The Luke Titan Chronicles: Books 1-4: The Luke Titan Chronicles Boxset

by David Beers

  He was smart and organized, but also unwieldy at times. In some ways, he was like the other killers Christian had chased (in what felt like a previous lifetime).

  The map on the wall zoomed in on Georgia, the green and black lines of roads replaced with a satellite vision.

  “Is he here? In Georgia?” Christian said aloud.

  Where?

  CHAPTER 15

  C harles opened the cabin door; the security cameras showed him who was coming a mile before the man actually arrived, but even so, Charles was surprised to see him.

  And, Charles didn’t like surprises. He was used to schedules and appointments, not people just showing up on his doorstep.

  And it’s you I’ll come for, he thought, his mind settling some. Eventually, he would come for Luke Titan, making all of these indignities worth it.

  “Nice of you to show up. Unannounced,” Charles said.

  “It couldn’t be helped,” Titan answered.

  Charles stared up at the man, then finally stepped back, allowing him to enter.

  Titan stepped through the door and entered the sparse living room. He turned around slowly, taking it in.

  “Not as nice as I’m used to, you see,” Charles said.

  “You’ve certainly made a lot of sacrifices for our endeavor.”

  Charles heard the sarcasm underlying the words, but said nothing. He didn’t have time for Titan’s jabs—held no interest in them anymore. The man may have been the smartest person to ever live, but he’d be dead soon enough and all those brains wouldn’t make a whit of difference underneath six feet of dirt.

  “The building came down nicely,” Titan said.

  “Yes, but we may have a problem.”

  “With?”

  “I think one of the men we used got picked up in Texas. He may have talked.”

  “He probably did. Does he know your name?” Titan asked.

  “I’m sure most people in the operation know who was setting it up. The people I choose are smart and have been around a while; they’ll have a network that will leak my name eventually.”

  “Do you have a contingency plan?”

  “Of course. That’s partly why I’m up here in these goddamn woods.”

  “Well, we needn’t worry then,” Titan said.

  “Sure, no need to worry.” Twaller walked past the man and went to the refrigerator. He pulled out a Diet Dr. Pepper and popped the lid on the can, tilting it up to his mouth. He finished his sip, and looked over to Titan. “So, what’s next? I think we might have another three attacks left, and then we’ll have to quit. The heat will be too much by then. It may already be too much.”

  Titan didn’t turn around to look at Twaller, but stared at the leather couch sitting against the wall. “No, we’re not going to quit, Mr. Twaller. We’re going to push this until we’re both dead, or something happens on the other side.”

  Charles swallowed, his throat suddenly dry despite the soda. He didn’t know what this psycho was talking about, but he had no intention of dying during this operation.

  “Excuse me?”

  “There’s no way we’re stopping at five.” Titan turned, his gaze full on Charles. “We’re in this until we die or an old friend of mine gives me what I want.”

  “And just what the fuck is that?” Charles asked. His hand was tightening on the soda can, though he hadn’t bent the aluminum yet.

  Luke cocked his head and Charles thought he was deciding whether to answer him.

  “I suppose it can’t hurt,” Titan said. “Christian Windsor, you know his name, correct?”

  “Your old partner.”

  “That’s right. Well, we will quit when he kills everyone close to him. Otherwise, we keep going.”

  Charles stared, unable to find words. All of them, every single one in the English language, had flown from his brain like birds leaving for winter. This man was insane. So far beyond insane that he wasn’t classifiable, or even certifiable. He was simply beyond. Here they were, waging war against the United States government, and his condition for surrender was an old friend killing his own family.

  “Are you wondering what you’ve gotten yourself into, Mr. Twaller?”

  Charles said nothing. He didn’t notice his lower lip was slightly open, giving him the look of a huge fish, staring dumbly through the walls of a fish tank.

  “I’m an idealist,” Titan said. “I’m not in this for money. I’m in this for purpose. You can, if you choose, leave, but there will be consequences. We have an agreement, and if you break it, I will be forced to take action given the amount of capital I’ve transferred to you.”

  Charles recognized he was being threatened, but still, he couldn’t find any goddamn words. The man’s face held him captive, unable to break free of its trance.

  “Onward and upward, am I right?” Titan asked.

  Charles closed his eyes, trying to block out the man’s stare. A few seconds passed, both standing in silence, and then Charles opened his eyes.

  “No,” he said. “No, you psychotic fuck. I’m not dying for this cause of yours. I’m not doing another goddamn thing, do you understand that? This is over, am I fucking right?”

  Charles turned, intent on grabbing the gun that sat just on the other side of the refrigerator. He moved two feet, and was reaching for it, when he felt iron grips on his shoulders.

  He let out a high squeal, like a pig being stuck with a poker, and then was lifted off his feet. No one, not since Charles beat up that fucking kid in grade school, had laid hands on him. Now, he was flying through the air, and all he thought as he looked at the world passing by was, the fucking indignity.

  Until he hit the ground.

  He slid across the floor, and banged hard into the wall. Picture frames above rattled, then fell, breaking on the floor around Charles. He looked up and saw a demon in the room with him. A demon that moved faster than any human to ever exist, that might as well have been the Devil himself. By the time Charles looked up, the demon was nearly on top of him, only the demon’s face held no anger or hate. It was still, like the water of an undisturbed pond. It was at peace, even as the demon reached down and took hold of Charles’s collar.

  He was suddenly moving up, the man’s strength greater than Charles imagined. He went from the floor to above the thin man’s head, and then Charles let out another squeal.

  “Do you want to kill me, Mr. Twaller?” Titan asked, not a single bit of strain showing in his voice. “Do you want to get that gun and put a bullet through my face?”

  Charles squealed again, wanting to be put down. To not be touched. To get the fuck away from the man.

  “Go ahead, Mr. Twaller. Get the gun.”

  The demon dropped him, and all at once, Charles was standing on his own two feet with Titan a safe distance away, looking as if he hadn’t just thrown him across the entire house.

  Pain radiated across the back of Charles’s head, but he made no motion to touch it. He didn’t move at all.

  “The gun is waiting, Mr. Twaller. Pick it up and shoot me. Rid yourself of me.”

  Charles didn’t move. Fear froze him in place, that same stupid fish now stuck in an aquarium of ice.

  “No? You don’t want to anymore? This will be your last chance. If you do not kill me now, you will never, ever, get this opportunity again.”

  Charles couldn’t move. Could barely think. He was in shock at being handled in such a fashion, not to mention the demon’s face—how he’d done it all so calmly.

  “Okay, Mr. Twaller, then we will move past my murder.” Titan glanced down at the cuffs of his shirt, and slowly put them both into place. “I’m ready for our next attack, and I have a pretty good idea of how it should go.”

  TOMMY AND VERONICA sat in his hotel room. He was in his wheelchair, and she sitting at the small breakfast table next to the window. Veronica had helped set up a computer, so that he could work at night from here. The three of them were still in El Paso, though they were supposed to leave
tomorrow. Another day had passed since talking with Drexler, and Christian had spent most of it alone, inside his mansion.

  Veronica came down hours ago, knocking on Tommy’s door.

  “Christian needs space,” she said, and that had been all that was needed.

  Tommy invited her in; Veronica brought her own computer, and after she helped set up Tommy’s station, she opened hers.

  “Have a lot of work?” he whispered.

  “Yes, actually. The emails haven’t stopped since I came out on that television show.”

  “What do they want, the people emailing you?”

  “Hah! Don’t you already have access?” she said.

  “I’m sure someone in the FBI does, but Christian and I certainly aren’t monitoring them.”

  “A lot of emails are from old friends that I had to cut off. Book deals. Old relationships in publishing. Job offers. A lot of job offers.”

  “You going to take any of them?” Tommy asked.

  “I’m going to try to live through the day. That’s all I can really do.”

  “You’re probably right,” Tommy said. “As sad as that is.”

  They passed a lot of the time in silence. Tommy was focusing on Charles Twaller, reading through reports that came in. An ‘All Points Bulletin’ had been put out on him, though with instructions to keep it out of the press. They didn’t want to spook him, causing him to go further underground. A man with enough power to keep his record this clean could disappear for a long time.

  “How are you, Tommy?” Veronica asked, breaking him from his concentration.

  “I’m okay,” he said as he glanced up from the screen.

  She laughed a single time, weak and without mirth. “Yeah, everyone involved with this is okay. Christian is. I am. Waverly is. And you certainly are.”

  He knew what she meant, but he also knew he didn’t ever venture down that path. He couldn’t. He’d never find his way back out.

  “You don’t have to talk about it, Tommy. I just want you to tell me how you’re feeling. That’s all. A few words.” She tilted the top of her laptop down, giving her a clear view of Tommy. “I can’t talk to Christian about this. He’s in his own world now. I hate to say it, but the man I loved, he’s not there anymore. I still love him, but that’s only because I can’t stop.”

  Tears were in her eyes.

  “I have no one I can talk to about this, Tommy. No one but you. I’m asking you to just talk to me for a minute.”

  A cold, reptilian thought came to Tommy: What would Luke do?

  An answer, just as chilly, came immediately. He would talk to her. He would set up cameras throughout Christian’s house, so that he knew what was happening all the time. Here is your camera, Tommy. Right in front of you. So open up, talk to her. Have her watch Christian for you.

  A part of him hated what he heard, but then an image came to him, and it dashed the hate into innumerable pieces: his fiancée, Alice, sitting at a kitchen table, a hole in the front of her head and blood covering her face. Her eyes open and staring forward, but seeing nothing, because all the life in her had been extinguished.

  “What do you want to know?” Tommy asked, pushing the image from his mind, and focusing on the woman in front of him.

  “I don’t know,” Veronica said. “Just what you’re feeling. How you’ve been.”

  Tommy’s chest hitched once, the closest to a laugh he could come by these days. “I mean, I get by. I don’t think about it much, to be honest. If I stopped and thought about everything that had happened, I’m not sure I could keep going. I wouldn’t want to.”

  Veronica nodded. “That’s the way I felt. Clearly, what happened to me wasn’t nearly like what happened to you, but I just often wondered whether going into hiding was worth it? Was life worth all of that?”

  “Is it?” Tommy said.

  “Is it for you?”

  He looked away. “It depends on if I think about everything that happened. If I think about Alice, about what I lost … Fuck, about what she lost, and how she lost it ….” He looked back toward her. “Then no, it’s not worth it. The pain becomes too great. It turns into a cloud, Veronica, one bigger than something an atomic bomb creates. It rushes forward, its blackness blotting out the rest of the world—the rest of the whole universe. I see nothing else but it, and its rushing right for me. If I think too long, that cloud will rush over me, and there’ll be nothing left.”

  Tears were in his eyes now. He couldn’t stop them, though he knew they would help with what he needed later. They gave realism to what he said, intimacy.

  “I’m so sorry, Tommy.”

  A tear dropped from each eye. Tommy’s chest hitched again, his single laugh coming out. “I can’t even clean up my own face. Hell no, it’s not worth it.”

  Veronica stood from her side of the table and walked to him. Using one thumb, she wiped the right side of his face, and then the left, clearing the tears. She leaned forward and kissed his forehead.

  Tommy’s emotion had been real, but he knew the truth. He had set her up to be used later.

  Am I any different from Luke? he wondered.

  MAPS LAY across every wall inside Charles Twaller’s room, the one that resided in Christian’s head.

  Christian was close to making a connection here; he could feel it.

  He thought Twaller was most likely in Georgia, the reason being Luke’s visit. Luke had been able to come to Christian’s home while he slept, prior to the first attack. If Twaller was commanding the operation, then that meant Luke would have been in close proximity. So, they had orchestrated the catastrophe from Georgia … but where? And where did they go afterwards?

  No records showed anything in Charles Twaller’s name—not in Georgia, anyway.

  Men were already sitting outside of his offices in Pennsylvania, but everything appeared to be closed down; the judge had denied them their warrant, saying hearsay from a questionable source didn’t meet the burden of proof.

  Luke burnt down the church when the priest disobeyed him. Now, he’s burning down the United States. There’s a buffer separating him and the actual warfare, though: Charles Twaller.

  Christian turned away from the maps. He was missing something, but he could feel himself nearly upon it.

  What did Luke love? What caused him to burn down the church?

  His mother and brother. His family.

  Almost there.

  And would Charles Twaller love his family?

  Except he had none.

  “Not under that name,” the other said.

  Christian’s mind came to rest and the screens on the walls around him went black.

  No, Charles Twaller had no family, but if one wanted to protect them, what would one do? Especially in a business such as his—would he keep his name? Or would that allow people easy access to his family, to those he might care about?

  “We’re looking for the wrong person,” Christian said.

  CHAPTER 16

  C harles Twaller wasn’t concerned with his name any more than he was how many polar bears had been eradicated by global warming. He was concerned with Luke Titan, and growing more so by the minute.

  The psycho had left the cabin, and as soon as he did, Charles made a call—two bodyguards were on their way now. That would be the last time Titan put his hands on Charles, and in all likelihood, the last time the two of them ever spoke in person.

  Because the next time Titan showed up, Charles’s bodyguards would be under instructions to shoot him right in the fucking face.

  He was fuming, though the dollar figures that Titan had spoken about before leaving helped alleviate it some. It was a hell-of-a-lot of money, and half had already been deposited. The other half would come once the operation was completed.

  And then, when that money was in its place, Charles was finished with this whole enterprise. Titan wanted him to keep going until he either died or some ex-fucking-toy of his went on a killing spree? Thanks, but no thanks, babe. Ch
arles was done with all of it, just as soon as this next ended.

  So far, they had killed around four hundred people, and leveled one building.

  What Titan wanted to do next would eclipse all of that, though.

  “It’ll be harder to get,” Charles told him.

  “And that difficulty has been added to your payment,” Titan responded.

  Which was true.

  “Can you do it?” Titan had asked.

  “Yeah, I should be able to.”

  Charles hadn’t trafficked in this before; the penalties were far more severe than guns. He had, however, been offered jobs involving it, but he always turned them down.

  The connections were still there.

  Charles could utilize them.

  “Do you want to?” the fat man wondered aloud, alone in his north Georgia cabin.

  For the first time—ever, perhaps—the answer that came back was no. It wasn’t that he held no interest in watching this new weapon work on people; he was intensely interested in that. Charles didn’t want to work with Titan anymore. He didn’t want anything to do with the psychopath.

  The money.

  Always the money.

  One more score and then Titan died.

  Charles had already agreed to find the weapon—and maybe that would be fun. He had always wanted to see what sarin gas could do.

  “HE CHANGED HIS NAME IN 1998.”

  Tommy had been pouring through records for the past two hours. He knew he could have some junior associate working on this, but it was too important to outsource. Tommy or Christian needed to take the lead on this, because if they were mistaken—or didn’t find the correct name—Twaller wouldn’t be found.

  “You’re sure?”

  Christian paced back and forth across the plane. The three of them were heading back to DC. Veronica sat to the back left of the private plane. Tommy faced her diagonally. Christian had remained seated for the first three minutes of the flight, but even with the ‘fasten seatbelt’ lights still on, he’d unbuckled and stood up.