David Morrell - The Covenant Of The Flame

'No! Jesus! Stop! I - !'

His words were smothered as his face was thrust against the powder. It smeared his cheeks. It caked his lips.

Then his face was rammed beneath the powder. It filled his ears. It plugged his nose. He fought to hold his breath, but as the three men held him down while the fourth man twisted the mouth of the plastic bag around his neck, Billy Joe finally inhaled reflexively and felt the stinging powder surge up his nostrils, spew down his throat, and cram his lungs. It burned! My God, how it burned!

The last thing he heard in a panic before he lost consciousness was, 'We know it's not the powder you're used to, but how do you like it, Billy Joe? You let three hundred people die from ammonia. It's time you got a whiff of it yourself.'

The eastern bank of the Mississippi. Ten miles north of Memphis.

In the bedroom of his country mansion, Harrison Page huffed and puffed but finally admitted that his frustrating efforts were pointless. The irony of the word wasn't lost on him. Pointless. It exactly described his penis. Out of breath, giving up, he rolled off the woman – his affair with whom had caused his wife to divorce him – and lay on his back, staring bleakly at the dark ceiling.

'Sweetie, that's okay,' the woman, Jennifer, said. 'You don't need to feel your manhood's threatened. You're tired is all. You're under stress.'

'Yeah, under stress,' Page said.

'We'll try again later, sweetie.'

Page had only recently admitted to himself how much her shrill voice annoyed him. 'I don't think so. I've got a headache.'

'Take one of my sleeping pills.'

'No.' Page stood, put on his pajamas, and walked toward a window, parting its drapes, brooding, oblivious to the moonlight glinting off the river.

'Then maybe a drink would help, sweetie.'

If she doesn't stop calling me that, Page thought. 'No,' he said irritated. 'I've got a meeting with my lawyers before I testify at the hearing this morning. I have to be alert.'

'Just doing my best to be helpful, sweetie.'

He spun, trying to control his temper. The moonlight through the parted drapes revealed her naked body, her dark mound between her legs, her lush hips, slender waist, and ripe breasts. Overripe, Page bitterly thought. They're like melons so swollen they're about to go rotten. And her skin, when he stroked it, had lately begun to make him cringe, because beneath its smooth once-arousing softness was a further softness, like jelly, like… fat, Page decided. The way she lies around all day, watching soap operas, eating chocolates, she'll soon be as fat as…

Although he stifled the angry thought, another thought insisted. How could I have been such a fool? I'm fifty-five. She's twenty-three. If I'd kept my dick in my pants where it belonged… The first time, after we screwed, when she started calling me sweetie, I should have realized what a mistake I was making. We don't have anything in common. She's incapable of an intelligent conversation. Why didn't I stop right then, give her a bonus, transfer her to another office, and thank God I didn't ruin my life?

But the fact was, Page dismally admitted, he'd let his dick control his brain. He had ruined his life, and now he didn't know how to salvage it. 'I'm going downstairs. I've got some testimony to prepare before I walk into that hearing.'

'Whatever, sweetie. Go with the flow, I always say. Just remember, I'll be waiting.'

Yes, Page thought, subduing a cringe. Isn't that the hell of it? You'll be waiting.

He put on slippers and left the bedroom, shuffling along a corridor, gripping the curved bannister of a marble staircase, unsteadily descending, relieved to be out of her presence. Her excessive perfume – like the smell of flowers at a funeral – had been making him sick.

Except for Jennifer and himself, the mansion was deserted. He'd sent the butler, cook, and maid away, lest they overhear conversations that might incriminate him if the servants couldn't keep their mouths shut when the investigators questioned them. Footsteps echoing, he felt the emptiness around and within him as he crossed a murky vestibule, entered his study, and turned on the lights. There he hesitated, chest heaving, staring at a stack of documents on his desk, the possible questions that his lawyers had anticipated he'd be asked at the hearing and the numerous calculated responses he would have to know by heart.

Weary, he rounded the desk, slumped in his chair, and began reviewing the depressing documents. If only his ex-wife, Patricia, were here, he'd be able to talk with her, to sort out the problem and try to solve it. She'd always helped him that way, listening sympathetically, rubbing his taut shoulders, offering prudent advice. But then he wouldn't have this problem if Patricia were here, because they wouldn't be divorced and she wouldn't have nearly bankrupted him in the settlement and he wouldn't have been distracted from managing the railroad, let alone have been forced to cut maintenance costs so he could squeeze out more profits to make up for the millions he'd been forced to pay his ex-wife. Three hundred people dead. Tens of thousands of acres of forest and pasture turned into a wasteland. An entire county's water supply poisoned. All because I thought with my dick instead of my head.

A noise made him jerk him eyes toward the left. With a flinch, fear burning his stomach, he saw one of the French doors that led to the patio swing open. Three men and a woman stepped in. All were in their thirties, trim, good-looking, dressed in dark jogging clothes.

Page lurched to his feet. His years of being an executive had trained him never to show weakness but to react aggressively when feeling threatened. 'What the hell do you think you're doing? Get out of here!'

They shut the door.

'I said, get out!'

They smiled. The woman and one of the men had their hands behind their back.

Page fought to control and conceal his fright. They looked too cleancut to be burglars, not that he knew what burglars would look like, but… Maybe they were…

'Damn it, if you're reporters, you've picked the wrong way to get an interview, and besides, I've stopped giving interviews!'

'We're not reporters,' the woman said.

'We don't have any questions,' one of the men said.

'I'm calling the police!'

'It won't do you any good,' another man said.

They approached him. The woman and one of the men continued to hold their hands behind their back.

Page grabbed the phone and tapped 911, suddenly realizing that the line was dead.

'See,' the third man said. 'It doesn't do any good.'

'I locked those doors! I turned on the security system! How did - ?'

'We're handy with tools,' the first man said.

'Like these tools,' the woman said.

They brought their hands from behind their back.

Page opened his mouth, but terror choked his scream.

While two of the men grabbed Page's arms and forced him flat across the desk, the remaining man held up a railroad spike, and the woman swung a sledgehammer, driving the spike through Page's heart.

'… impaled on a stack of blood-soaked documents that confidential sources indicate were statements that Harrison Page had been prepared to make at the hearing this morning.' The bespectacled television reporter paused somberly.

Appalled, Tess sat on a stool at the kitchen counter in her loft, watching the twelve-inch TV next to the microwave. The red numbers on the Radarange's digital clock said 8:03. She'd been trying to make herself eat breakfast – fruit salad, whole-wheat toast, and tea – but after yesterday's ordeal at the morgue and her discovery that Joseph was dead, she didn't have much appetite.