by Jeff Strand and Michael McBride

© Jeff Strand 2010 and Michael McBride 2010

Kutter

KUTTER

- 2 -

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

- 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.

- 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.

- 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.

- 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.

- 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.

- 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?"

- 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.

- 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.

- 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.

The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.

—Charles Baudelaire, The Generous Gambler

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.

“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.”

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.”

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.

“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.”

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 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).

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