Jackson Bell - Trigger Finger

“Hey, asshole,” I said. “I called you last night.”

“I saw it. I was busy.”

“Did you listen to any of your messages?”

“I had an Elon grad student in the shower with me. Do you think checking my voice mail was a priority last night? Single men have to work for their poontang, punk.”

I waved the envelope at him. “You need to see this.”

He reached for it, but I pulled it away.

“Not here. In your office. We need a computer.”

Fortunately, we’d both arrived early enough to where the staff remained sluggish, so nobody assaulted us with messages or questions or reminders or any of the little nuggets of pure joy that made mornings so much fun. We proceeded to Craig’s office and shut the door. I handed him the envelope as he lowered himself into his chair.

“I found this in my inbox last night.”

“Who’s it from?”

“That dickhead that called the radio station.”

He opened the flap and pulled out the sheaf of papers. “This is your Facebook page,” he said.

“Pieces of it,” I said.

“It’s all your photos.”

“Not all. Just the ones of Allie and Abby. Nobody else.”

He continued flipping, then returned to the beginning and flipped again.

“That’s a threat,” I said. “That motherfucker is threatening my family.”

He reached the last photo—Allie, Abby and I at Mellow Mushroom for Abby’s twelfth birthday dinner. He pointed to something typewritten on the bottom. “Did you see this? Says, ‘For a preview, go to www.doithard.com.’ Did you check that out?”

He spun around in his chair to face his computer and reached for the mouse.

“I did,” I said. “It’s a porn site. Bondage. S&M.”

He clicked the mouse and entered the website into the address bar. His computer took its time, as if it didn’t approve of where he had sent it and found the material highly distasteful. But then the pictures popped up.

“Whoa!”

“Yeah.”

“This is some sick shit!”

“He calls it a preview,” I said. I had folded my hands across my stomach, wanting to look calm, but I didn’t feel calm at all. “I didn’t sleep last night. I sat on the bottom step in my foyer with my AK-47 and waited for the son of a bitch to try to get in. Or send somebody after me.”

“Why didn’t you call the police?”

“They don’t give a rat’s ass about little crap like this. And how are they going to find him? I give them dead bodies and they can’t even get them identified!”

“We need to report this,” Craig said. “This is a threat, Kevin. This guy’s basically saying he’s going to come over and… do this stuff.”

I covered my face with my hands and shook my head.

“How long has it been since you’ve gotten any sleep?” He asked me.

“Night before last,” I said. “I got a little then. A few hours in the past forty-eight. Kind of hard to get any meaningful shut-eye when you have to deal with things like this.”

“I’ll call my people with Burlington and the Sheriff’s Department. They’ll take care of this thing.”

Would they? I wanted to believe that, but I wondered how the criminal justice system would tackle a perpetrator who created his own accomplices out of dirt and twigs. A perp who made . I wanted to tell Craig that I hadn’t called the police because this wasn’t a police issue anymore. It had escalated.

“You have court this morning?”

“Some pissant motions over in Civil.”

“I’ll continue them for you. Go home and go to bed. You need to sleep or you’re going to collapse.”

I dropped my hands from my face. The flesh beneath my eyes felt impossibly heavy right then, like my fingers were pulling all my features down towards my chin.

“Can I ask you a favor?”

“Sure,” he said.

“You still keep that gun in your desk?”

I swallowed.

“I think Allie might need it.”

The Bald Man didn’t want Allie and Abby. I had thought that before, but the more I pondered it the more convinced I became of it. I spent most of my time away from home; if he wanted to rape and murder my family, going after them when I wasn’t around—which was most of the time—made the most sense. It required only a well-placed visit to my house at four in the afternoon, with Abby doing her homework and Allie doing...whatever Allie did with her time at four in the afternoon. They didn’t constitute hard targets.

But he hadn’t done that. He’d thrown four golems at me after Pinnix and Ramseur, but he hadn’t thrown anything at them. Because, ultimately, they didn’t really have anything to do with this. This all centered around me . He wanted to show me I wasn’t a hero, put me in my place. Show me that he stood above me, that he could do anything he wanted and the Hero of the Month couldn’t stop him. Show me that I was a bitch.

Hurting Allie and Abby would only serve his purposes with me there to watch. I saw this as clearly as I saw the restaurants and offices and shops of West Burlington flitting past my window as I made my way back to the interstate. He would hurt them, but only in front of me. And he would do it in such a way that I would later blame myself; there would be some aspect of the assault that I could have prevented but failed to do so. I understood this, and I also understood the next logical progression: remaining around me put both Allie and Abby in serious danger.

“I want you to leave,” I told Allie at home.

I hadn’t told her about the envelope last night, but I told her now. I told her about Ruby the Redneck Psychic, the Facebook pictures of her and Abby and the website the Bald Man had directed me to. A preview, he’d called it. A preview. I told her about my dreams in great detail and although she flinched, she did not interrupt. Only when I finished did she speak.

“A premonition,” she said.

“A forecast,” I said. “And to be honest with you, I don’t know if he’s put it in my head to fuck with me, or if… I don’t know… God put it there as a warning. But something’s going to happen, and it’s going to happen here , in this house, and it’s going to happen soon. So I need you and Abby gone.”

“Where will we go?”

“Pennsylvania,” I said. “With your mom and dad. I’m pretty sure you’ll be okay there. He hasn’t hurt you yet because the time hasn’t been right. Just to make sure, though…”

I pulled Craig’s Smith & Wesson .38 revolver out of my belt. It hadn’t looked like much at first glance; a snub-nose meant for concealed carry, it lacked the heft and visual impact of something like my AK-47. Yet on my kitchen table, it glowed with a deadly aura.

“I want you to take this,” I said. “Just in case I’m wrong and he does come after you. Or sends somebody. But I don’t think you’ll have to use it.”

Allie stared down at the revolver, then up and me. She shook her head slowly and closed her eyes. “Kevin…”

“I know. It’s crazy.”

“This is not good. This is not good at all.”

“All the more reason for you to get gone. If I’m acting crazy, do you really want our daughter to stay here and watch her dad’s downward spiral?”

“I think you’re having a nervous breakdown,” she said.

“Maybe. But this shit is real. You guys need to go .”

“Abby’s got school.”

“She won’t miss more than a week. It’ll do her good to get away from all this for a few days. Visit her grandparents. Reconnect with her Yankee heritage.”

Devoid of makeup, flushed from her workout, hair in a messy ponytail, her beauty twisted my insides. I experienced a moment of unholy terror at the thought of sending her away—something akin, I imagined, to the idea of leaving your newborn baby unattended at a flea market in Tijuana. But the moment passed, and I returned to the solid conviction that come nightfall, she could not remain here.