening to instructions in an earpiece, and then pointed in Sam’s direction. When the man reached inside his suit jacket, Sam knew what was coming next.

  Who were they? What had Sam’s client done?

  The white Range Rover was parked to his left, ten feet away, engine still running, an elderly man of probably eighty helping a valet unload bags from the back. Sam jumped into the driver’s seat, put the SUV in gear, and punched the gas pedal down to the floorboard. The engine roared, and the thick tires spun powerfully. He yanked the steering wheel left, did a quick U-turn in the hotel entrance. In his mirror, Sam noticed the elderly car owner yelling, shaking a frail fist, his luggage toppling out the back—a suitcase rolled and spilled open, clothes littering the pavement. But Sam never slowed. He watched his mirrors. The two men in dark suits scrambled to their Mercedes and worked quickly to follow him away from the hotel.

  The street in front of the Four Seasons was thick with traffic. As he’d learned on the cab ride from the airport earlier, everywhere in Mexico City was crowded—there were twenty million people! Sam barely slowed, however, as he zipped into oncoming traffic, causing cars to swerve and jam on their brakes. He punched his foot to the floor again. He was flying by other cars, left and right, swerving in and out of congested traffic. Blood started dripping into his eyes from the cut on his forehead. He could even taste it in his mouth. He quickly wiped it away. The Mercedes was already gaining ground on him. There was clearly a trained driver behind the steering wheel, and the sedan was sportier than his vehicle.