He slumped back into the driver’s seat without bringing up his pants. Sasha curled into a fetal position on the passenger seat and sobbed. Across the lake, a giant monster watched it all through a hundred glowing eyes.
2
The knock at the front door pulled Anthony’s attention from the eggs quickly cooking in the pan in front of him. Brendan was already up and watching a cartoon about two bunnies dressed as Mexican lawmen (complete with bandoliers) hunting for a third, presumably evil, bunny that had stolen a supply of carrots. The animation in the show shuttered like the light from a strobe and the show jumped from scene-to-scene at such a frenetic pace that the few times Anthony tried to watch the show with his twelve-year old, he always left the room before his burgeoning headache evolved into a migraine. And yet, Brendan could watch hours of similar-style animation without the slightest apparent damage. Except, of course, for the ADD, which, as good parents, he and Chloe tried to keep under control with the little white pills Dr. Carroll prescribed. Those pills were best taken with food and Brendan’s favorite Saturday morning meal was scrambled eggs and bacon, eggs cooked in the bacon fat.
The knock came again. Whoever it was standing outside on the front porch, their knock suggested neither aggression nor impatience; it was a simple declaration of presence. Even so, Anthony didn’t want to leave whoever it was stranded outside when that person could clearly hear the cartoon bunnies galloping after the evil bunny and shouting, Badges? We don’t need no stinkin badges in a mockery of a Mexican accent.
He thought of telling Brendan to answer the door but that was an invitation for trouble, something newspapers would tout in giant headlines after some escaped sex offender made off with Brendan after the innocent boy answered the door. FATHER TOLD BOY TO ANSWER DOOR. Father claims he was too busy “cooking eggs” to see who the stranger was himself. Now, the father is on a hot-plate of his own as accusations of bad parenting and suspicions of the father’s complicit role in the scenario play out across the country. Did Anthony Williams not only know his son’s kidnapper but actually broker the deal as a way to pay his mounting drug debts to a secret Mexican cartel? While the father denies ever suffering any kind of drug addiction, his wife, Chloe, 39, admits that Anthony was a heavy pot smoker in college and that behavior might have served as a gateway to more dangerous drugs and a secret addiction he hid from his entire family.
Would Chloe sell him out that quickly? A mother’s love was stalwart. For the drug angle to work, though, the newspapers would have to believe that a man who never takes anything stronger than aspirin could somehow get wrapped up in the underworld dealings of Mexican drug trafficking, and all from his humble home in Sky View Estates in Orange County, New York. If anyone was going to go under the microscope of drug use it would be Chloe. Her pills were best taken with food as well. She preferred her eggs sunny side down. How appropriate.
He pushed the scrambled eggs onto a plate and dropped three pieces of bacon next to them. He set the plate on the kitchen table and, as he passed through the family room, told Brendan to get his breakfast while the bacon fat was still hot and tasty.
Anthony opened the front door. A tall man in a black suit had his hand raised to knock again. He slowly brought it down to cup the Bible held in his other hand. His suit was freshly pressed and tailored perfectly to his thin frame. Another man, shorter, though bulkier, like a lineman, also dressed in a black suit, also well-tailored, stood next to the first. This man’s suit was clean, but wrinkles weaved over the pants and jacket like varicose veins. Nearly identical smiles emerged on their faces like the multi-toothed grins of sharks breaking the water’s surface to snatch unsuspecting birds.
“Good morning,” the tall man said. His black hair was parted on the right side and gelled against his scalp; the color matched his suit. “How are you today?”
The shorter man’s hair was also parted on the right side but he had used less gel and several strands of hair were blowing around on top of his head. Neither of the men’s smiles wavered. Sharks approaching for the kill.
“I’m making breakfast, actually,” Anthony said. “For the family.”
Both men nodded in sync. They were either robots or they had done this routine a million times and knew the proper responses intuitively.
“We won’t take but a minute of your time,” the first man said. “We’re here about an exciting opportunity.”
Anthony offered a sarcastic grin. “We already have a vacuum.”
“This is an opportunity to discover your lord and savior,” the second man said and held out a folded pamphlet showcasing a picture of Jesus on the cross with the crown of thorns digging into his skin and blood trickling down His temple.
Anthony should have known. Easter was only a week away, which meant it was prime time for Jehovah’s Witnesses to spread the Good News. He held up his hand and shook his head. The shorter man looked strong enough to break Anthony’s arm in one quick move, if he wanted. Did Jehovahs get angry?
“May we leave you with some reading material?” the first man asked.
Reading material. What a clever way to disguise the blatant flier full of Jesus-touting rhetoric. Was Brendan eating his breakfast yet or still watching his Attention Deficit Disorder-inducing cartoon? Delaney would be up soon—she had her SAT prep course this morning—and Brendan had his bowling league and Tyler would be rising from the dead soon, too. Would Tyler mention his date last night and if not was it uncool to ask him about it?
“I appreciate you guys have to do this and all,” Anthony said, “but we’re not interested in being witnesses to Jehovah. Thanks anyway.”
The second man did not lower the pamphlet and the first man’s smile did not waver. His dark stare betrayed that smile, though. Something lingered in those eyes that was not wholesome. Maybe the guy was pissed at him for not taking the damned flier, but it could be something else, something stronger than anger.
“We’re not Witnesses,” the first man said. “We’re from the First Church of Jesus Christ the Empowered. We’re not here to spout the old diatribe but to invoke the New Order. Jesus Christ is your savior and His empowerment can empower you.”
“Can He make breakfast for my family?” Anthony immediately regretted being such a smart ass.
The first man’s smile actually widened, showing off even more of his large, white teeth. Now Anthony knew what that emotion was stirring in those dark eyes—not anger, but malevolence. That sounded extreme, yes, but Anthony was so sure that something was off about the first guy, probably both guys, that he thought again of sensationalist newspaper headlines. CRAZED JESUS FREAKS SLAUGHTER FATHER, MOTHER; KIDNAP KIDS. Whether the recent brutal slaying of a family in a gated community in Stone Creek, New York, was the work of a non-recognized sect of Christianity or if the Jesus-themed pamphlets left in the piles of the victims’ blood was a decoy for the growing Mexican sex trade is impossible to tell. Police are as shocked as the neighbors of the family, though one neighbor remarked that she had seen two men in suits walking the neighborhood and was immediately alarmed. “I wasn’t going to open the door for them,” she said. “This is a gated community, so how did they even get past the guard? There was just something not right about the two of them. The father should have known.”
“I’m not interested,” Anthony said with more firmness. The radical newspaper headlines running in his head were ridiculous, of course, but that didn’t mean he shouldn’t be cautious. The world was full of horrible people who did horrible things and you never knew when one of those people would step into your life.