And the Dead Shall Live by David Shawn Klein

Author:David Shawn Klein [Klein, David Shawn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Black Rose Writing
Published: 2024-02-22T00:00:00+00:00

They rode through the desert in a Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud. Jesse was forced to sit next to Fletcher, but that didn’t mean she had to talk to him. Or look at him, for that matter. Sasha, Maurice, and Troy had disembarked at Vegas quickly and without fuss, no one acknowledging what they’d been through. At San Bernardino, Durham had disembarked with a bow. “Nothing if not memorable.” At Palm Springs, Jesse followed Fletcher into a limo with blackout windows, forced to share the back seat, inches away from a monster. Houses appeared, and hotels and restaurants. They drove beyond all those, past beautiful private homes all clustered together, to the desert again, onto the driveway of a sprawling compound. Behind the house, a mountain faded into the darkening sky.

Apparently, it belonged to Fletcher. At the front door, he opened a panel, pressed his thumb onto a metallic plate. The doorknob gave and he pushed in, Jesse following tentatively. The house was spectacular, with high vaulted ceilings, wood beams, and a stainless-steel fireplace. “Fire,” he said, and the fireplace roared to life. The furniture was bamboo and white cedar over pilled beige carpeting. The stucco walls were eggshell white. The only color came from the flowers and a painting that hung unframed on the wall at the other end of the room, two huge melting rectangles of orange and red that outshone the twilight slowly swallowing the mountain out beyond his windows.

“You must know the artist,” Fletcher said.

“A knockoff of a Rothko you picked up at a garage sale?”

“A gift in lieu of a commission for brokering a deal,” he said with his small, unreadable smile. “Sometimes I bring a chair over and just stare at it until I lose myself.”

“Can you try losing yourself now?” she said, glancing around for a phone. When the cops dragged him away in cuffs for pushing Sky out of that plane, his eyes wouldn’t be laughing; then she’d see only misery and terror.

“Come on, I’ll show you to your bedroom,” he said.

Apparently, they were never going to talk about it. No excuses, no explanations. She was just supposed to forget.

He led her through the house to a small bedroom with two windows that looked out over the desert. A dress was laid out on the bed, a summer dress with large yellow sunflowers.

“Good old Christian,” she said. “Is he around? Or Doctor Death, your houseman?”

“Tomorrow I’ll explain your next assignment. For now, you have the run of the house. Pool, hot tub, game room, library. I have to make a call. The only room you can’t go into is my study.”

He left her alone, and she began searching her room for a phone. The small bamboo night tables. The dresser. The bathroom. The closet was empty except for a terry robe, a one-piece bathing suit, and a pair of pajamas. Christian strikes again.

She wandered his incredible house searching for a landline. It seemed she was his only guest. Alone with the monster and his Rothko and Waterford vases, his exotic flowers in the middle of the desert.

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