Bug Man Suspense 3-in-1 Bundle (96 page)

Alena kept clapping until the “Return” command finally penetrated the huge beast's frantic mind. Phlegethon instantly pulled up—but not before his momentum carried him into Donovan's legs and knocked him off his feet.

Riddick looked down at his own gun lying in the dust—but before he could reach for it, Nick made a headlong dive and landed almost on top of it, covering it with his crossed arms.

Riddick turned and bolted into the woods.

Donovan sat up in the dirt and stared at the woods while Phlegethon apologetically licked his face. “Now I have to run after him, and I
hate
running after people.”

“Don't bother,” Alena said. She walked from kennel to kennel, lifting each latch and opening the gates until the clearing was filled with barking dogs. She snapped her fingers once and made a quick spreading motion.

Every dog fell silent.

She walked over to the spot where Riddick had just disappeared into the woods, with all of the dogs following eagerly behind her. She snapped her fingers again and this time made a great swirling motion, then lunged forward and slung both arms as if she were flinging batter from her fingers—or casting a powerful spell.

Every dog took off racing into the woods, with little Ruckus in the lead and the lumbering Phlegethon bringing up the rear.

Alena looked at Donovan. “There's no hurry,” she said. “He'll be there whenever you want him.”

Riddick ran wildly, crashing blindly through the thick underbrush with his arms out in front of him to try to separate the branches and clear a path ahead. He had to run—he had to make it deep enough into the woods so that Donovan couldn't find him without help, and by the time help arrived it would be daylight. By then he would be far away and he could hole up somewhere and figure out what to do next.

There was a bright moon out, but the woods were thick and only broken shafts of moonlight could penetrate the dense canopies of the trees, leaving large areas of forest floor hidden in thick shadow. Riddick smashed his way through unseen branches and ripped through briars that tore little chunks of flesh from his arms and legs; once he stumbled headlong into a shallow ravine that unexpectedly dropped away beneath his feet. But each time he fell he struggled to his feet again and kept moving forward; he couldn't afford to slow down now—his life depended on it.

He kept thinking about Victoria and what she was probably doing right now—holding Johnny Boy's hand and stroking his bruised ego, doing her level best to convince him that trailer trash from the backwoods of Virginia could make just as good a wife as a blue blood with a seat on the
Mayflower
.
And she'll pull it off
, he thought,
because that's what she does best
—twist men like pretzels until they take on any shape she wants.

He stopped for a few seconds to catch his breath. He doubled over with his hands on his knees, panting and spitting and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

He imagined Vic's response when the authorities told her what he had done—how he had kidnapped some poor woman and tried to kill her, but had escaped at the last moment and was still at large.
She won't even bat an eyelash
, Riddick thought.
She's good at that too.
And he knew exactly what she would do then: She would deny all knowledge of his actions or intent; she would pin the whole thing on him; she would claim that it was his own insane desire to defend her or to protect her reputation—and then she would call down on him all the wrath and holy indignation of the self-righteous Bradens until she looked even better than she did before. And in a way she would be telling the truth: The whole thing
was
his fault, because she never actually asked him to do a thing. The whole thing was his idea—exactly as she intended.

Riddick shook his head—all this, just for the chance to be with her one more time. But that was the bargain Victoria always struck with men: not the promise that they
would
be with her, just the suggestion that they
might
. That was all she ever needed; that was always enough to get her whatever she desired.

He heard a sound in the trees behind him and looked up; an ugly little dog suddenly popped out of the brush and took a stand in front of him, throwing out its bony chest and yapping at the top of its lungs.

“Shut up!” he whispered, swinging at the dog with his foot—but the dog easily sidestepped the blow and continued to sound the alarm.

Now Riddick heard another sound in the woods—then another, and another. He squinted in the moonlight and saw the silhouettes of dozens of dogs rapidly moving toward him—and they didn't look friendly.

He turned and ran.

He weaved back and forth as he ran, thinking that he might outsmart the stupid dogs even if he couldn't outdistance them—but each time he glanced back he could see the dogs not far behind. They were bunched together now, traveling in a pack. They seemed to stride along easily, almost effortlessly—all except for one of them. The lead dog, somehow silently elected by its companions, would take off after Riddick at a dead sprint, barking and growling and snapping at his heels. When that dog tired he would quietly drop back into the pack and another dog would seamlessly take its place, forcing Riddick to run full out without rest while the dogs conserved their strength.

Riddick couldn't believe it—the stupid mongrels were working as a team.

At last he stumbled to a stop, exhausted, and turned to confront the approaching dogs. He bent down and picked up a broken tree limb and waved it back and forth at the pack, shouting and screaming at them in desperate rage.

“Get back!
Back!
Get away from me—go back where you came from!”

But the dogs simply formed a crude semicircle around him and began to lunge at him one at a time, each one watching for the right opportunity to move in.

Riddick picked the dog closest to him and decided to make an example of him; if he could badly injure one of the dogs, maybe the rest of them would learn the lesson and back off. He took a step forward and raised the limb high overhead—but before he could bring it down again an enormous black dog leaped forward out of the darkness and took him by the throat, sending him crashing backward onto the ground.

Riddick lay on his back staring up into the sky; the rest of the dogs quickly gathered around him and began to bark frantically just inches from his face. The black dog stood across him, gripping his throat in its massive jaws; Riddick could feel hot saliva dripping down the sides of his neck and he could hear the dog panting through its nose with great blasts of hot wet air. He felt one of the other dogs bite into his pant leg and tug, stretching him out like a man on a rack; two more dogs did the same with his other leg, and he felt a chill of primeval terror when he thought about his unprotected groin and abdomen. He tried to kick his legs free but the dogs just pulled harder; he grabbed at the black dog's snout with both hands and tried to pry it off his throat, but when he did he felt its teeth sink even deeper into his flesh.

He tried to wedge his fingers in between the dog's teeth and his throat, but once again the dog clamped down harder and he felt the flesh pop as the teeth began to puncture his skin—then he felt something else running down his neck.

The muscles of his neck began to cramp and he tried to scream, but almost nothing came out. He now realized that the dog was crushing his windpipe and he started to panic. He began to beat at the dog's head and face with both fists, but at such close range he couldn't generate any power and the dog just absorbed the harmless blows. He tried to squeeze his fingers into the dog's eyes, hoping to blind it or cause it so much pain that it would momentarily release its grip—but the effort only strengthened the dog's resolve, and it tightened its grip even more.

Riddick lay flailing in the dirt like a grounded fish, with each flop of his exhausted body a little weaker and less defiant than the one before. He slowly sank down and lay motionless, straining to draw each tortured breath through his slowly collapsing trachea. His eyes bulged out and he stared unblinking into the sky with a look of frozen astonishment on his face. His mouth gaped open and his swollen tongue jutted out between his teeth, and a final hiss of air was abruptly cut short. His oxygen-starved brain began to boil and his mind slowly faded to a single pinpoint of light—and when that light reached its zenith, it simply clicked off.

His hands dropped away from the dog's head and his arms fell limp to the ground.

The pack of dogs fell silent. They cautiously moved closer, sniffing at Riddick's inert body and pawing at his lifeless limbs.

They raised their muzzles into the air and with a single voice let out a low, long, mournful howl.

43

Victoria poured herself a drink from a crystal decanter; she quickly drank it down and waited for the burning liquid to steady her nerves. John knew everything now—her less-than-noble ancestry, her illegitimate beginning, even her humiliating birth name. To his credit he had said very little as she showed him the pages of the scrapbook, confessing each humbling detail of her true past. John seemed understanding enough, even sympathetic—though she wondered if it was the kind of polite and practiced sympathy he might show at a homeless shelter or a school for the “alternatively gifted.”

She kept a light, matter-of-fact tone as she spoke to him, as if she were doing nothing more than briefing him on a policy issue or some detail of the campaign. It was a lesson she had learned from Eleanor Roosevelt, a particularly homely woman who lived by the motto “No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.” And why should Victoria feel inferior? She had only learned these revelations herself a few days ago, and she took no responsibility for them. It wasn't about her, after all; it was about her mother and her father, whoever the irresponsible jerk was—about things done to her and not about things she had done herself. None of it changed any essential fact about her— about the woman she was or the things she had managed to accomplish all on her own. So she told John all about it in a simple, forthright manner, as if she were talking about someone else, because to be fair, she was—and she hoped that her husband would hear it that way.

She wondered if he did.

She poured another drink. For some reason she still felt that something precious had been taken from her, and the feeling made her angry and afraid. She hated that feeling—the feeling of being alone, of being the only one who was different. And she wasn't the only one, because John Henry Braden had a secret too—a secret he didn't even know about—the secret contained in the second scrapbook. Maybe he deserved to know; maybe she should tell him—at least that way she wouldn't feel like the only one standing with her dress up over her head. But Johnny was a vain and fragile man, and she wasn't sure how he would handle it. Maybe it was better if she handled it alone. It was okay; she could do it; she had enough strength for both of them.

She finished her drink and fit the crystal stopper back into the decanter with a dull clink. She needed to keep a clear head right now, because they had bigger things to worry about than who gave birth to whom. Dr. Polchak said that her mother had somehow managed to kill an FBI agent—Danny Flanagan. What was that all about? The news would have been nothing but a morbid bit of trivia, except for the fact that the old woman happened to be related to her by blood—and the whole world would soon know it.

Talk about lousy timing
—how was she supposed to handle both revelations at the same time? If only the news about her ancestry could have been exposed first, giving her time to build sympathy and win public support—then after a few months the news about the murder could have followed, easily attributed to some sudden decline in the old woman's mental condition. But no, both events had to happen at once, and both stories would hit the papers simultaneously, giving the public the clear impression that Victoria Braden was the spawn of a deranged killer. How would she ever handle that—before November?

What about Chris? Polchak said that a woman had disappeared this evening: Alena Savard—the Witch of Endor.
Chris—the moron—actually did it.
If the man had enough sense to do the job right, it might actually help; but if he bungled the job, it would make things infinitely worse, because it would bring an act with criminal intent right to her doorstep. Unfortunately, Chris
was
a moron, and there was a strong possibility that he was already under suspicion—as indicated by Polchak's visit. If that was the case then her best option might be a preemptive strike—to accuse Chris of wrongdoing and distance herself as quickly as possible. Who should she call first? What was the best way to do it?

And what about the Patriot Center? The bodies discovered there were now known to be victims of murder. Would that news delay construction even further? Johnny was carrying the construction loans himself; he stood to lose a fortune. And even worse than the financial loss would be the scandal—which could grow ugly enough to turn the public against them and cost them the only thing that actually mattered: the White House.

But there were ways—there were ways to handle everything. She began to see options, angles, possibilities—but she needed time to think, and she needed to talk with Johnny. That was the answer—to take all these issues to her husband, to figure out a strategy together, because they were always closest when they were standing back-to-back, fighting off their opponents together. The news about her true ancestry would pale in comparison to these larger concerns, and as they worked them out together he would appreciate again the woman that she really was.