Pretty Nightmare (Creeping Beautiful Book 2), page 30
But that’s what he is doing.
I’m not sure who’s gonna live over there. McKay and I sleep in my room now and Indie and Nathan have taken his. Maggie is right where she belongs in Indie’s childhood bedroom.
So none of us need a house across the duck lake. I’m fairly certain Indie will not want to live there, even if Nathan does. So I’m equally as sure that it’s not going to happen.
Maybe he’s building it for Donovan?
Maybe he’s just… keeping busy? Doing something to take his mind off the fact that our best friend is insane and in a coma. And if he ever recovers, he might try to kill us.
Maggie is over there ‘helping him’ and I recall all those days gone by when it was Indie out there giving McKay a hand.
Nathan and Indie are trying to figure out their past. They sit out there on her swing in the pavilion and go over it every day. She’s still not sure what was real and what wasn’t.
But only one thing really matters as far as I’m concerned.
Nathan St. James is Maggie’s father. Bolton has a colleague at Ole Miss who runs the molecular biology department so he sent in a DNA test for Maggie and Nathan and it came back a match.
Two weeks ago, I’d have been upset about that. But now I think I might’ve lost my mind if he wasn’t Maggie’s father and Carter was.
I turn away from the window and walk back into my office. Take a seat at my desk and stare down at the packet of papers I found in my twin brother’s grave.
It almost makes sense.
Most of it does.
I think my father was a friend to Nathan’s grandfather. Otherwise known as Nikos Szabó.
I think my father helped save Nathan. I think… maybe… I regret getting him killed.
I think I would’ve liked to hear his real story. Hear about my twin, who is missing. There is no baby-boy body in our family mausoleum.
I think I would’ve liked to know why he took me out of the Zero Program. Why he bought McKay when it seems pretty clear to me now that he never really intended to go through with any of it.
I think I would’ve liked to know him, actually. The man behind the father. The one who did his best to protect me, even though I never felt particularly protected.
Then I chuckle a little under my breath. Because I’m fairly certain Indie would say the same thing about me.
I will never touch Indie again. Ever. Not even a kiss on the cheek. And neither will McKay. Maybe we’re not biologically related to her, but it doesn’t matter.
We are the only fathers she ever had.
I don’t really know if Mallory Machette and Sidonia Ameci are important in the big picture. Not even sure it matters. Because I don’t think these were my father’s secrets to begin with. I think they were Nikos’s.
So I put them to rest with all the other secrets I’ve come across in my life and just let them die.
But there was that envelope with Nick Tate’s name on the front.
I read it. No way I couldn’t. And it said a lot of things make sense and yet don’t quite add up.
My phone rings on the desk. Right on time.
Nick Tate is nothing if not predictable.
I tab accept and say, “I’m glad you called.”
“You knew I would.”
“So you heard?”
“I heard.”
“We’re out.”
“You’re not out, Adam. There is no ‘out’. There is a nest of little girls—
“Yes. I know. But they’re gone.”
“Gone. How? Nathan?”
“No. Not Nathan. We went up there to check it out and the entire house is empty. One can only assume Carter had a final back-up plan and they got swept up in it.”
“Then they aren’t gone. So no one is out.”
“Well”—I sigh—“we’re gonna have to agree to disagree on this one, Nick. Carter and Donovan are dead now, so whatever was going on, it’s probably over.”
“So you say. It’s all pretty convenient.”
“Which part?”
“All of it. But especially the part about Donovan and Carter. It’s too bad they died.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because we’re a little short on PSYOPS people these days.”
“Still got you, right?”
I can hear him smile on the other end of the phone. “You are well aware that wasn’t me. It was my double. He was the one who went through that training. And he was the one I needed to kill to make my escape.”
“Sucks to be you, I guess.”
“Tell me again how Donovan died?”
“Point-blank shot to the head.”
“And that little girl, Maggie, did it?”
“Part of it. Indie took a shot too.”
“Interesting.”
He doesn’t believe me. But I don’t care. I’m gonna play this last card and leave it at that. He will walk away. He won’t have a choice. “I know of another one.”
“Another what?”
“PSYOPS specialist. Goes by the name of Merc. You ever hear of… Merc, Nick?”
He’s silent on the other end of the phone.
“He’s a good friend of Sasha Cherlin’s.” More silence. And I know I’ve got him. “You should give him a call. Oh. Wait. I forgot. You can’t. Because you lied to Sasha when you made her kill your double. And you dropped your daughter off with her too, didn’t you? Can’t really come back from something like that. I get it though. If I had dropped Maggie off with my best friend ten years ago to protect her, and then she suddenly came back into my life… well. I’d have a hard time staying away after that. I’d ruin everything to be with her again, and I wouldn’t even care. All my careful planning. All those tears Maggie would’ve cried when I left her behind. All that begging she would’ve done to keep us together.”
He says nothing.
I lower my voice and whisper the next part. “You don’t get to be the hero, Nick. Not then, not now, not ever. You don’t get to drop little girls off with other people and make her an unwilling accomplice to your pretty nightmare of lies that broke hearts—and still hold on to your self-righteousness like it’s a goddamned war medal. That’s not how this is going to end, you hear me? You’re not the good guy here.”
“And you are?”
“I have never pretended to be good. Ever. I take full responsibility for what I’ve done and who I’ve hurt. And if you think you’re gonna use us the way you used Wendy, you better think again. Because I will hunt you down and kill you myself if I hear one small whisper that you’re anywhere near my guys, or my family, or anyone else I hold dear.”
“Kill me, huh?”
“We both know you’re not the legend everyone thinks you are. That was your double. He was the mastermind. You were nothing.”
“And yet… I’m still here and he’s not.”
“Stay the fuck away from us. And that includes Nathan. He’s mine now. Do you understand me? Mine.”
“You seem to think everyone is yours these days.”
“They are. There is a new king of the Company now, Nick. And it’s not you.”
He’s quiet for a long moment. And I’m just about to hang up when he says, “Whatever Wendy told you, it’s not the whole story.”
Wendy hasn’t told me anything. She won’t even answer my calls. But I’m not gonna tell Nick that. Nathan filled me in on this little Wendy and Nick situation. He didn’t know much either, but it was enough to know that Nick fucked up with her. He did something to her that she can’t forgive. And his final words are gonna be just that. The last thing he ever gets to say to me. “Well, it was good talking to you. Have a nice—”
Alarms start screaming through my house. Wailing, screaming alarms.
Not the security system. The ICU machines on the other side of the breezeway, which have been connected to the central sound system so we would know, anywhere in the house, if Donovan’s condition changed.
Then Bolton is in my office doorway and before I can put up a hand, he says, “He’s awake! He’s awake!”
Bolton leaves with a swish of his white coat and then it’s just me and Nick.
He laughs on the other end of the phone. Loud. Loud enough for me to hear him over the screaming of the ICU machines.
The alarms cut off just as quickly as they started.
Nick is still laughing. “You almost had me, Adam. You sneaky little fuck. You almost had me.”
And then the call ends with three quick beeps.
Please join me in my Facebook fan group for a chance to win special prizes, get in on the Queen Bee Book Boxes, and hang out with me and my friends.
If you have not yet started the Rook & Ronin series (and you like this storyline and want to know where it all started) you should do that now.
The first two books are FREE.
END OF BOOK SHIT
Please join me in my Facebook fan group for a chance to win special prizes, get in on the Queen Bee Book Boxes, and hang out with me and my friends.
Welcome to the End of Book Shit. You know what this is so I’m just going to get to it. Quick reminder - this part is never edited so you will probably find typos.
I think we can all agree that 2020 has been a super-weird year so far and when I started this Company storyline back in 2013 with the book “Slack” (now part of the Ford book) never did I ever imagine that we’d be in the middle of a worldwide pandemic that had the fictional Company fingerprints all over it. I mean, who needs these books about these crazy Company people when we have real life, right?
Obviously I write books about the Company because I find the idea of a shadow government that controls, not just the United States, but the entire world, to be fascinating.
I remember liking that Bridget Fonda movie, Point of No Return back when I was a kid. And The Professional, with a very small, but formidable, Natalie Portman. There are a bunch of others out there. LOST comes to mind. I was really in to that show. And of course, every movie or TV show where the government and the corpos are in evil collusion together, Mr. Robot, anyone?
I just enjoy puzzle stories like that where you never quite know who the bad guy is and then, eventually, you figure it out, but he’s really the good guy—at least as far as you’re concerned.
But the thing that really intrigues me, and this is one of the reasons I started this storyline, was the idea that there are certain people in this world WHO LIVE OUTSIDE OF IT.
Maybe they are hackers or thieves?
Or soldiers who saw too much and have too many skills?
Or rich, powerful families that 99.999999% of us can’t even TRY and relate to?
Or maybe they were just in the wrong place at the wrong time and saw more than they should?
Or perhaps they are like Nick Carraway in the Great Gatsby and just, by accident, know someone who is one of these people and they get caught up in the fever dream?
Or maybe they grew up in a cult and there is no fucking way in hell they will ever fit into society?
These are the people I like to write about. These “outsiders” who see the shadow. Who notice that it’s not moving right. It doesn’t look right. And they see this when others can’t because, through some twist of fate or bad accident, they’re a part of it.
Maybe a small part, maybe a big one. It doesn’t matter. Once you look past the shadow and see the darkness underneath, you can’t go back.
When I wrote Tragic I knew Rook was in some bad shit. The details would all come later. But I based the spine of the series plot on the movie Ocean’s Eleven. A team of people who were so coordinated, and smart, and sneaky, and talented, and patient that they could pull off the heist of the century and get away with it.
Anyone can steal things, right?
But not everyone can get away with it.
That’s what I set out to do when I wrote Rook & Ronin.
But then Sasha Cherlin and Merc showed up in Slack and the little world I had created in Fort Collins, Colorado suddenly went global. And that’s when the Company was born.
Things kinda spun out of control after that. The story took on a life of its own and more and more characters appeared with even darker and more nefarious backgrounds to consider.
And it’s fun, as a writer, to try and piece all these things together and come up with—wait for it—a conspiracy theory!
It’s just fun.
So I was in to it.
But I didn’t start questioning any of it until I wrote Meet Me in the Dark.
If you’ve read that EOBS you know how much research I did and you know I was disturbed by it all.
The reason it’s so disturbing is because a lot of the mind control stuff I’ve written about is actually true. The US government admits it. This brainwashing shit—this PSYOPS shit—this actually happened. They destroyed most of the records in the Seventies—most likely all the of the really nasty shit—but the documents that survived—mostly financial statements and boring things like that—were enough to corroborate what that program was doing, and then, of course, they admitted it. And that program was brainwashing people. i.e.—they were being PSYOPS’ed.
When I started Merc’s book I didn’t even know what MK Ultra was. I mean, maybe I had heard of it? Maybe? In a movie—I did love that movie with Mel Gibson, Conspiracy Theory. But was I paying attention to the details? I will go ahead and admit to you right now, I rarely pay attention to any details. Just ask Johnathan McClain how often I forget shit. Even shit I write. It drives him crazy. But he has learned to live with, and maybe even love, my brand of insanity.
So no. Even if I had heard of MK Ultra, I was paying zero attention to it.
But of course I have this really active, cool imagination and I’ve seen a lot of these “conspiracy” type movies, and I did read The Da Vinci Code, bitches! And fun fact, Ancient Aliens is my most favorite show of all time and I’m kinda jealous of Jason Bourne’s hidden abilities that enable him to MacGyver his way out of pretty much any sticky situation in any country on Earth, all while speaking the native tongue!
Plus, I was a child of the Seventies so I was there for Watergate and the aftermath of the Vietnam War and my father was a golf-pro hippy living in Lake Tahoe with friends in Big Sur, and had books on his shelf called Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and In Watermelon Sugar sooo… ya know. I was kind of born into this weird counter-culture, but at the same time didn’t quite live in it because my mother is totally normal and boring and I lived with her most of the time after my parents divorced.
So HELLO!
I’m like… not a newb at this shit. This is Hollywood. This is the ramblings of crazy people. This is fiction.
But for fuck’s sake… when I find out in 2018 that there’s this cult of weird child sex traffickers hiding behind a “multi-level marketing” company called NXIVM who brand women like they are cattle, run by some sick fuck called Keith Allen Raniere, who—get this—goes by the supervillain name of Vanguard—and this plot is almost exactly what I wrote about in 321 in 2015… what the fuck am I supposed to do but admit that not all of it is fiction?
And of course, in 2019 we learn about another sick-fuck sex-trafficker named Jeffery Epstein who runs some kind of orgy island in the Caribbean and all kinds of people we thought we knew and respected were on said island with him at one point or another—some of them many times—and then he mysteriously “kills himself” while on suicide watch in prison before he goes to trial?
Are you fucking kidding me?
Come on—who’s been reading my Company books?
Guys! Get your own plot! This one is mine!
Or not. lol
So anyway… yeah. It’s crazy.
Truth is always stranger than fiction.
But I love this world I’ve created. And I love the antihero. I think most of you know that already. I love the idea that some jaded asshole who has seen too much, and done too much, and knows too much, finally—FINALLY—grows a pair of balls and takes a goddamned stand.
Just throws the fucking gauntlet down and says, “You and me, motherfucker! Right now. Let’s go!”
We’ve taken lots of these stands on our little journey through the minds of the Company kids and their friends so far.
The list is long:
Rook
Ronin
Ford
Ashleigh
Spencer
Veronica
Merc
Sydney
Sasha
James
Harper
Nick
Jax
Blue
Ark
JD
Logan
AJ
Yvette
Jesse
Joey
Johnny
Alonzo
Tony
Vann
And now we’re here. With Adam, McKay, Nathan, Indie, Nick, and (hopefully) Donovan. But one can’t be too sure—I mean, Adam is right, after all. Someone has to die at the end.
All these people making all these stands adds up to one really long, amazing, web of beginnings and endings, and truths, and lies, and good guys, and bad guys that, when put in the proper context, create synergy.
Something bigger together than they were alone.
I saw a review for Creeping that said it was too complicated.
I reject that characterization.
My books are not too complicated for the right readers. The people who enjoy these books like complicated and if you’re not into the story the way they are, this book wasn’t written for you. It was written for them.
And if you’re one of them who is enjoying this ride, then I hope you’re ready for who comes next.
Not what.
Who.
Book three—titled Gorgeous Misery (no pre-order yet) will release in October 2020. There is a reason for the five-month gap and that reason is called Johnny Boston. (If you want to know where Johnny Boston fits into the story, read the cheat sheet after the EOBS).
We’re going to move locations in Gorgeous Misery and we’re going to get another point of view.
Nick Tate was right—there’s always another side to the story.
