Alex Kava - A Necessary Evil

He tried to remember when he had started feeling sick. Did it coincide with the receipt of the gift? Was that the plan? To poison him? Or was it simply to weaken him so that he couldn't leave, couldn't escape and would be helpless when The Sin Eater came to finish him off?

He shoved the cup away, knocking it off the rickety wooden table and watching it splatter against the wall. That was the final betrayal. His so-called friend wanted to play games. Well, he could play as well.

He pulled his chair up to the computer and typed:

YOU POISONED THE TEA.

He clicked on Send and sat back.

Usually it took hours for a response, but it was as if The Sin Eater was sitting and waiting, expecting Keller. An e-mail came back within minutes:

YES, WITH MONKSHOOD. SINCE I CAN'T BE THERE TO KILL YOU MYSELF I WANTED YOU TO DIE A SLOW AND PAINFUL DEATH.

Why? How could he? The panic started to eat away at his insides. Or was it the poison? Could it already have caused irreparable damage? Could it already be too late?

He left the e-mail site and started clicking on news links, trying to find any new information on the slain priests. There had to be something, anything, he could use. Someone had put him on a hit list. He would find out who it was. Who could possibly know? There wasn't anyone he could think of.

This Sin Eater, this assassin, had sent him things. Surely there was DNA on the envelopes. And what about all the e-mails? Maybe someone could track them. A new AP story was posted, one he hadn't seen. It must have been posted late, expecting to hit the morning wires and newscasts. He clicked it open. Before he read a single word, he stared at the accompanying photo. He should have been alarmed, but instead he was pleased that he recognized one of the investigators. Because that's when the idea came to him. And that's when Keller knew exactly what he would do. It would work. It had to work. He had no other choice.

The only question was what price would Special Agent Maggie O'Dell be willing to pay to catch this killer?

Tuesday, July 6 Blackwater Bay Campground South of Bagdad, Florida

Corey Lee ignored his stepdad's yelling and kept walking. He rolled his eyes at his best friend, Kevin Potter.

"Shouldn't we wait for him to catch up?" Kevin asked.

Corey shook his head. "He won't come this way. He's taking the road. It'll take forever."

Besides, Corey didn't want to wait. They were almost to the boat ramp. And it was stupid to turn back now. Corey knew this shortcut. He and Kevin had taken it the last time the troop used this campground. It was a straight shot to the ramp, which was just on the other side of these trees. Yeah, the brush was thick and the no-see-ums came at you in swarms, but wasn't that what camping was supposed to be all about?

His stepdad didn't want them taking the shortcut. It wasn't safe, or so he'd said. He thought warning them about water moccasins and alligators would stop them, instead it only made Corey and Kevin more excited to take the shortcut. Ever since the dweeb took the position as a Scout leader he thought he knew everything about the outdoors. He already thought he knew everything about everything else. But Corey had been a Boy Scout for three years. He grew up around these wetlands. He didn't need his mom's latest "special friend" telling him what to do.

He still couldn't believe she actually married this one. Which meant Corey was stuck with him hanging around the house, but it wasn't fair that he thought he could invade Corey's escapes, too. When he complained to his mom, she told him to stop "being a baby" about it. She said that Ethan wanted this to be a bonding experience between them. Corey didn't tell her that bonding with the major dweeb was the last thing he wanted to do.

"Sounds like he's following us," Kevin said.

Both of them looked over their shoulders as they kept walking. Corey could hear Ethan, but he couldn't see him. The brush was thick, but he could hear something snapping the branches and swishing through the tall grass.

"Maybe he's not such a dweeb. Maybe you should cut him a break," Kevin said, but Corey shook his head again.

"He doesn't want us showing him up. You know, proving him wrong. Geez! Something sure stinks," Corey said and then he tripped.

Before he could catch himself he was falling, knocking into Kevin and bringing him down, too. He slammed his shoulder into a tree trunk and felt his elbow scrape against the bark. Kevin went facedown. Corey could hear the marshy slosh underneath the pine needles. Immediately his jeans were soaked. And geez! It smelled bad, like rotting garbage.

Suddenly Corey jumped up, quickly forgetting any pain. He saw worms crawling up his pant legs, fat little worms. He brushed and hit at them. Kevin watched until he saw them on his arm, then Kevin was back up on his feet, too, doing a dance to get them off.

They were so frantic getting the worms off that it took them a few minutes before they looked to see what had tripped them. Corey glanced back first. It looked like a pile of debris, dirty black rags covered with mud and leaves. There was a lot of household crap left over from Hurricane Ivan that had gotten caught up in the trees and brush.

"What the hell is that?" Kevin said, grabbing Corey's arm.

"What's going, on?" Ethan shoved his way through some branches. "I told you boys _ " He stopped when he saw the pile that had tripped them. "Jesus Christ! Is that a dead body?"

"Is it?' Corey asked. And now he could see what was left of a face under a moving swarm of white and brown worms.

"Wow! That is so gross," Corey heard Kevin say, and they both moved in for a closer look. He had never seen a dead body before except on TV or in Newsweek. He wondered if they'd be able to see any of the guts.

"Get away from there, boys," Ethan told them, but then he started gagging and wretching.

Kevin looked over at Corey. This time he rolled his eyes. "You're right. He is a dweeb."

Our Lady of Sorrow High School

Omaha, Nebraska

Nick Morrelli slammed the door of the rented Oldsmobile, taking out his anger on the car when he really wanted to smack some sense into Tony. It was bad enough that he and Jill had to stay at separate places while they were in town. She had to stay at her mother's while he stayed at Christine's. It was ridiculous. They were adults, not a couple of teenagers. What made it worse was mat's how Jill liked it. She seemed to prefer spending time with her mother and her girlfriends, which Nick couldn't really complain about. He was secretly grateful that they hadn't included him in dress shopping and cake tasting. But their first full week of vacation together that was supposed to include some wedding planning had turned into mega-planning with little vacation.

Then the one night they managed to have together _ this after cooking up the lame excuse that they needed to check out the downtown Embassy Suites for their out-of-town wedding guests __ even that ended up being interrupted. It was getting a little frustrating, to say the least.

This morning when he rolled over to answer his cell phone while in that nice warm, king-size bed with Jill curved up next to him only to hear Tony's frantic voice, he wanted to tell his old buddy to screw off. He wanted to remind him that he had warned him this would happen. What did he expect? He couldn't just fuck around with police detectives even if he did supposedly have God on his side.

But instead, he had agreed to meet Tony at the school in an hour, instructing him to tell the detectives to do the same while he half crawled, half fell out of the comfy hotel bed.

'Tell them that unless they have a warrant for your arrest, you shouldn't need to go down to the police station," Nick had told Tony. "They want to talk to you, then they can come to you."