***
Bobby the Hood had done his job. Sherman Kingsborough was utterly alone as he skulked around the rosebushes outside the Stone house. His entire body, other than his eyes, was clothed in black Lycra. His $6,300 digital watch—which was good to water depths of one hundred meters, showed all twenty-four time zones, and responded to a voice command with its own preprogrammed, New Zealand–accented woman telling you the correct time—was flashing 3:33 a.m., the same time it had been displaying for at least ten minutes. In a pique of frustration, Sherman took the watch off and ground it into the sod outside Jared’s kitchen. A muffled and lilting 3:33 a.m. seeped from the grass.
Sherman crept on until he found the back door, the one that matched the entrance on the map Bobby provided. As promised, it was unlocked and unguarded.
The house was completely dark. The only light came from a clock on the kitchen stove, which was, correctly, displaying the time as 3:51. Sherman took out his waterproof, plastic map of the house’s interior and studied it under the glow of his red penlight. The drawing had been done by a member of the Life and Death security staff, who was—at that very moment—en route back home to Juárez, Mexico, the $10,000 he had been paid tucked neatly into a money belt he wore beneath his new leather jacket. The same person provided Bobby with the information that Jared almost always spent the night in his office, which was circled on the map.
Sherman moved forward on his belly, slithering out of the kitchen and up the stairs like a snake. He had practiced this so many times on his own stairs he could now move as if he had no bones in his body. When he reached the top, he checked the map again and realized he was right in front of the door to Jared’s office. He was so close his forehead almost touched the wood.
He removed a twelve-inch hunting knife from the sheath that hung from his belt. Sherman clutched the knife in his hands and thought of the hours he practiced plunging the blade into the life-size dummy he had purchased. The dummy was meant for training guard dogs, but it had served his purpose. Sherman had done everything he could to mentally and physically prepare for this moment. The entirety of his brief life, he believed, had led to this place and time, had put him on the precipice of the ultimate human experience: the act of playing God.
And then he paused.
Who am I, he thought, to decide who should live or die? He lay there for a long moment, unable to move forward or move back. For a while, Sherman thought he might just stay there until the sun came up, letting the Stone family find him. Maybe, he thought, they can help me. But the feeling passed.
“Who am I to decide who should live or die?” he asked again, this time whispering it aloud. “I am Sherman motherfucking Kingsborough, bi-otch, that’s who.” Proving once and for all that absolute power corrupts absolutely.
With all the stealth he could muster, Sherman reached up and turned the knob of the door, nudging it open gently. His constant attention to his physical being, his trials on Everest and in sailboats and on hang gliders and bungee cords, and his hours of practice specifically for this night had paid off. Sherman Kingsborough entered Jared Stone’s private lair as if he were a ghost. He closed the door behind him. His moment had come.
***
As Jared slept, Glio was in the midst of consuming what Jared once described as a transcendental memory. He was at Big Sky Resort, sitting on a log in front of the BBQ shack at the top of the quad lift that served the gentler of the resort’s two mountains.
Snowflakes were drifting lazily by, sticking to his gloves, hat, and eyelashes as he sipped hot chocolate and listened to Marshall Tucker sing “Can’t You See,” the music blaring through speakers outside the shack. It was one of the few times in Jared’s life that he was completely and utterly in the moment. Nothing existed before that time and nothing after it. Jared, and now Glio, was perfectly centered. This, Glio thought, is what it means to be alive.
Jared had traveled to Montana with two guy friends during a college break. Deirdre, who he had been dating for almost a year, hadn’t come along on the trip. It was the thought of Deirdre that pulled him out of his reverie. And that’s when he knew he was no longer complete without her. He—Jared, Glio, both of them—was going to propose to Deirdre as soon as he got back to New York. Thinking that, knowing that, was one of the happiest moments of his life.
It was just at that instant, at the very zenith of his emotional contentment, when an eardrum-shattering scream exploded in Glio’s head, or would have if Glio had had a head.
***