J. Black - The Survivors Club

None.

Simple enough to memorize. Harder to implement.

He didn’t think he’d broken any of the commandments. He only knew Barkman through Barkman’s mother, Geneva Rees—and even then, he’d only met him once. Michael couldn’t even remember the circumstances, although he thought it might have been at the symphony. They were not even acquaintances.

Still…it was what it was.

Shit, meet fan.

Jaimie, pulling that crap with Hanley’s dog. That was what bothered him. Did she take the dog out of guilt, or was it something else? If she took the dog as a trophy…

What else did she do?

Michael knew that there was plenty of room for improvisation—and this was where the danger lay. It was only human nature that the written commandments would only be part of the game. The other things they made up as they went along. Because they could. Because it was fun to create a world and add to it.

As time went by and they were successful in staying under the radar, Michael realized he’d taken too much for granted. They’d become too improvisational.

Cocky.

Like what he did in Houston—no excuse for that.

It didn’t start out that way. Improvising had been discouraged from the outset. He’d made a big deal of it. Go off script, and you could blow the whole deal. But Michael admitted he was as guilty as Jaimie was. The game was…well, it was exhilarating. It made him feel like God, and that kind of thinking led to carelessness.

He realized he should have added another rule. “No celebrating in the end zone.”

One reason he’d chosen Sheppard—he himself understood what it was like to dive out of an airplane. He’d been on a toot for some time, but lost interest in it when he realized that the odds were thinner with every jump, that his number might come up.

The whole idea of it fascinated him. Having jumped himself, he tried to imagine what that would feel like—the panic. The fear. It must be like being on speed. It must be exhilarating and scary at the same time, a whole lifetime of fear in a few seconds.

But there was something about the man…

Maybe Sheppard wanted revenge. Maybe he had it in him to be like Michael, himself.

Michael knew Sheppard was a shark in business. He’d started from scratch with a petroleum cleanup method he’d patented after the oil spill, and it was only three years before his startup had gone public, and now he was rolling in it.

Which made him so attractive in the first place. His death would have made a big splash.

Michael had been extremely careful. He’d covered his tracks. Used an assumed name, chartered a jet. Every step of the way he’d been careful, thought it through. Once, twice, three times he’d gone through it. He made sure the whole plan was fail-safe.

And then, at the penultimate moment, to make a mistake like that? To telegraph his knockout punch?

What had driven him to do it? Did he want to fail? Did he want to get caught?

Like his sister and that stupid dog!

Now he wondered if Sheppard was coming after him .

Coming for him through the weakest link—his poor, simple, pathetic younger brother.

Once the thought crossed Michael’s mind, it ate at him. Scratched behind his eyelids. Sheppard was in great shape. He was strong. The guy was mentally and physically tough.

Was he the type to seek revenge?

Would he really go after Michael’s brother? The slowest, most vulnerable beast in the herd?

CHAPTER 27

Tess arrived at John Wayne airport at 7:38 a.m. and picked up her rental car. She took the 405 to Irvine, and from there she made her way to the gated entrance to Asteroid Canyon in the Santa Ana Mountains.

A detective had been briefly assigned to the Farley case, but it was soon classified as an unnatural death due to misadventure. Barry Zudowsky of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office North Operations was in his mid-to-late twenties. Tall and skinny as a string bean, he had freckles and a crew cut. His posture was erect, and he struck her as serious, if maybe humorless.

He’d e-mailed her reports on the case and she’d read up on them. There was little evidence, but the conclusion was that Peter Farley had gone up to a canyon pool, maybe to cool off, when he was attacked.

Tess had also read up on mountain lions as part of her homework. “I heard attacks like this are rare.”

“They are.”

“So the thinking here is that the lion had a cache of food, something it had killed, and somehow Mr. Farley came too close?”

“Either that or it could have been a female with a cub. Farley wasn’t located for three days and there’d been at least one big rainstorm. There was no sign of a mountain lion.”

“No evidence at all?”

“No tracks, no scat. Not even a sighting. The only evidence was Mr. Farley himself. The ranger and the subsequent mountain lion expert I talked with were skeptical.”

Tess looked up the gate barring the forest road. The asphalt ended just before the gate and turned to graded dirt.

Zudowsky nodded to the padlock and chain. “The Mullets.”

He opened the trunk to his unit and took out a lock cutter, then went to the gate and removed the padlock and chain.

“The Mullets?”

“It’s a clan of hillbillies, that’s what we call ’em, they have a homestead about a mile up this road. This is Forest Service land, but as you can see from the signs, there’s access for people who want to drive up in the canyon to the first place where the creek comes in. Dave Mullet thinks this whole canyon is his property and he’s been known to threaten people. He and his wife are always yelling at folks that it’s a private road, and if you heard what they were screaming your ears would turn blue. So get ready.”

They got into Zudowsky’s unit and drove through the open gate.

“Be ready,” Zudowsky said. “I heard one time Mullet’s wife pelted a ranger with cantaloupe rinds.”

The canyon was beautiful. Sycamore trees filtered the sunlight, and it was beautiful and quiet in late afternoon.

They came around a curve and there was the Mullet homestead. It looked like every squatter’s camp Tess had ever seen. Shotgun shack with a green asphalt roof. Corn patch. Falling-down corrals. Goat staked to what passed for a lawn. Kids’ toys scattered everywhere.

Tess asked if an asteroid had hit the canyon, if that was how it got its name.

“That’s the legend, but the locals think it was made up. The Manson family lived out here for a while. People who’ve lived out here a long time think it was them that came up with it. Used to be called Sycamore Canyon.”

“The Mansons?”

“Amazing, huh? Some official decided to change the name to Asteroid, and now that’s what it says on our maps.”

As they drove up canyon, he told her that mountain bikers loved the thirteen miles of road they had access to, as well as trails up into the hills. One of the trails led to the small waterfall and pool where Peter Farley’s remains were found. “Not much of a waterfall, except when it rains. It’s not year-round. Farley parked his vehicle outside the gate back there, so he could ride all the way up.”

“When was his car discovered?”

“After the weekend. It had been a couple of days—Monday was a holiday. He lived alone and it wasn’t until after the long weekend that a ranger called it in.”

They reached the bike and hiking trail to the waterfall, parked on the verge, and started up.

When they arrived, Tess glanced around. A pretty spot. Oaks and a willow leaning over the lower pool.

“He was up there.” Zudowsky pointed up at the rocks above. They followed the path and came to another pool with a small beach, but most of it was wild. Oaks, tall grass, underbrush, and a mat of wild grapevines. Tess recognized it from the scene photos and diagrams. A wire stuck up through the leaves—an orange flag. Someone had left candles at the base of the oak tree, plastic flowers and the fender of an old bike.