The Diabolical Conspiracy (13 page)

Oh, Marnie. Oh, God. I’m so fucking sorry.

Though a voice of reason reminded him of Marnie’s grievous shortcomings and told him this horrible thing he had done was right and necessary, the grief he felt was real. And he couldn’t bear to look again at what he had done to her, at the wreck he had made of her beautiful face.

Oh, Marnie. Jesus, what have I done?

There was a moment there where he might have crumbled completely, but that same strident voice of reason spoke up again, reminding him there was still work to be done and that everything might yet be lost if he didn’t get his ass in gear. So he got shakily to his feet and stumbled over to the barrel. The little girl peered up at him again and when he looked into those terrified but hopeful eyes, his resolve to do what needed doing returned and strengthened.

He reached into the barrel, grasped the girl by her armpits, and pulled her out, setting her gently down on the garage’s cement floor. Holding her gently by the shoulders, he strove for a comforting tone as he said, “You’re gonna be okay now. Hold on while I find something to cut your loose.”

Tears spilled from her eyes, but she managed a nod to show she understood.

He forced a smile. “Good girl. This is almost over, I promise.”

He stepped over Marnie’s prone form and scanned the work table for something he could use. There were knives aplenty in the kitchen, of course, but he couldn’t risk going in there yet. It was very possible Nadia was up and moving around by now and he didn’t want to deal with her until he’d set the girl free. There wasn’t much on the table’s surface, so he started rooting through the drawers beneath it. He hit pay dirt with the second drawer, finding a pair of garden shears with very sharp-looking blades.

After freeing the girl from her bonds and removing the gag from her mouth, he gripped her by the shoulders again and said, “What’s your name?”

She sniffled and her bottom lip trembled, but she managed to spit it out. “Buh…Brittany.”

“
Okay, Brittany. Listen close. I know you’re scared, but it’s very important that you do as I say. Do you understand?”

She sniffled again and nodded as she wiped tears from her eyes.

“
I’m gonna open the garage door in a minute. When I do, I want you to
run
. Okay? I’d take you back to your parents or to the police myself, but I’ve got some things I have to do. There are some more very bad people out there and I have to act fast to make sure they’ll never hurt you or anyone else again. Knock on a neighbor’s door, tell them somebody bad took you and dropped you off in this neighborhood. But please don’t send them this way, okay? At least not right away. This is super important, Brittany. If the police get here too fast, I won’t be able to do the things I need to do. Understand?”

Her brow creased with confusion and her lower lip jutted out in a pout, but she nodded again. Mike wasn’t at all sure the message was getting through, but there was nothing he could do about that other than hope for the best. He got to his feet again, did a quick scan of the garage, and spotted what he was looking for over by the door to the house. A punch of a button mounted on the wall there resulted in a rattling of gears as the garage door began to retract.

Mike met Brittany’s gaze one more time. “Run. Now.”

She ran.

Mike watched her as she dashed through the opening, the hem of her pee-stained polka-dotted dress flapping wildly around her skinny legs as she ran. Then she hooked a right and kept on running, disappearing from his vision. Once she was gone, Mike felt a small degree of inner peace return. He had done the right thing. Finally. For once. But it was just one piece of the puzzle. Much hard--and dangerous--work remained.

He reentered the house and stood inside the short hallway that led to the kitchen on one side and the living room on the other. Holding his breath, he listened for sounds of activity. But several moments passed and he heard nothing but the hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen. He let the breath out and got moving again, cognizant again of that diminishing window of opportunity. Maybe Nadia was still asleep, but that wouldn’t remain the case for long.

He slipped into the kitchen and tread lightly over the tiles as he crossed to the counter, where Marnie had left her handbag the night before. He opened it and felt his heart speed up at the sight of the nickel-plated automatic pistol resting in there against a makeup case. The same gun she had threatened him with that morning three months earlier. Had it been just three months? It felt more like a lifetime. Everything had changed. The mundane world he had known prior to the night of his forced initiation into the Diabolical Conspiracy was lost to him now. Part of him wanted to believe he could yet get it back somehow, but the larger part of him knew better. Odds were he wouldn’t even survive the day. A return to normality was a pipe dream, nothing more.

Taking the gun with him, he left the kitchen and climbed the stairs to the second floor. Nadia was still stretched out on the bed. She was still nude and the sight of her lovely body quickened his pulse, in spite of everything. Her head turned in his direction as he came into the room, her eyes fluttering open as she blinked blearily at him for a few moments. Then the world seemed to come into focus for her as her gaze locked on the gun in his hand.

She sat up. “That’s Marnie’s gun.”

He didn’t say anything.

“
Where is Marnie?” She squinted and leaned forward a little. “Is that…is that
blood
on your shirt?”

Mike pointed the gun at her. “Marnie’s dead. Get dressed.”

Nadia’s expression didn’t change. The implied threat of the gun didn’t seem to bother her. “So you killed Marnie? That’s too bad. I liked her a lot. Are you going to kill me, too?”

Mike jabbed the gun in her direction. “I told you to get dressed. Shut up and do it.”

Still no visible fear on her part, not even the slightest flinch. Nothing more than an apparently mild curiosity. It disturbed him. “But why am I getting dressed? If you’ve gone this far, you and I both know you have to kill me. You know I’d never let you off the hook for this. So why not just kill me now?”

“
Because I need your help.”

She laughed. “Oh, really? With what?”

He took a step closer to her and aimed the gun point-blank at her face. “I need you to help me kill the rest of them.”

14
.

The parking lot behind Fat Sam’s was mostly empty when Mike pulled in at just before nine that morning. The only other vehicles present were a van, two compact cars, and a delivery truck. The delivery truck was backed up close to the restaurant’s rear entrance, while the other vehicles were parked by a Dumpster in the same vicinity. Mike drove to a far back corner of the lot and backed into a space to watch for the arrival of a black Jaguar. All the empty space made him feel conspicuous, but parking any closer to the restaurant would increase the likelihood of being spotted by his quarry too soon. No, back here was the best position for surveillance. If the information Nadia had fed him was correct--and he believed it was--Olson would be arriving within the next few minutes. In the unlikely event of someone else from the restaurant approaching him to inquire about his presence or to tell him the restaurant wasn’t open yet, he had a cover story prepared. He would say he had arrived early for an interview and was just killing some time. It was a plausible-sounding excuse, but as it turned out, he didn’t need it.

Olson’s black Jaguar pulled into the parking lot at six minutes after the hour. Mike hit the gas and roared up to a stop next to it just as Olson was stepping out of his car. He threw his own door open and popped out, aiming Marnie’s gun over the roof of his car at Olson’s stunned face. The portly freak threw up his hands in an instinctive protective gesture, but, perhaps paralyzed by shock, he made no attempt to run. Mike let out a breath and squeezed the trigger. The bullet was on-target, punching through the center of his face and sending a cascade of red out the back of his head. Olson fell back against his car and slid toward the ground. Mike was back in his car before Olson’s corpse hit the dirty asphalt. He dropped the gun on the empty passenger seat next to him and burned rubber out of there. The whole thing went down so fast he was reasonably certain there had been no witnesses. No one had come running out of the restaurant at the sound of the gunshot, nor had he seen anyone on foot nearby. A lucky break. He would need more of them if he hoped to accomplish this insane mission he’d embarked upon.

His next stop was an apartment complex just a few miles away from Fat Sam’s. He drove slowly through the maze of buildings until he arrived at the one marked with a large black G. After pulling in next to a red Volvo, he grabbed Marnie’s gun again and tucked it in his waistband as he got out of his car. He pulled out the tail of his shirt to conceal the weapon and climbed a set of stairs to the second floor, where he knocked on the door to apartment 3G.

Blake Carter worked second shift at a department store. The Volvo parked out front belonged to him. So he was almost certainly home. The only question was whether he would be awake yet. Mike didn’t want to attract unwanted attention by having to repeatedly bang on the door.

His luck was in again.

The door came open perhaps a minute after he knocked. Blake, clad only in boxer shorts, peered blearily out at him. “Mike? Dude, what are--”

Mike shoved his way in and kicked the door shut behind him. Blake made a sound of surprise and stumbled backward. However, despite the abrupt nature of the intrusion, he didn’t seem alarmed yet. It was amazing. You would think a bunch of bloodthirsty, crazy Satanists would have sharper survival instincts, but apparently they were as apt to responding with bewildered confusion in moments of unexpected violence as anyone else. Mike pulled out the gun and shot his friend in the chest. The look of hurt surprise on his face triggered an instinctive pang of regret, but this feeling was even shorter-lived than the grief he’d experienced in the wake of assaulting Marnie. He was over it by the time Blake’s body hit the carpeted floor. Partly this was because of the sense of cold determination he was fighting to hold onto as a necessary component of making it through this whole blood-drenched process.

But it was primarily because another crisis had immediately popped up to occupy his attention in the wake of Blake’s death, this time in the form of a slender blonde woman clad only in black panties and a black bra. She stood in the short hallway beyond the little living room, regarding Mike with an expression of shock and terror. He didn’t recognize the woman. As far as he knew, she was in no way associated with the Diabolical Conspiracy.

“
Shit.”

Hearing his voice snapped her out of the paralysis of terror gripping her. She screamed and fled back down the hallway, disappearing into a room on the left and slamming the door shut behind her. Knowing he didn’t have a choice, Mike hurried after her, opening the door with a single swift kick that sent splinters of wood flying from the jamb. She stood cowering against the far wall with a cell phone pressed against her ear.

He aimed the gun at her. “Put the phone down.”

Instead of doing as she had been told, she screamed.

And screamed again.

Goddammit.

He rushed at her and she cringed away into a corner of the room. She almost slipped past him when he briefly stumbled after trying to adjust his trajectory to account for her movement. But he managed to remain on his feet and lunged after her as she went flying by him. He tackled her and drove her to the floor, effectively pinning her beneath him. She squirmed and cried out, but he pressed the gun against the side of her head and said, “Stop.”

She stopped moving as she felt the cold kiss of steel against her flesh. And now she was sobbing. “Please. Please…don’t rape me.”

Jesus. So this is what it’s come to…

He sighed. “I’m not going to rape you.”

Another sob. “Oh, God. Please don’t kill me.”

“
I’m not gonna kill you, either.”

She sniffled. “Please. Please. I barely even knew Blake. I don’t give a shit about him. I won’t tell the cops about you. I’ll lie. I’ll tell them you were big and black. I’ll make them believe it, I swear. You don’t have to kill me.”

Mike rolled his eyes. “For the love of fuck…look, I already told you, I’m not gonna kill you. Unfortunately, I do have to hurt you. I’m sorry.”

He whipped the butt of the gun across the back of her head before she could say anything else. It made her whimper and squirm beneath him again. Mike felt ripped off. That shit always worked on TV cop shows. So he hit her with the gun again, harder this time. And then he did it a third time. She never quite lost consciousness, but she did seem to have been rendered insensible. He got to work fast while she was out of commission, binding her wrists and ankles with electrical cords. He sealed her mouth shut with a strip of duct tape from a roll he found in the kitchen. That done, he gave her a once-over before departing. The electrical cords wouldn’t hold her as securely as rope. Eventually she might be able to twist her way free. But there was nothing else he could do other than hope they would hold long enough for him to do what he needed to do.