The Douglas Files: Books One-Four
Catch up on all the action in The Douglas Files in one complete anthology.
Get The Douglas Files: Books One-Four for just $10. All the action, all the adventure, all the smart-aleckiness of P.I. Jackson Douglas is yours in this complete e-book.
Get The Douglas Files: Books One-Four for just $10. All the action, all the adventure, all the smart-aleckiness of P.I. Jackson Douglas is yours in this complete e-book.
|
Don't have time to read all four books? Watch a three-minute video recap of Books 1-4. Or read a two-page summary (below) describing recent events in Jackson's own words. Both will catch you up on his adventures leading up to book five, Chasing the Wind. WARNING: Major spoilers included. |
I’m Jackson Douglas . . . P.I.
This is my story.
I got into this business to do good, to help people, to find my purpose. That’s about when it stopped going according to plan.
Twenty months ago, just after I got my private investigator’s license, my parents and brother were killed in an explosion. Part of me died that day too. More often than not, I wish all of me had.
Fast-forward one year, to my thirtieth birthday. I was hired by a woman who claimed to be Shay Carmichael, a Valley Girl who needed protection while delivering wooden idols to eccentric clientele for her brother. I figured, whatever, it’s a gig. Turns out, Shay wasn’t really Shay and the idols weren’t really idols. They were hollowed out to make room for packets of cocaine, and I had been roped into dealing drugs to save her brother’s life. Only he wasn’t her brother, but her partner. You see, she was an LAPD detective named Ashley, working undercover to bust a gang called the Grays. I spent the night chasing across L.A. to save her partner, save her, save my neighbor’s niece (who got herself mixed up in this too), and bring a gangbanger to justice. Eternal justice. I killed him, along with four others. But I saved the girl.
A couple of months later, I found myself with three female clients at the same time. Ryan was the brunette, a stray who showed up at my place by mistake. Against my better judgment, I took her in, trying to convince myself it was to keep her safe while I tried to find out who had murdered a guy named Douglas Jackson—the guy Ryan was really looking for. Meanwhile, the redhead—Marissa—was afraid her boyfriend, my old college roommate, was out to kill her. Funny thing, he’d just hired me to find her. Then there was Stephanie, the blonde, who I rescued from an abusive husband. Picture that, me, a reasonably attractive bachelor housing three more than reasonably attractive women. Yeah, it got crazy. Long story short, I forced Stephanie’s husband to get therapy if he wanted to see her again, realized that Marissa was actually the one responsible for a security breach at her company (and more of a threat than her boyfriend), and learned that Ryan had been raped at an orphanage by three guys, two of whom were now dead. Despite my doubts, she wasn’t responsible. I just wish she had known that. She might still be here if she had.
I didn’t know Ryan that long or that well, but her suicide stuck with me. I was growing accustomed to a life of pain, but nothing prepared me for September. My late brother’s fiancée, Hillary, showed up out of the blue and asked for my help. Hillary is . . . she’s Hillary. She is the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen, and second’s not particularly close. She’s also a piece of work. We pretty much can’t stand each other, which made working together almost interminable.
We went to Vegas, looking for some call girl she claimed could help her client (Hillary’s a defense attorney) beat a bad rap. The call girl was dead, and I found out too late Hillary’s true motive was to find out how this call girl was tied to her philanthropic father. Our investigation linked them both to a U.S. senator, a three-star general, and a Vegas Strip casino owner. Because I’m a sucker either for a desperate plea or a knockout blonde—or both—I agreed to go undercover with Hillary in a long con of Richard Holloway, the casino owner. We ultimately gained access to his penthouse safe, where we found connections to a remote military base and to a small Nevada desert town named Kingman. Because Hillary is relentless, we investigated further. Shortly after discovering that she had been conceived as part of some classified military project conducted at this Air Force base and then adopted by her parents, Hillary was kidnapped.
To save her, I had to torture a corrupt small-town sheriff, Die Hard my way onto the decommissioned military base, and take a senator’s wife and staff hostage. I crossed lines I never imagined, took almost twenty lives, and ended up in serious hot water. The legal authorities finally concluded my actions had been justified and Hillary came through the ordeal all right, although physically and emotionally scarred. And I . . . will never be the same. You can’t do what I did without it changing you. Sure, it was for a good cause—saving Hillary—but still . . .
I was in a dark place after that. Really dark. My private investigator’s license was temporarily suspended, so I ended up doing some part-time work for my pal Reggie at his restaurant. Then I stumbled—literally—into a one-time bit-part on a soapy TV show that I unintentionally parlayed into a temporary stint as a gofer for a coarse Hollywood director. But I did meet Noelle, a cute, sweet actress who needed my help tracking down a stalker. I found him and protected her when he attacked her at a concert, earning him thirty days in County.
I also was summoned to Mexico by Maggie, my quasi-girlfriend and a reporter for the Los Angeles Times. She was writing a huge exposé on a corrupt Mexican oil deal, and had gotten in trouble. With her friend Bill, I busted her out of the head honcho’s hacienda, only to be recaptured by his partner on our escape. That led to a shootout in the air that left four more dead by my hand, and also cost Bill his life. Maggie and I parachuted into the Baja Desert, hiked to civilization, and made it home safely, only for her to start receiving death threats. Turns out it was a huge misunderstanding from back home in New York, where Maggie’s estranged family was pretty much the mob. I flew out there in December to sort things out, and helped the FBI bring Maggie’s family and their rivals to justice.
My crazy year ended with me taking a bullet in the shoulder on New Year’s Eve. After everything had played out in New York, I got a call to come to a cemetery for some information. I’m a P.I., so of course I went. That’s when I was attacked and ultimately shot. I rang in the New Year in the hospital, and when I got out, tried to put the pieces together as to who had shot me. As my memory came back to me, I realized it was Noelle’s stalker, fresh out of jail. I hurried to her apartment, just in time to stop him from carrying out his sick fantasy. We fought over a shotgun and I won. His head didn’t.
I sat on the curb after blowing him away, almost numb from the pain in my shoulder and from all the killing I’d done. Yet again, as with Ashley, Hillary, and Maggie, I had killed to save the girl’s life. Done something “bad” for a “good” reason. It hit me in that moment, that maybe that was my purpose. Somebody had to keep ’bangers and the mob and rapists and other manner of thugs in check, right? What better person than me, a guy with no family, nothing to hold him back. Somebody who’s already got irremovable blood stains on his hands, whose soul is irreparably damaged by what he’s seen and done?
Happy New Year! Should be a doozy.