Chain of Vengeance: Chapter Ten - Part Eight

There was an unmarked car with a police radio parked outside Molly’s house when she jogged up.

Ruben opened the front door as she reached it. He chuckled. “Just in time to go to prison.”

Molly pushed past him. “Where are they Ruben?”

“In the lounge, talking to mother,” he said. “They’re waiting for you.”

She crossed the hall and made her way through. Her heart was whacking against her ribcage, her face flushed. She clenched and unclenched her fists. When she reached the lounge door she smashed it open, cracking it against the wall.

Her mother and the two visitors jerked, startled. Jennifer  was sitting to the right on an armchair, still in her dressing gown, a cigarette in her fingers down between her knees. A man and woman dressed in navy blue suits sat opposite on the sofa. The man was relaxed, leaning back into the leather cushions. The woman sat more curtly, knees together, hands resting on her lap.

“Here she is,” said Jennifer.

Molly left the door open behind her. She shrugged. “What can I do for you?”

The woman spoke. Her voice was brittle and cracked even though she was still young. “We’re here to ask you some questions if that is all right Ms Butler.” Molly shrugged again. “I have to tell you that it is within your rights to have a lawyer present during questioning. Would you like to exercise that right?”

Molly shook her head. “No.”

“Are you sure Molly?” said Jennifer.

Molly stared at her. “You think I’m capable of doing it, don’t you?” she said.

Jennifer lowered her head. “Of course I don’t. I just think it would be wise.”

“I’ll tell you what would be wise mom! If you left the room and minded your own business. Okay?” Jennifer gaped at her. “I don’t want you here.”

The light dimmed in her mother’s eyes. “All right. If that’s what you’d prefer. I understand.” Jennifer stood up and walked past Molly to the door. As she came level, Molly reached out and grabbed her wrist. Jennifer looked at her but Molly didn’t make eye contact. Then she said, “I’m sorry mom. You can stay if you want to.”

“No thanks,” replied Jennifer. There were tears in her eyes. She tried to pull away. Molly tightened her grip but Jennifer pulled harder, breaking free.

“Mom…”

Jennifer closed the door behind her. Molly made to go after her but she couldn’t with the cops there. She stared at the back of the door for a few moments and sighed. Why did she keep pushing people away?

“Ms Butler?”

“Yeah. Sorry.” She sat in her mother’s chair, ears burning. She knew she was acting the spoiled daughter, reinforcing any stereotypes these people brought with them.

“We’ve examined your father’s car,” said the man, “and your car too.”

Here it came.

“The evidence points to the fact that your father’s car was run off the road. His death wasn’t an accident.”

Molly pinched the skin at the bridge of her nose.

“We’ve established that it was your car that sideswiped his.”

“Look—” said Molly, raising her hand, “I didn’t kill him, alright? I don’t care what you say. The damage to my car didn’t – I wasn’t even driving it at the time. It happened when I was parked.”

The policeman looked at his partner. The woman said, “We know you didn’t kill your father Ms Butler. We’ve already confirmed your alibi for the night in question.”

Molly gaped. “Then why are you here?”

“We know you didn’t run your father off the road but we also know that it was your car that did it,” said the man. “We need to know who else could have had access to the vehicle on the night he died.”

“What? Are you serious?” Her mind was racing.

There was only one person it could have been. Ruben and her mother had been with her. She whispered his name. “Gaston.”

He had borrowed her car that night. She remembered now.

It made sense in some horrific way: the story he told her in the park before he left about the father whose daughter had hated him and been killed for it. Gaston had been talking about her! Surely he wouldn’t have murdered her father because he thought she wanted him to! It couldn’t be possible.

But she knew that it was.

And it wasn’t as simple as that. There had to be a lot more. The Gaston she knew was no killer. He was a writer. He researched murders, he didn’t perpetrate them.

But if he did, then how many others had he committed? What was he capable of now?

Worst of all; he was with Jack. And Jack had no idea how much danger he was in!

Chain of Vengeance: Chapter Ten - Part Seven

SAN FRANCISCO

“To be perfectly frank Molly, when you came in here yesterday I was sceptical.... more than a little.”

Howie climbed in behind his desk, forcing his girth into the gap with effort. There were papers everywhere but Molly knew there was an intricate system at work as well as on the half dozen extra-large pin-boards that filled the walls. It only seemed like disarray. Same with his personality; the way he did business. She wondered if it wasn’t all part of the act.

He was still having trouble fitting into the narrow space behind his desk. He made a little grin in apology as he finally got settled. “Sorry about that,” he said.

“Don’t worry about it.” Molly took a half seat on the edge of his desk. She’d been jogging along the sea front and was still dressed in shorts and a hooded tracksuit, the sleeves rolled up to her elbows.

“As I was saying,” he said. “I’ll tell you the truth. I was kind of humouring you when you came in with all those paintings before.”

Molly widened her eyes. She folded her arms.

“I thought they were good; don’t misinterpret me there, I wasn’t lying about that, but you know me; at least you should by now. It’s been nine years since we sat together in Economics class. I don’t always play it one hundred percent straight.”

“Like the time you sold Cocaine to half the eighth grade and forgot to tell them it was one hundred percent top grade flour.”

“Til the cops busted me, yeah.”

They both cracked up laughing. “So you saw Jack Catholic’s paintings that I brought in to show you and you decided to scam me,” said Molly.

“Hey, not at all! All I’m saying is that an art gallery is a business and I run that business. I love you Molly, you know that, but friendship is one thing and chucking out a great reputation as a dealer is another.”

Molly frowned, kicking her heels on the desk. She gathered her hands in her lap and became focused on them, blocking out the feeling of sadness and disappointment.

“Don’t get sulky on me Moll,” said Howie, struggling up out of his chair again. “This is a good news day, not bad. When do I ever give you bad news?”

Weak grin. “When you were the one to tell me I flunked Economics.”

“That’s what happens when you spend every class talking with your amusing yet still dashingly handsome seat mate.” He came round the desk to her side and took her hand, drawing the fidgeting fingers away from one another. “Come on beautiful.”

He led her to the door of the office and out to where his receptionist, Zita, was leaning back in her chair, reading what looked like Plato. The reception led out onto the street through wooden doors set into a two-storey glass wall. The glass was made up of large squares that must have weighed a tonne. Molly had always admired at a symbolic level the way the office space split off so perfectly from the gallery itself. It was kind of like work and real life; with the receptionist between to effect the crossover.

“Get busy,” grumbled Howie as he passed the reception desk with its curved shield-like front. Zita crossed her eyes and stuck her tongue out at him behind his back. Molly smiled.

“I saw that,” he said.

“You did not,” she wailed.

Howie held the door into the gallery open for Molly. “I keep firing her but every time she begs on her hands and knees that she’ll work only in return for sexual favours from me, so I take her back.”

“Dream the dream big boy!” shouted Zita as the door closed behind them.

Howie and Molly were laughing again.

This was the gallery itself now. Molly had been there to help him convert it when all it had been was an empty warehouse. When the builders hadn’t worked fast enough, the two of them had stayed up into the VERY early hours operating sanding machines and painting walls with enough tequila inside them to strip the paint right off again. Now, it was the height of taste and style, even if she’d had to offer Howie the occasional guiding hand in that department.

The ceilings had been lowered since the old times but they were still towering, the space was broken up by hanging walls that didn’t quite touch the floor. Everywhere there was art or what amounted to it. Molly loved Jack’s work but a lot of the rest she could take or leave. Only pieces where the artist’s souls wavered in the canvas caught her eye. Portrait, abstract or even still life could reach out to her but so many paintings were simple colour and texture. It was rare for her to find the clarification of expression that made one perfect. That was why she loved Jack’s work. It was exactly what did it for her.

“When I took your paintings on, my gut told me to just stick them in the back room for a few weeks, then return them saying I’d tried them out on a couple of people and the responses weren’t good. I really did like them, I just wasn’t sure if they were saleable. Now, before you look at me like that; anybody else I liked enough to take them on, I would have done exactly that – made up some story and kept them locked away – for you it was different. I wasn’t about to slap them straight into the prime spot in my gallery, but I did show them to a couple of people. I knew I couldn’t lie to you about that.”

“Did you get any interest?”

“Oh yeah. I sold one. I God damned sold one!”

Molly leapt on him, throwing her arms around his big neck. “That’s wonderful Howie! Oh my God, that’s great!”

“I thought that would be it,” he said, “but it wasn’t. I got a call last night just before I knocked off. Flora Lloyd. You heard of her?”

Molly shook her head.

“Rich chick. Fifty/sixty years old. I don’t know. All tentative like. She wasn’t jumping up and down about it. But she asks if she can come in and see some of Catholic’s stuff. She’d heard about it from a friend.” Howie turned and stopped her with his hands on her shoulders. “Now this is what I wanted to show you when I asked you to come down.”

He guided her round to her right.

There were two men and a woman working on a new display, ladders in place, tools lying about. There were barriers up to tell the public that the area was off-limits because a new exhibit was being set up.

“I don’t know how it’ll go,” said Howie. “People aren’t breaking down the door. Yet. But I think there’s just the smallest chance that they will be. If I can maybe build on all the ruckus in the papers lately as well, I think Jack Catholic could be one of the newest names in art. There’s a chance he could be big.”

Molly kissed Howie on the cheek over and over then smacked him one on the lips. “I love you Howie. This is fantastic!”

“Get off me Moll! You’re giving me a woody!”

Molly laughed, just ecstatically happy as she came away and looked again at the display that was going to be erected. It was going to make Jack so pleased. This was all he had ever wanted from his life.

“Ms Butler?”

She glanced to her right to see who had spoken.

There were two men who looked as though they’d only just come in. She didn’t recognise them. One was dressed in a shirt and tie, sleeves rolled up, the other in a T-shirt. The T-shirt one was carrying something in his hands. A box. She didn’t recognise it straight away. He lifted it up and she blinked as the flash took her off guard. A camera!

“We’d like to ask you a few questions Ms Butler,” said the one in the shirt. She was trying to place his face: good looks that were pressed into shrew-like interrogation. “The police have been examining your father’s car that was salvaged from the ocean from where it ran off the cliff-side road.”

Another flash and she blinked again as she staggered back from it. Howie was being rude to them but she didn’t hear his exact words.

The one in the shirt pushed through. “Are you aware of the fact that your father’s car may have been run off the road; that his death may not have been an accident?”

Flash from the camera in her face. She knew this reporter now: outside her father’s house when she first met Jack.

“The car was run off the road by another vehicle.”

Flash.

“Your father may have been murdered.”

Flash.

“I’ve been looking into it Ms Butler. I spoke to your brother. He claims you had a fight with your father the night he died.”

Flash.

Howie was shouting at them but they weren’t listening.

Flash.

“I’ve examined your car,” said the reporter. “It’s parked right outside your house. I’m surprised you made no attempt to conceal the damage to the front wing.”

Flash.

Howie was pushing them back by force, pressing them toward the door. The workmen were helping.

Flash.

But the reporter was shouting over the top of them.

The photographer was holding his camera up high.

“Did you kill your father Ms Butler!”

“Did you run him off the edge of a cliff in your car!”

“How does it feel to murder your own flesh and blood!”

Chain of Vengeance: Chapter Ten - Part Six

THE ALPS

Jack thought about what Gaston had said: he thought about the murders he had committed.

Gaston was a way ahead, the other half of the picnic supplies packed into the rucksack on his back. He was a lot older than Jack but very spry and sure of his footing. He moved down the steep slope swiftly but very surely. It didn’t seem to occur to him to check to see if his daughter was okay in Jack’s care and for her part, Christine seemed happy enough on Jack’s shoulders.

“Where we headed!” called Jack. Gaston raised his hand and pointed. Ahead the path disappeared into a rocky crevice.

Christine started again on her English practice, this time counting out the numbers. “One, two, three, four…”

“Five,” supplied Jack.

She giggled. “Six, seven, eight, nine, ten!” Each time she said a number she tapped one or other foot against his chest.

Jack reached the incline. The red rock was cut away by a narrow river almost hidden by the crevice. Gaston was no longer in sight. Holding onto Christine’s ankles and wary of the weight of his own pack, Jack started to follow the most logical route down. It wasn’t clear where Gaston was going but he obviously knew what was waiting down there. Because of the steepness it was slow going. Christine started wriggling, shifting Jack’s centre of balance forward and back erratically. He cast his memory to the French he learned at school. There wasn’t that much of it. “Christine! Arrêt! Give me a break!”

She giggled again but stopped wriggling thankfully.

“Merci,” he said.

At the bottom of the slope he came to a kink in the stream. The water came round a bend and then bent back on itself almost immediately. It came from a waterfall no taller than the little girl. Because of the kink the water was deeper here, still no more than waist height at the most but deeper than further down. The valley became a cliff two or three storeys high directly opposite. Further on it dropped down into a narrow channel that wound its way down the mountain gradually, cutting deep into the rock.

Gaston was sitting at the edge of the pool, his shoes and socks already off and placed neatly beside him. He was rolling up his trousers. They were loose and didn’t become too tight to stop rolling until they reached his thigh. He winked. “Will you join me?” Jack shrugged and lowered Christine to the floor. She started to blab away in French excitedly but Gaston clipped it short with a firm “Non.” He looked back at Jack. “It will be too cold for her.” Jack set his rucksack down and joined the older man at the edge of the water barefoot. “Make sure you are ready for this,” said Gaston.

“How bad can it be?” asked Jack.

Without replying Gaston walked into the water. Jack stepped in after him and waded up to his knees. It felt warm and tingly, not unpleasant at all. Then the cold hit him. It was colder than anything he had ever felt. He opened his mouth to cry out but the second wave of cold hit and the sound dried up in his throat. His arms flailed about by themselves and he almost lost his balance. When a sound finally came from his lips it was a tiny squeak. He dashed for the edge of the water, throwing up diamonds of icy splatter and struggled up onto dry land. The cold stayed with him for almost thirty seconds, rolling up and down his calves. When it eventually dropped away he realised he could hear the others making fun of him. Christine was clapping and giggling and Gaston, his arms folded was still knee deep in the icy stream, his head thrown back, bellows of laughter coming out of him.

“How bad can it be,” he said, still laughing. “Eh, Jack?”

Jack started laughing too. “You wouldn’t think it was quite so funny if I came and pushed your head under.”

“You’re welcome to try.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

Gaston came out of the stream, unconcerned. “It’s thawed snow from the very top of the mountain. The sun has melted it all down here but up there it is still winter.” He sat down on the rock beside Jack and broke out the remaining water bottle from his rucksack. “Thirsty?”

“Yeah. Please.”

“Christine? Do you want to join our guest and me for a drink?”

She squinted at him. He chuckled and repeated it in French and she nodded rigourously.

“Up in the village,” said Jack, “when we were talking about your book…”

“Mmmm?”

“You started to talk about how the murders affected the friends and relatives of the people he killed.”

“Oui.”

“If you think about the connections a person has,” said Jack, “made up of people they know; it creates a huge web, a network that spreads in every direction. If I think about all the people whose lives I’ve touched, everyone who would be affected if I were to die, it’s amazing; there are so many of them.”

“And are you so sure that the majority would care if something happened to you?”

“What do you mean?”

“People die every day. We all know someone who has passed on. The older I get, the fewer people are alive that I knew as a boy. There are almost none left at all. We get used to it. How many people do you know who would REALLY care if you died? There would be some, yes, who would be devastated. But others, the majority, would be sad for a short while and then go on with their lives. Even the ones closest to you have to go on somehow. In time, even they would forget.”

“I still think about my parents.”

“But they are out of your life now Jack,” he said. “I bet that you do not think of them as much as you could. Days and weeks go by without a memory. Am I right?”

Jack gazed into the water, his arms clasped round his knees.

“There is always mourning when someone dies, always; but is a transitory thing; it goes away. The grief they feel, in the end, is nothing.”

“Compared to the pleasure to be gained from killing, is that what you mean?”

Jack caught himself. His remark had come out a lot more forcefully than he had meant it to. Gaston was a very interesting man but his opinions were quite offbeat. Jack found himself reacting stronger than politeness allowed. For a second Gaston’s expression caved in, his eyes turning black, then the benign smile returned.

“What do you mean my friend?”

Jack told himself to keep his mouth shut, to change the subject, but when he opened it to do so the angry words just started coming and he couldn’t stop them. “You seem to have measured up their grief against the pleasure this bastard gained and decided that their feelings aren’t as important. Is that right? You really believe that? Don’t you judge him at all? It sounds like you admire him.”

“I would say so, yes.”

“What makes his feelings so damn important and his victim’s families irrelevant?”

Gaston raised his eyebrows. “I am a selfish being at heart. In many ways I am the perfect example of humanity in that account. I do put my own pleasure first. Why shouldn’t I? Every one of us on this beautiful planet are put here with a mind and the freedom to choose. I can use that freedom to do as I wish, as can you. As can the subject of my book, if he even exists as a single person. If you choose to kill for whatever reason then I would not stop you. You have as much right to take their lives as they have to defend themselves.”

“But who stands up for the people who can’t do that; who can’t defend themselves?”

Gaston thought for a moment then tilted his head. “Perhaps somebody like you Jack.”

Chain of Vengeance: Chapter Ten - Part Five

SAN FRANCISCO

It was like a monstrous exhumation.

The tarnished blue paint work was barely what could be called a colour anymore. There were cracks that weren’t cracks made by grime and wear and weed. There were dents cut into the side of the roof where the massive retraction tools had been attached.

It was on the dock, water still gushing from inside, flowing out onto the water-blackening concrete. Wet sand poured out too. It was almost as though archaeologists had ripped it from beneath the desert instead of the men from the salvage boat pulling it up from the ocean floor at the foot of the cliffs. It seemed as though no-one had seen what was inside it, not for thousands of years. It seemed as though her father’s body was still there, as though this were his coffin; but that wasn’t true. All these romantic illusions were gloss and powder over the stark fact of it.

Molly tightened her grip on her upper arms, squeezing at the chill, feeling the sadness now after all, that she’d hoped she wouldn’t.

The body had been removed already. Her father was no longer entombed within this old car of his. But he had been. The metal trap had struck the water from the top of the cliff, and if he hadn’t died right at that moment, then it had dragged him slowly down into the darkness, knowing exactly what was coming for him.

She had felt a tremendous catharsis releasing her story to Jack about her culpability in this grisly affair but any elation and reprieve was withering. The men from the salvage company moved around the car, unhitching their equipment. The chill in her body beneath the dark new denim of her short sleeved shirt was the chill at the bottom of the ocean. In this cold reality the truth she had made herself realise was coming back to her over and over again. She couldn’t work out why David Eden would have been so desperate that this car should be raised up. She felt grim resentment battering her face along with the early morning wind. She couldn’t work out why he’d want her of all the people in California to be there to see it.

Two men approached from the right dressed in suits. They weren’t cut quite clean enough to be lawyers but they weren’t far off. Molly turned back to the car as they began speaking to the chief salvage operator.

The recollection of the visions she’d been having of being trapped in the falling car herself came back to her mind: falling all that way and knowing it was coming.

She had been swimming in a pool once as a girl and jumped off the top board. It couldn’t have been more than twenty feet but with her eyes closed she had fallen and fallen and when the water had finally come up to engulf her all the air had come straight out of her lungs. She’d been trapped at the bottom of the pool, tons of water between her and the surface and the terror had overwhelmed her that she was drowning. She had swum to the surface, clawing at the water and kicking desperately but it had felt as though she would never breathe again.

She moved her hands up to her shoulders, squeezing and rubbing her arms to keep warm.

One of the two men in suits moved along the far side of the car. She couldn’t see the other. Then he appeared next to his friend, rising up from a crouch where he’d been concealed behind the chassis. She frowned at the same time he did. He turned to his partner and pointed down at something on the side of the car she couldn’t see.

The men in suits spoke again to the foreman. He pointed at Molly. She frowned again, concerned suddenly that she knew who they might be.

Chain of Vengeance: Chapter Ten - Part Four

Jack spread a thick dollop of Brie on his nugget of bread and lay back on the flat grass, gazing up into the perfect blue sky. Somewhere near his head he could hear the clop clop clop of wine pouring from the bottle into Gaston’s glass.

Lying there, he wondered if Gaston would finally make him face the truth: that no amount of rationalising could escape the fact that he was a murderer. Then he thought about Molly’s warning and about Sam. That maybe she was right and he should move on immediately... except the same sense that had told him to let Sam live told him that perhaps he should wait for the man to come for him.

Gaston’s daughter, Christine, was sitting with her legs across Jack’s feet, trying to say the English alphabet. Each time she said a letter she would pause to look to her father and whenever she made a mistake in the pronunciation he would shake his head and then correct her. It made Jack smile to hear the wrong corrections but he didn’t put them straight. He was too content and warm and weary. It was a two-hour climb from the nearest road and now they were here in the little abandoned village that Gaston had brought him to see, nothing seemed important except to relax.

Two hours walk from a quiet mountain road... longer to reach an actual inhabited village. How far to Nice, the nearest city? Fifty miles as the crow flew but about a world of difficult winding roads.

The grass they were sitting on, with their picnic spread round, was set in front of a tiny locked-up church. According to Gaston, services were held there only once a year. The tiny abandoned village might have once been inhabited by farmers or… Jack didn’t know what. The little white buildings didn’t even have a single modern contrivance: no water, no electricity, no windows. It was amazing to think. It was incredible in modern terms. He’d never felt so cut off and he liked it. Even his current life events, the abomination that had occurred in Bristol and the things that came after, were detached from this current place. They couldn’t touch him. No one on Earth knew where they were. It was attractive to imagine living there, and with his money he could buy it all of course, or somewhere like it.

“This is, as you say, the life,” said Gaston.

Jack didn’t tilt his head to look over. “Alleluia.”

A single tiny cloud made its way past the horizon into his field of vision. He watched it trundle ever so slowly across the sky.

“What’s your killer’s story then Gaston?”

“My story?”

“Yeah. Why don’t you tell me about it in episodes; you know; like chapters in a book? You can relate it bit by bit.”

Just within Jack’s line of sight, the base of Gaston’s wineglass tipped into view and then dropped down again. “Don’t you think hearing about murder and pain might ruin this beautiful day?”

“Take the risk. I’m curious. It’s why I came. I want to hear what you believe goes on in the mind of a killer.”

“And you can’t wait for my book to be published?”

“Something happened recently that makes it… important for me to learn about it now.”

“Very well,” he said, “but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Silence again from Gaston and another clop clop clop as he refilled his wineglass, then he snapped something out fast in French and Christine ran off to play.

“When my killer was born,” said Gaston, “his mother looked into his eyes and knew he was going to be a murderer. I can picture her – an extraordinarily beautiful woman with dark, curly hair, in an attic hovel in Paris – holding him up in front of her face. I don’t imagine there was proper lighting or heat. I doubt she even had a professional medical person with her. The… cord? hasn’t even been cut yet. She looks into his eyes smiling, happy to meet him at last; but a change comes over her. Perhaps she starts screaming. She has seen into his soul in that moment and she knows what he is going to become.” Gaston gave a little slurp as he took another drink. “That is why she abandoned him... or so I like to think.”

“And you know for a fact that he was abandoned?”

“Not really. My entire book is fiction based on conjecture and criminal profiling.”

He didn’t say anything else. Jack waited respectfully but when enough time had passed that he was sure Gaston wouldn’t go on he said, “Tell me more. Please.”

“His childhood was constructed out of strange material,” said Gaston. “It was made of hate.” He paused, perhaps to think and then added, “Fear also. He was taken to an orphanage in the dark area the tourists don’t travel to in Paris. The other children he grew up with were not nice. They were…” He laughed. “Let me say they were more evil than he turned out to be. He already knew how to hate by then but was given fresh lessons every day. Did you ever have trouble with bullies as a child Jack?”

“Some.”

“Because of my own feelings on the matter, I would like to say that as a man the killer went back there and hunted every one of them down, but my research does not confirm it.” He laughed again.

“You talked about his mother seeing the evil in his face when he was born,” said Jack. “Does that mean you believe a man can be predestined to kill?”
“Sorry, I do not know that word.”

“I mean: Do you think the subject of your research was born a killer, as opposed to being made into one by the things that happened to him?” 

“Ah! What came first? You want to know if being abandoned by his mother and taunted and beaten by his orphan brothers twisted him up inside. You’re jumping straight to the point Jack. If I tell you why he did it so simply there will be no more story to tell.”

Jack rolled over onto his stomach and raised himself up on his elbows. “Do you think he was angry with his mother when he was old enough to know what she had done?”

“Not at all. I expect he loves her still today as any dutiful son should. Whatever circumstances she lived in were impossible. She had no choice but to leave him behind. He would understand that.”

“Really?”

He smiled. “No. Not really. He hated her for it and he hates her now. He will always hate her.”

Jack tried to apply what he was hearing to his own life. He didn’t like to. It created uncomfortable pulses.

 “I do believe that people are born to kill or not to kill as a matter of fact,” said Gaston.

“You do?”

“Yes. The story about my killer’s mother seeing the evil light in his eyes is a lie of course. It makes me laugh to tell it but it probably isn’t true. I do believe that whatever was in him that drove him to kill was there from the very first day he was born however.”

Jack thought about Lucy.

“There is science to tell the tale now of course,” said Gaston. “DNA and chromosomes. But I don’t like to think of it in those terms – it has no romance – although I have read about it quite extensively. I think about it in other ways: the principle that a man has a soul, and that soul is either white or black or grey. White souls are destined to do great works of kindness. They heal the sick and bring love where there was hate (although I privately do not believe such people exist and if they do they are sadly very rare). Many many people have grey souls: they are not good; they are not evil; one day to the next they may choose to be thoughtful or selfish. They are neither evil, good, nor exceptional but who would want to be one of those?”

Jack laughed.

“You aren’t one of those, are you Jack?”

Jack looked out over the mountains and spoke sadly. “No. I don’t think I am.”

“Then there are people like my killer,” continued Gaston. “Black souls: born to be bad. They like it. They kill and kill and then laugh when they are dragged away to prison because they know that that will not stop them. There is some good in them, yes; but they are irredeemable. That is the way they are born and that is how they die and in between... In between is life: a black life for a black soul, full of the effects of the evil that they do and the pain and sadness they inflict on those around them.”

Jack looked past him at the mountains and the trees and the sky. There was a small amount of snow visible among the trees on the peak opposite.

“What of you?” asked Gaston. “The evil you have done. Were you born to commit these acts?”

For a moment Jack thought that Gaston had somehow guessed about his crimes. He examined the older man’s expression for clues but there didn’t seem to be any insinuation beneath the simple conversational question.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I’ve done bad things. Everyone has. Mine may be better… or worse than the things other people have done. Is it the circumstances of my life that led me to those points? Did I have a teacher or a friend at school that made me believe somehow, that it was right to do those things? Or is there something in my physical make-up, something passed on from my mother and father, that makes it impossible for me to stop myself committing acts of selfishness and anger?”

“Or was your soul black long before you entered this world, from the moment God created it in Heaven?”

“Either way,” said Jack, “wouldn’t it be logical that at some intrinsic level we are not guilty of our crimes? Whether we are made as we are or influenced by the events around us, doesn’t it make sense that either way, we are made, by external forces, to do wrong?”

Gaston refilled Jack’s glass. The deep scarlet liquid sloshed thick and coagulated around the crystal bowl. He chuckled. “I have to say I think you are clutching at straws there my friend. Every criminal seeks to find some loophole in the moral laws. They want to be able to say that they are not to blame for the things that they do. But there is always a choice. Always. However strong the emotions; however weak the person. If you have done wrong in your life, you only have yourself to blame.”

Jack looked sadly down at the grass at his feet. “Maybe you’re right.”

“The only way out of it is to be like my murderer friend,” said Gaston.

“How so?”

“You can overcome these demons by not caring. Don’t dwell on what is right and wrong. He doesn’t feel guilt. Perhaps that is what his mother saw in his eyes. But I will tell you something that I know to be true – however much the rest of my book is invention: a man who goes on killing does not feel the slightest remorse. Ever. That part of him does not function. That is why he has been able to do what he has done in his life and still enjoy a good glass of wine and some cheese. When a good person has done the things he has, when he has killed, it slowly becomes impossible for him to continue to live... unless the moralistic side of his nature, the side of him that believes in right and wrong, ceases to exist.”

Chain of Vengeance: Chapter Ten - Part Three

The phone was ringing in the house.

Jack was sitting out on the porch, feet dangling off the veranda, a baseball cap on that he’d found on a hook behind the kitchen door to keep off the heat as much as the light. He was sketching, trying to capture in a snap-shot picture the movement in the leaves and branches of a tree nearby on the slope. It was difficult without resorting to comic book streaks of the kind that might follow one of Superman’s punches.

The ringing hardly made it through the thick door. It was doubtful anybody but he heard it at all. Gaston was nowhere to be seen. They were going for their picnic soon but he had vanished. Even Christine was off somewhere out of sight. He would have settled for the farm manager, but he too, was off doing something important.

Jack got to his feet, knowing he should hurry to catch it in time but being unconsciously wary. Answering a phone in a foreign country was never a simple procedure. Jack’s French was about as good as his Russian: pretty much non-existent; but on the other hand, it would be rude not to get it at all, so he lumbered into the kitchen, his drawing pad still under his arm, and picked up.

“Hello? Er… Bonjour?”

“Jack? Is that you?”

“Molly?” It was great to hear her voice, as much because of the relief he wouldn’t have to stumble through the language barrier as anything else. “How you doing?”

“Fine. Are you okay?”

“Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

There was a hesitation that became a pause and then silence.

“Molly? You still there?”

“Yeah. I’m here.”

“What’s up? You sound like I should be worried about something.”

Another hesitation. “A man’s been here looking for you.”

Jack felt a constriction in his throat of self-hate and disappointment. He should have foreseen that. He shouldn’t have run away. “Really?”

“He said his name was Sam.” Jack nodded grimly. “He beat up David Eden.”

“What? Is he okay?”

“He’s going to be all right but he’s in a lot of pain.”

“Oh no.”

“He came after me too. He tried to trick me into telling him where you were. Then he followed me. He’s dangerous Jack. He chased me; I thought he was going to kill me. I barely escaped.”

Jack lowered the phone. He was a bastard; a stupid selfish bastard. He let Sam live and this was the result. “Where is he now?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen him since last night. Maybe he’s given up. That’s why I called. Maybe he’s found out where you are now. What if he’s on his way there?”

“God Molly. I’m so sorry. I should have been there to protect you from that. I should never have gone.”

A third hesitation, this one longer again. “Jack. Why is he after you? What does he want?”

I murdered his sister. He wants to kill me for it and I should probably let him. I deserve to be put down like a sick dog for what I did.

“I don’t know Molly. He’s some kind of psychopath. He’s fixated on me for some reason; I don’t know what. He wants to kill me.”

When she hesitated this time Jack knew she saw through him. She just didn’t know what the real truth was. “You should be careful Jack. Move on. Don’t stay there anymore. As long as we know where you are then it’s possible this man can track you down. You’ve got the money. Go somewhere else. Anywhere.”

This time the pause was his. “It’s really nice to hear your voice Molly.”

He heard her smile if that was possible: a tiny exhalation. “It’s nice to talk to you too.” In a conversation full of awkward silences, another one stretched out, constricting around the stem of the easy rapport they had built up in San Francisco. “Er, I’d better go.”

“Sure. Sure. Sorry. Long distance call and all that.”

“Yeah.”

“Thank you for calling me Molly. It means a lot.”

“No problem.”

“Okay, bye.”

One final hesitation. Jack didn’t know what question or comment Molly was holding back but she held it in, afraid to vocalise perhaps what had to be becoming increasingly clear... There was something not quite right about Jack Catholic.

Chain of Vengeance: Chapter Ten - Part Two

The bed Jack was lying on was tucked in under an extremely low sloping roof in the attic of Gaston’s house. The air in the room was chilly. He put his legs out of bed and sat there, ruffling his hair with both hands.

There were several tiers of shelves running round the walls, each filled with ornaments and mementoes. In actual fact there was disorder everywhere, clear in dawn-light more than it had been under a bare bulb the night before. No dusting had been done in recent history, if ever. On second inspection, most of the ornaments looked like junk, but they were linked to memories obviously. Jack couldn’t tell when or where most of them had been purchased. Some were very old; maybe from Gaston’s youth or the times of his ancestors.

Jack got to his feet, just a T-shirt and boxers on. It wasn’t exactly freezing but a gentle tidal chill moved in and out against his legs. There was a smile on his lips when he turned to his left and saw what he’d assumed was just a small window covered by drapes to the floor, in fact covering the whole peeked wall. Now the morning had lit up the sky, he could see the silhouette frame of a French door through the swirling crosshatch stripes of the material leading out onto what had to be a balcony.

Jack drew the curtains back and pushed open the doors. There was nothing like this in his experience: a balcony right in front of him, a tree, a slope of grass falling down at forty five degrees from the upper left, and then the mountains themselves, cutting a V out there in front and to the right, dark earth rising from the bowels beneath. There was a second mountain coming in from the right and the entire valley with mountains on both sides, was filled with thick, luscious, morning mist. He’d never seen such a volume of it. There had never been a time when his view had allowed him such perspective.

Dawn in the Alps. Daybreak. There was no time of day he liked better, even in the bleakest surroundings. Somehow, dawn-light turned even the dirtiest inner city street into something better. Here, among such splendour, it enhanced the natural wonder and made it literally heavenly.

He walked out onto the balcony. The only barrier to prevent him falling was a single faithlessly carved log, barely out of the tree. Jack rested the palms of his hands against it and curled his fingers round to meet the contours.

“Good morning!”

The voice came from down below, accented French and male. Though he recognised it straight away as Gaston’s, the sound of it startled him.

“Hi there,” he replied, covering up his embarrassment. “I didn’t see you.”

“They never do until it’s too late.” Gaston grinned and raised his eyebrows and Jack laughed.

Gaston’s truck was parked out of sight round to the left. Beneath Jack’s feet was the door into the kitchen he remembered from the night before. The wooden floor in front of it was raised up into a kind of balcony to counter the slope of the mountain. There were beams holding up Jack’s balcony rising from the one beneath and Gaston was sitting with his back against one of these, his knees up in front of him. There was a pocket-knife in his hand and he was whittling away at a palm-sized column of wood.

“Isn’t it lovely?” said Jack, looking out again into the neck of the valley.

“It is. Why don’t you find yourself some trousers and then take a seat. We can talk. Little Christine has seen a lot in her short life but I’m not sure she is ready for the sight of your legs in the morning.”

Jack nodded and vanished inside.

Christine was Gaston’s daughter, still very small but sweet as anything in the time he’d had chance to meet her the night before. They had dropped by a neighbour’s house down in the village before they’d actually got back to pick her up and though she’d been sleepy she was still charming enough to smile and laugh and hug her father until he had to make her stop.

Jack opened one of his cases and whipped out a pair of baggy towelling trousers with a drawstring at the top – he didn’t bother with socks – then he stepped back outside to hear what Gaston had to say. He took a seat on the balcony, legs swinging against unseen currents down beneath him. He rested his left hand lightly on the barrier close to shoulder level.

“Have you ever been in love Jack?” asked Gaston.

The query off-balanced him. “What would you do if I replied with a question?”

“That would depend on what it was.”

“Do you think it means that you aren’t in love if you aren’t sure whether you are?”

Gaston paused for a moment, perhaps assimilating the question as he translated it in his mind. His English was very good but not one hundred percent perfect. “I think the subject as it applies to me is this: How can you be sure that what you are feeling is love? How can you be sure that there isn’t someone else around the corner who would show you what love really meant?”

Jack looked out onto the sloping pasture. The grass was thick but not overrun. There were traces left behind from cow-dung and tracks. The animals were obviously keeping it in trim.

“Funny that all we can offer as answers are more questions,” said Jack. “I guess that says more about us than any actual answers would have.”

Gaston laughed. “I think you’re right!”

“Where’s Christine’s mother?” asked Jack.

“She’s gone now.” Gaston clearly saw the sorrow and regret in Jack’s face for bringing it up and raised his hand. “No. No. It’s all right. I don’t mind at all that you ask. She died a year ago in a traffic accident. Her car went through the side of the bridge down in the village in the middle of the night. She’d been drinking.” He shrugged. “I wish I’d been there. I would have been driving and it wouldn’t have happened. For Chrissy’s sake, I wish I’d been able to avoid it.”

Gaston concentrated on his whittling stick for a while. Out of respect, Jack let the conversation drop. He watched the flakes of wood curl up as the knife skimmed the surface and wither to the boards beneath him or drop over and onto the grass.

“Where’s Christine now?” asked Jack.

“Somewhere. I don’t know. She likes to play in the old barns. The farm is still operating but I don’t manage it. A friend of mine does, an employee really. He and his wife are the ones who look after my daughter when I have to go away on research trips or to America. He doesn’t mind her playing or watching him. She helps him out from time to time. Makes me sad sometimes that he sees more of her than I do.”

Jack wasn’t noticing Gaston’s accent much anymore. He was coming into alignment with him and when Gaston spoke there was a train of American in it that distorted the French anyway.

“I’m curious to know why you wanted to meet me,” said Gaston. “You haven’t yet provided me with a response I believe.”

Jack shifted on the balcony, feeling cramp suddenly that hadn’t been there a second before.  He looked into the mist. It was starting to thin. A current was taking it gradually higher. The silhouette of the mountains was becoming less clear, but in response, the detail at the depths of the valley was more starkly drawn. Shadows were becoming hedgerows and trees, movement was almost clear within the fog of the village and the heat was increasing too. It was going to be a hot day. The mist wasn’t just rising, it was being cremated.

“Some time ago my parents were killed,” said Jack. “In a fire. It took the whole house and obliterated it with the two of them inside.”

“I am sorry,” replied Gaston, out of sight, his voice soft.

“I’ve always felt responsible: both of them dead. The whole house caved in; it was more wood than anything else. I was staying there at the time. They burned and I did nothing to get them out beyond calling the fire brigade. By the time I realised it was on fire it was too late to get to them.” He wanted to say more but couldn’t.

“That’s all anyone would have done,” said Gaston.

Jack shook his head. “I don’t know about that. I can’t know the full circumstances of anyone else in a similar position and nobody knows everything about that day. It made me feel like a killer and I’ve felt like one ever since… That’s why I wanted to meet you. You’ve done so much research. You’re the closest thing to an expert I’m likely to meet. I wanted to know why you thought your killer did it so that I could judge myself based on that. A lot of things have happened since my parents died. I’ve done terrible things that maybe led me to you; but I’ve felt like a killer since then and that, more than anything, is why I’m here.”

Chain of Vengeance: Chapter Ten - Part One

THE ALPS

Jack’s eyes popped open. It was country black. He couldn’t remember where he was. He couldn’t see the ceiling or his hand in front of his face. Then he remembered: he remembered Gaston’s light-hearted threat of murder and that the reason he had woken was because he had heard a noise in his sleep.

There were no street lamps for miles. He strained to enlarge his pupils, to draw in any ebbs of natural light there were, but his entire field of vision was pure blind black.  The drapes were so heavy they were blocking out even the scant mountain starlight.

He kept still, straining to recapture the sound he had heard. Perhaps it had been nothing more than the moo of a cow; this was a farmhouse. There was sure to be any number of strange noises in the span of night; except this hadn’t sounded like a moo. Even asleep he could remember enough to know it wasn’t a natural animal sound. It had been more like a clunk; and nearby; in the house; maybe even in the room.

It was natural to hear things at night. There was no crime in getting up to visit the toilet. It didn’t mean that Gaston was stalking through the gloom, coming to kill him.

There wasn’t a recurrence of the noise: no distant cars down in the village, no birds or cows or sheep. Then a creak came, loud and close, breaking the silence completely; not just in the house; in the same room as him: a floorboard creak no more than five paces away.

Jack lifted his head off the pillow. His eyes hadn’t become any more accustomed. He still couldn’t see the slightest contour to any objects in the room. “Hello?”

Like the creak, his voice sounded loud against the back-cloth of nothingness. It went out to meet the opposite walls of the little attic room then came back to him unanswered.

“Is someone there?”

The creak came again, a deeper, longer sound like the croak of a dying toad, and this time it wasn’t five paces away. It was on the floor right beside the bed.

Jack tried to get up but he couldn’t move. Sudden absolute childhood terror had taken the strength from his torso. This close now he could sense the mass of the intruder even though he couldn’t see him, parting the air with his body, rustling it with his dry silent breath. Jack tried to speak, to create a sense of normalcy if nothing else – somehow if someone were speaking then this night-time terror might vanish – but his vocal chords only quivered and gave out a moan.

Then the mattress shifted, creasing as the intruder sat down beside him on the bed. There was absolutely no doubt now. If he’d been able to move he could have touched the intruder or pushed him away but he couldn’t. The intruder was sitting on the covers at Jack’s waist, pinning his arms underneath them. The distributed pressure of the trapped covers pressed him down into the bed like belt straps in a loony bin.

He tried to speak, tried to move, but he couldn’t.

The intruder shifted his weight toward Jack’s head, tilting. He wasn’t even a silhouette against the sloped ceiling. Jack’s entire sight was a bland boneless sheet of black. He could feel the intruder’s breath against his eyes, light and subdued, not laboured in the least. Then words, in the inevitable whispered French accent of Gaston: “I warned you about sleeping in the house of a man obsessed with killing.”

Jack couldn’t move. He couldn’t speak.

An edge, a taut edge, came down against his throat. It pressed harder and started to hurt: a blade. Gaston pushed it against his skin.

The skin started to break.

Then Jack woke up.

For real this time, covered in sweat, the bedclothes pushed into an ugly misshapen fan at the bottom of the bed. There was no Gaston; no blade at his throat; no impenetrable darkness. It had been nothing but a nightmare, but even so Jack could feel exactly the same sensations: the pressure, the cut of the blade, the breath on his eyes, the sound of Gaston’s voice. He could feel them as clearly as if they had really just happened. It didn’t seem possible that it was only a dream. But dream or no, it was built inside a cage of anxious danger, the reality of his current life.

It was irrational. Gaston wasn’t a killer. He had only been joking.

But Jack still couldn’t escape the feeling of impending danger nevertheless.

Chain of Vengeance: Chapter Nine - Part Sixteen

Sam spent most of the evening driving round. He didn’t sleep; hiding out, hoping not to be stopped.

He had booked his return ticket already. His plane was set to depart for London in two hours. He would be travelling under the same false name he had used before: George Barnado. His main stash was in London and there were other reasons to go back too.

His whole trip to America was a bust. Nothing had gone right and he’d lost his target. Jack was somewhere in the world with unlimited funds and there was no way for now that Sam could find him. The only person likely to know where he was had not been told. He’d been able to see that in her eyes. Molly had no idea where Jack was. How could he find Catholic if he hadn’t even confided in those he had left behind?

And now Sam was wanted by the police without a home-ground advantage. Better to get back to England, pick up the rest of his stash and have a rethink.

And something else was grinding at his mind. He was letting emotion take over when he’d had such fine control in the past. He had assaulted an old man, leaving him almost dead. He had threatened violence time after time. What would he have done to the girl if not for that policeman? Would he really have tortured her? It was better that he had been stopped; much better; better to leave now before he was tempted to go back and ask harder.

The pressure was there all the time now in his head, driving into the soft tissues of his brain. He had taken aspirin but it wasn’t helping. He was on double the maximum dose.

And one final thing had been niggling at him ever since he left England: something his father said about Lucy: that it was better she was dead; that it was God’s will. He’d been too stunned at the time to question it but now… It filled him with rage to consider anyone saying that about his beautiful perfect sister; absolute rage.

But he had to stay calm.

Logic. Strength. Precision.

He repeated it to himself.

Logic. Strength. Precision.

These were the words he had to focus on.

Things were getting out of hand, he was drifting away from his target, but they weren’t going to get out of hand anymore. Jack was gone. The woman and the old man couldn’t help him or wouldn’t. There was nothing more he could accomplish in America, but there was one simple possibility he still had within his grasp here: Ruben Butler; Molly’s brother.

Sam watched from his hire car across the street as the drug transaction occurred. A lanky Mexican with thick hair down around his face like a dead afro, standing in the doorway of a closed porn shop. Ruben slipping several folded up notes into his hand and took a clear plastic package in return. Ruben was dishevelled and under strain. It was clear in his demeanour that the stress of what Sam had read about in the gossip column was wearing him down. The Butler family were almost broke. Both Molly and Ruben had publicly stated that they should have received Robert Catholic’s money. There had to be resentment there of Jack. And Ruben was flawed; fatally weak. The high profile lifestyle, increasing lack of funds and reported resentment forged a perfect tool.

Sam sneered and chuckled.

Ruben nodded to his dealer and walked away, hands in his pockets, head low. The dealer looked round suspiciously then ambled in the other direction. Sam drew his car out of its parking space and chugged slowly, keeping Ruben in sight as he made his way along the pavement. When there was a gap between parked cars, Sam pulled in ahead of him and wound his window down.

Chain of Vengeance: Chapter Nine - Part Fifteen

The cop spoke again, this time impatiently. “Can you step away from the car please sir.”

This was bad. It could all be over. She was bluffing him but he couldn’t call it. He couldn’t strangle a woman in front of a police officer and hope to get out of there. They all carried guns in this fat fucking country.

“Let me go,” hissed Molly.

“STEP AWAY FROM THE CAR!”

He didn’t have any option. He released her and stepped away.

The spotlight was blinding. He didn’t look into it but the reflected light was enough to make the closest object glare and everything beyond the circle of light become nothing but blackness. His eyes were locked with Molly’s. She glanced at the cop.

“If you scream then I will have to kill him to escape,” whispered Sam.

Molly looked terrified but she managed to speak. “Just walk away.”

Sam nodded then started backing up toward the police car. He heard the door open. The cop said, “Turn around please sir, slowly.” He was starting to get out of the car. He was right behind Sam, almost within touching distance. Sam wasn’t going to be able to talk his way out of this. There was no reason for Molly to back up his lies; no reason at all.

Sam turned round, smiling, holding out his hand as though to shake, then rammed up against the door of the car, smashing the rim of it into the cop’s face. Molly called out a warning too late. Sam pulled the door back then mashed it into his face again.

There wasn’t another officer in the car, thank God. Molly screamed. The cop slumped down between the half open door and the cavity of the driver’s seat. He wasn’t unconscious but he was stunned.

Sam looked back at Molly. She had crawled to the other side of the car into the passenger seat, her face drilled with alarm. She started to scream. “Help! Help me!”

This had become untenable. His options had dropped to one. He turned his back on her car and started to run; out of the circle of spotlight and across the street toward the intersection and the motel car park beyond.

Molly was still screaming. The district was seedy enough to prevent that much help coming at a trot but Sam sprinted. He hit the pavement at the side of the motel and ran round into the car park. Then he got in his car and drove away as fast as he could.

Chain of Vengeance: Chapter Nine - Part Fourteen

Molly let go of the phone and ran.

It clattered against the wall as she got to the door leading to the street. Her reflection was big and frightened. Behind her the man was moving already, coming after her, getting bigger.

She thrust hard on the door. The proprietor shouted something she didn’t hear. Molly ran straight into the street and screamed, darting forward, as the roar of an engine and a horn swept over her and a flatbed truck missed her by half an inch and skidded to a halt between her and the motel door behind. Molly turned, staggering backwards when she heard the crash as the man banged up against the other side of the truck.

She looked at his eyes. They were filled with anger and drive but were fiery as well with excitement. She screamed and ran, straight across the intersection, looking back crazily, cursing her heels.

The man ran round the front of the truck and sprinted after her. There was no chance she could outrun him but she went as fast as she could. He was calling her name. She didn’t even know his. She had no idea who he was or what he wanted but she couldn’t let him catch up to her.

She got to the sidewalk on the other side of the street by the Seven Eleven. The man overtook her on her left at the other side of a parked car. He was trying to cut her off. Molly stopped and cut back. The man tried to change direction but overcompensated and lost his balance. He cried out as he hit the tarmac.

Molly ran past him, jumping over his arms as he flailed to grab her ankles. She thrust down into her purse, searching by feel for her bunch of keys, found them and pulled them out.

She should have put the top up on her car.

Behind her the man was on his feet. He was coming again. She got to the car, put in the key, got inside, pulled the door closed.

Then he reached her, slamming against the side of the car. He jabbed his hands over the top of the door and took hold of her arm and her throat. Molly tried to scream out for help but he tightened his grip on her windpipe and cut it off. He leered at her. “Let’s keep it quiet shall we.”

“Who are you? What do you want?” She could barely get the words out.

“My name’s Sam. You know what I want.”

“Jack.”

He nodded. “That’s right. Now tell me where he is.”

She did everything she could to keep the fact that she knew about Jack’s visit to Gaston out of her face but the man was so close it felt like he could read it in her eyes. “I don’t know.”

Sam tightened his grip. “Tell me... where he is.”

“Why? What has he done to you?”

He relaxed his grip for a second then tightened it again. “Do you really want to know?”

Molly hesitated.

“You like him don’t you?” asked Sam.

Molly didn’t respond. Kiss or no kiss, she hadn’t asked herself that question yet and she wasn’t going to start explaining herself to some bastard with his hand on her throat.

“You might not like him anymore if I told you,” said Sam.

“Let go of me!”

Sam closed his fingers on her throat. “Not until you answer.”

There was a burst of blue light and a half second series of notes from a police siren then they were both flooded with light. Sam loosened his grip. Behind him on the street was a police squad car, pointing a spotlight beam in their direction. Molly stared into his face. The cop in the car called across. “What’s going on over there?”

Sam didn’t turn round. He put his face close to Molly’s and whispered, spitting the words out. “Say everything’s okay – that I’m your boyfriend – or I’ll kill you right now.”

She glared at him. “You’re going to kill me anyway.”

“Do it.”

“No. Stand away from my car or I’ll scream.”

“I can strangle the life out of you long before that cop can save you. Then I’ll kill him.”

“I’m not going to cover for you unless you stand away,” she said.

Chain of Vengeance: Chapter Nine - Part Thirteen

Sam split open the top of the bag of M&Ms, tipped half a handful out and threw his head back. The taste filled his mouth and he smiled as he crunched them into chocolatey paste. That hit the spot: a charge of energy and taste that sharpened his resolve immediately. He knew exactly what to do now: find Molly and do whatever he had to do to her to make her talk.

The motel proprietor sat like a vulture behind the counter, peaked shoulders and sweaty unshaven face. The wall behind him was covered in postcards. No threat at all. Just an irritating necessity that didn’t require The Lie. Sam openly sneered. “Cover yourself up you fat ugly shit.”

The proprietor stared at him, hostile but fearful. It felt good to let The Lie drop so casually for a change, to say what he really felt. The proprietor’s eyes flicked from Sam to the girl on the phone against the wall and then back again.

Sam turned to go toward the double glass doors that led through toward the car park, his eyes falling back to her: tight yellow tank top that exposed her delicate wrists and slender arms; short skirt, heels that accentuated her calf muscles. She was trembling.

He stopped walking.

It was her. Here. She’d followed him.

He smiled.

“Miss Butler. I was hoping we’d get the chance to talk again.”