The Diabolical Conspiracy by Bryan Smith

It didn’t matter what or where, really, just that his time was his own again and he could do as he pleased. For instance, instead of heading home now, he could turn in another direction and drive to the police station. He could spill everything he knew. He could offer to wear a wire to the next Diabolical Conspiracy meeting. And he could put an end to this crazy fucking shit that had engulfed his life once and for all.
    But every time he worked himself up nearly to the point of thinking he would do just that, he would remember that chillingly quiet morning drive with Marnie and shelve the idea. He suspected she had exaggerated the conspiracy’s reach and ability to anticipate and eliminate threats. The rational part of his mind told him it was ridiculous to believe they would systematically begin murdering every one of his loved ones the moment he showed up at the police station. But they had gotten their hooks too far inside him. He believed the hype, despite its surface absurdity. They had gotten away with murder many times before and had never been exposed. In the end, he simply couldn’t stomach even the remote possibility of the people he cared about being harmed.
    So he was trapped.
    Unless…well, unless he killed himself. Speaking of remote possibilities. But he hadn’t entirely ruled it out. If the situation ever reached the point of feeling completely untenable, it might become a feasible exit strategy.
    Until then…
    He started to frown as he drew closer to his car. There was something clipped behind the windshield wiper on the driver’s side. A white slip of paper, perhaps, or an envelope. There was something ominous about the way the edges of it flapped in the stiffening breeze, as if it were calling his attention. More paranoia? A quick scan of the scattering of other cars nearby showed no other white slips of paper clipped to other windshields. Of course not. Security would have chased off anyone attempting to distribute flyers on company grounds. No, whatever else this might be, it was undeniably an attempt to communicate directly with him.
    Fuck .
    A tight knot of dread formed inside him as he reached the car and saw that it was an envelope clipped behind the wiper. Somehow a sealed envelope felt even more ominous than a folded sheet of paper. He opened the car and chucked his backpack inside before snatching the envelope from the wiper. That knot of dread tightened several more degrees as he saw the block letters printed across the front of the envelope--TDC.
    The Diabolical Conspiracy.
    Mike slapped the envelope against the palm of his free hand and kicked at a pebble on the asphalt, sending it skittering across the lot until it disappeared beneath a blue Lexus. Which was what he would like to do about now. Fucking disappear .
    Fuck! Fuck, fuck, fucking double goddamn fuck!
    He had known it. On some level, he had known from his first glimpse of the thing clipped to his wiper that it would in some way be related to those evil fuckers. He didn’t know how he had known it, but he had, even though things had stayed mostly quiet on that front since that first horrible night. There had been a couple more meetings, but they had been uneventful, almost mundane. There had been no more murders. No more orgies. And the last meeting had been more than a month ago. Yet something within him had accurately divined the true nature of this thing almost instantly. It was almost as if something in the universe had been speaking to him. Trying to warn him. Which he couldn’t interpret as anything other than a very bad sign.
    He sneered at the letters written on the envelope a moment longer.
    Then he got in the car and tore it open.
    The note it contained was terse and also written in block letters: GO TO FAT SAM’S ON FRONT STREET. ASK FOR JASPER. SAY YOU’VE COME TO PICK UP THE PACKAGE. TDC.
    Mike read the note several times over, the crease in his brow deepening each time his eyes scanned the cryptic message. Fat