Author: Jeff Strand
Date: 2010-01-02 05:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Horror
Description: The Mad & The Macabre... Two novellas, previously only available as hardcover limited editions, now joined together into one affordable package! KUTTER by Jeff Strand Charlie Stanlon is a serial killer. A ghastly, vicious sociopath who chains women to a table in his basement and tortures them to death. He has no friends. He has no family. He despises his co-workers. His only pleasure in life is to cause pain and terror. Until the day he finds an adorable Boston Terrier and takes it home... REMAINS by Michael McBride On May 21st, 2008, seven graduate students in Religious Studies set out from t
Publisher: Dark Regions Press

THE MAD AND THE MACABRE
by Jeff Strand and Michael McBride

This eBook edition published 2010 by Dark Regions Press.

http://www.darkregions.com

SMASHWORDS EDITION

It is available as a Trade Paperback here.

© Jeff Strand 2010 and Michael McBride 2010

Cover Design by Frank Walls

Ebook Creation by Stephen James Price
www.generationnextpublications.com

Table of Contents

Kutter

Remains

About the Authors

KUTTER

-1-

Charlie Stanlon held the dead woman and wept.

It wasn't supposed to happen like this. He'd been careful, like always. He'd applied antiseptic and bandaged each cut right after he made it, and he hadn't cut her anyplace where she should've bled to death. Though her nude body was covered with dozens of bandages, she should've been his for at least another week.

But, no, she'd just given up. After the first few slashes, she'd barely even struggled.

Charlie walked away from the bloodstained metal table, to the other side of the basement, and tried to compose himself. Crying over this was ridiculous. He was forty-two, not a little kid who'd broken his toy airplane. He grabbed a rag from the crooked shelf he'd installed himself and wiped his eyes.

Pathetic. He was absolutely pathetic.

Charlie forced himself to shrug. "Oh well," he said out loud. "These things happen. Can't win 'em all. That's life in the big city for you."

He glanced back at the corpse. He could pretend she was still alive. Pretend she could feel the new cuts. Pretend she was so petrified with fear that she'd slipped into a catatonic state where she could see everything, feel everything, yet couldn't make a sound or move a muscle, even though she was screaming inside of her brain.

No. He'd just be cutting up a dead woman. That was no good. There was no satisfaction there--he'd simply be making a mess.

He felt the tears start to form again, and bit down on the sides of his mouth--hard--to keep them from flowing. It didn't work. But at least the pain made him feel a little bit better about crying.

Charlie sat in the corner on the cement floor, and silently wept. It wasn't fair. Nine hours. He'd only had her for nine hours.

Maybe this one wouldn't count. If he had less than a day with her, she shouldn't count. That made sense.

No.

No, no, no.

He had a rule: one every two months. No more. Not ever.

It was always somebody who wouldn't be missed. She was homeless and usually a junkie, although he preferred it when she wasn't on drugs. He could barely even imagine the euphoria if he were given the chance to cut somebody healthy and attractive--maybe even one of his co-workers--but he didn't want to spend the rest of his life in jail. He had to be cautious. And that meant no more than one victim every two months, even if one died prematurely.

He'd just have to figure out a way to make it through the next few weeks.

* * *

Alicia dropped the papers into Charlie's in-box. He didn't look away from his computer monitor until she'd walked back to her desk.

He picked up the stack of papers and sighed with frustration. She'd stapled them in the top center. She was supposed to staple them in the top left, so that he could easily fold the papers over when he was photocopying them. He quickly typed an e-mail to Bob Testiro, his supervisor, explaining the issue once again and requesting that he send out a note to the department to remind everybody of the proper procedure.

He flipped through the pages and sighed again. She hadn't written the customer report date on the balance adjustment form. Charlie sent another note to Bob to inform him of the situation.

A few minutes later, Alicia walked back to his desk. "You know, I sit in the next row," she said.

"Okay."

"Instead of trying to get me in trouble, you could've just asked me to write in the date."

"I wasn't trying to get you in trouble."

"It took more effort to get Bob involved than it would have to come to me directly."

"Okay." Without looking Alicia in the eye, Charlie took the papers out of his in-box and handed them to her.

"Did I do something to piss you off?" she asked.

"No."

"Are you sure?"

Charlie didn't respond. He looked back at his monitor and silently pleaded for her to leave him alone. If she'd done it right the first time, he wouldn't have to bother anyone, and nobody would have to bother him. It was just a staple and a date. Not that hard to remember. She'd been working here three weeks; it wasn't like today was her first day.

Alicia scribbled on the form and put it back in his in-bin. But she didn't leave.

"Charlie?"

"Hmm?"

"Look at me."

Charlie reluctantly turned to face her. She was a couple of years younger than him, as far as he could tell. Not model pretty or actress pretty, but her beauty still made him nervous. She had curly red hair that went down to her shoulders, and freckles. Lots of freckles.

"We have to spend nine or ten hours a day in this place," she said. "So why don't we try to make it a pleasant work environment?"

"Okay."

"If you have an issue with me, bring it to me first, all right? If you're still not happy, then take it up a level. We're supposed to be partners, not adversaries."

Charlie nodded. Why wouldn't she leave him alone?

She stood there for an excruciatingly long moment, as if waiting for him to continue their conversation. He had nothing to say. Finally she left.

* * *

Charlie sat in his basement, staring at the empty table. He'd disposed of the dead woman in what he liked to call the Body Pond four days ago. She should still be alive and thrashing around in front of him. He had no idea how he was going to make it all the way to September 24th, the day he was allowed to stalk his next victim. He'd go insane.

She really shouldn't count. If they died in less than twenty-four hours it shouldn't count. Otherwise it wasn't fair. Just not fair.

He closed his eyes and lightly rapped his head against the basement wall. This wasn't about fairness. This was about being careful. He'd go hunting every week if he knew he wouldn't get caught, but after claiming his first victim three years ago in what had been the greatest single moment of his life, he'd promised himself that he wouldn't get greedy. Wouldn't get sloppy. One kill every other month.

The schedule had always worked out well. It gave him something to look forward to. But after getting ripped off so badly this time, he wasn't sure he could wait for the next one, especially because he rarely found somebody the first night of a hunt. It usually took a couple of days of searching to find a suitable victim where there'd be no witnesses and little chance of injury. Sometimes it took more than a week.

He couldn't break the rules. He'd created them for a reason.

Yet...if he thought about this logically, which was more dangerous? Seeking another victim sooner than planned, or waiting until he was so desperate and frantic that he made a mistake? If he went now, he'd still be in top mental and physical form. In a few weeks, he might be like one of those twitching junkies he sometimes killed.

Yes, waiting was far more dangerous. He'd have to be a complete fool to wait. And since he hadn't been caught in three years, Charlie Stanlon knew he was no fool.

He'd begin the new hunt tonight.

* * *

As Charlie walked down the sidewalk, his heart raced with excitement yet he was also sick to his stomach with dread. As always, he knew that this could be the one that went bad. He could end up in jail, or lying on the street with a knife in his belly, or strapped to a metal table in somebody else's basement. He shuddered at the thought of the things he did to the women happening to him.

He wore a pair of gray sweatpants and a matching gray shirt, specifically chosen to be nondescript. The clothing was hotter than he'd prefer during the summer, even at night. But though Charlie wasn't obese, he was a couple dozen pounds overweight, and he figured he'd be more memorable to possible witnesses in shorts.

It wasn't a good evening. Too many people hanging out in groups. There was one potential: a middle-aged woman huddled on the bench at a bus stop, trying in vain to light a cigarette butt that had no tobacco left. Charlie watched her for a few minutes, then decided that she could be carrying a can of pepper spray. He had to get up early for work tomorrow, so he quit around ten-thirty, went home, and went to bed.

The next hunt began much better. She wasn't attractive, at least not at the moment, but she was young. Sixteen or seventeen. She looked scared.

For several minutes, he stood thirty feet away and watched her dig through the garbage bin behind the crappy restaurant, working up his courage to approach her. Finally he did so, keeping his pace casual, trying to be as quiet as possible.

The girl gasped and spun around to face him. She dropped a Styrofoam container and looked almost embarrassed. Her eyes darted back and forth, as if trying to decide where to run.

"Hi," Charlie said, trying to sound friendly. "I'm not going to hurt you."

"I wasn't stealing anything."

"I don't care." That didn't come out right. "I mean, I don't care if you were. I don't work here. Did you run away from home?"

The girl nodded. She still looked like she was about to flee. If she did, Charlie would just let her go--you couldn't be cautious enough when you were sprinting after a potential victim.

She wasn't a good choice. If she was a new runaway, then somebody was probably looking for her. Charlie preferred to prey upon people who wouldn't be missed right away, if at all. Too risky to take a girl away from parents that cared about her.

Still, he really wanted to do this.

"Do you have anywhere to go?"

"I'm fine."

Charlie thought carefully about what he was going to say. Though he said the same thing almost every time and had even written it down, he occasionally got the words wrong and scared the woman off. "I'd offer to let you sleep on my couch, but I'm crammed into a really small apartment and I barely have room to turn around as it is. I can't give you any money--nothing personal, it's just the way I am after getting burned a few times. Drug users, you know."

The girl stared at him. Charlie cleared his throat.

"Anyway, I can't do any of that, but I'd be happy to buy you something to eat."

He waited expectantly. He considered offering a friendly smile, but that wasn't something that had worked out well for him in the past. Charlie wasn't sure why. He'd practiced his smile in the mirror and it seemed pleasant enough.

The girl shook her head. "I...I don't think I can."

"Why not?"

"I just can't. I'm sorry."

She stepped back. Charlie grabbed her wrist.

Oh, no. Why had he done that? He never did that kind of thing. He always got them back to the car before laying a hand on them. This was sloppy. This was horrible.

He realized that he was squeezing way too hard and let go of her. "I'm just trying to be nice," he said.

She ran.

Charlie took a step forward, then stopped himself. He couldn't chase her out where people might see. That was ridiculous. He'd screwed this one up and couldn't salvage it, so it was time to go home. That was his rule: if a hunt was close but didn't work, he quit for the night.

The rules were what kept him out of jail. Kept him alive.

God, he wanted to chase her. Chase her down, drag her back to where they'd been standing, and bash her head against the rusty metal side of the trash bin. Not hard enough to kill her--hard enough that she knew he wasn't playing around, hard enough that she knew he was controlling her fate, hard enough that she knew there was a lot more pain on the way.

There didn't seem to be anybody else around. The whole area was quiet.

If she was reduced to digging scraps out of the garbage, she probably didn't have much energy. He could catch her quickly. She wouldn't put up much of a struggle. He could handle the situation in less than a minute. Nobody would see.

No. Terrible idea. Terrible idea.

"You can't win 'em all," he whispered.

The hunt was over. Charlie walked back to his car and drove home.

- 2 -

Charlie stared at the TV for about three hours, not really watching it.

* * *

He was deeply ashamed of himself the next morning. Grabbing her arm? How could he be that careless? That impatient? He was starting to lose control, and if he didn't shape up soon, he'd find himself on the receiving end of a three hundred pound convicted rapist's penis. At least, that was the fate he'd overheard a co-worker wish upon the person who stole her laptop. For what Charlie was doing, he'd probably end up with a much larger rapist. Or a much larger penis. Either way, he needed to get himself back to normal.

There was always his emergency shelter, but that was a last resort. He'd rather not spend his remaining years hiding out like an animal.

He looked at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. "Shape up or ship out," he told himself.

Charlie brushed his teeth and rinsed with Listerine, then practiced his smile a few times. He didn't think it looked that creepy. Maybe it was his eyes. He knew people whose eyes seemed to sparkle when they smiled, but his never did.

Contacts might work. Lighten his eyes up. Turn them from brown to blue or green. Then the women might trust his smile. He should make an appointment to visit the eye doctor sometime soon.

After work the next day, Charlie decided to empty his change jar. All of his spare change went into the plain glass jar. When the jar was full to the very top, he'd dump it into the grocery store's loose change machine, get his savings in paper currency (minus an eight percent service charge), and then buy himself something special. With his last jar, he'd bought a really nice power drill with dozens of different bits. He found that he preferred the smallest one.

The jar was just over a third of the way full, and Charlie's official rule was that the top coin actually had to protrude over the surface before he could consider spending the money. But having already decided to break the biggest rule in his life, using the change jar early was a pretty minor infraction, and a handful of bills could possibly accomplish what his personality couldn't.

* * *

He walked out of the grocery store, disappointed. Only fifty-five dollars and twenty-one cents. Less than he'd expected. The jar must've been heavier on pennies than usual.

Still, it should be enough to get somebody into his car. Though it felt like cheating this way, he didn't think he had a choice. After this one, he'd get completely back on track. Follow all of the rules. He just needed to get this one out of his system and then everything would be back to the way it used to be.

* * *

The money worked. He didn't even have to promise that more was forthcoming. He drove with the hooker--really, a crack whore, though he hated that term--in his passenger seat and tried to keep his eyes on the road.

"So what do you want to do?" she asked.

Charlie shrugged. He didn't have a script for this sort of thing.

"I bet you have some idea."

"Okay."

"This your first time?"

"No."

She smiled. "Not first time ever. I meant first time for money."

"Oh. Yes."

"I can tell. I know a guy who can give us something to make us both feel better. It doesn't cost that much."

Charlie shook his head.

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

"You're the boss. Pity, though. You'd have a lot more fun if you relaxed a bit."

"I'm okay."

She pointed through the windshield at a building up ahead. "How about you pull behind that bank over there?"

"My house is better."

"How far is it?"

"Not far."

"You know I can't drive around all night with you, right? Not for what you're paying. Let's just go someplace quick."

"My house is better. It'll only take ten minutes."

"You got beer?"

"Yes."

"What kind?"

Charlie tried to remember the commercials. "Bud Light."

"All right. But we're gonna have to be quick."

The first thing she did when they walked into his house was excuse herself and go into the bathroom. When she emerged a couple of minutes later, her eyes were glazed over and she gave him a half-smile. She wasn't anywhere near as appealing now, but it was very easy to get the chloroform-soaked rag over her mouth.

* * *

"I never had any interest in finding my real parents," he told her, as he polished the blade with a cloth. "I could probably find them, I guess, but I don't see any reason to do that. I lost touch with my first foster family, too, and I spent a lot more time with them than I did my birth parents, so it's just not something that's important to me. I feel guilty about that sometimes, like I should care, but I don't. Why do you need parents when you're in your forties?"

She continued tugging on the straps. He liked that.

"I think maybe if I'd had a really good childhood or a really bad childhood, I'd be more interested. But I barely even remember being a kid. What would we talk about? I don't even use credit cards, so it's not like I'd try to borrow money from them. This is going to sting a lot, so brace yourself. I mean it--it's really going to hurt. I'm going to cut you right there. Not a long cut but a deep one. Are you ready? Blink if you're ready. I bet you can't keep your eyes open like that for more than a minute. Want me to time it? One one thousand, two one thousand, three...see, you blinked. Ready?"

Charlie winked at her, then slid in the blade. Not too deep. He left it there for a few minutes, giving it a slight twist every now and then.

Finally, he removed it and showed her the tip. "Don't worry, I'll make the bleeding stop now. Then you can relax for a while."

He giggled as he tended to her wound. This was well worth the risk he'd taken. Not that he planned to ever do it again--he had to follow the rules--but for this one time he deserved the pleasure.

She went into withdrawal on the second day and died on the third, but Charlie felt completely satisfied.

* * *

His September 24th hunt went much more smoothly. He got her the first night. She'd begged him for money. It probably would've been harder to keep her out of his car than to get her in there.

She screamed so loud when she regained consciousness that Charlie worried that even the extensive soundproofing in his basement might be insufficient, so he put on the leather gag. By the third day, she wasn't screaming very loud anymore, and he took it off.

* * *

His November 24th hunt was about average. Last year around Thanksgiving he'd told his victim that he was celebrating with human flesh instead of turkey, and then he read her some cannibalism jokes he'd gotten out of a book. He dug out his notes and did the same thing this year. He didn't really eat her, though.

He drove her pieces to the Body Pond, which was a small pond about an hour out of the city. As far as Charlie knew, hardly anybody ever went out to the pond, and he thought it was deep enough that even an extended drought wouldn't uncover the rock-filled sacks.

Of course, he hoped to fill the pond enough that someday he'd be forced to find a new hiding spot.

* * *

"What do you think you're doing?" Alicia asked, walking over to his desk.

"What?"

"What do you think you're doing?"

Charlie squirmed and desperately wished she would leave him alone. "I'm just trying to work."

"Everybody else is in the break room having Christmas lunch. Doing work is strictly off-limits. C'mon."

"I didn't bring anything for it."

"Why not?"

Charlie shrugged.

"You could have at least signed up to bring napkins. It doesn't take anything to stop on your way here and buy a package of napkins. But I won't tell anyone you didn't contribute if you don't. Let's go get some food."

"I'm fine."

"If I called it a holiday lunch instead of a Christmas lunch, would you go?"

"I'm not hungry."

"How hungry do you have to be for cookies?"

"I don't know."

"Get up, Charlie. The whole department is having a holiday lunch, and you're part of the department. It's silly for you to sit here by yourself. Don't make me drag you in there by your shirt collar. I'll do it."

Charlie looked back at his computer screen. "I'm not hungry."

Alicia stared at him for a moment, and then shrugged. "Whatever you want. I'm just trying to be nice to you. Hope you get a lot done."

She left, and Charlie let out a deep sigh of relief.

* * *

Charlie walked down the sidewalk, hands deep in his pockets, breath misting in the cold air. He had no interest in the Christmas lights or the music that played from one of the downtown shops, but he did enjoy the crunching sound the occasional patches of ice made under his feet as he walked.

The wind was starting to pick up and it was getting chillier than he liked. He pulled the hood of his jacket over his head and decided to cut through Klant Park. It wasn't usually a good idea to walk through the park at night (Charlie was confident in his ability to deal with a helpless vagrant woman; less so in his ability to fend off a group of muggers) but the small park seemed to be empty.

As he walked through the single path, past the swing set, he heard something.

A faint whimper.

He stopped and listened more closely. Definitely a whimper. Not human. Sounded like a dog.

He glanced around, looking for the source. It was difficult to hear over the rush of the wind, and the park was poorly lit, but it seemed to be coming from the opposite side. He picked up his pace a bit, curious to see what was out there.

He walked through the park until he found the source of the sound, which came from beneath a wooden bench. It was indeed a small dog, lying on its side. He crouched down and stared at it with mild interest.

Charlie had never owned pets as a kid, and didn't feel he was missing anything as an adult. He knew that a lot of serial killers started with animals and worked their way up to humans, but Charlie didn't see the point. Anybody could have control over a domesticated dog, unless it went on a wild rampage and started mauling infants. There was no trick to keeping a dog on a leash, no thrill to be gained from causing it pain. Why bother?

He wondered what was wrong with the dog. There didn't seem to be any blood. Maybe it was just starving.

The dog kind of amused him. It had a funny black-and-white face (white down the middle, black on the sides) that almost looked like a clown. He didn't know the name of the breed, but this kind of dog appeared in television commercials a lot. He liked the way its eyes bugged out a little. Very silly.

He gently brushed his hand across its fur. The dog whined, though Charlie didn't think he was hurting it. It wasn't wearing a collar.

Would it bite him if he put his finger next to its mouth? He'd never been bitten by a dog before. Maybe it would enrage him enough to want to bring the dog to his basement. That would certainly be less risky than a homeless woman.

Of course, the dog could be rabid. That was a good reason not to see if it would bite him.

It didn't seem to be foaming at the mouth at all, and it certainly wasn't being aggressive. Admittedly, Charlie knew very little about rabies, but everything he'd seen on TV and movies involved foaming at the mouth and growling. A rabid dog wouldn't just lie here under a park bench; it would be going berserk.

He took off his right glove, extended his index finger and carefully placed it in front of the dog's mouth.

The dog whimpered and licked his finger.

Charlie wiped its slobber off on his jeans. Disgusting.

But he wasn't going to kill it simply because it got some dog spit on him. He put his glove back on and stood up. He might check back tomorrow to see if it had starved to death, just out of curiosity.

As he walked away, the dog let out a pitiful howl. Charlie kept walking. It wasn't his dog, and if the owner didn't care enough to watch his property, Charlie wasn't going to do it for him. If he saw the owner frantically searching for his dog, he might point out where it was laying, but beyond that, the animal wasn't his problem.

He left the park and resumed walking on the sidewalk, once again enjoying the crunch of ice under his feet. He tried to remember which commercials he'd seen that kind of dog in. At least one of them was for flea medicine--the clown-faced dog was scratching and the pug wasn't. Or maybe it was the other way around. He also thought one of those dogs was in a car insurance advertisement. It might have talked.

It was definitely a popular type of dog. Not only would the owner probably be looking for it, but there might be a reward for its safe return.

Charlie had no idea how much a clown-dog cost, and he had no idea what kind of reward might be offered for finding one...but what if it was a lot? What if it was five hundred dollars? Though it was unlikely to be that much, what if the owner was really attached to the dog? It wasn't as if Charlie had anything else to do tonight--he might as well take the dog home and hope there was a reward. If there wasn't, he'd throw it back outside. No harm done.

He turned around, walked back to the park bench, and crouched down next to the dog again. Now that he was looking at it a second time, he seemed to recall that it was named after a state. Or a city. Something like that.

"Don't bite me," he warned the dog. He was fine with the animal biting him as part of an experiment in rage control, but not when he was trying to help it.

Charlie immediately felt like an idiot. Dogs couldn't talk. And, more importantly, dogs couldn't understand human speech. He was glad that nobody else was around to hear.

He carefully slid his hands underneath the dog's side and lifted it off the ground a few inches, then pulled it out from beneath the bench. The dog whimpered some more, but lifting it didn't seem to hurt it. He hugged the dog to his chest and stood up.

The dog licked his face.

Even more disgusting.

He couldn't wipe it off without dropping the animal, so Charlie merely scowled and left the slobber on his face. The wet warmth quickly turned uncomfortably cold in the chilly night air. Stupid dog.

The dog nuzzled its face into his jacket, as if trying to burrow inside for warmth. Charlie supposed he couldn't blame the poor creature, though he wasn't about to unzip his jacket and let it get any closer to him.

It was a bit heavier than he'd expected, but Charlie was used to dragging corpses around, so he was pretty sure he'd have no problems carrying the dog home.

As he stepped onto the sidewalk, the illumination from the streetlights revealed a couple of streaks of red on the dog's fur. He hadn't noticed the blood before. He wondered if the dog had gotten into a fight, maybe with a squirrel. There hadn't been a shredded squirrel carcass lying under the bench, so it was kind of sad that the dog had been beaten by something so much smaller than it.

Well, okay, he had no evidence that it was a squirrel. It could've been a bigger dog. Or a human with a knife.

Either way, the dog didn't seem to have lost all that much blood, certainly not enough to account for its weakened state. Possibly a lack of food and water is what made it lose the fight. Much of Charlie's success at hunting came from seeking prey that was hungry and thirsty, so he understood the dog's plight.

The dog fell asleep in his arms as he carried it home.

- 3 -

Charlie smiled as he carried the dog downstairs to his basement. He'd lived in this house for five years, and the dog would be his first guest that wasn't going down into the basement to die. At least he hoped it wasn't--the dog didn't seem to be dying, but Charlie couldn't be certain. He'd never even met a veterinarian.

Actually, as embarrassing as it was to admit to himself, Charlie was a bit uncomfortable with the idea of the dog seeing the scene of his many crimes. Not that he thought the dog was going to run barking to the police, but still, dumb animal or not, it was another pair of eyes on the table where he'd killed almost twenty women. Maybe he was being less than meticulous about his secrecy.

However, that irrational feeling wasn't enough for him to let the dog bleed all over his upstairs furniture. He'd upholstered that couch himself.

He placed the dog on the metal table. It looked as if it wanted to jump to the floor but lacked the strength. He pressed down on its back to keep it from moving, and counted the wounds. Five different gashes: two long ones on its back, two smaller ones on its left side, and one on its back left leg. None of them were bleeding profusely.

Charlie had plenty of experience tending to wounds. No medical training, and nothing fancy--just bandages and antiseptic. He assumed this would work for a dog, too.

Normally his patient was strapped down. Unfortunately, though his ankle and wrist bracelets could adjust to accommodate various heights, they were still only designed for a human. He'd just have to hold the dog down while he applied the alcohol.

The dog yelped and thrashed and almost got free. "You'll break your leg if you jump off," he warned it as he pressed the dog more tightly against the metal surface. Instead of his usual precise touch, he settled for pouring the antiseptic over the wounds, and then held the dog against the table for several more minutes until it calmed down. The bandages didn't stick very well because of its fur, so Charlie wrapped tape around its legs and torso, which kept them affixed well enough.

The basement had a sink that Charlie primarily used to rinse blood off his tools. He found a small plastic bowl, emptied out the screws and nails that were inside, filled it with water, and placed it in front of the dog. The dog frantically lapped up the water, drinking so vigorously that Charlie had to hold the bowl steady to keep the dog from knocking it off the table. When the dog finished, he refilled the bowl and let it drink some more.

He lifted the dog off the table, causing it to yelp in pain, and set it down on the floor. "Stay," he told it in a firm voice, as he walked toward the staircase.

The dog followed him. Slowly and shakily, but it followed.

"I said, stay." Charlie pointed to the dog. "Stay."

The dog barked.

"Don't bark at me," he told it. "Stay." He decided to try something else: "Sit."

The dog did not sit. It barked again.

Charlie walked up the stairs and shut the basement door. He didn't want blood and dog hair upstairs. The only untidy part of his house was his basement, and then only when he had a victim down there. That dog was lucky it wasn't still freezing in the park; it would just have to deal with being kept downstairs until he returned it to its rightful owner.

He opened the cupboard and looked through the shelves. He didn't have any dog food. What was the next best thing?

Breakfast cereal? That sort of looked like dog food.

He filled a bowl with dry cereal, then reopened the door to the basement. The dog sat on the bottom step, looking up at him expectantly. Charlie walked down the stairs and placed the bowl on the floor next to the dog. It sniffed the cereal, looked back at up at him, and whined softly.

"Eat it," Charlie said.

The dog continued to stare at him.

"Eat it," Charlie repeated. "They're Cocoa Puffs."

The dog sneezed. Charlie wasn't sure if it was a derisive sneeze or just a regular sneeze. Either way, he didn't have a lot of sympathy for a starving creature that wouldn't eat the food that was right in front of it. If it wanted to die, he'd let it die. If it expired in his basement, his only regret would be that it had sneezed all over his perfectly good Cocoa Puffs.

Maybe he was being unfair. Charlie wouldn't eat a bowl of dog food, so perhaps it was unreasonable to expect this dog to eat a bowl of human cereal, especially without milk. It was only around eight o'clock, so the pet store was probably still open. He'd pick up some real dog food and then bill the cost to the owner.

"Stay," he told the dog, then walked back upstairs and shut the door.

* * *

Before he went to the food aisle, Charlie stopped at the revolving metal book rack. He looked at the various covers, trying to figure out what kind of dog he had in his basement. It wasn't a schnauzer, dachshund, beagle (That was a beagle on the cover? They didn't look anything like Snoopy!), pit bull, shih tzu, Japanese chin...there it was. Caring For Your Boston Terrier. He knew it was named after a city or a state.

He didn't take the book off the rack. He had no intention of learning how to care for the dog--he was just curious about what kind it was.

He wandered over to the food aisle and frowned. There were several dozen different varieties. Were they breed specific? Was it all the same garbage with different packaging? What was wrong with just having one bag and labeling it "Dog Food?"

Charlie decided to make this into a much easier decision. He scanned the aisle, searching for the lowest price.

"Looking for something in particular?" asked an employee, a young cute brunette, maybe twenty-two or twenty-three.

"Just food."

"How old is your dog?"

Charlie shrugged.

"Is it a puppy?"

"No." Charlie picked up the closest bag of food, hoping that the employee would think he'd made his final decision and go away.

"If you're looking for anything else, toys, treats, or whatever, just let me know," said the employee with a friendly smile.

"Okay."

After she left, Charlie put the bag of food back on the shelf and traded it out for a cheaper one. Actually, for some reason he'd expected dog food to be a lot more expensive; still, no need to risk spending unnecessary money in case he never found the owner and had to abandon the dog.

He walked past the toy section on his way to the checkout counter. Maybe he should buy something to keep the dog occupied during the day. He picked up a bone-shaped squeak toy, decided against the expenditure, then paid for the food and went home.

* * *

The dog gobbled the bowl of food as if it hadn't eaten in months. It didn't even seem to be taking time to breathe, which was funny to watch because it had a flat little nose that didn't seem like it would be easy to breathe through.

It finished off the contents of the bowl in no time, ate the pieces that had spilled over the side, then looked up at Charlie. He shrugged and filled its bowl again. This time it finished half of the food, then let out what sounded like a happy bark.

Charlie had nothing to say to the dog, so he went back upstairs to make some signs.

* * *

Charlie wrote "Found Boston Terrier" and his phone number in black magic marker on twenty pieces of paper. The notice would probably be more effective if he attached a picture of the dog, but he didn't own a camera. The whole idea of photographs made Charlie uncomfortable. Not that he believed that they'd steal his soul or anything like that--he just didn't like them. He might have owned a cell phone with a camera, if he ever had anybody to call.

After he finished making the twentieth sign, he questioned his judgment in putting "Boston Terrier" on there. If those were valuable dogs, people might try to falsely claim the one in his basement. Though he could certainly figure out a way to make potential owners prove that the dog truly belonged to them, he didn't want to be bothered with scam artists.

He crumpled up all twenty signs and began the process again, writing simply "Found Dog" and his phone number. Then, armed with his signs and some scotch tape, he walked around the area for about half an hour, taping the signs to streetlamps, mailboxes, and newspaper boxes, as well as on the park bench where he'd found the dog. He returned home, turned up the heat, and went to sleep.

* * *

Charlie woke up out of a sound sleep and glanced over at the alarm clock. 1:21 AM.

There was a strange noise in the house. He listened carefully for a moment, and then figured out what he was hearing: scratching.

Why was that stupid dog scratching on the basement door? What could it possibly want at this time of night?

He closed his eyes and tried to go back to sleep, but the scratching didn't stop. The dog had food and it had water--did it just have an attitude problem? Charlie was a big believer in the merits of a good night's sleep, and if this dog didn't knock off the scratching, he'd kick it in the face.

He counted slowly to five hundred. The scratching continued. With all the soundproofing, scratching on the door was pretty much the only sound he would hear from the basement. Figured.

Charlie cursed, got out of bed, then walked in his underwear through the kitchen over to the basement door. He opened it and glared at the dog, which sat on the top step.

"Don't do that," he said.

The dog barked.

"Don't do that, either," he told it.

The dog pushed past his leg and ran into the kitchen. Charlie cursed again and went after it. If that dog wrecked any of his things, he was going to withdraw his objections to torturing a dumb animal. With Charlie in hot pursuit, the dog ran into the living room and jumped up on the couch.

Charlie pointed to the floor. "Get down."

The dog lay down in the crevice between the two couch cushions.

"Get down," Charlie repeated, more sternly.

Charlie realized that he'd left the basement door open. It wasn't as if he had a victim down there who might escape or be discovered, but still, he liked to keep the door closed at all times.

"Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you," he said out loud, closing the basement door and causing a waft of cool air to brush against his face.

It was pretty cold down there, he supposed. He couldn't blame the dog for wanting to come upstairs where it was warmer. The basement was surely a lot better than being outside in the park, but if the dog was used to a warm home with a rich master...

Charlie poured himself a glass of milk, drank it, rinsed out the glass, and then returned to the living room.

"Hey," he said to the dog. It looked like it was about to fall asleep. "You can stay up here, but if you..." He trailed off. Why in the world was he trying to speak a complete sentence to a dog? He was losing his mind. Many of his victims had claimed that he was insane, and now he was trying to prove them right!

The dog closed its eyes.

Charlie watched it for several minutes until he was sure that the dog was asleep. Then he returned to bed.

* * *

Charlie woke up and glanced over at the alarm clock. 4:29 AM.

Woof!

Stupid dog.

Woof! Woof! Woof!

Charlie got out of bed and stormed into the living room. The dog stopped barking and started panting happily. At least it looked happy--it was just a dog, so he couldn't tell for certain.

"What?" Charlie asked. "What do you want?"

A horrifying thought occurred to him. He quickly rushed over and peeked out the front window to make sure the dog wasn't trying to alert him to potential danger.

No police car was waiting outside. Apparently no watchdog duties were being performed. He returned his attention to the animal.

"What the hell is your problem?" he asked.

The dog continued to pant happily.

"I have to sleep! I have to get up early to go to work! You can't bark like that!"

Then he noticed that the dog had somehow worked the bandages off its legs. There were a few small blood spots on his couch. Charlie cursed again, setting a personal profanity record.

"You had your chance, but you blew it," he said, picking up the dog. "That's the way the cookie crumbles."

He carried it into the kitchen, shifted the dog in his arms so he could open the basement door while still holding it, gasped as he nearly dropped the dog, regained control, then got the basement door open and placed the dog on the top step.

"It's your own fault," he said, closing the door.

He didn't know if it would start scratching again, but he could sleep through that a lot more easily than the barking. He'd be okay for work if he got in a couple more hours of rest before the alarm went off. Charlie was perfectly fine with not getting much sleep on a night when he had a plaything in the basement, but he was much less fine with the idea of losing sleep over an idiot dog.

* * *

Charlie woke up to the alarm at 6:30. He had a banana and a piece of toast for breakfast, then opened the door to the basement. The dog bounded up the stairs toward him as he walked down, nearly tripping him as it nipped at his feet. He braced himself against the wall and told the dog to knock it off. It had a lot more energy now than when he'd first found it, that was for sure.

He reached the bottom without falling and breaking his neck and then refilled the dog's food and water bowls. By now it had lost its torso bandages completely, so he took a few minutes to redress its wounds. The dog licked his hand, and he wiped the slobber off on its fur. He didn't see the point in explaining to the dog that it would be spending the entire day in the basement while he went to work, so he simply went back upstairs to shower and get dressed.

* * *

As Charlie drove to work, it occurred to him that he should have taken the dog for a walk before he left. Oh well. It was far from the first mess he'd have to clean up in that basement.

- 4 -

During his 10:45 AM break, Charlie called his home voice mail to check if there were any messages. He had to think for several moments to recall his password--he wasn't used to having any reason to access his voice mail.

Two messages. The first was from an old-sounding man who described a white poodle. No need to call him back. The second was a woman who didn't say what kind of dog she was missing, just that she hoped he had her beloved Rhinestone. Charlie didn't think the dog looked like a Rhinestone--he didn't think any dog looked like a Rhinestone--and it didn't sound like the kind of name a wealthy person would give a dog, but he called the woman anyway.

"I'm returning your call," he said, when the woman answered with an annoying, sing-songy "Hello."

"My call about...?"

"The dog."

"Oh, yes, of course. Rhiney came home this morning. Sorry to waste your time!"

"Okay." Charlie hung up.

There were no messages at lunch or at his 3:15 break. Charlie was surprised. He would have expected more people to lose dogs than that.

There were no new messages waiting for him when he got home. Charlie opened the door to the basement and the dog rushed out. It stampeded over to the front door, whining and twitching. Charlie realized that he didn't have a leash. He had plenty of rope and other things that he could fashion into a leash without too much effort, but the dog seemed to be in a state of emergency and what was the worst thing that could happen? The dog might run away. So what? Charlie wouldn't be any worse off.

He opened the door and let the dog race outside. It ran a few feet out onto his lawn and then immediately squatted. Charlie watched it for a moment, then questioned why he was watching this particular activity in progress and averted his eyes. The dog finished and ran back inside the house. It was definitely well trained.

Charlie went down into the basement, and was surprised and pleased to note that there weren't any messes to clean up. The dog held out better than some of the humans he kept down here.

He filled its food and water bowls once again, then walked upstairs. The dog was back on his couch.

"Get down," he said.

The dog rolled onto its side.

"I'm not going to pet you," he told it. "Get off my couch."

The dog woofed at him--not quite a bark.

Charlie sighed. "You can stay, but you'd better not shed on it."

Interesting. Now he was not only speaking to the dog as if it could understand human speech, but he was acting as if the dog could control its own shedding. Bring on the men in white jackets.

If nobody claimed the dog by the time he was out of food (a couple of days, probably) he'd take it to the pound.

Charlie changed out of his work clothes into jeans and a sweater, then microwaved a frozen pizza. He sat down next to the dog and turned on the television.

The dog licked its chops.

"No," he said. "It's mine." He took a bite of pizza and winced. Way too hot. He opened his mouth and fanned his hand in front of his tongue.

The dog inched closer to him.

"Don't even think about it."

The dog whimpered.

"No. My pizza. You've got dog chow." Charlie blew on the slice of pizza to cool it down then took a big bite. The dog watched him carefully. "I'll take you to the pound right now if you don't quit staring at me," he informed it. "I mean it."

The dog didn't whimper again, but silently watched him as he ate the first piece of pizza. Charlie didn't like the crust anyway, so he pinched it between his thumb and index finger and offered it to the dog. "Here."

The dog snapped at the treat, biting his fingers.

"Ow!" Charlie slapped the dog in the face as hard as he could. It let out a loud yip, jumped off the couch, and ran into the kitchen.

Rotten mutt.

It was lucky he didn't shove its food bowl down its throat. Maybe he would. Maybe he'd slice that cur's neck open with an electric carving knife and see if he could get the bowl all the way in there.

He examined his fingers. They stung a bit, but the dog's teeth hadn't broken the skin.

Rotten, lousy, ungrateful mutt.

Wretched, mindless, bitey cur.

Then again...

What was the dog supposed to do when he offered it a piece of food that way, pinched between his fingers? His flesh was in the way of the pizza crust. He couldn't have expected the dog to carefully nibble around his skin--it was just an animal, living through instinct. He should've placed the offering on his palm or set it on the couch cushion. He'd been wrong.

Oh well. Charlie wasn't going to get bent out of shape over hitting a dog without just cause. It was still lucky he hadn't left it to freeze to death in the park, and if he took it to the pound, it might end up euthanized anyway, in which case the slap was the least of its problems.

He watched television and ate the other three pieces of pizza. He almost ate the crusts just to convince himself that he wasn't saving them as a peace offering for the dog, but decided that would be silly. He didn't like crust. Why eat something he didn't like just to fool himself into believing that he wasn't trying to make up for hitting a dumb animal?

He carried his plate into the kitchen, where the dog was huddled in the corner. Charlie set the plate with the pizza crusts down on the floor. The dog looked tentatively at it but didn't move.

"It's food," Charlie said, impatiently. "Eat it."

He could see the dog's nose twitching, but it remained in the corner. Charlie shrugged. It wasn't his job to force the dog to eat. He went back into the living room, and before he even had a chance to sit down on the couch he heard the scrape of the dog's feet as it ran across the tile floor. He listened to it eating. Good. At least the pizza crusts wouldn't go to waste.

About twenty minutes later, Charlie realized he was sitting through a rerun and hadn't even noticed. He switched channels. Nothing looked interesting. He shut off the television and sat there for a moment.

Why did he feel guilty? It was a mindless animal. It was like having guilt over slapping a mosquito.

He looked toward the entrance to the kitchen. There'd been no sound for a while. He wondered if the dog had gone to sleep.

Charlie got up off the couch, feeling stupid. He walked into the kitchen, still feeling stupid. He looked at the dog, which lay curled up next to the basement door, and then cleared his throat, continuing to feel stupid. The dog raised its head and perked up its ears.

"I'm sorry I hit you," he said.

Charlie stood there for a long moment, as if waiting for the dog to acknowledge his apology. It did not.

He returned to the couch and turned the television back on. A few minutes later, the dog bounded into the living room and jumped up onto the cushion next to him. It sat next to him until bedtime.

* * *

"Surfing the net on company time?"

Charlie glared at Alicia over his shoulder. "I'm on my lunch break. We're allowed."

"I was just kidding," said Alicia. "Wow, you take everything personally, don't you? We need to figure out a way to make you a little less serious."

"I'm fine."

"You're a powder keg of repressed rage. If you don't lighten up, you're going to run somebody over with your car."

"Okay."

"Looking for a new dog?" she asked, nodding at his monitor. Charlie was in the middle of a Google search for animal shelters in the area.

Charlie shook his head. "Getting rid of one."

"Oh, no! What did it do?"

"Nothing. I found it."

"Well, make sure you take it to a 'no kill' shelter."

"They have those?"

"Yeah, they'll keep it until they find it a home. What kind of dog is it?"

"Boston terrier."

"Oh, I love those!" said Alicia. "They're so cute! Did you name it?"

Charlie shrugged. Why would he name a dog that he was taking to the pound? And why wouldn't she leave him alone? She knew he was on his lunch break--why couldn't she respect that and let him enjoy it?

"I guess if you named it, it might be hard to let it go," Alicia admitted.

"Yeah."

"But it was nice of you to take in the dog and give it a home for now. Where did you find it?"

"In a park."

"I can't believe the owner hasn't claimed it yet."

"Do you want it?" Charlie asked.

"Can't. I've already got three cats. If I didn't, I'd take it in a second. I think you should keep it, though--a dog would be good for you."

"Why?" Charlie was surprised to discover that he actually cared about her answer to his question.

"Unconditional love. A dog doesn't care if you're in a bad mood or if you cheated on your taxes; they love you no matter what."

Charlie frowned. Was she accusing him of cheating on his taxes?

"I don't have time to take care of a dog," Charlie said, knowing that he had plenty of time, even if he kept up his current schedule of television viewing.

"That's fair," said Alicia. "I'm not trying to get into your business. But promise me that you'll take it to a 'no kill' shelter, okay?"

"Okay."

"I'll even look one up for you and give you the address. Then you can enjoy the rest of your lunch break."

It took Charlie several seconds to figure out how to respond to that. "Thanks."

"No problem at all. I'm happy to do it." She smiled. "Did you notice that it's not that painful to have a friendly conversation with a co-worker?"

Charlie didn't necessarily agree with Alicia about the level of pain the conversation created, but he nodded and forced himself to smile.

* * *

By the end of the day, still nobody had called about the dog. Maybe his signs just weren't very good. He supposed that if he asked Alicia, she'd help him make better ones--he'd seen the sign she made for a bake sale last week that he didn't participate in, and it was colorful and eye-catching. Of course, making new signs would be a waste of time, since he'd be taking the dog to the address of the animal shelter she'd given him right before he left.

Still, it would be a major disappointment if he turned the dog over to the shelter and then the rich owner claimed it that same day. Or even a few days later. The dog wasn't exactly eating up a large percentage of his income; maybe Charlie should hang on to it for a few more days, just in case. Also, he didn't want to deal with the awkward phone conversation if the elated owner called him to reclaim his or her pet, and Charlie had to explain that he'd taken it to the pound, where it might have been given to somebody else. At least he wouldn't have to tell the owner that the dog had been gassed. He didn't like hearing people cry outside of his basement.

He decided to stop at the pet store on the way home.

* * *

"Don't get used to this," said Charlie, waving the red rubber squeak bone at the dog. "I'm not buying you a toy every time I go out. This is all you get." He squeaked the bone and the dog ran in a joyous little circle on the basement floor. "If you lose it, it's not being replaced, so be careful."

He tossed the bone to the dog. It caught it in its mouth and then dropped onto its stomach, chewing vigorously on the toy, which squeaked and squeaked and squeaked.

Charlie leaned against his metal table and watched the dog. It seemed to be having a lot of fun. Why? It was just a rubber bone. Was the dog imagining that the squeaks were screams of agony? They didn't seem comparable.

He observed it for several minutes, wondering what possible pleasure the dog could be getting out of this, besides the opportunity to exercise its jaws. Why did people like Alicia think that dogs were so great? Who cared about unconditional love? Love should be given out on an "as deserved" basis.

When he decided that the dog had squeaked the toy enough for one night, Charlie changed its bandages and refilled its food bowl. The dog was healing nicely--in a few days, it would probably be completely back to normal. Normal for a clown-faced idiot dog, anyway.

"I don't want you to run away and cost me my reward," he informed the dog as he showed it the cheap black collar he'd purchased, "so you're going to have to wear this, like it or not."

The dog most definitely did not like it, and it took a few minutes of struggle to get the collar over its head and fastened properly. Charlie considered hitting the dog to encourage it to keep still...but, no, there was no reason for that. He'd win this little dispute without resorting to violence.

He got the collar on the dog, attached the leash he'd also bought, and led it up the stairs. He let the dog run around the living room for a minute while he put on his heavy coat and gloves, and then took the dog outside for a traditional walk.

It finished its business almost immediately, but Charlie was pretty sure that walks were about exercise as much as defecation, so they began to walk along the sidewalk. Sometimes the dog walked right alongside of him, sometimes it tugged on its leash in a failed attempt to run ahead, sometimes it forced Charlie to tug on its leash because it got distracted by fascinating smells, and sometimes it ran in a circle and almost tripped him, but overall Charlie thought it was a relatively successful walk.

After they'd gone about six or seven blocks, they approached a driveway where a young blonde woman was taking groceries out of her car. Her eyes lit up as she saw the dog.

"Oh, look at you!" she said, placing a bag of groceries on the ground and crouching down so she could pet the dog. "What a sweetie!"

The dog licked her face, clearly loving the attention.

"What's his name?" the woman asked Charlie. She was absolutely beautiful. She looked as if she might have just come from the salon as well as the grocery store.

"He doesn't have one."

"Doesn't have a name?" The woman scratched both of the dog's ears. "How can a sweetie like you not have a name? You don't like that at all, do you? I bet you don't!"

"I mean, I don't know its name," said Charlie.

"Well, he's absolutely adorable," said the woman, picking up her grocery bag and standing up. She grinned at Charlie. "Both of you have a great evening, all right?"

The woman turned and retrieved a second grocery bag from her trunk. Charlie couldn't believe it. She was just standing there, totally unguarded, not even looking at him. He could shove her into the trunk, slam the lid, and have a gorgeous woman in his basement this very evening.

He wouldn't do it, of course. He'd broken the schedule once, and had vowed to never do it again. And though this idea sounded great as a flash of fantasy, it was far too risky. She could scream, or somebody could see (for all he knew, her husband was right inside), or she could be locked in the trunk with the only set of keys.

Still...he was amazed at how the dog had instantly created a level of trust.

He should have asked the woman if he could help her carry her groceries inside, just as a test.

"Maybe you could be useful," Charlie told the dog as they resumed their walk.

Yes, he was talking to an animal in public, but the woman had done the same thing without feeling humiliated. Clearly, you were allowed to talk to uncomprehending animals without looking like a candidate for the local asylum.

Perhaps he shouldn't be so quick to get rid of it. Charlie might have a creepy smile, but he had a cute dog.

* * *

"You need a name," Charlie told the dog as they sat on the couch.

The dog squeaked its bone.

What was a good name for a dog? Fido? Rover? Duke? Prince? Spike? Clowny-Face?

Killer?

Hmmmm. He liked Killer.

"Do you want to be named Killer?" he asked.

The dog squeaked its toy again, but it was a non-committal squeak.

Killer wasn't exactly subtle. He should probably brainstorm more options. Charlie went to get a pen and a notebook, then sat back down and started writing down ideas. He wrote down every dog name he could think of, the first names of everybody he knew, and other names that might be appropriate for a dog whose cuteness was going to lure women to their death.

After about an hour, he had a list of forty-seven names. He read them slowly, one at a time, to see if any elicited a reaction from the dog.

None of them did. The dog just kept chewing on its toy. Charlie had to admit to himself that he was taking his newfound willingness to communicate with the dog a bit too far.

He read the list of names again, to himself in a whisper.

Cutter sounded the best, but it didn't look right. He wrote it on a separate page. Cutter.

He wrote it again: Kutter.

"That's your new name," he said. "Kutter the dog."

Charlie took Kutter for another walk, tearing down the "Found Dog" signs as they went.

- 5 -

"Did the address help at all?" Alicia asked the next day.

"I'm keeping it."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. Its name's Kutter."

"Well, that's great. Congratulations on the new addition to your household."

"Thanks."

Charlie looked at her more closely. He'd always liked freckles. Perhaps someday she'd let him take her out for coffee or--

--his basement. Perhaps someday he'd lock her in his basement. That's what he meant.

But maybe coffee to start.

Charlie wasn't even going to try to pretend to himself that he'd be even remotely close to capable of asking her out right now, so he ignored the thought and glanced back at his monitor.

"Do you have pictures?" asked Alicia.

Charlie shook his head.

"You need pictures."

"Okay." Charlie had no intention of buying a camera, even a cheap disposable one. Still, it couldn't hurt to pretend to go along with her idea.

"Well, I'm glad you kept the dog. Give it a great big hug for me." Alicia patted Charlie on the shoulder and then returned to her desk.

* * *

Alicia asked him about Kutter photos every day for the next three days. After the third day, Charlie realized that saying "I forgot again" just wasn't going to continue to work. It was really not her place to guilt him into photographing his dog, but finally Charlie decided to cave in to the pressure. He bought a surprisingly inexpensive disposable camera on the way home from work.

Taking the camera downstairs was not an option. Some clue about the basement activities, no matter how subtle, might appear in the photograph, and Charlie couldn't take the risk. He also refused to appear in the picture himself. He'd just get a couple of quick snapshots of Kutter and take them straight to the photo-developing lab at the grocery store.

He opened the door to the basement. Kutter happily bounded up the stairs. Charlie put on his leash, took him for a quick walk, then brought him back inside.

"On the couch," Charlie said, patting the cushion.

Kutter jumped up onto the couch.

"Good boy. Now smile." As Charlie peeked through the viewfinder, Kutter jumped off the couch and ran into the kitchen.

Stupid dog. "Hey, get back in here!" Charlie called out. He heard Kutter thundering around in the kitchen for a moment, and then the Boston terrier came running back into the living room. He patted the cushion again. "C'mon. Picture time."

Kutter woofed at him.

"I don't like it either. We don't have a choice."

Charlie patted the cushion a few more times, then decided that although the couch was the most aesthetically pleasing location for the photograph, it didn't much matter either way. He pointed the camera at where Kutter stood on the floor. The dog looked right at the camera. Perfect.

He pressed the button, and nothing happened.

"What the hell?" He pressed it again and the camera still didn't click or flash or do anything to indicate that a photo had been taken. Was it broken?

No, he just hadn't wound it.

Cameras sucked.

He wound the dumb little dial. Kutter ran back into the kitchen.

"Hey!" Charlie followed Kutter into the kitchen and nearly tripped over the dog as it ran back into the living room. He pointed the camera at the dog, trying to follow it as it ran in a circle around the living room, and squeezed off one shot that he knew wasn't even close.

"Sit down, Kutter! Stay in one spot!"

Kutter jumped up onto the couch. Charlie quickly pointed the camera and pressed the button, but he hadn't wound it this time, either. Kutter jumped back down before he could finish.

"Do you want me to tranquilize you? Quit moving around!"

Charlie managed to take another twelve action shots of the hyperactive animal, and then, finally, a few pictures of Kutter relaxing on the couch. He decided to splurge on the one-hour developing, and discovered that his thumb was over the lens on all of the pictures.

* * *

Alicia laughed at his feeble attempts at photography, but it was a nice kind of laugh, not a mean one.

* * *

Charlie bought a couple more squeak toys and a stuffed penguin, to give Kutter some variety. He also bought the forty-pound bag of dog food, which was the most cost effective, and a bag of pseudo-bacon treats. If all went well, Kutter would deserve the reward.

* * *

It wasn't as if walking Kutter opened up a whole new world for Charlie, where potential victims fell at his feet by the dozens. But there was no question that the dog was going to make things easier for him. Somebody fussed over his dog almost every other walk, and in two weeks there'd been at least three separate occasions where he'd felt completely confident that he could have safely gotten a woman home--and not homeless vagrants; attractive, desirable women who would be almost unbearably pleasurable to cut.

He altered his route often, sometimes taking Kutter out for as much as three hours at a time. Exactly one week after seeing the woman unloading groceries from her car, almost to the minute, he saw her again, doing the same thing. A creature of habit. Charlie liked that.

It was only about three weeks until his next hunt on January 24th. There was no question whatsoever in Charlie's mind that this was going to be the best one yet.

* * *

Charlie stood impatiently by the open basement door. "You know where to go."

Kutter never wanted to go down into the basement at bedtime. Not that Charlie blamed him--it was cold down there--but Charlie was the master and Kutter was the dog and house pets didn't have any say in the matter of where they slept. "Get down there."

Kutter whimpered.

"Do you really think that's going to work on me?" Charlie asked. "Seriously? If my heart melts, it's not going to be for you. So get your flat face down there."

Kutter just stared at him.

The dog's wounds had healed completely, so it wouldn't be ripping off its bandages and ruining his furniture. That was the primary reason Charlie kept him in the basement. As long as Kutter was quiet through the night, there was no real reason to keep him locked away.

Charlie narrowed his eyes and pointed his index finger at the dog. "All right, you're going to get your way, but let me make one thing perfectly clear: No barking. None. Unless somebody is breaking into this house--not a neighbor's house, this one--I don't want to hear a single peep out of you. Do you understand?"

Kutter continued to just stare at him, which Charlie took for a "yes."

"Good. Don't forget it."

Kutter ran into the living room, then ran back with one of his squeak toys. Charlie pulled it out of his mouth, a task made more difficult by the fact that Kutter assumed they were now playing tug-of-war. "I don't think you'll be keeping me awake with that thing," Charlie said, putting the toy on top of the refrigerator. He gathered up Kutter's other toys and placed them up there as well.

Kutter sneezed at him.

"Bless you. Good night."

Ten minutes after Charlie got under the covers, Kutter pushed open the bedroom door, jumped up onto the mattress, and curled up at the foot of the bed. Charlie carried Kutter back out to the living room and told him to knock it off. The second time Kutter pushed open the door, which never seemed to close properly, Charlie put him back down in the basement.

Charlie gave the dog another chance the next night, with the same result.

"This is your last chance," Charlie warned, tapping Kutter gently on the nose to emphasize his point. "If you try to break into my room tonight, you'll be sorry."

He was woken out of a sound sleep by the stupid dog jumping up onto the bed. Kutter curled up next to his right foot. Charlie was too tired to bother getting up to remove the disobedient animal, so he simply rolled over and went back to sleep.

It was surprisingly comforting. When he woke up the next morning, he decided that maybe the dog could sleep in the bedroom from now on.

* * *

Charlie looked at the calendar on his desk at work and realized that it was only a week until his next hunt could begin. He was surprised--for some reason he'd thought it was a couple more days than that. Great news.

Since he was going after a higher class of victim this time, he needed to change his cover story. He couldn't lure these kinds of women in with promises of a warm meal. Well, he could, but he'd have to sell the idea in a different way. Find out which unsuspecting women wanted to grab a quick cup of coffee with the trustworthy guy with the cute dog. Kutter would win their heart, Charlie would talk them into his car, and the chloroform would do the rest.

Charlie wondered if he should make some personal changes to assist with the success of his new plan. He'd always kept his hair neatly trimmed, but what if he added a bit of style? Nothing crazy and nothing unsuited to a guy in his forties--just something slightly more contemporary.

Then he wondered if that was the first sign of a mid-life crisis.

He'd do it. What could it hurt? He wasn't quite ready to depart from his usual barber, but when he went in on Friday he'd ask the guy to do something a little different.

* * *

It had been difficult to convince his barber that "different" did not include coloring, spikes, or any sort of hair product, but he'd eventually gotten the message across. Charlie walked out with hair that was a little wavier on the sides and a little mussed in the front. Though he wasn't sure if he liked it or not, he'd promised his barber that he'd stick with it through the weekend and give it a chance to grow on him.

They'd both laughed at the "grow on him" comment, although the barber laughed a little harder than Charlie.

Charlie knew that Kutter didn't care about his hairstyle, and indeed the dog didn't treat him any differently, but for the first time in his life Charlie found himself sort of looking forward to returning to work on the following Monday.

* * *

"Nice! I like it!" said Alicia, giving him a thumbs-up sign as she quickly walked past his desk on her way to a meeting. Charlie was a bit disappointed that she hadn't stopped to talk longer. The hair was staying for sure, though.

- 6 -

January 24th. The first night of the first hunt of the year. Charlie put on his nicest shirt--a dark blue, long-sleeved dress shirt that he hadn't worn since his job interview. It was sort of a wasted effort, since he'd be wearing a winter jacket over the shirt, but dressing well might subconsciously cause him to behave in a more charismatic manner.

He looked at himself in the mirror. Not bad.

He took down a bottle of unopened cologne that he'd received from somebody one year for Christmas--he thought it might have been a work gift exchange from somebody who didn't realize that he wasn't participating--and unscrewed the cap. He sniffed it. Awful. However, women liked this sort of thing, so he splashed some on his neck.

Charlie took a piece of folded paper out of his pocket. Couldn't hurt to practice a few more times. He unfolded the paper and tried to sound natural as he read the handwritten words aloud.

"Hey, I know a great little coffee place, maybe a two-minute drive from here. I can't promise you won't get dog hair on you, but I'd be more than happy to drive us there and treat you to a cup."

Maybe he should cut the part about the dog hair. If somebody was genuinely fussy about getting dog hair on their clothes, they might decline his offer based just on that. But he liked the way it sounded--it acknowledged concern that Kutter might have gotten dog hair on the front seat. Maybe he'd use it the first time, and drop it if the comment seemed to be the deciding element in somebody refusing to come with him.

He read it out loud a few more times, making his voice as friendly as possible, then moved on to another prepared line: "He's a handful, but I love him." This was to be used when somebody was cooing over Kutter, and he'd already tested it out a few times. Responses were evenly divided between an amused "I can imagine!" and the mock disbelief of "Nooooo, not this sweetie!" Either way, the line worked.

The story of how he'd found Kutter worked perfectly fine when he told the truth, and he was surprisingly comfortable sharing it, so he didn't write it down. He practiced the "handful" line a few more times, then refolded the paper and put it back in his pocket.

"Okay, time to earn your keep," he told Kutter, fastening the leash to his collar. "If you help me out tonight, I'll give you as many bacon treats as you want." That wasn't entirely true--he wasn't going to rush out to the pet store to buy another bag if the first one ran out, but still, Kutter would be entitled to a hell of a lot of bacon treats.

He'd considered putting Kutter in a doggie sweater, but that seemed too far over the top. He wasn't looking for bimbos, just women more attractive than his usual prey.

He put on his jacket, checked his appearance in the mirror one more time, and then he began his first-ever hunt with a partner.

Normally Charlie was content to hunt within half an hour or so of his home. But since he had a Boston terrier along for the ride, which might make him more memorable to possible witnesses, and was planning to take home a victim more likely to be missed, he decided to play it safe and drove for nearly two hours before pulling into a movie theatre parking lot just after dark. It was one of those enormous multiplex theatres, twenty-four screens, and he figured that a place like this would be busy enough that he could wander around and be relatively anonymous.

"Don't let me down, buddy," he said, scratching the top of Kutter's head. They got out of the car and he walked Kutter toward the theatre.

Kutter was an instant hit. Unfortunately, it wasn't in a way that did Charlie any good.

People made a fuss over the dog, but it was children with their parents, girls with their boyfriends or husbands, and women in small groups. And some guys, too, which did Charlie even less good. Nobody seemed to go to the movies by themselves.

Of course they didn't. Everybody knew that.

Charlie dragged Kutter--who was loving the attention--back to the car after about fifteen minutes. Stupid. How could he pick a movie theatre, of all places? This was why he didn't get to kill beautiful women. This was why he didn't deserve to kill beautiful women. All of this planning, and he still screwed it up. Pathetic.

He felt like hitting something, but it couldn't be Kutter. The dog had done his part. Perfectly. The fault was all Charlie's.

"Stupid," he said out loud. "Pathetic."

Kutter panted happily. He didn't seem to think that Charlie was stupid or pathetic. Charlie put his index finger out and Kutter licked it. He felt a little better.

All right, so he'd made a bad decision and wasted some time. Fifteen minutes was nothing, especially not when he'd driven over two hours to get here. Now was not the time to start doubting himself. "No use crying over spilt milk," he said.

He'd just have to laugh off this minor moment of foolishness and drive someplace else where he was more likely to find a single woman. No problem at all. He'd just drive to the first public parking lot he could find, and then walk Kutter around the area until he was successful.

Charlie found a parking garage less than a mile away. "See?" he told Kutter. "We're back on track." He parked on the third level. Maybe he'd be lucky enough to get out of here quickly and only pay the single-hour rate.

He hadn't even shut off the engine before he wanted to kick himself. He couldn't drive a victim out of a public parking garage! Not only were there security cameras, but the attendant would see him drive out of there with a soon-to-be-missing woman. What in the world was he thinking?

He'd made mistakes before, lots of them, but Charlie couldn't remember ever having been so dense during a hunt. Was Kutter just distracting him? Could he not think clearly with a dog in the passenger seat? This was crazy! Bonkers!

"I'm a creature of habit," he told Kutter. "You're throwing off my game."

The official hunt was over for tonight. Charlie couldn't risk making another stupid mistake. He'd drive around for a while and try to find a suitable location, and then return the next evening. Better to waste a four-hour round trip than get the electric chair, lethal injection, or the gas chamber. There had to be a good place to hunt where there were no security cameras.

When he drove past the dog park, Charlie burst into a fit of giggles so intense that he had to pull off to the side of the road for a few minutes to recover.

* * *

She was perhaps the most beautiful woman Charlie had ever seen. Her dog was ugly as hell.

"What's his name?" she asked, as her bulldog and Kutter exchanged undignified sniffs.

"Kutter," Charlie replied. "With a K." He'd thought of clarifying the "with a K" part during the drive over that afternoon, and was very pleased with himself. It made him sound friendly.

The woman stroked Kutter's fur. "Well, he's a sweetheart."

"Thanks." The woman's bulldog caught sight of another dog and tugged on its leash. Charlie knew he had to act now. "Would you like to get coffee?"

The woman smiled. "I can't, sorry. I don't do caffeine."

"It doesn't have to be coffee. It can be anything."

"I'd love to, but I can't."

"Why not?"

Her smile vanished. "I just can't."

"Are you sure?"

She nodded. "I've gotta go," she said, letting her bulldog lead her away.

Charlie made himself shrug. He hadn't done anything incorrectly that time. He'd just try again with somebody else. Nobody, not even movie stars, got a "yes" every single time they asked somebody for a date. He had plenty of time.

* * *

"What's his name?" asked the woman, letting Kutter lick her palm. She was probably in her fifties, but still nice-looking.

"Kutter," Charlie said. "With a K."

"Hi, Kutter. You're a good boy, aren't you?"

Charlie tried not to grimace, Yeah, he talked to Kutter way more than he wanted to admit, but at least he didn't ask idiotic questions like that. What did she think Kutter was going to say? "No, ma'am, I'm not a good boy at all, but I appreciate your vote of confidence."

The woman had a wiener dog. Charlie didn't want to touch it. He knew he had to make some small talk before asking her out.

"What's your dog's name?" he asked.

"Harvey. With an H."

Charlie frowned. What other letter would the name Harvey start with? Did she think he was a moron? She was the one with the hot dog dog, not him.

Then he realized from her smile that she was trying to be amusing by referencing his "with a K" comment. Duh. He shouldn't have needed extra time to figure that out. If she thought he was a moron, she was absolutely right. But if she was joking around with him, then she trusted him, and if she trusted him...

"Do you want to get some coffee?" Charlie asked.

The woman held up her left hand, revealing her wedding ring. "I don't think my husband would like that."

"I didn't mean like that. Just coffee."

"I'm just here to get Harvey some exercise. But I appreciate the offer."

Charlie started to insist that he merely wanted to get coffee as friends, but no, it wasn't a good idea to appear desperate. The last thing he needed was for her to tell the cops that there was a creepy guy harassing women at the dog park.

"No problem."

This wasn't working at all. Apparently only the dregs of society could be convinced to go anywhere with him, even with a Boston terrier in tow. It was time to give up on this idea and return to his old hunting grounds.

No. He had as much right to be here as anybody else, and it wasn't a crime to ask somebody to go out for coffee.

It was definitely a nice park--a lot nicer than the one near his house. Would hanging out here all day without bringing home a victim really be such a wasted day? Kutter seemed to be enjoying it, if nothing else.

There was a circular purple object lying in the snow. A Frisbee. Charlie picked it up, shook off the snow, and let Kutter sniff it. The dog seemed to approve.

Charlie flung the Frisbee, which went in the exact opposite direction that he'd intended and struck a tree that was about four feet away. As soon as the Frisbee hit the ground Kutter had snatched it up in his mouth and brought it back, holding it up expectantly.

Charlie took hold of the Frisbee and tugged gently, but Kutter didn't let it go.

"Give it to me so I can throw it again," he instructed.

He tugged again. Kutter tugged back.

"You're not doing this correctly," Charlie said. He knew next to nothing about dog/human interactions, but he at least knew how to play fetch. How was it possible that he understood the rules better than Kutter?

Charlie let go of the Frisbee. "When you're ready to play right, let me know."

Kutter stared up at him for a moment, then let out a whine.

"Don't whine at me. You have to let it go. Do you want me to throw it with your jaws still stuck on it?"

Charlie grabbed the Frisbee and gently tugged again. Kutter vigorously shook his head side-to-side and refused to relinquish his grip. Charlie tugged a little harder and Kutter tugged back harder.

"You're playing the wrong game," Charlie informed the dog. Tug-of-war was supposed to be with a thick rope, or a sock, or maybe a dead squirrel. Frisbees were for throwing and playing fetch. This dog was totally mixed up.

Charlie released his grip again. This time, Kutter let the Frisbee fall. Charlie picked it up and gave it another fling--right into the same tree. He looked around the park to see if anybody had noticed.

Several people had. They were amused.

Charlie cursed.

Kutter brought back the Frisbee, and after another minute of not letting go of it, dropped it into the snow. Charlie picked it up and walked several feet to the left to distance himself from that stupid tree. He swung his arm back and forth a few times, trying to envision the trajectory the Frisbee would take when he released it. Finally, with all of his strength, he threw the disc.

It was another pretty lousy throw, but this one at least missed the tree and any other obstacles and flew through the air like it was supposed to. Kutter, barking furiously, chased after it, running across the park at top speed while kicking up snow. He leapt up into the air and caught the Frisbee in his mouth.

Wow. Charlie was impressed. He certainly couldn't do that.

Kutter happily scampered back over to Charlie and dropped the Frisbee in front of him. Then Kutter snatched it back up as Charlie reached for it. It was a bizarre combination of fetch and tug-of-war--clearly the poor animal had never been taught how to separate the individual games. No problem. Charlie played along, making several attempts to retrieve the Frisbee before Kutter let go of his prize.

The next throw was infinitely better. Charlie hoped lots of people had seen it, because it went perfectly straight and almost beyond the edge of the park. Kutter caught this one, too.

"You're pretty talented," Charlie told the dog. "That's a good skill to have."

It wasn't really, unless there was a market for Frisbee-catching, but everybody else in the park was complimenting their pets, so why shouldn't Charlie? He scratched Kutter behind the ears, then threw the Frisbee again.

And again. And again.

He threw the Frisbee until his arm ached. Kutter never seemed to get tired of it. On the seventh or eighth throw, Charlie accidentally blurted out "Go get it, boy!" which was of course a completely pointless command, but he found that he felt a surprising lack of self-consciousness while saying it, so he kept it up, going so far as to cheer on the dog as it sprinted toward the purple Frisbee. Though Kutter didn't catch it every single time, he at least got three out of four, and the ones he missed could generally be blamed on the quality of Charlie's throw.

Charlie shifted to his left arm when his right arm started to go numb, but after a throw that involved flinging the Frisbee straight down into the ground, he decided to quit for the day. He checked his watch. Wow. They'd been there over two hours. It hadn't felt anywhere near that long.

It was a lousy hunt, but a good day.

- 7 -

"That wasn't very smart of us," said Charlie as they pulled into the McDonalds drive-thru. All that Frisbee-tossing had made him hungry. "Everyone in that park is going to remember us. We can't hunt there tomorrow, or maybe any other time. We're too memorable."

Well, perhaps they weren't. Certainly Kutter wasn't the first miracle Frisbee-catching Boston terrier to have spent a couple of hours practicing his craft in the dog park...but still, they had to be as cautious as possible, and running around in front of everybody was not the way to keep himself out of jail.

Even if he had found a woman willing to get into his car, it would've been a terrible idea to actually lure her inside. He'd screwed up.

That said, Charlie didn't feel like beating himself up over it. He didn't feel like crying. He wasn't pathetic. He felt fine.

He'd had fun. And it was a much safer kind of fun than torturing and murdering a woman in his basement.

He ordered a Big Mac, large fries, and Coke for himself, and three hamburgers and a cup of water for Kutter. Kutter gobbled the burgers almost as quickly as Charlie could unwrap them and toss them over to him, and also lapped up the water in no time, although Charlie had to keep tilting the cup, since it wasn't really designed for a dog.

Not a bad day at all. And they really didn't need to drive so far to do it again. He was sure he could find an equally nice dog park in his area. If he wasn't planning to kidnap anybody, there was no reason to be discrete.

He'd resume the hunt tomorrow. If he felt like it.

* * *

That evening, Charlie sat on the couch, watching television. Kutter lay on his lap, snoring softly.

There was a knock at the door.

Kutter immediately woke up, jumped off the couch, and ran toward the front door, barking. "All right, all right, calm down," Charlie said, even though he was a bit panicked himself. Nobody ever came to his door at nine-thirty at night. Hardly anybody ever came to his door, period.

He peeked through the peephole. It was a young blonde. She didn't look like a cop.

Charlie opened the door. The young woman, who probably wasn't even twenty-one, smiled brightly at him.

"Hi," she said. "I'm Patti, and I'm trying to pay my way through college. It's pretty expensive these days, as I'm sure you know."

Charlie didn't respond. She sounded even more rehearsed than he did.

"So I'd like to offer you the chance to purchase subscriptions to your favorite magazines at a greatly discounted price." She crouched down and petted Kutter. "Aw, what a cutie! What's her name?"

"His name. Kutter."

"Awwwwwww." She scratched Kutter's chin, until he rolled over and she rubbed his belly.

Charlie glanced outside. Nobody around.

He grabbed the girl by the hair and yanked her inside. He slammed his hand over her mouth, kicked the door shut, and dragged her into the kitchen where he kept the bottle of chloroform.

* * *

Well, that was impulsive.

Charlie leaned against the basement wall, staring at the blonde who was now strapped to the metal table, still unconscious. He should've been cackling with glee; she was, without a doubt, the finest victim he'd ever claimed. If he believed in fate or a higher power, he would have called her a heavenly gift. But she wasn't--her presence at his door was a coincidence, and her presence in his basement was the result of acting without thinking.

He'd wanted to let her go as soon as he got her into the kitchen. Unfortunately, this wasn't like accidentally stepping on her foot or spilling soda on her blouse. He couldn't just apologize and send her on her way. She had to die.

But that was a good thing, right?

Somebody would definitely come looking for her. The disappearances of young cute college students didn't typically go unnoticed. And though she was dumb enough to go knocking on the doors of strangers after dark, she probably wasn't dumb enough to do it without telling anybody where she was going, so the search would probably begin soon.

He had to get rid of her. The question was, how much time did he have? A day? A couple of hours?

Under other circumstances, a couple of hours with a victim would barely seem worth the effort. But tonight, it sounded like paradise.

Did he have even that long? What if she lived at home, and his house was her last scheduled visit before she was late for dinner? The cops could be one or two houses down already, doing a methodical search.

Would they suspect him, though? Would they suspect that the guy with the cute dog was a killer?

Yeah, probably. Charlie still had to admit that he was kind of creepy.

"What should I do?" he asked Kutter, who lay on the cement floor, chewing on a piece of rawhide. He didn't like having Kutter down here, as if the dog might think less of him for what he'd done, but he knew that if he kept the basement door closed, Kutter would just stand outside of it and bark. Loud barking in his home was not a good thing at this moment.

The smartest course of action would be to quickly end her life and dispose of the body...but freebie victim or not, it seemed like a waste. If this was divine intervention, which it wasn't, was it a good idea not to make the most of his gift?

"Now you're just trying to rationalize it," he said out loud. Kutter looked away from his rawhide for a moment as if Charlie was speaking to him. "Bad idea. Bad, bad idea."

He needed to slit her throat, soak up as much pleasure as he could from the act, and then get rid of her. Dump her in the Body Pond.

Or...?

He could take her someplace else. Someplace far away. Someplace where he could take as much time as he wanted.

His emergency shelter?

He owned a crappy little cabin deep in the sticks, about a five-hour drive away, left to him when his second set of foster parents died. He'd only visited it a couple of times, and had stocked it with canned food, bottled water, and other emergency supplies. His plan was that if he ever did screw things up badly enough that the police found out about his murders, he could hide out there for quite a long time.

The cabin was miserable, though. He'd only go live there as an absolute last resort.

And it wasn't soundproofed. His assumption was that if he ever had to flee from the police, he'd probably quit killing women for a while. Deep in the sticks or not, he couldn't have a live victim out there, so the cabin idea was out. He'd deal with her here.

Charlie walked over to the table and ran his fingers through her hair. She was absolutely beautiful.

Killing her seemed like...a crime.

What a bizarre way to feel.

He'd been given the gift of a lifetime (admittedly, a high-risk gift that could easily land him in prison) and he just didn't really want to kill her. He sort of wished he'd asked her to go get coffee instead.

The whole situation reminded him of when he'd gone to a buffet restaurant, and he'd eaten until he was full and didn't want to eat anymore. As he was walking toward the exit, he'd noticed that they put out strawberry cheesecake. He didn't much feel like eating dessert after his huge meal, but he knew that he loved strawberry cheesecake and would have pounced upon the opportunity to have some if he weren't so full, and he'd felt compelled to eat it anyway.

Would killing the girl make him just as sick to his stomach as the cheesecake?

Maybe this wasn't a good example. He could go for some strawberry cheesecake right now, actually. The point was that dragging the young woman into his house was a decision based more on what he'd wanted in the past than what he wanted now.

If only he could undo it.

"You can't change what's in the past," he said. He'd be fine. Quite honestly, he was probably just still riding high on the adrenaline from playing with Kutter all afternoon--in the morning, he'd be absolutely delighted to have a beautiful college student to slice.

Yeah. That was it. Also, he was just nervous. One cut with the razor and he'd probably be energized with the desire to kill.

Maybe he'd use the drill instead.

No, no, the razor. Keep it simple.

He selected his smallest razor from the shelf, and then held it above the unconscious girl's stomach. He'd awaken her with smelling salts before he began the process, but he should figure out his plan of action first. "Where to cut...where to cut...?"

He dropped the razor in surprise as the phone rang.

He quickly picked it back up--it had broken the skin on her stomach a bit--and set it on the metal table as he hurried upstairs. Kutter followed him, and he told the dog to shush up as he opened the door to the basement and hurried through the kitchen into the living room to answer.

"Hello?"

"Hi there! I'm calling about the dog you found."

- 8 -

Charlie suddenly felt as if he'd been kicked in the chest. "What?"

"I heard from one of your neighbors, Darlene Clifton, that you found a Boston terrier about a month ago. I think it's mine."

Before Charlie could lie, Kutter let out a loud bark.

"Hey, I recognize that guy!" said the man on the other end. "I'm right in your area. Mind if I stop over?"

"I'm...heading out."

"I'm literally like a minute from your place. I'm passing Darlene's house right now."

Charlie wasn't sure which one Darlene was. Probably the old lady on the corner. He supposed it didn't matter.

"Okay," he said.

"Great, thanks!"

Charlie hurried into the kitchen and closed the basement door. The soundproofing really wasn't designed for situations where somebody was sitting right in his living room, so he'd just have to pray that the girl didn't regain consciousness while he had a visitor.

What was he going to do? He couldn't let the man take Kutter away.

Maybe he had the wrong dog. Maybe he'd just show up, take one look at Kutter, sigh, and say "That's not my dog. Sorry to have bothered you, sir. Have a pleasant evening."

Or maybe Charlie could just not answer the door. What was the man going to do, break a window and steal Kutter? He couldn't force Charlie to give him up, could he? Charlie wished he'd researched the state law on this matter.

He scooped Kutter up in his arms and let his dog lick his face. "Don't worry," Charlie said, "I won't let him take you away." He held Kutter until he heard the car pull into his driveway, and then he put Kutter in his bedroom and closed the door. A moment later, the doorbell rang. Charlie paced around the living room, trying to figure out what to do, until the doorbell rang again.

The man standing on his front porch looked about thirty. He had slicked-back hair, wore a black leather jacket, and had a phony-looking grin. Charlie disliked him immediately.

"Hey there, Charles," said the man, sticking out his hand. "You go by Chuck?"

"Charlie."

"Nice to meet you, Charlie. I'm Byron." When Charlie didn't return his handshake, Byron lowered his arm and shifted uncomfortably. "I know you were on your way out, so I won't take up much of your time. Could I just see if you've got Duke?"

"Okay," said Charlie, stepping out of the way so Byron could come inside. But it wasn't okay. He couldn't just let this irresponsible owner come and claim a dog that he'd left to freeze to death. "How did you lose him?" Charlie asked, shutting the door behind Byron after he entered.

Byron let out a deep sigh. "Kid next door. I've been out of town, so I paid him twenty bucks a day to stop by before and after school to walk and feed Duke. Kid's sixteen years old, you'd think he could handle it, right? Loses Duke the second day. Doesn't call me on my cell. Doesn't tell anybody. I bet he barely even looked. And here's the kicker--the little shit asked me to pay him for those first two days. Can you believe it?"

Charlie didn't respond.

"Anyway, can I see if it's him?"

Charlie wanted to refuse, but how could he? The man knew that he had a dog in the house. If he tried to lie and say that Kutter had just run away moments ago, no doubt the stupid dog would bark again at precisely the wrong moment.

"Okay."

On numb legs, Charlie walked down the hallway toward the bedroom. He opened the bedroom door. Kutter rushed out, nipped at his ankles, and then saw the man crouched down on the living room floor.

"Duke!" Byron joyously exclaimed. "It is you! C'mere, boy!"

Kutter bounded over to Byron and jumped into his arms. Byron stood up, lifting Charlie's dog into the air. "Duke! Aw, I've missed you, boy! I didn't think I was gonna see you again!" Kutter licked the man's face all over while Byron laughed and Charlie just stood there, absolutely stunned.

"Did this guy take good care of you?" Byron asked Kutter. "You look great!" He turned to Charlie. "There's a reward. I'll pay you what I'd planned to pay that dumb-ass kid."

"Please," Charlie said in a quiet voice. "Don't take him."

"Excuse me?"

"Please don't take him."

Byron smiled. "It's easy to get attached to these little guys, isn't it?"

Charlie nodded.

"He's a great dog. Have you ever owned the breed?"

"No."

"I had one before this. Ronnie. Sweetest dog you can imagine. Lived seventeen years. I swore to my parents that I'd walk it, clean up after it, buy the food with my own money if they'd let me get a dog. They made me practice on a goldfish. Fish lived, so they got me a hamster. Dad accidentally kicked the hamster in its plastic ball down the stairs and killed it, and my parents felt so guilty that they got me the dog."

"Please don't take him away from me," Charlie said. He didn't care how he sounded.

"Do you own any other dogs?" Byron asked.

"I've never had a pet."

"Never had any kind of pet? Ever?"

Charlie shook his head.

"That's almost criminal," said Byron. He scratched the top of Kutter's head. "No wonder you don't want to let this guy go."

"I found him in the park under a bench. He was almost dead. I helped him get better."

"I really appreciate that."

"He likes it here."

"He does, huh?" Byron set Kutter down on the living room floor. Charlie crouched down and gestured, and Kutter ran into his arms. "He's definitely a friendly guy," Byron noted.

"I've got toys for him," Charlie said. "And lots of food. Good food. I bought the cheapest food when I first got him, but now I've got the really good kind. And I have bacon treats. I clean up after him when I take him for walks, and I let him sleep on my bed, and I clipped his toenails a couple of days ago, and I play Frisbee with him."

Byron chuckled. "You sound just like me when I was pitching the idea to my parents."

"Please. I don't have any friends. I really like having him here."

Byron's smile faded. "I can't give you my dog, Charlie."

Kutter licked Charlie's nose.

"Just let him stay a little while longer, okay?" Charlie asked. His voice cracked. He couldn't remember it ever having done that.

Byron was quiet for a long moment. "You've really never had a pet?"

"Never."

"You're almost making me cry here, Charlie."

"I'm sorry."

"Mind if I have a seat?"

Charlie shook his head, and Byron sat down on his couch. "You're not making this easy for me, you know. I feel like I'm stealing a puppy away from a little kid."

Byron sat there for a while, lost in thought. Charlie desperately wished that he'd written a script for this kind of thing. He should've guessed that somebody would come for Kutter eventually, and he should've written a foolproof speech to convince the owner to let Charlie keep him.

"Can I at least visit him?" Charlie asked, his upper lip trembling a bit.

"Show me the toys," said Byron.

"What?"

"The toys you bought him. Show them to me."

Charlie walked over to the television stand and picked up the small wicker basket that was on the floor next to it. "He keeps scattering them all around the house," Charlie said, "but I put them here when I clean the place up."

He brought the basket over to Byron. "It's only six. He wrecked two of them. The stuffed ones."

Bryon peered into the basket and nodded his approval. "Nice selection. He likes squeaky things." Byron poked at a rubber dolphin. Kutter's ears perked up at the squeak.

"I'd buy him more," Charlie insisted.

"Well, it's never good to spoil them."

"I'd spoil him anyway."

Byron sighed. "All right, Charlie, here's what we're going to do. Have you seen those movies or TV shows where the kids are fighting over the rightful owner of a dog, and so they do a contest where they both call the dog and see who he comes to first?"

"No."

"Doesn't matter. We'll set Duke in the middle of the room, we'll each take a corner, and we'll both call him. You're clearly deeply attached to the little guy, and if he's just as attached to you, I'll step down as his owner. Sound fair?"

"Yes. Very fair." Charlie was elated. Even if he liked his old home, Kutter wouldn't want Charlie to be left alone, would he?

"Go grab a couple of dog treats," said Byron.

Charlie retrieved two pseudo-bacon strips from the canister on top of the refrigerator and brought them back into the living room.

"Duke loves food a lot more than he loves either of us, that's for sure, so we'll put the treats in the center of the room while we each take a corner."

"Who picks the corner?"

"You have the home field advantage, so I'll pick. I'll stand in the corner by the TV."

Charlie walked over to the opposite corner and crouched down. If Kutter didn't pick him, Charlie was going to start sobbing right in front of this stranger. Maybe that would be a good thing. Maybe he'd look so pathetic that Byron would give him Kutter anyway.

No. You didn't give great dogs away to pathetic sobbing people. He just had to frantically hope that Kutter would make the right choice.

Byron dropped the bacon strips onto the center of the floor and then gently set Kutter down next to them. He quickly walked to his own corner, and then crouched down as well. "C'mere, Duke!"

"C'mere, Kutter! Here, Kutter!"

"Duke! Come to your Daddy!"

"Kutter! Come to your friend!"

The Boston terrier gobbled up the first bacon strip and immediately started on the second.

"Here, Duke! Here, Duke, Duke, Duke!"

"Here, Kutter! Here, Kutter, Kutter, Kutter!"

Byron clapped his hands. Charlie did the same.

The dog finished up the second bacon strip, sneezed, let out a soft bark, and then ran into Charlie's arms.

"Thank you!" Charlie said as he vigorously petted the dog with both hands. "Thank you, Kutter! You're such a good doggie! Yes, you're such a good doggie!"

Byron stood up. Charlie felt a pang of sympathy for the guy as he dabbed at the corner of his eye with his index finger. "The dog has spoken," he said with a sad smile.

"I'll take good care of him," Charlie promised.

"You'd better. I reserve the right to make surprise inspections. If I don't like what I see, I'll grind your ass up and feed you to him."

"That's fair."

Byron walked over and stuck out his hand. Charlie shook it.

"Congratulations on owning your first pet. Kutter, huh?"

"Yes."

"I actually like that better than Duke."

"Me too."

Byron picked up Kutter and spoke softly to the dog while it licked his face. Charlie felt as if he should leave the room and give them some privacy, but he also didn't want to give Byron a chance to sprint for the exit, so he stayed where he was.

After a couple of minutes, Byron handed Kutter to Charlie. "I guess I'll head off. You were on your way out, right?"

"No. I made that up."

"That's what I figured." He gave the dog one last scratch behind the ears. "Seeya, Kutter."

Charlie let Byron out of the house. He watched through the window as he got into his car and started the engine, not willing to believe that Kutter was truly his until Byron backed out of the driveway and drove out of sight.

Steak. He and Kutter needed a steak to celebrate.

Then he remembered that he still had the girl in his basement.

- 9 -

"What am I supposed to do with you?" Charlie asked the girl. He'd already taken off her gag and informed her that if she screamed, he'd cut her throat. It wasn't a threat he'd ever made good on--though he had cut vocal cords more than once--but he was feeling more paranoid than usual and didn't entirely trust the soundproofing in the basement.

"You could let me go," said the girl, her voice raw and scratchy. "I won't tell anyone."

"Yes, you will. I would."

She violently shook her head. "No, no, I swear to God I won't tell anybody. I've got a warrant out for my arrest--I can't talk to the cops even if I wanted to."

"What did you do?"

"I killed my ex-boyfriend. I shot him."

"No, you didn't." Charlie's spirits fell. He'd been momentarily excited, because the idea of her not going to the cops because of an outstanding arrest warrant made a lot of sense, but if she'd committed murder she wouldn't be going door-to-door selling magazine subscriptions.

"I did. I swear I did."

"I can look it up and find out if you're lying," Charlie told her, although he wasn't certain that he could. "If you are, I'll use my knives on your arms until they're just skeleton arms. That takes a long time. Are you willing to stick to your story?"

The girl began to cry.

"Answer me."

"No," she said.

"I didn't think so. Don't lie to me again." She was being pretty brave, a lot braver than most of his victims, but her body still shook with tiny sobs. Charlie usually enjoyed that sight. Not tonight. "I don't want to kill you," he said. "I thought I did, but I don't anymore."

"Then don't."

"It's not that easy. You know what I look like. You know where I live. How can I let you go?"

"I promise I won't tell anybody."

"But you'd be stupid if you didn't. Why would you let a serial killer roam free and not tell anybody where he lived? I don't want to hurt you, I swear I don't, but you'd tell the police. You'd have to tell them. You'd be a horrible person if you didn't."

"You'd come after me if I did."

"Not if you had police protection."

"I wouldn't have police protection forever."

"I'm not that kind of killer. I hunt easy targets, people who won't be missed."

"Everybody is missed."

"No they aren't."

"Yes, they are."

Charlie could talk to strapped-down women in his basement with an ease that eluded his interactions with other humans, but he found himself momentarily flustered. "Either way, a promise not to tell isn't enough. I can't believe you."

"Then what can we do?"

"I don't know! That's the whole problem! If we can find an answer, I'll do it, but I can't think of one! I probably shouldn't have kept you alive even this long. The police could be on their way right now."

"They're not."

"I'll make it quick," Charlie promised. "I never do, but this time I will. It'll be over in seconds. You'll hardly even feel it."

"My name is Patti."

"I don't care."

"I just want you to know that. My name is Patti."

"I said I don't care." Charlie ran a hand through his hair, thoroughly frustrated. She was ruining his celebration with Kutter.

"I can come up with a plan," Patti said. "Just give me time. Give me an hour."

Charlie considered that. It was a bad idea, a terrible idea, but it seemed fair to give her a chance. She might come up with something brilliant. If he could resolve this situation without murdering her and risking having the police hunt him for the rest of his free life, it would be worth taking the chance on keeping her alive awhile longer.

"Okay," he said. "I won't kill you yet."

"Thank you."

"Put your thinking cap on. I'll go get you some food. Do you like cereal?"

* * *

Charlie closed the basement door behind him as he stepped into the kitchen. He didn't have any steak in the house, and though there was a twenty-four-hour grocery store not too far from his home, he wasn't sure it was a good idea to leave the house right now. He and Kutter would just have to celebrate with bacon strips.

He walked into the living room. "Kutter! What the hell--?"

Kutter stopped chewing on the couch cushion. He'd exposed a piece of the stuffing, and another bit of white fluff was on the floor.

"Why are you chewing up my couch?" He hurried across the room. Kutter ran to the other side, thinking it was playtime.

"You idiot, I was going to buy you a steak tomorrow! Steak! I bet you've never even had a steak. A big, thick juicy steak on the way and you're trying to eat my couch? Why would you do that? Huh? Why?"

Charlie stood there, waiting for an answer. Then he remembered that he was unlikely to receive one.

He couldn't believe this. He hadn't even been the dog's official owner for half an hour and Kutter was chewing up the furniture.

He sat down on the damaged couch. Kutter jumped up next to him.

"Go away. I'm mad at you."

Kutter prodded Charlie's hand with his cold wet nose, seeking petting.

"No. You don't deserve to get petted. You're a bad dog. Good dogs don't chew up couches. Only evil ones do that."

Kutter continued to prod him. Charlie reluctantly petted his head.

"What's wrong? Were you just stressed out because your old owner tried to take you away?"

That might've been it. Byron's unexpected presence might've confused the poor animal. And Kutter might've been scared by having Charlie go down into the basement so soon after Byron left. Maybe he thought that Charlie had left him forever.

"I'm sorry," said Charlie. "You're not a bad dog. We'll make up." He took Kutter's paw in his hand and shook it. "Deal?"

Kutter licked his face.

* * *

Charlie watched the 11:00 PM news to see if there was anything about Patti. Nothing. That wasn't surprising--she'd hadn't been missing for very long, and if she lived on campus and had a boyfriend, it might not be unusual for her to come home late.

He had time.

"What a waste," he told Kutter. A beautiful girl in his basement, and he simply didn't feel like torturing or killing her. How had his life turned out this way?

He decided not to go downstairs to check on her. She'd be fine until tomorrow. Then Charlie would call in sick to work, and spend the morning either following Patti's plan, or disposing of her body.

* * *

The alarm went off as usual at 6:30 AM. Charlie got up, threw on a robe, took Kutter for a quick walk, came home, brushed his teeth, and then practiced his "sick voice" a few times. He thought it sounded pretty good. He considered leaving his voice mail without using a script, then lost his nerve and wrote down what he wanted to say. He kept it simple--giving more information than was necessary made it sound like a lie.

He dialed Bob Testiro's number. It rang twice.

"Hello?"

Charlie froze. Bob was never in this early. "Uh, Bob? It's Charlie Stanlon."

"Hey, Charlie, what's up?"

He considered coughing into the phone, then decided it would sound forced. "Nothing much. I'm just calling in sick."

"What's wrong?"

"Sore throat. Some aches and pains."

"Charlie, we're already two people down this week. I worked all day Saturday and half a day yesterday to get ready for the global operations center's visit. You really can't fight through a sore throat and some aches and pains?"

"I...guess I can."

"Thanks. It's just really not a good time for you to be out. If you're still not feeling well on Tuesday, it won't be an issue. See you in a bit."

Charlie hung up. That hadn't quite gone as planned. He couldn't afford to get fired, so it looked like he'd be going in to work today.

It would be fine. He'd left women in his basement countless times while at work. It even made the day more pleasant, knowing they were down there. He'd simply have to treat this situation no differently than any of the others. If there'd been a witness, the cops would've been at his door by now, so he'd just trust that the security measures he already had in place were sufficient. And maybe this was a good thing. His job was pretty boring, so he'd have all day to brainstorm ideas on how to let Patti live.

And after he dealt with that, he thought he might build Kutter a doghouse.

* * *

Charlie stared at the stapled papers.

Alicia had been doing so well, but there it was, stapled in the top center instead of the top left. Only one of them--the others were done correctly--but this could be the start of a trend. If he didn't say something, the entire batch of papers could be improperly stapled tomorrow. He'd have to pluck out all of the staples and redo them, which wasted staples and put his fingertips at risk for puncturing.

He started to type an e-mail to Bob, then stopped after "Bob, I need to bring to your attention--"

Alicia was always nice to him. She was the one who'd suggested that he keep Kutter. If he hadn't listened to her, Kutter could've been gassed or adopted by an unloving home. She'd said that if he had a problem with her, he should bring it to her directly, so that's what he'd do. She deserved that much.

He picked up the flawed papers and walked over to her desk.

"Uh-oh, did I screw something up?" Alicia asked.

Charlie shook his head. "No. It's all fine."

What was he saying? It wasn't fine. It was wrong in a way that he'd already asked her to fix. Why was he suddenly compelled not to mention it?

Coming over to her desk was a mistake. He should've just e-mailed Bob. It was never a good idea to change the plan.

Alicia was a lot more beautiful than he remembered.

"I just wanted to tell you that I get to keep the dog," he said. "The real owner came over, but he's letting me keep him."

"Really? That's great! I bet you're thrilled!"

"Yeah. So...thanks."

"For what?"

"For your help."

"Oh, I didn't do anything. I just told you to keep him."

"That helped."

Alicia smiled. "Well, then I graciously accept your thanks. Now tape a damn dog picture to your monitor. That's the rule."

"Okay."

She returned her attention to her work. Charlie didn't leave. His mouth had dried up and he ran his tongue all over the inside, trying to replenish the moisture so he could speak.

"Did you...did you want to get coffee sometime?" he finally asked.

Her smile faltered. Just for a fraction of a second, but it faltered.

"You know," she said, "some of us get drinks after work on Wednesdays."

He knew. Alicia had mentioned it a couple of times, but he always declined the offer. It sounded boring.

"You should come with us."

Did she really want him to come along, or was she just trying to get out of a coffee date? He was almost positive it was the latter. He couldn't blame her for that.

"I didn't mean it like that," he said. "I wasn't asking to...I wasn't asking because I wanted to..."

"No, no, I understood. Coffee as friends. I'm sure you have a rule against dating co-workers just like I do. But you really should come with us for drinks on Wednesday. Coffee counts as a drink."

"Maybe."

"Is that a legitimate maybe, or a maybe meaning no?"

"A legitimate one."

"Great! We'll look forward to having you along."

Charlie returned to his desk, feeling humiliated. He never should have asked her out. That was idiotic. There was no possible way she'd ever have said "yes," and now she'd go around the office telling everybody what he'd done.

He could hear her voice: "Oh, he's got a cute little crush on me! It's so adorable!" She probably thought he was a pathetic little puppy, following her around, too stupid to know that she was out of his league.

He wasn't sure if he should go with them on Wednesday or not. Most likely, Alicia had just invited him to escape from the awkward social situation.

He'd leave her alone from now on.

* * *

After an endless day, Charlie drove home. At least he knew Kutter wouldn't decline his invitation to go for a walk.

As soon as his key touched the lock, he could hear Kutter's happy barking on the other side of the door. He opened the door and his best friend gave him the usual wildly enthusiastic greeting. "Good boy," Charlie said, crouching down and petting him. "You're always a good boy, aren't you?"

He glanced over at his couch.

No new tooth marks. No stuffing all over the floor.

However, there was a big puddle of vomit on the left cushion, much of which had trickled down the front and onto his carpet.

"Aw, come on, Kutter, why would you do that?" Charlie asked. "You couldn't hold it in until I got home? I've got an entire kitchen of tiled floor that you could've puked on. Why did you need to do that on my couch?"

Kutter did not answer.

"What are you even eating that you would've--aw, shit!"

Literally.

"That's horrible, Kutter. Horrible. That's a horrible thing to eat and a horrible thing to vomit on my couch. I can't believe you would do that."

Charlie's was not always a life of great dignity--after all, he'd once found himself in his basement sobbing over the corpse of a victim who'd died too soon--but he'd never eaten and thrown up his own feces. Even his moments of most intense shame were never that low.

"You suck, Kutter." Charlie glared at his dog. "If I had let you lick my face before I saw that, you'd be out on the street."

Oh well. If there was one thing that Charlie's home didn't lack, it was cleaning supplies.

He took Kutter for a much shorter walk than usual, then brought him back inside and took off his leash. When Charlie opened the basement door, Kutter pushed past him and ran down the stairs. Charlie didn't bother calling him back--Kutter couldn't jump up on the table, and Patti couldn't get down, so it really didn't matter if the dog was down there or not.

He had mentally run through scenarios all day, trying to figure out how he could let Patti go without putting himself in serious danger. He couldn't think of any, except to leave her here and flee to his cabin, but even in that scenario he'd be more likely to get captured and arrested than if he just killed her. Still, he was the first to admit that he didn't always think of every possibility, and he hoped that she'd been more successful.

Kutter scampered around the room while Charlie cut off Patti's gag. "Do you have to go to the bathroom?" he asked.

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

She looked scared, but she also looked defiant. She could be as defiant as she wanted--she was still strapped to a table, and she wasn't getting away.

"I tried to find a solution," Charlie said. "I really did. What did you come up with?"

"Here's what I came up with. If you kill me, my parents will hunt you down to the ends of the earth. You will never know another moment of peace. You will--"

Charlie put his hand over her mouth. "I didn't ask you to come up with a speech. Is that really all you've got for me? A threat? All this time down here and your answer is to tell me that your parents will seek revenge?" Charlie was incredulous, but it also made him feel a little better about himself. If she'd spent about twenty hours in a basement with absolutely nothing to do but think about how they could work things out, and even she was unsuccessful, then there truly had to be no answer. It wasn't just him.

He pulled his hand away. "They'll torture you," Patti said.

"They'd do that even if I let you go."

"They'll fuck you up."

Charlie picked up the knife. "You didn't do what you were supposed to. This isn't my fault."

"You'll burn in hell."

"You think I don't know that?"

"They'll—"

"Enough! Do you want the blade in your throat or in your heart? You pick."

Patti bit her lip and said nothing.

"Throat or heart? Come on. It's not that difficult of a decision."

Her voice became frantic. "I have a place where you can stay. My parents own a cabin. Nobody will find you there. I'll take you there right now if you let me go. I'll never tell. I swear."

Charlie shook his head. "That won't work. It's better than the threat, but it won't work. Heart or throat? You can also think of it as slice or stab. Which do you want?"

"I--I don't..." Tears began to stream down the sides of her face. "Which one hurts less?"

"I don't know. I think heart."

"Please don't kill me."

"We'll do heart."

Charlie raised the knife over Patti's chest. Kutter began to whimper.

"What's wrong?" Charlie asked. The dog continued to whine, clearly distressed.

What was wrong seemed pretty obvious: Kutter didn't want him to stab her.

Great.

"It's okay, boy," Charlie assured him. "You don't have to be scared."

He set the knife down on the table. Wow. He never would've expected to interrupt killing his prey to avoid traumatizing a dog.

"Kutter, upstairs. Come on." He whistled and started up the stairs himself. Kutter didn't follow. Halfway up, Charlie clapped his hands and whistled again. "Come on, boy!"

He spent another full minute trying to coax the dog onto the stairs, then gave up and just picked Kutter up. "It'll be fine," he said in a soothing voice. "Nothing bad's going to happen to you." Kutter continued to whine as he carried him upstairs into the kitchen. He closed the door behind them and set Kutter on the floor. Kutter immediately started to scratch on the basement door.

"Stop it," Charlie said. "You know better than that."

Charlie decided that he might as well clean up Kutter's mess before tending to the problem downstairs. Stupid pukey dog. "It's not too late to take you to the animal shelter," Charlie said, even though he was considering no such thing.

By the time Charlie finished cleaning up the couch, Kutter had fallen asleep on the floor and was snoring softly. It felt weird to be sneaking around in his own house, but Charlie crept into the kitchen and slowly opened the basement door. He shut it behind him as he went down the stairs.

He walked over to the table and sighed with frustration.

And then he slid the blade across Patti's throat, receiving no pleasure from the sight of her gushing blood.

- 10 -

The next evening, a policeman showed up at his door. Charlie told him that a girl had indeed tried to sell him a magazine subscription, and that he felt bad turning her down, but that he couldn't bring himself to do anything that might encourage further door-to-door solicitation. The officer seemed satisfied with his response, gave Charlie his card, and asked him to call if he thought of anything else that might be helpful. Charlie promised him that he would.

* * *

"So are you coming?" Alicia asked, as Charlie shut down his computer.

He'd decided that he wasn't. She'd only asked him to join them as a way to be nice about turning down his request for a date--not even a date, coffee as friends--and he didn't particularly like the other people he worked with. He knew their names and whether or not they had kids (mostly because they talked about it so loudly in the aisles) but not much else, and wasn't interested in knowing more.

"Nah."

"You really should."

"Okay, I'll go," he heard himself say.

"Great!"

Oh well. No big deal. He'd survive this. Worst-case scenario, he'd have a miserable hour or so, and then he'd go home and spend some quality time with Kutter. Wednesdays were now Frisbee night--he'd stop at the toy store on the way home and get the nicest plastic Frisbee they had.

* * *

Five of them sat around the table in the restaurant. Mike, Gary, and Jessica had all expressed surprise that Charlie was coming with them, and it looked like Jessica had purposely picked a seat where she wouldn't be next to him, yet they were all reasonably pleasant. Everybody ordered alcoholic beverages except Charlie--Gary had pushed for him to get a beer, but Charlie needed to remain in full control of his mental state. He'd never been drunk, and could see no positive outcome to having too much to drink and accidentally blurting out something like "Say, were you aware that during my non-working hours I slaughter innocent women?"

They started by talking about tedious job-related stuff that Charlie had no interest in. He didn't care about the whispered rumors about possible mergers or layoffs in other departments or suspected affairs between bosses and their administrative assistants. Charlie did his own job as well as he possibly could, and expected others around him to do their jobs correctly, but outside of his area, he didn't much care what was happening. None of this conversation affected him personally or professionally. What a waste of time that he could be using to choose the perfect color of Frisbee. His thought was blue, if they had it, though dark green might also work.

"So, Charlie," said Alicia. "Tell everybody about your new dog."

Charlie's stomach clenched up. He hated being the center of attention, even in a small group. "Kutter," he said.

"What kind of dog is it?" Mike asked.

"Boston terrier."

"Oh, I love those!" said Jessica. "Those cute little faces. You didn't get him from a puppy mill, did you?"

"No."

"Charlie found him under a park bench, badly hurt," said Alicia.

"Not badly hurt."

"I thought you said he was hurt."

"He just had some scratches. But he was freezing to death, I think."

"So you saved his life."

"I think so. Yeah."

"I had no idea you were a heroic puppy-saver," said Mike. Charlie couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic or not. Then Mike smiled, and Charlie decided that he wasn't.

"He isn't a puppy," Charlie explained.

Charlie noticed Jessica rolling her eyes. He was screwing this up. He never should've agreed to this torture.

"I just meant that if he was a puppy I probably wouldn't have been able to save him. It's good that he had grown up."

Charlie wasn't sure if that explanation helped things or not.

"Why the name Kutter?" asked Gary.

"It's my grandfather's name," Charlie lied, as he'd planned in case anybody ever asked him.

"Kutter Stanlon?"

"Yes."

"That's a pretty bad-ass name."

"Thanks." Charlie took a long drink of his Cherry Coke, and then checked his watch. Alicia kicked him gently under the table. He thought he'd been more subtle.

"Do you have a picture?" asked Alicia.

"Not with me." Charlie did have to admit to himself that he appreciated the way Alicia was trying to keep him involved in the conversation. Yeah, he'd rather be at home, but all things considered, this really wasn't so bad. If nothing else, this place knew how to make a good Cherry Coke--he hated the weak ones. He couldn't see himself joining his co-workers every single week...but perhaps once a month, just to be nice.

Maybe he'd try something new. Something he couldn't remember ever having tried before in his adult life. Maybe he'd ask somebody about themselves without any motive except to hear the answer.

"Do any of you own dogs?" he asked.

Mike owned a golden retriever named Zak who carried around a teddy bear, and a parakeet named Twitter who said three different phrases in German. Gary was allergic to dogs but owned goldfish, which he flushed and replaced on a regular basis so as not to disturb his daughter, who tended to overfeed them. Jessica desperately wanted a puppy, something that would stay small, but her apartment complex didn't allow pets. And Alicia had three cats, Wilson, Puffs, and Jagged Edge, each named by one of her children. Charlie hadn't known that she had children.

Three kids. Wow. Charlie had never expected to love a dog, but the idea of having a girlfriend with three kids was almost inconceivable. He was really glad that she'd declined his offer for coffee. He smiled to himself, thinking that this had been a productive social outing after all.

They stayed for another hour, with Charlie successfully carrying his fifth of the conversational load. Gary was the first to excuse himself, and everybody else simultaneously agreed that it was time to head home.

"Did you enjoy yourself?" Alicia asked, as they walked out of the restaurant and headed for their vehicles.

"Yeah," said Charlie, surprised that he didn't have to lie.

"Join us next week?"

"I might."

She didn't give him a kiss or a hug or any of the things that Charlie would've originally considered the only possible benefit from going out with the group--just a friendly pat on the arm. And Charlie was fine with that.

* * *

He picked out three Frisbees: a light blue one, a dark blue one, and a glow-in-the-dark green one. That way he'd have extras if any of them got lost or Kutter chewed them up to the point where it impacted their aerodynamics. When he got home, he let Kutter out of the basement, put on his leash, and ran with him to the park, at least for the first couple of blocks, after which Charlie walked fast while Kutter tugged on his leash and stopped occasionally to smell things.

The glow-in-the-dark Frisbee didn't glow worth crap, but Kutter was still able to catch it. Charlie tried to keep track of how many times he threw the Frisbees, until he lost count around twenty-eight and decided that it didn't really matter. This time, Charlie was amused to find that Kutter ran out of energy before him, although to be fair, Kutter was doing the vast majority of the running.

* * *

As Charlie lay in bed, with Kutter asleep at his feet, he suddenly realized that he'd forgotten to worry about the police returning based on new evidence against him. Odds were, he'd gotten away with his impulse kill. Though he never planned to do anything even remotely that reckless again, it was kind of nice to know that even when he had a huge lapse in his better judgment, he could evade arrest.

He got a great night's sleep, and dreamt about working in a dog biscuit factory.

* * *

The next evening, it was finally time for their steak dinner celebration. Charlie dragged his rarely used grill out into his backyard, applied a generous helping of lighter fluid because he enjoyed the whoosh of the fireball, and tossed a match onto the pile of charcoal. When the coals were ready, he brought out two thick New York strip steaks and tossed them on the grill. He liked his steaks medium rare. In the cartoons, dogs always ate raw steaks, but Charlie didn't want to risk Kutter getting worms, so he cooked the dog's steak medium rare as well.

Kutter whined and twitched and licked his chops over and over as Charlie cut his steak into small pieces. "Chill out," Charlie told him. "I don't want you to choke."

The dog, clearly unconcerned with the potential choking hazard, let out an impatient bark.

Charlie set Kutter's bowl on the floor, watching as the dog proceeded to gobble the steak down so quickly that it might as well have been a bowl of Alpo, considering how little time the food spent in contact with Kutter's tongue. Charlie elected to savor his own meal in a much more leisurely manner, and also enjoyed a side dish of a fully loaded baked potato. Because he was in a really good mood, and it was a celebration dinner, Charlie gave Kutter the last third of his steak.

* * *

"Shake! Come on, buddy, shake! Shake hands!"

Kutter never resisted when he shook his paw manually, but Charlie could never get the dog to put up his paw on his own.

"Shake hands, Kutter! Shake!"

He took Kutter's paw and shook it again, to demonstrate what the dog was supposed to do. "Shake," he said, looking into the dog's eyes. "This is called shake."

He let go of Kutter's paw, but kept his hand out. "Shake, Kutter! Shake!"

Kutter preferred face licking over paw shaking as a means of greeting, but Charlie refused to give up. He didn't expect the dog to leap through flaming hoops (although that would be pretty cool) but sometime before the end of this year Kutter was going to learn how to shake!

"Shake, Kutter! Shake! Shake!"

Kutter lifted his paw. Charlie grabbed it and shook it. "Good dog! Good doggie!"

Next up: Rolling over.

* * *

Charlie found himself speaking to Mike, Gary, and Jessica about non-work-related matters. Only brief, trivial conversations about pets, television shows, and prior night's meals, yet he enjoyed the contact. The next Wednesday, he went along for drinks, even though Alicia couldn't go because of a prior engagement. They talked about their favorite movies, and Charlie made a list of things he needed to rent on DVD.

* * *

A month later, Alicia announced that she was engaged. Charlie wished her the best, and meant it. Then he joined his co-workers in speculating about whether or not the ridiculously short time frame between meeting the guy and agreeing to marry him was somehow related to an unexpected pregnancy.

When she brought him to their next gathering, Charlie decided that no, they were simply in love.

* * *

On a lark, Charlie entered Kutter in a small local dog show. They were eliminated in the first round, though at least Charlie was pretty sure that their scores were better than the bulldog that took a dump in front of the judges. They didn't get a trophy, but Charlie gave Kutter lots of treats.

* * *

"Hear me out before you say no," said Alicia. Charlie didn't like her wicked grin. There was no question that her intentions were evil.

"All right."

"I have a friend--"

"No."

"She just moved here a couple of weeks ago. If you don't count me, she doesn't have any friends outside of work. She's really nice. She likes dogs. I think you two would really hit it off."

Charlie thought about that for a moment. "You mean a blind date, right?"

"Yep."

"Uh-uh. No."

"You're not going to take pity on my poor friend? My poor lonely friend, who got really excited when I told her all about you?"

"Sorry."

Alicia lowered her voice to a whisper. "She's been unwillingly celibate for the past two years."

Charlie broke into a cold sweat and hoped that Alicia didn't notice. "I'm busy."

"I didn't say when."

"When?"

"It's open-ended. Anytime you two are able to make it work. And here's the best part, I thought that you could do a 'dog date,' where you take your dogs to the park together. She has a Yorkie. So Kutter can have a date, too. It'll be fun."

"Is her Yorkie mean?"

"Her Yorkie is just fine. Can I tell her you said yes?"

"I don't know."

"You need to say yes, because I'll harass you about this as much as I can without violating any HR policies."

By the official company rules, Charlie thought that the "unwillingly celibate" comment might have been a human resources violation already, but of course he wasn't going to report her. "Fine," he said.

"Cool! How about Saturday?"

"Afternoon or evening?"

"Do you already have plans for either?"

"No."

"Then let's go with Saturday afternoon. You'll love her. I promise!"

* * *

Despite the badgering from his hair stylist, Charlie still refused to add any highlights.

* * *

He had no idea what to wear. He wanted to dress to impress, but he also didn't want to look like an idiot running around the dog park in formal clothes.

"You're lucky," he told Kutter. "All you have to wear is fur."

Kutter woofed in agreement. Or disagreement. One of the two.

Charlie settled on jeans and his nicest red polo shirt, with an extra spritz of cologne.

* * *

She was seated on a bench, waiting for him as he and Kutter arrived at the dog park. Unless it was some other curly-haired blonde with a Yorkie on her lap.

"Elizabeth...?" he asked.

"Hi, Charlie!" she said, standing up.

Charlie had hoped it was a case of mistaken identity. She was remarkably unattractive--overweight, bad complexion, and crooked teeth. Her hair was nice, and Charlie liked her yellow blouse, but she wasn't one-tenth as good-looking as Alicia.

Was that how Alicia saw him? Her ugly co-worker? She hadn't set up the blind date to be nice to him; she did it because there was nobody else who'd go out with her repulsive cow of a friend.

Okay, "repulsive cow" was too harsh.

And he had to be honest: he was not a handsome man. Not even if you graded on a curve. For all he knew, she was thinking the same thing, that Alicia must've picked her ugliest co-worker to set her up with on the date.

If nothing else, she looked a lot better than some of the junkies he cut up.

"Hi," he said. He gave a gentle tug on Kutter's leash. "This is Kutter."

"Nice to meet you, Kutter," said Elizabeth. "This is Cooper."

"After the singer?"

"Alice Cooper?"

"Yeah."

"No, but I like his music. Are you a fan?"

"Uh-huh." Charlie didn't listen to music very often, but School's Out was one of the few CD's he owned.

Charlie awkwardly shook her hand. A soft breeze was at her back, and he noticed that she smelled nice, sort of like cotton candy.

"So Alicia says that you rescued your dog...?"

"Yeah. Not from wolves or anything like that, but yeah."

Elizabeth giggled. Charlie smiled as well. The wolves line was kind of clever. He didn't usually ad-lib things like that.

"That's pretty cool of you. I got Cooper from an animal shelter. If my sister hadn't stopped me, I probably would've taken home six of them."

"That's a lot of Yorkies."

"Yeah."

They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence. Charlie frantically tried to think of something to ask. "Do you go by Beth?"

"Liz. Or the full Elizabeth. As long as you don't call me Lizzie, it's fine."

"I won't."

"Thanks."

"Do you want to see Kutter catch a Frisbee?"

"I'd love to."

With the pressure on, Charlie half-expected Kutter to develop performance anxiety and completely botch the Frisbee-catching game. Fortunately, with the exception of one miss that was Charlie's fault (a bad throw, but not a bad enough throw to be humiliating) Kutter caught them all.

"He's really good at that," Liz said.

"He was that good when I found him. Can Cooper catch?"

"Yeah, but not one of those Frisbees. They're bigger than she is!"

"What can she catch?"

"A bouncy ball. I have to do it at home, though. It won't work on the grass."

"I'd like to see that," Charlie said.

Had he accidentally made a suggestive comment? Charlie sure hoped not. He couldn't honestly say that he was attracted to her, but he still didn't want to screw the date up this early, if for no other reason than to have to face Alicia on Monday.

She smiled. "Maybe you will."

Okay, that had been a suggestive comment.

They spent another hour at the dog park. Though the conversation didn't always flow freely, they were able to fill the silences by watching the dogs play. Liz suggested that they get an early dinner, so they drove in separate cars to Charlie's favorite seafood restaurant. Never having brought a guest there before, Charlie suddenly became very concerned about the quality of the food--maybe he only liked the flounder because he didn't know what good flounder tasted like!--but decided that he really couldn't worry about it.

"Please don't destroy my car," Charlie told Kutter as they pulled into the restaurant's parking lot. "You have no idea how happy it will make me if I come back and you haven't wrecked anything. You went to the bathroom before we left and you haven't eaten anything that you should need to vomit, so there's no excuse. If you have to slobber, slobber, but don't chew up the seats. Okay?"

As Charlie ate his baked flounder and Liz ate her salmon Caesar salad, Charlie decided that the date had gone from "much less painful than he would have expected" to "absolutely fantastic." By the time they'd finished their crab cake appetizers her physical appearance didn't bother him at all. In fact, her smile and the way her eyes lit up when she spoke made her more appealing to look at than a lot of genuinely pretty women he knew. And she was easy to talk to. Almost as easy as Kutter, and the best part was that she talked back.

They had similar tastes in movies and television shows, both hated sports, had differing political views (Liz was a passionate Democrat, while Charlie had no interest in the subject whatsoever and had never voted in a single election), both read very few books, and neither had travelled extensively. Charlie wasn't thrilled with her choice of dessert, since bread pudding was among the nastiest concoctions ever devised by humankind, but he happily shared it with her.

She asked if he wanted to go back to her place to watch a movie, and he enthusiastically accepted her offer.

Aside from a drool mark on the steering wheel, Kutter hadn't harmed his vehicle.

Liz apologized for the condition of her apartment, which was only sparsely furnished and had boxes everywhere, but Charlie didn't mind. It was a nice little apartment, and he was glad that she hadn't asked to continue their date at his house. Kutter and Cooper chased each other around the apartment until finally both dogs fell asleep halfway through When Harry Met Sally. When the movie ended, Liz asked if he wanted her to put in another one. Charlie said sure. A moment later he realized that "sure" wasn't the answer she was looking for, but it was too late to change course now. She put in 9 1/2 Weeks.

About half an hour into the movie, she asked if he wanted to kiss her, and this time Charlie gave the right answer. Her lips were...perfect.

Half an hour after that, she asked if he wanted to move to the bedroom. He gave the right answer to that, too.

- 11 -

Charlie lay in bed, Liz asleep next to him, thinking that he'd never felt so content. He was pretty sure his performance hadn't been very good, but she'd seemed reasonably satisfied and she certainly hadn't complained. Charlie figured he had the benefit of her two-year dry spell working in his favor.

Just as he was about to fall asleep, Liz woke up and began to kiss his chest. "Are you still frisky?" she asked.

Charlie nodded.

"We should do it in a way that honors our doggies," she said, getting on her hands and knees.

Charlie spent all day Sunday at Liz's apartment. They watched a couple of movies and took the dogs for a couple of walks, but spent most of the time in bed. Charlie tried to imagine her strapped down to the table in his basement. It was a repellent image.

He left Sunday night with a kiss and a promise to see her again after work the next day.

* * *

Alicia walked over to his desk as soon as he sat down the next morning.

"You are such a slut," she whispered. Charlie felt his face turn red and his ears burn as she walked back around the corner, giggling.

* * *

"So do you think I have a girlfriend now?" Charlie asked Kutter, as he put on the dog's leash right after getting home. "I was only there one night, so I guess it counts as a one night stand, but I spent all day there, too. Don't you usually leave first thing in the morning if it's a one night stand?"

Kutter, as always, provided no useful feedback.

When Charlie went over to her apartment, Liz greeted him wearing nothing but a string bikini and some freshly applied chocolate on her nipples. Charlie decided that she was indeed his girlfriend.

* * *

March 24th. The night of the new hunt.

It used to be like Christmas six times a year. In the days prior to a hunt, he'd be so filled with excitement that he could barely control himself. He'd spend hours sitting in his living room, opening and closing one of his pocketknives, fantasizing about where he'd cut first. Had to start with the extremities--fingers and toes. He didn't want a victim to bleed to death too soon.

Tonight...he just didn't feel like it.

He was enjoying work a lot more these days. Sure, he'd still quit if he won the lottery, received a surprise inheritance, or got a higher offer elsewhere, but the day went by much more quickly now that he interacted with his co-workers in a friendly manner. His relationship with Liz was going wonderfully. He was relatively certain that she considered him more of a "boy-toy" than a "soul mate," but Charlie had never been anybody's boy-toy before and he liked it.

He didn't need to hunt anymore.

Didn't need to kill anymore.

And so, on this particular March 24th, he was not going to roam the streets hunting for prey. He was going to put on the iPod he'd just bought last night, put on the "Walking Kutter" playlist, take his Boston terrier out for a nice long stroll, and then go out with his girlfriend.

"This is where I found you," said Charlie, as Kutter sniffed the bench. "If I hadn't taken you home, you would've been a dog Popsicle. Kutter the dog-flavored Popsicle. That's no way to end your life, buddy."

As usual, the park was empty. They really needed to promote this place better. Charlie unhooked Kutter's leash and played fetch with a rubber ball for about fifteen minutes. Then, on one throw, Kutter ran in the opposite direction, toward the street.

"Wrong way!" Charlie shouted. It wasn't a particularly busy street, but he could hear a car coming. "Kutter! Get back here!"

Kutter kept running. Charlie took off after him.

Charlie could see the car now. A small one, but Kutter was headed straight for--

The car took a left turn, putting Kutter out of potential danger.

Charlie saw what Kutter was running for. A dog on the other side of the street. "Kutter!" he shouted. "You stop right now!"

Kutter stopped, then went into a barking fit. Charlie hurried over to him and snapped the leash onto his collar. "Don't ever run off like that again," Charlie said. "You could've been hit by a car! Do you know how worried I was?"

He glanced across the street again. Now there were two dogs. Big ones. The one he'd seen first was a big black dog--a rottweiler, he thought it was called. He thought the other one might be a pit bull but he wasn't completely sure what pit bulls looked like, just that they were vicious, mean dogs. And the two men holding their leashes didn't appear much friendlier.

"Time to head home," he said. Kutter barked at the dogs again. Brave but stupid.

"Hey there!" said the first man, waving to Charlie from across the street. "How's it going?"

Charlie didn't answer. He tugged on Kutter's leash to draw his attention away from the other dogs and began to walk down the sidewalk.

"Don't walk away from us!" the man said. "We just wanna see your dog!"

Charlie kept walking for a few moments, then stopped. He really didn't want to talk to these guys, but if they decided to turn their scary dogs loose he could be in a lot of trouble. He had a knife in his inside jacket pocket, so if they intended to mug him he'd take them by surprise with a blade to the face.

Kutter growled as the men and their dogs approached. Charlie shushed him. They probably wanted nothing more than to laugh a good laugh about how they had big monster dogs and he had a silly looking clown-faced dog. Or else they just wanted directions.

The men walked their dogs across the street. They were both smiling, but they were some of the least friendly smiles Charlie had ever seen. He wanted to pick Kutter up to keep the dog out of harm's way; however, that would prevent him from using the knife if the men truly did intend to mug him. Though he wasn't worried about losing money, since he only had seven dollars in his wallet, some muggers got mad if you couldn't pay them off and stabbed or shot you to vent their frustration.

The men were of equal height--probably over six feet tall--and both had facial hair, though the first had a neatly trimmed mustache and goatee while the second had an unkempt full beard. The first man seemed to have bathed much more recently than the second.

"Nice dog," said the cleaner man.

Charlie tightened his grip on the handle of Kutter's leash. "He's mine."

"Nobody said he wasn't."

"What do you want?"

"I thought I already said that we wanted to see your dog." The pit bull sniffed at Kutter, and Charlie took a step back, pulling Kutter away. "It's a pretty nice dog. How much does one of those things cost these days?"

"I didn't steal him."

"Why would you think that we're accusing you of stealing him? I'd think that the owner of such a fine dog would be used to people wanting to see him."

Charlie took another step back. "Keep your pit bull away from him."

"Pit bull? This isn't a pit bull. This is an American Staffordshire terrier. And even if he was, you're not one of those people who think that pit bulls go around mauling babies, are you? They got a bad rap. Pit bulls are great dogs if the owner takes care of them. When you hear about them ripping some kid apart, it's almost never the dog's fault."

"I don't have any money," Charlie said.

"Paranoid, paranoid, paranoid." The man laughed, but there was no humor to it. "We've seen you around and we liked your dog. You're acting like you have a guilty conscience. You do something you shouldn't have?"

"I need to get home," Charlie said.

"Why?"

"I'm meeting my girlfriend."

"Then by all means, don't let us keep you." The man gestured grandly toward the way Charlie had been walking. "I wouldn't want to stand in the way of a man who's gonna get himself some."

Charlie led Kutter away from them. Behind him, one of the dogs growled.

"None of that, Bear," said the first man. "He's going to get himself laid. Let's not ruin his night."

Charlie wanted to run, but didn't dare. He settled for walking very, very quickly, tugging hard on Kutter's leash when the dog tried to stop for sniff breaks.

* * *

Charlie and Kutter sat on the couch. What had those men wanted? Were they simply jerks? Were they friends of Byron? Maybe Byron had never really owned Kutter, and these men were after him to take the dog back.

"You're being ridiculous," Charlie said out loud. It wasn't part of some elaborate hoax.

Then again, Byron might not have been Kutter's original owner. Charlie might be his third owner, and one of the men in the park might have been the first.

If so, why wouldn't they just ask for him back? Why be all weird about it?

Either way, he didn't feel like going out with Liz tonight. He called her, claiming that he was sick to his stomach (which was technically true, even if he blamed it on food poisoning) and cancelled their movie date. She told him that she hoped he felt better tomorrow, and made a very pleasant suggestion for an evening activity if he did.

Charlie wished that he could report the men for harassment, but having the police investigate why he might have people angry with him was probably not the best course of action. He'd just have to wait this out and be on the defensive.

Kutter didn't seem distressed by this. Charlie wished he could be more like the dog.

Charlie wasn't sure what to do the next morning. He didn't want to leave Kutter at home--what if the men broke in and dognapped him? Liz would probably let him drive over and leave Kutter there for the day, but he'd still be leaving Kutter unattended, and her place might not be any safer than his if the men were following him.

So he called in sick. Bob was fine with it.

"I can't do this forever," Charlie told Kutter. "They don't give me many sick days each year. But I'll protect you. I promise."

Charlie kept three guns--fully registered--around the house in case of emergencies. These "emergencies" were supposed to be in the almost inconceivable case that one of his victims escaped from the basement, but dog defense was an even more valid purpose. He didn't want to keep a gun on his person, since he couldn't bring himself to trust that it wouldn't go off accidentally, so he took the one in his sock drawer out and rested it on the coffee table for easier access.

Under normal circumstances, it would've been a very pleasant day, since he did very little except watch television and hang out with Kutter. He took Kutter for a couple of cautious walks and saw no sign of the men. If he was lucky, they'd simply been a couple of creeps who were having fun messing with him, and his life could return to its standard level of paranoia in a couple of days.

* * *

What his day job needed was a new policy where dogs were allowed to accompany their masters to work. "You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Charlie asked Kutter. "You could sleep under my desk all morning, I'd take you for a walk at lunch, you could go back to sleep all afternoon, and we'd go home. That would solve all of my problems."

He thought it might be funny to send Bob an e-mail with that suggestion, adding a smiley face to the end to make sure Bob knew he was joking. But it was getting close to time for his annual performance review, and he didn't want Bob to think that he was using humor as a brownnosing tactic.

He took Kutter down into the basement and set some cardboard boxes on their side for Kutter to hide in if it came down to that. They weren't very good hiding places and he didn't think that Kutter would figure out what to do with them, but Charlie wanted to keep open any options he possibly could. He gave his dog some extra petting, then locked him in the basement.

Around noon, Charlie became too anxious at work and told Bob that he needed to take a half day off.

When he hurried down into the basement, Kutter ran out of one of the boxes, perfectly fine.

"We can't live like this," he told Kutter. "It was just a couple of stupid men playing a joke. They haven't come back. We'll probably never see them again. Only an idiot would keep worrying about them, right?"

* * *

The next evening, as Charlie poured some dry food into Kutter's bowl, there was a knock at the door. He finished pouring the food, walked into the living room, and looked through the peephole.

It was both of the men. And their dogs.

Charlie backed away from the door, slowly and carefully, hoping that the men hadn't heard his footsteps.

The knocking grew in intensity.

"We know you're in there," said the man who'd done all of the talking before. "It's rude to leave guests waiting out on your porch."

Charlie picked the gun up off his coffee table and shoved it into the waist of his pants. He pulled his shirt over the weapon, but it was too obvious--it looked silly. And he still didn't trust it not to go off in his pants. If he opened the door and immediately shoved the barrel into the first man's face, he ran the risk that the man might simply pluck the gun from his fingers and turn it on him.

He decided to keep the gun in his hand and sit on the couch. If they broke in, he'd shoot them. He had neighbors, so they had to know that they couldn't make too much of a ruckus or somebody would call the police, even if Charlie himself couldn't.

Kutter joined him.

The men continued to knock on the door, but didn't say anything else. After a couple of minutes, they left.

"Don't worry," he told Kutter. "If they try to hurt you, I'll kill them."

- 12 -

"Dammit!" exclaimed Charlie as the warm liquid splashed into his face. He wiped the soapy water out of his eyes. "Quit shaking!"

Kutter tried to jump out of the tub, but Charlie blocked his escape and pushed down on his back. "This isn't hurting you," he said. "You want to be all nice and clean so that people know I'm taking good care of you, don't you?"

The dog obviously had other priorities, such as getting out of the tub as soon as possible. The slippery, soapy animal slid out from underneath Charlie's hands and leapt out of the tub. Charlie grabbed for him and missed. Kutter ran out of the bathroom.

"Not on the couch!" Charlie shouted.

Kutter jumped up onto the couch and shook again, spraying suds all over. This was better than vomit, Charlie supposed. He picked Kutter up, hugged him to his chest, and carried the struggling dog back into the bathroom. He pushed the door closed--which he should have done in the first place--with his foot and then set Kutter back into the tub.

"Don't you want to smell nice?" he asked. "Not to be rude, but you don't always smell so good. This is expensive shampoo just for dogs. Not every dog gets this kind of treatment, so you should be counting your blessings instead of being a pain in the neck."

He scrubbed Kutter some more, then pulled out the plug and let the water drain out of the tub. "Almost done," he said. He turned on the warm water and filled a plastic bowl, then gently poured it over Kutter. After a few bowls of water, the soap was rinsed out of Kutter's fur and Charlie dried him off with his fluffiest towel.

When Charlie let Kutter out of the bathroom, he ran happily into the living room, then rolled around on the floor. Charlie was glad he'd vacuumed.

* * *

Somebody called in the middle of the night from a blocked number, but didn't say anything. They hung up after about ten seconds. If Charlie'd had a whistle handy, he would have blown out the caller's eardrums.

* * *

Kutter stood at the door and let out one sharp bark, indicating that he was ready to be taken for a walk.

"Why aren't you a cat?" Charlie asked. "If you were a cat, you could just use a litter box and you'd never have to go outside."

Technically, he never had to let Kutter outside anyway, but the cleanup would be unpleasant and the dog would be miserable. He wasn't going to let those cretins ruin his relationship with his pet. He put on his jacket, and put the gun in his inside pocket.

Charlie had been altering his route every time these past couple of days, figuring that the men probably weren't watching his home from an unmarked van, and so if he kept his path unpredictable he wouldn't run into them. He hated having to do this. He almost hoped that he'd run into them tonight, put a bullet in each of their throats, and end the problem.

Almost. Not quite.

It was a nice, long walk, and both Charlie and Kutter had a great time. Then, as he dug his keys out of his pocket and unlocked his door, the two men and their dogs ran onto his front porch. They must have been hiding by the side of the house.

He threw open the door and quickly stepped inside. Before he could pull the door shut again, the man with the goatee stuck his foot in the gap and blocked it. Charlie yanked harder on the door, hoping to break the man's foot or even pop it off, but he wasn't strong enough and the man easily forced the door all the way open.

"Can we come in?" the man asked.

"I have a gun," said Charlie.

"We're not going to hurt you. We just want to talk."

Charlie and Kutter cautiously backed into the center of the living room as the men and their dogs came inside. The man who hadn't said anything yet closed the front door. The rottweiler and the pit bull (or whatever it was) growled and strained against their leashes, which looked like they might snap at any instant. Charlie wondered if these were the kind of dogs that fought each other while people bet on them.

"Were you worried?" the first man asked.

"What?"

"All this time. Were you worried?"

"About what?"

The man laughed. "Let's make a rule that during this encounter, we'll all respect each other's intelligence, okay? I'm talking about the way we entered your lives. Were you worried?"

Charlie shook his head.

"Bullshit. Do you know when I was worried?"

"No."

"When my sister didn't come home." The man reached into his pocket and took out a piece of folded white paper. He unfolded it and held it up for Charlie to see. "Recognize her?"

Charlie did. He'd been crying over her eight months ago, when she died on his table too soon. "No."

"Sure you do. Think back."

"I've never seen her."

"Never? You're saying that you recall everybody you've ever seen in your entire life? People in line at the grocery store? That's a pretty impressive talent. But you know her. She made a lot of bad decisions, and she got herself hooked on all kinds of shit, but she was the only thing I had. I kicked her out of my place so she'd get clean. You took that chance away from her."

"You have the wrong person."

"I do not have the wrong person. I made damn sure I had the right person. The cops may not care about a homeless junkie, but she was my goddamn sister and you murdered her!"

At this point, Charlie didn't think that lies were going to do him any good. He also didn't think that the man would accept an apology. So he said nothing.

"What do you care about?" the man asked. "Just that dog, right?"

"I have a girlfriend."

"Yeah, but that's nothing. You've got no emotional investment there. I don't even have to hear what you're saying to each other to know that. She'll dump you as soon as she gets a better offer, and you'll mope for a week and move on. You don't care about her."

"Okay."

"That dog, though. Man's best friend."

Charlie shoved his hand into his inside jacket pocket.

"You packin'? What are you going to do, shoot both of us and our dogs? You think you can do that before we get you?"

Charlie fumbled with the gun inside his pocket for a moment before he managed to pull it out and point it at the man who did all the talking. The man did look a bit worried, but not worried enough.

"Put the gun down," the man said. "You prey on the helpless, like the sorry piece of crap that you are. Even with a gun you're not going to stop big strong guys like us. You're pathetic."

"I'm not pathetic."

"Yeah, I think you are."

Charlie wanted to put a bullet right between the man's eyes. Unfortunately, even at this close range he wasn't sure he could hit his target, and the man was absolutely right--two men and two huge dogs were more than he could handle.

"Do you want money?" Charlie asked.

"Money? Are you kidding me? This isn't about blackmail. At this very moment it's about your life, so why don't you put the gun away so we can take it out of that area?"

Charlie had no idea what to do. A bloody shootout wasn't going to end well for anybody. If these men really meant to kill him, they would've done it sooner instead of stalking him. He wasn't good at talking his way out of situations, yet this might be one time that he had to.

He put the gun back in his inside jacket pocket, then held up his hands to show that they were empty except for the handle of Kutter's leash.

The man let out a loud whistle that hurt Charlie's ears. "Kill!"

Both men released their dogs.

The dogs moved like a blur, and as the dogs struck him Kutter let out a high-pitched yelp that was like a shriek of pain and terror. The yelp didn't stop as Charlie reached into the snarling mass of dogs, drops of blood spraying into the air, screaming and trying to rescue his pet.

Jaws clamped down on his arm, but he couldn't feel them.

Charlie kicked at the rottweiler as hard as he could. He was off balance and panicked and the kick bounced harmlessly off the dog's side. The rottweiler shook its head back and forth rapidly, ripping away Kutter's skin and fur.

His second kick connected with the rottweiler's snout and the dog let out a yelp of its own. The other dog pulled its jaws away from Charlie's arm and bit down onto Kutter's ear.

With a burst of adrenaline that he'd never felt in his life, Charlie yanked the bloody mess of Kutter out of the fray. Both dogs pounced on him, and at any other time Charlie knew that they would've knocked him to the floor and probably mauled him to death within minutes. But he held his footing. He had to protect his best friend.

With Kutter clutched to his chest with both arms, Charlie ran for the hallway, the dogs right behind him. He raced down the hallway into the bathroom, spun around, and kicked the rottweiler once again. This time he got it good, giving him enough time to slam the bathroom door closed.

"Kutter...oh, God, Kutter..."

Tears streamed down Charlie's face as he looked down at his pet. Kutter had been savaged--most of his left ear was gone, and much of his fur was so soaked with blood that Charlie couldn't immediately tell how deep the lacerations were. More blood was flowing freely from several places.

There was no way Charlie could tend to these injuries the way he had the wounds when he first found the dog.

He needed his hands free, so he set Kutter on the floor. Kutter let out a whimper as his fur made contact with the tile. Outside, the dogs barked and growled and clawed at the bathroom door.

Charlie pulled out the gun that he never should have put away. Stupid. A terrible decision. He couldn't wait out the men and their dogs, not with Kutter dying on the floor, so he flicked off the safety and fired a shot through the door so they'd know he was serious.

He heard the men calling off the dogs, and the scraping stopped. Charlie almost fired another shot, then decided that he needed to conserve his bullets in case he didn't successfully scare the men off. He opened the door, then scooped up Kutter in his left arm and stepped out into the hallway.

The men were exiting through the front door. Charlie shot at them and the bullet didn't even come close, putting a hole in his wall instead. By the time he got outside, the men were sprinting down the sidewalk with their murderous dogs.

Charlie bolted to his car and opened the passenger side door. "I'm so sorry," he told Kutter as he set the dog on the seat.

Towels. He needed towels. Not to protect his car seat--he didn't care about that--but to wrap around Kutter and hopefully slow the bleeding enough that he wouldn't die before Charlie could get help. And he needed the car keys.

"I'll be right back," he promised Kutter as he ran back inside. He grabbed a stack of towels, got the car keys from where they rested on the kitchen table, and hurried back outside. He wrapped Kutter tightly. Blood immediately soaked through the first white towel, and he wrapped him in another.

He slammed the door and got in the driver's side. "Don't die, don't die, please don't die," he whispered as he started the car's engine and pulled out of his driveway.

Charlie realized that his arm really hurt where the dog had bitten it, but he had much more important things to worry about. As long as he didn't pass out from loss of blood before he could get help for Kutter, he'd be fine.

Kutter whimpered softly as Charlie sped down the road.

"You're going to be okay," Charlie promised. "They'll fix you up. They'll make you stop bleeding and they'll sew you up and we'll play Frisbee."

He wiped the tears from his eyes since they were blurring his vision, and then scratched Kutter's chin. The dog licked his fingers with a bloody tongue and whimpered again.

Charlie thought about his emergency cabin. If he started driving to it right now, he might gain enough of a lead on the police that they wouldn't know where he'd gone, wouldn't be able to find him. He'd live in relative discomfort, but it would be a hell of a lot better than prison or lethal injection.

The men would tell the police that he'd murdered the girl, and they'd connect him to the murders of twenty-one other girls. Even if they never found out about the others, even if they only got him for the one, he was screwed.

If he drove to the cabin, Kutter would die.

If he didn't, he was going to prison.

If he left him somewhere, even someplace that could fix him up, he'd never know if his dog lived or died.

There was only one possible choice here.

"Just a few more minutes," he assured Kutter. "Just a few and then I'll make everything okay."

* * *

Charlie burst into the hospital emergency room with Kutter in his arms. "I need help!" he cried out. "He's dying!"

Several people turned to stare at him, but Charlie didn't care. He rushed over to the receptionist's window and tapped on the glass. "Please, you need to save him."

The receptionist, a plump woman with too much eye makeup, slid open the window. "Sir, you're at the wrong--"

"I don't know any twenty-four hour veterinarians," said Charlie. "Saving a dog is easier than saving a person, right? Please."

"Sir, your arm--"

"I don't care about my arm. I care about my dog."

A man in blue scrubs pushed through a pair of swinging doors and looked startled as he saw Charlie and Kutter. "What's going on here?" he asked, walking over to them.

"Please save him," Charlie begged. "His name is Kutter and he loves Frisbee and this wasn't his fault."

The man in the scrubs looked at Kutter, then at Charlie, and nodded. "Give him here."

* * *

Charlie sat in the waiting room with his arm bandaged up. It had required eight stitches, but he wouldn't bleed to death.

Two cops sat next to him, one on each side. Charlie had promised to go peacefully if they let him wait until he knew what had happened to Kutter.

* * *

"Not my usual patient," the doctor said with a smile, as Kutter licked Charlie's palm. Kutter's entire torso was covered in bandages, as was what remained of his left ear, but his tail wagged happily. Charlie wished that there was more unbandaged fur available to pet, and settled for petting Kutter's legs.

"You're a good boy," Charlie said. "You're the best dog ever." He wiped some tears from his eyes--much happier ones than before--and turned to the doctor. "Thank you."

"Not a problem. It'll be a good story for parties."

"He'll be okay, right?"

"Yeah, he'll be fine. The vet should be here to pick him up any minute now. Don't worry about him."

Charlie spent a few more minutes with his dog, until the police told him it was time to leave.

* * *

"I could ease into this, or I could just get straight to the point," said the detective, leaning back in his chair in the interrogation room. "As you'll soon discover, Charlie, I'm a get-to-the-point kind of guy. Where are the bodies?"

"I can't tell you yet."

"The more you hold out on me, the worse things are going to be for you. I recommend that you come clean right now."

"I'm really stupid sometimes," said Charlie, "but I know enough to know that things can't get worse for me. I want to bargain."

"You have nothing to bargain with."

"I can save you a lot of time. I'll tell you everything you want to know."

The detective raised an eyebrow and took a sip from his cup of coffee. "What do you want?"

"I have a dog. He's hurt, but he's going to be okay."

"Yeah, I know about your dog."

"Kutter."

"Kutter, right."

"I want you to make sure he gets taken care of. His original owner is a good guy, he'll take him back, but I want to make sure that Kutter gets everything he wants. I've got some savings. I don't want to pay for a lawyer--I want that money to go to Kutter. I want him to have steaks and bacon treats and a nice dog bed and I don't want him going back to being named Duke and I want him to come visit me sometimes." Charlie wiped his eyes. "That's all I want."

The detective scratched his chin. "Hmmmm."

Charlie wondered what Alicia and his other co-workers were saying about him. They were probably totally freaked out. Liz was definitely freaking out. She'd had sex with a serial killer. He didn't think she'd ever come see him in prison, except maybe to yell at him, but he didn't care as long as they brought Kutter in every once in a while.

"I want it in writing," said Charlie.

The detective took another sip of his coffee. He set the mug down and smiled. "You've got yourself a deal, Charlie. If the original owner doesn't want him back, my daughter has been wanting a dog. He'll get a good home. I promise you."

"Thank you."

Charlie took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and then told the detective everything he wanted to know.

REMAINS

On May 21st, 2008, seven graduate students in Religious Studies set out from the University of Colorado in Boulder in search of God. Armed with only their faith and the scriptures, they rented a small cluster of cabins on the western side of the Continental Divide, twenty-eight miles northwest of the nearest town of Pine Springs. Their website allowed their friends and family to track their progress via daily video blog updates, the last of which was made on July 11th.

None of them were ever heard from again.

On July 14th, a forest ranger was dispatched to check on the students at the urging of their concerned families. He found the cabins abandoned, though all of their belongings remained, as though they had simply walked away and never returned. Forty-eight hours later a formal inquest was instigated. Rangers and volunteers combed the surrounding National Forest beneath the thunder of the Search & Rescue helicopter, while policemen tore apart the cabins looking for clues. After ten days, only the families remained to wander the woods in futility. A week later, even they were gone.

On July 11th, 2009, a ten-foot cross was erected on the summit of Mount Isolation. The bronze placard affixed to its base listed seven names above the inscription: Seek and ye shall find.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

—George Bernard Shaw

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.

—Charles Baudelaire, The Generous Gambler

The great enemy of truth is often not the lie—deliberate, contrived and dishonest—but the myth—persistent, persuasive and unrealistic.

—John Fitzgerald Kennedy

October 29th, 2010

Saturday

Rand Armstrong had picked up the tracks in the fresh dusting of snow two miles east of the edge of his property on Rocky Mountain National Forest land. There had been no mistaking them: three-lobed heel pads; teardrop-shaped toes in uneven lines; no appreciable claw marks; and the feathery halos surrounding the prints from the fringe fur. No doubt this was the mountain lion he was after. Damn prints were nearly the size of a tiger’s. No way this wasn’t the bastard that had snuck over his fence and torn apart his huacaya alpacas. He’d already lost three in as many weeks, and he wasn’t about to risk losing any more. Breeding those fluffy llamas may have sounded like a pathetic way to eke out an existence, but he was pulling twenty grand a head. Even with that kind of income, he sure as hell wasn’t about to blow another ten thousand bucks electrifying nearly five miles of fencing like the Forest Service suggested. If they weren’t going to come out and relocate that blasted cat, then he was just going to have to take care of the problem himself.

He’d been hunting big game in these very hills his entire life, but he had to admit the mountain lion posed more of a challenge than his standard prey of deer and elk. The cougars were more like big horn sheep in the sense that rather than skirting rock formations and seeking the route of least resistance, they just as often went up and over. There were points where he lost the tracks entirely under the dense canopy of pines where the snow didn’t reach the ground and in the clusters of scrub oak where the lion could wriggle through and under the branches while he couldn’t, but it never took him very long to pick them back up again. Best he could figure, the prints were about two hours old, which put the mountain lion passing through here right about half an hour before sunrise. It would have been back in its den before first light, so he had to be getting close.

A steep embankment rose about a mile ahead. The Rockies beyond were all gray rock and snow above timberline, where only sporadic pines grew at severe angles from the slope.

Rand paused to rub the blood back into his stubbled cheeks and stomp some feeling into his toes. His Gore-Tex camouflaged jumpsuit may have helped him blend into the forest, but it was useless against the frigid wind, which knifed right through his skin and into his bones. He imagined how red his hands must have been inside his gloves. His trigger finger still worked just fine though. A pull from his hip flask and he was on the move again.

He slung the Remington Model 70, Sporter Deluxe .30-06 off his back and carried it across his chest.

Not much longer now.

One quick shot and the deed would be done. Dragging the carcass back down to the ranch would be a bitch, but he looked forward to incinerating that infernal cat for all the trouble it had caused him. Maybe he’d even cut a chop or two off its flank. It did butcher his alpacas after all. Turnabout was only fair.

He lightened his tread on the detritus and advanced at a crouch. Mountain lions weren’t as cumbersome as elk. They could distribute their weight on those fat paws to such a degree that they could practically float across the snow. He was going to need to hear everything he possibly could. And unlike a deer, if he cornered it without knowing, it could blindside him with a barrage of slashing claws and sharp teeth.

More likely than not, it was curled up in its den licking alpaca blood from between its toes, but he wasn’t about to take that for granted. The walk back was more than long enough to bleed to death.

A skeletal aspen tree bore the telltale gouges from the cat’s claws. Twenty feet up there was a smear of dried blood on the trunk to mark the passing of a squirrel.

The forest faded to the left as the valley wall rose to the right, growing steeper with each step. Large boulders had fallen from the lip above to line the base of the embankment, creating dark crevices and caves, any one of which would have proven a suitable temporary den. At least mountain lions were solitary creatures by nature and he didn’t have to worry about stumbling into a dozen of them. Besides, he only wanted the one.

He pulled back the bolt silently, chambered a round, and eased it back home. Seating the butt against his shoulder, he slowed his advance and scoured the hillside along the barrel of the rifle. The wind tapered and the world around him assumed an unnatural calm.

Movement drew his eye from up the rocks to the right. He knelt behind a boulder and made himself small. Nuzzling his cheek against the stock, he looked through the scope and traced the contours of the haphazardly assembled rock slope with the crosshairs.

A flash of white, and then it was gone.

Slowing his breathing, he steadied the scope on the spot where he had seen it.

His finger found the trigger and gently pressed it into the sweet spot. Even the slightest pressure now would do the job.

He saw the black triangle lining the ear first, and then the creature raised its head. Golden fur over the smooth crown of the skull, a cold black eye, white muzzle—

Crack!

A spray of crimson raced up the rocks behind the lion as it disappeared from view.

The report echoed through the valley over the tinny ringing in his ears.

Rand rose, chambered another bullet, and advanced cautiously. The scope never left his eye as he crawled up and over the obstacles in his way. He attuned his ears to even the slightest sound, but only heard his own tread. When he reached the boulder, he leaned over it and looked down. The cat was sprawled on its right side. Its left front paw carved at the ground in twitching movements. Blood drained down the rock behind it toward the crater where its left ear had once been. The better part of its cranium was gone, and its left eye and the surrounding fur were scorched.

It shivered and made a meek mewling sound, then became still.

Rand climbed over the rock and pressed the barrel of the rifle to the soft flesh behind its front leg for a quick heart shot if it even flinched. He kicked its rear haunches, but it made no effort to move. One more kick for good measure and he lowered the rifle.

He smiled and slung the gun back over his shoulder.

“Sixty thousand dollar cat,” he said. “Damn.”

He kicked it again…and again.

Momentarily satisfied, he shoved his hand into his pocket and produced the big game strap he used to haul deer up by their hooves to be gutted. He looped it around the mountain lion’s back legs. It was nearly as large as a wolf, so he was going to have to drag it.

From the corner of his eye, he saw the mouth of a small cave barely large enough to accommodate a grown man in fetal position. There was a collection of broken bones near the opening, most likely from a rabbit. Beside them was another, much larger bone. He felt a surge of anger again at the thought of it belonging to one of his alpacas and stormed over to investigate.

He bent over to grab it and froze.

It wasn’t an alpaca bone.

Not even close.

“Son of a bitch,” he whispered.

He was totally screwed now.

November 4th, 2010

Thursday

“Office hours don’t start for another twenty minutes,” Gabriel Hartnell said without looking up from the following day’s lesson plan. He was going to have to insert an image of staphylococcus aureus into the Power Point presentation as an introduction to those depicting MRSA if he expected his students to follow the lecture.

He heard the door close and again focused on the task at hand. There was only so much depth he could provide in a two hundred-level Intro to Pathology class, but he couldn’t glaze over the actual pathology portion. Maybe he simply wasn’t cut out for this teaching thing after—

An impatient sigh.

“I said come back in—,” Gabriel started, but his words died at the sight of the man, who waited just across the chipped oak desk from him. Rather than a timid undergrad with the fear of potential failure etched upon his face, he stared into the eyes of a man in his early thirties with thinning black hair and several days’ worth of stubble. He appeared so sleep-deprived he could have passed for a grad student. Gabriel hadn’t seen the man in more than a year, and honestly hadn’t expected to ever again. The man’s mere presence elicited a fresh wave of the pain Gabriel still struggled to hide, even from himself.

“Been a while, professor,” the man said. He wore a charcoal polyester suit, the creases betraying how long it had been since he had last changed it. His pale blue tie hung loosely around his neck. A tuft of curly hair peeked out over the unbuttoned collar of his shirt.

Gabriel rose so quickly he knocked his notes to the floor and banged his hip in his hurry to get out from behind the desk. He proffered his hand and the two men shook abruptly. There were so many thoughts racing through Gabriel’s mind that he couldn’t formulate any of them into words. He could only think of one reason why Brent Cavenaugh would have driven all the way out to Boulder to see him face-to-face. His stomach clenched and he felt the room start to spin. He steadied himself against the edge of the desk and ran his fingers through his shaggy, sandy-blonde hair, slicking it back with the cool sweat beading his forehead.

“Can we sit down?” Cavenaugh asked. He gestured to the twin chairs in front of the desk.

Gabriel nodded and they sat side by side. He felt the heat of Cavenaugh’s hazel eyes upon him, but couldn’t force himself to raise his eyes to match the stockier man’s stare. Cavenaugh was with the Denver Police Department, a detective with the Pattern Crimes Bureau of the Criminal Investigations Division, and had a way of looking through a man rather than at him. While Gabriel had an undergraduate degree in Biochemistry from the University of Denver and a master’s in Cell and Molecular Biology from Colorado State, Cavenaugh had joined the force after earning an associate’s degree in Criminal Justice from Front Range Community College, and what he hadn’t learned in the police academy, he had picked up in a hurry on the streets. The only thing they had in common was the overwhelming sense of loss, the hole in their lives that the past two years hadn’t begun to fill.

Gabriel tried to ask the question out loud, but couldn’t find the strength to voice it.

Did they find the bodies?

“I want to show you something,” Cavenaugh said. He reached under his jacket and produced a manila folder, which he passed to Gabriel. After a moment of expectant silence, Gabriel opened the folder. “Tell me what you see in that first picture.”

It looked like the crater-pocked surface of the moon with a long, segmented mealworm crawling across it.

“You’ll have to do better than that,” Gabriel said. “There’s always at least one student every semester who thinks he can stump me with this. It’s an unclassified extremophile found on a meteorite speculated to have originated on Mars. The closest living microorganism we can find on Earth is a halophile, a species of haloarchaea. What does this have to do with anything?”

“Look at the next picture.”

Gabriel flipped the page and studied the image, which showed five of the microbes on a lattice-like substrate. Some were curled into crescents while others were elongated.

“And the next,” Cavenaugh said.

The following picture had the exact same background, however the microorganisms had assumed different shapes and positions. He noticed a time stamp on the bottom of the image and turned back to the previous page. It had been stamped only one minute prior.

“They’re alive,” Gabriel whispered. “That’s impossible.”

“You aren’t the first to say that.”

Gabriel finally met Cavenaugh’s eyes. The expression on the man’s face was unreadable.

“What aren’t you telling me?” Gabriel asked.

“Those images were taken through an electron microscope on samples of bone prepared from a human femur that was found just outside of Pine Springs.”

Gabriel drew a sharp breath.

“DNA testing confirmed it was Nathan Dillinger’s.”

“Did they find anything else?”

“You mean anything belonging to one of our sisters? No. Just the one bone. No other parts of Nathan Dillinger or the other six.”

“Are they investigating the site where they found it? I mean, if they discovered one bone, then surely—”

“Calm down, Gabriel,” Cavenaugh said. His eyes softened and he placed a hand on Gabriel’s shoulder. “They scoured the National Forest for two straight days and came up with nothing. I would have told you at the time, but I didn’t want to get your hopes up.”

“I don’t understand any of this. How did this microorganism that by all rights shouldn’t even be alive get onto the disembodied femur of one of the people who disappeared with our sisters? Where’s the rest of Nathan, and where is Stephanie?”

Saying her name was a self-inflicted wound.

“I was hoping you might be able to shed some light on that.”

“What do you mean? How the hell would I—?”

“An anonymous tip led us to the mountain lion den where we found the bone. Of course, it didn’t take long to track the call to the man who poached the animal. It was tagged and being tracked after all. It took all of about an hour to place it on his property prior to its death and perform a ballistics match on the bullet, but here’s the interesting part. Mountain lions are nomadic. They tend to move around when food becomes scarce. The Division of Wildlife had been monitoring its movements for more than a year, and twice in that time it passed within five miles of the cabins. The most recent of which was only two weeks ago.”

“You think it came across Nathan’s remains during that time.”

“Stands to reason,” Cavenaugh said. “But here’s the kicker: they performed an autopsy on the mountain lion and found it riddled with those microorganisms. I figure that’s our most substantial link. We’ve had cops scouring the mountain lion’s trail, but haven’t had any luck. I was thinking you might have some stroke of genius that could help us find where these microorganisms can live.”

“I’m sure you already have experts far more qualified than I am.”

“I have a group of scientists poring over microscopes and slides, giddy with the prospect of publishing and naming these little bugs after themselves, and a cold case for which the department can’t spare any more manpower.”

“What do you want from me?”

“I want you to help me find my sister,” Cavenaugh said. Fire burned behind in eyes. “And yours.”

November 10th, 2010

Wednesday

Gabriel hung up the phone and leaned back in the chair. His heart was pounding and his palms were damp. He wasn’t sure he was going to be able to go through with this. After nearly a week had passed without word from Cavenaugh, he had begun to think that he might never hear from him again, which had sounded better and better as time had passed. It had taken planting the cross on the peak of Mount Isolation to truly come to grips with the fact that his little sister was dead. Granted, not knowing how she had perished ate him alive inside, but worse was the prospect of learning that she might have suffered. Finding a single disarticulated bone didn’t bode well in that regard. Of course, the authorities had until recently speculated that she was still alive somewhere out there, that she and the others had formed some sort of cult and were now living safely in some apocalyptic compound praying for the Rapture. They apparently believed that there was a fine line between a believer and a zealot, and that anyone who disappeared into the wilderness looking for God had long since crossed it.

But that wasn’t his sister. Not his Stephanie. Hers was not a blind faith, but a carefully orchestrated search for a higher power.

He supposed that was what he had been doing all this time, too. In the years following their parents’ death, they had both embarked upon a quest for answers. He had only been sixteen years old and Stephanie fourteen when the car accident had uprooted them from their stable lives in Hartford, Connecticut and moved them to Denver to live with their maternal grandparents. It wasn’t right for any God to orphan two children on what felt like a sadistic whim. In retrospect, Gabriel understood that their individual searches had diverged long ago. He had thrown himself into a science lab where he worked through a microscope, not necessarily to disprove the notion of God, but to prove that man held power over Him, especially when it came to life and death, while Stephanie had turned her eyes to the heavens.

None of that mattered now. He had promised, if only to himself, that he would never let any harm befall her, and he had failed. Maybe they hadn’t found her body, but deep down, he knew. His little sister was dead.

Gabriel swiped away the tears and rose from the chair. He walked into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. The discomfort in his stomach told him he was hungry, but nothing looked remotely appealing. He finally settled on another bottle of Rolling Rock and returned to the living room of the small apartment, where he sat in front of the desktop computer. For the last six days, he had felt its inexorable pull and had resisted through sheer force of will, but now he knew the time had come.

Cavenaugh had made all of the arrangements, just as he had promised he would. The cabins were rented for two weeks, and four of the others would be meeting them there on Saturday morning. Gabriel had already arranged his leave with the university by cashing in every last one of his accrued vacation days, while secretly hoping he wouldn’t have to use them. The short notice was going to cost him two classes over the summer session, but if he managed to gain some measure of closure, then it would definitely be worth it. Until now, the trip had been something of an abstraction, the kind of plan that never really materialized, but now he was faced with the reality of the situation: in two days he would return to the last place where his sister had been seen alive in hopes of discovering how she had died.

He set aside the beer, which seethed like acid in his gut, and typed in the web address.

After a moment, the home page opened and he stared at the image on the left side of seven smiling men and women, barely out of their teens. Their faces were flushed with the prospect of adventure. Gabriel was certain that was how they would have chosen to be remembered. Stephanie stood in the middle, her blonde hair pulled into a ponytail, her blue eyes like twin sapphires. She was wearing the yellow sweatshirt with the CU buffalo across the front that he had given her three months before on her twenty-third birthday. Had he known that birthday would have been her last, he would have given her something special, something meaningful. The cross she always wore hung over the collar: gold with five diamonds, one in the center and another at each end. She had been so vibrant, so beautiful, the kind of person who naturally became the center of attention whenever she entered a room. To her right stood Jenny Cavenaugh, who had short dark hair and her brother’s stocky build. She had eyes a shade of shamrock green so intense they looked computer-altered. Beside her were Levi Northcutt, who was tall and gangly, and had yet to outgrow his adolescent acne, and Nathan Dillinger, an average-looking guy with a Rockies cap pulled down over his eyes, and both femora still seated firmly in their sockets beneath his dirty jeans. To Stephanie’s left was Grant Farnham, who reminded Gabriel of Peyton Manning. He was discreetly holding his sister’s hand, which confirmed what Gabriel had suspected for several months leading up to their disappearance. Beside Grant were Chase Evans, a short, chubby boy with moppish red hair and a crooked smile, and Deborah MacAuley, a frumpy brunette with thick glasses and a palsy hand she held close to her chest. And rubbing his flank on Stephanie’s shin was her rescued orange tabby, Oscar, named for his frequently rotten disposition. Even he had vanished without a trace, leaving behind his empty food and water bowls, a used litter box, and his traveling crate amidst the collection of clothes, personal effects, and the food none of them had bothered to collect in their hurry to join the supposed cult.

Gabriel felt a rush of anger at the thought and realized he was grinding his teeth. After more than a year of dissociating himself from his emotions, the last six days had broken the floodgates and left him at their mercy. He wanted to scream, cry, lash out, collapse into bed and sleep forever. But he hadn’t opened the website simply to view the photograph. Though he could probably recite the video blogs by heart, he needed to watch them again.

A link on the right side of the home page led him to the “Diary Page,” which listed all of the dates of entry in columns beside the rectangular video screen in the center. The seven had each taken turns. His sister had been first in the rotation. He clicked the first link and Stephanie’s frozen image appeared in the viewer. His heart caught and a lump rose in his throat. With a shaking hand that caused the cursor to tremble on the screen, he clicked the triangular “PLAY” button.

“Well, here we are, Day One,” Stephanie said. She wore the same smile she generally reserved for birthdays and Christmas morning. She was so happy she positively glowed. Her hand moved back and forth in the lower periphery of the image, soliciting a contented purr from her lap. Behind her, the window had been opened on a wall of pines and whatever forest creatures chattered in the canopy. The walls were paneled with wood so coarse it could give you splinters just by looking at it. “We would all like to thank our families for being so supportive of our little adventure. So, thank you.”

Stephanie blew the camera a kiss and there was a chorus of assent from somewhere off-screen.

Gabriel smiled, even as the tears rolled down his cheeks.

“So, as you all know, we’re here in the middle of nowhere searching for proof. Maybe we’ll find it. Maybe we won’t. Either way, it’s going to be an exciting summer that none of us will ever forget. Another year of grad school and we’ll all have our master’s degrees. Some of us will continue on and pursue doctorates, while the rest of us will venture out into the real world and try to make a living in this primarily theoretical discipline. I guess that makes this our final hurrah.

“And now our statement of mission for posterity. We’re here on the western slope of the Rocky Mountains, nearly an hour’s drive from the nearest indoor plumbing, because this is where the scriptures have led us. When we say we’re looking for proof of the existence of God, we understand that no such thing can ever be found. God must be taken on faith. However, what we can find is corroborative evidence to support the verses in the Bible, peripheral proof if you will. Like Porcher Taylor found what we believe to be Noah’s Ark on the top of Mount Ararat. Astronomers have recreated the night skies to validate the presence of the star that led the three wise men to the stable where Jesus was born, and the lineages of the Caesars can be factually dated to correspond with those in the Bible.

“I would like to read a few verses now.

“This is from the Book of Revelation, chapter twelve, verses seven through nine. And there was a war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found anymore in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world; he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

“There’s another from Second Peter, chapter two, verse four: For God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment.

“And that’s why we’re right here, right now. We believe that somewhere, hidden in these hills, we will find where the nephilim, the dark angels cast out of heaven with Lucifer, landed on earth, and provide incontrovertible proof that angels do exist. And by inference, we will be one step closer to finding God.”

November 13th, 2010

Saturday

All mythology is rooted in fact.

Those six words returned again and again to the forefront of Gabriel’s mind as he drove westward along the winding highway, higher into the mountains. Throughout its history, mankind has always sought to explain what it doesn’t understand. Wild stories have been fabricated and deities created to rationalize events that are now easily justified. Thunder was caused by Thor’s hammer, lightning by Zeus’s hand. Sickness was the result of angering the spirits and natural disasters were the vengeance of the gods. While Gabriel didn’t subscribe to the Christian notion of God, he couldn’t help but think the same principles applied. How did man come to be? Why, God birthed him from nothing and set him down in the Garden of Eden, of course. Never mind the irrefutable arguments for evolution. The fall of Sodom and Gomorrah? God did it. Scholars claim to have found the Garden and the remains of both cities. If they had actually existed, then what had truly happened there? And if the mythology of the bible were based in fact, then what had his sister and her friends found in these very mountains?

Gabriel was forced to slow his black Dodge Intrepid as the snow, which until now had only come down in fits and starts, began to fall in earnest. The impregnable walls of ponderosa pines, assorted spruces, and bare aspens sparkled with the recent accumulation, while the scrub oak packed between the trunks remained sheltered beneath the canopy. Each bend in the road granted a brief glimpse of the sharp white peaks in the distance over the treetops. The flakes tumbled sideways across the asphalt on the shifting wind, but had fortunately yet to begin to stick.

He cranked up the radio to drown out his thoughts.

The highway descended into a deep valley, at the bottom of which was a wide river so blue it positively radiated a glacial coldness. Its banks were already buried beneath several inches of snow. Gabriel veered from the pavement onto the widened gravel shoulder just before the bridge that crossed the river, and turned right onto an uneven dirt road designated only by the 432 mile-marker post. The forest closed in from both sides to form a claustrophobic trench. Tire tracks marred the dusting of snow ahead. His car rattled over a long washboard stretch before the road evened out again.

County Road 432 wended around the topography of the mountains for twenty-some miles before it appeared to simply peter out on the map. The cabins were just over fourteen miles from the highway. If he pushed the car past twenty-five miles per hour, he would be there in half an hour. Unconsciously, he eased off the gas.

The river flirted with the road, but remained just out of reach through the trees.

Gabriel switched on the headlights and turned up the windshield wipers, which made the thumping sound of a mechanical heartbeat that accelerated with his own. Between the heat gusting from the dashboard and the oppressive forest, the car was beginning to feel like a coffin. Cracking the window, he welcomed in the crisp wind, which screamed through the valley. He chased away the thought that it was the residual echo of the sound his sister had made with her dying breath.

***

Gabriel recognized the final stretch leading to the cabins as though only days had passed since he was last there. In his mind, he still wandered the forest in circles radiating outward from the small cluster of buildings, his throat on fire from crying Stephanie’s name well past the point where his voice failed him. The sharp pain in his gut intensified as he rounded the final bend and turned down the short drive, which ended in a rough gravel turnaround. There was a ring of pines in the center, between which were several weathered picnic tables. Three cars were already parked in front of the cabins beyond. He pulled around and parked behind Cavenaugh’s red Explorer. More than an inch of snow had already accumulated on its hood and roof, while the two cars parked diagonally in front of it were only beginning to grow a layer of ice.

He sat in the car a moment longer and watched the snowflakes turn to droplets of water on the windshield. His hand shook when he finally reached for the handle and opened the door. After collecting his suitcase and backpack from the rear seat, he headed past the other cars toward the front cabin. The gold Lexus sedan presumably belonged to Kelsey Northcutt, Levi’s father the gastroenterologist, but he didn’t know to whom the forest green Chevy pickup in front of it belonged.

At the foot of the dirt path, Gabriel paused to survey the cabins. They seemed somehow smaller, yet otherwise little had changed. Maybe the dark wood of the exterior had faded slightly, but the fixed green shutters beside the windows still appeared to be a stiff breeze from falling off and there were more shingles missing from the roofs than remained. The painted green doors were chipped and battered, and again he refused to imagine how they might have gotten that way. Thinner branches led from the main path around the sides of the front cabin to the other two, which were set just far enough behind and to the sides of the first to form a small courtyard between them. The yellowed wild grasses showed through the snow in matted clumps. There were no stumps or other evidence of cleared trees, as though the lush forest that encircled the buildings had simply refused to grow there.

He heard the grumble of tires on gravel from the distance behind him and suddenly noticed that it was the only sound he heard over the soft patter of his tread on the snow. Even the wind, it seemed, couldn’t reach them on that isolated patch of earth.

The front door opened and Cavenaugh stepped out onto the wood-plank porch. Firelight flickered behind him through the slots of the wood-burning stove.

“Glad you were able to make it,” Cavenaugh said. He smiled, but it was obviously forced.

Gabriel nodded and continued up the path. He ascended the warped stairs and passed Cavenaugh without making eye contact. The warmth pulled him into the small room, where he set his bags to the right of the door beside the others. There was barely enough room for a threadbare couch and a small end table with a kerosene lantern around the potbellied stove. He could see the lumpy, stripped mattress through the bedroom door directly to the left of the fire, and an avocado Formica countertop beside a rust-stained sink without faucets through the door to the right. Until now he had forgotten he would again have to become accustomed to using the outhouse and the hand pump for the well water.

Cavenaugh rested a hand on his shoulder and he nearly jumped.

“We’re just waiting for Maura Aragon now,” Cavenaugh said. “The former Maura Evans.”

“Chase’s sister,” Gabriel said.

“The only one who won’t be represented here is Nathan Dillinger. His family feels that finding his femur was more than enough to answer their lingering questions. They just asked that they be notified if we come across any more of his remains.”

Gabriel nodded once. He couldn’t blame them for not wanting to learn the details of how their loving son could have been separated from his right leg. The mere knowledge that he had must have been painful enough.

“We’re setting ourselves up in the same rooms where our siblings—or son, in Kelsey’s case—stayed,” Cavenaugh said. “That means the two of us are bunking in the northern cabin with Jess MacAuley. She’s dropping off her bags over there now. We figured she could sleep on the couch and you and I could share the bed. Just no spooning.”

Cavenaugh laughed. Gabriel tried to at least smile, but he didn’t have it in him. He had known how difficult it would be to return here, yet he had been completely unprepared. It felt as though all of the air were being sucked from the room. A dull ache radiated outward from his head into every bone in his body.

“Might as well run your stuff over there before the storm gets much worse,” Cavenaugh said. “We’re all meeting back here as soon as we’re through.”

Gabriel grabbed his bags, walked through the kitchen, and exited the back door. He veered left and passed the outhouse, which was now nearly overgrown by scrub oak. Smoke billowed from the aluminum cap on the roof of the cabin. He was nearly to the back door when movement from the edge of the forest to the right caught his eye, but when he turned, he saw only a cluster of ponderosa pines and the maze of trunks beyond leading into the shadows.

He set his bags by the back door beneath the overhanging roof, and walked toward the tree line. Nothing moved, not even ground squirrels darting across the detritus from one mouth of their burrow to the next.

In his mind, he envisioned a younger version of himself stumbling blindly through the wilderness, shouting for his sister, dirt thickening the trails of tears on his cheeks to mud. He had hoped never to feel that helpless again, and yet here he stood now.

Gabriel was just about to head back to the cabin when he noticed a series of tracks in the fresh snow. They looked like those of a small dog, or more likely, a fox. Now that he really thought about it, he might have seen a flash of orange darting out of sight into the forest.

He watched for any sign of movement for another minute before returning to the cabin to unpack his belongings.

***

Half an hour later they were all assembled in the front cabin, where they shared an awkward silence over a pot of strong coffee. In the time it had taken Gabriel to unpack his belongings, Cavenaugh had converted the main room into a kind of command center. Satellite images were tacked to the walls, overlaid with grids marking latitude and longitude in minutes and superimposed with topographical maps. There had to be twenty of them in all, and surely covered every inch of the National Forest. The corner of the room was filled with stacks of equipment Gabriel had never seen before. There were electrical boxes reminiscent of the components of a stereo tower, coils of coaxial cable, and what appeared to be two fancy metal detectors.

Gabriel hovered in front of them, away from the others. He paced from one wall to the next and back again. The coffee only seemed to amplify his nervous energy. He wished someone would crack a window despite the storm. It was starting to feel like a gym locker room in there.

Cavenaugh stood in the doorway to the kitchen. He waited for all of them to absorb their new surroundings. Gabriel couldn’t believe the amount of time and money Cavenaugh must have invested into the project. Now that he really thought about it, no one had asked him to contribute a single cent. His first thought was that Kelsey must have financed everything, but one glance confirmed that he was every bit as awed as the rest of them. He sat on the arm of the couch, attired in the newest and trendiest winter gear from L.L. Bean: a navy blue ski jacket, black snow pants, and furry Sorel boots. His pale gray hair had thinned over the last year, but he had taken such good care of himself that it was impossible to pinpoint his age at a guess. The fire reflected from the wire-framed glasses perched on his aqualine nose as he surveyed the room. Will Farnham slouched on the couch beside him, a stark contrast to Kelsey. He wore an old flannel shirt, dirty carpenter jeans, and Wolverine boots that betrayed the steel inserts over the toes. Long johns peered out over his collar and from his pant legs. He had a thick black beard and a shaved head, and brown eyes that appeared to track a little too slowly. Maura Aragon sat beside him, nervously tapping her feet and doing her best to avoid making direct eye contact with anyone. Her long black hair hung over a face which would have been unmemorable were it not for her crystal-blue eyes. She wore a heavy, knitted sweater featuring teddy bears and hearts, jeans that clung to her wide hips and thighs, and padded boots with faux fur lining the tops. Jess MacAuley leaned on the wall behind them by the front door, sandy blonde hair pulled into a ponytail. She had wide blue eyes, a slender face, and plump lips. Even without makeup she was striking. Her azure sweater brought out her irises, and her faded Levi’s traced her long legs into waterproof hunting boots. She and Gabriel had already exchanged clipped formalities in their cabin while they unpacked, but he had yet to speak with any of the others.

“All right,” Cavenaugh finally said. “I assume none of you need introductions. So let’s just get started. First off, thank you all for dropping everything in your lives back home to come here. I can only imagine the kind of sacrifices you’ve had to make to do so. With any luck, we won’t have to make this pilgrimage again, and this will be the last time any of us see this place or each other ever again.”

“Where did you get all of this?” Kelsey asked, gesturing around the room.

“The maps came directly from NASA’s Terra satellite. I had them blown up and printed. The originals are still on my laptop, which allows digital manipulation and zoom capabilities. They were generated just under a year ago, so they aren’t one hundred percent precise, but they’re the best available.”

“They must have cost a fortune,” Kelsey said.

Cavenaugh offered a weak smile and sighed before continuing. The firelight made his eyes appear recessed into darkness and highlighted wrinkles Gabriel hadn’t noticed previously. “Behind Gabriel over there are two GPR—ground-penetrating radar—machines capable of detecting remains buried up to fifteen meters beneath the ground under optimal conditions, and our communications and analysis equipment, all of which are on loan from the Denver Police Department.” He turned to Gabriel. “I trust you were able to secure an electron microscope.”

Gabriel nodded and tried not to imagine what the university would do to him if they found out he had borrowed it. Granted, it was an older model he had procured from storage, but he was still going to keep it in the trunk of his car until he absolutely needed to use it for fear someone might break it.

“Excellent,” Cavenaugh said. “So what we need to—”

“What is the deal with the microscope and the germs?” Will interrupted. “I don’t understand what you were saying about those germs on Nathan’s leg bone. How is that supposed to help us find out what happened to them?”

“Gabriel?” Cavenaugh said.

In a heartbeat, all eyes in the room were upon him. He took a final slug from his coffee and set aside the mug. Cavenaugh had prepared him for this eventuality, and had cautioned him that there was one key piece of information he intended to withhold in order to convince the others to join them. Specifically, he made no mention of the similarities between the bacteria found on Nathan’s femur and their fossilized twins on the Mars meteorite. Gabriel still wondered why the evidence techs at the Rocky Mountain Regional Computer Forensics Laboratory, the FBI forensics lab that shared resources with the local police, weren’t tearing apart the hills in search of the almost mythological extremophile.

Gabriel cleared his throat and began. His gaze wandered restlessly around the room as he spoke.

“The organisms they found on Nathan’s femur bear an uncanny resemblance to a kind of extremophile called haloarchaea, which has several unique characteristics we feel could help us isolate the region where the mountain lion encountered the bone. Extremophile is the name given to microorganisms that require extreme environmental conditions to thrive. In the case of haloarchaea, they need at least a ten percent salt concentration in water to survive, preferably more, which implies that we’re looking for a small body of saltwater or a solar saltern.”

“There’s no saltwater in Colorado,” Will said.

“That’s not exactly true. There are specifically no bodies of water one might consider similar to seawater or that of the Great Salt Lake, but these mountains are rife with mineral springs with high contents of naturally recurring salts like sodium chloride, carbonate, and sulfate, and additional carbonate salts from calcium, magnesium, potassium, and lithium. If you’ve ever been to the hot springs in Glenwood or Idaho Springs, you know what I’m talking about.”

“So if we can find this hot spring, we should theoretically find this microorganism,” Jess said from the back. “And that should confine our search enough to presumably locate the remainder of Nathan’s body, and hopefully our family members as well.”

“Exactly,” Cavenaugh said. “Of course, that theory is predicated upon the assumption that Nathan’s femur wasn’t moved from another location to begin with. If it had simply been discarded there by someone or some other creature like a bear, then it may just be a wild goose chase.”

“There’s another interesting fact about haloarchaea we suspect may apply to this microorganism. They have an inordinately high concentration of carotenoid pigments for protection from ultraviolet rays, which cause them to take on a reddish or rust-colored hue. If we find our spring, we should know it right away.”

“And from there,” Cavenaugh said, nodding toward the equipment behind Gabriel, “the real work begins.”

☼☼☼

They had spent the afternoon learning how to use the equipment. The GPR had taken some serious practice, but by the time dinner rolled around, they all had a pretty decent understanding of the various signals on the readout and were at least able to recognize the differences between ice, packed dirt, and various rocks. Human remains would be a different animal entirely, but there were no test subjects available. They could only hope they would be able to identify them when the moment of truth arrived.

After a meal of boiled hot dogs and baked beans, during which conversation had been sporadic at best, they had decided to retire early and gather again before sunrise to formulate their plans. They were all eager to begin, but the storm had intensified to the point that the blowing flakes obscured even the major landmarks. The first thing they were going to need to do was study the satellite images in hopes of finding the hot spring, and then make notes of the clues in the bible verses that might have led their missing family members to it. For now, Gabriel was content to allow the day to end. Granted, they had accomplished nothing, but simply being there in the cabins again had taken a physical and emotional toll on all of them.

Gabriel closed the outhouse door and threw the hood of his jacket up over his head to shield it from the onslaught of snow on the shifting wind. If for nothing else, he was thankful the flies had died off for the season. He had horrible memories of the buzzing sound and the tapping of insect bodies against his bare rear end. As he trudged through the accumulation, he tried not to wonder what the coming day would bring.

He was nearly to the back door of his cabin when he noticed a figure standing at the edge of the forest, staring off into the trees. At the sound of his approach, the figure turned and gave him a halfhearted wave. He was able to see just enough to identify Jess by her profile.

“This wasn’t what I had in mind,” she said.

“What’s that?”

She wrapped her arms around her chest and walked toward him.

“The snow,” she said. “It was in the fifties when I left Denver. I nearly didn’t pack all of my winter gear.”

“This is definitely going to make our search more challenging.”

Silence hung between them for a long moment. Gabriel was just about to excuse himself when she finally spoke.

“What aren’t you telling us?”

“What do you mean?”

“Earlier, when you were talking about the bacteria they found on Nathan’s bone, you said they were ‘similar to’ haloarchaea, ‘like’ haloarchaea.”

Gabriel nodded.

“You never once said this microorganism was haloarchaea.”

“I don’t know where you’re going with this,” he said, but it was obvious.

“I’ve been thinking about this all afternoon, and I can only come up with two options: either you don’t know what kind of bacteria they found, or you’re just not telling us.”

Gabriel didn’t know how to proceed. He had promised Cavenaugh he wouldn’t mention their theory about the origin of the microorganism, but he had only done so because they agreed the others might not join them if they did so prior to arrival. Now that everyone was here, though…

“This is hard enough on all of us as it is,” Jess said. “We don’t need secrets between us to make it worse.” She took his hand and looked directly into his eyes. “I lost my sister here, too.”

He took a deep breath and glanced back over his shoulder toward the cabin. Before he consciously made a decision to do so, he started to talk.

***

Gabriel stared at the exposed wooden planks of the ceiling above. His mind wouldn’t keep quiet long enough for him to sleep. Cavenaugh’s clock ticked monotonously from the other side of the bed, metering the rhythm of his wheezing exhalations. The light from the wood-burning stove in the main room had faded to a weak glow through the open doorway, and if he turned just right, he could see the cloud of his breath. He rolled over and pulled the covers up over his face, primarily to drown out the sounds of the man lying on his back scant inches away in the queen-sized bed. With any luck, Jess was having better luck on the couch.

She had responded to the details of the halophile about as he had expected, as he was sure he would have had their roles been reversed. Had he not seen it with his own eyes, he would have shared her disbelief. They had left the conversation in such a way that he still didn’t know exactly what she thought. Whether the microorganism had once originated on a different planet or not was irrelevant anyway. It was merely a tool to help them locate the bodies. Maybe once he was able to formally close this chapter in his life, he would be able to convince the university to write him a grant to study it in the field. Or perhaps he would be happy enough to never return to these godforsaken mountains again.

There was a scratching sound, faint at first, like a bare branch raking the siding outside the window. But there weren’t any trees within ten feet of the cabin.

He pulled down the covers to better hear. Even over Cavenaugh’s snoring, he could discern it, louder now.

It stopped abruptly.

Gabriel sat up and craned his head to listen. Was there someone outside the cabin trying to get in? His heart was pounding, his breaths coming shallow and fast. He leaned over the side of the bed and grabbed his flashlight from the floor.

Thump.

The hollow sound originated somewhere behind a wall, or possibly under the floorboards. It was hard to tell. He could only be sure he had heard something bump a wooden board in some sort of recess.

A minute passed. Then two. The sound didn’t repeat.

Gabriel climbed out of bed, slipped on his boots, and shrugged into his jacket. He switched on the flashlight and directed it around the room. Nothing. Mustering his courage, he exited the bedroom, passed through the living room and kitchen, and opened the back door. The wind buffeted him with a swarm of snowflakes as he stepped out into the night. He swept the column of light across the glimmering white mat, spotlighting large flakes that cast strange, shifting shadows. Easing along the side of the building where the snow had begun to drift, he continued moving the beam from side to side until he was nearly directly under the window, and stopped.

There were tracks in the snow.

He knelt and examined them. They belonged to some sort of animal for sure. The prints were too deep to clearly see the imprint of the paws, but he could tell it couldn’t have been more than a foot tall based on the uneven sweeping marks the fur on the animal’s belly left atop the snow between the tracks. They probably belonged to the fox he had seen earlier.

The snow had been cleared away from the base of the cabin wall, where there was a small, dark opening between the ground and the siding. He flattened himself to his stomach and shined the light into the hole. Weathered planks, upon which the wooden interior floors were braced, stretched off into the darkness beyond the reach of the flashlight. The ground beneath was bare, leveled dirt. He smelled mildew and turned earth, and underneath, a foul organic stench that suggested something had crawled under there to die.

He pointed the light to the right and caught a flash from twin golden rings. There was a hissing sound and something slashed his cheek. Dropping the flashlight, he rolled away from the hole in time to see a furry orange animal dart across the clearing and disappear into the storm.

“Jesus,” he whispered. He dabbed his left cheek with his fingertips. They came away damp, and only caused the pain from the wounds to intensify. He retrieved the flashlight from the snow and shined it on his hand to confirm what he already knew. His fingers were covered with blood and he could feel it beginning to run down the side of his neck.

Did that thing bite him? All he remembered was the reflection of eyes and a blur of movement. He had barely managed to close his eyes before it struck his cheek.

At least that accounted for what he had heard from inside.

Cautiously, he shined the beam back into the hole, half expecting to see an entire litter of those monsters waiting to tear off the rest of his face. There was only a small burrow worn into the dirt, a shallow cavity filled with short, knobby sticks. He tipped the light down just a touch and gasped.

Those weren’t sticks in that nest.

He took several deep breaths to steady his nerves, reached under the house, and closed his fist around the first object he felt. Rolling away from the hole, he directed the light onto the object balanced on his open palm.

Three small bones, articulated with rotting knots of cartilage. No sign of the flesh remained, and the cortices were scarred by grooves from an animal’s teeth.

There was no mistaking what he held.

It was a human finger.

November 14th, 2010

Sunday

“Ouch.” Gabriel winced as Maura swabbed his cheek with alcohol. It felt as though he’d been attacked with a series of dull, rusted razorblades. Fortunately, the lacerations were fairly superficial, but that didn’t mean they didn’t sting like hell.

“I may not be a doctor,” Maura said, “but I think you’re going to live.”

She opened the medical kit Cavenaugh had had the foresight to bring and taped a couple squares of gauze over the side of his face. It was frightening how well-stocked the kit was. Not only were there bandages, but syringes, splints, vials of lidocaine and epinephrine, and enough needles to make an acupuncturist jealous. What kind of trouble did Cavenaugh anticipate they would get themselves into up here?

Again he pondered what Cavenaugh might know that he hadn’t divulged.

Maura closed the kit, took it back into the kitchen, and set it on the counter. Gabriel remained seated in the doorway, oblivious to the snow blowing in his face as he was too busy watching the others where they crouched beneath the window. They had widened the hole under the house substantially, and were now excavating the small recess. Cavenaugh wore a pair of non-powdered latex gloves, and wriggled in and out of the orifice. Each time he returned with a few more small bones, which he set on the pillowcase Kelsey held stretched open in front of him. Will pointed the flashlight over Cavenaugh’s back and directed the beam under the floorboards, while Jess stared intently at the growing collection of skeletal remains.

“Hand me another baggie,” Cavenaugh said.

Will passed him a sandwich-sized Ziploc bag, and a moment later Cavenaugh scooted all the way back out of the hole and stood. He grimaced as he stretched his back.

“Let’s get out of this snow,” Cavenaugh said, leading the others toward the back door of the cabin.

Gabriel rose to allow them to pass and followed them into the living room, where Maura had the fire stoked to a roaring blaze. Cavenaugh opened the grate to light the room and gestured for Kelsey to spread out the pillowcase on the floor in front of it. Will shined his flashlight at the collection for good measure. Carefully, Cavenaugh began to separate the bones by species. There were thin rib bones, beaks, leathery claws, and wings that still bore feathers, which he moved all the way to the right. Other smaller mammalian bones, a hodgepodge of rodents, were placed to the left. The remainder, in a jumble in the center, all appeared to be human. There were more than a dozen phalanges, most of which appeared to be from fingers, while the shorter ones were obviously from toes. Some were still articulated with cartilage that had long since turned black, but the majority were loose and disjointed. They were all scored with the same teeth marks in the manila surface, and there wasn’t even a hint of flesh.

“Do you think…?” Will asked.

“No way to know for sure,” Cavenaugh said, “but I think so. Unless there are more bodies hidden in these mountains. Without DNA analysis, we can only work under the assumption that they are.” He sighed and turned to Gabriel. “What kind of animal did you say it was?”

“I didn’t get a very good look at it.”

“Do you think it’s possible it might have been a cat?”

“A cat? But we’re in the middle of nowhere and…” His words trailed off as realization dawned.

Cavenaugh produced two clear plastic bags, the first of which contained an assortment of whole finger and toenails. He set it aside and held up the second for Gabriel to examine. It was filled with a mess of hairs: some of them were long and stiff, others shorter and slightly curved. There were even pinches that appeared to have been shed in clumps. Some were white, but most were a subdued orange.

“Oscar,” Gabriel whispered. “How could he have survived out here all this time?”

“You’re missing the big picture,” Cavenaugh said. He dropped the baggie on the floor beside the bones. “This cat knows where at least one of the bodies is hidden.”

***

They had all followed the tracks through the snow and into the woods until the prints had vanished in the detritus beneath the heavy pine canopy where the snow couldn’t reach, at which point they had split into three pairs and headed in different directions. That had been close to an hour ago now, which was the designated time to turn around and head back to the cabin where they would all meet for an early breakfast. While Maura and Will had branched left and struck off to the north, and Cavenaugh and Kelsey had continued east in the direction the tracks had been leading them, Gabriel and Jess had veered south. They all understood that the tabby knew this forest better than all of them by now, and if it didn’t want to be found, then they didn’t have a prayer of finding it. But they had to take the chance. If Gabriel had startled Oscar badly enough, Lord only knew when he might return to his home.

Gabriel had given up calling for the cat. Oscar certainly wasn’t going to scamper out of his hiding place at the sound of Gabriel’s voice, but it had at least made him feel like he was doing something productive. Now he and Jess walked in silence, with only the crackling sound of dead pine needles, broken branches, and festering aspen leaves between them. They swung their flashlight beams ahead of them, making the tree trunks cast shadows that simulated movement, as though dark figures ducked behind them as soon as the light neared.

Jess wore the same look on her face that Gabriel had seen earlier in the night. They weren’t close enough for him to try to coax out whatever was bothering her, so he waited for her to voice her concerns.

“It’s time to head back,” she finally said. A cloud of her breath hung around her head. Her cheeks and nose were bright red, and she had begun to sniff every few seconds. She looked him in the eyes, then turned quickly away. “We aren’t going to find him regardless. Not like this anyway.”

Gabriel pulled a bottle of water out of his jacket, took a long drink, and offered it to Jess. She took it with a grateful nod, and tipped it back.

“I’ve been thinking about this,” Gabriel said. “I’m pretty sure the remains have to be fairly close for the cat to have been able to find them. If Oscar’s still living at the cabin after all this time, then he can’t possibly be roaming too far.”

“That’s why we need to find him.” She passed back the water and he tucked it into his coat. “Maybe he can lead us to them.”

“I don’t think so. By now, the flesh would have rotted and sloughed from the bones. There would be nothing left for him to eat, or at least nothing he would want to eat. I’m confident he gathered those…parts not long after they died, and has been living off of birds and ground squirrels since.”

Jess nodded. It obviously wasn’t what she had been hoping to hear.

They started walking back to the north. Several minutes passed before she blurted out what was really bothering her.

“I think we should call the police. Maybe finding these new bones would light a fire under their butts and get them back up here. We could always use the help.” She paused. “And the bottom line is now that bones are beginning to turn up, they should stop looking at this as a missing persons case, and start investigating it as murder.”

“They came out here after discovering Nathan’s femur, and that accomplished nothing.”

“But we know more now than they did then. They could bring dogs up here to track the cat, and maybe figure out where it came across the remains.”

Gabriel shook his head. By all rights, new evidence should be turned over to the police, but Cavenaugh was a cop, and seemed to think that calling in the authorities now would be a waste of time. At least at this juncture. He had suggested they use the next several days to search on their own before reporting the evidence. Besides, the police and FBI had both scoured the countryside over the prior two days and had found nothing. The appearance of a pile of phalanges wasn’t earth-shattering news either, at least from their perspective, and any subsequent search would be halfhearted, undermanned, and sloppy at best. It would be a self-fulfilling prophesy. If they expected to find nothing, then that was exactly what they would find.

Gabriel agreed with Cavenaugh’s assessment and the plan to buy themselves just a little more time, but he didn’t particularly care for the idea of withholding their findings any longer than that.

“You agree we should wait,” Jess said, making no attempt to hide her disdain.

“For a couple of days. That’s all.”

“Doesn’t it make you wonder why Cavenaugh—Detective Cavenaugh—would not want to call it in?”

“I…don’t know,” Gabriel said, but he clearly understood what she implied, which brought him right back to his suspicion that Cavenaugh was indeed hiding something.

“Look at it this way.” She took him by the arm to stop him and met his eyes when he looked at her. “The bones were scarred with teeth marks, but none of them were broken. That tells us the cat was unable to break through the cortex to get to the marrow. What makes you think it would be able to bite off an entire finger? Think about it.”

Gabriel pictured the phalanges that had remained articulated. None of them had still been attached to the metacarpals or metatarsals, nor had there been any residual cartilage on the bases of the proximal phalanges. Cavenaugh must have recognized it right away.

“Christ,” Gabriel whispered. “They were severed before Oscar found them.”

***

Fueled by the lack of sleep, the manner in which they had awakened, and the task at hand, the tension in the main room of the front cabin was palpable. They had eaten their soggy oatmeal in silence, and now the dirtied paper plates hung in a plastic trash bag by a nail from the back of the northern cabin in hopes that the smell would entice Oscar to return. The coffee wasn’t percolating nearly fast enough to keep up with the demand. Will had joked that this was probably the only place in the world where there wasn’t a Starbucks within a block, but none of them had found it remotely amusing.

Cavenaugh, Kelsey, and Gabriel scrutinized the satellite maps while the other three played the daily video blogs on Cavenaugh’s laptop, making notes of anything the ghosts on the screen said that sounded like directions. They only narrowed the search to a ten mile radius for fear of being too aggressive. The last thing they wanted was to miss the right hot spring based on a faulty assumption. The springs were hard enough to spot on the maps as it was. With the dense forest and ragged cliffs, they could barely discern the river cutting right through the center, let alone smaller ponds. They guessed the maps were made in roughly March or April as there were still shaded slopes white with snow, while others showcased evergreens and aspens already beginning to sprout leaves. Details were relatively sketchy, but they had managed to locate several small creeks and a dozen larger bodies of water. They eliminated the lakes fed directly by the streams and those where they could see the wooden arch of beaver dams. Those were obviously freshwater, and they were looking for isolated pools without current or significant runoff, which narrowed their prospects to four. Two of them were within three miles of the cabins, one just under five, and the last barely within their radius. Considering they were only visible as faint reflections through the overhanging treetops, there were no guarantees they were actually bodies of water and not some stray piece of corrugated aluminum from an elk hunter’s blind, but they needed to explore every viable option.

All four possibilities were just below timberline, nearly hidden by the final surge of pines. One was on the southwestern slope of Mount Isolation, and there was another on the northern side. The third was on the northern slope of Mount Haverstam, roughly four miles south of Mount Isolation, across a valley bisected by a small stream. The fourth and farthest, was nearly ten miles to the northwest, on the northern slope of Mount Cranston. It was the least likely candidate as the rocky face was carved with eroded trenches above the pond, which potentially suggested that it was fed by seasonal runoff from the melting snow, but as they couldn’t entirely exclude it, they would save it for last.

“Listen to this,” Maura said. She sat on the middle cushion of the couch with the laptop on her thighs while Jess and Will leaned in to see the screen from either side. “This is from the book of Isaiah, chapter fourteen, verses twelve through fifteen: How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! How art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.”

“Three of the four are on the northern slope of the mountains,” Kelsey said, “but I don’t feel we can eliminate the fourth based on its proximity. It’s the closest to the cabins, and looks like it’s one of the larger springs. What else do you have?”

“Here,” Jess said, pointing down at the binder in which she was taking notes. She traced under the words as she spoke. “This is Ephesians, chapter six, verses eleven and twelve: Put on the whole armor of God, that ye may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”

“All of them are roughly the same elevation,” Kelsey said.

“But of the three mountains, Isolation is the tallest.”

“This is getting us nowhere,” Will said.

“We need to remember that we’re dealing with more information than they had when they disappeared,” Gabriel said. “They didn’t have satellite images or any knowledge of hot springs. They were following the clues from the bible alone.”

“You said something about the bacteria turning red, right?” Jess asked.

“Yeah, for UV protection.”

“I know it’s a stretch, but fire could be used as a metaphor for the color red, like in this quote from Ezekiel: Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so; thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.”

“Do you really think it’s possible they found what they were looking for based on these verses?” Will asked. “I mean, what are the odds of all of this stuff existing right here in Colorado? Didn’t all of this biblical stuff happen somewhere in the Middle East?”

“It’s like they say here,” Jess said. “This is from Daniel: Thus he said, the fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces. Stephanie said in the video that they interpreted this to say that the world is divided into four parts, and that the fallen angels were banished to similar locations within each. And that the fourth kingdom describes North America, specifically the United States.”

“Angels don’t chop someone’s fingers and toes off,” Will said. “That’s the kind of thing men do.”

“You don’t believe in angels?” Maura asked.

“This isn’t the time.”

“Your brother believed in them,” Jess whispered.

“Grant was a dreamer. He would have believed anything he was told. The more outrageous the better. But he was my brother. My only little brother. And I’ll be damned if I don’t return home with some kind of news for my mother…and someone to be held responsible. So you ask if I believe in angels? Not a chance in hell. And despite all of his faults, I loved my brother, and I’m here to see that somebody pays for his death.”

Will stewed in silence for a moment before rising and storming out the back door.

“Should one of us go after him?” Maura asked.

“He just needs to blow off some steam,” Cavenaugh said. “He’ll be back soon enough.”

“Yeah,” Gabriel said, gesturing toward the window. The snow was falling so fast and thick that it was like watching television static. Even the tall pines were now invisible beneath their winter coats. “Where could he possibly go?”

***

Gabriel was exhausted. The adrenaline rush from the previous night had long since abandoned him and left him drained. They had spent the remainder of the morning and early afternoon plotting their courses through the forest and viewing the videos chronicling the last days of their family members. It had been painful for all of them to watch, especially with each other. After the final entry, they had all drifted silently apart like specters.

Will had returned after a couple hours, noticeably subdued. He had offered a mumbled apology to them as a group, but had said little else for the remainder of the time they had been together. Gabriel couldn’t blame him. Will had nearly vocalized his own thoughts verbatim. It was hard enough to lose someone cherished, even harder when the reason why seemed absurd. Their loved ones had vanished while searching for something that had meant the world to them, yet made little sense to those left behind to mourn them.

Right now, Gabriel just wanted to crawl into bed and close his eyes. The plan was to strike out into the mountains in the morning under daybreak, with plenty of time to make the trek and return home before nightfall. None of them wanted to find out what it was like to spend the night in the wilderness, even knowing that the storm showed no sign of relenting and that the longer they waited to leave, the more difficult the hike would become. That was a problem for tomorrow, though, and right now he just wanted to make all of the problems go away, if only for a few hours.

He trudged through the shin-deep powder in the courtyard to the back door of his cabin, opened the door, and stepped into the kitchen. The precipitation had loosened the bandage on his cheek, so he peeled it off and dropped it into the trash bag, careful not to notice the amount of blood that had soaked into the gauze. He was just about to stomp the snow from his boots when he heard heated voices rise from the other side of the wall in the main room. After a moment’s hesitation, he crept across the room and pressed his back against the wall so he could better eavesdrop.

“I don’t care if you think it’s a bad idea,” Jess said. “It’s the right thing to do. The only thing to do.”

“And just what do you think that will accomplish?” Cavenaugh asked. He lowered his voice, but his anger was no less apparent. “Look outside. There’s no way they could even make it up the mountain in this weather.”

“Of course they could. They have SUVs with four-wheel drive and helicopters, for God’s sake.”

“You think they’re going to come thundering up here with a chopper because we found some old finger bones?”

“No, but that’s not the point. What we found is the evidence of a crime. That’s why we need to call them. There’s nothing more to debate. What if those bones belonged to Jenny? Hmm? What if that cat had been hiding under this very floor gnawing on your little sister’s remains?”

There was a heavy moment of silence before Jess spoke again.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to…”

Another pause.

“Fine,” Cavenaugh whispered. “Make your call. Tell them whatever the hell you want.”

Gabriel heard footsteps on the wooden floor headed in his direction and barely had time to step away from the wall before Cavenaugh blew past. The detective didn’t even look back as he threw open the door, stepped out into the snow, and slammed it behind him.

From the other room, Gabriel heard the beeping sound of a cell phone. He stomped the melting ice from his feet and walked into the main room.

Jess had extended the antenna on her cell and was pacing back and forth across the room, turning in various directions as she walked, all the while watching the small screen.

“Damn it,” she whispered.

“Are you okay?” Gabriel asked.

She started at the sound of his voice.

“I can’t get a signal.”

“Must be the storm. Cell signals are weak up here to begin with.”

She grabbed her jacket from the back of the couch and slipped into it.

“Where are you going?” Gabriel asked.

“Outside.” She breezed past him into the kitchen. “There has to be someplace around here where I can get a signal.”

The kitchen door opened and closed again, and with that, Gabriel found himself alone in the cabin with only the company of the crackling fire. He went into the bedroom, pulled one of the blankets off the bed, and returned to the living room. Moments later, he was bundled on the couch in front of the potbellied stove, fast asleep.

***

He awakened to the smell of chicken broth and sat up to find Jess standing over him. She smiled and eased down beside him while he rubbed the residue of sleep from his eyes.

“I brought you dinner.”

She proffered the Styrofoam bowl.

“Thanks. I didn’t mean to be asleep so long.” He glanced back over his shoulder at the window. The world had turned gray, save the flakes tapping at the glass and the crescents of condensation framing the pane. “What time is it anyway?”

“Does it matter?”

He smiled and nodded. “I don’t suppose it does.”

The soup was only lukewarm, but it tasted absolutely divine. He shoveled down a couple spoonfuls brimming with noodles, then looked at her. She was staring blankly into the room and working her fingers into knots in her lap.

“Did you ever get your phone to work?” he asked.

“No.” She turned to face him. “And we lost our internet connection as well.”

“Stands to reason.”

“Does it?”

She rose and paced nervously in front of him.

“Yeah. No cell signal, no WI-FI connection.”

“I know, I know. But something’s not right here. Can’t you feel it?”

“We’re all just stressed out. Tomorrow’s going to be a rough day. If everything goes according to plan, we’re going to find our sisters’ bodies. I need to know… We all need to know. I just can’t imagine how much it’s going to hurt when we finally see what actually happened to them. On one hand, it will be a relief to finally learn how they died. On the other, seeing it, seeing how they might have suffered… There’s no way to un-see that.”

“You’re right,” she said. “I’m probably overreacting. I can’t tell you exactly what’s wrong, only that something is.”

He finished his soup and set the bowl on the floor. When he sat back, Jess leaned against his shoulder and her hand found his. The fire bathed them in heat and the moment felt natural, comfortable.

“There’s an emergency transceiver in the main cabin,” she said.

“What do you propose?”

Jess was silent for a moment. “I don’t know for sure. I can only assume it connects directly to some emergency broadband channel. Maybe we could just alert them to the fact that we found these bones and let them determine the proper course of action from there.”

“That sounds reasonable enough.”

Another silence.

“What’s the problem then?” he finally asked.

“I don’t think Cavenaugh would appreciate it. He’s made that abundantly clear.”

“Cavenaugh? He already told you to make the call.”

“I get a bad feeling from him.”

Gabriel scoffed. “What could he possibly do?”

***

“So is everyone clear about the plan for the morning?” Cavenaugh asked. He surveyed their faces one by one. “Good. I don’t want to waste a single minute of daylight. I want us out of here by oh five hundred sharp.”

They all rose from the couch and floor where they’d been sitting through the final strategy meeting. The pertinent maps had already been pulled from the walls and rolled into neat tubes, rubber-banded, and marked with a number, one through three, to correspond with the team number. They were laid out on the wooden table they had dragged in from the kitchen. Beside each map was a radio unit, which had already been tuned to a common frequency, and a backpack containing granola, dehydrated fruit, two bottles of water, and a flare gun with two extra loads.

“One more thing,” Cavenaugh said as they were all about to disperse. He walked to the right side of the room where the communications gear had been assembled on top of the cases in which it had arrived. Beside the stack of components was a metal case Gabriel had assumed to be empty. Cavenaugh unlatched the lid and swung it open. He leaned over the foam-lined box and reached inside. “Who knows how to shoot one of these?”

When he turned around, he held a rifle across his chest. The polished barrel reflected the firelight.

Will walked over and took it from him, a curiously animated expression on his face. He whistled in admiration and turned it over in his grasp. Aligning the sights, he aimed it across the room, then resumed his appreciative inspection.

“Bushmaster RealTree Camo Rifle. Twenty-inch barrel with flash suppressor. Nickel Acetate finish. 5.56mm/.223 caliber, semi-automatic, thirty-round magazine. Six hundred meter range. This is definitely not your grandfather’s hunting rifle,” he said. “Fine piece of equipment though. You could drop a bounding deer from halfway across the state with one of these bad boys. How’d you get a hold of these?”

Cavenaugh shrugged. “Borrowed them from a friend.”

Kelsey took the rifle from Will and appraised it, but didn’t appear nearly as comfortable doing so. It looked more like an assault rifle than anything used for hunting.

Gabriel crossed the room and peered down into the case. There were several stacked tiers inside, each of which, he could only assume, housed a rifle in its custom fitting.

“Why do we need these?” Maura asked. Of them all, she seemed the most wary.

“We already know there are mountain lions in this area,” Cavenaugh said.

“They’re as afraid of us as we are of them,” Maura said.

Gabriel turned and watched Jess as she perused the stacks of equipment. She moved around the clutter as though searching for something. When she caught him looking, she shook her head and mouthed the words “It’s not here.”

“Then consider it an unnecessary precaution,” Cavenaugh said. “Better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.”

Maura nodded her acquiescence, but didn’t appear relieved in the slightest. She just continued to stare at the rifle as though Kelsey were handling a venomous snake.

Understanding finally struck Gabriel. This wasn’t about mountain lions. Not at all. But until that very moment, all he had thought they might find in the forest were the remains of their loved ones. He had never considered the prospect that they might encounter whoever was responsible for their deaths.

***

Gabriel leaned against the kitchen cabinets beside the back door, dozing in and out. He was fully clothed beneath the blanket, and anything but comfortable. The warmth from the fire was fading fast and the bitter chill was seeping in through the walls and under the floorboards. Best not to stoke the flames to combat it just yet. If nothing else, the cold was keeping him from falling into a sound sleep, and right now he needed to remain sharp if he expected to hear anything other than the howl of the wind and the resultant creaking of the cabin around him.

He knew he should be getting as much rest as he possibly could in anticipation of the arduous day ahead, but this was something he needed to do. Whether or not Oscar returned, he at least had to try. That cat was now the only living link between his sister and him. Expecting a now-feral feline to lead them to the bodies was ridiculous, but Stephanie would have been heartbroken at the idea of her furry friend being abandoned in the wild. Maybe he would never learn what had happened to her, and would have to live with the guilt and the loss for the rest of his life. That would be his cross to bear, but at least if he found a way to take care of Oscar, he could justify to himself that he had done something. And perhaps through her cat, he could feel close to her again.

The rational part of him knew he was being absurd, but there were already enough regrets without adding one more. To leave her beloved cat at the mercy of the elements and predators would be to dishonor her memory and everything she had stood for. Stephanie had always been the most caring, most gentle—

There was a soft thump against the wall behind him.

Gabriel silently peeled off the blanket and rolled over onto his hands and knees.

The wind whistled along the eaves and rattled the glass in the window above the sink. He must have heard it blow the bag of trash against the siding. Hopefully it was still tethered to the nail, or all of this was for naught.

He rose to his feet, careful to place his tread lightly enough so as not to make the floorboards squeak, and took the hot dog he had set aside in a plastic baggie from the counter. Two stealthy steps and he was at the door, knob in hand. He turned it slowly, soundlessly, and drew the door inward.

Snowflakes swatted him in the face and something raced toward his feet. It was only one of the Styrofoam bowls, but that meant—

He whirled to his left. The yellow plastic ties were still bound to the nail, but the bottom of the trash bag had been ripped open. Its contents were scattered all over the ground. Bowls and trash had blown up against the building, while more garbage tumbled across the accumulation. This would never work now. He had thought for sure the bag would be strong enough to withstand the wind. Grabbing the useless tatter of white plastic, he inspected the bottom, then looked quickly back to the snow.

The wind hadn’t beaten the bag open against the cabin. Something with sharp claws had torn it open right along the seam.

There. To his right, at the very edge of the building, was a fuzzy orange face, eating out of a bowl pinned by a small paw. Oscar glanced up and Gabriel caught a flash of gold from his eyes.

Gabriel held perfectly still and the cat again resumed its meal of crusted oats.

Quietly, he eased out the door into the snow and removed the hot dog from the Ziploc. He split it in half and approached Oscar until the cat bristled and turned his attention from the bowl to the back door.

Gabriel froze. He expected Oscar to dash off for the safety of the forest at any second, but after a while, the cat stuffed his face back into his meal.

As slowly as he possibly could, Gabriel knelt in the accumulation, extended his arm, and held out the offering of processed meat.

Oscar appeared not to notice at first, but after a few eternal minutes, he raised his head and turned toward the smell. His face was scarred over his left eye and across his nose, and his right ear had been all but torn away. There were tangles and briars in his thick fur, and Lord only knew what crawled on his skin beneath. Cautiously, Oscar eased around the corner of the cabin and started in Gabriel’s direction.

The cold from the snow bit into his legs, but Gabriel knew if he so much as flinched, the cat would be gone.

Oscar approached a single step at a time, pausing and watching him between each, until in a streak of orange, the cat darted at him and nipped the hot dog out of his grasp. All Gabriel had felt was fur on his fingertips. Again, Oscar crouched at the far end of the wall, where he gnawed on his meal from the side with his back teeth.

Gabriel watched with a growing sense of disappointment. There was no way he was going to be able to grab the cat. Oscar had moved so fast he hadn’t even had time to think, let alone reach down and snatch the cat by the scruff of its neck.

He retracted his arm slowly, took the other half of the hot dog from his left hand, and held it out for the cat again.

Oscar had finished the first portion and now crouched on his belly, haunches flexed, prepared to pounce. He watched Gabriel closely for several more minutes before venturing out from behind the side of the building. Once he was again close enough, Oscar sprung at Gabriel’s hand and relieved him of the food. In a blur of orange, Oscar fled in the direction of the woods and vanished.

Gabriel stared into the darkness beneath the snow-covered pines for a long time before he finally stood and headed back into the cabin.

November 15th, 2010

Monday

Gabriel had barely fallen asleep when Cavenaugh’s alarm woke him. The crushing feeling of dread followed within seconds. Today would potentially be one of the worst days of his life, and as much as he hated to begin it, the sooner he did, the sooner it would be over.

The bed shook as Cavenaugh climbed out, and Gabriel could hear rustling from the adjacent room as Jess slipped out from under the covers. After a long moment of hesitation, Gabriel finally followed suit. He dressed in a fog, adding layer after layer of clothing until he felt as though he were smothering.

Cavenaugh passed him and exited the room as he donned his coat and snowcap.

With a sigh, Gabriel joined the others in the main room and waited while Jess bundled into her massive coat, pulled the hood over her head, and cinched the ties tight to hold it in place.

Cavenaugh left through the back door without a word.

“Are you ready to do this?” Gabriel asked.

Jess looked him squarely in the eyes.

“No.”

***

Jess shouldered the backpack while Gabriel slung the rifle over his back. He was surprised by how light it was. Between the two of them, he was the only one who had ever fired a gun, and not since his father had died. Even then, he had only ever shot on a range. What were the odds that he would have to use it though?

The others appeared ready, but none of them were in a hurry to head out into the storm. All wore matching expressions of apprehension, save Cavenaugh, whose mouth was a tight line of determination. Gabriel couldn’t remember seeing him blink.

Will and Maura had been assigned the spring on the northern slope of Mount Isolation. It was the farthest trek, but the trail looked to be the easiest. Cavenaugh and Kelsey had chosen the northern slope of Mount Haverstam based on the spring’s proximity to the mountain lion’s charted range. Considering his police experience, it made the most sense to gamble that Cavenaugh would make the discovery so it could be handled by the book. Jess and Gabriel had been relegated to the southwestern slope of Mount Isolation, which meant they would follow the stream through the bottom of the valley before scaling the heavily-forested hillside. That placed them in a position to be the second party to reach either of the other sites should problems arise or if they found the bodies.

“Are there any final questions?” Cavenaugh asked. He paused just long enough to slide his Project 25-capable, digital walkie-talkie into his outer jacket pocket. “Good. Now let’s get a move on before—”

“Who’s carrying the emergency transceiver?” Jess interrupted.

Cavenaugh flashed her an angry glance, but it quickly disappeared.

“It’s in Kelsey’s backpack.”

“I want to carry it.”

“It’s most logical to bring it with us based on the probability of our destination.”

“We’ll be in constant radio communication. Any one of us can use it just as well as another.”

“If I give you the goddamned transceiver, will you let us leave now?” Cavenaugh’s face grew bright red.

Jess nodded.

Cavenaugh stomped over to Kelsey, spun him around, and unzipped the backpack. After some digging, he extracted the transceiver, which looked like a long walkie-talkie with a small digital readout and a miniature keypad, and threw it to Jess. She caught it and shoved it into her jacket pocket.

“Can we go now?” Cavenaugh asked through bared teeth.

“After you,” Jess said, gesturing to the door.

Without a backwards glance, Cavenaugh opened the door and stepped out into the storm with Kelsey right behind him. Will and Maura followed, leaving Jess and Gabriel to close up behind.

The snow had slowed noticeably. The flakes were smaller and more sporadic, and the wind only rose in occasional gusts. There was still no sign of the night sky through the thick cloud cover, but at least it no longer felt as though the storm was sitting right on top of their heads. Maybe there was actually a chance they might see the sun at some point during the day. Gabriel couldn’t help but think of that as a good omen.

He and Jess stood on the porch and watched Will and Maura disappear down the driveway behind the island of evergreens. They were to head north once they reached the road before finally branching from it at the designated trail.

Cavenaugh and Kelsey had already disappeared to the south.

“Ready?” Gabriel asked.

“Just a minute,” Jess whispered. She walked away from the cabin and looked around before returning. Gabriel was just about to ask her what she was doing when she pulled the emergency transceiver out of her pocket. She switched on the power and there was a hiss of static.

“Try a different frequency.”

She turned dials and pressed buttons, but the quality of the static never changed. When the steady hiss began to grate on her nerves, she clicked it off and shoved it back into her coat.

“It should be working,” she said.

“We’ll try again at a higher altitude. I’ll bet it’s a combination of the storm and this location.”

“You’re probably right,” she said, forcing a smile. “Just interference.”

They started their journey to the north, prepared to intercept the path that would lead them northeast into the valley.

***

The sun rose somewhere above the rocky peaks to the east, but did little more than cast a gray pall over the forest. At least it was now light enough to watch their footing more carefully. Neither of them could afford to so much as sprain an ankle or their journey would be over. The maze of pines protected them from the majority of the snow and wind, and the accumulation was only half of what it was in the thin meadow lining the stream, which was nearly invisible beneath a rugged sheet of ice. Soon, even that would vanish until spring.

Gabriel had known his physical prime was well behind him, but he hadn’t been remotely prepared for this kind of exertion, especially in the thin air so high into the mountains. His lungs burned and his legs ached. It felt as though he were trudging through peanut butter. Whether Jess was any better off or not, she did a better job of hiding it. Her cheeks and nose were scarlet, and clouds of steam burst past her lips in a panting rhythm, but she waited for him to call the breaks, which he had begun to do with increasing frequency.

They sat on a fallen tree in a small enclave beneath the protective canopy, momentarily shielded from the wind. Jess slipped out of the backpack and set it on the ground beside her. She removed one of the bottles of water and passed it to Gabriel, who tipped it back and took two long swigs, savoring the second. He debated taking off his jacket for a few minutes as he was dripping with sweat beneath, but he knew he needed to preserve his body heat. His best guess was that they were roughly halfway there, and the going on the easy leg had been even more challenging than he had speculated. He was dreading the prospect of scaling the hillside on the opposite side of the stream, which appeared to grow even steeper farther to the east. If they could barely maintain their traction on level ground, how were they supposed to do so on the sharp incline?

The radio crackled before Cavenaugh’s voice emerged from the static.

“How’s everybody doing out there?”

“We’ve reached the trail that leads away from the road,” Maura said. “With all the snow, it took us a while to find it, but we can see timberline from where we are now. Will thinks we should reach our destination within the next two to three hours, barring anything unexpected.”

“Good. Gabriel? Jess?”

“We’re still down in the valley and the mountain looks a lot steeper than it did on the map, but I’d imagine we should reach the spring around the same time Will and Maura reach theirs. So long as neither of us fall and break our necks,” Jess said. “How about you guys?”

Gabriel heard something rustle in the scrub oak behind him and turned toward the sound.

“Same here,” Cavenaugh said. “We would have been there already if it weren’t for the blasted accumulation. Now that we’re into the forest where it’s not as deep, we’re making decent progress.”

There was only the gentle swaying of the disturbed branches.

“I’ll check in on you guys again in an hour,” Cavenaugh said. “Out.”

Gabriel reached into the bag and removed a granola bar. He unwrapped it, took a bite, and climbed over the log toward the bushes.

“We should probably get moving again,” Jess said. “The worst is still to come.”

Gabriel looked back at her and pressed his forefinger to his lips, then crouched in front of the tangle of branches, beneath which the fallen leaves were merely dusted with snow. A crunch of the detritus drew his attention to the right, where a pair of green eyes stared directly at him. There was Oscar, body pressed flat against the ground, partially concealed by a cluster of thin trunks. His one good ear stood erect.

Gabriel broke off a section of the granola bar and slowly held it out for the cat, which visibly tensed at the movement. He reached deep into the brush. Oscar licked his scarred nose, but held his position.

There was the sound of footsteps approaching from behind.

Gabriel saw the cat’s eyes tick upward, and in one swift motion, Oscar dashed away into the forest.

“Damn it,” Gabriel whispered. He scooted back out of the branches and rose to his feet.

“Is that cat following us?” Jess asked.

“I managed to get him to eat a hot dog out of my hand last night. I thought maybe he’d take some granola bar, but…”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare him off.”

“Hopefully we’ll see him again.”

He was angry she’d startled Oscar to flight, but if she hadn’t done it, he probably would have. After surviving in the wild for so long, the cat had become feral, tapped into his primitive instincts. The idea of catching him was a fool’s proposition.

“We will,” she said, wrapping her arm around his back beneath the rifle.

Gabriel hugged her around the shoulders. Without having said so, he knew she understood what he was trying to do with the cat. He gave her a gentle kiss on the bridge of her nose.

“I suppose we should hit the trail again,” she finally said.

“Yeah,” he said, reluctantly releasing her from his embrace.

He helped her into the backpack and followed her to the edge of the woods toward the path. She turned around and smiled. His heart fluttered. He couldn’t help but wonder what the future might hold for them back in the real world.

***

Just over two hours later, they were both beyond the point of exhaustion, but they were too close to stop now, and in no position to do so regardless. The sharp, snowcapped peak loomed over them from above, a fin of white blowing from the pinnacle. Their zigzagging ascent had brought them to the point where they now had to crawl around tree trunks that grew at bizarre angles from the steep embankment. If a path existed somewhere beneath the snow, they had long since lost it. They had to be close to the hot spring by now. The abrupt transition from forest to bare rock at timberline was perhaps a quarter-mile above them and the satellite image had shown just a hint of water through the overhanging branches.

Gabriel’s heartbeat was racing and his thoughts were a blur. He both hoped to find some sign of his sister and dreaded the possibility at the same time. The urge to turn around was now more pressing than his will to continue on, but one glance back over his shoulder, down what appeared to be a deadfall into the valley now hidden by snow, and he knew he had no choice but to proceed.

The wind shifted and pelted him in the face with ice crystals, and something else…the familiar stench of rotten eggs. Sulfur.

“Do you smell that?” he called to Jess, who was just up the slope to his right. Beyond her was a cloud of mist. No, not mist. It was steam.

She turned at the sound of his voice and he saw the look of recognition on her face. She had seen it too.

They scrabbled over the crest of a stony knoll and stared down into a small crater, at the bottom of which was a pool of murky gray water, barely visible through the swirling steam. Sliding down the slick, granite slope, they stood at the edge of a small pool no more than twelve feet in width and twenty feet long. The smell of salt and dissolved minerals washed over them, something of a cross between a marsh and the ocean. Tiny bubbles rose to the surface, like a pot of water only beginning to boil. Uneven stones lined the bottom, covered with a thick layer of hairy moss. The snow melted in the steam and fell to the spring as droplets of rain.

“How hot do you think it is?” Jess asked.

“Most geothermal springs are between ninety-seven and ninety-nine degrees.”

“Were it not for all the slime on the bottom, I’d climb right in.”

Gabriel thought of the strange bacteria they had found on Nathan’s femur and shuddered at the idea of them crawling all over his skin. He walked around the side, careful not to slide off the uneven rocks into the water. If he did and his boot became soaked, there would be no way to dry it and he’d end up losing his foot to frostbite. He scrutinized the choppy surface and the crevices between the stones beneath for any of the telltale signs of the presence of haloarchaea. Granted, they were making an assumption about the unique microorganism, which appeared to be the same as that which had arrived fossilized on the meteorite from Mars, based largely on the physical resemblance to haloarchaea, but the composition of the celestial rock and the known qualities of the soil on the fourth planet made it a sound correlation. Perhaps this new species didn’t have the same need for ultraviolet protection, and hence wouldn’t necessarily produce the same red-tinged pigments. After all, if they were correct about its origin, Mars was hundreds of thousands of miles farther away from the sun, the source of the radiation. Maybe it simply didn’t need to—

Gabriel stopped and crouched right at the edge. Steam billowed in his face, momentarily warming his cheeks and stinging his eyes. He waved it away and looked deeper into the water. There was a crevice between two jagged rocks, a slash of blackness from which a steady stream of bubbles flowed. And lining the rocks was a thin layer of scarlet, tight lips around the mouth of the geothermal fissure.

“Well, what do you know,” he whispered.

Jess knelt beside him and followed his gaze into the murky water.

“That red stuff,” she said. “That’s what we’re looking for, isn’t it?”

Gabriel nodded. He wished he had some way of excising a sample of the bacterial growth so he could study it up close. It was staggering to think that these microscopic creatures may have originated across space on a planet that hadn’t seen water in eons. If that was indeed where they had been spawned, then how had they managed to survive the journey? The only other example had been fossilized in a chunk of rock. Maybe what they were looking at now was simply a variation of a naturally occurring species of haloarchaea.

“Do you think this is where the mountain lion found Nathan’s bone?” Jess asked.

“It’s possible.” Until that point, he had been specifically looking for the proliferation of microorganisms, and not for human remains. “I didn’t see any other bones right off, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t any down there covered in algae.”
They walked a complete circuit of the spring, often stopping and crouching to get a better look at something on the bottom, until they finally returned to where they started.

“Nothing,” Gabriel said. Though disheartening, it was still a relief not to have found any skeletal parts. It allowed them to cling to the grain of hope that somewhere their sisters might still be alive.

***

Gabriel sat on a stone at the edge of the steaming pond and poked a long branch down into the water. He scraped a section of the red growth off of one of the rocks and held it up so he could take a closer look. It was just like any sample of pond scum in texture: slimy, phlegm-like. There were striations, almost as though countless organisms had aggregated into long strands that stuck together to form a sludge. Part of him wanted to believe that these microorganisms had traveled from a distant planet to populate this spring, but they appeared too ordinary. And generally, the answer to any scientific question was the most obvious one. He was probably just staring at an unnamed species of haloarchaea, and nothing more mysterious than that.

Tossing the stick back into the water, he remembered the verse Jess had quoted from the blog. Thou art the anointed cherub that covereth; and I have set thee so; thou wast upon the holy mountain of God; thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire. Even studying the red rocks in the water now, he had a hard time imagining anyone calling them “stones of fire,” even metaphorically.

He rose and ascended the slope to where Jess stood between two tall pines, staring out over the valley through a gap in the branches while talking to Cavenaugh on the walkie-talkie.

“That’s right,” she said. “There’s nothing here.”

“You’re sure you found a geothermal spring and not just a freshwater pond?”

“Please.”

“And you’re certain you can see that red bacteria down there?”

“For the hundredth time, yes. We found the hot spring. There’s all kinds of red slime around what looks like where the water comes in, but no sign of human remains.”

Only a crackle of static responded.

“We’re almost to our destination now,” Cavenaugh finally said. “Maura, how far out are you guys?”

“We’ve got to be close. We can’t see anything yet, but we can definitely smell it.”

“Excellent. Report back as soon as you’re there,” Cavenaugh said. “Jess. You and Gabriel hold your position until we both check back in, and be ready to move in either direction should we find anything. Out.”

Jess sighed and shoved the walkie-talkie into the backpack again. She looked out over the distant stream a moment longer before turning to face Gabriel. A gust of wind blew a sheet of snow between them.

“Looks like the storm’s getting—” Gabriel started, but Jess silenced him with a sharp look.

Their eyes locked and she steered his gaze to his right. She whispered the word “Slowly.”

He nodded his understanding and unhurriedly turned around. At first he saw nothing but the cloud of steam rising from the spring, until the wind shifted and he momentarily had a clear view of the water and the far bank beyond. Heavily-needled pines shivered loose a shower of snow, which descended as sparkling bits of glitter onto the shrubs beneath. And there, under the cover of a juniper, was a small orange shape with green eyes and one pricked ear.

“Toss me one of those granola bars,” he whispered, fearing even the slightest movement would send Oscar hurtling into the underbrush. He heard the rustling sound of Jess rummaging through the bag, and then the soft tap of something hitting the ground at his feet.

Gabriel never allowed his eyes to stray from the cat’s as he crouched and grabbed the bar. He had to glance down at the wrapper to tear it open. When he looked back at the forest, Oscar was gone.

He cursed under his breath and watched the tree line a while longer before returning to Jess, who must have read the expression of disappointment on his face.

“He followed us this far,” she said. “You’ll get your chance sooner or later.”

He smiled at the sincerity of her words and squeezed her hand. She smiled back, and he caught a glint of what might have been mischief in her eyes.

“Don’t look now,” she said, “but I think our furry friend’s overcoming his shyness.”

Gabriel turned to his left, and there was the orange tabby, standing right at the edge of the forest, thick winter coat spotted with clumps of snow.

Oscar sat on his haunches, cocked his lopsided head, and let out a meow.

***

The cat cautiously crossed the icy rock ledge to where Gabriel knelt with a chunk of granola held as far away from his body as he could manage. Jess crouched beside him with another piece of the broken bar at the ready. As Oscar drew near, his haunches trembled, but he pressed on. Once he was within three feet, he paused, then darted in, took the granola, and scampered back out of range. Only this time, he didn’t disappear into the woods. He dropped his meal onto the ground and positioned himself so he could watch them while he ate.

After he crunched down the last morsel, he inspected Gabriel, who was already offering another bite.

A burst of static from the walkie-talkie, and Oscar was gone.

“Shoot,” Gabriel said.

“It’s progress,” Jess said as she produced the communications device from the backpack.

The buzzing sound continued until she walked away from the thicker canopy toward the valley slope where the trees thinned significantly.

“…here now.” Cavenaugh’s voice took form from the white noise. “It’s roughly the size of a swimming pool, but I can’t tell how deep it is. The water’s fairly cloudy. I can maybe see the tops of some rocks…and they’re red. We definitely have confirmation of the bacteria.”

“We’re here now too,” Maura said. “This one is much smaller. Roughly ten feet in diameter, but it looks really deep. There are all kinds of tiny bubbles, like the water’s carbonated or something. I just…can’t see the bottom. There’s a lot of red stuff though. There’s a ring on the rocks all around the spring. It looks like some kind of sludge. Even the water has a pinkish tint to it.”

Gabriel looked at the spring behind him and then back at Jess. A knot of tension tightened in his gut.

“They’re only on the other side of the mountain,” Jess said. “Why would there be so much more bacterial growth?”

“Did you say pink?” Cavenaugh asked. “We’re getting a lot of feedback on our end. There are only a couple rocks with that stuff growing on them here. Do you see anything else, Maura?”

“It’s too deep to tell. Will broke a branch off a tree and tried to reach the bottom, but just ended up losing the stick. The spring itself is recessed into what almost looks like a crater. There are fairly steep, slick rock walls all around it. We’re surrounded by a ring of pine trees so large their branches nearly touch across the water.”

“Do you see any bones, Maura? Any sign that they might have been there?”

“No. Nothing. Wait…”

Gabriel heard the muffled sound of Will’s voice, too far from the microphone to be intelligible, a click, and then dead air. He looked at Jess, whose eyes reflected the anxiety that rose within him.

“Maura?” Cavenaugh called, his voice taut.

“Will found something,” Maura said. “Give me just a minute. It’s covered with this red slime. I’m scraping it off as fast as I…Jesus.”

“What?” Cavenaugh nearly screamed. “What is it?”

“It’s a bone,” she whispered. “Rounded and smooth on one end. Blunted and widened on the other. About the length of an upper arm.”

“Where did you find it?” Jess asked. “Are there more?”

“Will found it right at the edge. Just under the water, wedged between some rocks. He was looking for another stick to test the depth…”

There was a crackle of static.

“Maura?” Cavenaugh asked. “Maura!”

Jess’s face paled and she hurriedly donned the backpack.

“Jess,” Cavenaugh said. “You guys are the closest. Get moving!”

“There are more,” Maura said. The tremor in her voice was evident even over the underlying fuzz of white noise. “Dear God. There are so many more. Will’s pulling them out of the water one after another. More long bones. What are those? Jesus. Ribs. A spine. Is all of that still connected?”

“Maura,” Cavenaugh said. “Leave everything where it is. Stop pulling it out and wait for us to get there. Do you copy, Maura?”

“Yes. Don’t touch the bones. Now that Will’s pulled the ones with all the sludge on them off the top, we can see a whole pile of them. We’ll leave them where they are until you get here. What do you want us to do in the mean—?”

“Maura?”

“Shh.” Her voice was so soft it could have been static. “Did you hear that?”

“Maura, I can barely hear you.”

“Shh. There it was again.”

“Get out of there!” Cavenaugh shouted. “Now!”

Gabriel sprinted to the north, away from the spring, leaping over boulders and slaloming between tree trunks. He slipped, hit the ground, and propelled himself to his feet again.

“Please,” Maura whispered. “You have to be quiet. There’s somebody—”

She screamed so loudly through the walkie-talkie that it echoed off into the forest.

There was a clattering sound, a burst of static, then a dying hiss that bled away into nothingness.

***

Gabriel’s legs burned and the altitude had stolen his breath, causing him to double over as he walked. He was panting, trying to steal enough oxygen to prepare himself to run again. His head was light, disconnected. Maura’s scream played over and over within on a continuous loop.

“Maura? Will?” Cavenaugh’s voice called from the walkie-talkie Jess held in her fist. His words were ragged, his breathing fast and haggard. “Do you read me?”

There was a crashing sound behind Gabriel and he turned to see Jess crumpled in the snow amidst a scattering of broken branches. By the time he reached her, she had already pushed herself to all fours. Her shoulders shuddered, and when she looked up at him, tears streamed down her red, chafed cheeks. She reached into her jacket pocket and removed the emergency transceiver, scanned through channels of static, and screamed in frustration.

“It’s going to be all right,” he said, helping her stand. “They probably just saw a mountain lion and dropped the walkie-talkie in their hurry to find cover.”

“Maura said she heard ‘somebody.’”

“Who else could possibly be up there?”

The answer hung in the silence between them.

“We need to keep moving,” Jess said. She shoved the transceiver back into her coat and stumbled away from him through the calf-deep accumulation. The wind rose with a howl, shaking the upper canopy and dumping clouds of snow all around them. They remained partially shielded by the dense forestation, but the wind that managed to find them lanced right through their gear.

“How close are you?” Cavenaugh panted.

“I don’t know,” Jess said. The panic sharpened her voice.

“Don’t go in without us. You wait for us before you get to the spring. Am I clear? You wait for us. Copy?”

“Loud and clear.”

A steep valley opened before them, a vertical scar formed by centuries of spring runoff from the exposed summit. The descent wasn’t sheer, though neither was it graceful. They were going to have to carefully choose their route to navigate the clusters of pines and limestone cliffs. Progress would be slow, but on the other side of the canyon the forest bent to the right, following the western slope of the peak as it gradually became the northern.

And somewhere, just out of sight over the jagged horizon and beneath the seemingly impenetrable masses of trees, was a steaming cauldron full of human bones.

***

They ascended from the forest onto a windswept slope of bare granite. The ground was uneven with sharp boulders as though the mountaintop were in a perpetual state of decay, sending large chunks of rock tumbling down to meet the resistance of the trees. There was no longer anything to save them from the wind, which battered them with fists of snow and bitter cold. They had hoped to be able to see the steam from the spring from this higher vantage point, but the worsening storm choked visibility down to fifty yards at best, and even then they could only look for so long before the snow that pelted them in the face forced them to turn away.

How much time had passed since Maura’s communication had been abruptly terminated by her scream? Two hours? Three? Time had lost all meaning. There was only the mountain and the elements, which warred against each other with stone and ice, creating a treacherous battlefield to cross.

Gabriel tried to tell himself that Maura had just been startled by an animal and had dropped the walkie-talkie, which had broken on the rocks surrounding the spring and short-circuited in the warm water. He imagined that even now she and Will were pacing nervously, waiting for the rest of them to arrive so they could apologize for worrying them and explain away Maura’s clumsiness, but deep down, Gabriel knew that wasn’t the case. There was something in the air, something callous and unfeeling, a deadness that seemed to radiate from the earth beneath their feet and whisper promises of suffering on the breeze.

Jess brushed the snow off of a boulder in the lee of another larger stone and sat down. She brought the emergency transceiver to life with a squawk of feedback. The only response was static, but it changed in quality as she scanned through the bandwidths. Rather than a harsh crackle, it produced a more subdued buzz.

“Is someone there?” she asked. “Can anybody hear me?”

She fine-tuned the knobs and elicited more feedback. When it faded, there was something else beneath it. A voice.

“…you copy?” a man’s voice asked from a million miles away. “I repeat: This is Alpine Ranger Station. Do you copy?”

“Oh my God,” Jess blurted. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes, ma’am.” The voice sounded bored, distracted, as though the ranger had been stolen away from a good book and a fresh mug of coffee. “Is everything all right?”

“This is an emergency. We’ve lost contact with two members of our group on the northern face of Mount Isolation.”

“What the hell are you guys doing up there in this storm? We’re under a winter storm warning and all roads up the mountain are closed. How in the world did you get up there anyway?”

“We’re staying in the old cabins on County Road 432. We started hiking—”

“I didn’t receive notification that anyone would be staying there. Standard protocol dictates that the owner or leasing agency contact us regarding all off-season rentals, and no one ever—”

“There’s no time to argue,” Jess snapped. “Our friends might be in big trouble up here.”

“There’s no way anyone can reach them until the storm breaks. Even with four-wheel drives, we can only get as far as the main road. You’re talking about hiking for miles up into the mountains in this weather. We’re better served waiting it out and sending up a Search & Rescue chopper—”

“We found human remains.”

“Please repeat,” the ranger said, now all business.

“We found human remains. Do I have your attention now?”

“Are you certain?”

“They’re in the hot spring on the northern slope of the mountain. Our friends had just discovered them when communications were cut off.”

“Where are you now? State your position.”

“Maybe a quarter to a half mile southwest of the spring.”

“Are you in any immediate danger?”

“No, but our friends—”

“Stay on this channel,” he said. Gabriel could hear the ranger talking away from the radio, but was unable to make out his words. “I’m patching you through to the Morgan County Sheriff’s Department.”

The wind erupted with a scream and a new siege of snowflakes commenced, isolating them even from the rocks surrounding them. Gabriel had to duck his head and walk closer to Jess just to keep her in sight.

“We need to keep moving,” he said. “Maura and Will might need our help.”

Jess held up a finger to signify that she only needed another minute. The transceiver crackled. Jess brought it right next to her ear in order to hear over the wind and static. There was a loud squeal and a faint voice emerged in bursts from the overpowering fuzz.

“…Deputy Ross, Morgan County…Department. What is…on the way…twenty-four hours…”

The static silenced the voice like the closing of a coffin lid.

“Are you still there?” Jess shouted. “Can you hear me?”

“We can try again when the storm dies down,” Gabriel said. He took her by the hand and guided her down off the rock.

Jess screamed in frustration, but the blizzard swallowed the sound before it could echo.

They hurried back into the relative protection of the trees and again continued east along the northern face of the peak. The wind tore right through the forest, bringing with it the assault of flakes and the reinforcements from the accumulation in the branches above. Visibility was fading fast. All either of them could see was the thickening sheet of white underfoot and the dark silhouettes of tree trunks.

Even the sweat under Gabriel’s clothing had chilled to the point that his skin positively ached with goosebumps. They were going to have to seek shelter from the elements soon before their body temperature began to plummet.

Jess walked with one of the communication devices in either hand. The grainy buzz from both in stereo and the churning white dots of snow lent the impression of walking through television static.

“Cavenaugh,” Jess said into the smaller of the two units. “Do you read me?”

She depressed the button and waited for a response.

There was nothing but dead air.

***

Gabriel knew how quickly the weather in Colorado could turn, but he had still been caught off-guard. Down along the Front Range of the Rockies, six inches could accumulate in mere hours from formerly blue skies. Traffic would slow to a crawl. Businesses and schools would close early or not open at all. People would hunker down in their houses with central heat and fireplaces, enjoy hot cocoa and freshly baked cookies, and watch the forecast on their big screen TVs while dreading the prospect of brushing the snow off the satellite dish or shoveling the walk. But this…this was something different entirely.

This was survival.

It had taken him until now to recognize that simple truth. The only fireplaces were nearly a four-mile blind hike over a nightmare terrain of ice, where every tree looked just like the last and the only directions not masked by the blizzard were up and down. There was the very real possibility that if they didn’t find somewhere to ride out the storm, they could end up walking to their deaths. He had read in the newspaper about hikers vanishing a couple times every year for as long as he could remember, but he had never realized just how easy it could be. If they didn’t find the others soon—

And then he smelled it, the faint hint of salty marsh.

He turned around and looked at Jess, who had taken to walking in his boot prints from sheer fatigue. Her entire face was chafed and red, the skin cracking on her cheekbones and peeling in strands from her lips. She acknowledged that she had noticed the scent with a nod.

Cavenaugh had told them not to approach the spring until he arrived, but they couldn’t just hang out in the woods waiting from him. They needed to make sure that Maura and Will were all right, and then they needed to seek shelter. The plan was to come upon the site slowly, cautiously, to study it from the anonymity of the trees to ensure that everything was fine. Once they determined it was safe to do so, then they were just going to walk right down there and figure out what they were going to do. Cavenaugh could kiss their asses if he thought they were going to stand around in this blizzard waiting for him to announce his grand arrival.

It was snowing so hard that Gabriel didn’t notice the steam through the flakes, or perhaps the wind was blowing so hard that it simply dissipated. He barely saw the iced granite rim of the crater in time to keep from stumbling out into the open. Crouching behind the wide trunk of a ponderosa pine, he motioned for Jess to do the same. He wanted to call out for Maura and Will, but something prevented him from doing so. It wasn’t as though he had expected to find them standing right there at the edge of the spring, but he had hoped to find some sign of them. He could only shake his head at the seemingly irrational thoughts and fears.

Surely nothing had happened to Maura and Will. They had probably found somewhere out of the wind to keep from freezing to death like any sane person would have done under the same circumstances. And yet still Gabriel couldn’t bring himself to leave the cover of the forest.

Jess leaned over his shoulder and whispered into his ear, “Do you see anyone?”

He shook his head, silently pulled the rifle over his head, and held it in front of his chest. It took a moment to find the safety by the trigger guard through his thick gloves. He pressed his right index finger onto it in preparation.

The water was still hidden from sight, but he could see the majority of the eastern side and the wall of forest beyond through the thick steam when the gusting wind shifted. There was no sign of Maura or Will, no movement at all.

He crawled through the scrub oak toward the clearing. The Styrofoam crumpling of snow and the snapping of branches announced his advance to whomever may have been lying in wait, but it was still preferable to walking unguarded into the open. He tried not to think about what might be lurking only feet away. There was no chance of outrunning either a mountain lion or a bullet. The words of an old high school friend rushed to the forefront of his mind. I don’t have to be able to outrun trouble. I just have to be able to outrun you.

The tangle of branches opened in front of him and granted an unobstructed view of the clearing. Snowflakes and steam swirled in the center, creating a dense fog that churned at the mercy of the wind. To his left, the mountain fell away from the rock embankment like the edge of a dam, and pines crowded against it to bar even a glimpse of the valley below. The bank directly ahead was coated with a skin of ice that had to be several inches thick, and he could barely see the red crescent of water four feet down against the granite. The summit rose steeply to the right in sheer formations of slate, between which pines and scrub oak battled for root space.

He held his breath and scrutinized the scene down the barrel of the gun, wishing it had a scope rather than this strange arrangement of steel sights. But this weapon hadn’t been made for hunting. This was an assault weapon. What had Cavenaugh suspected they would find that he had felt it necessary to bring such firepower? Gabriel couldn’t imagine one could sign out a case of semi-automatic assault rifles from the police armory either. What was really going on here?

The radio screeched behind him and he heard Cavenaugh’s voice.

“…copy me, dammit?”

The sudden burst of sound made Gabriel cringe. He waited for the white and gold streak of a mountain lion to leap at him with his finger on the trigger. When nothing moved, he crawled out of the brush onto the slick rock. He heard Jess answer Cavenaugh, but he couldn’t make out her words over the pounding of his pulse in his ears. There could have been packs of feral creatures hiding in the wilderness just beyond sight, but he was completely alone in the clearing.

If Cavenaugh’s voice hadn’t brought every predator in the forest running, then he figured it was probably safe to risk calling for Maura and Will, but neither answered.

He scooted to the precipice of the crater and looked down. Maura hadn’t exaggerated. The spring was so full of the bacteria that it had a pink cast and the edges were thick with it, a ring of crimson sludge, except for one small stretch where a pile of bones jutted from the surface. His breath caught at the thought that they might have belonged to his sister. Suddenly, he wasn’t sure he wanted to know. He wanted to remember Stephanie as the glowing young girl with the world stretched out before her, not as a collection of broken and disarticulated bones.

The tears stung as they ran down his cheeks. He looked up to stall their descent and caught a blur of movement from the corner of his right eye. There. At the top of a stone outcropping, nestled against the twisted trunk of a spruce, was a small orange face with green eyes and one stiff ear.

“Oscar,” he whispered. “You nearly scared me to death.”

Gabriel stood and walked slowly toward where the cat crouched about twenty feet up the rugged slope. He was nearly to the end of the spring when Oscar scurried down the granite toward him. Gabriel froze.

Oscar stopped halfway down, lowered his head, and lapped at the rock with his tongue. The tabby’s eyes never left Gabriel as he approached in what he hoped were non-threatening steps.

He was almost close enough to consider trying to pet the cat when he recognized what Oscar was gleaning from the slanted stone surface.

“Oh, God,” Gabriel whispered.

He nearly dropped the rifle in his hurry to turn away.

Blood.

The rocks were crisscrossed with arcs of blood.

***

It was unnerving watching Oscar squatting there on the rock, licking and licking, the fur surrounding his mouth turning a rich shade of red. Gabriel had no way of knowing whether the blood had come from a human or an animal. Regardless, whatever had met its demise in that dead end had done so badly. He was no forensics expert, but long spatters of blood that stretched more than a dozen feet up a nearly vertical surface implied an attack of unimaginable violence. And they hadn’t been caused by a firearm. A shotgun would have created a large blot spatter; a pistol or a rifle a similar high-velocity starburst. In either case, the mess would have been surrounded by a mist composed of droplets of various sizes. These arcs had been caused by a blade, and one wielded with frightening strength.

Gabriel tried to convince himself that Will must have encountered a cornered mountain lion and been forced to battle it with a hunting knife, but Will had been carrying a rifle with which he was intimately acquainted. If push had come to shove, he would have shot the animal and its skin would have been tanning between the trees while its carcass rotated on a spit over a roaring blaze.

“They should be here within half an hour,” Jess said. “Or at least they hope so.”

Gabriel nodded. He couldn’t force himself to look away from Oscar. The cat was like a machine, showing no sign of tiring, licking over and over and over and over—

“Are you okay?” Jess asked.

“They died here.”

“Maura and Will?”

“All of them. They all died right here. Where we’re standing at this very second.”

“You can’t know that for sure. These bones could belong to anyone and that blood—”

“Is still fresh, Jess. It hasn’t even frozen yet.”

The wind shifted and blew the salty steam between them.

“What are we doing here then?” Jess asked. “We should just leave.”

“Don’t you want to know what happened here? Don’t you want to know how your sister died?”

“Of course I do. I loved Deb, but she would never have wanted me to risk my life for that knowledge.”

“They obviously risked their lives for the sake of knowledge. What’s the difference?”

He felt her hand close around his, but she said nothing more.

Together they watched Oscar slather his sandpaper tongue on the steep granite outcropping without any indication of slowing.

***

Gabriel sat at the edge of the spring and scooped gobs of slime out of the water with a branch. Were it not for the striking red color, it could have been any pond scum from anywhere in the world. And maybe it was. Haloarchaea certainly didn’t aggregate like this. Without a microscope, he couldn’t determine a blasted thing about the microorganism. He was stalling anyway, postponing the task he had originally sat down here to begin. And he only had a few minutes to do it while Jess was still up the slope, out of the trees, trying in vain to reach the sheriff’s department again on the emergency transceiver.

She had promised not to go very far and to stay within earshot. He could see her perched on the top of a rock to the left of Oscar, who seemed to have forgotten they existed as he tried to consume every drop of the rapidly freezing blood. The barely audible hiss of static and the occasional squawk of feedback told Gabriel everything he needed to know.

He had to be quick. Cavenaugh had told Maura to leave the bones where they had found them. Obviously, she and Will had shoved them back into the spring. Gabriel understood he would have no idea which bones may have belonged to his sister, but he held out hope that none of them did, that he would pull them out and recognize immediately that they weren’t human at all, but instead belonged to some deer or wolf that had fallen into the water and drowned while trying to get a drink.

A glance in Jess’s direction confirmed she was still battling the transceiver.

Gabriel jabbed the stick down under the surface and dragged out an interlocked tangle of bones to where he could reach them. They were unmistakably human and belonged to at least two distinct individuals. Some were longer and thicker than others, most evident in the curvature and width of the ribs and the height of the vertebrae in the red-stained columns. Rolling the first pile away from the jumble beneath, he dragged several more long bones toward the surface. One was clearly a humerus, another a tibia through which a vertical fracture coursed. There was another, this one still articulated in spots despite the rotting cartilage. The radius and ulna were still connected at both the proximal and distal joints, and the carpals held the rest of the skeletal hand to the wrist. But there was something wrong with the arrangement. The wrist and the hand were contorted, twisted.

He reached down and examined it in his gloved hands. The carpals were fused, making the wrist curl in upon itself, and the metacarpals and phalanges appeared too short and thin in proportion to the rest of the forearm. The fingers were curved inward in such a way that they were more reminiscent of a bird’s claws than—

The truth struck him, but it was too late to throw it back into the spring.

Jess moaned behind him and he turned to see her face contort with pain. He watched a part of her die in her eyes.

It was a palsied hand.

He remembered the picture on the website, of all of the kids smiling on their first day at the cabins, and the girl to the right with her stunted hand held to her chest.

Deborah MacAuley.

Jess’s sister.

***

“I’m so sorry,” Gabriel said. He stood, still holding the arm, unsure of what to do with it. Jess couldn’t look away from it. He didn’t want to throw it back into the water right in front of her, nor did he suspect offering it to her was the right thing to do.

Jess nodded. She appeared to have disappeared somewhere inside of herself. Her eyes no longer shimmered, but drained a steady stream of tears. She reached out tentatively, then jerked her hands back to her sides.

“What are you doing?” Cavenaugh snapped.

He and Kelsey emerged from the forest with the racket of snapping branches.

“I told you to wait for us before coming down to the spring,” he said. His face flushed purple-red when he saw the bone in Gabriel’s hands. “And I said I don’t want anyone touching or moving those bones in the slightest. Jesus Christ! That’s evidence of a crime! We can’t risk anyone contaminating—”

Cavenaugh fell silent. He looked from the forearm to Jess and then back again. The color drained from his cheeks. When he resumed speaking, his voice was even and calm.

“For the time being, why don’t you put that back where you found it.” He turned to Jess. “We’ll make sure that everything is handled with the utmost care and respect. She’s somewhere better now. You and I both know that.”

Jess stared through him with a glazed expression of shock. Gabriel used the distraction to return Deborah’s arm to the pile under the water, where it mercifully sank beneath the bacterial sludge.

“Any sign of the others?” Kelsey asked. He alone appeared unaffected by the significance of the finding. His jaw was thrust forward, his lips a grim line, reflecting a frightening measure of determination.

“We couldn’t reach you on the radio…” Jess whispered.

“Where are they?” Kelsey asked. “Will? Maura?”

“The blood,” Gabriel said. “There’s blood all over the rocks. It was still warm when we arrived.”

He pointed toward the stone abutment.

When Oscar saw all of them turn in his direction, he abandoned his meal, bolted up the slope to the right, and vanished behind a sharp crest of stone.

“That’s the same cat, isn’t it?” Cavenaugh asked, but Gabriel was already walking away.

Gabriel affixed his stare to the point where the cat had disappeared, passed the spring, and began to scale the cliff. He should have seen Oscar emerge from the other side of the rock. Maybe the cat was still hiding behind it, but he had been moving so fast it would have been nearly impossible to stop so suddenly, even for a clawed feline. Gabriel clambered over a granite pinnacle and had to drop to all fours to maintain his balance on the slick stone. Behind and below him, he heard the others calling to him. Cavenaugh had found the spatter patterns and cursed him for allowing the cat to disturb them while Jess cautioned him to be careful. He made no reply as he crawled toward the jagged slate fin.

Oscar wasn’t crouching behind it, nor were there any footprints leading away on the snow-dusted ice.

There was only a deep black crevice under the slanted rock that led down into the ground.

Gabriel leaned closer, expecting to see the cat wedged down in there, staring back at him with terrified green eyes, but there was only darkness and a faint, warm breeze that smelled simultaneously of dust and mildew, salt and biological decay.

He reached down into the hole with his right arm until it was all the way inside and his shoulder was lodged in the opening.

And still couldn’t feel the bottom.

***

They had uprooted a six-foot aspen sapling, stripped the branches to the three-inch trunk, and now Cavenaugh knelt above the hole, prodding the darkness below. He had forced the tree all the way into the ground and had encountered no resistance. Gripping it in one hand, he added the length of his arm and thrust. He grunted and swept the trunk from side to side, but only succeeded in losing his grip. After a moment they heard the hollow clatter of wood striking the ground.

Cavenaugh leaned back and stared down the slope toward the spring with a look of confusion.

“That hole has to be at least fifteen feet deep,” he said. “And did you hear the sound it made? There has to be some sort of cavern directly under us.”

He gnawed his chapped lower lip, then brushed away a patch of snow until he found a rock about the size of his fist, and dropped it down into the crevice. It pinged off one of the slanted sides before ricocheting from the stone surface below. He grabbed another rock and did the same thing again, only this time, after striking the cavern floor, it hit something that sounded like metal.

Cavenaugh looked at the others where they huddled for warmth. The expression on his face had metamorphosed into excitement.

“There’s something in there,” he finally said. “And if someone could find a way to get a sizeable metal object in there, then we can get in there too.”

“We shouldn’t do anything until the police are able to get here,” Jess said. “The signal cut out, but I’m sure he said they could be here in under twenty-four hours.”

“What if Maura and Will are hurt? What if they need our help? Are you suggesting we should allow them to bleed to death while we wait?”

“There was so much blood—” Gabriel started.

“All the more reason to find them now. We can’t sit on our thumbs if there’s a chance we can help them.”

“They could be dead already.”

“Then whoever killed them probably already knows we’re here. How long until they come after us?”

The words chilled Gabriel on a level even the storm couldn’t. Until Cavenaugh had vocalized them, the concept had been an abstraction. He suddenly realized that someone could be watching them that very second, hiding in the branches of a tree, crouching behind a boulder, or simply standing there at the very edge of sight, cloaked in the blizzard. Jess was right. They needed to get the hell off that mountain, but would they be any more difficult to overcome on the steep descent through the dense forest and deep valleys? But at the same time, what if the others were lying somewhere in desperate need of help? And the most horrifying thought of all…

“The rifle,” he said. “Where’s Will’s rifle?”

“Jesus,” Kelsey whispered.

They were all exposed on the face of the peak and the range of the rifle exceeded the extent of their visibility through the storm.

Jess clicked on the emergency transceiver again, but there was still no hope of finding a functional channel.

With the click of a disengaging safety, Cavenaugh was on his feet, rifle at the ready.

“We need to seek cover,” he said. “Now.”

***

They stood in the cul-de-sac on the south end of the spring with the steep, bloodstained granite wall at their backs. The steam was a living cloud that seemed to move with their eyes, alternately concealing and revealing the snow-blanketed trees and the shadows wrapped around their trunks. They were sitting ducks.

“We should head back to the cabins,” Jess said. “Even if we can’t reach the highway in our cars, at least we’d be inside where we can defend ourselves.”

“We’d still be alone on the mountain,” Kelsey said. “If someone wanted to hurt us badly enough, they’d find a way.”

“You’re assuming we could even make it back to the cabins in this snow,” Gabriel said.

“What do you suggest then?” Jess asked. She was barely holding the panic at bay. “Should we just stay here and wait for whoever got to Maura and Will to come back for us?”

“Whoever did it is undoubtedly still here,” Cavenaugh said. He’d given his rifle to Kelsey, and was now crawling on the ground, sweeping the snow off the layer of ice. “I’d lay odds they knew exactly where we were staying and have been watching us the entire time. Probably the same thing that happened two years ago. They just waited until we split up and followed Will and Maura.”

“Will’s an experienced hunter,” Kelsey said. “He wasn’t the weakest link.” He looked pointedly at Gabriel and Jess.

“You keep saying ‘they.’ Do you really think there’s more than one of them?” Jess asked.

“I don’t see one person being able to overcome Will and Maura at the same time. Even Will by himself,” Cavenaugh said. He crawled closer to the edge of the water, still clearing away the accumulation. He paused and chiseled at the ice with his fingertips, then smoothed his palm across the surface. “I’ll bet they have us flanked right now.”

“Why do you think that? They could easily be miles away by now. For all we know they could have had a truck waiting down on the road and they could be anywhere.”

“These are the same people who killed our sisters, Jess. And probably Maura and Will as well. That’s nine people. Just that we know of. Why do you think they would run? They obviously have no qualms about killing, and they know these woods a hell of a lot better than any of us. Right now, they’re just playing with us, hunting us. They want us scared, and they want us to make the first move, to begin the chase. That’s the sport of it. And these aren’t the kind of people who are hoping to get a clean shot at three hundred yards. If that blood belongs to Maura and Will for sure, then these are men who thrill in working up close and personal. They enjoy the ritual of the kill, the feel of blood on their hands.”

“Or maybe they just feared we’d hear the report of a rifle,” Kelsey said.

“Possible, but I don’t think so. Those spatters indicate a startling level of savagery. No hesitation. No remorse. They’ve killed that way before.”

“So you’re saying we’re screwed regardless,” Gabriel said.

Cavenaugh looked up at him and flashed a crooked grin.

“That’s not what I’m saying at all.”

***

“Look here,” Cavenaugh said. He swiped away the wet snowfall that had accumulated on the ground in front of him in the last few minutes since he’d cleared it last. “The ice is uneven in spots. See? Some sections are elevated as though more water had been added on top of the frozen parts. Everywhere else, the ice is smooth and even. Why then should these sections be raised more than the rest?”

He looked up at them expectantly and waited for them to make the connection he apparently already had.

“We don’t have time to mess around,” Kelsey said. “They could be coming for us—”

“Bear with me,” Cavenaugh interrupted. “And if you look over here…”

He scooted closer to the edge of the water and brushed away more snow.

“Blood,” Gabriel said. It was barely discernible from the dark color of the rock under the frozen sheet, yet the way the droplets and smears were arranged, it was unmistakable.

“Right. Now if you run your palm across it, you can feel how it’s elevated from the ice. Just a little bit. What happened is that since the blood was still warm, it began to melt into the ice before transferring all of its heat, creating a kind of dimple for the fluid to rest in, a miniature cup to hold the blood. Once it cooled enough it couldn’t continue to melt through the ice, it started to freeze. And now that it’s frozen solid, there’s an uneven bump over the rest of the ice around it. You can tell this happened a while ago based on the amount of ice that has since frozen over the top of it. That’s why you can hardly see it now, but it still leaves a palpable lump.”

“We already know someone bled here,” Kelsey said. His eyes narrowed with impatience. “The evidence is spattered all over those rocks. We’re wasting valuable time. Time we don’t have.”

“You’re missing the point.” Cavenaugh was growing frustrated as well. “All that blood over there. The smaller spatters here by the spring. They were killed over there.” It was the first time one of them had phrased it as such. The impact served to silence whatever objections Kelsey had opened his mouth to make. “And they were carried, not dragged, over here to the edge of the spring, where they were thrown into the water.”

“That doesn’t change anything,” Jess whispered.

“Of course it does,” Cavenaugh said. “Where are their bodies? Corpses tend to float, especially in a saline body like this. That’s why you always hear about murderers weighting down their victims with stones and concrete blocks.”

“So that’s what they must have done,” Kelsey said. “The water’s deep enough that we couldn’t reach the bottom, and with as cloudy and bacteria-riddled as it is, we can’t see very far down into it at all. For all we know, there could be a whole pile of bodies on the bottom.”

“It’s possible, however unlikely. Something would end up floating to the surface, especially considering the constant influx of water from the underground source of the spring. These things have to exchange hundreds of gallons of water a day to keep up with evaporation from the heat. No, I don’t think their corpses are in the spring at all.”

“But you just said that whoever attacked them threw their bodies into the spring,” Gabriel said.

“Exactly.”

There was that strange smile of excitement again. Coupled with the way he contradicted himself with every word, Gabriel suspected Cavenaugh teetered on the brink of a breakdown.

“You aren’t making sense,” Kelsey snapped.

“You’re missing the obvious,” Cavenaugh said. That smile was starting to grate on Gabriel’s frayed nerves. “Look back here, where we started. I showed you how the blood made the ice so that the surface wasn’t level. What do you think caused this?”

He gestured to several oblong stretches where the ice was thicker, almost like melted candle wax. There were dots where drops had fallen and other long lines of spatter, but in the center of each was a distinct shape that appeared the same to a large degree with each repeat occurrence.

“Don’t you see?” Cavenaugh asked. His smile faltered and he appeared exasperated. He turned to each of them in turn before finally shaking his head. “Watch.”

He raised his right foot and stepped down on the raised section of ice, then did the same with his left on the next instance. Then his right again on the third.

“Jesus,” Jess gasped. “They’re footprints.”

***

“So whoever dumped the bodies in the spring got in there with them, weighted them down, and then climbed back out,” Kelsey said. “That can only serve to help us. There’s no way they’re walking around out here with wet legs. They’d have frostbite long before they were able to either change out of their clothes or find shelter.”

“You’re right about that,” Cavenaugh said, “but you’re working under a faulty assumption. Look at the prints again. They’re narrowest here, on the end closest to the water, and wider on the leading edge. They were made by someone coming out of the water just like you said, but I believe they were made before the bloodstains.”

“What’s the difference? It doesn’t change the fact that we need to get off this mountain right now.”

“How do you think it’s possible that someone snuck up on Maura and Will without either of them noticing? You made the point yourself about Will being an experienced hunter. Once they found those bones, he would have been acutely alert and watching the forest like his life depended upon it. And we would have heard the report if he’d managed to fire the rifle,” Cavenaugh said. He unzipped his jacket and shed the hood.

“You’ve lost your mind,” Kelsey said.

“Give me the backpack.”

Kelsey pulled off the backpack and thrust it at Cavenaugh, who opened it and dumped the contents onto the ground at his feet. He removed his jacket and shoved it in, then followed with a light jacket, a sweater, and a flannel shirt, until he was down to a single undershirt.

“What are you doing?” Jess asked.

“We know there’s a cavern underneath this mountain,” he said as he slipped out of his boots, then his snow pants and jeans. “We also know that the geothermally-heated water flows into this spring from somewhere. The footprints are coming out of the water, and we know that no one could survive very long out here if they were sopping wet.”

Cavenaugh now stood before them in only his undershirt, long johns, and a single pair of socks. The rest of his clothes were stuffed into the zipped backpack.

“You’re going to freeze to death if you do this,” Gabriel said.

“Someone just did this exact thing before we got here. There has to be a way to warm up, or at least dry off, inside the cavern.” Cavenaugh shrugged. “Worst case scenario, I’ll have to sit in this spring until help arrives if I’m wrong.”

“Are you willing to take that chance?” Kelsey asked. “You know that could exacerbate your condition.”

Cavenaugh cast him a sharp look.

“What condition?” Jess asked.

“It’s no one’s business but my own.”

“The former Detective Cavenaugh here has esophageal cancer.”

“Former detective?” Gabriel asked.

“You didn’t really think any of this was sanctioned by the police, do you?” Kelsey asked. “The assault rifles, the communications system, the gear. Do you think the Denver Police Department just opened up the armory for Cavenaugh’s little shopping spree?”

“We don’t have time to do this now,” Cavenaugh said.

“That’s why you wouldn’t let me call the police,” Jess said. “You lied to us and jeopardized all of our lives—”

“Listen to me,” Cavenaugh snapped. He pulled off his long underwear and socks, and stood against the wind in nothing but a tee shirt and a pair of boxers, visibly shivering. “That doesn’t change anything. Run away if you want, but I, for one, intend to find out what happened to my sister before I die. Even if it kills me.”

He donned the backpack and snatched the rifle from Kelsey with a look that could have stopped a charging bull. A moment later he was sliding down the icy embankment into the spring. Two steps away from the edge, the ground fell away beneath him, and he plunged out of sight.

***

“Thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire,” Jess whispered.

They stood at the edge of the spring, watching the burbling surface of the pink water and the red rocks beneath through the swirling steam. Cavenaugh had been down there for at least three minutes, and all of them knew there was no way he could have held his breath that long. Gabriel pictured Cavenaugh with his feet snared in a tangle of bodies on the bottom, struggling to free himself before finally taking that fateful inhalation of fluid. Somewhere down there, Gabriel imagined the stocky man’s lifeless body swaying on the current like a leaf of kelp. Worse, if Cavenaugh’s theory had been correct, he just might have found an underwater entrance to the cavern where the killers waited for him. Will hadn’t been able to fire a single shot in defense. There were no guarantees that Cavenaugh would be any luckier. Gabriel envisioned Cavenaugh crawling out of a small pool into a dark chamber where a shadowed form leaned over him from behind, grabbed him by the hair, and yanked his head back to expose his throat. A flash of steel and twin arterial sprays painted the walls.

Gabriel scrutinized the spring for any darkening of the already reddish water, half-expecting a rush of crimson from the intake that would dissipate—

The crown of a head broke the surface and there was a loud gasp.

Gabriel nearly squeezed off a shot, would have had his hands not been shaking so badly.

Cavenaugh paddled toward them, but as soon as his back crested the water, he thought better of it. The barrel of the rifle pointed over his right shoulder as the broken wing of an angel might. The strap crossed his chest. Steam twirled from his head in the cold air like a recently extinguished candle.

“I was right,” he said, still panting for breath. “There’s a tunnel down there. Leads right out from the bottom. Barely wider than my shoulders, but it goes…all the way into the cavern. Without light, I can’t…can’t tell how big it is, but I’d guess it’s pretty large by the acoustics.”

“Was there anyone inside?” Kelsey asked.

“Like I said. I couldn’t see a thing, but I could smell…” Cavenaugh paused and dunked his head again to replenish his warmth while he formulated his words. “There was definitely something dead in there. Once you’ve worked a homicide, you don’t forget the smell.”

“So what now?” Gabriel asked.

“We do some spelunking.” Now that Cavenaugh had regained his breath, his smile returned. “I don’t know what kind of geothermal vents heat that cavern, but it’s like a sauna in there. The backpacks are waterproof, so we can carry all our clothes through the tunnel and change once we’re in there. I already dumped mine.”

He produced the empty backpack and tossed it at Kelsey’s feet.

“You’re crazy if you think I’m going in there,” Kelsey said.

“Fine. Stay here. I’m going back in regardless. How about you two?”

Gabriel opened his mouth under Cavenaugh’s intense gaze, but no words came out. The prospect scared the hell out of him. He heard a zipper behind him and turned to see Jess shrug out of her coat.

“I’ll go,” she whispered.

“Gabriel?” Cavenaugh asked.

Gabriel stared down at the rifle for a long moment before passing it to Kelsey. He reached for the zipper on his coat with trembling hands.

“You can’t leave me out here alone,” Kelsey said.

“It’s your choice, doctor,” Cavenaugh said. His grin now had teeth.

“What if they come back? How could I possibly—?”

“If I’m right, they’re already inside. You’ll have nothing to fear unless they get past the rest of us.”

“You think they’re in there, waiting for you, and you still want to go in after them? After they’ve already proven their willingness to kill?”

Cavenaugh’s face remained stoic.

“You’ve lost it.”

“The floor of the tunnel is littered with bones, Kelsey, and the current runs directly toward the end of the spring over there where all the rest are piled. Are you following my logic? If you want to figure out what happened to Levi…the only way to do so is by going in there.”

“Where there are people waiting to butcher us.”

“The rifles are waterproof as well.”

“I don’t share your death wish. I have a wife, and a respectable practice—”

“Suit yourself,” Cavenaugh said.

Gabriel stood in his underwear and tee shirt, the rest of his clothing stuffed in the backpack beside his socked feet. He shivered and his teeth chattered. What in the name of God was he thinking?

“Make sure to pack both flare guns,” Cavenaugh said. “We’re going to need them.”

Gabriel wedged the bulky gun and spare cartridges into the bag and zipped it closed again. The frigid wind felt as though it blew right through him. The time had come to decide. Either he unpacked his clothes and got dressed again before he froze to death, or he forced his legs to propel him forward into the water. Jess emerged from his peripheral vision in only her bra and panties, a mismatched set of pink and white, and slid down the rocks into the water, dragging her backpack by the strap. She waded out a couple steps and dropped into the deep water with a startled cry. A heartbeat later, she returned to the surface, coughing and spitting out the vile liquid.

One step at a time, Gabriel eased closer to the spring. He felt a sense of detachment, as though he had somehow separated from his body and were merely watching himself inching toward the spring from afar. At the edge of the bank, he lowered himself to his rear end and slid down into the water. He scooted forward to the edge of the rocks and plunged into the depths. About eight feet down, his feet met the bottom, which he used as leverage to launch himself back up into the cold air.

“The opening to the tunnel is pretty much right under us,” Cavenaugh said. “It’s roughly fifteen feet long and the current will be pushing you right in the face. You’re going to need to take the biggest breath you can hold and use your arms to pull you through.”

“What about the backpacks?” Jess asked.

“Loop the straps around your ankle.”

“What if it gets stuck?” Gabriel asked.

“Then ditch it and we’ll go back for it.”

“What if—?”

“It’s now or never,” Cavenaugh said. “Follow me if you want, or stay if you don’t. At this point, I don’t care. Either way, I’m going now.”

He took a deep breath and was about to dive under when Kelsey spoke.

“Wait.”

***

Gabriel waited a moment after Jess dove, drew as much air as his lungs could hold, and dove under the water. The salt content stung his eyes so badly he could barely keep them open, but he managed to see Jess’s feet before they disappeared into the rocky mouth of the tunnel. The red bacterial sludge grew over everything, covering the uneven rocks and the scattered, strangely shaped objects he assumed were bones. He couldn’t help but wonder about the consequences of exposing his bare eyeballs and the sensitive membranes to the foreign microorganisms.

Gripping the stones at the edge of the opening, he pulled himself ahead into utter darkness. His shoulders scraped against the walls, ripping his shirt. The skin on his fingertips threatened to peel away and he was certain he was going to lose a nail, but the pain was nothing compared to the pressure in his lungs. He already needed to take a breath. It felt like his chest was full of smoldering coals. The irrational panic cut through what little semblance of control remained, and he began to thrash. Tearing open the skin on his elbows and knees, on his scalp and toes. Colored amoebae floated across his vision and the entire tunnel rotated around him. He clawed forward, faster and faster, not caring if he flayed every inch of flesh from his bones, until his head slammed into something hard.

Gabriel opened his mouth to scream. Something struck his back between his shoulder blades and jerked him upward. He sputtered with the influx of air, retched, then rolled away from the opening and vomited onto the stone floor.

“Shh!” Cavenaugh hissed into his ear.

Gabriel continued to gasp until he calmed down and rationalized the situation. The darkness in the cavern was lighter than the underwater tunnel by degree, but only enough to limn the silhouettes of the others. His harsh breath echoed hollowly in the large, unseen room.

“Hurry back,” Cavenaugh whispered.

With a soft splash, Jess crawled down into the water and headed back for Kelsey. She was obviously a better swimmer and had handled the journey far better than he had.

Gabriel sat up and tried to get a feel for his surroundings. The blackness was claustrophobic, and even though he couldn’t see the stone walls, he felt confident they were about to collapse and bury him alive.

There was a rustling noise, then a metallic snapping sound.

“This won’t last long,” Cavenaugh whispered. “Memorize everything you see.”

Gabriel wasn’t sure what Cavenaugh meant until with a whoosh and a scream, a fireball streaked off into the darkness with a startling flash.

***

The resultant glow stained the room orange from where the ball of fire burned against the stone wall ahead and to the left. Already it was beginning to fizzle and fade. Gabriel was shocked by the sheer enormity of the cavern, which more closely resembled a highway tunnel through a mountain than any sort of natural formation. The walls were smooth, with few outcroppings, and rounded to create an elliptical room perhaps twenty-five feet wide, but only a dozen feet high. It almost appeared man-made. Beyond the leading edge of the fading light, a section of the roof and walls had collapsed into a pile of rubble.

Gabriel tried to absorb every detail before the crackling flame extinguished. Rivulets of water trickled down the walls and dripped to the ground from the condensation above. A small channel of water cut through the middle of the floor, whisper quiet, and emptied into the pool from which they’d emerged. There was a stack of red aluminum containers to the right, presumably what they’d heard the rock strike from the hole through which the cat had crawled. They were rusted and dented, but one still bore the faded letters KER SENE. The smooth stone floor beside the small stream was wet and sloppy. Maybe it was the orange glare, but the long smear that led deeper into the tunnel glimmered scarlet.

The flare diminished to a wan glow of embers, and finally to nothing at all. In the dying light, he thought he had seen movement ahead near the mound of rocks, a shadow passing across shadows. The darkness wrapped around them again with humid arms.

Gabriel felt Cavenaugh’s breath on his ear before the other man whispered, “They dragged the bodies through here. There’s blood all over the ground in front of us.”

There was a muted metallic clatter as Cavenaugh ejected the spent metal flare casing and chambered another.

“We should have brought flashlights,” Gabriel whispered.

“You think?”

He’d obviously hit a sore spot. Cavenaugh had gone to great lengths to outfit their expedition, but apparently hadn’t foreseen every contingency.

Gabriel heard a shuffling sound beside him and realized Cavenaugh was getting dressed. Following suit, Gabriel stripped out of his wet clothes, unpacked the dry, and had only begun to get dressed when a slosh of water and a gasp announced Kelsey’s arrival. His reaction upon crawling out of the spring was the same as Gabriel’s. He was still retching when Jess slipped out of the water.

They dressed in a silence marred only by the occasional zip of a zipper and scratch of Velcro.

“Ready?” Cavenaugh whispered. When no one immediately spoke up, he detailed his plan. “We advance in a diamond formation. I’ll take the lead. Jess and Gabriel, you’ll stay right behind and to either side of me. You’ll carry the flare guns. Only fire one off on my signal. Kelsey, you’ll bring up the rear. Walk backwards. Make sure no one tries to sneak up on us from behind. Anything moves, shoot it. Got it?”

Whispers of assent.

“If you see or hear anything—anything at all—stop where you are and tap the people to either side. Keep the formation close, and no one strays away. Understood?”

The stream hissed past them, an indifferent serpent in their midst.

Kelsey checked to make sure a load was chambered in the rifle with a clack.

The sound of their breathing grew harsh, tense.

Something pressed into Gabriel’s stomach and he took the flare gun from Cavenaugh. His palm was sweating so badly it took several attempts to find the proper grip. A thought struck him like a bullet to the temple.

They were all going to die in there.

“Move out,” Cavenaugh whispered, and took the first step forward into the darkness.

***

The clatter of rock against rock signaled Cavenaugh had reached the section where the roof had fallen. A faint slant of mote-riddled gray light cut through the darkness from a hole in the ceiling mere feet above the top of the pile. Judging by the distance from the spring, Gabriel could only assume that was where Oscar had entered from above.

“Be careful and quiet,” Cavenaugh whispered, and began his ascent.

Gabriel leaned onto the mound and tested the boulders with a shove, but they didn’t budge in the slightest. He reached out and found purchase on a rock. His hand slipped when he tried to pull himself up. The surface was slick and damp. He prayed it wasn’t blood from a body being dragged over them, and resumed his climb. When he crested the top, he looked up into the hole in the fractured ceiling, but couldn’t see the more than a few feet before the passage bent to the right. Cold air blew in his face.

The descent was more challenging as he refused to turn his back to the unseen chamber beyond in order to properly use his hands. Instead, he picked his way down on his rear end, testing each step with his heels. At the bottom, he stood beside Cavenaugh, where they waited for the others to join them.

“Jess,” Cavenaugh whispered. “Flare.”

Again there was a whoosh and a scream as the ball of fire sped into the darkness. It hit the ground and bounded down the tunnel. Its momentum petered out after about fifty yards.

Gabriel gasped. Nothing could have prepared him for what he now saw.

“Holy crap,” Kelsey whispered.

The thin stream on the ground divided the cavern into halves. To the left, a stained and aged mattress rested against the rounded rock wall. Two rumpled sleeping bags were spread out on it. The pillowcases at the head of the bed looked like they hadn’t been washed in ages. There were two backpacks on the floor, overflowing with clothes. A kerosene lantern rested beside the bed. A bench had been constructed from tree trunks, still round and flaking with dried bark. A black leather book sat on the planks. It was embossed with three white words: The Holy Bible. The pages were dog-eared and tattered. Another lantern had been positioned next to it beside a reserve tank of kerosene.

The right side of the room was something else entirely, as though the occupants had created their version of heaven on one side, and hell on the other.

There was a pallet composed of uneven tree trunks lashed together with various thicknesses of rope. A rusted ax stood at an angle from where the blade was buried in the wood. Chips and wedges had been stolen from the trunks through repeated use. Its function was no mystery, as Maura’s and Will’s bodies were sprawled across it. They had been stripped, their wet clothes piled beside them in twin heaps. Their flesh had paled dramatically in stark contrast to the vicious red wounds across their chests and throats. Oscar sat in the crook of Will’s neck, worrying at a sizeable gash with his teeth. He secured a mouthful and darted deeper into the tunnel without a backwards glance.

Various animal carcasses were scattered on the floor, the bones bleached, presumably from being boiled in the carbon-scored pot sitting on the charcoaled remnants of an extinguished campfire.

Gabriel caught a reflection from the wall above the carnage and looked up to see a half dozen necklaces hanging from the imperfections in the stone. His eyes were drawn to one in particular, from which a small golden cross dangled. There were five small diamonds set into the design, one in the center, and one at each end.

He recognized it immediately.

The flare died, and again the darkness enveloped them.

Gabriel stifled a sob, but couldn’t prevent the tears from streaming down his cheeks. He felt like someone had reached inside him and torn out all of his bowels. His stomach roiled and his head spun. Whatever hope he had held out that Stephanie might still be alive had been crushed. Rage and anguish warred within him. He wanted to rip the rifle out of Cavenaugh’s hands and run screaming down the tunnel, to make someone pay for his sister’s death. All he could see was an image of Stephanie’s naked, lifeless body spread across that hideous chopping block, covered with blood, while a faceless shadow stood over her, raised the ax, and—

Thuck. Followed by an angry hiss.

“What was that?” Jess whispered.

The sounds had come from deeper in the mountain, where Oscar had just fled.

“Someone’s down there,” Kelsey whispered.

“They’ve been leading us in that direction the entire time,” Cavenaugh whispered. “They’re waiting for us.”

***

Cavenaugh led them through the pitch black, slowly, silently. The ground began to slope upward ever so slightly. Once they reached the point where the flare had died, they halted and closed rank.

Gabriel heard a rustling sound behind him and turned. Something warm and wet slapped him across the face. A salty, metallic taste filled his mouth and he had to swipe the fluid from his left eye. He froze. His mind raced in an effort to comprehend what had just happened. His first thought was that Kelsey had stomped into the stream, but there hadn’t been a splashing sound to match.

Gabriel spat out the foul substance, then whispered, “Kelsey?”

There was a scraping noise mere feet away from him, but he couldn’t see a thing.

“Kelsey?”

“Gabriel,” Cavenaugh whispered. “Flare. Now.”

Gabriel pointed the blunted gun back in the direction from which they had come and pulled the trigger. The tunnel bloomed orange as the fireball streaked away into the darkness with a shriek and collided with the wooden pallet where the corpses still rested, and burned, hot and fast.

The ground at Gabriel’s feet was sloppy with blood, and, as he could now see, so was he. A wide smear led back down the tunnel, terminating in a pair of boots. Kelsey was sprawled on his stomach, his head and shoulders under the water, arms pinned beneath his chest.

Jess ran to him, rolled him onto his back, and cradled his head to raise it out of the stream. The laceration across his neck opened like a second mouth into a soundless scream.

A shadow darted along the wall to Gabriel’s left in the dying light, but by the time he turned, there was no sign of movement.

The flame fizzled and extinguished, stranding them in the impregnable blackness.

There was the clatter of rock on rock and the soft sound of footsteps, and then nothing at all.

Jess whimpered and started to cry.

Gabriel spun in a circle. It felt like he was surrounded, as though there were people so close he could feel their breath on his face.

“Fall back,” Cavenaugh whispered.

“What about—?” Jess whispered.

“Leave him. There’s nothing any of us can do for him now.”

“But I just saw someone—”

“I said fall back.”

Gabriel felt a hand shove him between the shoulder blades from behind and started walking. He could no longer tell if his eyes were open or closed.

There was a splashing sound from his right. A few seconds later, a wet rifle was thrust into his abdomen. He shoved the flare gun into his jacket pocket and cradled the rifle across his chest, sweeping it in front of him in jerking motions.

“Jess,” Cavenaugh whispered. “Fire another flare.”

Light exploded from the barrel and hurtled away into the living quarters. The flare struck the mounded rocks and bounded back toward them. The area was momentarily illuminated by a wavering peach glow, casting shadows from every object like black flags, before the ball of flame bounced into the stream and darkness raced back in with a hiss.

“Give me the flare gun,” Cavenaugh whispered.

A dozen more echoing footsteps and the light blossomed again. With a scream, the flare flew into the corner of the dead end, ricocheted from the boulders and then from the wall, and came to rest beside the bed. Cavenaugh passed the smoldering pistol back to Jess and walked directly toward the lantern on the ground.

“What are you doing?” Gabriel asked.

“What we should have done from the start.” Cavenaugh picked up the lantern, removed the glass housing, and held the broad wick to the flare until it lit. After dialing up the flame, he replaced the top and held it up to light the room. “I thought we’d make easy targets walking with the lantern. Apparently we did a good enough job of that without it.”

The dancing flame and the refractions through the glass brought the furthest reaches of the lantern’s light to life with shifting shadows.

“How many flares are left?” Cavenaugh asked.

“I have one,” Jess whispered.

“Same here,” Gabriel whispered.

“Then we don’t have much margin for error,” Cavenaugh said in a normal tone. The lantern was a handheld bull’s-eye. It didn’t matter now if their voices betrayed their location. “Jess, do you think you can carry that red canister?”

She lifted the container easily by the handle and sloshed the fluid. It sounded like there was maybe half a tank. Cavenaugh passed her the lantern, which she held aloft in her free hand.

“Gabriel,” Cavenaugh said. “You stay in the rear. Walk backwards. I’ll lead. Jess, stay between us and keep the lantern raised high enough that we can see.”

He started walking back toward Kelsey’s body.

“What are you doing?” Gabriel asked.

“I just told you.”

“We need to get out of here. I thought that’s what we were doing.”

“No,” Cavenaugh said. He turned. The expression on his face was frightening. “This ends here and now.”

“You’re out of your mind. Think about what just happened to Kelsey. We need to get the hell out of here while we still can. Let the police and the FBI come in here after them.”

“We leave now and they’ll be gone before reinforcements arrive. If we don’t do this now, we’ll never know what happened here.”

“It’s pretty obvious,” Gabriel said, gesturing to the corpses on the other side of the stream. “What more do you need to know?”

“I need to know why!” Cavenaugh shouted.

Gabriel retreated a step. Cavenaugh’s eyes were wide and wild, his red face contorting awkwardly with emotion. Gabriel was debating the merit of turning his rifle on Cavenaugh when the man spoke again, this time more softly.

“I’ll be dead inside three months. The cancer’s metastasized to my stomach and lungs. In a matter of weeks, I won’t be able to breathe without oxygen or swallow anything solid. Radiation will just prolong the process. There’s nothing I can do to change that. And I can’t go back empty-handed. There isn’t anything for me to go back to anyway. All of this equipment? These guns? You’d better believe someone’s noticed they’re gone by now. The department’s probably pretty anxious to have a little chat with me, one that starts with ‘You have the right to remain silent.’ So, as you can imagine, this is my last chance. My little sister died here. She never had a chance to get married or have children, to find happiness. All I want from the time I have left is to make sure that Jenny’s life mattered, that it counted for something. I don’t care if you come with me or not. Run away. That’s fine by me. But there’s something I want you to think about before you do.”

Gabriel looked at Jess, then back at Cavenaugh.

“Whoever killed Kelsey snuck up on him from behind. From the direction you want to go,” Cavenaugh said. “We probably walked right past him in the dark.”

Gabriel felt a sudden chill at the thought. Neither option appealed to him in the slightest. He wanted to just sit down and wait for someone to come rescue them, but he knew that if none of the search parties had found this tunnel before, they weren’t about to any time soon.

Cavenaugh turned away and struck off deeper into the mountain. After a moment’s hesitation, Jess followed.

Gabriel glanced back at the mound of rocks and the passage over them that led to the spring one final time before he joined the others. He spun around and walked in reverse, pointing the barrel of the rifle at the moving shadows cast by the lantern.

He slid his trembling finger onto the trigger.

***

Gabriel watched Kelsey’s body fade behind them until the darkness advanced from beyond the lantern’s reach and claimed it. He could barely breathe. The terror had conspired with the heat and humidity to compress his chest. Were it not for the prospect of someone with a wickedly sharp knife lying in wait in the darkness, he would have gladly succumbed to the panic and run screaming out of the cave. As it was, he was slowly losing the battle with his nerves. Every shift in the shadows nearly summoned a fusillade of bullets. With his hands shaking as badly as they were, he wondered if his aim would be remotely accurate if he had to put it to the test.

He had been so wrapped up in his thoughts that he didn’t notice Jess had stopped until he backed into her.

“Sorry—”

“Shh!” Cavenaugh whispered.

Gabriel listened, but couldn’t hear anything over his ragged breathing and the thrum of his pulse. After seeing nothing ahead, he risked a glance back over his shoulder. About twenty feet past Cavenaugh, illuminated by just the faintest glow, were twin mounds of rock to either side of the tunnel where another section of the earthen roof had collapsed. The passage narrowed to a bottleneck. They would have to pass through single file, becoming sitting ducks as they emerged on the other side one at a time.

“They’ll be ready to ambush us at the end of that passage,” Cavenaugh whispered.

“There’s no other way through,” Jess whispered. “We should turn back now. I don’t want to die in here.”

“You think any of our sisters did?”

“Don’t you dare use my sister against me. You have no idea—”

A shadow darted across the tunnel at the peripheral extent of the flame’s light and Gabriel jerked the trigger. The bullet flew high and wide, struck the wall with a spark and a ping, and careened off into the darkness.

“What did you see?” Cavenaugh asked.

“Something. Someone. I didn’t get a good look.”

“We need to keep moving.”

“We’re being herded,” Jess whispered.

“Do you have a better idea?” Cavenaugh asked. “If you want to wait here for them to come for you, I’m not about to stop you.”

“What are our options?” Gabriel asked.

Cavenaugh was silent for a moment. The corners of his lips curled upward into an uneasy smile.

“We’re going straight through that bottleneck.”

“But we all know it’s the perfect spot for an ambush,” Gabriel said. “You already said someone will be waiting for us at the end of the passage.”

Gabriel looked down the tunnel and then back at him. Cavenaugh’s face was a miasma of churning shadow and light. The smile had turned into a maniacal grin. Without a doubt, Cavenaugh had snapped.

“I hope so,” Cavenaugh said.

***

“How accurately can you shoot with that flare gun?” Cavenaugh asked.

“I don’t know,” Gabriel said. He couldn’t see where Cavenaugh was going with that line of thought, but the ever-present smile was unsettling.

They should never have gone through that spring, not without the police. And Kelsey had paid for their folly with his life.

None of them would ever see the light of day again. They were all going to die in there.

“We only have one shot at this, so you’d better not miss,” Cavenaugh said. He leaned closer and explained his plan in a whisper while constantly peering through the darkness for the first sign of movement like a prairie dog emerging from its burrow. “So do you think you can do it?”

“Are you sure this will work?” Jess asked.

“No,” Cavenaugh said. He took Gabriel by the shoulders and drew him closer until their faces were only inches apart and enunciated each word carefully. “Can you do this?”

Gabriel hesitated. Could he? He wasn’t sure. Thus far he’d only been firing the flares in a general direction without taking aim.

“This is our only chance,” Cavenaugh said. “If this doesn’t work, then we’re all dead. So I need to know. Right now. Can you do this?”

“I think so.”

“You think?”

“Yes. Yes, I can do this.”

Cavenaugh clapped him on the shoulder. “Give Jess the rifle.”

Gabriel held out the weapon for Jess, who set the canister of kerosene and the lantern on the ground, and took it from him. She turned and faced the length of tunnel they had already traversed. The barrel visibly shook in her grasp.

Cavenaugh transferred his rifle to his left hand and hoisted the red container in his right.

“Everyone know what they’re supposed to do?” Cavenaugh asked. Gabriel and Jess whispered that they did. “Then on my mark… Now.”

Jess fired indiscriminately down the tunnel, sweeping the semi-automatic from side to side. Bullets ricocheted from the ground, walls, and ceiling with a showcase of golden sparks.

Under the deafening ruckus of suppressive fire, Cavenaugh hurled the canister through the mouth of the bottleneck into the eager shadows, readied the rifle, and began to shoot.

Gabriel heard the faint metal chorus of bullets striking the container, steadied the flare gun, and pulled the trigger.

The shriek of the streaking fireball was barely audible over the echoing gunfire as the thin corridor between the fallen rocks turned orange.

There was a flash of light, and then flames everywhere. A black cloud of smoke billowed into the passage.

Cavenaugh charged forward into the smoke, the discharge from his rifle like a strobe in fog.

Gabriel tugged Jess by the hood of her jacket, and she started to walk in reverse, following him into the corridor. Once inside, she stopped firing as she had been instructed, saving what few bullets remained until she could see their assailant coming.

There was a scream from ahead through the smoke.

Gabriel coughed. His lungs hurt and his eyes felt as though they were on fire. The tears made it so even the little he could see ahead was refracted through the saline. Cavenaugh was a vague blur, his form silhouetted by fire. A puddle of burning kerosene advanced along the ground from the shredded tank, which now looked more like a sea urchin.

The shrill screaming grew louder with each step.

Gabriel stepped out of the passage into a confusion of smoke and fire. Liquid flames poured down the cavern walls and dripped from the ceiling. The smoke swirled with nowhere to go.

The tortured cries pierced his right ear and Gabriel turned to see Cavenaugh charging toward a creature of fire. A mane of flames rose from the figure’s head and all of its clothes burned amber. Fingers of fire crawled over its blackened face. Its wide eyes and teeth were a sharp contrast of white, the cries a contortion of pain and rage.

Cavenaugh strode directly toward it, shoved it back against the stone wall, and pressed the barrel of the rifle to its forehead.

The figure seemed not to even notice as it slapped its hands across its face and chest in an effort to smother the flames.

“Look at me!” Cavenaugh shouted. “You killed my little sister. Why? For the love of God, tell me why, or so help me, I’ll let you stand there and burn to death. Tell me and I can make the pain stop.”

A pair of milky eyes rolled upward to meet his.

Cavenaugh gasped and took an involuntary step away. He shook his head in disbelief.

Gabriel saw the flash of the knife in the flaming hand a heartbeat before the figure thrust it into Cavenaugh’s abdomen.

***

Cavenaugh fell to his knees. He held his attacker’s wrist in a firm grasp, and dragged the figure down in front of him, their faces a breath apart. Gabriel heard Cavenaugh whisper a single word.

“Jenny.”

Gabriel dashed to where Cavenaugh had dropped the rifle and leveled the barrel at the scorched face. All of its hair had burned back to its skull and the cracked skin wept blood and pustulates. The clothes still crackled, but the flames had diminished. The figure’s black features tightened and there was a sucking sound as it jerked back the knife and stabbed Cavenaugh again.

“Let go of the knife!” Gabriel shouted. The rifle trembled so badly the barrel tapped against the thing’s temple. “Do it now or I shoot!”

The eyes rose and looked at Gabriel.

Shamrock green eyes.

Suddenly he understood.

“Why are you doing this?” Cavenaugh asked. His voice faltered and a rivulet of blood drained from the corner of his mouth. His brow crinkled and his eyes narrowed as though trying to read the answer in her face. “I’ve been looking for you for so long….and now I…. What have I done?”

Cavenaugh’s shoulders shuddered and tears streamed from his eyes. Despite the blade embedded in his gut, he wrapped his arms around his sister’s shoulders and drew her into his embrace.

Jenny’s screams turned to sobs as she buried her face in the crook of his neck.

“Please forgive me,” she whispered. Her voice was garbled by the pain and her closing windpipe.

Gabriel didn’t know what to do. A moment prior he had been prepared to blow a hole through the side of her head, and now…. If Jenny was still alive, was it possible that…?

“No one can ever know,” Jenny whispered. “None of us can ever leave here.”

She withdrew the knife and stabbed her brother again.

“Anything can be forgiven,” Cavenaugh whispered. “You…you were the one who told me…God forgives everyone.”

“That’s the problem.” She started to cry harder. “There can be no forgiveness. There can be no more—”

Gabriel stepped forward and pressed the barrel against her head behind her ear.

“—hope.”

He stared down at Cavenaugh, whose jacket had already begun to burn. Tears streaked through the soot on his cheeks and blood trickled from his mouth and down his chin. The expression on his face reflected a level of pain the likes of which Gabriel had never seen before. Cavenaugh turned his attention back to his sister and stroked her cheek softly.

“I love you,” he whispered, then turned and gave Gabriel a single nod.

Gabriel squeezed the trigger.

***

The report echoed through the cavern, and beneath it Cavenaugh’s gut-wrenching cry. Gabriel could only stare at the body lying on the ground beside Cavenaugh. The entire upper half of Jenny’s head was gone, replaced by a sloppy mess of tattered skin, bone fragments, and gray matter, from which blood poured into an ever-expanding pool. Flames spread from her shoulder over the side of her face, where they took root and began to consume her.

As Cavenaugh watched, his features twitched and twisted while he ran the gamut of emotions. His hands worked at the hilt of the knife until they were finally able to pull it free. He wavered in place before finally toppling onto his side. He reached for his sister’s hand, and closed it within his.

Gabriel grabbed Cavenaugh’s other hand and tried to drag him away from the fire, but the stronger man jerked it away.

“Get up!” Gabriel yelled. He looked to Jess for help, but she just stood there, paralyzed by shock.

A shadow separated from the smoke and flames behind her.

“Jenny!” it shouted. The figure shoved Jess out of the way and threw itself to the ground beside the smoldering corpse. It tried to lift her head, but only succeeded in dumping the remaining contents onto the ground. With a pitiful moan, it whirled to face Gabriel. The firelight exposed a face masked by a scraggly beard and wild hair. The man’s eyes narrowed to slits and he bared his teeth.

Gabriel stumbled backwards and aligned the barrel of the rifle with the man, whom he recognized with a start.

Levi Northcutt. Kelsey’s son.

He had slit his own father’s throat.

“Stay right where you are!” Gabriel yelled. His mind was reeling. Levi and Jenny had been alive all this time. Was it possible that his sister was somewhere nearby in the darkness? But there had been so many bones…and her cross was hanging from the wall over the pallet where the carcasses were butchered. What could possibly have transpired that would have led Levi and Jenny to kill all of their friends, and then the family members who had come to search for them? What could have happened that would have forced Levi to kill his own father and Jenny to repeatedly stab her brother?

No one can know, Jenny’s voice repeated in his head. None of us can ever leave here.

What did they find in this cavern?

There can be no forgiveness. There can be no more hope.

“You don’t know what you’re doing,” Levi said. He rolled to a crouch and tensed in preparation of launching himself at Gabriel. “You don’t understand. No one can find out about this place. Ever.”

Gabriel didn’t want to ask the words that came out of his mouth next, but he had to know. He needed to hear it.

“Did you kill my sister? Did you kill Stephanie?”

The expression of anger on Levi’s face never faltered.

“She would have told.”

Gabriel felt his heart break, and in that instant he wanted nothing more than to shoot Levi in the face. Not just shoot him, but destroy him, obliterate every last inch of him.

“For God spared not the angels that sinned, but cast them down to hell, and delivered them into chains of darkness, to be reserved unto judgment,” Levi said.

Jess drew close to Gabriel and stood at his side. She raised her rifle and pointed it at Levi.

“Do you think we wanted this burden?” Levi asked. “Without faith there can be no God, and without God there can be no hope. What would happen if you stole the hopes of millions, the hope for the entire world?” He pulled a long, serrated hunting knife from his jacket pocket. “There would be no reason to exist.”

“Don’t move!” Gabriel shouted.

“If you kill me, the responsibility falls to you.”

Levi adjusted his grip on the hilt of the knife. The blade pointed downward from his closed fist.

“Don’t,” Jess said. Her voice quivered.

“Once you’ve looked upon the face of God, there’s nothing left to live for but the perpetuation of the lie. The lie upon which all of our lives are built. Everything’s a lie! The bible?” He scoffed. “That’s what led us here. To the fallen angels. They were right where it said they’d be.”

“You’re insane,” Gabriel said. Something had broken inside Levi’s mind, splintered into incoherent pieces. There were no angels and this had nothing to do with God. This man had killed his sister and her friends. His own father, for Christ’s sake!

“Drop the knife,” Gabriel said.

“I can’t let you leave here. No one can ever learn the truth.”

Levi sprung from his haunches like a panther. Gabriel saw a flash of reflected fire from the blade of the knife, the crazed look on the younger man’s face. Wide eyes. Screaming. Gabriel pulled the trigger at the same moment Levi slammed into him. The rifle clattered from his grasp and Levi’s weight drove him to the ground. His head slammed against the rock floor. He barely had time to throw his hands up to ward off the coming attack.

Another flash from the knife and Levi raised it high over his shoulder.

Gabriel grabbed for it, but it was well outside his reach.

A small shape leapt from the pile of rocks and landed on Levi’s back. He whirled in surprise and a flurry of claws tore into his cheek. Hissing and slashing, Oscar turned the entire right side of Levi’s face to a sheet of blood before he was able to grab the tabby by the scruff of the neck and hurl it against the wall.

By the time Levi turned back to Gabriel, Jess had brought the barrel of her rifle to bear on his forehead.

There was no look of fear on Levi’s face. Only resignation. Or perhaps relief.

One second Levi’s head was there, the next it was gone, and Gabriel was wiping warm fluid from his eyes. The body wobbled and then fell down onto him.

Gabriel tried to scream, but his mouth was full of Levi’s blood.

He scurried out from under the corpse and looked up at Jess, who stood frozen in place, a twirl of smoke rising from the barrel of the rifle, her face pale.

The weapon fell from her hands.

***

Cavenaugh burned where he had fallen. There was nothing left of his clothing but ash and charcoal, and his skin had already blackened and cracked. He still held his sister’s rigid, clawed hand within his own.

Gabriel had to look away. The beauty was painful to behold.

Jess took his hand. He had never been so grateful for such a simple gesture in his life. So many years of constant torture and longing and hoping, and now it was over.

Now he would have to truly mourn the loss of his sister. No more deluding himself, no more hoping for a miracle. He faced the daunting task of collecting her remains and committing her to the earth in the Christian fashion she would have wanted.

There was so much death. All around him. So much loss. And for what?

Oscar limped away from the cavern wall. His right rear leg was broken in such a horrible way that it pointed straight behind him like a second tail.

Gabriel crouched and held out his hand, which only startled Oscar, and sent him hopping deeper into the cavern.

“Damn it,” Gabriel said.

He released Jess’s hand, walked into the smoldering fire, and found where they had abandoned the lantern. When he turned, he could read the expression on Jess’s face, but he couldn’t forsake the cat now. Oscar was the only part of his sister left in this world. The tabby had saved him. It was only right that he return the favor.

Raising the lantern, he staggered away from the smoke and flames, the scent of burning flesh, and pressed further into the mountain.

***

Gabriel felt dead inside. The sense of loss he now experienced, the horror over so much death, was sending him into a state of shock. He could only focus on finding the cat. Once he had done so, he knew he would fall apart.

His legs moved of their own volition, leading him into the rapidly cooling depths of the earth. The air was still and dusty, as though even the breeze feared to violate the darkness. After several minutes, or it could have been hours, of stumbling on numb legs, he found himself before another collapsed section of the tunnel. There was only a small black gap between the rocks and the ceiling through which to crawl. Considering he hadn’t encountered the cat, that left only one option.

He turned at the sound of footsteps to find Jess staring at him with the same distant expression he was sure he must have worn. Without a word, he started climbing the haphazard pile of stones. He held the lantern out before him and slithered through the gap.

I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north.

His mind failed to rationalize the scene before him as he descended the other side. The flickering lamplight played off a rounded chamber, only rather than highlighting the imperfections on a granite surface, it died on smooth walls thick with a layer of dust. Cobwebs were strung from the ceiling and walls as though some great spider had filled the room with an intricate network of webs. The dust in the air hung like a mist. Suddenly Gabriel felt as though he couldn’t breathe.

Thou hast walked up and down in the midst of the stones of fire.

He raised his other arm and brushed away the cobwebs, which clung to his skin and jacket.

“What is this place?” Jess whispered from behind him. She reached to her left and ran her hand along a straight edge that resembled the side of a doorway. Her hand came away gray with dust, but the surface she had just cleared shone like stainless steel.

Thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit.

Gabriel turned back to the room before him and held up the lantern. The walls weren’t as smooth as he had initially thought. He walked all the way across the chamber and brushed off another section of the wall to reveal an instrument panel with a flat-screen display, beneath which was a series of buttons resembling a keyboard.

His heart was pounding so hard he could hear his pulse.

He was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

Gabriel headed left, the ground beneath him making a sound like buckling metal under his weight. The lamp highlighted several large mounds of dust-covered debris in the middle of the room. As he approached, the lantern drew contrast on the shapes. It looked like a cluster of high-backed chairs with headrests and—

There was a crackling noise ahead of him and a soft meow.

Gabriel followed the sound around the first seat and glanced down at it. There was Oscar, curled up not on the chair, but on a pair of spindly, desiccated legs. The cat looked up at him, the reflections from his eyes twin golden halos.

Jess drew a sharp inhalation.

Gabriel followed the legs to a collapsed abdomen. The hip bones poked through the mummified gray flesh. A five-point harness crossed a bare chest, thick with dust. The parchment skin peeled away from the buckle to reveal the thin manila bones of a ribcage.

For God spared not the angels that sinned…

He reached across the harness with a trembling hand and tipped the head up by the chin.

“Oh my God,” Jess whispered.

Gabriel couldn’t find any words for the face upon which he now stared.

…but cast them down to hell…

The orbital sockets were far too large, ovular rather than circular, and set too low on the face, to creating an abnormally long and broad forehead. The eyes themselves were absent and the skin had peeled away from the deep black pits. A triangular ridge of bone between them formed a nose far too small for the face. And beneath was a thin mouth. The lips had shriveled and retracted from the bared teeth, which were small like kernels of corn to fit the tiny mouth. There was only a bump of bone at the base of the weak chin.

…and delivered them into chains of darkness…

He wanted to jerk his hand back, but he couldn’t tear his gaze from the face.

The bible had led his sister and her friends to the location where the angels that had been cast out of heaven struck the earth.

…to be reserved unto judgment.

Where they were bound for all eternity, not in chains of darkness, but in their harnesses.

He understood now the secret that had been important enough to kill to protect.

No one can know, Jenny had said. None of us can ever leave here.

Their entire existence was built upon the perpetuation of a lie.

There can be no forgiveness. There can be no more hope.

These weren’t just the fallen angels of Christian lore, the defeated faction from the insurgence in heaven, that his sister and her friends had found high on the northern slope of the mountain after following the stones of fire into the very mouth of hell.

The face into which he now stared was not that of a mystical angel, but that of a being from another world entirely. A being whose existence had provided the foundation for the greatest lie ever told, a lie upon which countless lives depended.

“It doesn’t even look human,” Jess whispered. “What do you think it is?”

“An angel.”

“If this is an angel, then…”

Her voice faded to nothingness.

Gabriel turned away from the remains, looked into her eyes, and finished her thought for her.

“Then what the hell is God?”

Epilogue

Jess held Gabriel’s hand as together they stood before the crimson spring, looking up toward the mountain peak where the cross had been erected to memorialize their vanished siblings. They had just mounted another placard beneath the first to commemorate the more recent lives that had been lost in the search for their missing family members. The warm June sun shined down on them in slanted rays through the wavering branches of the ponderosa pines. Only spotted patches of snow remained beneath the densest thickets. Otherwise, the ground was dry, the kindling and leaves crackling as they rustled on the slight breeze. Soon enough, the rains would come, heralding winter’s inevitable return. This was their window of opportunity.

The Search & Rescue copper had airlifted them down from the mountain the following day as soon as the storm had broken. Jess and Gabriel had joined the police, FBI, and countless volunteers over the ensuing week in a futile search for Maura Aragon, Brent Cavenaugh, Will Farnham, and Kelsey Northcutt. None of their bodies were ever found and they were eventually written off as victims of the cruel mountain and the wicked storm. It happens in the Rocky Mountains every year, the authorities had said. Eventually, their remains would be found.

Gabriel was certain they never would.

They had rolled a number of stones into the hole above the spring where Oscar had entered, sealed it with gravel and dirt, and wedged the largest stone they could lift over the top. That had been two days ago. Ever since, they had done nothing but roll boulder after boulder into the spring to block off the underwater tunnel. The red water now overflowed the granite banks and cut twin streams to either side down the slope.

No one would ever again set foot inside that mountain. No one would ever learn the secret that had cost so many lives. The lies would pass through countless more generations, but hope would persevere as a corollary of the deception.

Levi had been wrong.

Stephanie would never have told. To her, hope and faith were synonymous.

And to honor her memory, he would now protect the faith of millions.

“Are you ready?” Jess asked.

Gabriel nodded, and squeezed her hand.

They turned away from the distant silhouette of the cross and the amassed rocks that now clogged the spring, and began their descent of Mount Isolation for the final time.

***

Gabriel sat on the couch with his laptop on the coffee table in front of him. Beyond that small screen was the much larger television, which Jess watched from the kitchen behind him while she doled out the Mongolian beef and Szechuan chicken onto plates from the take-out containers. He heard the clatter of plates on the eating bar and smelled the divine mixture of aromas. Oscar had taken notice as well. Despite his useless rear leg, he managed to leap out of Gabriel’s lap and scamper around the couch to entangle himself in Jess’s feet.

“Ready to take a break for dinner?” she asked, massaging Gabriel’s shoulders to make sure she had his attention. Oscar meowed and pawed at her legs until she picked him up.

“Yeah. I just need a couple more minutes…”

His voice trailed off.

The rerun of Seinfeld had been interrupted by another news flash showing aerial coverage of the fire in Rocky Mountain National Park, which had now been burning for more than seventy-two hours. They speculated it may have been caused by a lightning strike, or perhaps a carelessly discarded cigarette butt. Either way, it made Gabriel nervous. Thirty-five hundred acres had already been consumed. The remote location and steep slopes, coupled with the gusting winds, made the fire nearly impossible to contain. Pine Springs had been evacuated the day before and the highway closed to all but emergency personnel. Pockets of fire burned from the scorched earth while a halo of towering flames advanced outward in all directions. The image zoomed out to encompass the greatest extent of the damage. The sharp topography of the mountains looked like the landscape of another planet entirely. Rugged peaks and chiseled valleys aligned in such a way that they almost looked like a—

“Jesus,” Gabriel whispered.

He leaned forward, grabbed the remote from the table, and paused the picture on the screen with the aid of the DVR. Carefully, he saved the paper he had been preparing on the unclassified species of salt-loving microorganism he had been writing for publication in the Journal of Bacteriology of the American Society for Microbiology entitled “On a New Species of Haloarchaea: H. stephanii,” and typed in a quick internet search. He breezed through the sites until he found what he was looking for, and enlarged the image to fill the small screen. It was an image of the surface of the Cydonia region of Mars as captured by Michael Malin’s Mars Orbiter Camera in 2001, the infamous “Face on Mars.”

Gabriel glanced from the monitor to the frozen picture on the TV, then back again. Over and over.

It was the same face, the same seemingly natural alignment of peaks and valleys on planets separated by hundreds of thousands of miles.

The same gaunt, desiccated face into which he had stared in a cobweb-riddled cockpit in the heart of Mount Isolation.

The true visage of God.

About the Authors

Jeff Strand and Michael McBride have written over thirty books, though not together. Their novels include PRESSURE (Jeff), BLOODLETTING (Mike), DWELLER (Jeff), THE INFECTED (Mike), WOLF HUNT (Jeff), GOD’S END (Mike), BENJAMIN’S PARASITE (Jeff), and INNOCENTS LOST (Mike).

Mike likes to write about science and the end of the world, and does a lot of research. Jeff likes to write about psycho killers and flesh-eating monsters, and does significantly less research. Jeff thinks Mike should really be taking better advantage of Facebook as a promotional tool, but the fact that Mike doesn’t waste time on Facebook might help explain why he writes his books at a steady, consistent pace while Jeff freaks out right before the deadline.

You can visit Mike’s website at http://www.MichaelMcBride.net and Jeff’s website at http://www.JeffStrand.com. You should visit both.

Dark Regions Press has been publishing since 1985 and is an award winning press. We specialize in Horror, Fantasy, and Science Fiction. However our favorite niche is Horror. We have published such renowned writers as Bentley Little, Kevin J. Anderson, Michael Arnzen, Elizabeth Massie, Jeffrey Thomas and many others. Dark Regions Press has had many Bram Stoker Award nominations and four award-winning short story and poetry collections.

Visit our website for more exciting books.

Table of Contents

- Epilogue
- Kutter
- Remains
- About the Authors