Chapter One
It’s fucking hot.
Even though I’m naked, I’ve kicked all the blankets off in the middle of the night.
The sun isn’t even up yet, and it’s still blisteringly hot in the middle of the desert, somewhere west of Pinon, Arizona. I roll over on my back and try to blow air down my chest, letting the sweat there mix with my breath to cool me down a bit. It helps, but only when I’m actually exhaling.
The bed squeaks as I drop my legs to the side and hope I don’t end up with another fucking splinter from the ancient wood floors. My eyes fall to my Barrett, a long barreled rifle with an elaborate scope, which is propped up in the corner of the room, next to the bed. It is my constant reminder of how I ended up here. I stretch and moan a little before I take a quick piss and dig around for a clean pair of boxer shorts, my jeans, and a faded Jesus and Mary Chain concert T-shirt. Once I’m dressed, I go outside and check the level of gasoline I still have for the generator. If I don’t run a fan and only use the electricity for cooking and checking my email, I’ve got enough to keep me going another week or so.
Internally I hope that will be enough, but I know in the back of my head that it probably won’t be. I will have to make the one-hundred mile trek to a gas station where I have yet to be seen. Lots of people pass through the area on the highway several miles from here, but they don’t ever stop twice in the same place. Even if they did, chances are no one would notice, but I’m not one to take chances.
Before I can head back through the door of the small, two room house, I hear a magnificent sneeze followed by the thumping of four canine feet across the dusty ground.
“Come ‘ere, Odin,” I say with a yawn, and the Great Pyrenees lopes over to get his head scratched. Though his white coat is still pretty close to his skin, in this heat he needs another haircut. I wonder if I have enough juice to charge up the electric trimmers. If there isn’t, I’m going to have to do it by hand with a pair of scissors. Odin isn’t going to like it much, and it will probably end up looking like shit, but it’s better than overheating.
I fill his water dish from the pump outside and wipe my forehead with the back of my hand. There’s just enough light to see by as it streaks across the barren landscape while the sun decides to make an appearance. I do a quick look around, check the wires hooked up to the battery of the old Chevy truck in the back of the house, and verify they’re still connected. The wire runs the perimeter of the two acre property and would set off the vehicle’s horn if breached.
It’s not the best security around, but I’m supposed to be dead anyway.
I stretch out, do a few pushups and sit ups, then jog around the shack a few times before I head back in. Odin follows me back inside, and I take quick inventory of the place out of habit, not because I don’t know what I will find. There isn’t much to go over – a bathroom with rusted out fixtures, a kitchen area with a mini-fridge full of room temperature – that is, warm – bottles of water, and a small electric stove. The main room is mostly occupied by my twin-sized bed with a cast-iron frame, once painted white, but is now chipped and falling apart. Pushed against the wall is a card table with two folding chairs. There isn’t even room for a full sized chest of drawers or anything, so the small amount of clothing I do have is folded up in the drawer of a short nightstand. I showed up here with a single duffle bag, so I don’t have that much, anyway.
“Fucking paradise,” I grunt to myself.
Odin looks up at me and snuffs. He hardly ever barks but seems content to huff through his nose and occasionally whine at me. I’m not one to talk to the dog a lot either, though he is my steadfast companion. He’s eight years old, and I’ve had him since half way through his first year. I don’t know why I decided to walk into the county animal shelter that day, but he was with me when I left, and he’s been by my side just about constantly since then.
After making myself a peanut butter sandwich, I pull one of the warm bottles of water out of the fridge and drink it down. I stretch again, rub Odin’s wooly head, and grab the rifle before I go out to the front porch to sit in the rocking chair and watch.
It’s not like I really think I’m going to be found at this point – I’ve been out here in this Godforsaken place for a quarter of a year – but I don’t have much of anything else to do, and I can’t leave until I get the go-ahead to do so. Watching at least gives me the feeling that I am doing something because I find it difficult to do nothing at all. I wish I could read, but I tend to get very lost in a good book, and that would drop my defenses to a completely unacceptable level.
Just because I haven’t been found doesn’t mean I won’t be. I know this from experience.
I pick up one of Odin’s rubber bones from the corner of the porch and toss it out into the dust. He stands and looks out at it, wags his tail a few times, and then drops back down at my feet.
“You used to want to play fetch, you lazy thing.”
Another huff through his nose is all I get in return. I’m fairly certain what he means to say is it’s too damn hot for that shit. I sit and tap the run-down front porch with the toe of my boot as I rock back and forth with the sniper rifle across my lap and Odin at my feet. The heat continues to be oppressive, but there is at least the hint of a breeze in the air today. It’s still unbearable, but it’s a slightly better version of unbearable than it was yesterday. It’s a hell of a lot better than a bunker in the Middle East even without the breeze.
Lunchtime.
I fire up the generator and the stove to boil some water, add part of a box of pasta to the pot, and heat up some sauce. I let the fan run while I eat because the afternoon is just too fucking hot and I need a little temporary relief. The pasta is nicely al dente, but the sauce comes out of a jar and sucks. I remember homemade sauces from Rinaldo’s kitchen – his wife slapping my hand away as I tried to get a taste before dinner was on the table.
While I eat, I fire up the netbook PC and wait for it to acquire enough of a satellite signal to download my email. Odin watches for cues from me, but when he gets none he just drops at my feet with his head on his front paws. The fan shuffles the hair on his head around, and he huffs again before closing his eyes for a bit of a nap.
The electronic beep tells me my email has loaded. There is o
ne message from Pizza Hut, offering me my choice of any pizza with any topping for ten bucks – fucking tease that email is – and three additional, similar advertisements. I have also apparently won the Swiss Lotto four times, can obtain Canadian prescriptions for Viagra at a discount, and the President of a country I have never heard of wants to give me one-point-two million dollars from his off-shore account.
Nothing from Rinaldo.
I don’t delete the messages – I just shut the PC back down again.
I wash the dishes, put them in the cupboard, turn off the fan and the generator, and then drop back into the rocking chair on the porch. Odin wakes up and follows. He lets out a big yawn, stretches, turns himself in a circle, and then settles back down at my feet. I reach out and rub the back of his neck with the toe of my boot.
My eyes scan the horizon.
Sage brush, packed red earth, and dust devils.
I lean my head back and close my eyes for a moment. Visions of a cool, rainy alleyway and the sound of gunshots fill my head. I can see my own arm upraised and the barrel of my Beretta turned on its side as a man in a dark blue suit runs away from me. My arm jerks twice, and he falls.
“What the fuck, Arden? He wasn’t the target!”
“He was a witness.”
“But shit…Rinaldo’s not going to be happy about this.”
“I’ve done worse.”
Well, I thought I had.
Apparently killing the nephew or cousin or some such shit of Greco’s mistress pissed the guy off. Since Greco’s group was Rinaldo Moretti’s competition, the potential for an all-out mafia war was pretty high, which is why I had to disappear. Greco didn’t know who did it, but he was determined to find out, and it was better if I was just not around to be found. Rinaldo was ticked, and there had been a moment there in the first fifteen minutes of his stalking around in his office when I thought he was going to put a bullet in my brain, but he didn’t. Exile was the next best alternative. That was just after Memorial Day weekend, and tomorrow will be the first of September.
I open my eyes again and stare at one of the dust devils as it spins and jerks around for a minute before dissipating into the dry ground. I roll my shoulders one at a time and glance down at Odin, wondering how he can sleep while wearing a fur coat in this heat. I scan the horizon again, rather haphazardly.
Movement.