“Stop,” Yuri ordered.

  The Cowboy stared at him.

  “You’re asking him how everyone escaped?”

  A nod.

  “Was he one of those who escaped?”

  A slight head shake.

  Yuri chose his next words carefully, balancing the rage he felt with the very real fear that the Cowboy could shoot out his heart in a fraction of a second. “If he knew how everyone escaped, wouldn’t he be out there with them, running away?”

  The Cowboy said nothing.

  “Go,” Yuri held out his open palm. “Find them all.”

  The Cowboy hesitated, then handed Yuri the prod and left the car.

  Yuri made a huge fist—

  —and hit the wall, putting a dent in the metal. He stared at the blood, sprouting out of splits in his knuckles, and then tucked the prod under his armpit and patted down his jacket, locating his pipe.

  Smoking during work hours was unwise. Yuri tried to keep his opium habit restricted to the early morning hours, to help with the nightmares. But this unfortunate setback was a reasonable excuse.

  He took a puff. Then another.

  Calm settled over him like a blanket, tucked in by a loving mother that Yuri had always imagined, but never known.

  He regarded the prisoner. Terrified. Half-starved. In obvious pain.

  “I have been where you are, comrade,” Yuri said, placing his large hand on the man’s head. “Sometimes we are the spider. Sometimes the fly. It is always better to be the spider. But… I was the fly once. The things they did to me.” Yuri wiggled the cattle prod and snorted. “This is like a child’s toy, compared to what they did. Would you like to know how I got away?”

  The wide-eyed man stared blankly.

  “After weeks of unspeakable torture, I was able to bribe one of my captors. My entire life savings. Every ruble I ever stole while working on the death squad. Over one and a half million rubles. Seven hundred thousand, in American dollars. That pig took it all, in exchange for letting me escape.”

  Another puff.

  “I will confide in you, my friend. When I had money, I lived well. Three apartments, a woman kept in each one. Cars. The latest electronics. I had the huge, flat screen television, larger than the President’s, and every Pixar movie on the Blu Ray Discs. A Bug’s Life, you know this movie? Wonderful American computer-generated comedy movie. I confess, I always sympathized with the grasshoppers.”

  The captive appeared confused.

  “I shall get to the point. I was the fly, trapped in the spider’s web. I bribed the spider. That is how I got away. So I ask you; do you have seven hundred thousand dollars?”

  The man just stared.

  “There is no shame in poverty. I was poor once. But without any money to bribe me, you must remain the fly.” Yuri shrugged. “It is the natural order of things. No man rises to the top alone. You must trample upon others, climb over their corpses, and kill anyone who tries to tread upon you.”

  “Mi llamo Pedro,” the man said.

  The man hadn’t understood a single thing Yuri had said.

  Yuri punched him in the stomach for wasting his time, then left the car and headed to the driver’s cabin to assist Dmitri with the search effort.

  THE COWBOY

  With Yuri and Dmitri staying on the LeTourneau, that leaves seven men, plus the Cowboy, to catch the fifteen escapees.

  With the exception of the Cowboy, nobody openly carries a gun. It’s a rule Yuri insists on to make sure that no slave ever gets hold of a firearm. Yuri does have guns, in a heavy duty lockbox with a combination (can’t steal keys to a combination lock), but they aren’t normally needed for apprehension.

  Instead, hunting down prisoners uses a decidedly Planet of the Apes approach, with a modern twist. The guards wield nets and animal control catch poles with wire loops on the ends, tasers in the tips. Rather than horses, they ride ATVs.

  After passing out earpieces and doing a quick radio check, the Cowboy climbs on a quad vehicle behind Leonid, a short, thick man who bears a slight resemblance to Herb Benedict’s companion. The one the Cowboy shared an intimate moment with, in the Punishment Room.

  The one who outshot the Cowboy using only a derringer.

  That derringer man is intriguing. His background is no doubt military, probably elite spec ops; Green Berets, Rangers, Delta Force. Perhaps a SEAL. He’s short, the right height for submarine duty.

  But there’s something more to him, other than his obvious skills. That man has secrets. A dark, mysterious past. Beneath the hard shell, the Cowboy senses a deep, permeating sadness.

  The Cowboy wants to know more. And the best way to learn about a man is to hurt him until he breaks.

  The idea is arousing.

  The Cowboy is mostly asexual, due to a combination of past history, unfortunate circumstance, and certain physical issues. But the hormones still occasionally churn, and the Cowboy has the ways and means to take care of those needs while at home.

  For this, and other reasons, there have never been any sexual improprieties at work. There are whole swathes of Snuff-X that focus on rape and genital torture, and certainly that will be a part of Usher House 2.0 when it is up and streaming. But the Cowboy never mixes the high of causing pain with the thrill of orgasmic pleasure.

  That is, until meeting the derringer man.

  And now, the derringer man is missing.

  And the Cowboy doesn’t even know his name.

  Riding bitch on the ATV seat, holding Leonid’s stocky torso tight, the Cowboy orders the team to move out.

  “Nearest target, three hundred ten kilometers north northwest,” Dmitri says over the headphones.

  “We want to start with the farthest targets,” the Cowboy tells him. “If we begin with the closest, the others could get out of range.”

  “Da. Yes. Farthest is… two point two kilometers southwest.”

  The Cowboy gives Leonid a squeeze. “We’ll take that. The rest of you, divvy up the next three.”

  Leonid hits the gas.

  The night is cool and bright. A Waning Gibbous Moon, the centerpiece of a rhinestone patchwork of stars, makes it possible to see for several meters even without the headlamp. As they near the fleeing prisoner, Dmitri micromanages their approach (north, now east a bit, more north, twenty meters ahead), and then they see the man, running ahead, staring back over his shoulder with crazed, wide eyes.

  It isn’t the derringer man.

  Leonid races alongside, then cuts him off, and when the prisoner gobbles the ground the Cowboy dismounts with the catch pole in hand. After two feints, the Cowboy loops the wire over his head, cinches it, and gives him a taser jolt. As the volunteer flops around, Leonid walks over and applies some zip cuffs, and then the Cowboy attaches the swivel on the catch pole’s handle to the bracket on the back of the ATV. As the vehicle begins to move, the prisoner is forced to stand up and follow, or else be dragged by his neck and strangled.

  It will take at least twenty minutes to return the man to the land train, so the Cowboy radios Dmitri to see if there is anyone else close.

  “Two targets. Stationary. Five hundred ten meters west of you.”

  Is it the derringer man? The Cowboy wonders.

  Please let it be the derringer man.

  The Cowboy takes the extra catch pole, two pairs of zip cuffs, and the casting net, and sets off on an easy jog.

  The easy jog quickly becomes labored. The Cowboy’s stamina isn’t what it used to be, and crocodile boots, while undeniably cool, aren’t the best footwear for chasing prisoners through the plains in the dark. When combined with the constant pain that all the Tramadol in the world can’t ever fully mask, the pursuit becomes agonizing.

  But the Cowboy doesn’t slow down.

  Agony and the Cowboy go way back.

  “One hundred meters, northwest.”

  The Cowboy shines the flashlight at a compass—an old-fashioned compass with an actual magnet, rather than a phone app—and adjusts direction.

  “Forty meters. Targets still stationary.”

  The Cowboy kills the flashlight, and the painful jog becomes a walk, the focus on keeping quiet.

  Before seeing anyone, the Cowboy hears whispers.

  Extending the catch pole, hoping it is the Americans, the Cowboy creeps forward, slowly, silently, controlling every breath, controlling every movement, part of the night, part of the wind, closer and closer and—

  Spanish. They’re speaking Spanish.

  “No te muevas,” the Cowboy says.

  The men do not move.

  Which makes it stupidly easy to shoot them each in the head.

  Two more notches for the gun belt. But these two aren’t the two the Cowboy wants.

  The Cowboy wants the Americans.

  Wants the derringer man.

  Switching the radio back on, the Cowboy tells Dmitri, “Two attacked me. I had to put them down.”

  “Two volunteers down?” Yuri has been listening in. “We had better hit our production quota.”

  Recently, the white Russian has been becoming more paranoid. Less in control.

  “We’ll hit it, Yuri. Who’s closest?”

  Dmitri answers, “Six hundred ten meters, west southwest.”

  “Has anyone found the two Americans yet?”

  “Nyet.”

  The Cowboy feels a buzzing. A text message.

  TOMORROW LUNCHTIME.

  That’s soon. Maybe too soon.

  The Cowboy once again resumes jogging.

  It hurts.

  But pain can be compartmentalized. Managed. And unlike Yuri, who tries to mask his memories with opium, the Cowboy deals with the PTSD in a much healthier way. Prescription drugs can take the edge off the pain, aid in sleep, lower blood pressure, and relax the muscles. But there is only one true way to combat the memories of being hurt.

  Forming new memories, of hurting others.

  It’s a rather obvious, tawdry vicious cycle. The abused becomes the abuser.

  But it works ridiculously well.

  The one surefire way to vanquish all of the horrors endured in Usher House, is to create Usher House 2.0.

  It’s not revenge. It’s therapy.

  So the Cowboy presses onward. With the other creatures of the night.

  Hunting prey.

  JACK

  In the dream, Phin was taking Sam and leaving me. For good.

  “Stick to chasing psychos,” Phin told me. “You care about that more than us.”

  “Don’t leave,” I begged. “You’ll destroy me.”

  “You’re destroying yourself, Jack. You want to drag us down, too? We’re better off without you.”

  And then they left, walked off without looking back, and I didn’t chase after them. Because Phin was right. I kept making the same mistakes over and over, and I didn’t learn from them, and when I tried to change it was always half-assed because something always came up that put me back in the line of fire.

  After they left, I started bingeing on bread. Phin’s delicious baked bread. And I got fatter and fatter and finally so impossibly huge that I’m all of a sudden an elephant and the main attraction at a circus. Criminals from my past, horrible people who had done horrible things, are pointing at me and laughing and throwing things and I just stood there, fat and humiliated, and I don’t do anything. And my husband and daughter were in the crowd, and Sam said, “Daddy, is that Mommy?”

  And Phin said, “No, Mommy is right here.”

  And standing next to Sam, with her hand on Sam’s head, is…

  Pasha. A woman Phin used to date.

  Used to love.

  Younger. Prettier. Smarter. Kinder. More affectionate. And no doubt a much better lover than I am.

  She deserved him. And Sam.

  I deserved to die alone while the world laughed at me.

  And then some long dead, leering psychopath from my past spat in my face.

  Alex Kork.

  “Did you really think I was gone, Jack? You’ll never be rid of me.”

  She laughed, and I’m covered in her warm, slimy phlegm, and I finally opened my eyes to see Rosalina licking my face.

  Sleep-groggy, still disoriented and confused, I realized we were no longer moving.

  What a shitty night.

  All evening I’d been restless, unable to get comfortable, unable to shut my mind off, and whenever REM came it had been some variation of Phin leaving/Me binge eating/Shit I’m an elephant/Alex Kork is still alive/Phin’s cheating. In one of the permutations, I actually watched him make love to the impossibly beautiful Pasha, and he was staring at me the whole time saying, “This should be you.”

  Worst. Nightmare. Ever. If I believed Freud was anything more than a penile-centric misogynist in deep romantic love with his mother, I would have wondered if my subconscious was trying to tell me something.

  I sat up in Harry’s bed.

  Checked my phone.

  Phin hadn’t returned my call. And why would he? I hadn’t left any message.

  Checked the time.

  It was almost noon.

  Checked the GPS.

  We were in Nebraska.

  I redialed Phin.

  He didn’t pick up. This time I left a voicemail message, asking if Sam was okay, telling him to call me. I should have also said, “I love you”, but I didn’t. I didn’t, because in my dream he left me and cheated on me.

  How much sense did that make? How could I be mad?

  Seriously, I was an awful spouse.

  After half a second of hesitation, I decided that if I checked on him it would be out of genuine concern, not jealous paranoia. So I accessed Find My iPhone and tried to locate him.

  I couldn’t. His cell was turned off. According to the app, he’d turned it off hours ago.

  There were a dozen legitimate reasons why that could be the case. Maybe it ran out of juice. Or it broke. Got lost. Got stolen. He left it in the car. Sam was playing with it. Duffy ate it. The red ants in the back yard took it deep into their lair to give to their queen, and there is no signal in Ant World.

  Or maybe Phin was angry.

  Or maybe Phin actually was cheating.

  I tried to think like the rational detective that I once was, rather than the shitty wife I’d been since Baja. And I had been shitty. So focused on moving, setting up the new house, my new job, getting Sam situated. Phin and I hadn’t had sex more than a handful of times in the past six months.

  Shit. I couldn’t even remember the last time I blew him.

  What had happened to us?

  The question was rhetorical. I knew what the problem was.

  My macho, bad ass husband had gotten seriously hurt. Trying to help me.

  He’d been broken in Mexico.

  And instead of helping to fix him, working to restore his confidence, I treated him like a fragile porcelain doll. Because seeing him damaged was a constant reminder of what a terrible person I was, and how it was all my fault.

  And now here I was, making things worse. Once again hurting the people I cared about.

  But that was bad-partner thinking, not good-detective thinking. A good detective focused on solutions, not placing blame.

  We didn’t have a land line at the house. I could call my mother. She lived in a retirement community near us. I could ask her to swing by, make sure things were okay. But a call to Mom would mean telling her where I was, and that would be yet another person I loved that I had to lie to.

  But there were other ways to trace phones.

  From the other room came the yap-yap of McGlade in full patter mode. Must have been streaming again. I caught a few random words and sentences.

  “Closing in on the Cowboy…

  “Meeting the Sheriff…

  “Best friend, Herb Benedict…

  “Graphic nature will definitely repulse younger or more sensitive viewers…”

  Was McGlade actually going to show the footage of Herb having a tooth yanked out?

  Then I heard Herb’s screams, and had my answer.

  Any groggy self-loathing and jealousy I felt was cast away by a wave of anger. Then my anger was tempered by reality. As much as I wanted to give McGlade a lecture, I didn’t want to do it on a live webcast. Heckle and Jeckle might have promised to hide my face and disguise my voice, but I guessed that required some technical set-up and couldn’t be guaranteed to work on the fly.

  So I kept quiet and hidden in the bedroom, until I heard Harry do his closing.

  “…our next episode of Private Dick Live and Streaming In Your Face. I’m Harry McGlade. Keep your lights on and your doors locked.”

  I exited the bedroom, ready to raise hell.

  “Hiya, Jackie. You missed an epic webisode. What’s our views at?”

  Heckle checked his laptop. “Two point six million.”

  Harry whistled. “That’ll pay a few bills. How are the t-shirt sales going?”

  Jeckle checked his laptop. “Eighteen.”

  “Eighteen? That’s it? J-Dawg, wouldn’t you buy a shirt that says Get Streamed In The Face? They’re only forty bucks each.”

  I stared at him, crossing my arms over my chest.

  “How about a thong? Assuming you were younger and slimmer. How many thongs have we sold?”

  “One,” said Jeckle.

  McGlade made a face. “Only one? Is that the one I bought?”

  Jeckle nodded.

  “How many baby jumpers?”

  “Zero the Hero,” said Heckle.

  “Zilch? What about the mugs that say I Wake Up To A Private Dick Streaming In My Coffee?”

  “Attila the None,” said Jeckle.

  Harry rubbed his stubble. “Maybe we need to rethink our merch selection. Broaden our horizons. How about one-of-a-kind stuff? I know a rock star who paints. He’s good. Sells art like crazy. J-Dawg, would you buy an original Harry McGlade painting of me, streaming all over your face?”

  “You aired that footage of Herb,” I stated.

  McGlade nodded. “Gotta show the stakes. Viewers need to see the asshole we’re taking down.”

  I moved toward him, in what must have been a menacing way, because Harry’s eyes went wide and he leaned back in his chair to get some distance.