Page 107
Story: When the Dark Wins
The girl outside groaned then screamed in climax, for the third time. I blinked away the monster. Mechanically, I touched the photos, the knife, the capsules, then I mouthed the words. I only read a few of them nowadays, and it was enough.
“It was a bright day in Cuba when I first saw Wolfe and I first saw Red...”
This was my shrine to the day Isak Bain went bad but stayed a little good.
The girl was sobbing and I matched the rhythm of my words to her sounds.
When I finished and stood, she lay curled on the stone. Vitor was taking down the ropes. Her breathing was still rapid, she was mottled and striped with red, but she was fine. I clicked my tongue.
“Vitor, take her downstairs. She’ll get sunburned there.”
Chapter 2
I flew in, went through customs, and hired a local taxi within an hour of landing. With my innocuous luggage in the trunk, I was on my way to where he lived. I knew his name, couldn’t think it without fearing retribution. I couldn’t think it without feeling ill.
As we drove down from the hills surrounding the town, it unfolded like some perfect, pop-up children’s book. Small and peaceful, on the surface. The vast and sparkling blueness of the sea overwhelmed me more than the cuteness of the houses.
If this was the last thing I saw before I died, at least it was pretty. Such dark musings.
A dull gnawing in my stomach reminded me of the stupidity of my plans.
I pressed the back of my hand to my mouth, smearing lipstick. I rubbed off the marks on my skin with a tissue until all of it was gone. Cleanliness was close to innocence.
Could you become innocent after being dragged through the dirt? Not that he’d done much to me physically – it was having someone inside my head that bothered me. It’d left a stain, a dirty, stinking, life-wrecking stain.
Most of this trip was arranged and planned. Being downgraded to an analyst hadn’t deprived me of the ability to get things done. I’d manipulated the system and would get fired and arrested if I returned. When.
Who gave a fuck? Except it limited my free time here. The agency would catch up with me soon.
Years of agonizin
g lay in my wake.
I had the names of illegal gun dealers but hadn’t been able to arrange a weapon, and I couldn’t kill him up close.
Those years...
No lovers. No orgasms. No intimacy. Crying myself to sleep because I could tell no one what had caused my so-called breakdown in Cuba.
That first time I encountered a mesmer in the US...
Luckily, he’d died before he could do anything except brush across my mind, adding another microscopic layer of grime to what the other man had left. I took it as a warning and hired protection for when I wasn’t at work – briefed my bodyguard on possible actions if I did anything odd. I took other precautions, as a suspicious, over-paranoid agent might do.
Then...nothing.
No one came near me and no one obstructed my search for him. A fingerprint on my handbag was my treasured clue and I’d used it to find him – Isak Bain.
After three years of looking, the database had coughed up a match. A routine police investigation in a South American country, to rule out the innocent, had been picked up by NSA scans. His print was one of those tested and discarded, because he was innocent. As if he could ever be.
The taxi thumped over potholes, rattling my luggage.
I inhaled and let my hands rest in my lap. All I had to do was get a long gun, stay distant, and kill him before he realized I was here. The CIA had taught me to shoot and I’d enhanced my combat skills over the three years since, anticipating this day.
If he closed in, if I was brought within range of his freaky mind control, I would fail.
The longer I took, the more likely he or the CIA would find me. I’d been bad.
I stepped out of the cab into the shadow of a roof outside Reception. My apartment in this up-and-down, dilapidated little resort was elevated and on the fourth floor.
Table of Contents
- Page 1
- Page 2
- Page 3
- Page 4
- Page 5
- Page 6
- Page 7
- Page 8
- Page 9
- Page 10
- Page 11
- Page 12
- Page 13
- Page 14
- Page 15
- Page 16
- Page 17
- Page 18
- Page 19
- Page 20
- Page 21
- Page 22
- Page 23
- Page 24
- Page 25
- Page 26
- Page 27
- Page 28
- Page 29
- Page 30
- Page 31
- Page 32
- Page 33
- Page 34
- Page 35
- Page 36
- Page 37
- Page 38
- Page 39
- Page 40
- Page 41
- Page 42
- Page 43
- Page 44
- Page 45
- Page 46
- Page 47
- Page 48
- Page 49
- Page 50
- Page 51
- Page 52
- Page 53
- Page 54
- Page 55
- Page 56
- Page 57
- Page 58
- Page 59
- Page 60
- Page 61
- Page 62
- Page 63
- Page 64
- Page 65
- Page 66
- Page 67
- Page 68
- Page 69
- Page 70
- Page 71
- Page 72
- Page 73
- Page 74
- Page 75
- Page 76
- Page 77
- Page 78
- Page 79
- Page 80
- Page 81
- Page 82
- Page 83
- Page 84
- Page 85
- Page 86
- Page 87
- Page 88
- Page 89
- Page 90
- Page 91
- Page 92
- Page 93
- Page 94
- Page 95
- Page 96
- Page 97
- Page 98
- Page 99
- Page 100
- Page 101
- Page 102
- Page 103
- Page 104
- Page 105
- Page 106
- Page 107 (Reading here)
- Page 108
- Page 109
- Page 110
- Page 111
- Page 112
- Page 113
- Page 114
- Page 115
- Page 116
- Page 117
- Page 118
- Page 119
- Page 120
- Page 121
- Page 122
- Page 123
- Page 124
- Page 125
- Page 126
- Page 127
- Page 128
- Page 129
- Page 130
- Page 131
- Page 132
- Page 133
- Page 134
- Page 135
- Page 136
- Page 137
- Page 138
- Page 139
- Page 140
- Page 141
- Page 142
- Page 143
- Page 144
- Page 145
- Page 146
- Page 147
- Page 148
- Page 149
- Page 150
- Page 151
- Page 152
- Page 153
- Page 154
- Page 155
- Page 156
- Page 157
- Page 158
- Page 159
- Page 160
- Page 161
- Page 162
- Page 163
- Page 164
- Page 165
- Page 166
- Page 167
- Page 168
- Page 169
- Page 170
- Page 171
- Page 172
- Page 173
- Page 174
- Page 175
- Page 176
- Page 177
- Page 178
- Page 179
- Page 180
- Page 181
- Page 182
- Page 183
- Page 184
- Page 185
- Page 186
- Page 187
- Page 188
- Page 189
- Page 190
- Page 191
- Page 192
- Page 193
- Page 194
- Page 195
- Page 196
- Page 197
- Page 198
- Page 199
- Page 200
- Page 201
- Page 202
- Page 203
- Page 204
- Page 205
- Page 206
- Page 207