Her face was a mirror. It held the same breathless scream Bishop had on the day he saw his parents die.
But for some reason, watching Charlotte’s pain was worse.
They’d only just met, but after seeing her father and his friend gunned down in front of them, they were connected for life. A shared experience that can never be repeated with anyone, ever.
Speechless in the center of the hotel room, Charlotte’s body shook. He pulled her in close, resting her head on his chest as her body went limp.
The last image seared into the back of Trent’s eyelids before he woke up this morning was his wife and kids, strung upside down by their feet, throats slit.
4-year-old Miriam’s lifeless eyes shattered every atom of his being. They stared at him pleading, swaying, sisal rope creaking in his empty, quiet house.
A message from his former employer.
In his nightmare, he would wail and howl and punch through the drywall into a stud, again and again, until his fists bled into the grain of the spruce wood.
Great plumes of smoke rose purposefully on the wind, bruising and blackening the heavens over Tempestria.
From his valley cottage window, Ansum Eylinder watched each great wave of smoldering blackness – great gouts of flame preceding each pregnant wave of smoke.
The sun itself seemed dim, ashamed to shed light on the ruin below.
He gripped his gnarled, arthritis-ravaged hands – ground calloused fingers into his leathery flesh. “It’s burning, Meryn,” Ansum said.
Bishop exited the black town car the company sent for him. Now surrounded by a sea of twenty-foot, floor-to-ceiling glass and ornate furnishings that would make Donald Trump proud, Bishop swam through the massive foyer of Omnivox Technologies.
His mind was still racing from the firefight when he saw the confident blonde, walking straight for him. About his same height, with a slender frame, she could’ve been an athlete or a model or both.
As she looked past him he couldn’t resist the urge to speak. “Can you tell me what floor Data Command is on?”
The Dog had always hated pork.
Why the fuck would you eat the meat of something that rolled around in its own shit and mud all day?
Momma used the say the world had grown dirty, she’d say. She’d gotten dirty, too, and had The Dog – that’s why his pa’ wasn’t around.
He wasn’t even sure she had named him Dogwood. Might’ve just been ‘Dog.’ Might’ve just been, ‘Like a fuckin’ dog.’ Only the Social Security office knew.
A sharp squeal ejaculated his mind from the sweetness of memory lane… and back into the present.