The Bruise_Black Sky (25 page)

He glanced at himself in the mirror. It was very possible Peyton Garic knew who he was. But it was one thing sending anonymous threats over the internet and quite another facing down someone in person.

He climbed out and quickly strode across the sweltering sidewalk and up onto the porch, flattening himself against the rough, peeling paint alongside the front door. He thumped the side of his fist on the screen, half expecting shots in response.

A wheezy voice called out, “Yeah?”

Nikolas rattled the frame once more, this time harder, and it slumped on its hinges under the onslaught.

“Hey, why don’t ya’ll just come in? Break my damn door down, why don’t ya?”

Nikolas pulled his other army-surplus shop purchase out of his waistband. How absurdly easy did Americans make it for their citizens to murder each other? He’d bought a Glock with less difficulty than buying a pair of good shoes to fit in Exeter.

He kicked the door in, fly screen and all, and burst into the one-room shack.

§§§

Afterwards, Nikolas made a mental note to apologise to Miles Toogood, because, for one minute, as he’d rolled to his feet, gun level, he’d thought it was Miles, twenty years and a considerable number of pounds on. The man was…vast. He was so securely wedged into his computer chair that he couldn’t have responded to Nikolas’s unorthodox entry even if he’d wanted to. He just stared, mouth open, joystick in his hand. For one moment, he flicked his eyes back to his screen where a blond-haired, computer-generated man in black body armour was shooting everyone in sight, but then he fastened his gaze on Nikolas once more. Suddenly, he grinned. “Jedi, man! He fucking rocks!”

Nikolas licked his lips, seeking possible danger and put his back to the wall, the weapon level on the enormous man’s head.

“Awesome, dude. How much he payin’ ya? Jedi’s my man!” He screeched in glee and did a jiggle in his seat. Suddenly, he lunged for something on his desk.

Again, afterward, Nikolas sent a small prayer of thanks to the universe that he’d seen the phone before he blew Peyton Garic’s brains out. He blinked as the flash went off. “Thanks, man. This is so awesome. Hey, you’re not gonna strip or anything, are ya? ’Cus I’m not into that shit no more. Know what I mean? Got a few issues now.”

Nikolas repeated, “Strip?” because it was the only thing he could think to say.

The room was an altar to alternative reality. Every inch was packed with high-end computer equipment, one wall totally taken up with screens. Cables snaked everywhere across the floor, and in the very middle of this web was Peyton Garic. Four hundred pounds and counting…if the vast stack of pizza boxes was anything to go by.

Nikolas didn’t know what he’d walked into, but he was fairly sure this man had not recently flown to New Zealand and pushed him off a cliff.

He gestured with the gun for the phone and when it was handed over, deleted the photo. Before Peyton Garic could object, he put the barrel of the Glock to the fleshy, sweaty forehead and enunciated carefully, “I think we have a language problem. Do not speak to me again unless it is to answer my questions. Do you understand?”

Peyton Garic nodded, a drip dampening the dull metal of the pistol. Nikolas would have stood further away, as his training dictated, had the man’s arms not been wedged to his sides by flesh. “Oliver Whitestone.”

Silence.

Nikolas frowned.

Peyton Garic’s eyes widened. “Was that a question? Fuck man! A question goes up at the end! Like this? Well, more like…this?”

It
was
Miles! Was it something about him that trumpeted: try my patience?

“Oliver?”

“Sure, I know who he is! What the fuck is this, man? See, question? Up? Jedi didn’t send you, did he? You’re not gonna strip? Even though…? Could you maybe…the gun? Question? Oh! Fuck! It was
you
who got to ask the questions. I got it mixed up, man, thought it was okay to speak so long as I was asking…”

Nikolas put the gun back in his waistband. He reckoned this was going to take a little longer than he’d planned.

Peyton’s face was bathed in sweat, watching the gun disappear. “Shit, man. I gotta go.” He began to struggle to pull himself out of his chair.

“Go where?”

“The bathroom! Fucking shock.” Suddenly, he sank back down. “Too late.”

Nikolas took a step away, but realised he was back against the wall already.

“What you wanna know about Ollie for? He’s dead.”

“Tell me about the death threat.” Nikolas tried to keep his focus off the rapidly spreading stain in the man’s track pants. It used to be more fun making people piss themselves with fear. He was getting old.

Peyton’s brow creased up so much his eyes completely disappeared. “Threat? Threat? It wasn’t a threat. That’s a question by the way? Weren’t a threat? Up at the—”

“Stop talking about questions! Shut up for a minute! What you do you mean, it wasn’t a threat?” When no reply was forthcoming, with a sigh, Nikolas sank down onto his haunches and put his head briefly into his hands. “You can answer that.”

“Oh, okay. Only you said…It was like…man…you’re gonna make such an awesome Ollie. Fuck.” He turned to his computer and suddenly fat digits flew to life, clicking around on the keyboard faster than Nikolas could follow. And there in front of him was Ben’s death once more, played out on the large screen…standing by the lake…blending seamlessly with Oliver as the gladiator, and then falling to his death, bleeding out on the pebbles of the beach. “He’s awesome, fucking awesome. He’s called Ben Rider. I’ve got his name first. Claimed it.”

Nikolas couldn’t summon words, so he just tried to look encouraging. Peyton didn’t appear to notice, he was still gazing at his idol. “I’m gonna be
BenRider
when the game comes out.”

“It was a tribute? You’re telling me you did it as a tribute?” Nikolas rose to his feet, pulled the gun out and held it to Peyton’s head once more. “Then what about the ones to Oliver Whitestone? Were they a gift too?”

Peyton’s eyes gave him away. Score two for the tactic. He knew about them. A tiny flicker, but Nikolas saw it. The fat man sighed. “Some really weird fuckers in this world, man.” He closed his eyes and a trickle escaped. “Fucking killed him.”

“
You
sent them.”

Wide-eyed once more, Peyton shook his head so rapidly that rivulets of sweat flicked off him like a dog shaking seawater from its coat. “I just found them!”

“Found them?”

“I hacked…I mean…sure, I saw them, awesome work, man. But I’m better, and I thought I’d send Ben…You didn’t think that was a threat! Hey! Oh, my God, do you know Ben Rider? You, like…wait, wait, fucking wait…” His fingers began their dance once more. Nikolas considered the gun, sighed, and tucked it away again. Now he knew why he’d never even tried torturing Americans before. They were too…

“Oh, oh, oh, look, you do! It’s you! I knew it…” Peyton relaxed back in his seat and murmured, “Fucking wish I’d not had those large Cokes now.”

Nikolas swallowed and kept his eyes on the screen. It was a shot of him on the set in Paradise. A gallery of pictures put up online. Many were of Ben on the beach on the first day of his arrival.

“Who are you? I mean…fuck. The real deal. I’ve gotta call Jedi, man, he’ll be stoked. Can I, like, have my phone back?”

“You hacked Peter Cameron’s computer, found Oliver Whitestone’s death threats and based your…tribute…to Ben Rider on them, using photos from this gallery?”

Peyton seemed to think about this for a long time. “Yeah.”

“You don’t want to kill Ben Rider?”

“Kill him? Man, I want to
be
him!”

Nikolas raised his brows and considered a reply. Then he had a thought. He looked around at the computers and screens. “Hacker, huh?”

“Can I plead the fifth on that?”

§§§

Peyton only had one chair, so Nikolas had to stand while the fat digits worked their magic, but he wasn’t too keen on sitting anywhere that Peyton had sat anyway. He wandered back to the window to admire his new vehicle. “Someone is sitting on the couch in your garden.”

“Huh? Oh, that’ll be Jedi. He comes round to watch TV.”

Nikolas frowned, bemused, as the man outside reached into a refrigerator and pulled out a beer and did appear to be watching something on the box. He wrinkled his nose. He had lost a war to these people. He was deeply shamed.

“Here you go.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s the address the threats were sent from.”

“But that’s here. Louisiana.”

“Sure is…Salt Island. I’ve heard that name recently…”

Nikolas straightened. “Yes. So have I.”

He kicked the remains of the door out of his way and ran from the house towards the Hummer.

After the Wars
was filmed on Salt Island.

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Nikolas arrived on the set the next day just as Ben was being shaved and titillated, ready to film his training scene with Santiago.

He took in everything rapidly, noting Squeezy standing just off to one side.

He flicked his head at him to follow.

Behind the dark glasses it was impossible to tell if the man saw him.

He repeated the gesture, more openly.

Nothing.

With a sigh, he heaved out his broken phone, tapped it for a moment to get it working, and texted him.
11 o’clock arc. Look
.

He watched, incredulous, as Squeezy rummaged in his pocket and consulted his phone. He didn’t look in Nikolas’s direction, but appeared to be texting something back. Nikolas glanced at his screen.

I fucking saw you.

Incredulous took on a whole new meaning. He stabbed the keypad.
Follow me, you fucking moron.

Squeezy read this, glanced up then strode over. “I thought it was like a fucking test or something!”

“Test! What—?”

“You show up and see if you can get me away from his side!”

Nikolas opened his mouth to comment on this idiocy, but only gritted his teeth and began to stride towards the trailers.

When they were in the one Ben was using, Nikolas took a bottle of water from the small fridge and began curtly, “The original death threats to Oliver were sent from someone on the set. The stuff sent to Ben was unrelated. Someone sent threats to Oliver Whitestone, killed him, and then had it covered up as suicide. I think they saw the pictures sent to Ben, saw the similarity to what they’d sent to Oliver, and took the opportunity to try and kill Ben, too. But I have no fucking idea why. Who’d want to kill the fucking star of their own show? Then kill the guy playing him in an unrelated movie?”

He flung himself into the seat opposite Squeezy. He’d expected a more enthusiastic reaction. “Are you going to contribute to this damn process, or am I fucking talking to myself here?”

“Oh, I agree with you. One hundred percent.”

“Well, hallelujah, the moron agrees with me.”

“The moron knows who the killers are, too.”

It was one of those moments Nikolas absolutely loathed. Being pulled out of a sinking car…being found nearly dead in the snow and rescued…and now this. And the bastard was gonna drag it out…make him ask…

“This is
Ben
.”

Squeezy sat straighter. “Yeah. Sorry, boss. It’s the Sasquatch and his misses.”

“W—?”

“Bigfoot—Santiago Molina—and Gina Cameron.”

Nikolas digested this for a while. “And you know this how?”

“Easy. Did what I do best. Well, ’sides being a soldier. And fucking, course, and I guess—yeah, sorry, so anyway, I chatted this bird up, see? Fodder in me hands, so to speak. Putty? Nah, fodder. Diesel thinks I went on a date with her, ’cus he’s like that—suspicious and worried about people cheating on him…wonder why that is…so, anyway, it was pretty fucking obvious. I was watching him, see? When Tattoo thought Ben was gonna take Oliver’s place as SushiYoshi. I saw Bigfoot’s expression. I saw hers, too. Everyone else watching Ben, like. As you would, given he’s usually the best fucking thing there is to watch. Not me. I was watching them. They weren’t fucking happy and they were fucking
together
in that unhappiness. If you get my drift.”

“I haven’t understood a single word you have just said.”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake. Bloody foreigners! Gina Cameron and Santiago Molina are bonking. I reckon they’ve been bonking for a long time now. Writer of show wants new toy boy to get the lead role, what’s she gonna do?”

“Write Oliver off the show. But she can’t, because he’s too good. Too popular.”

“’Xactly. Second best?”

“Persuade him to go.”

“Ding. Right answer again. How she gonna do that…being a writer an’ all, maybe?”

“Write threats…”

“And when they didn’t work?”

“Fucking hell.”

“That, my big…I mean, sir, is exactly what I fucking said.”

“They killed him.”

“But then what happened? Something they couldn’t bloody predict?”

“Her husband says he wants to make a movie about Oliver to explain his death…”

“Yeah, that’s what I figure. All that raking up of stuff they managed to get nicely packaged up, buried, and explained away as suicide.”

“The Katrina-Wood windfall.”

“The what when it’s at home?”

“They got it hushed up because the local cops didn’t want it known that a big star got killed on their patch.”

“Convenient, but we’ve got no fucking proof of any of this.”

Nikolas picked up his phone, started to call Kate, but then changed his mind and dialled another number. The call was answered, but no one said anything. “Hello?”

“Oh, man, that you, Hummer? Jedi said orange fucking V8, man. How cool is that? Can’t be too careful who you pick the fucking phone up with these days. You see what happened to the god?”

Nikolas closed his eyes for strength. “The what?”

“Kim Dot, man! Fucking raided. By the fucking CIA! Illegally! I gotta be careful. What’d’ya want? Can you hang on? I gotta…never mind. You want more hack—investigations?”

“Yes. A man called Santiago Molina flew to Wellington sometime last week. I want you to trace his movements when he was there. And a Gina Cameron.”