Chris Mooney - World Without End

"When I'm done with Conway, you and I are going to take a ride up north to a cabin," Cole whispered, his voice breathy. Excited.

"The only way you'll be able to scream is in your head. Why don't you start practicing now." Cole sunk his teeth into Lee's ear.

Nothing in his life so far matched the pain he felt as his ear was ripped away from his head. In his mind he screamed for it to stop could hear himself screaming and what came next was a memory from his childhood: the time he had stolen the highly prized boom-box from his neighbor's back porch. Ten years old and the prize tucked under his arm and he ran like lightning across the dirt backyard in the dead of night with the neighbor's snarling bulldog mutt chasing after him. Lee had climbed the chain link fence and jumped, his right hand stretched out to the side, confident he was in the clear when he ran forward and was jerked back, the spike of pain in his wrist unbearable. He looked back and in the moonlight saw that the fence's barb-shaped tip had penetrated his wrist and had popped through to the other side, ripping through his flesh and muscle when he had tried to run. Blood squirting everywhere, Lee dropped the boom box and screamed and screamed, squares of yellow lights popping up in the windows of the neighborhood, the black sky filled with stars just like tonight, thousands of eyes that stared down on him, not caring.

Mark Alves, the Elf, sat behind the wheel, his eyes riveted on the rearview mirror. He felt his stomach flip and then flip again and then felt the bile shoot up his throat. What was happening in the back… he had heard stories about Cole but what Alves was seeing made him want to run out from the van. He had his hand on the door. He squeezed it, about to open it, when the nagging voice called out:

You check the account to see if Cole made the deposit?

Shit, no, he hadn't checked the Cayman Islands account. Four hundred G's… that's a lot of cash to give up.

You leave now, you leave without the money. You want to give it up?

No. And the strange thing was, he couldn't take his eyes away from the rearview mirror. Owen Lee lay on the floor, absolutely still, his eyes wide and staring straight at him as if to say Look what you've done.

You've fucked me and good. Not my problem, dude. I needed the money you knew that and you decided to play your cards and I played mine.

Shit happens.

Cole, on his knees and hunched forward over Lee's body, suddenly straightened as if startled by a sound. He turned his head around slowly, the ear still in his mouth. Then the ear dropped.

"Want a taste, Mr. Alves?"

"No," the Elf wheezed. That could be you, he thought and almost pissed himself.

"Then drive."

Alves peeled out of the parking lot. Stay on Conway and then let the cannibal psycho go after him, get Cole the fuck out of here. Alves would use the computer here in the back, check his account, and if the money was there, transfer it to another account. And after that? Fake his death, run away, do something. Mark Alves never wanted to see Cole again.

Booker headed down Route One South toward Boston. Traffic was light;

Booker and the other SUVs cruised up the highway at a steady eight-five. The world outside the windows was full of bright signs for stores and strip malls and gas stations. The SUV was warm, lit up by the dials on the control panel. Miles Davis played over the speakers.

Conway had taken off his mask, but he could still smell the aroma of the sweaty rubber. The fleet of SUVs had split up. When he left the room, he exchanged briefcases with one of Booker's men. Con-way kept the watch, Palm, and the phone, knowing that Cole would lock on the transmitters and follow this vehicle. The CD was on its way to Booker's contact at the Channel Five news station in Need-ham, and with any luck, Cole and his men would be following him.

"My boss, Raymond Bouchard, he killed Riley. I got it all on this CD,"

Conway said. He stared at the depth sensor in his watch and thought, I hope you're listening, Raymond.

"You got your FBI contact all lined up?"

"It's all set," Booker said.

"He'll meet us with his team. All we have to do is hand him the CD and he'll take it from there."

There was no way Cole would let that happen. He would try to intercept this vehicle and put a stop to it. That's what Conway wanted. Now all they had to do was to get to Roxbury.

The penthouse suite inside the nine-unit condo on Devonshire is less than a two-minute walk from the heart of downtown Boston even under the worst weather conditions. The suite comes with its own private parking garage and a separate elevator which is accessible only by key a remnant from the previous owner, a basketball player from the glory days of the Boston Celtics who demanded privacy and discretion. The other owners must pass through the front doors and enter the lobby where a security man who doubles as a concierge sits behind a wonderfully crafted desk bathed in soft light.

None of the owners or the security personnel have ever met Simon LeCruix personally in fact, no one who lives in the building can claim they've met the man. But they do know the story of how Mr. LeCruix paid a staggering seven-figure sum to gut the entire suite and rebuild it from scratch, a three-year project that included a changing chamber behind the door, complete with two special HEPA-filtered devices, scrubbing stations and lockers that held boxes of latex gloves, surgical masks and Tyvek sterile garb. No one knew why Mr. LeCruix needed such an area, or why the same group of well-groomed men would periodically visit him.

Inside the suite now, the rooms dark and cold, always cold to keep whatever lingering germs and viruses that might have survived the scrubbing with the Vesphene/Spor-Klenz cleaning solution from incubating. The suite's layout was almost a mirror image of the one in Austin, right down to the choice of furniture and its arrangement.

This strict order was also imposed on the owner's thoughts. For years, the rooms of his mind have been clean and ordered, a majestic, sweeping museum of stored emotions and experiences and adventures that have been neatly labeled and could be, at a moment's notice, examined with total clarity.

Gunther's death had changed that. The once-splendid rooms in Amon Faust's mind, these crafted private sanctuaries that had held glorious memories and tastes and secrets, have been ransacked, their contents destroyed, the glass containers and picture frames and vivid filmstrips of a perfect life now shattered against the floor, burned and defaced.

Faust had spent the better part of the day inside his office, sitting with his back against the wall, his eyes closed, focusing his mental energy on the task of cleaning. Deep, slow breaths kept the volatile mix of rage and regret and loss and grief from consuming him. It was critical to keep his mind clear. It was the only way he could help Stephen through this next maze. Faust couldn't afford another mistake.

Another loss.

The phone rang.

He opened his eyes. Outside the pair of sliding glass doors that led out to the patio was a black sky alive with the full moon, its silver light washing over the hardwood floor decorated with dozens of pictures of Gunther taken at various stages of his life. The photographs were arranged in ascending order, a series of molts that charted Gunther's inspiring transformation from a troubled, violent boy to a handsome, intelligent Renaissance man capable of so many wonders. The pictures captured the boy's essence in various phases, and as Faust viewed them, a part of him believed that Gunther was still alive, still a viable presence in his life, and not a carved up piece of meat waiting to be dissected on an autopsy table.

The headset was already in place. Faust hit the TALK button.