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  He reached down with his hands to about waist level, planted his palms on the rocks, and straightened his arms to push his torso up about a foot. He moved one of his feet up about six inches, set it firmly against the wall, and brought the other one up to meet it.

  His ostrich boots were slippery on the wet rock, requiring even more leg strain to hold their grip, and his back was already sore from being forced into the uneven and sometimes pointy rock wall. But it was a start.

  After struggling for what seemed like an eternity, he finally felt his butt clear the water and his boots drain. Fuck, this was gonna take a long time, but at least his little two-shot Derringer pistol in his right boot was out of the water now.

  His Boy Scout training kicked in, and he reached down and felt around for the plastic sheet he had been wrapped in. It was floating near the surface of the water. He grabbed it and looped it through his belt. He’d need it later to help him survive the cold.

  Mental focus was never one of his strong points, and he had three thoughts that kept interfering with his concentration of the task at hand.

  How far did he have to climb? In the dark, he had no idea how far he’d progressed.

  How much did that freakin’ stone that sealed him in weigh? Sure, he was strong, built like a bull, but in the awkward position he’d be in when he reached the top of the well, he might not even be able to move thirty pounds.

  And, if he got out, how would he survive the frozen night while soaked to the bone?

  17

  At least London was happy to see me. When I pulled up, I spotted his gray-and-black face looking through the living room window. He was backlit by a nightlight that Debbie had been kind enough to leave on for me. Or that she had forgotten to turn off before she stormed out.

  His tail was shaking so hard his head shook. Not the normal vision you had when someone mentioned “German Shepherd,” but the superaggressive European guard dog of old had been bred down over the last few generations and turned into a great family dog. They’re still fearless and the best guard dogs money can buy. Smart, too.

  I pulled into my garage and entered the house through the mudroom. London hit the wall switch and the hallway lit up. I’d taught him how to do that in about ten minutes.

  I let him out the back door and he ran around for a while, took care of some business, and tried to make friends with a couple of rabbits that were eating breakfast. They decided they’d rather hide under the shed until the scary black beast with the giant paws went away instead of risking life and limb for some wide-bladed grass or three-leaf clovers, so, he was left friendless.

  He lay down under my hammock, a favorite resting place of his. Those rabbits really tired him out. After a few minutes he caught on that I wouldn’t be coming out to relax at my prized napping venue. He trotted into the house, his big brown eyes happy to see me.

  I spooled up the Keurig—hadn’t gotten around to teaching him that yet—and made a cup of dark-roasted Colombian. London followed and lay down at my feet. He was still out of breath from frolicking with the rabbits and I made a mental note to take him back to the vet. On our last visit, the Doc commented that his heart murmur was getting louder, and that we needed to keep an eye on it. Not sure what we could do, London being almost ninety in human years and all…

  I went to my workstation and started my TOR browser. After the normal delay to ensure privacy, I logged in to the HFS portal. HFS, commonly known as Home Front Security, is a top-secret federal agency. So secret that the folks who work there had to sign an agreement never to tell anyone who they really worked for, or what they actually did. I knew, because I’d had to sign one.

  The agreement stayed in force for life, and every employee was given a custom-made cover story of their job duties. Mine was as a computer specialist for the State Department. If we told anybody about our real job, we forfeited our pension, turned over our firstborn, and were rewarded with an all-expenses-paid extended vacation to Leavenworth’s version of Guantánamo Bay. I wasn’t sure if waterboarding was part of the Club Fed package, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if it was. Not to gain any intel, just to do it for the fun of it. And practice.

  HFS had been started after 9/11 and was tasked with gathering information. On everyone. We didn’t discriminate. We spied on every single person. If you had a pulse, we knew how many times a minute it beat. We were the gods of information gathering.

  We unofficially labeled HFS “Holy Fuckin’ Shit,” because that was the reaction every single congressman and women had after we showed them examples of our intelligence-gathering capabilities during budget season. You would have said the same thing.

  Everything—phones, TVs, Wi-Fi routers, microwave ovens, watches, refrigerators, thermostats, washing machines, water meters, satellite dishes, cable boxes, even your wife’s Tampax—is our electronic probe into your privacy.

  But the grand pooh-bah, big daddy of the mac of all eavesdropping devices, is the smartphone. Thank you, Steve Jobs. That’s right, thanks to a little secretive strong-arming by our Twitter-happy president, all manufacturers implant a chip in every single device. Every one. That chip allows HSF to log in to your smartphone whenever we want, to listen, record video, and even check your email. Think you’re safe when your phone is off?

  Wrong!

  Want to know what Joey in Connecticut was doing at 8:21:30 last night? The little devil had used his mother’s credentials to log in to her laptop while she was out on a date, and was on RedTube watching two MILFs going to town on each other on a sixty-foot yacht while the owner drank champagne from their shoes.

  At least Joey was smart enough to delete his browsing history before he shut down. Amazing how smart middle schoolers are these days. Too bad he didn’t know about TOR, though…

  While little Joey was learning about life on the high seas, Father George in Michigan was penning an email to one of his parishioners explaining why the rectory needed a new furnace. After a glass or two of red wine, he had this strange habit of typing in the nude. I had to admit, I hadn’t expected such bravado from an Irish priest. Given their, ahem, shortcomings and all.

  At least the good Father’s alleged trafficking of old men for sex slaves turned out to be false. He also deserved credit for good posture while typing, back and head straight as an arrow. Part of that comes from his discipline of typing for twenty minutes and standing for five.

  I scheduled my breaks to coincide with when he stood up, rationalizing that if I saw him naked one more time I’d be scarred for life and have to go on disability. At least now I knew why he’d become a priest.

  The president was taking a little personal time with the first family and watching A Christmas Story. He slapped his knee and laughed like a little kid when Ralphie said “fudge.” It was good to see him relaxing and enjoying life for a change.

  Senator XXXXX was hosting a full-blown orgy in an oversized hot tub in D.C. while her husband was visiting his elderly mother in California. Her twenty-years-her-junior lover was a big hit, and easily won the night’s MVP award. Amazing what a little Coke and Viagra could do for one’s recuperative powers. I toyed with the idea of adding myself to the guest list for her next shin ding, but chickened out.

  Dr. Klein was… oh, you get the idea.

  HFS knows whatever they want to know, about anybody, anywhere. Nobody is safe. If you think you’re safe, email me and within a few minutes, I’ll get back to you with what you had for dinner last night, how regular your bowel movements are, your flaccid penis length, and how much you dial back your scale to convince your wife you’re following her low-carb diet recommendations. Shame on you.

  Act right now and as a special bonus I’ll even let you know what percentage of her orgasms are fake.

  So how is that massive amount of data organized and archived? That’s where experts like myself come in. My master’s degree is in IT security, and when I first graduated Notre Dame, I went to work for the CIA.

  After a few months of
working there I got bored with analyzing foreign activity, so I transferred to NSA. My excellent work ethic, plus my father’s millions in political donations, made me pretty popular and labeled me as an up-and-comer in my secretive little D.C. tribe.

  When the idea to form HFS was approved by the president, complete with plausible deniability, my name was thrown in the hat. Together with a handful of others who could keep a secret and had no immediate family that might call the police in case we went missing, we ran the most secretive organization in the history of the planet earth. Holy shit, that was fun.

  But all good things end, and I have since moved on to the greener pastures of sheriffdom. I couldn’t be happier. Watching Father George type emails in the nude was surprisingly stressful. I couldn’t even tell any of my friends about it. Horrible.

  And even though I’d bailed on that life, I kept my hand in the money jar via consulting work. Besides the easy cash, my second job of IT consulting for the government, while not as fun as my third job, had a ton of perks.

  I could take on as many or as few assignments as I wanted. I could work from home. Evenings, weekends, sick days, middle of the night when I couldn’t sleep and ran out of Jack Daniels. Whenever I wanted.

  But the single most important thing that kept me in the IT game, besides lightning-quick body fat percentages and STD checks on potential lovers, was that I had access to all the data that HFS paid me to protect. I knew everything. About everybody.

  With that treasure trove of data just a few keystrokes away, I had my pick of the litter, the belle of the ball, to choose from when I got the itch to live out my childhood Batman fantasies. Thanks to Kalib and Flight 2262, I got that itch a lot. That was unfortunate for people like Fat Sam, because, and I’ll be the first to admit this, I didn’t handle my God complex very well…

  18

  I logged in to the HFS portal and within minutes I had Sam’s file open on the screen. I studied it for a while, and when I grew tired of reading what a pitiful waste of life he was, I decided to find the two stooges from last night.

  They’d have to try and find Sam. I mean, it wasn’t like they could just drive home and tell everyone that Sam had disappeared into thin air. I chuckled out loud. London raised his head and looked at me like I had a tomato-sized tumor on the tip of my nose.

  That would be perfect though. I could see them in my mind, hemming and hawin, doing a little two step in front of the big boss. “Er, ahh, uhm, sorry boss, we lost Big Sam. He just got up in the middle of the night and disappeared. Honest.”

  Right. I’d give them two days before they were whacked in retaliation for killing Sam.

  But since that wasn’t likely to happen, I figured the chances were good that the two hammerheads would reappear today at the last place Sam had been. The Red Barn. Where else could they start looking for him? I decided that I’d better learn a little bit about these jokers. Know-your-enemy type of thing.

  Compared to Sam, their files were tiny. Fat Boy was married, lived in Staten Island, and was a low-level associate, as opposed to a “made man,” which was mobster lingo for a fully initiated member. The only reason he was in Summit this weekend was because two of Sam’s closest pals had recently enrolled in the witness protection program and were spending their days in warm and sunny Arizona, posing as a retired government employee and a florist. Seriously, can’t make this stuff up. A florist?

  Skinny Guy was a mob associate, single, and lived in Long Island. He’d spent much of his life below the radar, so there wasn’t much background info on him other than a few arrests for some minor stuff.

  Now I had to decide how to handle them. I’d opened up a can of worms with Sam’s well tossing, not that I’d had any choice in the matter. But how much would this fiasco spin out of control? If I did nothing, the two stooges were sure to do something bad for somebody. Not for me. Probably for Mary Sue. They were desperate, and desperate men were very dangerous.

  If I took them out, something that I salivated over like the Big Bad Wolf did when he saw Little Red Riding Hood skipping through the woods all by herself, then we’d have even more visitors from their hood.

  Unless… Hmm, yes, that’s it! I got it!

  19

  Less than halfway up the well, Sammy’s legs started to shake. Not from the cold, which was becoming a factor despite his body heat rising from the workload, but from the strain of keeping his lower back pressed against the rock wall hard enough to support his weight. His thigh muscles burned worse than he’d ever felt in his life.

  He stopped and tried to lock his knees in place to support his weight, giving his legs a rest, but the well wasn’t wide enough for him to fully extend his legs. He tried another tactic, and placed his hands on top of his knees and pushed against them so that he could relax his legs. Ahh, that felt good.

  It lasted about fifteen seconds before his triceps gave out, and he was back to using his leg muscles to support himself. Holy shit, that was freakin’ brutal. He extended his arms straight down, locked his elbows, and dug his palms into the rock wall next to his fat ass. He was able to take some of his weight off his legs that way.

  He thought of Sally, and what a good and loyal wife she’d been throughout his rise in the business. Being the wife of a high-ranking mobster was difficult, and she had ulcers to show for it. Despite how it was portrayed in Hollywood, mobster life was anything but easy.

  Sure, there were parties, and the work itself was easy. There was always lots of cash floating around. Mobsters were the ultimate “bad boys,” and there was no shortage of gold diggers ready to hop in the sack with him and suck some cash from him.

  All mob wives knew that their husbands’ Friday nights with the boys were really Friday nights with their mistresses, but those whores didn’t really mean anything to him. Plus he could do things with his girlfriends that he’d never do to the mother of his child.

  And then there was his daughter, Barbara. Daddy’s little girl, except that she was going off to college next year. Fuck, how time flew. She’d need him around to keep all those asshole boys from trying to jump her bones.

  God, he loved them, and couldn’t bear to leave them like this. Getting whacked was one thing. They all lived with that elephant in the room on a daily basis, but disappearing altogether? His family would never know what had happened to him. How would Sally handle his disappearance? She’d probably hold out hope for a while, but sooner or later she’d have to move on. How soon before she found another man to take care of her? He pictured a faceless man on top of her, pumping away to satisfy her, and his blood boiled.

  Revenge was a powerful motivator, and his adrenaline surged at the vision of tracking down the big bastard from the wench’s house and shooting him in the back of the head. He was a pro, and he’d do it the right way. He’d show that fool how to whack someone.

  He thought of his Derringer pistol in his boot. It might have weighed in at less than eight ounces, but he’d used it over a dozen times, and each time it had worked flawlessly for close-up head shots. The little .22-caliber bullet was powerful enough to get through a thick skull, but not too powerful where it came out the other side and created a hell of a mess of splattered bone fragments, blood, and brain. He’d learned that the hard way when he’d used a .38-caliber on his first hit and spent the remainder of the night cleaning up the mess. That sucked.

  Not so with a .22, though. The little bullet just bounced around the inside of the guy’s head and created Swiss cheese out of his brain. He smiled.

  His anger and lust for revenge fired him up, and the cold, fatigue, and red-hot burning of his leg muscles faded to the background.

  He started inching his way back up the well. I will kill that bastard. I will kill that bastard.

  20

  The anxiety Sammy felt about being able to make his way to the top disappeared when his head brushed against the stone that covered the well. Yes!

  His exuberance was short-lived, replaced by another fear. What if
the stone was too heavy for him to move? How messed up would that be?

  He rested for a second and started thinking about Sally, Barbara, and revenge, and his adrenaline started pumping again. He placed both hands on the stone and pushed. It didn’t move; instead he felt his back slide down the rock wall. Shit. He cringed and stopped pushing. He placed his palms against the rock by his butt to support his weight and leaned forward to take some of the pressure off his back. He had to do this. He couldn’t come this far and not make it.

  He needed to find a better way to brace his back, so he felt around the perimeter of the well for a rock that stood out a little more than the others. If he found one and could work his way over to it, he could plant his ass on it and use it as a ledge, which would give him more leverage. Maybe even enough to move that damn stone.

  About halfway around the well, he felt a small ledge of a rock. It stuck out about two inches from the others around it and was a little higher than he wanted, but he was in no position to be picky. He maneuvered over to the rock and slid his butt over top of it. He was closer to the overhead stone than he wanted to be, and his head was forced to the side, but he had to make do.

  He reached up, held his breath, and pushed.

  The stone didn’t move. Damn. But his butt didn’t slide down either, so that was a win.

  This was it—he either moved this freakin’ stone or fell back down into the well and rotted here. Fear and anger were powerful motivators. His heart raced and he yelled like a Russian weightlifter on steroids, and pushed with all of his might.