67
There were worse places than North Dakota. At least Darnell Freeman imagined that there must be. As much as he hated the FBI office to which he had been assigned after the Los Alamos debacle, the idea that somebody out there must have an even worse assignment gave him some sense of solace. Someday he'd have to check the directory to see just what those worse places were. The only reason he hadn't done it already was the lurking fear that he wouldn't find any.
Freeman drove his car up his driveway and parked under the carport. He stepped out into the wave of summer heat. Shit. Who would have imagined that it could get so hot this far north? Even the sun sinking behind the western horizon, bathing the sky in red, had not yet yielded any relief. No doubt six months from now he would look back longingly on this heat wave, but right now it sucked.
Freeman found the house key, wiggling it around in the old door lock until the dead bolt finally turned. Another thing he was going to have to fix. By the time he had closed the door and made his way into the living room, Freeman had already removed his sweat-dampened shirt, tossing it over the back of the La-Z-Boy as he flipped on the television. Walking into the kitchen, he opened the old Maytag refrigerator, filled a glass with unsweetened iced tea, then turned back toward the living room and his beloved recliner.
The knife slid into his stomach as he turned. The shock of pain curled him into a fetal ball as the glass fell from his fingers to shatter on the kitchen floor.
A powerful hand arrested his fall, gripping Freeman by the throat and slamming him back against the wall. Too weak with shock to struggle, pinned by the knife twisting in his gut and by the hand at his throat, Freeman's vision narrowed. Into that straw's eye view a vaguely familiar face swam toward him. As the last of his consciousness faded, Darnell Freeman suddenly recognized it. The face of Satan, welcoming him into hell.
Releasing his grip, the dark figure let the rapidly dying FBI man slip to the floor, then bent over him to draw something in magic marker on Freeman's forehead. Straightening up once again, the killer paused for just a moment. Then, as quickly as he had appeared, the shadowy figure was gone.
Propped up against the kitchen wall, Darnell Freeman sat in a pool of iced tea and blood, his lifeless eyes locked in terror. Scrawled in red on his forehead were two words.
Raymond Bronson.