Hollow World (7 page)

The promising young detective stumbled over to one of the chairs in the middle of the massive, high-ceilinged lobby and collapsed within it. Leaning his head back against the soft cushion, he closed his eyes and breathed deeply. His visions were haunted by the image of Meghan’s tortured face from just moments before they’d entered the tunnel. The machine that was Charlie Walker was beginning to break down, spurred on solely by the fierce need to protect his family.

Leaning back in his chair, Charlie steepled his fingers beneath his chin and began to plan his next move.

Little did Detective Walker know, as he sat feeling sorry for himself in the lobby of the Wilderness Lodge, that he was being watched. The man savored the pain that the young detective had been displaying. He was breaking. The slump of his shoulders, the seeming inability to carry on, and the apparent physical exhaustion—all of these were signs that the current plans were far exceeding their expectations. Charlie Walker was now well within the man’s control, but there was much left in store for the detective. He was not out of the woods yet, so to speak.

Much to the man’s pleasure, Walker’s
mind
still worked like a well-oiled machine after everything he been through and all of the stress he was experiencing. He discovered the existence of the explosive device even quicker than the man had anticipated. The man was impressed; Walker was truly a force to be reckoned with, and it seemed like none of these unfortunate events had any effect on the detective’s mental faculties. Regardless, the detective would be tested one final time before he would be allowed to rest this night.

Cracking open a brand new bottle of extravagant glass-bottled water, the man leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes, mirroring the actions of his adversary. He contemplated the actions of the detective so far. The way he’d instantly complied with the man’s instructions and his obvious aversion to interaction with Disney Security proved that Walker was doing everything in his power to dedicate himself to the man’s game, unhindered. This pleased the man. While he had expected Walker to discover the explosive used on the bus tire, he had not expected him to
actively
cover up its existence. While unanticipated, this development was not unsatisfactory.

The man assumed Detective Walker realized that if he were to be detained by Disney Security, his possessions would be taken from him while his records were pulled and questioning took place. The Blackberry that the man had given Walker was his only link to his missing family, and if he lost that precious device he may lose any chance that might present itself to save his family. Walker would be willing to do anything to keep that phone in his possession.

The man was greatly impressed by Walker’s devotion, though he cared nothing for emotional attachment, viewing it as a weakness that could be easily exploited. Those anchored by emotional attachment were simply inviting the keen observer to easily take advantage of their nature. Though the man did not wish to profit from Walker’s immense love and dedication to his family, he was overjoyed to have been given such an easy opening to draw the detective in. Had Walker been a solitary person like the man, luring him into this challenge would have been immeasurably more difficult.

The man had never cared for another person in his entire life. He’d once had a family of his own but it was a necessary evil, a tool for advancement and a cover, of sorts. A man with a family is more widely accepted by the public. It allowed him to fly below the radar and execute some of his more legitimate business endeavors with little suspicion as to his true motives and behind-the-scenes actions. Had his family known the actual nature of their patriarch, things might have been different. His wife had known him only as a hard-working, caring person—until her ‘accidental’ death, when she had outlived her usefulness and her presence had started to complicate matters.

The man had chosen his unwitting wife specifically
because
of the qualities that he detested in her, for it were these traits that would draw unwanted attention away from him. He was young and, at first, it seemed like the perfect cover. What better way to disguise your true intentions than to so closely associate yourself with someone who stood for the exact opposite? For a while, everything had gone according to plan.

The man’s wife, Andrea, was a woman of the highest caliber of classic beauty, and had the heart and soul of a humanitarian. He found his wife’s physical attractiveness to be an unnecessary but not unwelcome perk, though the person she was inside had only made it all too easy for him to arrange for her untimely demise when this arrangement of theirs had lost its convenience—all beneficial aspects having exhausted themselves.

In their short time together, the insufferable woman bore him twins—a boy and a girl. It was an unexpected occurrence—unwelcome—and it hindered the man’s plans for his endeavors, ultimately forcing him to change several plans he had made concerning the immediate future. For a time, he considered raising the children himself after Andrea’s death. He had toyed with the idea that they could grow to become tools that he could utilize for his plans. His immaculate genes had undoubtedly been passed along to his offspring, and surely they would come of age bearing his unrivaled level of intelligence. This train of thought was derailed shortly after, as he realized that the traits of the children’s mother had also been passed down.

Ever the humanitarian, the children’s mother had been considered a ‘good’ woman, and the man was perpetually mortified by her constant need to help others who were less fortunate. Secretly, the man viewed these less fortunate people for what they truly were: the plague from which the Earth so agonizingly suffered. The only reason these imbeciles were ‘less fortunate’ was because they had allowed themselves to become so. There was no such thing as luck, divine intervention or a grand plan. A human being’s place in life was a direct result of their actions and decisions. The man was nauseated by the state of some of these disgusting people that his wife had so often dealt with. On the outside, he politely listened to their have-pity-on-me sob stories and feigned deep concern, while restraining himself from killing them on the spot and ridding the world, once and for all, of more unsightly pustules.

The man’s wife had never known what kind of thoughts truly went through the mind of her husband. She had never known that the man resented her lifestyle. She had access to all the man’s money, yet rarely spent a dime on herself. Her charitable nature constantly manifested itself through constant donations to various charities and ‘helpful’ foundations. Even after so many years, the man was forced to choke down the surge of bile that crept up his throat every time he thought about her. It was an idiotic way to squander such a well-deserved fortune as the one he’d gained for himself—gained
without
the help of these so-called Good Samaritans.

Finally, he had decided that these children—while half his—were also half
hers.
They were tainted by DNA that showed zero promise, and for this reason he rid himself of them. They had the potential to be great but he believed they would never utilize it, held back by their mother’s blackened bloodline.

The man did not kill the infants after their mother’s death—as he would have liked to. Instead, he gave them up for adoption, citing that his business-heavy lifestyle and constant travelling made him unfit to be a single parent—it was a weak story, but more than enough to convince the agency. He had still kept tabs on his children over the years and he watched them become adults and earn a unique character all their own.

For a short time, his son had shown a small inkling of the potential that he held within. Unfortunately, the boy was amateurish, savage, careless and guided by base passion rather than by logic and reasoning. Therefore, the boy’s criminal resume was full of the fruitless labors of small-time morons. The boy murdered in the heat of passion. He kidnapped. He raped. He tortured. He made grotesque displays of human remains simply to gain attention and strengthen his horrible reputation. These crimes were beneath someone of his intellect. Unlike his son, if the man killed or tortured someone, it was simply to further his cause. He didn’t necessarily enjoy it, and would avoid it if at all possible, ultimately because murder tended to be a messy and oftentimes irresponsible act. Rape, on the other hand, was absolutely detested by the man. The fact that his son had become infamous for the rape and torture of so many young women physically sickened him. These acts were those of the desperate, the idiotic and the insane. These were not the actions of the offspring of the world’s most brilliant criminal mind.

Luckily, the boy’s reign of terror had come to an end several years ago when he was thankfully killed. Granted, the boy wasn’t sloppy and covered his tracks well, but in some rare cases an individual comes along and is unhindered by these precautions, making the care you’ve taken unexpectedly inadequate. Ultimately, the boy was beaten, and for that he had disgraced his family name—preserving what little dignity he had left by dying before he could commit more senseless atrocities.

The man’s daughter, on the other hand, was an entirely different story all together. She was intelligent—
highly
intelligent—and her prowess impressed the man deeply, but grudging respect was all he had for this girl. She was not unlike her mother: strikingly beautiful, gloriously strong-willed and frustratingly insistent upon using her great mental power to help others—albeit in surprising and unexpected ways. His daughter had, to her father’s great surprise and extreme dismay, become a field operative in the Central Intelligence Agency. Imagine that! His daughter, a government agent—it was almost too ridiculous to be real.

The fact that his daughter had found an employer in the CIA had complicated matters extremely. The Company had immense resources along with the time and manpower to fully take advantage of them. The man was not so dense as to think that his daughter had failed to discover his identity. After leaving the orphanage, like her brother, she had retained her given name, as adopted children often do. Using the CIA’s resources to find her origins would have been simplicity itself, given even an hour’s free time. There was no doubt in the man’s mind that the girl knew who her father was, and also the things he had done. The man was sure his daughter had begun to suspect the real cause of her birth mother’s death, even if she had no way of knowing for sure.

The man was also positive that the girl had located her brother. The adoption agency had decided not to keep the children in the same household, and so the twins separated and went to different families in entirely different states. The boy went with a family in northern Ohio, while the girl ended up just outside Boston. The girl had, without a doubt, discovered the deeds of her father and brother.

The girl’s occupation was a double-edged sword. When she’d joined the Company nearly a decade ago, the man had been forced to cease his surveillance of her for fear of being discovered and apprehended. As it stood, the man had no reliable way of locating his daughter. The girl, however, could track him with ease. It was a loose end that he planned to tie up sooner rather than later.

Jolting himself out of his reverie with an involuntary shiver, the man refocused his attention on the screen, hoping the sight of the tortured detective could alleviate this black mood and return him to his previous state of euphoria. Walker still sat in the armchair with his head back and his eyes closed; he could have been asleep.

Deciding that the time had come to put an end to the night’s festivities, the man contacted the head of his operations unit, Brody Kinney, as well as Brent Masters. He’d specifically ordered Kinney and Masters to remain close to Walker throughout the night for precisely this reason.

“Gentlemen,” he spoke into his headset. “The hour is growing late. I believe our detective has had enough for one night. What say you accompany him back to his lodgings?”

The two men acknowledged their superior’s orders.

“His location should now be available on your GPS,” the man added, pressing a few keys to activate the tracking device in Walker’s Blackberry.

The man was sufficiently satisfied that the detective was mentally sound, and capable of being a worthy opponent in the oncoming challenge. He had other events planned for the night in the event that he still remained unsure about the detective’s state of mind, but he’d come to realize they were no longer necessary. Even after the events that the detective had been through, his mind was still as sharp as ever, matching that of the man stride for stride. While he’d canceled the other plans he’d had for the night, the man still had one event left in place for the detective that was sure to provide the entertainment he so desperately needed after the unwelcome memories of his family had come flooding back to him.

Relaxing in his seat, still listening to the beautiful classical music and sipping the expensive water, the man’s eyes were glued to the screen. He waited patiently for his men to present themselves to the detective and bring to him that which he had so desperately hoped to avoid: detention.

Marvelous,
thought the man, for he was a virtuoso—and the crescendo of the first piece in his grand symphony was about to be played.