The Inner Circle (58 page)

“You don’t have a choice.”
 

Scooter pulls out his Blackberry, points it at me. “Can I get a picture then?”
 

I just stare back at Scooter, than glance at Nova when he finally pats me on the shoulder.
 

“So,” he says, “you ready to party or what?”

3

Nova drives me in the Town Car to the Bellagio. He doesn’t speak once. He just drives and I sit in the back, watching the bright lights and the people still awake at two o’clock in the morning, finding it hard to imagine how just five hours ago I was at my mother’s place for family dinner. It’s her monthly excuse to get me and my sister and my sister’s husband and their two boys together, so she can learn what’s new and interesting in their lives and subtly hint at her disappointment in my life, what with me being almost thirty with no boyfriend or solid job or even secure future.
 

God how I hate those family dinners.
 

As Nova turns up the long drive to the casino, I close my eyes and take a breath. Then we make it to the front and he stops and one of the attendants hurries over to open the back door.
 

I step out into the cool dry air of the Las Vegas desert. I smile and nod at the attendant, and in broken English say, “Tank you.”
 

I’m wearing a thin cashmere overcoat that comes down to my knees, and as I walk toward the entrance, as I enter the hotel and make my way toward the elevators, I transform myself into tonight’s character: a Japanese working girl, limited high school education, speaks very little English. Just the type of girl who knows what guys like to hear and feel and is willing to give it to them for the right amount of cash.
 

At the elevators a man in a suit approaches me. I can tell at once he’s not hotel security. The suit is Armani, much too nice, and the look he gives me is intense.
 

“You here for the party?” he asks, and I nod, my lips pouted, like I only understand half of what he’s saying. “Okay then, follow me.”
 

He leads me to one of the farther elevators. He has a keycard which he swipes and the shiny, spotless doors open.
 

“Go on up, honey,” he says, “have a good time,” and as I walk into the elevator he gives me a quick pat on the ass.
 

My first impulse is to spin around and pop him one in the face, break his nose, send him to the ground with his eyes watering and blood dripping into his mouth. But I let this impulse slide, remembering that I’m a professional, and I only turn, smile at him, give him a half wave until the elevator doors close completely and then the smile fades and I turn my hand around and drop all my fingers except the middle.
 

As the elevator ascends I step back and look at myself in the shiny doors. I open the cashmere overcoat to reveal tonight’s requested outfit. Black three-inch high-heels, white knee-high stockings, a green and blue plaid miniskirt, a white button up top that’s opened at the chest to reveal my cleavage. Not at all what I was planning on wearing tonight, but if a Japanese schoolgirl is what this bastard wants, a Japanese schoolgirl is what he’s going to get.
 

In my ear Scooter says, “
You alone?
”
 

I’m wearing a wireless transmitter in my ear, a tiny thing smaller than a pebble.
 

“In the elevator, yeah. What’s up?”
 

“
Listen to th-th-this Bazooka Joe comic I just opened.
”
 

“Scooter, I don’t have time for this.”
 

“
But I th-think it’s a good omen. It’s my favorite one, comic number twenty. Joe’s grilling and he says to his buddy, ‘Hey, what happened to th-the hot dogs? Who took the hot dogs?’ And in the next panel Joe’s dog is leaning against a tree, a toothpick in his mouth, and says, ‘It just proves it’s a dog-eat-dog world. Get used to it, kid.
’” He pauses. “
What do you th-th-think?
”
 

Nova’s voice comes over the line, saying, “
I think you need to quit bothering Holly so she can concentrate.
”
 

“
Yeah, I know, but don’t you two see the life lesson in the comic? It’s brilliant. And the fortune says it all: We know what goes around, comes around—if you send it, you better duck.
” He laughs. “
Isn’t th-th-that just perfect?
”
 

The elevator begins to slow before I have a chance to respond. I look up at the numbers, see I’ve made it to the thirtieth floor. The elevator stops completely. I close the cashmere overcoat, take a deep breath. Then the doors open and I start to step forward but stop when I see the gun pointed at my face.

ALSO BY ROBERT SWARTWOOD

NOVELS

The Serial Killer’s Wife

Five years ago Elizabeth Piccioni’s husband was arrested for being a serial killer. Her life suddenly turned upside down, she did what she thought was best for her newborn baby: she took her son and ran away to start a new life.

Now, living in a quiet part of the Midwest with a new identity, Elizabeth is ready to start over. But one day she receives a phone call from a person calling himself Cain. Cain somehow knows about her past life. He has abducted her son, and if Elizabeth wants to save him she must retrieve her husband’s trophies—the fingers he cut off each of his victims.

With a deadline of one hundred hours, Elizabeth has no choice but to return to the life she once fled, where she will soon realize that everything she thought she knew is a lie, and what’s more shocking than Cain’s identity is the truth about her husband.

The Serial Killer’s Wife
is a 80,000-word thriller in the vein of Jeffery Deaver, John Sanford, and Thomas Harris. It includes a special foreword by Blake Crouch.

“This is a scary, thrilling, page-turning, race-against-the-clock novel if ever there was one, with a true shocker of an ending. Miss this one at your own peril.”

—
Blake Crouch

Walk the Sky (with David B. Silva)

Things are bad for Clay Miller and George Hitchens.
 

For starters, they’re on the run from a posse out for blood. Then, as they ride through the Utah desert, the two come across the crumpled body of a young boy on the brink of death. The boy can’t speak, but it’s clear he’s frightened of something nearby. When asked what’s got him so scared, the terrified boy writes three letters in the dirt ...

DED

By nightfall, Clay and George are tied up in jail. They can’t move. They can’t speak. They can do nothing but listen to the boy, outside, screaming for his life.

Yes, things are bad for Clay and George.

And they’re only going to get worse.

The Dishonored Dead

In a not-so-distant future, the world has devolved and most of the population has become the animated dead. Those few that are living are called zombies. They are feared and must be hunted down and destroyed.

Conrad is one of the animated dead. A devoted husband, a loving father, he is the best zombie Hunter in the world. But when he hesitates one night in killing a living adult, his job is put in jeopardy. Instead of being outright dismissed, he is transferred to a program so secretive even the Government would deny its existence—and where Conrad soon learns a startling truth about how his own son might be in danger of becoming a zombie.

As living extremists become more emboldened and blow up a Hunter Headquarters, as a power-hungry Hunter becomes more enraged and will stop at nothing to gain absolute power, Conrad begins to question not just his profession, but his own existence. And before he knows it he is on a journey of self-discovery, remembering a past he was forced to forget, and soon finding himself not only a hunted man, but a man who must now save both his son and the entire world.

The Dishonored Dead
is a 100,000-word zombie thriller that includes the 3,000-word short story “In the Land of the Blind,” which won 10th Annual Chiaroscuro Short Story Contest and was the inspiration for the novel, plus the 3,000-word short story “The Hunter” and a bonus interview with the author.

“
The Dishonored Dead
is simply brilliant, and its telling a superb achievement. Robert Swartwood has given us a wonderful twist, not only on the zombie novel, but on the dystopian tale as well. It’s like
Brave New World
meets
Logan’s Run
, but with a bite all its own. Strongly recommended!”

—
Joe McKinney

“
The Dishonored Dead
is one of the most original and gripping zombie novels I have ever read, offering a glimpse into the life of a zombie in a world turned backwards, where zombies live and humans are feared. Highly recommended!”

—
Jeremy Robinson

The Calling

When eighteen-year-old Christopher Myers’ parents are murdered, something is written on his bedroom door, a mark in his parents’ blood that convinces the police the killer has targeted Christopher as the next victim. To keep him safe, he travels away with his estranged grandmother and uncle to the small town of Bridgton, New York. And it’s in Bridgton that he meets an extraordinary young man who has come with his father to stop an unrelenting evil. Soon Christopher learns of the town’s deep dark secret, and how his parents’ murder was no accident, and how he has been brought to Bridgton by forces beyond his power—forces that just may threaten the destruction of all mankind.

The Calling
is a 100,000-word supernatural thriller in the vein of Peter Straub and Dean Koontz.

“
The Calling
is a powerful, gripping and terrifying novel, the sort that possesses your whole life while you’re reading it; it’ll stalk you through the day, and inform your dreams. Swartwood has delivered a novel that will become a classic.”

—
Tim Lebbon

“Robert Swartwood’s
The Calling
is a diabolical rocket sled of a psychological thriller. Told through the vivid, almost druggy point of view of a young man on the edge, tangled in a web of tragedy and surreal horror, Swartwood’s novel gets under the skin and stays there. Highly recommended.”

—
Jay Bonansinga

NOVELLAS & SHORT STORIES

Real Illusions: Stories

A mysterious man appears in town ... a man only children can see. A young boy’s heart does not beat ... just like everyone else’s in the world. A group of teenagers find an old woman in a cavern ... and a tunnel that leads to another dimension. Two boys on the run from an abusive father stumble across an empty farmhouse ... a farmhouse haunted by more than just memories.

As Robert Swartwood proves in his first full-length collection, illusions are all around us.

Some are real.

Some are terrifying.

Real Illusions
is 80,000 words long and contains ten stories (including the novellas
The Man on the Bench
,
Through the Guts of a Beggar
, and
The Silver Ring
), as well as a special author introduction and story notes.

Phantom Energy: [Very Short] Stories

From Robert Swartwood, the editor of the critically acclaimed
Hint Fiction: An Anthology of Stories in 25 Words or Fewe
r
, comes a collection of twenty-six very short stories, ranging from the real to the surreal.

Phantom Energy
is 11,000 words long.

“The zip fictions of Robert Swartwood’s gorgeous
Phantom Energy
 are as much about silent spaces as the inky depths of text, cluttered as they are with the disturbing exhaust of endless afterthought. These are overly animated pixels, antic antics, hyper-real really real reality on the sly sent reeling into the intimate spaces between the blanking stars.”

—
Michael Martone

“The stories in 
Phantom Energy
might look like little windows onto characters trapped in strange other worlds; but read on, and you’ll find something magical happens — they turn to mirrors, and there’s you behind the glass.”

—
Ben Loory

The Man on the Bench

In the summer of 1922, nine-year-old Ethan’s only worries are chores, having fun, and keeping out of trouble.

But a shadow soon falls over the tiny backwater town of Benton, Pennsylvania that threatens to change everything.

First the cats disappear.

Then the little girls.

After that, the real horror begins.

The Man on the Bench
is a 24,000-word coming-of-age story in the vein of Stephen King and Robert McCammon.

“I absolutely loved
The Man on the Bench
. It was wondrous, intriguing, sweet, scary, surprising ... everything a good story should be.”

—
David B. Silva

Spooky Nook

A writer whose wife has been missing for eight months encounters a familiar old woman with an odd request—a request that will introduce him to a surprising evil.