“Times can change, little one.”
Samantha let go of Terrier’s finger, and her shoulders slumped. As she walked toward the kids’ room, she didn’t look back at Terrier.
Times have to change, Terrier thought. I’m not going to let them get away with it anymore. I wish Ryder was here. She’d know what to do.
Chapter Eleven
“What happened?” Massimo asked.
Kelvin was out of breath and distressed. “Scott’s been murdered. His wife Annie came screaming into the Old Dog after finding his body. I went to their house.” He shook his head. “There was so much blood. I’ve never seen anything like it before.”
Massimo was shocked by what he heard. There had never been a murder or any kind of real violence in Pinewood.
“I want to see the body,” Massimo said, and Kelvin’s face went white. “You don't have to go inside. Just lead the way.”
Kelvin frowned. “I’m fine, Massimo. It was just a shock.”
“Do you know who did it?”
“No.”
There was a pause as the men tried to think about every person that lived in the town. No obvious suspects jumped out at him.
“Did you have a fire?” Kelvin asked.
“Just a small one,” Massimo said as he grabbed his English-style flat cap and headed out of the house with Kelvin.
“Where’s Leandro?”
“Out for a run. Did you need to speak with him?” He’d better not be thinking Leandro did it.
“I thought he could help,” Kelvin said. “People are scared.”
“He’ll be back soon. Has anyone new come into town?”
Kelvin shook his head. “I was wondering the same thing, but there haven’t been any newcomers for years.”
The men looked at one another. If it wasn’t an outsider, then it had to be someone from Pinewood, and it could be anyone.
The men headed to Scott’s house, and Massimo braced himself for the worst.
When Sergei and his hunters got to Level Four, which was their level, it was packed with other men milling about. In the chaos, Nestor took the opportunity to move into the crowd, away from Sergei. He needed to stop the voices in his head. They’d given him a pounding headache.
Nestor pushed past someone, who wasn’t too pleased. “What the fuck?” the man asked.
Nestor turned back to the man and growled, saliva dripping from the corner of his mouth like he’d lost control.
“Freak!” the man huffed as he walked away. He’d been called a freak before, but this was different. He was different. He felt it, and others could see it.
Nestor quickly scurried away and headed for the kitchen. He was so bloody hungry. He took the first tray he saw, with a slab of meat and some vegetables, but as famished as he was, he didn’t want it. Nestor looked at all the trays and then took the one with the rawest, reddest meat.
With his head down, he took a seat and started eating. It didn’t satisfy his cravings. If anything, it only made them worse. The noise in his head was louder now, sounding like relentless, wailing shrieks. It was like his head was filled with starving babies, and he couldn’t figure out how to stop their cries.
Nestor slammed his hands to his ears, trying and failing to block the screams. How could he? They were inside his head.
A heavy hand landed on Nestor’s shoulder. It was Yegor. “What are you doing?”
Nestor turned to face his oldest friend, but he didn’t know how to answer him without sounding nuttier than a squirrel’s turd.
Yegor shook his head. “You look like shit. Were you messing around with Ivan?”
“No, why?”
“Your lips, mate,” Yegor said. “They’re scabbed up like a day-old tattoo.”
Nestor ran a finger over his lip, and he felt the clotted blood there. He knocked a scab loose and it fell on top of his meat. He pushed his plate away before he got sick.
“I don’t know what happened,” he said.
“Well, get your ass up. You’ll look even worse if Sergei sees you in here, fucking about. We’ve got to find Terrier, or we’ll never hear the end of it.”
Nestor stared at his friend while the voice in his head screamed, bite him, bite him, bite that motherfucker!
Knuckles and Tank brought Ivan’s head to the third level, where the generals lived. They’d played rock-paper-scissors before coming into the bunker to determine who would get the reward, and Knuckles had won.
“Best of five?” Tank asked again as they made their way to General Murray.
“Nope, I won.”
General Murray wasn’t too pleased to see them. “You dumb sons of bitches! Did your mothers drop you on your goddamned heads? You’re not on Level Five now. We don’t walk around in our own filth up here!”
General Murray’s face was bright red, and froth was forming at the corners of his mouth. Knuckles and Tank didn’t have a clue why, since they hadn’t noticed the trail of blood they’d left in their wake.
Tank blinked in confusion. “We brought you a head.”
“I can fucking see that,” the general told them with a sneer.
Tank swung Ivan’s head toward General Murray, and a single drop of blood landed on the general’s neatly-polished black boot.
General Murray gritted his teeth. “Holy fucking shit. Does that severed head have more sense than you? Drop and lick my boot clean, you fucking embarrassment.”
Tank frowned. “I’m not gonna do that.”
“You can’t disobey orders, numbnuts,” General Murray said, pointing at the cameras. They were always watching. “And you won’t get your reward if you don’t.”
The general had played the role of “jerk” for so long that he had lost any sense of decency. The problem was, if he acted like a human being, his son Martin would be in danger. Afana and the advisors held the children hostage to control their fathers’ behavior. If General Murray crossed the line, Martin would be the one to pay for it.
Over the years, Murray had seen sons murdered for the crimes of their fathers more times than he could count. The general wouldn’t let that happen to his own son.
Knuckles and Tank were pissed at their superior’s command,
