CHAPTER 11Bethany and I spend the next few weeks surreptitiously watching and studying Derek Johnson and his friends, trying to learn as much about them as we can. It’s still too early to have a comprehensive profile of our Herring, but we have been able to determine that—based on a number of t-shirts we have seen them wearing—they are Rob Zombie fans. We make the safe assumption they are fans of both his music and his movies. It’s a small start, but it’s a start.For research, we spend a Saturday night—a Saturday night that Bethany is not spending with Tim ‘the Soccer Coach’ Collins—watching Zombie’s movies. A little too close to torture porn, for my tastes, but Bethany seems to be eating it up like the orphan Oliver at an all you can eat buffet. I’ve always preferred the classic slasher films; Friday the Thirteenth, Nightmare on Elm Street, Halloween. Cut a guy’s head off with a machete. Drive a pitchfork through a couple in the midst of coital throes. Hack someone to pieces with

CHAPTER 13As discussed, we spend the next several weeks stalking Christy Lee Spinner like a zombie stalking a group of addled college students.For the most part, her days are fairly routine. The only thing that separates her school-time actions from the rest of the class is that, as class president, she spends more time in the principal’s office for meetings than a straight-A student would normally be expected to.Every day, after school, she goes to cheerleading practice, after which Johnny walks her home. As both her parents work, the couple then has a few hours alone with Christy’s younger sister, Sally. I would like to believe they actually act responsibly and watch over Sally as opposed to fooling around, but they’re fucking teenagers so my hopes aren’t high in that regard. Johnny is always careful to be gone from the house by 5:15, when Mr. and Mrs. Spinner usually return home from work. His eagerness to disappear only furthers my suspicion that he and Christy get up to more

CHAPTER 15I didn’t intend to sleep with the IT guy. Really. As you should probably have figured out by now, your stereotypical IT guy is not my type of man. But . . . well . . . let’s put it this way. When you wake up at eight on a rainy morning and answer the door—wearing little more than a silk bathrobe, mind you—to find a man who bears a striking resemblance to Mister What’s David Brennan waiting outside your door to ‘come into your apartment and look for espionage devices,’ certain things are just going to happen.I’m sorry, don’t ask me to explain it, but there is just something irresistible about a man who, in the midst of a battle for the fate of human civilization as we know it, breaks into reciting The Lion King. I know, I know. That kinda thing would normally be a turn-off for me. I don’t know. Maybe it’s the British accent. Unfortunately, the IT guy doesn’t have a British accent, which kinda ruined the illusion, so there was a lot of me telling him to just shut up every t

CHAPTER 17“Look, I’m sorry, I know you said we should keep our distance, but considering the circumstances of last night, we need to talk,” Davison says, as he steps through the door into my living room.“Yeah, that’s why I’ve been trying to call you all morning,” Bethany replies, crossly. A little too crossly. I shoot her a warning glance, to remind her to keep cool.Davison blushes as he pulls out his cell phone.“Oh, so you have . . . sorry, I . . . must have forgotten to take it off Do Not Disturb . . . ”“Too busy fucking your students to notice?” is what I want to say. “Yeah, well perhaps you should have checked it before you barged into my apartment and risked exposing the entire mission,” I say instead.Bethany returns my earlier reproachful glance. Hey, compared to what I’d wanted to say, I did keep it cool.“Okay, okay, you’re right, I’m sorry. But we can stand here bickering, or we can deal with what happened. What did exactly happen last night?”“Someone beat us to

CHAPTER 19I don’t remember falling asleep, but apparently I must have, because I find myself lying face-down in the middle of my floor, a page of Nick Jin’s case file stuck to my cheek, and someone knocking at my door.I pull myself from the floor, every bone in my body snapping, crackling and popping from having slept in such an awkward position.I open the door to find The Mister—I mean, David waiting.Apparently I look as bad as I feel, because he says, “Is this a bad time?”“No, sorry I’m a mess. Didn’t sleep well. Come in.” Then, because I’m still not sure if anyone can hear us, I ask, “Did you bring . . . protection?”He smiles as he reaches into his pocket, and pulls out—to my relief—a little gizmo that looks kinda like a USB flash drive with a tiny radio antennae attached.“No one will be able to hear us while this is on,” he tells me.“So they do bug us before sending us out into the field?” I say, choosing my words carefully, as he isn’t supposed to know what it real