by Scott McEwen
* * *
“Line up!” Hallsy called out one afternoon. Wyatt hoped this would be their last swim before dinner. Wyatt kicked off his boots and took off his thinning (and foul smelling) Tony Hawk T-shirt, padded across the sand, and got into formation for the swim.
It was a week or so after the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, and the days at Valor were looooonggg. It was close to 6 p.m., but given the sun’s position in the sky, it felt earlier. Sunset would come around 10:30 p.m.
Wyatt had just run four miles, over very steep terrain, but he didn’t feel winded. Just a thin glaze of sweat and an expectation that the day would get a little harder with the swim to Flint Rock and back, but that would be it. Wyatt was unaware, or perhaps mildly aware, that he had become comfortable with the challenge.
Hallsy, the Old Man, Mum, Cass, Avi, and the other key staff came down to the dock. As the Group-C candidates waited on the beach for staff to give them instructions, Wyatt smelled a familiar scent wafting over the water. He almost couldn’t place the smell. It came on the breeze from over the water. Then he heard the Sea Goat and saw Mackenzie at the helm, steering the boat into the cove. Sitting on the Sea Goat’s bow, placed up on a riser so they wouldn’t get wet, were thin boxes—perhaps twenty or so—stacked in two neat columns. Wyatt instantly recognized the boxes and felt his stomach spasm at what was inside. Pizza.
“At ease,” the Old Man said. “This evening there has been a change of plan. The staff and I need to head into town for an emergency meeting.”
He tried to read the staff on the dock to see a clue. But their faces were inscrutable.
The Old Man went on, “It’ll take us about two hours to get there, an hour to conduct our business, and two hours to get back. You will be left alone on the island with no supervision during that time. We have ordered pizza for you. A projector has been set up by the fire pit.” The Old Man motioned toward the outdoor meeting area. “A small selection of some of the staff’s favorite movies has been set out. If you can figure out how to hang a sheet, you can watch some movies. You might also find some pops and ice cream in coolers as well.”
Wyatt glanced from face to face of his fellow Valorians. Could it be that they were really having pizza and movies and ice cream and sodas and no staff? Everyone tried to hide their smiles.
Everyone but Hud, who looked uncomfortable with a night left to be just a kid. Wyatt felt that Hud was one of those people who couldn’t just hang out. He always had to be proving himself, always surly and on edge.
“Since we are letting you off early tonight, tomorrow might be a little more challenging, so we recommend you get to bed early. And since Avi will be gone, you may want to organize a security detail, but that’s up to you. You’ve proven yourselves to be responsible with supervision, so we want to test you without it. Enjoy yourselves and relax. You guys earned a night off.”
A cheer rose up at these words, and the pizzas were placed on the dock.
“Word to the wise, campers,” Hallsy said over his shoulder on his way down the dock. “Don’t forget you’re trying to earn your way out of prison. Slip up, and you just might go back.”
The staff boarded the Sea Goat, and as the boat and supervision left the island, Wyatt had an irresistible tingling in his stomach—something he had not felt since the night he’d stolen Narcy’s car. He was buzzing with freedom.
CHAPTER 15
October 2015
Third Floor, Hotel Hermitage, Monaco
Pablo had seen some weird and scary stuff in his life. Lots of it. Like the old lady who came back from the dead. It was in the early days with the Colonel. They’d put down a bunch of the villagers and the old lady lay in a ditch, shot in the lung, half-burnt, not breathing. Pablo shoveled a spade full of dirt on her face and she popped up, moaning, and came at him, hair scorched, half her scalp bleeding.
“MAAAHHHHHHH!” she had screamed. Pablo saw, at the last second, that she held a high-heeled shoe in her hand and was going to slam it into his face.
Pablo covered up, maybe even shrieked a little. The Colonel casually shouldered his rifle and double tapped the lady. She tumbled back into the ditch, a couple ounces of lead in her brain. Pablo stood on the edge of the ditch looking down, chest heavy, mind just catching up.
By god, the scorched old lady with the high heel had given his heart a jolt. But she had nothing on what he saw now, as the ergonomically designed office chair swiveled around and Pablo beheld a human transformed.
It was vaguely male. The body had iridescent skin and black eyes, and was naked, except for what might have been a pair of gym shorts, or an adult diaper covering his crotch. He was completely covered in a jelly, like Vaseline, the scant patches of head and body hair matted down in clumps. Pablo could not tell if his skin actually glowed or if it was the jelly on the skin that glowed, but a greenish iridescence glimmered and twinkled across the man’s body, like someone had put a handful of fireflies in a blender, hit “frappe,” and injected the glowing emulsion into his veins to be pumped through his vascular system.
Even as an old man, Pablo’s mind still worked like a detective’s. He recalled the writing on the back of the hoodies—Glowworm Gaming.
And here it is, he thought. The Glowworm.
The Glowworm’s feet were long, bony, and sported six-inch-long toenails. Jesus, Pablo thought, feeling bile rise up in his throat. Oddly, Pablo noticed, the Glowworm’s fingernails were manicured. Must be so he could type. A computer thing.
The Glowworm’s mouth was sunken and black, and his tongue moved around his lips nervously. The slurping sound Pablo had heard before, he now realized, was caused by the absence of teeth. Pablo hardly could have guessed that the Glowworm had elected to have his teeth removed. Just as he’d elected to have a feeding tube implanted into his stomach, a clear tube that snaked from his abdomen to a machine that pumped food into the man. The pump sat on his desk, next to an old Nintendo gaming console and a Vitamix blender. Arrayed around the blender were protein powders, limp vegetables, and heaps of raw ground meat. What kind of meat, Pablo was scared to guess.
But weirdest of all was the series of diodes that had been placed across the Glowworm’s body. They pulsed electricity into his muscles, which twitched and sputtered, so that he could get a workout without having to leave the chair. And it appeared the workout was getting results. The Glowworm was ripped, but not in a natural, human way. He was cut like the men in El Greco paintings. He was skinny-fat with selective, unnatural bulging muscles that spasmodically clenched and unclenched while his eyes and face remained completely calm.
“Come closer,” the Glowworm said after some silence. “I can see you well from where I am. But in this light, I’m not sure if you can see me.”
Pablo stepped closer, the smell of the Glowworm making him nauseous, like the BO of a horde of zombies. “Don’t you recognize me?” the Glowworm asked pleasantly.
Despite the missing teeth and the green, shiny stuff smeared on him and the smell and the diodes and all the other distracting changes that had been made over the years, when Pablo got closer, he saw it. The face of the reclusive fifteen-year-old boy he had known almost thirty years before.
“Wilberforce,” Pablo said.
“Good, you recognize me,” the Glowworm said, then switched to Spanish. “I am Wilberforce no more. I am the Glowworm. Oh, what memories we had,” he chuckled. “I used to call you tío, Pablo, before you killed my father and tried to kill me and my mother. I have looked forward to this day for many years. And I can promise you”—the Glowworm eyed the blender on the desk—“I plan to savor my revenge for a long time.”
Pablo did not even bother to run or defend himself. There was absolutely nothing he could do. The suite, which he thought was empty save the Glowworm, was not. It was filled with guards who, at that moment, were emerging from the darkness, dressed completely in black, heavily armed and wearing night vision goggles. Far more troubling than guns pointed at him was what R
aquel held in her hand—a six-inch, razor-sharp Japanese boning knife. And perhaps even more troubling than the knife was the smile on Raquel’s face. Luminescent, eerie, and beautiful. It was a hungry smile.
But Pablo had one card left to play. “Wilberforce,” he said, then corrected himself. “I mean, Glowworm, I know you will kill me, which I deserve. Yes, I roughed up your mother a little.”
“A little!” The Glowworm opened his mouth and strands of saliva stretched across the open black hole. It looked like he was going to speak. Instead, he coughed like a cat puking up a fur ball. “A little? I heard you beat her. I saw the bruises and the blood.”
“You’re right. Maybe a little more than a little.” Pablo nodded in agreement. “And if I had my way, I might have killed her. But I didn’t. And I did not kill your father.”
“Mentiras!” The Glowworm’s legs twitched and quaked, and the creature began to rise up out of its seat. Raquel moved closer and held her blade to Pablo’s neck.
“You speak lies!” the Glowworm said.
“Your father was an evil, terrible, cruel man.” Pablo’s voice was shaking. “And I would not have had it any other way. He was my hero and my mentor. And I have made it one of my life’s goals to unlock the mystery of who killed him. I am almost one hundred percent certain I have solved it, and that the killer is still alive. You can always kill me, but before you do it, why don’t you listen to me first and maybe discover who truly deserves your wrath?”
“So far, I have listened to nothing. To air, to baseless denials. Boring. Now it’s time for you to listen.” The Glowworm nodded to Raquel.
Raquel’s movement was so fast, Pablo hardly could track her hand and the boning knife. He saw a blur and then felt searing pain on the side of his head.
Pablo screamed and reached up to feel his left ear, but it was gone, only a tuft of raw cartilage and seeping blood.
The demonic girl picked up the ear. It looked pale and hairy in her hand. She bit into it, tore off a piece of gristle. And chewed it like gum and then spat it out. “Tastes disgusting.”
“I don’t care about taste,” said the Glowworm. “I want some.”
The girl dropped Pablo’s ear into the Vitamix blender, blended it, and pumped the slurry into the Glowworm’s stomach.
“Yum,” the Glowworm cackled and shifted his eyes to Pablo. “I mean this in the strongest, most literal way possible. My hunger for revenge is all-consuming. My only interest is to watch the person who deprived me of my childhood suffer and to feed off of that suffering. Again, I mean literally.” He enunciated the word clearly. “If you have anything to say, cut to the chase. Otherwise, I’d prefer we begin dissembling you.”
“Fair enough.” Pablo bowed, trying to play it cool as sweat beaded on his face and neck. He pulled the neatly folded silk pocket square from the front of his suit and pressed it to the side of his head. “But killing me would deprive you of that satisfaction. Did you ever consider that the killer of your father may have been an agent of the United States, a state actor? Wouldn’t that make sense?”
The Glowworm shrugged. “Sure. That is possible. It was a competing theory at the time. One theory was you killed my father, the other was someone did it on behalf of the Americans. Of course, you could have been acting both for yourself and as an agent of the United States.”
“Come now,” Pablo said, an edge to his voice. “You insult me. You can’t be serious. I have been called a lot of things in my life—scumbag, thug, murderer—but a friend of the Americans is one I’ve never heard.”
“Anything is possible, Pablo.”
“Good point.” Pablo raised a finger, damp with blood from his ear, or the flap of skin where his ear should have been. “Remember that. Anything is possible. So let me ask you another question. Was there anyone on the boat who had an unusual amount of access to your father?”
“Just me and my mother…” The Glowworm leaned in. “And you.”
“Yes, but you are forgetting. Was there anyone else who might have been allowed in your staterooms? To perhaps plant evidence or steal information … Was there anyone who was with you almost the entire time?”
“You, of course, are referring to my friend, Chris Gibbs.” The Glowworm swiveled in his chair and reached for the gaming console on his desk. He pulled it into his lap and seemed to pet it, like a cat.
“Do you know how many people aboard the boat were not interrogated by me?” Pablo held up two bloody fingers. “Dos.”
“Sure. I wasn’t. Chris wasn’t. But that was only because you ran out of time.”
Pablo nodded and glanced into his handkerchief, now sopped with blood. “I did run out of time. Someone helped your mother escape from her room. Do you know who helped her?”
“My mother saved us.”
“Not exactly,” Pablo said. “Who came to her first? Who helped her out of her room? Can you recall that detail?”
The Glowworm’s mind turned back to the day his father was killed. He lay on the floor of his stateroom. Face stuck to the carpet. There was gunfire in the hallway. Pablo had killed his father’s friend Raul. Then Pablo’s men moved on to another room and there were new footsteps and then the door to his room was kicked open … by Chris. His mother stood behind him, holding his father’s gold-plated gun. The moment Chris and his mother had rescued him had been a ray of light during the darkest time, and now he began to feel the ground under his feet shift.
“You are right. I had always thought she’d gotten him. But it is possible that Chris had gone to my mother’s room. And he led her to mine.” The Glowworm’s fingers absentmindedly clicked the power and eject buttons on the console’s face.
“And how many Americans were on that boat?”
The Glowworm looked lost in thought and oddly hurt, oddly human. “But he was my best friend.”
“Yes, I’m sorry to tell you this now. Chris was an agent of the United States.”
“But he was just a boy. We were just boys.”
Pablo shook his head. “He was not just any boy. I have every reason to believe that he was part of an elite American program to train young agents and assassins.”
“But how could he have gotten to my father’s stateroom? He was locked in his berth on the other side of the boat.”
“Excellent question,” Pablo said, now feeling like he could see a possible way to survive this encounter and even live to brag about it. “And that is where I actually have proof. I have photographs that show exactly how your friend gained access to your parents’ suite. And how he gained access to the suite of the rather unfortunate fellow who had jewels planted in his room. As you know, I put him to death after we found the jewels…” He then added, “Perhaps somewhat hastily.”
“Where is the evidence?”
“In my home, on my computer.”
Pablo saw a flash of white as the Glowworm rolled his eyes in the darkness.
“We searched your computer. If there was evidence on it, my people would have found it.”
Pablo pushed back. “Then they missed it. Bring me my computer and I will show you.”
“My people do not make mistakes … twice.” The Glowworm settled back down in his chair, the slime that coated his body making a nasty squishing sound. He flicked his fingers, and someone left to fetch Pablo’s computer.
* * *
“Just bear with me,” Pablo said again, trying to find the proof he’d been promising for over an hour. But like most old people, he fumbled with anything digital.
The Glowworm, bored and doubtful, sat watching with the Nintendo console in his lap as the old thug opened and closed countless files in the mess of folders on his desktop.
“Ahh, I think this is it.” Pablo clicked on a photo.
The Glowworm squinted, as if mildly appalled at the sight of Pablo on his seventy-fifth birthday aboard a Russian yacht off Ibiza, holding a fishing pole, drunken smile, beer gut spilling over a tiny banana hammock bathing suit, gold chains, man boobs, silver
chest hairs so thick he looked like a bald silverback gorilla.
“Sorry. Wrong file again. Wait.” Pablo scrolled down a list of folders. “Here it is.” Pablo coughed and opened a folder labeled “Salt Stains on Hull,” which contained a series of JPEGs. He opened the first two, each almost indistinguishable from the other. “These files are digital scans of photographs taken in 1994,” said Pablo. “They are of the fiberglass hull of La Crema.”
“I don’t see anything,” the Glowworm said.
“Let me zoom in. We need to look closer.” Pablo increased the zoom until very faint, tennis ball–sized circular salt stains and smudge marks became visible. He pointed to the first photo. “These marks were found on the side of La Crema ascending and descending the hull below the master stateroom where your father and mother slept.” He then referred to the second, almost identical, photo. “These other, matching marks were found on the hull on the opposite side of the boat where we discovered your father’s ring and other jewelry. Which proves to me they had been planted.” Pablo drew a finger along the edge of the stains. “See the circular shapes? These were left by a climbing apparatus that employed suction technology. Four suction cups—one for each hand and over the knees. The killer climbed like this.” Pablo mimicked suction-crawling up the side of the boat. “Your friend Chris used the cups to scale the side of the boat to gain access to your father’s room, kill him, and reach the other side of the boat to plant the evidence—the stone from your father’s ring.”
“Salt stains…” the Glowworm said, absorbing this information. “When did you find them?”
“The day after you left the boat.”
The Glowworm looked skeptical. “And how do you know they were not used by the man who was found with the jewelry?”
“Very good question.” Pablo patted the bandages covering his ear. “I did think that was possible, and initially these stains reinforced my belief that I had killed the right man. However, once we found this set of stains, we very carefully searched the rest of the boat and found these.” Pablo opened another photo. This one was of the hull as well and depicted very faint salt smears like someone had tried to wipe away the suction marks. “These marks were made just above the waterline below Chris’s room. You can see the salt trail seems to disappear the higher up the hull you go. We determined the boy used a sheet lowered from the window to try to wipe away the marks.”