We rode the elevator down, returned through the catacombs, and climbed the stairs. This time as we neared the top, I chose the smaller stairwell and found myself staring into the service entrance that fed the kitchen. The house was empty.
Clearing the room, I spoke out loud. “Bones?”
“Check.”
“Turned one into eleven. All require medical attention. Stat.”
“Roger. En route. Check.”
The exterior propane tank explosion had set the pool house ablaze. Black smoke and flames climbed above the trees. Staring across what used to be the back porch, I saw a tall, fit man wearing sunglasses and a black suit exit a cabin beyond the far end of the house and begin strolling casually across the scorched earth to a golf cart waiting to ferry him to the airport. He walked as if he hadn’t a care in the world. Just another stroll in the park. I leveled my AR and studied him through my optics. He was handsome, tall, broad-shouldered, and walked purposefully while the firelight danced upon his face. For one brief second, he turned and looked. Directly at me—which was strange given that I’d attempted to hide myself. The look lasted two or three seconds. Something he intended. Through the smoke and reflection of the flames, I saw chiseled, familiar features, long salt-and-pepper hair, and a white trimmed beard. I could not place the face, but his expression told me this was his world. Everything I could see or touch for miles belonged to him. Further, the smug look in his eyes said that even what I thought belonged to me belonged to him. I checked for my shadow.
The man stepped into a cart driven by an armed gorilla, casually crossed one leg over the other, and turned down the hill for the runway. Driving into the darkness, he pulled off his sunglasses and glanced once more over his shoulder. Right at me. A slight smile. A slightly upturned eyebrow. I turned the dial on my scope, increasing the magnification, and placed the crosshairs on the bridge of his nose, equally spaced between amber-colored pupils that matched the fire around him.
I’d met a lot of bad men in my life. Most wear masks to conceal their dark hearts, but regardless of makeup, costume, or plastic surgery, their eyes betray them. Bones told me early in my training that the eyes are the lamp of the body. They magnify the soul, reflecting the truth of the person housed below.
This man’s eyes were black holes.
Reminding me that the best way to kill a snake is to cut off the head.
I exited the kitchen door and began running down the hill to the barn, the boy on my heels. I threw open the barn door where the Ferrari-red engine cover of the snowmobile caught my eye. I cranked the engine and catapulted out of the barn while the boy latched a death grip around my waist. Seldom had I reached eighty miles an hour so quickly. I carved an S-curve through the back pasture en route to the airfield where two jets, engines glowing red, remained on the tarmac.
The cart carrying the man drove through the gates of the airport, circled, and dropped him at the stairway of the first jet. While I redlined the engine, shooting a rooster tail of snow some sixty feet behind me, he casually climbed the stairway, only to stand atop it and light a cigar. Not a care in the world. I leveled my AR to disable his engines with .223 rounds when he lifted a phone from his pocket and dialed a number. No sooner had he finished dialing than the empty garage exploded and an angry ball of flames climbed into the night sky.
With an expression of satisfaction, he held out both hands. The suggestion was clear: Me or them?
I turned the snowmobile ninety degrees, and the boy and I climbed the hill toward the garage as the man’s plane taxied away.
We reached the garage where the explosion had blown off everything to the left of the elevator, which was fortunate given that I’d stacked the girls in their cocoons along the far right wall. Sometimes you get lucky. While the girls smelled like smoke and soot covered their faces, not a one had woken. They’d never remember it, which, given the hell they’d endured, was good.
Overhead, his jet roared through the night sky. I stood in the trees and watched the vapor trail dissolve into two snake eyes. I did not like losing.
Bones landed, medical personnel tended to the ten girls along with my new friend, and Bones found me standing in the woods staring at the house. He spoke as soon as he saw me. “Girls are all good. Gunner too.”
“How’d he get those pics?”
Bones shook his head. “He planted a guy in Freetown. We’ve got him on video. And he did more than just take pictures of the girls. He took video.”
“Of them?”
“No. The grounds.”
It took a second for this to sink in. “He’s scoping us out?”
“Looks that way.”
“How?”
“Walked into the hospital as one guy, then out as another. We didn’t catch the disguise until he’d exited the perimeter.”
“I thought our security couldn’t be beat.”
“It can’t.”
“Except for this guy.”
“Don’t beat yourself up. He’s good.”
“What about that facial recognition software we spent so much money on?”
“He knew how to avoid it.”
He pulled a double cheeseburger out of a bag and handed it to me. “Sorry. It was all I could do on short notice.” I ate it, followed quickly by a second. He offered me a beer but I declined, choosing to eat the fries instead. All I really wanted was a shower and a bed.
While the pool house had been entirely consumed, the main house and most of the other buildings remained standing. Structurally sound, they could be brought back to life. “Bones, who is this guy?”
“He sells himself as a philanthropist. Said to have made his money in tech, but it’s a cover. He keeps friends in high places. And not just the church. He owns dozens of homes around the world, and a couple times a year he flies in ‘friends’ from around the world. Priests. CEOs. Politicians. Powerful people who either have, or have access to, money. Calls them ‘Soul Restoration Summits.’ It’s a shell game. Most of the partygoers have no idea what’s going on behind closed doors.”
“He have a name?”
“Several.”
Bones took a breath. “Peel away the layers and you’ll find he’s the owner of the second largest pornography company in the world. He employs several thousand people who canvas the planet for young, fresh ‘talent,’ and he has single-handedly bought and sold more flesh than possibly anyone in modern human history.”
“How do you know so much about him?”
“More on that later.”
“How come we’ve never bumped into him?”
“You have.”
“What do you mean?”
“Forty-seven names on your back once belonged to him. And those are just the ones we know of. Could be twice that.”
“That would explain the expression on his face.”
“Which was?”
“Looked like he knew me. Like we’d met before.”
A pause followed by a slight change in his voice. “Chances are good you’ve cost him more than any person alive.”
“How long have you known about him?”
He looked into the memory. “A long while.”
I stared at the house, and something inside me wanted to send a signal. I climbed the hill, walked into the house, disabled the sprinkler system, and then doused the great room with fifteen gallons of gasoline meant for the snowmobiles. I lit my Zippo, threw it into the room, and returned to Bones while the flames grew. By tomorrow morning, only the foundation would remain.
We turned toward the plane, but when I tried to take a step, I stumbled and Bones caught me. My energy reserves had almost played out. He locked his arm in mine, saying, “Weebles wobble.”
“Yeah, and all the king’s horses . . .” By the time we reached the stairs of the plane, he was almost carrying me. “That guy played me tonight . . . a pawn on the chessboard. He used those kids as decoys.” I was losing the ability to think clearly. I spoke through the fog. “Why’re you just now telling me about him?”
He shrugged. “Some things are better left unsaid.”
Maybe I spoke because I’d been shot. Maybe I spoke out of exhaustion. Maybe I was tired of losing to evil. Maybe I spoke because I needed to hear the truth. Whatever the case, the words left my mouth before I had a chance to filter them or call them back. And when I spoke, my tone changed and I made eye contact for the first time. “Like Marie?”
He exhaled. “That’s different.”
I knew my words had caught him off guard and stung him. I wanted to take them back, but silver bullets never return once fired down the barrel. So I faced him. “You may have convinced yourself of that, but not me. Remember that.”
We leveled off at forty thousand feet and I slipped into an uneasy sleep, drifting in and out of conscious thought. Bones helped the nurse change the bandages on both my arm and leg, then sat back and sipped his wine. When he spoke, I could feel his whisper on my face. “I do.” He took another sip as he stared out across Montana blanketed in moonlight white. “Every day.”