Bug Man Suspense 3-in-1 Bundle

by Tim Downs

  “I wasn’t expecting you to have company,” Nick said. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to have a word with you in private.” He looked at Gunner. “Is that okay with you?”

  “That’s up to Alena,” Gunner said. He reached out and took her right hand. “Are you okay with this? Do you feel safe?”

  “I’m not afraid of him,” Alena said.

  “I don’t think you need to be,” Gunner said. “I’ve met Dr. Polchak before, and I believe him to be an honorable man.” He looked at Nick. “Am I right?”

  “I braved wild animals to get here,” Nick said. “That should tell you something.”

  Gunner turned to the coffee table where there was a small mahogany box lined with maroon-colored satin; it held a glass bottle with a round lid, four small glass cups, and a pillbox-sized container made of brass. Gunner quietly closed the lid, stood, and tucked the box under his left arm. “I still owe you that beer,” he said to Nick.

  “I’m looking forward to it.”

  Gunner stopped in the doorway and looked back at Alena. “If you need anything else, you know how to reach me.”

  “Send in Acheron when you go,” she said, then took a seat on the sofa.

  A few seconds later, the huge black dog came trotting into the trailer and sat down next to Alena.

  She looked up at Nick. “Just so you know: Before you could ever lay a hand on me, Acheron would tear out your throat.”

  “I got a sample of what Acheron could do the other night,” Nick said. “Believe me, I’m happy right where I am.”

  “Sit,” she said, pointing to the sofa.

  “Is that an invitation or a command?”

  She didn’t reply.

  Nick looked down at the dog. “Acheron. If I remember my mythology, Acheron is one of the rivers that surround Hades—the ‘river of woe,’ isn’t it? It’s an unusual name—how did you happen to pick it?”

  “He picked it,” she said.

  Nick raised one eyebrow. “He picked it?”

  “That’s right.”

  “You were taking a big chance, weren’t you? Most dogs would have picked ‘Woof.’”

  Again, no response.

  Tough room, Nick thought. He turned to the bookshelves and began to examine the books. “How do you happen to know Gunner?”

  “I live here, remember?”

  “I thought you hated the folks down in Endor.”

  “Most of them. How do you know Gunner?”

  “I stopped by his church the other day. I was looking for information about a mysterious woman who lives alone up in the mountains. People say she’s a witch.”

  She paused. “What did he tell you?”

  Nick looked at her. “Apparently a lot less than he could have.” He slid a book from the shelf and opened it. “Gunner thinks you can tell a lot about people by their books; I agree with him. Take this book, for example: Scent and the Scenting Dog, by William Syrotuck. It has chapters on ‘The Human as a Scent Source’ and ‘Atmospheric Factors and Airborne Scent.’”

  “So?”

  “Not exactly a book of spells and incantations, is it? This doesn’t look like a witch’s library at all; in fact, it’s the sort of library that might belong to a behavioral scientist.”

  Alena frowned and got up from the sofa. She took the book from Nick’s hand and replaced it on the shelf, then turned to him and shook the hair back from her face. “What is it you want, anyway?”

  Nick blinked. Alena was standing only a foot away from him, looking directly up into his eyes. This was as close as he had ever been to her; it was the first time he had seen her face in the light and both of her eyes at the same time. She was beautiful, and Nick was more than a little surprised. In the dark shadows of the woods, she created such an eerie image that Nick had imagined the worst. He had assumed that the hair hanging down over her face was intended to cover some hideous blemish—but he saw no blemish here. He had assumed that her skin would be pale and sallow, but now he realized that it only appeared that way by contrast with her jet-black hair; up close he could see that she had a light tan and a spray of fine freckles across the bridge of her nose. Her most striking feature was her eyes—they were large and almond-shaped, and they were an astonishing shade of emerald green. One eye alone had looked haunting in the moonlight; both of them together were almost overwhelming.

  “You should pull your hair back more,” Nick said. “You have a very nice face.”

  She immediately dropped her head and shook her hair down a little. “I asked you what you want.”

  “For starters, I want you to trust me.”

  “Trust you? How did you get up here tonight?”

  “I drove.”

  “I’m not stupid—I saw your car, remember? How did you get through my gate?”

  “I cut the lock off.”

  “What? Who gave you the right to—”

  “I did it for your own good. If you’d shut up and listen for a minute, I could explain.”

  She raised her eyes again—they were still overpowering, but this time they were filled with anger. “You climbed my fence and I told you to go away. You came back again and I had to have my dog take you down. You talked me into helping you, and you said no one would ever know, and I had to stand there and be insulted by that—that woman.”

  “I’m sorry about that,” Nick said. “I never meant for—”

  “And now you cut the lock off my fence! What does it take to get through to you, anyway?”

  “I had to walk all the way back to Endor the first time,” Nick said. “The second time I had to lay there and let your dog slobber all over me—and now I have to stand here and let the ‘river of woe’ stare at me like a lunch meat buffet. Do you think this is some kind of fraternity initiation, Alena? Do you think this is fun for me?”

  She hesitated. “Then why are you here?”

  “Because I think your life might be in danger.”

  Her eyes softened. “What?”

  “The woman you met at the Patriot Center—the obnoxious one with the dehydrated dog—I think she might be dead.”

  “You think she might be?”

  “Let me ask you something: Would you ever leave one of your dogs locked in a cage all day without food or water—without letting it out to relieve itself ?”

  “Never.”

  “Do you think she would?”

  Alena considered. “No—even she’s not that evil.”

  “Well, I found her dog locked up that way this evening.”

  “That doesn’t mean she’s dead.”

  “Her car is still in the parking lot.”

  “Maybe she’s in a hospital somewhere—maybe she just went off her rocker. I could believe that, after meeting her.”

  “You’re right, she might turn up somewhere—if she does, she’ll eventually come back for her car and the dog. I’ll put the word out—I’ll ask around and see if anybody knows where she is. But if she doesn’t show up by tomorrow, I’m going to the police.”

  Alena studied Nick’s face. “You don’t think she’s coming back, do you?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You think somebody killed her.”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “It smells that way.”

  “What?”

  “Instinct—I just have a feeling.”

  “But why would somebody want to kill her?”

  Nick looked at her. “Because somebody thought she was you.”

  16

  Alena opened her eyes and looked at the clock. She blinked once, testing her eyelids to see if they were heavy enough to sink shut again, but they remained open. She listened and heard the wind howling through the woods; she could hear the oaks and hickories rocking back and forth, sweeping the night sky with their great leafy brooms. A powerful gust caught the trailer broadside and flexed the metal wall with a soft boom; she squeezed her eyes shut and pulled the sheets tighter around her neck.

  The wi
nd began to tease the trailer, buffeting it with sticks and twigs and the brittle shells of old acorns, making ticks and clicks and soft dull thumps everywhere. She heard something land on the roof and slowly roll across—or was it walking? The harder she listened, the more each sound seemed to take on life: The ticks on the walls became tapping fingers; the pummeling wind contained muffled voices; the shadows that flashed across her window became figures stealing by.

  She felt a drop of cold sweat run down her back, but still she kept the sheets pulled tight. She stared wide-eyed into the darkness and tried not to listen while she strained to hear even more.

  She heard a sound under the trailer, where she had never heard a sound before. It was a thumping, dragging, scraping sound, and it seemed very much alive. A dozen hopeful explanations hurried through her mind: a possum or raccoon escaping the wind; a rabbit or ground squirrel that couldn’t reach its burrow in time; even a tiny field mouse, its size amplified by the thin, hollow floor. Now the darker explanations began to creep into her mind: the hideous, the deformed, the slithering, the nameless ancient fears that only come out at night. She could feel something under her, staring up at her, feeling along the floor with its cold dead fingers for a crevice or a crack.

  The thumping stopped as suddenly as it had begun, and the room fell silent, except for the sound of air exiting her lungs in short, trembling gasps.

  She heard a high-pitched whine from the direction of the kennels. It was the whimper of one of the younger dogs, probably cowering from the wind—or was it something in the wind? She could imagine the dog pacing back and forth in its kennel, its head slung low and its hackles standing on end from fear. She heard another whine—a lower one this time, from one of the older and more experienced dogs that should have known better. Now the rest of the dogs began to slowly join in a rising lament of whimpering moans and howls.

  She sat up on the edge of her bed and listened.

  From somewhere deep in the woods she heard a bellowing yelp and then an abrupt silence. In the kennels, every dog fell silent.

  She threw off the covers and ran from the bedroom. She flung open the door of the trailer so hard that the spring snapped and the door crashed back against the trailer wall. She flew barefoot past the kennels and toward the trees in the direction of the dog’s yelp. The wind beat her like surf, throwing her off balance and tossing her hair in every direction. She came to the edge of the woods and crashed into the brush without hesitating; the leafy branches slapped at her face and arms, and brambles tore at her nightgown, trying to hold her back—but she ran wildly, frantically, trying to reach the echo before the last reverberation faded away.

  She broke through the brush into a small clearing; there, on the ground, she saw the body of a beautiful golden dog lying on its side. She staggered up to it and looked down; its eyes were dull and lifeless and there was a dark pool under its head. She squeezed her eyes tight and clenched her fists; she threw back her head and let out a mournful wail, but the sound was instantly swallowed up by the wind. She sank to her knees beside the dog; she lifted its massive head and cradled it in her lap, stroking its soft fur and sobbing. Who would do this? Why would they take him away from me? Don’t they know that I’m alone now—that I have no one else in all the world?

  She heard a branch snap and looked up.

  She listened and heard nothing more, but she sensed a definite presence. Someone—something—was watching her from the woods. She heard the quiet crunch of leaves and then it abruptly stopped—like someone taking a cautious step closer. She gently laid the dog’s head back on the ground and struggled to her feet. She wiped her eyes and face, staring into the trees and listening. She felt her grief slipping away, and fear crawling over her like a creeping vine.

  She looked back toward the trailer but saw no sign of it through the dense brush. She tried to remember how long she had been running— how far she was from safety—but in her panic she had lost all sense of time and distance. She took one tentative step toward the trailer and listened—

  She heard another crunch from the woods.

  Terror flooded over her like a breaching dam and she took off back through the woods, plunging madly through the brush, searching for the light from the kennels and listening for footsteps behind her—but it was all one cacophony of crashing branches and frantic panting and crunching feet. She imagined someone running behind her, matching her stride for stride, slowly gaining, reaching out his fingers, touching the fringes of the soft cotton gown fluttering out behind her—

  She broke through the brush and into the clearing. She caught her ankle on a grapevine and almost lost her footing but managed to stay upright. More than anything in the world she wanted to turn and look back, to know and understand the terror that was pursuing her—but she didn’t dare. She ran screaming for the trailer, her heart pounding in her throat, unable to feel her legs or the ground under her feet. She ran with everything in her, but the trailer seemed an infinite distance away. She was utterly exhausted; she imagined her strength failing completely, collapsing to the ground, unable to move—the horrible image was enough to keep her going a few more steps.

  She reached the open trailer door and scrambled inside, doubled over and panting like a spent mare. She staggered across the living room and through the doorway into the bedroom beyond. She stumbled to the far corner of the room and turned, sliding down and wedging herself tightly against the walls, wrapping her arms around her shoulders and staring back at the doorway, waiting for the pursuer who would never come.

  She looked across the room at the floor-length mirror and saw a terrified ten-year-old girl with long black hair and green eyes. The little girl buried her face in her arms and began to cry.

  Alena woke up in her bed, sobbing.

  17

  Nick looked down at Kegan, who was kneeling inside a newly opened grave and probing in the soil with a pointed trowel. “Have you seen Marge lately?” he asked.

  “Not this morning.”

  “What about yesterday?”

  “No, now that you mention it. Why?”

  “She said she wanted to confirm these sites, but I haven’t seen her around. Ask around, will you? See if anybody’s seen her.”

  Kegan smiled up at him. “You miss her, don’t you?”

  “It’s hard to describe the feelings I have for her.”

  “Don’t laugh,” she said. “I’ve read about things like that: You despise someone so much that you suddenly begin to like them.”

  “I just realized something,” Nick said. “I’m in love with you.”

  “Dr. Polchak! Dr. Alexander!”

  Nick and Kegan turned. At the tech tent a courier from the FBI crime lab at Quantico was waving at them with a manila envelope.

  “That should be our test results,” Kegan said.

  “It’s about time. Let’s take a look.”

  Kegan took the envelope from the courier and spread the papers out on a folding table in the shade of the tent. The courier looked at her and asked, “Have you got anything for me to take back?”

  “Those,” she said, nodding to three corrugated evidence boxes lined up on a nearby table. Each measured one-by-one-by-three, and each contained an entire set of bones recovered from a grave, as well as soil samples and any artifacts found nearby.

  “Anything else?”

  “I’ve got something,” Nick said. He reached into a knapsack and took out two zippered plastic bags, each containing a few strands of hair. “I want a DNA sequence run on both of these—both mitochondrial and Y-line—and tell them I want to know the haplogroup too. Have you got all that?”

  “Got it.” The courier took the bags and the first of the evidence boxes and headed for the parking lot.

  “Where’d you get those samples?” Kegan asked.

  “It’s a surprise.”

  “Nick, tell me—I should know.”

  They were interrupted by another voice: “Nick! I want to talk to you—right now!”


  They looked up and saw Danny Flanagan charging across the field toward the tent.

  “Uh-oh,” Nick said under his breath.

  “Nick—what did you do now?”

  “I demonstrated problem-solving abilities and exercised personal initiative.”

  “What?”

  “I dropped by to see Senator Braden yesterday.”

  “You what?”

  “Do me a favor,” he whispered. “Act like it’s something you would have done too.”

  “Nick,” Danny said, “I was just informed that you paid an unscheduled visit to Senator John Braden yesterday. Is that true?”

  “Let me think,” Nick said. “Yesterday was such a long day.”

  “Are you out of your mind?”

  “I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked that.”

  “Who gave you permission to do that?”

  “I didn’t think I needed permission.”

  “I thought I made myself clear yesterday.”

  “Is there some FBI regulation that says I shouldn’t pursue a possible source of information in the course of an investigation? Kegan, help me out here—is there any reason I shouldn’t have interviewed Senator and Mrs. Braden?”

  Kegan’s mouth dropped open. “You saw Victoria Braden? What was she wearing?”

  Nick rolled his eyes.

  “Exactly what information were you looking for?” Danny demanded.

  “We need to identify these bodies,” Nick said. “We could use some help.”

  “And you think Braden knows who they are?”

  “This is his property—he could have family records. C’mon, Danny, it was a logical assumption.”

  “It’s Daniel—and if you wanted to inquire about the senator’s family history then you should have gone through proper channels.”

  “What channels?”

  “First of all, me. I would have cleared it with the Bureau, and they would have made the request through the senator’s chief of staff—”

  “And by that time we’d all be buried here. You would have told me no or the Bureau would have put it on the back burner or Braden’s chief of staff would have shelved it until next month’s staff meeting. That’s how ‘channels’ work, Danny—you should have learned that by now.”