Visit jimheskett.com/seasonfive for podcast episode show notes.
__________
Want the inside scoop on each Layne Parrish novel, including info on how it was created and the inspiration for each story?
Want to read the first chapter? You’re in luck!
LAYNE PARRISH ALWAYS loved a good rumpus. Nestled in a cramped bed next to a little girl named Cameron, he flipped to the last page of Where the Wild Things Are.
“Daddy,” she said.
“Yes, little one.”
“Why did Max go home? Why can’t he stay with the wild things?”
“Because he missed his family.”
Cameron stared at the page, an illustration of the protagonist sailing across the water toward home. Pale brow creased, her face riddled with confusion. Thinking. Her eyes were kaleidoscopic puddles of blue crystal, glistening under the meager light of the bedside lamp. The young child readjusted herself on the twin bed, and Layne had to pivot his weight to keep from slipping over the side.
“He missed his mommy and daddy?”
Layne nodded. “He did.”
In his pocket, a phone buzzed. He slipped it out to find a call from an unknown number lighting up the screen. Unknown to the phone companies, but Layne had a strong suspicion who was on the line.
The same person who had been calling and texting him relentlessly for the last two days.
“Daddy, put it away. You said no more screens.”
“You’re right,” he said as he jabbed it back into his pocket. “Watching screens after dark makes our eyes cross, right?” He crossed his eyes and let his tongue loll out.
She giggled and poked his chest with a finger not much bigger than a toothpick. “Daddy, stop.”
Cameron traced one of her fingers along his arm, gliding across one particular section of the tattoos that covered it from wrist to shoulder. A cherub in the middle of his forearm, obscuring a gunshot wound from long ago. The cherub now appeared faded and blurry on his forty-year-old arms.
The phone squirmed inside his pocket again, demanding attention. A repeat call. This time, though, he ignored the eager person on the other end of the line.
“It’s time for bed,” he said.
She pondered this for a moment and then frowned. “Are the wild things going to get me?”
“You’re a wild thing,” he said, and his fingers leaped to her belly for a tickle. She cackled, writhing, and he instantly regretted it. Bedtime was supposed to be calm time. But he couldn’t resist torturing such an easy target.
“Okay, okay, little one. Time for bed, for real.”
She pushed out a breath, the remnants of tickle energy fading. Her lids were heavy, her motions thick, like a person wading through swampy water. She was an inch away from sleep. Layne anticipated no bedtime false starts tonight.
“I love you much, Daddy.”
He kissed her forehead as he drew the covers up to her shoulders. “And I love you much, little one.”
He sneaked across the room and rested a hand on the light switch. “I’ll be right downstairs, okay?”
“Okay, Daddy.”
Layne flicked out the light and stole one last look at her, a miniature head nestled on a Thomas the Tank Engine pillow. He closed the door behind him as his phone buzzed yet again. Didn’t bother to take it out.
Next, a knock came at the front door, downstairs. He paused for a moment in front of his daughter’s room to make sure she wouldn’t call out. No way she was asleep already, but maybe she hadn’t heard it. The excitement of someone coming to the door would turn bedtime into a circus requiring a whole new set of little kid cooldown routines.
She made no sound. No vibration through the door.
Layne held perfectly still until another knock came. He wasn’t unreachable in this small town, but he almost never had visitors. And never unannounced or after dark. The neighbors knew about bedtime policy and wouldn’t betray Layne’s evening ritual.
He hustled down the stairs, past the fireplace, and through the living room to the front door. Keeping his large body close to the wall, he eased toward the framed art print of a stretch of highway cutting across a Nevada desert. Three motorcycle riders blurred with speed, the stark highway underneath them rippling with heat.
After lifting that off the wall, he accessed the hidden vault behind it. He pressed his thumb against a small pad in the lower left corner. A moment later, it clicked and then opened. Inside were two Glock 19 MOS with Trijicon RMR sights and four extra magazines. He loaded a magazine into each pistol but left them inside the safe.
He inched toward the door and slid open a small cover on the other side, revealing a six-inch LCD panel connected to a video camera concealed above the front door. With squinted eyes, he tapped the screen to wake it. A hefty sigh then escaped his lips. A tall brunette with curly hair posed on his front porch, wrapped in a heavy winter coat. Shivering against the flakes of snow cascading down around her.
He gritted his teeth and shut the wall vault. Rehung the framed poster.
Layne opened the front door. “Hello, Daphne.”
“Let me in?” she said, grimacing. “It’s cold as hell out here.”
“It’s December at eight thousand feet. Obviously it’s cold.”
She strutted inside and hooked a heel to kick the door shut behind her. Spent a couple of seconds unspooling the scarf around her neck like a mummy unwrapping herself. “I don’t know why you insisted on Colorado. And not even somewhere sensible like Denver, but way the hell up here in the backwoods.”
“What can I do for you?”
She let her coat slip off her shoulders and crash to the floor. Layne did not miss the fact that she was wearing a formfitting business suit, one that amplified every one of her curves.
Daphne strutted around the living room, rubbing her hands together and casting narrow eyes at the decor in his house. It wasn’t much, but Layne didn’t care about decorating. He cared more about childproofing the electrical outlets and making sure Cameron had plenty of space for her toys, which littered the floor like grenade shrapnel.
As she glanced into the kitchen, she grinned at his refrigerator. “Still adding to your magnet collection, I see.”
Layne said nothing.
Daphne paused before a framed print of the Denver skyline hanging above the modest television in the living room. “What do you have to drink?”
He shook his head. “We’re not doing that. Why don’t you just tell me why you’re here, so I can politely refuse and send you on your way?”
“Aww, Boy Scout,” she said, mock-pouting, “you really need to work on your conversational skills. I haven’t seen you in so long, and all you have to offer me is hostility and bitterness?”
“You know when you drop a lobster into a cold pot and then slowly turn up the heat so he doesn’t know he’s boiling? That’s how this feels right now.”
Wearing a wry grin, Daphne sashayed across the room and slipped her hands around Layne’s waist. “This is a far cry from how you used to greet me after a long absence. Remember the Radisson in Houston? I thought we were going to break the bed.”
“I just put my daughter down for the night. She sometimes doesn’t sleep well at this altitude, so I would like to sit in my recliner and drink a Fat Tire while I read my book. After that, I’m going to bed, so I can be ready when she wakes up to go potty two or three hours from now. How can I hurry this conversation along so I can get to my alone time faster?”
She removed her arms and stepped away from him. “Fine, dear. I’ll get to the point. You’re needed for something, and it’s important. Give me two minutes, and I can lay it all out for you.”
He shook his head, feeling the familiar burn of a headache ignite behind his eyes.
“You’re not even curious?” she said. “Not even a little?”
“Nope.”
“You have to trust me, Layne. I can tell you most of it now and the rest when we’re at our destination. This operation is something that affects you personally.”
“I’m not interested. I appreciate you coming all this way, but it was a wasted trip.” He pointed up at the ceiling, toward the room where Cameron slept. “That’s the only thing that affects me personally anymore.”
“We don’t have time for this cat-and-mouse foreplay.”
“No cat and mouse. There’s nothing you can say to make me jump back into that life, and whatever is at stake here, you can get your own people to handle it. I’m done.”
Daphne chewed on her lower lip for a second, then sighed. “You’re making a mistake.”
“I can live with that.”
“Hundred percent, this is your final answer?”
He stared, stone-faced. Figured he’d said all he needed to say.
“So be it.” She dropped into a crouch to pick up her coat, slipped it on, and carried the scarf in her hand as she marched toward the door. Layne opened it for her, saying nothing as she exited.
When the door had closed, he stood there watching the LCD screen as she shuffled through the snow toward the street. A brief pang of guilt thumped his chest. That he should have agreed to hear her out, at least. She’d come a long way, and it couldn’t have been for no reason.
But then again, Layne didn’t do this kind of work anymore. He’d left that life behind years ago for something simpler. Something less dangerous.
He continued to study her tiny avatar on the screen as she reached the edge of his yard. Couldn’t see what car she’d arrived in.
As she shucked snow from her shoes, Daphne lifted a phone to her ear. Her head peeked back toward his front door as she mouthed some words into the phone.
He could see it in her eyes.
His finger jabbed the button next to the LCD screen to change the view. First it cycled to the camera at the side of the house, then to the rear porch. At two black-clad shadows, breaking into his back door.
Their footsteps padded across the threshold, into his house.
He spun around as he felt the first pinch. A jab in the side of his stomach, like a heavy-duty mosquito bite. His eyes flicked down to see a stick no longer than a match jutting from his shirt. An instant of wooziness struck him, and his vision filled with stars.
Through his living room, Layne could see two figures slinking into his kitchen from the back laundry room. Both were dressed head-to-toe in black, one man and one woman. The female had an arm extended, a device like a pistol in her hands. Stun dart gun. Layne turned back toward the wall safe next to his front door when the second pinch happened, this one in his back. Like a needle jabbed into his spine.
He wrenched a hand back to pluck the dart from his skin. Wobbling on his feet, not sure if he could keep himself upright for much longer. His eyelids fluttered.
The two figures in the kitchen continued to advance. Layne spun and raced toward them. He swerved along the way, bumping against his recliner. Could barely keep his eyes open. His hands felt like meat dumbbells hanging from his arms.
From around the corner by the fireplace emerged a third assailant, same attire. Layne pivoted and drove his shoulder into the man’s chest, knocking him back against the wall.
He noted one odd thing: aside from the stun dart pistol, they’d brought no other weapons.
Not here to kill him.
He ducked down and swept the nearest attacker’s leg, knocking the man off-balance and sending him to the floor. The third pinch hit him, this time in the shoulder blade. The world spun. His chest tightened while his limbs flopped, feeling out of control. Couldn’t raise his arms.
His eyelids wanted to slam shut. His body weighed a thousand pounds. He sank to one knee, a few inches away from the man on the floor, now incapacitated. Layne struggled to draw in a breath as the weight of his own frame succeeded in pulling him to the floor.
Layne rotated onto his back as he fell to the carpet. The ceiling swam, and his mouth lolled open. Two figures loomed over him, both of them wearing dark fabric over their faces. Layne made one last attempt to swipe at a nearby ankle before his eyes closed completely.
Then darkness.
Subscribe for your ears Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS | More