Chapter 11
ELEVEN
His coffee was getting cold, which he hated.
It was like drinking flavored bathwater.
He kept moving his hand to try and find warmth around the medium-sized cup.
He had stripped the brown paper cozy from the exterior.
There were carefully torn pieces of it in almost exactly the same size sitting in a neat stack on the table.
His patience was waning. He rapped his fingers on the table.
The exercise class was late in getting out. There weren’t the usual women hurrying to get a fancy coffee or a tea, but it didn’t matter. They were all the same.
The man sat up straight in the chair at the small table on the patio of the coffee house. It might be one of the women notices him, smiles, and even says hello. They never do, he thought and grimaced, imagining choking them until their eyes showed the death stare.
He was right. The women were talking and laughing, heading to the coffee house.
He watched them in a group, still carrying their rolled-up mats.
One woman with her blonde hair pulled tight in a long ponytail glanced at him, but immediately looked away as if she was repulsed.
The laughs and giggles entered the coffee house.
As soon as the door shut, it was quiet again.
He could see them huddled together, figuring out what flavors they wanted.
It disgusted him.
He took his old coffee and poured it out, crushed the cup, and left it on the table. After adjusting his dark-denim jacket, he walked to his car—a minivan with tinted windows. He never looked at the women again.
He drove down a long gravel road just outside Pine Valley. It had been part of a storage facility and junkyard. He arrived at the gate and got out of his vehicle. He unchained three heavy-duty locks before driving in, then repeated his routine, but this time to secure the fence.
The large interior area contained old cars, equipment, refrigerators, and pieces of house siding. That was what anyone would see if they happened to try and look inside the property. No one had any idea that there was something much sinister going on past the junked items.
The man turned on the high beams to see a single-sized modular home with a large metal barn next to it.
It was his favorite place and was where all the excitement happened.
Farther into the property there was a hillside and buried deep within that was an old bunker.
It was his secret place—his happy place.
As he drove by the metal barn the headlights reflected an eerie light show, which was one of his favorite displays—it reminded him of all the hard work he had done to the structure. Parking in front of the home, he got out.
Hunger plagued him, his stomach grumbled, but he pushed past the feeling.
Instead, he walked to the barn. Everything around him was silent.
No breeze. No sound. No voices. No barking dogs.
It was his heaven. Darkness had descended upon the area, pushing to his favorite time of day: the dead of night.
Everything on the property, including the land, he owned outright. And the property was in a business name that didn’t connect to anything else. He took great lengths to make himself anonymous.
For the first time since the coffee house, he smiled, showing his perfect teeth and crinkles around his eyes. Actually, it was rare for him to show any emotion. He felt all types of emotions deeply, sometimes till they spiraled out of control, but you’d never know.
He reached the door of the barn and punched in a five-digit code. With a soft pop, the entry door opened. He pushed it inward.
Stepping into a pitch-dark room, he reached to the left where there was a light-switch panel and he flicked all six upward. Almost instantly, the special overhead fluorescent lights ignited. The soft buzzing was the only sound.
The room was a large rectangle, with a cement floor and four large white refrigeration units in the center. The man walked up to the first fridge and stood over it as if savoring the moment. Reaching out, he ran his hand along the top as his smile reappeared.