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His first attack had gone well, but his surveillance had been bad. He had somehow missed the arrival of dinner guests. Getting into Daniels’ Security’s network would have helped a great deal, because he’d have the live surveillance feed to observe, as well as more intel on the clients. Daniels’ Security keeps very thorough records. He sighed. But he hadn’t and things were wonky with their network now. He kept getting username errors. Even the admin username was more complicated than it had been in the past. However, he’d sat in the cafe trying to brute force his way in and guess usernames long enough for today. The murders of the Mercado family were all over the news. If someone from Daniels’ Security noticed him here, they might start putting the pieces together quicker than he wanted. Besides, he was planning another round this evening and he needed to be rested for it. He’d take a nap, then head to the target house.
It was late afternoon when he awoke from his nap. The days were getting longer as Mother Nature prepared for the first official day of summer. He rubbed his upper arm and shoulder, massaging some of the tension from it and wondering if it was going to rain tonight. It rarely ached unless it was going to rain. He’d taken a bullet in it four years previous. He’d needed to have it reconstructed and the joint was now artificial. His pinky and ring fingers on his left hand tingled all the time, and there wasn’t any feeling in them. As he rubbed his arm and shoulder, he remembered the bullet wound from the night before. It had gone clean through a few inches above the elbow. He’d come home and stitched it closed using fishing line and put bandages on both sides. At least it wasn’t his right arm. He needed to be more careful. He’d never considered the Mercados the type to own guns, let alone teach their son how to fire them. Or maybe it had been the other kid’s gun and he had fired the rounds at him through the door. He couldn’t be sure, as he’d only seen the gun lying on the floor between the two boys. The baby had belonged to the other kid, maybe the gun had too. He wasn’t sure and he wasn’t sure it mattered either. The next family would be easier. He popped a couple of Tylenol 3 with codeine left over from surgery earlier that year.
It had been his third surgery in four years to fix the damage Nadine Daniels did to him. Oh yes, he would get even with her if it was the last thing he did.
He checked the news on his phone. The first headline for the local TV station was “SCTU Consults with Raytown Police Department on Mercado Family Massacre.” He closed the article without reading it. He’d thought both SCTU teams were out of town. Not that it mattered, Aislinn Cain probably would have rushed back to town the moment she realized her friend was in trouble, and by tomorrow there would be no doubt that her friend was in trouble. They’d be circling the wagons around her soon, not that she was ever very long without protection. He’d been trying to kill her for two years and yet hadn’t even come close. He’d tried poisons, a bomb, and even shooting her without any luck. This, though, would draw her out and he’d get his chance; nothing mattered more to her than the people that lined her pockets. Killing them was the best way to get her running around like a headless chicken and away from her armed guards.
He drove toward the house. Surveillance was obviously not his best skill, given that he’d missed the arrival of five people the day before. So he decided against surveillance. He parked in a hotel parking lot less than a mile from the neighborhood he was planning to attack in. The hotel was just swanky enough to not be considered a motel, but it wasn’t fancy and didn’t have valet parking or even a restaurant. But the parking lot was very full. He parked a few spaces away from a green Honda. Got out, tried the door, and found it unlocked. It took less than three minutes to get parked, get in the car, hotwire it, and be gone from the hotel.
He parked a few houses away and got ready. His gun was already in its holster and the mask was in the gym bag on the front floorboard on the passenger’s side. He reached into the bag and brought it out. He stuffed it into his pocket as he got out of the car. There had been a picture of him in the demon mask released to the media, which he’d expected, so he’d pitched it the night before. He had ten of them stored up for these events. He could be a different monster for every kill if need be. The one in his pocket now was a generic rubber werewolf mask. He put it on as soon as he reached the sidewalk.
He walked at a normal pace. He didn’t look around. The sun was finally setting. There was a small sign near the front door that said the house was protected by Daniels’ Security. He looked up at the security camera and gave it the finger. Then he rang the doorbell. It was opened by a middle-aged woman with her hair up in curlers. For a moment he was so taken aback by the curlers that he just stood there.
“May I help you?” she asked in a slightly nasal twang that said she wasn’t from the area. In response, he raised the gun and fired it into her face at point blank range. Blood sprayed out the back of her head and showered the door that was angled behind her and not fully opened. The bullet lodged in the door. He pushed past her fallen corpse and entered the house. No one ran out—the house was eerily silent. He had forgotten to set the timer on his watch. He moved through the house with barely-contained fury. Where was the husband and three kids? He wanted to shout into the silence. He found a cat in one of the bedrooms and shot it. The bullet left the animal without a head and he mused for a second over the power of these bullets. His father had bought them decades earlier and they’d just sat in the study at his father’s house unused, until now.
He couldn’t wait for the rest of the family to come home, so he went back to the living room and took a Sharpie out of his pocket and wrote on the wall in big letters “Sorry 2 Miss U.” Then he walked out. That had not been the message he had intended to leave, but he was so pissed off about the rest of the family not being home, he’d forgotten the real message. He threw the mask in the car and tried to peel out of the neighborhood, but modern cars didn’t really allow one to squeal and bark the tires like older muscle cars did.
He drove for about a block before coming to a decision. He’d make another stop and then he’d burn the car and mask. He turned into what appeared to be a decent neighborhood full of one-story ranch style homes with single garages and sheds and mowed lawns. He looked for the little signs Daniels’ Security gave out. He came to the end of the road without seeing one and turned onto the next road in the neighborhood. The third house down had one of the hateful signs, and he parked directly in front of it. He pulled on his mask and got out, stomping to the front porch. The entryway was blocked by a porch and oversized juniper hedges; a criminal’s favorite type of house. None of the neighbors could clearly see the front porch. He flipped off the camera once again, then started the timer on his watch before knocking on the door. The door was opened by a teen boy.
“You’re not the pizza guy,” the boy said as the killer fired into his face. A man came running, and as soon as he appeared in the frame of the doorway, he shot him too. There was screaming coming from deeper in the house and he forced his way past the body of the boy and into a very small and crowded living room. He fired a bullet toward a shadow in the kitchen and hit the wall. More screaming erupted along with hysterical sobbing. He marched toward the sounds. In the kitchen, he found a middle-aged woman encircling a young boy, trying to shield him from whatever horrors were about to come. The killer fired twice; the foot of the boy twitched under the weight of his mother’s dead body. He watched the twitching foot for a few seconds, then he fired a third time just to be sure. The woman wasn’t so fat the bullets wouldn’t go through her into the child, and he couldn’t leave witnesses.
He pulled out the Sharpie again and wrote in big letters “Tell Nadine I’m coming for her.” Then he walked out of the house and back to his stolen car. He returned it to the hotel where it had been stolen. There were no police in the parking lot, so he was betting no one had even noticed it was missing, just as he had suspected they wouldn’t. He dropped a Molotov Cocktail on the driver’s side floorboard and tossed the werewolf mask on top of the flames. The hair instantly ignited and began to melt. Then he got in his own truck and drove away as if nothing had happened.
Three attacks and none of them had gone as planned. He had sworn he wouldn’t kill anyone under the age of ten, but in the heat of the moment, it was hard to stick to it. Plus, was it really better to grow up the sole survivor of a massacre or die with your family? He was pretty sure it was better to die.