“I don’t know,” Vince said, sighing. “I know it sounds stupid, but… everything that’s happened has just been so… chaotic and… just imbued with secrecy. Like why did my mother have all this information buried in a box in her backyard? Why was she afraid to talk about it? Why did she pull stakes twenty-five years ago and take me, change our names, tried to bury our past? Was she hiding from something? Running away from something, or somebody? I don’t know.” He looked at her. “And Frank. He just suddenly pops into my life, telling me I’m in danger and he knows all this stuff that’s happened. He knows my mom was murdered, he knows about Laura’s death, he’s been spying on my friends—”
“That’s the scary part,” Tracy said, looking concerned. “The fact that this guy actually poked around in your life. My life!”
“Exactly! I mean, he seems to be a pretty nice guy and all, and considering the circumstances of what he and Mike have told me and what I’ve found out, I don’t blame them. In fact, I feel good that you came up clean.”
“What do you mean?” Tracy frowned.
Oops. Vince tried to dismiss the blunder with a shrug. “Nothing. Just that Frank said that you and Brian and some of my other friends came up with clean records. You aren’t part of the all-sinister Children of the Night.” He chuckled, trying to make everything a big joke.
Tracy looked serious. “What if he’d told you that I was a member?”
Vince’s laughter dried up. “You’re kidding, right?”
Tracy shook her head. Her features had taken on a grim, stony-faced appearance. “No, I’m not. Suppose Frank had told you that I’m a member of The Children of the Night.” She cocked her head. “What would you have done?”
All the spit seemed to dry up in Vince’s mouth. His stomach turned into a ball of lead. “Um… I don’t know…”
“You don’t know?”
“I…” Vince was at a loss for words. Tracy waited for him to answer. Her persona had taken on a tone of deadly seriousness; she was no longer the flirtatious, laughing, sexy woman he’d met and fallen in love with. Now she resembled a dangerous, sly, secretive woman who was holding a winning hand.
“You don’t know what you’d do… isn’t that right?”
Vince nodded. “I guess not.” He searched her face for some tell tale sign of the Tracy that he knew.
Finally, she smiled. “Scared you, didn’t I?”
Vince relaxed, feeling as if a sudden weight had just been taken off his shoulders. “Jesus, Tracy, you scared the hell out of me!”
Tracy laughed. “I got you good, didn’t I? You didn’t know what to think!”
Slightly embarrassed by having scared the crap out of him, and slightly imbued with playfulness, Tracy didn’t resist as Vince wrestled her onto her back. She squealed. “Hey, wait a minute, I was only kidding!”
“Only kidding?” Vince tickled her sides. Tracy howled with laughter. “Only kidding? How’s this for kidding, huh?”
Vince tickled Tracy’s side and under her chin as she laughed and playfully slapped his hands away. The tenseness that had been present between them when Tracy suggested that she was a cult member was gone now. Vince caught her flailing wrists and pinned them down to the mattress above her head. Tracy’s eyes flared. “Oh, you domineering man, you!”
Vince laughed and kissed her.
The kiss led to other things. When those other things ended thirty minutes later they reclined again against the headboard. They lay atop the sheets, the sweat cooling from their bodies amidst the air conditioning. Vince swallowed some water from the bottle of Evian on the nightstand. “Can I ask you something?” Tracy asked. He looked at her. “Seriously?”
Vince nodded. He capped the bottle and replaced it on the nightstand. “Sure.”
“Suppose Frank did come back and say I was a cult member? Suppose he did it to keep you away from me due to his… his paranoia?”
Vince thought about it. She had a point. “I don’t know if I would believe him.”
“I would hope not.”
Vince laughed. “Really, Tracy, I’d have to make him see the error of his ways. I mean, if you were a cult member why would you seduce me and lead me on like this?”
“As part of some grand scheme to get you back into the group?”
Vince shook his head. It was bullshit, but in a way it made sense, too. It would be the kind of answer Frank would give him. “There’d be no arguing with him I guess,” he said, regarding her calmly. “Then I’d know he’s a nut. Especially if he claimed Brian was a cult member, too.”
Tracy rolled her eyes. “Oh yeah, Brian Denison, mister atheist. Guy who has no time for religious lunacy in any way, shape, or form. That would be a big giveaway.”
Vince chuckled. “Of course you and Brian are pretty similar. If Frank thought you were a cult member I’d know he was full of shit. I know you; he doesn’t.”
“And you don’t think your theory is full of shit?”
“What theory?”
“The one you just told me,” Tracy said, looking serious. “That you think you’re their Anti-Christ.”
So this was where Tracy’s tactics were leading. Suddenly Vince saw his theory for what it was worth. A fragile notion perpetuated by his own rising sense of fear and confusion over the chain of events that had taken place over the past few weeks. A notion helped along by good old-fashioned paranoia. “Well, now that you put it that way,” he said.
Tracy’s mouth was set in a smirking grin. “See? You can see the error of your ways!”
Vince laughed. “I guess I can.”
Tracy smiled. She took his hand in hers. Vince smiled back at her and the look in her eyes told him that she supported him and believed in him. And in knowing that, he began to believe in himself.
FRANK WAS TYPING the week’s diary entries into his journal when his cell phone rang.
He’d spent thirty minutes on the phone with his literary agent, Peter, who reported that everything was fine with Brandy and the kids. Naturally they were worried and missed him, and Frank had assured Peter that what he was working on was almost finished. He’d been assured his family was safe (“not even the IRS knows where they are, Frank,” Peter had said. “You’ve got nothing to worry about.”). Frank had given Peter a message to relay to Brandy and the kids, then hung up. He’d been detailing the weeks’ events in his notes on his Compaq laptop when the phone jarred him out of his thoughts.
He groped toward it automatically. “Yeah.”
“Frank!” At first Frank didn’t recognize the voice. Whoever it was sounded panicked, frantic. “Ah, thank God you’re there Frank.”
“Mike?”
“Carol’s missing!” It was Mike and he sounded scared to death. His voice wavered on panic. “The place is a mess and… and there’s blood everywhere!”
Frank felt himself grow light headed with shock and he had to force himself to stay calm. “Okay, what happened?”
“I don’t know.” Mike panted, as if he were out of breath. “I got home and saw that Carol’s car was in the driveway so I figured she was home. And when I got in…” His voice strained, on the verge of trembling into sobs. “…the place was… was trashed! And it… it…” He began to stammer.
“Calm down,” Frank urged.
“She just wasn’t there!” Mike cried, and now he was crying. He didn’t heave great wracking sobs, but Frank could hear the tears in the man’s voice. “The place was ransacked and she’s gone!”