by Dan Ames
“Kimberley found this place-“
A deep growl emanated from Sal’s chest and Nicole stopped abruptly.
“What-“ Tristan started to say.
“Sal...” Nicole said.
Occasionally, they would meet other people on the trail, but Sal usually never growled.
Nicole and Tristan came to an abrupt stop and stood in silence, listening. Sal’s ears were pointed, and he was turned slightly to the left, looking behind them.
Through the leash, Nicole felt the energy vibrating off the big dog.
Nicole heard a whisper of movement as Sal took a cautious step further to the left. And back.
Nicole’s body tensed.
She had definitely heard something.
And whatever it was, it was behind them.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Family Man
BRENT TUCKER SAT down at his computer and fired up the screen. His cubicle was impeccable. Stacks of papers, manuals, charts and catalogues all sat in their proper places, edges neat and aligned.
The shelves held books; dictionaries, thesauruses, AP style guides, the Elements of Style. Everything else held pictures. Photos of his children. His wife. The family on vacation. Sports photos. Birthday cards made by his kids for him.
He was the ultimate family man.
Brent Tucker was also a technical writer for a company that specialized in computer peripherals. He neither liked nor disliked his job. It was simply his job, no more, no less. He received his assignments from the new products group, downloaded all of the information regarding the latest routers and cables and motherboards, and assimilated that information, formatted it, and turned it into a logical flow of description that the end consumer could understand.
It was a job he did well. His documents were always error-free, properly formatted, and never late. His superiors loved him. His coworkers respected him. But no one really knew him.
As his computer screen blinked on, he thought about his lack of passion for the job. Love and passion, he thought, interesting concepts. Yes, he did his job well. It wasn’t important whether or not he liked it. He just did it. End of story. Every day. Every week. Every month. Every year now for almost twenty years.
His real love, his real passion, well, that was something no one else knew about.
At least, that’s what he thought until he saw the message pop up in the corner of his screen. It was a simple statement: “Check your top drawer.”
And then the message was gone.
Someone from IT, maybe? Sometimes they monitored people’s computers and would control them remotely if they wanted to install software updates.
But he felt a surge of anger as he reached for the top drawer and began to pull it open. He had a mailbox – why wouldn’t they put the message there? Or in an interoffice envelope? This was an invasion of privacy. And if there was one thing in the world Brent Tucker loved with a deep passion, it was his privacy.
He slid open the drawer and saw the card sitting peacefully on top of a neat collection of Post-It notes, paper clips and push pins.
The cover said, “Family Man.”
He opened it.
DEAR FAMILY MAN,
It is my honor and privilege to welcome you to another family. You have been selected as a competitor in The Killing League. I have marveled at your ability to hide your secret life under the screen of such a wonderful facade: you are Ward Cleaver incarnate! Please find your travel information and tickets enclosed. Can’t wait to welcome you to your new family! Please join us, we would hate to have to turn in a family member to the police!
Sincerely,
The Commissioner
TUCKER SLAMMED the drawer shut and carried the card over to the company shredder.
His hands shook as he fed the document into the machine. When it was over, he went into the bathroom, found a stall, closed the door and sat down.
And wept.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Mack
HE PULLED the boat into the boat hoist, and hit the button to raise it from the water. Mack peered into the darkness, but the shadow he had seen before wasn’t there.
He hoisted the cooler up onto the deck and looked at the house. On the second floor lanai, he could see Adelia reading to Janice. If the figure had been Adelia, there was no way she could have gotten back to-
“Mack!” a voice boomed from the shadows.
Mack jumped and nearly cracked his skull on the boat hoist’s steel beam.
A face emerged from the shadows. And with it, a big body and frame belonging to Oscar Williams.
Mack breathed a sigh of relief. “Jesus Christ, you scared the shit out of me.”
Oscar laughed, his brilliant white teeth glowing against his black skin.
“Sorry, once you get used to making as little noise as possible, it’s second nature.”
He held out his hand and Mack grasped it. The big man hoisted Mack up onto the deck.
Mack knew that Oscar Williams was a Marine sniper and that he had been due back any day from Afghanistan. It definitely looked like he was back.
“Let’s go have a beer,” Mack said. “As long as Janice is in her room.” Even though Janice had no longer any concept of alcohol or what it was, he didn’t drink in front of her, nor would he let anyone else partake in her presence.
Oscar took one end of the cooler and they went in through the lower lanai area, then climbed the steps to the second floor. Mack peeked inside. Adelia saw him and joined them on the back deck.
“Is Janice in her room?” Mack said.
“She’s retired for the night,” Adelia said, and accepted a beer from Mack. He twisted the cap off another and gave it to Oscar, then got one for himself.
“Cheers,” Mack said as they all raised their beers.
“Hope you don’t mind if I borrow my lady here for a couple of days. I have to fly back out of here on Monday.”
“Not at all,” Mack said. “I’ll have to teach myself how to cook, but I’ve always got the microwave.”
“Don’t believe it, Mack’s a good cook. Especially with the grill,” Adelia said. “Man knows how to grill fish, he can cook just about anything.”
Mack winked at Adelia. “Don’t believe her. I just burn everything and call it Cajun.”
They chatted until the beers were gone and then Mack walked them down to Oscar’s SUV.
He shook hands with Oscar and hugged Adelia.
“Good luck, Mack,” she said. “I’ll see you the day after tomorrow.” She paused. “I can’t put my finger on it, but something seems a little different.”
“You mean with Janice?” he said.
She shrugged her ample shoulders. “Never mind,” she said. “I’m not sure what I mean.”
Mack watched them until the SUV’s taillights disappeared in the darkness.
He walked back to the house, shut and locked all the doors, then set the alarm.
He sat down at the table overlooking the river. He couldn’t see it in the pitch black darkness, but he could hear the current running against the mangroves.
Adelia seemed to want to tell him something but had changed her mind.
It didn’t matter. Whatever she was feeling, he had felt it too.
He just didn’t know why.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Blue Blood
DOUGLAS HAMPTON’S mouth tasted like his fifth and last martini. He stood just outside the swanky restaurant where he’d treated himself to a nice two-and-a-half-hour lunch. The food was average, as always, but the wait staff was hot. That was really the only reason he went to the place. The waitresses were all young, slim and attractive. They wore white, long-sleeve dress shirts and tight black pants. It was a non-stop beautiful ass parade.
The fish bowl size, super strong martinis didn’t hurt, either.
He glanced down at his Panerai watch and considered the time. Technically, he should go back to the office and waste some more time at his big desk in his big corner office.
Maybe log on to some porn sites, or check out some of his singles online dating services. He had a variety of profiles, all fake. He never chose the women he found there, though, as his victims. Too easy to trace. He preferred the anonymity of the ghetto for his hunting grounds.
He didn’t have to go into the office, though. Everyone knew he kept odd hours and no one would miss him. For him, the office was really just a tax dodge. It included a seat on some board set up to oversee a few of the gargantuan Hampton trusts. He didn’t know the details, didn’t care to know them.
But he had to go there at least a few times a week, his lawyer told him. Just in case.
So he went on a somewhat regular basis. At least once a week for an hour or two unless he was on vacation out of the country. During his time there, he’d completed not one single piece of actual work but had managed to fuck every receptionist the company employed, even the ugly ones, out of sheer boredom.
Now, he savored the last taste of the martini and knew he wasn’t going back to the office. He would head out to the country club, maybe bang some cougar in the locker room, just pull her cute little golf skirt up and have at it.
The valet gave Hampton the keys to the BMW. It was parked immediately outside the front door of the restaurant. It was always placed front and center because he was a Hampton, of course. But also because he had dumped so much cash at the restaurant, everyone treated him like royalty. Plus, it was good marketing for the restaurant. It told everyone that rich people ate here, and they should try it, too, if they could afford it.
Hampton walked to the driver door and noticed a card pinned beneath the Beemer’s $170 windshield wiper (he’d had to get them replaced last season) and was about to crumple it up and throw it to the curb when he noticed it wasn’t a parking ticket. It was a card.
On the front it read: Blue Blood.
He climbed into the car, sat behind the wheel, and ripped open the card.
DEAR BLUE BLOOD,
No Hampton accomplishment can compare with this one: You, Douglas, have been chosen to be a competitor in The Killing League. Enclosed are your travel instructions. You don’t need to get anything out of your storage unit #27, though, and the cops certainly don’t need to be alerted to its contents. Wink wink, nudge nudge. Thanks and good luck!
Sincerely,
The Commissioner
HAMPTON TOOK A DEEP BREATH, then smiled. So what if someone knew what he was doing. They clearly weren’t going to the cops. No doubt, they wanted some of his money. But he liked their style. A blackmailer who was a bit of a smart ass.
Okay, he thought. I’ll play along. He took out the ticket and slipped the card inside his glove compartment.
Hampton checked the airline ticket. Coach. He laughed out loud. Coach! Fuck that. The first thing he’d do at the airport would be to upgrade to First Class.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Nicole
THE ATTACK CAME in an explosion of speed and ferocity that gave Nicole no time to react.
In a single breath of time she recognized Sal’s body attuned to something just beyond them, his ears pointed, his massive shoulder muscles bunched as a blur of brown and white, blazing yellow eyes and an inhuman scream sucked every molecule of oxygen from the air around her.
From a dense stand of scrub brush and a few cholla trees a dark brown blur flew at them. Nicole had just enough time to scream, and nearly lose her arm before she dropped the leash as Sal shot forward, pulling with all his might to get at the mountain lion.
It flashed through her mind – news stories of lone hikers and or bicyclists attacked by mountain lions and eaten, or dragged off the trail. One old man had been saved by his wife who used a ball point pen to gouge the big cat’s eyes.
It all went through Nicole’s mind in a flash and she watched Sal crash into the big cat. Nicole whipped the knife from its scabbard along her ankle and took a step forward just as a second explosion rocked the air around Nicole’s head. She felt dizzy and nearly collapsed as the dark brown blur reversed itself and disappeared back into the scrub brush. Sal was back on his feet in an instant and about to dart into the brush when Nicole screamed.
“Sal! No!” She prayed that every moment of training would kick in and Sal would listen to her.
He did. The big dog stood at the edge of the brush, his teeth bared, the hair on his back standing out in a long, dark ridge. Nicole knew that every fiber of his being shouted at him to chase the intruder down and kill it.
“Motherfucker!” Tristan said, her voice high and tight like a plucked violin cord.
Nicole turned and saw her friend with a gun in her hand pointed toward the sky.
The smell of cordite hung in the air around them.
“What-?” Nicole started to say.
Tristan lowered the gun and parted her backpack to reveal a holster inside.
“You can never be too careful, Nicky,” she said, as she thrust the gun back into its holster and zipped the backpack shut.
“But how did you know?” Nicole asked.
“I didn’t” Tristan said. “When Sal turned and you turned and we both heard something, I slipped my hand inside just in case. And when that fucking thing bolted, I just ripped the gun out and shot it in the air. I’m glad I didn’t shoot you, Christ, I haven’t fired a gun in ages.” Nicole thought her friend’s hand was shaking a little bit. Tristan looked very pale, too.
“Wow,” Nicole said. She was still shaking, and Sal was now growling instead of barking. “We need to let someone know about this, like, now.”
Tristan pulled out her cell phone. She looked at the display and shook her head. “We’ll have to hike down to the parking lot to get reception. But yeah, if that thing attacked us, it’ll attack someone else.
Tristan put her hand on Nicole’s shoulder. “Are you okay?” she said.
Nicole felt the weakness in her legs. It was too much. The attack, the gunshot, it brought back memories. Bad memories. She looked down and realized she was still holding her knife. She slid it back into her ankle scabbard.
“I never was a cat person,” she said.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
The Messiah
A LAYER of rose petals floated in the warm bathwater. They moved in no discernible pattern, the currents slow and unpredictable.
The Messiah laid his head back on the edge of the tub. A small bead of sweat ran from his forehead down along his temple. Incense filled the room with what he thought of as the scent of the ancients. A deep, spiritual connection to the great philosophers of the past linking them to him, the bright light of the current human race.
A gentle knock on the door reached the Messiah’s ears, but he did not move. In slow motion, the door opened and a young man entered the bathing area.
He held a card in his hand.
The Messiah opened one eye and glanced at the young man whose body posture and expression conveyed the deeply held fear that was obvious to the man in the tub.
Everyone knew he absolutely loathed interruptions when he bathed. It was a sentiment so tightly held that if ignored, often caused a severe backlash against the responsible party.
No doubt the young man had been ordered to risk the fallout an uninvited appearance might create. Still, the Messiah was not above taking out his anger and frustration on the messenger.
The youth walked to the edge of the tub and stood in silence.
The Messiah, now with both eyes closed, spoke. “It would be in your best interest to have a very good reason for this intrusion.”
The young man began to speak, but instead, he sputtered. The Messiah opened his eyes and studied him. He knew that stories had been told of his angry outbursts. The masses knew it was the type of fury that often resulted in people disappearing and never being found.
“Messiah,” the youth said. “The house master instructed me to bring this to you immediately.”
The Messiah turned his head and faced the youth directly, then brought his arm from the wate
r and took the card.
He read the front: The Messiah.
The card had already been opened. The Messiah had clear instructions that all mail should be opened and handled with only emergency or highly important messages delivered to him in private.
He pulled the card from the already-opened envelope.
DEAR MESSIAH,
Praise God! You are the chosen one! Please accept my invitation to The Holy Order of The Killing League! Based on your ungodly ability to bury poor souls in the desert, please find our enclosed travel information to the Holy Land of Homicide!
Sincerely,
The Commissioner
THE MESSIAH GLANCED at the airline ticket, and then dropped the card to the bathroom’s tile floor.
It was a good thing the message had reached him while he was in a state of deep relaxation. The anger was slow to grow, but he felt it coming.
There had not been a leak, he knew that. He ruled his flock with utter and total domination. No one had talked. No, this was an outsider violating the sanctity of his community.
An outsider who clearly did not understand the breadth and depth of his resourcefulness, nor his penchant for cruelty. The Messiah began to think of what he would do to the party responsible. His erection rose and broke the surface of the bathwater.
He glanced at the young messenger still standing next to the bathtub.
“Undress and join me,” the Messiah said. “You have violated my private time and for that, you must make amends.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Nicole
“OKAY, first person to come up with a great entrée featuring mountain lion as the main ingredient gets a big bonus,” Nicole said to the kitchen staff at Thicque.
They’d all heard the story of the attack, and had been cracking jokes all afternoon.
“Grilled cougar with a side of Nicole’s soiled undergarments,” Paolo Gerrar said, a big grin on his face.
Nicole laughed and walked out to the dining room. She noted with no small amount of pleasure that the tables were already put together, fresh flowers had been delivered minutes earlier, and a beautiful soft light filled the space thanks to the sunlight seeping through the gauzy linen curtains.
