Only the Strong

by Ethan Cross

  “They’re standard police-issue.”

  “How did you plan on getting those off when our business was completed? Are you a magician?” Rhonda tried to laugh, but it didn’t sound convincing even to her own ears.

  The man smiled, but the expression didn’t reach his eyes. “I assumed you would be kind enough to remove them. The key’s also on the dresser.”

  “Good. That’s what I hoped.”

  She patted him on the shoulder, grabbed the money and the key, and headed for the door. Her fingers wrapped around the knob—but then something struck her from behind. Strong hands squeezed her shoulders and spun her around, slamming her back against the door.

  He pressed the edge of the blade against her neck with just enough force to hold her in place without breaking the skin. His breath was hot on her exposed flesh. “I apologize if I gave the impression that I was secured to the chair. Because of all the scarring that runs up my forearms, my wrists are much larger than my hands. It comes in handy when I want to slip out of a pair of cuffs. The restraints were to keep me from lashing out involuntarily when you began to make the incisions. They were for your protection.”

  Tears ran down Rhonda’s cheeks, streaking the layers of make-up. “Please … don’t … ”

  The man lowered the knife from her throat and leaned closer. “I suppose that I shouldn’t judge you too harshly. I do admire a woman who shows initiative, and you can’t blame a girl for trying. But you see, we had a verbal contract, and you’ve yet to hold up your end of things.”

  Her fingers clawed at her thigh, pulling up the black fabric of the skirt. She kept a small switchblade concealed there for moments such as this. “You want me to cut you?” She felt the metal handle of the knife, pulled it free, and pushed the button to expose the blade. “How’s this for a start?”

  Rhonda jammed the knife into his leg and shoved him away. She expected him to drop, but he remained on his feet and fell against the room’s door, blocking her escape. Screaming for help, she bolted for the bathroom, nearly falling over the chair resting in the middle of the floor. Once inside, she slammed the door behind her and engaged the lock.

  Lime green tile-covered the walls, and the room smelled of mildew and urine. A blow shook the doorframe. “You’re trying my patience,” the man said calmly from the other side.

  Her whole body trembled. She wiped the man’s blood from her hand onto her dress as she scanned the room for a way out. The shower curtain was thin and white, and light shone through it. She ripped it back, snapping the rings in the process. They fell to the tile with small metallic clinks.

  A window occupied the back wall. She scrambled into the tub and pushed up on the window’s frame. It wouldn’t move. She checked for a lock. Flipped the latch. Pushed again. But the window still wouldn’t budge. It must have been painted shut.

  The bathroom door flew open. The wood splintering, and the knob striking the tile on the opposite wall. The old green ceramics cracked and shattered and fell to the floor.

  Rhonda screamed, but he was already on top of her. His grip was like a vise. It crushed her airway and cut off her cries. He pressed her against the window and lifted her from the floor of the tub.

  She clawed at his hand and kicked at him with her legs, but he was so strong and refused to relent. A wave of dizziness swept over her, and she realized that this was her last moment on Earth. She would never see her baby girl again. She would never have the chance to tell her grandma that she was sorry for running away after her parents died.

  She wondered what he would do with her body. Would he mutilate her? Bury her in some shallow grave, a feast for the bugs? She imagined the worms crawling through her veins.

  The man raised the knife and admired the blade. Light from the translucent window danced across its surface.

  This was it. Rhonda tried not to think of the pain to come. Would he bury the knife in her stomach, stabbing her over and over, savoring each thrust in some twisted sexual way? Or would he slice her throat and let her bleed out quickly? She prayed for a quick death.

  The knife came toward her. She wanted to close her eyes, didn’t want to see the sight of her own blood. But, for some reason, her eyelids refused to obey the signal that her brain was sending.

  She watched as the blade swiped across his forearm just in front of her face, opening three long gashes in his flesh. The blood flowed quickly and dripped down into the bathtub. He closed his eyes as if savoring the moment and licked the blade clean.

  Then he relinquished his grip. She dropped to her knees, and he backed away. She gasped in greedy mouthfuls of air, and violent sobbing seized her whole body.

  Rhonda looked up to see him sitting on the toilet, watching her. He took a deep breath and said, “I apologize. I lost my head for a moment. I didn’t want to hurt you. To tell you the truth, this is the first time that I’ve contracted with someone of your profession.”

  Her hands found the edge of the tub, and she pushed herself to her feet, preparing to lunge for the door. He must have sensed her intention and moved forward, blocking her way out.

  “What’s your name? Your real name.”

  “Screw you.” Her throat felt like she’d swallowed sandpaper.

  He stepped closer, and his eyes narrowed. “I’ve killed a lot of people. Men, women. Knives, guns, fire, my bare hands. I possess an unnatural talent for extinguishing life. But I’m trying to be a good boy here, and I would appreciate it if you showed me at least some small measure of respect. What’s your name?”

  “Rhonda,” she said through the tears.

  “Thank you, Rhonda. It’s moments such as these when a person must examine their existence and their place in this world. We all have regrets. Some mistakes can be rectified, and some can never be undone. The trick is realizing the difference and acting upon it. In the past, I would have enjoyed killing you. I would have drawn out the process and extracted every exquisite moment of pain possible. But I’ve come to believe that there are three kinds of people in this world. At our core, we’re all either a creator, a maintainer, or a destroyer.”

  He took another step toward her, reached out, and took her hands in his. She didn’t recoil from his touch. She just stood there, oddly transfixed. Hypnotized by the intensity of his gaze.

  “Maintainers keep the status quo. They’re the worker bees of our little hive, and they enjoy keeping the cosmic wheels turning. It’s what they were made for, and without them the walls of our reality would crumble. Then there are creators. Those rare individuals who dare to discover new things and think differently, to break the chains of fear and bring into existence something beautiful and new. I fall into the third group. The destroyers. But I want to be better than that. I need to be more. Unfortunately, I’ve found that I only feel alive when I’m inflicting pain or experiencing it myself.”

  The man kept hold of Rhonda’s hand as he guided her gently back into the bedroom. “What I’m asking you to do is a kindness to me. I want you to help me be a better person. To transcend my nature as a destroyer and become something more.”

  He gestured toward the chair and laid the knife in her palm. She stared down at it in confusion. When her gaze returned to his face, he smiled and said, “Now, are you ready to begin?”

  the judas game

  When a correctional officer climbs to the top of his watchtower and opens fire on the inmates and guards, federal investigator Marcus Williams and serial killer Francis Ackerman Jr. must join forces again to unearth the truth behind the incident. What they find is a serial killer using the prison as his hunting grounds. But the Judas Killer’s ambitions don’t end with a few murders. He wants to go down in history and has no reason left to live.

  With Ackerman undercover among the inmates and Marcus tracking down the mastermind on the outside, the team must learn the identity of the Judas Killer and stop a full-scale uprising that he�
�s orchestrated. But the more they learn about what’s happening at the prison and why the more enemies they must face. From inside the overrun facility, Marcus and Ackerman must save the hostages and stop an elaborate escape attempt while trying to determine how a rival corporation, the leader of one of the world’s most dangerous criminal organizations, and an inmate with no identity only known as Demon fit into the Judas Killer’s plans.

  Launching a bold new cycle of novels featuring The Shepherd Organization, The Judas Game is searing, mesmerizing fiction—it’s Ethan Cross at his very best.

  Here’s an excerpt:

  Francis Ackerman Jr. admired his new face in the reflective side of the interrogation room window. The surgeons had done excellent work, better than he had expected. In fact, he hadn’t initially been receptive to the idea. It wasn’t that he had any qualms about getting a new face or worried that he would miss the original. It had nothing to do with vanity or sentimentality. His was a concern of practicality and offensive capability. He had been told by many women that his previous face was quite attractive and charming. What if he needed to seduce or charm someone of the fairer sex? His handsome face had always been a useful weapon in his arsenal—a helpful tool on his belt. What if his new face didn’t possess whatever feature he had inherited to make the last one so disarming and seductive?

  As he looked at his new face, he was happy that those concerns had proven to be a nonissue. His new face was at the very least as handsome as his last. Plus, this one had the added benefit of not appearing on wanted posters across the country.

  Or at least, his face had been featured on the walls of every law enforcement facility in the United States. Now, he supposed they had taken the posters down. Stuffed them into drawers or wastebaskets or wherever the paper pushers stuck the posters that were no longer needed. Not needed because the men and women gracing their covers had been captured or killed. He was one of the latter.

  According to the official story, Francis Ackerman Jr. had died in a shootout with the police nearly a year ago. His new friends at the Department of Justice and the CIA had dotted the i’s and crossed all the t’s to make it seem that Francis Ackerman Jr. was a dead man.

  The whole thing made him a bit sad.

  Not because he was now officially dead and locked up in some CIA black site usually reserved for terrorists and national security threats. And not because of how easily a person could be erased or how quickly a person could be forgotten. And not because they had taken down his posters.

  Ackerman was sad at how mundane and simple they had made his death. He hated the way they had perverted his legacy, and he felt a burning to right that wrong.

  His death should have been shocking and theatrical. He had even made some suggestions to what that might look like, but they had ignored him and carried out their own quaint little plans. Small minds, small thoughts.

  They had faked a death scene with two cops pulling over a stolen car and being forced to take down the murderer behind the wheel. One of the most prolific and feared killers in the history of modern society, and they concoct a tale where two average state troopers gun him down over a routine traffic stop.

  It was insulting, and a stain upon his memory and reputation.

  But he supposed none of what he had done to build that reputation mattered now. All that mattered was being a good lab rat and staying alive long enough for his brother to get him out of this place, so that he could do what he had been born to do—hunt and kill.

  The room was cold and gray and old, and the fluorescent lighting buzzed overhead like a bug zapper. The whole black site smelled like old paper and ink, like dust and graphite. Maybe the place used to print newspapers or housed a defunct post office?

  The door buzzed open, and the CIA technician entered the room. The tech wore a dark polo shirt and was a diminutive sort of person; not to say that he was tiny or fragile. In reality, he appeared to be in above average physical condition. Ackerman found the man small in a way that was less quantifiable, as if Agent Polo Shirt added no substance to the space or sucked something from it, like a black hole. Polo entered and sat down across from him; yet Ackerman still felt like he was the only living being in the room.

  They hadn’t taken any chances with his restraints this time. Ackerman had been straightjacketed, restrained to a stand-up gurney from his head to his feet, and masked to keep from biting. He supposed that his last demonstration of escape artistry had made an impression.

  A week earlier, he had freed himself and had drawn a maniacal happy face on a different CIA technician. He had done it just to prove a point.

  Although, Ackerman couldn’t exactly recall what that point had been.

  Regardless of such trivial details, he felt a sense of warmth recalling the event. A fond memory. The previous tech had cried for his family and begged for his life. Ackerman couldn’t remember the man’s name. Something beginning with an A. Austin, maybe? But he did remember how quickly Austin had lost control of his bladder. That had been good fun.

  As Ackerman’s gaze fell over the new tech, he wondered if this man would instead beg to be put out of his own misery. Agent Polo Shirt was talking to him; perhaps even trying to establish some connection with him or dominance over him. Ackerman couldn’t tell which and didn’t care.

  “I won’t answer any questions from this man. Roland, send me a different one.” Ackerman shifted his eyes toward the two-way mirror, knowing that the tech’s supervisor, Roland Green, was watching. He also knew that his old friend, Emily Morgan, occupied the space beyond the glass. “Better yet, Roland, just send in Emily. I’ll do the test with her. The pod person here can still handle the machines, but I won’t participate if I have to answer questions from him.”

  The tech finished hooking up all the medical equipment and monitors to Ackerman’s body and then tried to continue with the test but, true to his word, Ackerman ignored Agent Polo Shirt.

  Instead, he went inside himself. He imagined a huge hydroelectric dam bursting and flooding an entire small town. He watched the townsfolk being swept away and pinballing down the streets and alleyways, slamming into concrete walls and being impaled on tree branches. He watched an old man clawing the water for one last gasp of air. He watched a young mother futilely try to shove her children free from the smacking lips of the waves.

  “Ackerman? Did you go to sleep on us, boy?”

  Ackerman opened his eyes. “Good morning, Roland. So good to hear the smooth Texas twang of your voice. I just like the way that voice makes me feel. It brings to mind old Western movies. Hearing you speak makes me want to be a cowboy.”

  He intentionally tried to insert the CIA man’s name as much as possible. It was a bit of a trick to keep Agent Green off balance. Ackerman had faintly heard someone in the corridor beyond the interrogation room call the agent in charge of the lab rat phase of his incarceration by his first name. Roland. The agent had introduced himself to Ackerman with his last name only without offering his first. This small nugget of information gave Ackerman a certain power over Agent Green. He could see the wheels turn in the other man’s eyes every time he referred to him by that first name. Green would try to assume that the killer had just overheard it, or he had somehow let it slip, but he wouldn’t know for sure. And, consciously or subconsciously, that question would gnaw at the back of Roland Green’s mind.

  Did Ackerman know where he lived? Where he slept? Where his kids went to school?

  It was delicious.

  Roland Green locked eyes with Ackerman and then gestured toward the technician. “What’s wrong with him?” Green said.

  Ackerman replied, “He depresses me, Roland. Just look at him. His eyes are like leaches. Stare at them too long, and they’ll suck out your soul.”

  Green faced the tech, looked at him a moment, and said, “Fair enough.” Then he added, “I don’t see the harm in letting her ask you the question
s while the technician monitors the equipment, but if you cross me on this or try anything, if you so much as make her teary eyed, then the deal you have with the CIA is over. Do we understand each other?”

  “Am I irritating you, Roland?”

  “Of course not. Seeing you is the highlight of my day, Mr. Ackerman. Now, do we understand each other?”

  “Carl Jung said, ‘Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.’”

  Roland Green nodded his head slowly for a moment and then said, “I’m just going to pretend you said ‘yes’ and move on. Emily, come on in.”

  Green pointed at Ackerman as he left and added, “Don’t forget what I said.”

  “Of course not, Roland. To me your every word is like a drop of rain to a desert flower.”

  Roland raised his eyebrows and shook his head. “Whatever that means.” The door opened, and Roland and Emily passed each other in its threshold. “You sure he ain’t crazy, Doc?”

  Emily tilted her head and said, “Crazy is a broad term used by the general populace, not a diagnosis. So it becomes a matter of perspective and definition.”

  The gray-haired Texan just nodded and said, “Sure thing, Doc.”

  Emily moved toward a pair of metal chairs which had been bolted to the floor–Ackerman had taught them that lesson as well. Agent Polo Shirt shifted over a seat as Emily slid into the chair directly facing Ackerman.

  Emily’s movements reminded Ackerman of a Siamese cat he had once seen in the home of a victim. It was the way he imagined a feline princess would move–confident but not boastful. Powerful. Graceful. But gentle. All at once.

  Her features were pale with an odd mix of Asian and Irish heritage. Her skin was flawless and smooth like a child’s. Like the harmful rays of the sun had never touched her skin.

  If he recalled correctly, she had an Irish grandfather and a Japanese grandmother. Ackerman wondered when he had learned that piece of information.