Killer Within Read online

  Arnie felt a surge of relief when he saw Edgar pressed against the back wall, still standing, but curled up like someone had punched him in the stomach.

  Arnie realized that this man, this ordinary, average guy, meant to kill Edgar if he didn’t open the safe. In his mind, he imagined the poor kid’s head smashed open by the gunshot. But he realized that the image wasn’t really of Edgar. It was Jason, or at least how he imagined Jason might look as a teenager one day. Suddenly, Arnie saw everything around him through a different lens. It had nothing to do with Edgar, or the man with the gun. It was all about protecting his own son in a violent world, a world in which Arnie always felt completely helpless.

  He looked down at his shaking hands and realized for the first time in his life that his fear had somehow been transformed into rage. He hated everything about the man in front of him. He hated the way he pointed a gun at Edgar. Despised his tone of voice when he ordered them around. He resented that he kept him from going home to Jason. He was insulted that the man thought so little of Arnie that he robbed the store with him in it instead of just waiting a few minutes until he left. He hated everything about him. And he liked the feeling. He gripped his hands into fists and when he released them they were steady. He was done shaking.

  On the counter next to Arnie was a pen. A thick plastic Bic. With the man’s back turned, Arnie reached out, grabbed it, and clutched it in his right fist.

  The man pointed the gun at Edgar again. He shouted something but Arnie couldn’t hear it over the drumbeat of the blood that pounded in his head.

  Arnie thought about his little boy at home, little Jason taking his hand and walking him to the couch so Arnie would hold him while he drank his bottle.

  When that little boy grew up, what would he think of his father? The mouse of a man who watched life instead of living it? What kind of man would Jason be when he grew up if his model was the sniveling nobody Arnie had allowed himself to become? How could he stand by and do nothing while someone else’s son died?

  Arnie was back on the edge of the canyon, his toes dangling. The vista wrapped around him, calling to him, beckoning him to jump.

  Then, from a dark, unknown place within his mind, came the gust of wind that pushed him over the edge and changed everything.

  Arnie lunged, right fist cocked back over his head, Bic pen sticking out from the fleshy circle formed by his little finger and the pad of his hand.

  The man never saw him coming.

  The skin gave little resistance as Arnie jammed the pen into his neck.

  Before the man could jerk away, the palm of Arnie’s hand slid up and forced the pen deeper, twisting as it went in.

  The gun exploded.

  BAM.

  Sparks everywhere. The bullet hit one of the lights in the ceiling.

  Arnie shoved his body weight against the man, twisting the pen from side to side, scrambling the man’s veins, carving up his windpipe.

  They fell together to the ground.

  Arnie felt warm liquid splash over him. On his face, his neck, in his eyes. He tasted it on his tongue, salty and warm.

  He crouched down, snarling, ready to attack again.

  The man lay on his side, his back to Arnie, nothing but the top inch of the Bic pen standing up out of his neck, the rest buried in the flesh. Blood spurted out of the wound in arcs almost a foot high.

  Wet gargles escaped his throat as he clutched at the wound.

  Then the man twitched—horrible spasms, like there was electricity shooting through his body.

  Suddenly, as if there were a power outage, the body slumped and ceased to move. The sounds stopped. Everything fell quiet.

  Arnie looked up at Edgar, who somehow found the willpower to move around the counter to check out the body.

  “I think . . . I think you killed him.”

  Arnie nodded. He didn’t think he’d killed the man. He knew he had.

  Somehow, Arnie was certain that just injuring someone wouldn’t feel this good.

  He started to cry, his shoulders jerking up and down, snot covering his upper lip. He had never cried like this before, never felt such a deep release, never felt so bare.

  Never felt so fucking alive.

  Even as the sobs racked his body, he knew the emotions were not only from killing the man; it was also the pain of so many years piled up on top of him. And then, in one action, he understood that none of that pain was necessary. He’d had it within himself the whole time to take control. To be the master of his world, not some sniveling servant. The elation of this truth had always been so close to him. The feeling of total power right there for the taking.

  But with the realization came a rush of panic. The incredible high would fade. He knew it would. He had learned the hard way that nothing good in life lasted. And just like every other time, Arnie knew everything would go right back to the way it was before.

  His body shook even harder as the feeling of raw power slipped away.

  He couldn’t go back. Not to his wife beating him down. Not to his bullshit job. Not to his insignificance. He refused. He wanted to feel that power again.

  Needed to feel it again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Arnie picked up the man’s gun.

  He would not let himself go back to the way things were.

  He balanced the gun in the palm of his hand, savoring the weight of it.

  How could he even consider going back, now that he knew what true power feels like?

  He slid his finger over the trigger.

  No more lies, Arnie promised himself. No more weakness.

  Never again.

  He pivoted to his right, took aim at the spot between Edgar’s eyes.

  “What the—”

  A cloud of blood sprayed out of the back of the kid’s head, and his body dropped to the floor.

  It didn’t feel as good as killing the man, of course. But the rush was still there. The power. It was all there. And it was real. Accessible whenever he needed it.

  But not if he got caught. Arnie’s mind wasted no time on emotions but occupied itself by rifling through all the forensics shows on TV. Not the prime-time series with the good-looking actors, but the reality shows with the ugly people and the actual science. He knew all the tricks. He knew he had to be careful. He was smart, he’d always been smart, but the science was sophisticated now. He had to worry about the science.

  Arnie wiped the gun off with napkins and put it back in the dead man’s hand, feeling calmer than he’d imagined he would. He wrapped the limp fingers around the trigger and forced the gun to discharge once more. Probably unnecessary, but he couldn’t be sure the gun powder residue on the man’s hand from the first shot when Arnie stabbed him would demonstrate a controlled forward shot.

  Adrenaline pumped through his system. The police would be there soon, and Arnie needed to get his story straight. There would be questions, newspaper interviews, probably television too.

  He sat on the floor in the middle of the pool of blood, arms crossed against his chest, and giggled at the thought. He had jumped off the canyon wall and instead of falling to his death, he discovered how to fly.

  THIRTEEN YEARS LATER

  CHAPTER 1

  Charlie Foxen clung to the possibility that sex might still happen. For a week now he spent all his free time, when he wasn’t working at the bar, toting around bags of equipment and chauffeuring Allison Davenport to his favorite spots on the Chesapeake Bay. He’d sent all the signals, flashed his best smiles, applied an extra dousing of Axe cologne each day, even worked out at the gym before picking her up to make sure his flexed muscles were easily seen beneath his thin T-shirts. On most girls in Annapolis, the Charlie Foxen treatment worked like a trick. But this was different. This was a woman he was after. And maybe this woman needed a little more con
vincing to take him seriously.

  He grabbed a roll of duct tape from the car and looked at the center of the beach. Down on the edge of the water, with a tripod balanced on pieces of wood to keep it from sinking into the sand, stood Allison, the most perfect woman Charlie had ever seen. That included the Playboy and Hustler women that kept him company during all those hours of bathroom intimacy in his teenage years. Those women were a different kind of look—too plastic, too made-up, and slutty. Besides, they were just pictures. Nothing compared to getting to know Allison. Nothing compared to seeing her now standing by the Bay with a storm blowing in ahead of her, the way she faced into it snapping pictures, her blonde hair thrown back by the wind, her tan skin standing out against a white sleeveless shirt, old jeans revealing just enough of a figure to make Charlie feel the blood thumping through his body.

  He grasped the roll of duct tape a little tighter and headed down the beach, not quite believing what he was about to do.

  Allison looked up from her camera’s viewfinder long enough to see what was keeping Charlie. She wanted to attach a plastic shield to the camera body to block some of the glare coming from the sun’s last rays of the day, but she’d left the tape in the car. It was an hour before sunset but the clouds were moving fast, and the best shots would be the seconds just as the clouds and sun met.

  “Hurry, Charlie,” she said. “We’ll miss it.”

  Charlie waved and broke into a trot. Allison smiled. Charlie was a great find when she first arrived in Annapolis. She’d strolled into McGarvey’s Saloon and Oyster Bar one afternoon and ate lunch during his shift behind the bar. She wasn’t halfway through her beer before he offered to play host to her and show her the area and then another hour after that to convince her it was a good idea. The past week he’d never been far from her side and she’d grown used to having him around.

  While she knew he considered himself quite a guide, her real motivation to have him along was to run interference on any other men trying to pick her up while she went about her work and keeping the curious at bay. People tended to leave alone a young couple out on a walk, and she enjoyed the space Charlie helped carve out for her. She suspected he was developing a little puppy-dog crush on her, even though she tried to send the signals that she wasn’t interested. Judging by the way he looked at her, she guessed his interest in helping her wasn’t just because he wanted to learn more about photography. Still, their developing friendship made her feel a little guilty that she had done nothing but lie to him since they met.

  “Wow, it’s really starting to blow,” Charlie said with a whistle.

  “Did you see that lightning over there to the south? I think I caught some of it.”

  “Long exposure?”

  “Yup.” Allison smiled. It was one of the few photographic principles Charlie understood, so he used it as often as possible in conversation. “Six seconds. Caught it right at the beginning.”

  “Cool.”

  “Did you get the tape?”

  Charlie held it up. “How much do you want?”

  Allison reached down into her bag to grab a black plastic lens hood she could use as a screen. “Just enough to attach this to the barrel. We only have a minute or two before we lose the sun.”

  When she stood up, Charlie was holding out a piece of tape toward her, just out of reach.

  “Here you go,” he said, nodding down at the tape.

  “Stop fooling around, Charlie.”

  “Who’s fooling around?”

  Charlie’s smile was all wrong. Blotches of red burned at his cheeks. Then Allison noticed his hand shaking.

  Charlie couldn’t keep his hands still. He’d never been this nervous before in his life. Nausea churned in his stomach and, in a flash of panic, he thought he might throw up.

  Allison, shaking her head, took a step forward to take the tape.

  Do it, Charlie, he said to himself. What are you waiting for?

  He couldn’t. He watched as she got closer, everything moving in slow motion, her eyes searching his for . . . what? Some kind of sign that he was interested in her?

  Hell yes, you’re interested. Do it, Charlie. She wants you, man. Don’t be a loser.

  Charlie waited until her hand was near his; then he reached out and grabbed her wrist.

  He yanked her toward him, his other hand reaching out for the back of her head, his mouth open and seeking her out.

  But then everything went wrong.

  Allison’s wrist twisted. There was sudden pressure on his groin. No. More than pressure. Pain. Baseball bat to the nuts kind of pain.

  Then the world reversed itself and the Chesapeake switched places with the sky. It hung there for just a second before the natural order of things returned as he collapsed in a heap, the air knocked out of him by the hard landing.

  He lay on the ground, his hands cupped around his throbbing testicles.

  “Oh Jesus, Charlie,” Allison said, dropping to her knees next to him. “Are you all right?”

  Charlie’s eyes squinted open. “Never better. Just give me a minute.”

  Allison patted him on the shoulder. “Is it bad?”

  Charlie coughed and rolled to his side until he was up on one shoulder. He smiled weakly. “Where’d you learn to do that?”

  Allison waved the question away. “You scared the hell out of me. I didn’t mean to . . . I mean . . . are you all right?”

  “Bruised ego and some sore nuts. Not really what I had planned.” Despite the pain radiating from his groin, he managed to still feel embarrassed. “I just thought . . . I don’t know . . . it’s just . . .”

  “You’re a good guy, Charlie. You should know better than to pull shit like that.”

  Charlie looked down at the sand. “I know. I’m sorry. I just thought . . .”

  She let him wallow for a bit, then pointed up to the car. “Why don’t you wait in the car?”

  “I can help—”

  “I can manage. Go ahead and wait in the car.”

  Charlie nodded, rolled up to his knees, then hobbled up the beach, staggering like a vasectomy patient walking back to his car in the hospital parking lot.

  Allison watched him go and felt genuinely sorry for the poor kid. At twenty-one, Charlie was awkward and still trying to figure things out. She was sure he would have stopped if she had just pulled away from him and told him she wasn’t interested. Incapacitating him may have been a little more that he deserved.

  Then again, the kid didn’t realize how lucky he was she hadn’t hurt him worse than she did.

  And although she felt bad, she wasn’t sorry for the lesson she’d taught him. Come on too strong to a woman who doesn’t want it and you just might get a swift kick in the balls.

  “Damn,” she said, looking out over the Bay. The sun was behind the clouds now. She’d missed the shot of the day. Still, she reminded herself as she glanced over to the large house perched on the cliff farther down the coastline, she got what she came for.

  She smiled to herself as she packed up her gear and headed to the car. No matter the circumstances, it was flattering that a good-looking guy like Charlie would still go for her even though she had him by more than a decade. She decided to let him off easy and not make a big deal out of it on the way home.

  CHAPTER 2

  The storm was as bad as its reputation. The rain pelted them in thick sheets, and thunder rattled the windows of the rented Dodge Durango. Still, with the truck in four-wheel drive just to be on the safe side, Allison navigated the Eastern Shore back roads at full speed. Soon they were on Highway 143, heading north.

  After a half hour of driving in silence, with the Bay Bridge finally in sight, Allison figured Charlie had suffered enough.

  “You OK?”

  “Yeah,” Charlie said. “I screwed up, huh?”

  Allison nodded. “Yes sir, y
ou sure did.”

  “But I didn’t . . . I mean, I just wanted . . .”

  “Oh, I’m pretty sure I know what you wanted,” Allison laughed. She felt bad when she noticed Charlie turn red and look away. “You’re young. And when you’re young you get a little impatient for things to happen. I know, I’ve been there.”

  Charlie nodded. “So you’re saying I need to be more patient?”

  “Exactly.”

  “And if I take it slow, then maybe . . . you and I . . . we could . . .”

  “You’re not listening to what—” She stopped when she saw the smile spread across his face.

  “Got you,” he said.

  “Very funny.”

  “I’ve got it. I’m too young. Don’t have enough going on to get a fine woman like yourself.”

  “You have plenty going on, trust me. You’ll do just fine.”

  Allison rolled up to the tollbooth and paid her three dollars. The toll operator opened the sliding glass just enough to stick her hand through to take the money. The rain came in horizontally with the stiff wind coming off the Bay, and the roof of the booth didn’t provide much protection. Allison drove off without getting a receipt for her expenses. A small thing, but another reminder that no one was reimbursing her for this trip.

  “Where did you learn to kick ass like that anyway?” Charlie asked. “What do you weigh, about a buck thirty?”

  “Watch yourself or I’ll beat you up again.”

  “No, really. Are you some kind of karate-voodoo master or something?”

  Allison laughed. “Karate-voodoo master? No, I don’t think so.”

  “What then?”

  “I just like to take care of myself, that’s all.”

  “Took care of me,” Charlie grumbled.

  Allison poked him in the ribs. “And I’ll do it again if I hear about you trying to kiss girls who don’t want to be kissed.”

  “I got it,” Charlie cried out. “Lord Jesus, get me back to my bar and out of this woman’s car.”