The Devil's Dream: Book One (23 page)

We
need to talk. Email yourself. -MB

Matthew didn't know
what other ways the man had to communicate, but he'd get the email if
he accessed a computer anywhere. He would email back without an
encryption, then things would be much easier for Matthew. He would
know where Jeffrey Dillan was and he could show up on his own time to
see exactly what the man had been doing here at this gas station. He
had never thought about killing Dillan, not until now, because the
man had been an honest reporter. Things changed though. Matthew knew
he was no God, and if they caught him again, he wouldn't be lucky
enough to survive in rest behind The Wall. If they caught him again
he was going to the gas chamber. So despite his honesty, despite what
he might be trying to do right now, despite the small connection they
had years ago, Jeffrey Dillan might need to die.

"Are you ready to
come see me now?"

"You stole that
woman out of her house, didn't you? Did you have to kill all those
cops too?"

"There wasn't any
other way."

"Then why didn't
you simply leave her alone, Matt?"

"We all get what
we deserve in the end. I'm believing that more and more. I used to
think very few people got what they deserved, but the longer this
goes on, the more I see how the chips were supposed to fall."

"What are you
saying?" Rally asked.

"I couldn't
complete this until I learned some kind of humility. That was my
ten-year punishment. All the people who touched Hilman are just about
dead or at the least understanding what was taken from us. He's close
to coming back, Ral, and there isn't much that can stop it from
happening. The F.B.I. is just now understanding how I took Lucent
from her house. Everyone that was involved in Hilman's death,
including us, is getting what they deserve. We'll be getting a son
soon; it just took me time to learn how to deserve him again."

"Do you understand
how insane you sound?"

Matthew was quiet for a
second. "To you? To the police listening? Yes, I guess I do. Are
you still coming to me?"

"Yes. I'm ready.
One day, that's all you get."

"That's all I
need."

* * *

Allison Moore listened
to the phone call between Rally and Matthew Brand with a growing fear
that she would never be able to stop this man. Like he was closer to
a god than a human, and they were all just part of his plan. Even
Rally's trip to him, orchestrated by her to find him, but he was
somehow in control of that as well.

Four cops dead and her
F.B.I. agents left sitting outside the house for six hours without a
clue as to what Brand did inside. Allison had botched it, and if she
continued, she was done, off the case and back at home with her
daughter and her husband.

And
would that be so horrible?

Her career would be
over. They would give her a desk job somewhere, allow her to fill out
paperwork and continue earning a paycheck, but no more cases like
this. No more chasing criminals.

Giving
that up isn't worth getting your family back?
Allison
couldn't think about that now, couldn't go back to Jerry and the
things he was feeling. She had to be present, here and now, focusing
on what she could do to stop Matthew Brand. If she let her mind
travel to her family, then this was done. If she allowed Jerry's
wants to infiltrate her thinking, she would never focus on this task.
She was already at a disadvantage, and allowing her personal issues
into it would completely handicap her.

Pushing Jerry from her
mind, she found the other man in her life.

Allison had sat in the
car with him, looked at his face and conversed with him. Two feet
from Matthew Brand and not a clue. Just driving up and down the road,
following Lucent. Barking out orders of ways they could make her
safer, when all the time the spider spun its web around them all.
Three more people died because she saw a cop instead of a killer. She
hadn't even thought it possible, that he would come in as one of
them. He wanted Lucent, but had known the cops that would be on duty,
known where they lived, known what time they woke and arrived at
work. Was there anything he didn't know? Was there anything Allison
could keep from him?

He sounded like the
world would simply open up for him, give him whatever treasures he
wanted. The woman he loved was coming down to see him and the people
he had wanted to find were all with him, locked away in whatever
wooden cabin he kept now. Was Allison wrong, here? Was she setting
Rally up to die or to be kidnapped? Was he in control and herself
simply a bug caught in his web?

Allison forced herself
from her own head and looked forward at Rally. The woman stared at
the kitchen table in front of her, the phone pressed to her ear. Her
husband sat beside her, holding her hand. Allison thought she must
have been one of the strongest women to ever live, perhaps long lost
kin to Joan of Arc, in order to bear Matthew Brand through all those
years of marriage. To put up with everything that came after, and
even now, instead of kicking Allison from her home, agreeing to
somehow see this monster who talked about loving her son. Somehow
trusting the F.B.I. that they could keep her safe even though they
had been unable to keep anyone else safe in this whole ordeal.

* * *

"So how is this
going to work?" Rally asked. Her eyes followed the wooden lines
on the table, trying to see one all the way across but she kept
losing it.

"I'm going to come
get you and after a day, I'll let you go."

"When?"

"I'm just going to
tell you with all those cops sitting around your house, huh? You
think that's my plan, Ral?"

"Worth a shot, I
guess. I'd see you one way or the other, either at your place or in
jail."

She heard him laugh.

"I'm going to try
and stay out of jail for the time being. I'll come get you soon
though, before I take anyone else. I just need you to be ready when I
move, but I don't think that'll be a problem. Freezing up was never
your specialty, was it?"

Rally laughed next.
"Not when it came to divorce."

"I suppose that's
true. Okay, I'll see you soon. Agent Moore, are you there?"

Rally looked up to the
F.B.I. agent staring at her. "She is."

"I'll have Rally
home safe, I promise. It'll be easier for all of you though if you
stay out of my way. I don't want to have to put more people down than
necessary. You need to understand that if someone gets in my way,
I'll kill them, and it won't be on me because I'm letting you know
this now. Whoever dies at this pick-up and drop off, that blood
covers your hands. Those cops in Durham, that's on me. The cops here,
they're yours."

Rally looked at the
woman who had been her contact throughout all of this. Her face
didn't change, she just kept her hands pressed down on the earphones
covering her head. There wasn't much to show that she had even heard
Matt speak; a simple nod was all she gave as the silence stretched.

"She heard you,
Matt. No one's going to get in the way. I'm going to come see you and
maybe put a stop to all this."

"Or maybe join in,
who knows?" He said and Rally could almost feel the smile he
wore on his face.

"He's off the
line," someone else in her house said, some other agent who
didn't know where she kept the spoons or the sugar, some agent who
was here for the month and then would leave as soon as they brought
Matt down. Some agent who practically lived with her now though,
monitoring all her calls and triangulating exactly where they came
from. All the calls except for Matt's. The agent couldn't find where
that call originated from no matter how many times Matt dialed her.

"Still no match,"
the agent said.

"It's fine,"
Moore spoke, standing up from her chair. "He'll be here soon.
That could be tonight or it could be in a week. We've got a lot to
do. I'm going to bring the techs in and let them have a look at you,
Rally, to see where we can hide these wires. Time to get started."

Agent Moore pulled her
phone from her pocket.

Rally looked to her
husband who in turn looked simply frightened. This wasn't what he had
signed up for, but he wasn't turning to run. No one else in the room
was scared, or at least they didn't show it, besides Harold. He
didn't want her doing this. Didn't want her going to meet Matt and
didn't want these cops trying to make her do it. The rest of the
people in this house held their fear at bay, or maybe they had none
because it didn't really matter if this woman died. Outside of the
media storm that her death would bring, there wasn't any reason for
them to really want her to stay alive. To everyone in this room, she
was bait the same as Lucent had been; only Harold was scared.

She leaned in and
kissed him, and he kissed back, his hand on hers.

"Don't do this,"
he whispered.

"I have to,"
she told him.

We
need to talk.

Email
yourself.

-MB

Jeffrey looked at the
letters that formed words and the words that formed sentences and the
sentences that formed a single message. And it answered one question:
Matthew had his phone. He didn't know where Jeffrey was, but with the
phone, he knew where the rest of Jeffrey's loved ones were. His niece
and his nephew. His sister. Her husband. His Dad and the nursing home
he resided in. His agent, his lawyer—although, to be honest,
Jeffrey really didn't care too much what happened to him. Lawyers,
according to Jeffrey, were whale shit, which fell to the bottom of
the ocean, guaranteeing nothing lower on Earth. The rest of the
people in the phone? Even drunk—which he definitely was now—Jeffrey
couldn't deny he cared about them.

Did Matthew imply that
he might hurt them? Was that in the note?

"Of course it is.
What do you think he's going to do if you don't message him back?
Fucking forget about you?"

Jeffrey's new hotel
room was a hundred miles out of Daytona. There was no need to look at
the warehouse or Matthew's hotel any longer. The only reason he
hadn't kept driving north, driving all the way to Canada, was he was
too drunk to drive. He had rushed down here at speeds approaching
one-hundred-and-twenty, and only God's grace kept him from being
arrested or dying. Looking in his rear view the whole time for that
rusted car Brand drove. He got to his hotel, grabbed as much shit as
he could as fast as he could, running it out to his car in the
hundred degree heat and then left. No check out. No key return. Just
fled the city.

He wasn't so drunk that
he was seeing doubles, but staying between the lines was becoming a
challenge. He pulled off I-75 and found a Holiday Inn. He brought his
computer to his room, leaving everything from his clothes to the
boxes of files in the car. He had no need for them anymore. What he
needed was a gun or a bodyguard; he would have brought those things
up if he owned them.

Allison's Moore number
sat on his computer screen, using Google's database to look up his
contacts, but how could he use it? How could he call her now? He
could lie from here to heaven about how and when he had found Matthew
Brand, that wasn't the issue. The cops' inability to do anything
right so far, that's what kept him from simply finding a phone and
dialing her up. If he told her where Brand was and they fucked that
up too, well, Jeffrey felt confident that anyone important in his
phone would end up dead. He could scream all he wanted about the
F.B.I. protecting his relatives, but that wouldn't be their first
concern, not until they failed to capture Brand. Then they would go
to the one's Jeffrey cared about, but then it would be too late.

So he looked at Brand's
email.

What should he say?
What
could
he say?
Lie? It would be pointless, like lying to God.

He typed one word:
What?

The cursor blinked at
the end of it, asking him if he wanted to continue.

"What the hell
else am I going to say?"

The cursor had no
answer.

Jeffrey hit send and
put the computer on the bed, leaving it open so that he could see if
a new email arrived. He lay down, the view of the blank television
changing to the white ceiling. His drunk hadn't nearly worn off and
he still had about three inches of vodka left in his bottle. If he
closed his eyes, the room spun a bit but he could handle that. Hell,
if he drank the rest of the vodka, it would probably force him to
sleep. He threw his legs out of bed and went to the floor where the
plastic bag holding the bottle of Absolut waited. He grabbed it,
bringing it to eye level. Three inches and then sleep; this was his
life. All his best thinking led him to this point, let him end up in
this hotel in a town he didn't know holding a bottle of vodka and
hoping to some higher power that he could find a way out of this. All
of his brains had got him here.

He unscrewed the cap.

He would drink this and
lie down. Maybe he would call his agent. Maybe he would tell her
where he was and what he was doing and what trouble he'd gotten
himself into. Maybe he would call his own cell phone and tell Brand
where he was. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. The only thing certain, the only
thing Jeffrey knew that was going to happen without any hesitation
was that this liquor would end up inside him and the rest of the
world could take care of itself.

"I'm an
alcoholic," he said to the bottle.

The only answer that
came back was:
What else do you
have anymore?

* * *

She sat outside on the
patio. Her hair hung around her face as she studied the menu.

The man in front of her
had to be her husband, Harold.