Green screamed again before something flat and hard chopped him in his Adam’s apple. His cry turned into a pained choke.
“Shhh,” a voice said.
Even though he was shivering and couldn’t feel his damn legs, the removal of the ball gag gave Green a ray of hope. Maybe this was just a robber who wanted to put a scare into him. Well, you know what? It’s working, buddy. I’m absolutely petrified. And even though you cut the living shit out of my leg, I’m willing to let bygones be bygones. Take my money. Take whatever you want. Just go.
After he coughed a few times, Green recovered his voice.
“You win—please just let me go. I swear. I won’t tell anybody.”
He tried to sense the location of his assailant. Was he behind him? Green thought he heard the wrinkling of material behind him. But his senses were telling him that someone was standing right in front of him, too. Face to face. He could almost feel hot, strong breath on his face.
“Look, I know important people. I don’t say that as a threat—I mean I can get you what you want. Whatever you want. Just talk to me.”
There—movement—behind him. Green tried to twist himself around. Not that he could see anything, but it gave him the smallest glimmer of control of the situation. He may be dangling from his basement ceiling, but at least he could rotate to sort of face his attacker.
Still, he tried to plead his way out of the situation.
“Please. Tell me what I can do to make you happy.”
Instead of a reply, his assailant sprayed something on Green’s face. Instantly, it felt like his face was on fire, ravaging his skin one layer at a time. Green had never felt anything like it, couldn’t even catch his breath to scream.
Then a crinkly bag slipped over his head.
Someone spoke to him. Through the bag it was little more than a whisper, but Green could have sworn he heard the word—this
—right before he inhaled, and the burning sensation spread to his lungs, which was when Martin Green knew for sure he was about to die.
chapter 1
West Hollywood, California
Steve Dark snapped awake, rolled out of bed, dropped to the floor.
Landing silently on his fingertips and toes, he stayed frozen in place and listened. Traffic hummed on nearby Sunset. Someone laughed, drunkenly. There was the faint click-clack of high heels on concrete. A car horn, muted and distant. Normal L.A. night sounds. Nothing out of the ordinary.
But still . . .
Supporting himself on fingertips and toes, Dark slowly crept through the house, keeping to the shadows, listening intently. The only sounds he could discern were the soft popping of his joints as he moved. Dark recovered his fifteen-round Glock 22 from its concealed space beneath the floorboards, then stood up on the balls of his feet. He slipped off the safety. He always kept a bullet chambered. The initial sweep took about ten minutes and revealed nothing. He checked the windows and doors, one by one. The front door—secured. Window locks—in place. Security system—on. Invisible window and door tape—unbroken. Not a single entry point had been disturbed.
Dark put himself through this routine so often it was almost becoming rote. Which was a problem. He couldn’t let himself become complacent. He should devise another routine. Maybe think up another safeguard.
After slipping on the safety on his Glock, Dark placed it on the couch next to him. Then he opened his laptop and accessed the remote site that stored his video surveillance. Every square foot of his home was covered by pinhole-size, motion-activated cameras. The quality was low-res, but then again, Dark wasn’t shooting precious family moments. He merely wanted to detect movement. Dark tapped the ENTER key, and the remote site began to download video from the past six hours that showed any movement whatsoever. When it finished loading, though, it only showed Dark’s own movements through the house. Nothing else.
So what had he heard?
Just some stray noise from a nightmare?
Dark checked his watch. 3:21 A.M. Early, even for him. He didn’t sleep much, and the loss of two more hours was disappointing. But at least the house was secure.
Wasn’t it?
Dark had thought the same thing five years ago, and a monster had still managed to squirm his way into his living space. It had been a different house, with a much cruder security system, but it shouldn’t have been so easy. Dark had learned the painful lesson: You could never be too careful. Dark had destroyed the monster with his own hands. Hacked away at his adversary until he resembled a pile on a butcher’s table. Watched the pieces burn. Spread the ashes with a metal rake.
Still, the lesson remained: You could never be too careful.
Dark padded his way to the kitchen and flicked on his electric carafe that heated water in about sixty seconds. A coffee would be good. After that . . . he didn’t know what. Ever since leaving Special Circs, his days had seemed both shapeless and endless. Four months of limbo.
When he left, he told Riggins he had a lot of unfinished business. Namely, reconnecting with his daughter—who almost didn’t recognize her father’s voice on the phone.
But Dark had spent most of the summer installing security in his new home, telling himself he couldn’t possibly bring his daughter here to visit without it being locked down tight, 100 percent secure. That process felt like battling a hydra. Chop off the head of one potential problem, six more seemed to spring up in its place. Dark did nothing but work on the house, check the Internet for murder stories, and try to sleep.
Five years ago he’d killed a monster. But no matter what he did, he couldn’t shake the feeling that another monster was coming after him . . .
So now it was three thirty A.M. and his instant coffee sat cooling in a mug and the sounds of L.A. murmured and there was nothing left to do.
chapter 2
Dark walked into the second bedroom. The primer had been applied to the walls a few weeks ago, but he still needed to ask Sibby what color she’d prefer. She was five now, old enough to make those kinds of decisions. The wooden bed frame sat in the corner, yet to be assembled. Boxes of dolls and doll clothes were piled up in another corner. Dark wanted to surprise her with a roomful of them. She loved dressing them up, making them talk to each other. But they’d sat undisturbed since he purchased them at the Grove a month ago. Nowhere to put the dolls until the walls were finished and the shelves were mounted.
Could he really do this? Be a dad? He’d had so little practice.
Over the years Dark had tried to create some kind of semblance of a normal life when he wasn’t working at Special Circs. But it was difficult to act like a father when you were almost never with your daughter. Not long after the Sqweegel nightmare, Dark had sent Sibby to live with her grandparents in Santa Barbara, clear on the other side of the country. It was supposed to be a temporary move. Dark planned on getting out of Special Circs as soon as possible so that he could get his daughter back and start a new life.
Easier said than done. One case blurred into many cases. One year turned into two, three . . . and then five.
The work kept Dark in the game. He was practically addicted to it, never felt more alive than when he was crawling in some killer’s brain, trying to out-think him. And despite his best intentions of slowing down and finally stepping off the Special Circs merry-go-round for good, Dark found it nearly impossible.
Until this past June. He’d finally done what he’d long promised and pulled the plug. Part of it was the bureaucracy; Special Circs had increasingly fallen under political sway, and the process frustrated Dark. But mostly Dark wanted his daughter back, safe at home.
A few minutes later Dark was speeding through the nearly empty streets of L.A., cigarette in his mouth, loaded Glock tucked away in his jacket pocket.
Dark didn’t have to travel around the world to find evil. It was all around him. In L.A. County alone—where Dark hoped to make a home for his little girl—someone was murdered every thirty-nine hours. A majority of those murders happened during the night
, between the hours of eight P.M. and eight A.M., and half of those happened over the weekend. In other words, a night just like this—early Friday morning. Four A.M. People died in South Central, up in the Valley, out in El Monte, as well as in the supposedly “safe” enclaves of Beverly Hills and the Westside and the beaches of Malibu.
He liked to drive at night because he felt the urge to face the danger firsthand. Not read about it. Dark needed to see it. Smell it. Sometimes touch it, even though Dark knew he could be arrested for such behavior. But when you see a couple of toughs, pockets hung heavy with weapons, heading into a mini-mart in Pomona, what were you supposed to do? Wait to read about it in a crime roundup in the next day’s L.A. Times?
At least with Special Circs he had been on the front lines. Along with his boss, Tom Riggins, and his partner, Constance Brielle, Dark had fought evil every day. Monsters may be everywhere, but it somehow felt reassuring to have at least a few of them in your gun sights.
And now?
Now Dark felt like he was caught in some limbo. Not a manhunter or cop anymore. Not a father. Not fish, not fowl. Some unborn version of the two. Dark knew, deep in his heart, that the only answer was to choose one and forsake the other.
It was time to head back. Blast himself with cold water, snap himself out of these tired old torments. He couldn’t very well teach college students with a mind full of garbage.
chapter 3
Special Circs HQ / Quantico, Virginia
It was official now; there were too many fucking things on Tom Riggins’s desk.
Tiny slips of paper with last names and out-of-state phone numbers scrawled on them. A pair of bullets. An empty plastic container of antacid. A screwdriver. A framed photo of his daughters. File folders upon file folders, stacked like a paper Tower of Babel, all of them jammed with photos and neatly printed descriptions of the most gruesome things people did to each other. Half-consumed cups of coffee.
What Riggins would really love is time to finish one of those cups of coffee. Not that it was any good. The stuff was too strong, with a strange metallic aftertaste he could never figure out. But if Riggins managed to get to the bottom of a single cup of the swill, maybe he’d feel like he actually accomplished something for a change.
Special Circs had started out as something amazing—the most elite violent-crime unit in the world. But years of bureaucracy and muddled directives from above had turned Circs into a shadow of its former self. “Elite” in press release only; now in real danger of becoming just another random fiefdom in the byzantine empire of Homeland Security.
Riggins was thinking about going to the kitchenette, pouring himself a fresh cup, then standing right there at the sink and downing the whole thing, steaming hot, until he saw bottom.
As he stood up to leave, the cell phone on Riggins’s desk buzzed. He had to go searching for it, swatting aside file folders and flicking away cigarette ashes. Finally he found it. The name on the screen:
WYCOFF
For a while there, Riggins had reprogrammed the phone to display KING ASSHOLE whenever the secretary of defense called. After a few weeks, Riggins changed it back. Not because he was worried that Wycoff would see it. Riggins just felt KING ASSHOLE didn’t quite cover it. When he came up with something better, he’d program it in.
Riggins thumbed the cell and pressed it to his ear. “Yeah.”
“It’s Norman. I’ve got something for you.”
Got something for you. Like they were a group of errand boys with Glocks and Ph.D.’s. Then again, Riggins bitterly noted, for the past five years, that’s exactly what they’d been. To the ruin of them all.
“What have you got?” Riggins asked.
“Do you know the name Martin Green?”
“Should I?”
Wycoff huffed—which could either be the sound of annoyance or grim laughter. “Green’s part of a high-level economic think tank. Early this morning, somebody killed him.”
“Well, that’s very sad.”
“I’m sending you a few photos via the secure transfer site. Take a look, and get down to the scene in Chapel Hill immediately.”
“Who—me? You want me to go down to North Carolina?”
“Immediately, if not sooner. Like I said, I’m sending the files now.”
“Come on, Norman, what’s this cloak-and-dagger shit? Tell me what this is about. And how this qualifies as a Special Circs case.”
Riggins was the head of Special Circs, which had started as an offshoot of the Justice Department’s ViCAP—Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. ViCAP was the computerized think tank that tracked and compared serial killings. It was a vital resource for law enforcement. But sometimes, ViCAP tracked cases so violent, so extreme, that local cops or even the FBI weren’t quite equipped to handle them. That’s when Special Circs would step in.
Norman Wycoff, however, didn’t seem to understand the distinction. Even after five years. Not the whole department—just Riggins, Constance Brielle, and Steve Dark. Working off what Wycoff perceived as a “debt.” A debt incurred for doing the right thing.
Normally the secretary of defense would have absolutely zero sway over any Justice Department agency. But Wycoff had inserted himself into their biggest case five years ago for personal reasons. And now Riggins, due to a series of circumstances that still made his stomach turn, suddenly found himself as Wycoff’s errand boy.
“It’s a Special Circs case because I say it is,” said Wycoff. “After all this time, are you still too dense to understand that? Green’s an important man. He means a lot to certain people in my world. We want you on this. This comes from the highest levels.”
Highest levels. Wycoff loved to deploy that phrase, either to deflect potential blame or puff up his own perceived importance.
“Fine,” Riggins said. “I’ll send someone to check it out.”
“No. I want you on this, Tom. Personally. I want to be able to tell them I sent the best man for the job down to check it out.”
Well, this was new. Usually Wycoff was content to give Riggins an order, then let him assemble the right team to deal with it.
“Right,” Riggins said.
“So you’ll go?”
“Send me whatever you got,” Riggins said, then pushed END.
Riggins waited, looking over all of the crap on his desk, and thought about how easy it would be to sweep it all away with a stiff arm—computer and all. Just watch everything tumble to the ground. Then stand up and walk out into the cool Virginia morning air and forget about chasing monsters for a living.
Just like Steve Dark had.
chapter 4
Usually if there was a special request—namely, some dirty bit of business Wycoff wanted done—Riggins would call Dark. It had been part of their “deal” following the Sqweegel case.
Back then, Wycoff agreed to shield Dark from prosecution for killing the suspect known as “Sqweegel.” In exchange, Wycoff wanted Dark’s exclusive manhunting services from time to time. Services, like the tracking and capture of cartel leaders. Fugitive financiers. Double agents. Terror masterminds. Sometimes, the trail ended in death. Funny; Wycoff didn’t have a problem with murder in those cases.
The secretary of defense thought he had Dark by the balls. If Dark wanted to keep his position at Special Circs—and stay out of prison—he’d run Wycoff’s international errands, off the books. There was no way a man like Dark would ever quit the job. It was all he knew, all he had.
Yet, that’s exactly what Dark had done, back in June. Riggins remembered that day vividly. He thought Wycoff was going to have a seizure. The man wasn’t used to hearing no.
“You’ll be in solitary confinement before dusk, you arrogant bastard,” Wycoff had barked.
“And your career will be over by dawn,” Dark had replied. “You don’t think I’d do something like this without making certain arrangements, do you?”
Wycoff recoiled as if he’d been slapped on the nose with a rolled-up newspaper. “You
have no evidence. Of anything.”
“Even you can’t be that deluded. I’ve been elbow deep in your shit for five years, Norman.”
Wycoff glanced over at Riggins, who was standing off to the side, enjoying this more than he should. The look he gave was somehow both furious and pleading: Fuck you, Riggins, for allowing this to happen. But also: Riggins, get me out of this. But Riggins stared back, impassively. Dark was his own man.
Wycoff tried a different tack. “Nobody threatens the government and walks away.”
“I’m not threatening the government, Norman. I’m threatening you. Come near me, or my daughter, and you’re done.”
And just like that, Dark was out.
Wycoff had all kinds of paperwork drawn up and promises exacted—Dark was to have no contact with Special Circs, ever, no how, no fucking way, etc. But Dark hadn’t seem too broken up about that.
Which confused Riggins. What the hell was Dark doing?
Dark, who he considered the closest thing to a son, hadn’t said a word about it. Riggins had the typical tangle of parental emotions: hurt, worry, anger. But mostly worry.
Not that Dark should fear retribution from Wycoff—fuck that arrogant prick. No, Riggins worried about Dark’s sanity. The job seemed to be the only thing that enabled Dark to keep things together. It was also the only way Riggins could keep a careful eye on him. Five years had passed since that awful night when he crossed the line. Five years since Riggins had learned something truly horrible about a man he’d considered to be a son.
Five years of Riggins’s silence . . . because for five years, Riggins had kept careful watch over Dark. And now?
Now, Riggins could only wonder what a man like Steve Dark was doing with his time.
Back in the early 1990s—when Dark was hell-bent on earning a spot at Special Circs—Riggins had been in charge of vetting all applicants. Early in the process, Riggins learned Dark had come from a foster family. He went digging. Soon, Riggins wished he hadn’t.
Dark Prophecy Page 2
