CHAPTER 1
“You’re going to want to take that call,” I said.
The guy with the gun frowned at me. “Call? What call?”
His cell phone rang. A burner phone. The kind criminals and terrorists use because no one is supposed to be able to track them.
“That one,” I said.
CHAPTER 2
HIDEAWAY MOBILE HOME PARK
TUCKERTON, NEW JERSEY
He kept his gun pointed at me as he dug the cell out of his jacket pocket, thumbed it open, and hit the green phone icon.
“Yes…?”
“Put this call on speaker, Mr. Norris,” said a voice. Male, authoritative, with a bit of a New England Kennedy accent.
I wasn’t close enough to hear him from Norris’s phone. But I could also hear it clearly through the earbud I wore. The bud looks like a freckle, and his guys hadn’t found it when they patted me down. And by a pat-down, I mean something as intimate as a Swedish massage in a good spa. No happy ending, because they took all my other goodies. Keys, fake ID, box of minty Tic Tacs, pack of Kleenex, and my gun.
“Who the fuck are you?” demanded Norris.
The voice said, “I am the person who, for the moment, has your best interests at heart. That consideration ends if you refuse to put this call on speaker.”
Norris looked at the other three men in the room. They were all big, all wearing windbreakers over polo shirts and khakis. A kind of uniform. Paramilitary contractor chic. All the rage these days.
“What the hell is this shit?” he asked his friends.
“Ticktock, Mr. Norris,” said the voice.
“Maybe do it, Rick,” said one of the thugs.
Norris looked dubious, but the situation was already strange. So, he muttered something wonderfully obscene under his breath. I was impressed. Goats and strap-ons factored into it. Then he hit Speaker.
“Now tell me who you are and what the fuck is going on,” he demanded.
“My name is unimportant,” said the voice. “What is important is that you and your three colleagues have made a critical error. There is a narrow doorway of opportunity still open in which you can walk back your mistake. If you release your prisoner and let him leave, then that door stays open. If you do not, it will shut with a bang.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“I do not think I need to repeat myself.”
Norris tried to bluff. “What prisoner?”
Norris and his goons all grinned at that. Big joke. I smiled, too.
The voice on the phone said, “I am talking about the person seated on your twelve o’clock, forty-three inches from you. He is more valuable alive and unharmed to me than are you and your colleagues. It is in your best interest to release him. All you need to do is nothing. He gets up and walks out.”
“Nice try, asshole, but I have guns on him right now and—”
There were four shots. They came all at once, overlapping, muffled by distance, smothered by glass, aluminum siding, and insulation.
Norris and his buddies went down hard and … messy.
I had blood, brains, and—god help me—teeth and part of a nose all over me.
I would say that I love what I do for a living. And it’s true most of the time. Sometimes, though, I really hate my job.
INTERLUDE 1
THE MANSION
UNDISCLOSED LOCATION
TWO YEARS AGO
“I … dreamed that I was dying,” she said.
The room was dark, and all she could see were shadows. Some were fixed and unmoving and over time resolved themselves into things she knew she should recognize. When she did, it took a little longer to assign them names. Wall. Closet door. Bureau. Drapes. Ceiling.
Other shadows moved. What were they?
Blades that cut the shadows that clung to the ceiling.
What was that called?
She fished and fished and finally reeled in the words.
Ceiling fan? Was that right? Was “ceiling fan” a real thing?
Yes, she decided. It was. So were the other things. The walls and doors and heavy drapes that blocked out the … the thing. The bright thing. Sun? Yes, that was it. She could not see it, but she knew the drapes blocked out the sun.
There was another thing. Closer than all the others. Right there. Right next to her. What was it?
Was it a person…?
Or, maybe … a man?
His face was awash in shadows, and she wasn’t able to pick out details. For a while, she accepted that it was a faceless face. A shape with no definition. No … parts.
And yet it spoke. Even without a mouth.
“Did the dream frighten you?” he asked. A soft voice. Accented—she knew that much but could not put a name to which kind of accent. Not foreign, though.
“Yes.”
“Were you very afraid?”
“Yes.”
“Are you still afraid?”
She paused before answering that question.
Then, finally, she murmured, “Yes.”
It was very soft, the way a self-aware child might say it, and all the more heartbreaking for that.
“What are you afraid of?” asked the shadow man.
“I’m afraid that I’m dying.”
“No,” he said. “You are not dying. Is that really what you were afraid of?”
She thought about that as she watched the blades of the ceiling fan slice and slice. The breeze they made stirred the man’s hair, and that made her realize he had hair. And a brow. Cheekbones. A nose and a chin.
But she still could not see his eyes. Or his mouth.
“I thought I was dead.”
“Ah,” he said.
“Am I dead?” she asked, and the asking of it terrified her so deeply that she began to cry.
“Shhhhh,” he soothed. “Shhhh, now.”
“Please,” she begged. “Am I dead?”
“No, sweet pumpkin,” he said softly. “You’re not dead.”
“Then … am I … alive?”
There was a pause, and though she could not see any mouth, she somehow knew he was smiling.
“No,” he said. “You’re not alive, either.”
That’s when she started to scream.
And she screamed for a very long time.
CHAPTER 3
HIDEAWAY MOBILE HOME PARK
TUCKERTON, NEW JERSEY
There are two doors in most double-wide trailers—living room and utility. Sometimes kitchen. The shooters came in through both, weapons up. Two in the front, two in back, with a shaggy white combat dog in close company.
None of them were in full combat rig, though I knew they had very thin and very tough spider-silk and Kevlar X9 body armor under their street clothes. The two who came in the back were as mismatched a pair as you could find. The guy was a Cajun with coal-black hair, ice-blue eyes, a face that was youthful and charming. The woman had intensely dark skin and intensely fierce eyes, and she had scars that spoke to a horrific past.
The pair who came in the front weren’t any closer to being a matched set. There was a black man with a shaved head and graying goatee, and the kind of wiry build that explained why someone of his age was still running with the fast dogs. His partner was six and a half feet of overly muscled white guy with blue eyes, blond hair, and a don’t-fuck-with-me grin on his face.
They cleared every room of the trailer home while I sat, zip-tied to the chair.
When they were done, the older black man sent the young white kid and the black woman outside.
“Mother Mercy,” he said, “get up top here. Gator Bait, you take a stroll. See who else is awake. Both of you keep it on the DL. No muss, no fuss.”
They melted away.
Then he and the giant stood in front of me. The dog came and sat between them, eyes fierce but tail thumping like a puppy’s.
“Any reason you’re still tied up, Outlaw?” asked Bradley “Top” Sims. “Or you getting lazy in your old age?”
I grinned, then did that trick with sharp twists and leverage that snaps the zip ties at the connector. Pop! Looks like a great feat of physical strength, but it’s really just physics.
Wrists freed, I half stood, then lifted the chair, the legs of which slipped easily out of the plastic cuffs.
Harvey “Bunny” Rabbit, the ex–volleyball jock from Orange County, snorted. “They legit cuffed you below the chair’s cross brace?”
“If Norris and his goons were clever, farm boy,” said Top, “they’d still be alive.”
He tapped his comms.
“Pappy to Merlin. Package secure. All hostiles down.”
That’s when Ghost, the vicious man-killing, titanium-toothed fur monster, jumped at me and tried to lick me to death. Yup, dead men, blood, and brains all over the place, and the highly trained combat dog goes all six-week-old puppy on me.
I told him to sit his furry ass down, and he did. Though he still looked happy. He loves this sort of stuff.
Top came close and used his thumb and index finger to turn my face one way and then the other, studying the damage.
“You’ll live,” he said.
“But he won’t be pretty,” said Bunny.
“Wasn’t to begin with,” replied Top.
“Thanks for rescuing me,” I said, “and—I mean this with my whole heart—fuck you both.”
Bunny laughed. Top smiled. A bit. His brown eyes studied more than my bruises. He looked deep into my eyes and read what was there to be read. What I let him read. Which, given this was Top, was a lot.
“You good, Outlaw?” he asked gently as he handed me an armored vest.
I knew what he was asking. Ever since the Darkness thing a year or so back, he did these spot checks on me after anytime I get shoved into a bad place. The reason I let him is because I went a little crazy back then. Okay, full disclosure—crazi-er. While searching for the group of killers who murdered my entire family, I went pretty far off the psychological reservation. As the personification of the darkness that had been born within me at that mass funeral, I did more than merely hunt for criminals. I ruined them. Destroyed them. And nearly destroyed myself in the process.
As far as I’m concerned, that aspect of me is gone. One hundred percent.
Not everyone agrees with me. Or, maybe it’s that I went so far off the reservation that reasonable doubt is … well … reasonable. And Top, being more than my strong right hand in Havoc Team, is also wise, kind, and insightful. He knew that if I strayed out of the light, then I was more than a danger to myself—I could easily endanger my team. And the mission.
Do I fault him for that caution? No, I damn well do not.
“I’m good,” I said, meaning it. “This was nothing.”
He nodded and stepped back.
I’d been in civvies for the meet at the bar, so the vest made me feel a lot more comfortable and confident. And before you call me silly and weak, even scorpions have armor. So there.
I finished attaching the vest with Velcro and plastic clips, strapped my gun belt on, and checked my sidearm. I was carrying a Colt M1911 .45 ACP that used to belong to my father. Norris had examined it but, except for ejecting the round in the chamber, hadn’t messed with it. I worked the action, swapped in a new magazine, chambered a round, made sure the thumb and grip safeties were on, and holstered it. A comforting weight.
On my other hip was a Snellig 22A-Max gas dart gun with a full magazine of Sandman that shoots high-velocity collagen-shell darts filled with a cocktail of chemicals designed around the veterinary drug ketamine, but with BZ—3-Quinuclidinyl benzilate—to cause intense and immediate confusion and DMHP—Dimethylheptylpyran, a derivative of THC—for muscle failure. We call it Sandman because when you get hit, you go down and go to sleep. Not a nice sleep, mind you, but into a version of the Twilight Zone that Rod Serling would have done if he were both high and mad at you.
That gun was also, in its way, comforting.
Top said, “No one else at home here, but the clock’s ticking.”
“Yes, it is.” I nodded to Bunny. “Toss the place. Anything electronic goes in a bag. Same for weapons, IDs, papers, travel docs, the works. Norris and his goons are Tenth Legion, and those assholes are paranoid as hell, so look for trips and traps.”
“On it,” he said and began his search.
To Top, I said, “Nice circus trick with the four shots.”
“Yeah, well, that was Gator Bait’s idea. He had drones feeding us thermal scans with in-room mapping. We took up our spots and waited for Merlin to give the word.”
Merlin was the combat call sign for Mr. Church. Our boss, the spooky bastard who always sounds cool and calm but is never to be messed with. What just happened was a clear example of why.
Top unslung his pack and handed me some other items—a pair of Scout glasses, my lock knife, and some useful electronic stuff that went into various pockets.
Copyright © 2025 by Jonathan Maberry
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