Torched: A Thriller by Daniel Powell Page A

gator, an enormous gator, sprang up out of the water. Its jaws sprang open and clamped shut, and
she felt the force of air on her face and chest. She smelled the creature’s
rancid breath—a sour, reptilian stench that she associated with water in
August, low in Florida’s retention ponds.
    Instinct still
governed her, and it was instinct that shot her arm forward. Screaming, she
buried the knife in the creature’s head. It sunk to the hilt, the powerful
beast snapping again at her arm. She felt the creature’s leathery muzzle
against the exposed flesh of her forearm, and then the cursed monster backed
off.
    The knife
sticking out of its head, it slipped back into the canal.
    Still screaming,
Vivian scrambled backward from the canal.
    She was whole.
Her hands darted about her body, double checking that she had, indeed, survived
the passage.
    There was an
ugly gash on her calf, a wound probably torn open by the armored tail of one of
the gators, but she was whole and she had made it.
    Dripping, she
looked up at the sky and loosed a feral shout. She snatched up the iPad.
    “I’m coming,
Terri! You better be fucking ready, because I’m coming!”
    “Good! See you
soon,” Terri said, smiling pleasantly. The map replaced the video feed, and
Vivian quickly pulled her shoes and socks on.
    The iguanas were
gone. In the midst of the feeding frenzy, one of the gators had been ripped
apart. She watched, an eerie sense of satisfaction steeling her nerves, while a
twelve-footer crunched the bones of his vanquished competitor on the banks of
the island that had been her cell.
    With a little
grin, she gathered the iPad and the irrigation key and jogged south.
    ***
    “She’s not the
same person,” Miguel said. He bled from a dozen wounds, though the lashes
didn’t bother him as much as the mosquito bites. His skin crawled with
irritation, and he yearned to scratch the bites. “Please…you can still call
this off. It’s not like we can go to the authorities.”
    Chaco listened
to the begging man. He wore a grin. “No? No authorities, eh? Well, that changes
everything! What do you say, then, Terri? Should we set him free?”
    Terri sidled up
to Chaco. She had a set of pruning shears in her hand. “Can’t do it, Chacon.
You see, our friend here is not without blame himself.”
    “Oh?” Chaco
said. Terri had filled him in on the research, about the information Benny
Hines had gathered for her. “Do tell.”
    Terri put the
shears down and picked up the iPad. She made a racket, dragging her metal chair
close to Miguel’s. She navigated the machine until she found the folder and
pulled up a document.
    “Read it,” she
said.
    Miguel squinted.
    “Out loud,
Mikey.”
    He cleared his
throat. “William Allen Whethers entered into the kingdom of heaven on March 12,
2012. Mr. Whethers was a devoted father to his three children and a loving
husband to his wife, Marie. Other survivors include…”
    He finished the
obituary and turned to Terri. Grimly, she moved to the next document. Another
obituary. Then there were news stories and photographs. The last image showed a
man and a woman and four children, standing about a make-shift campsite. A
ripped tarp had been tied to their SUV, which was stuffed to bursting with
clothes and other items.
    “Why? Why show
me all of this?”
    “These people
were victims of the Pegasus Funds collapse. They were regular people with good
jobs and decent lives. They paid their mortgages on time. They weren’t
speculators.”
    Miguel’s face
fell. He looked away. “So? What does that have to do with me?”
    “Oh, you know exactly what it has to do with you. Those first two obituaries were suicides, Mike. It
was Will Whethers’s young daughter that found him, hanging from the rafters in
the shed outside of their ranch home. The same home that had been his
own father’s—the one that was scheduled for foreclosure before the end of the
March. These people signed documents in good faith, and