Free The Morning After by Lisa Jackson

phone jangled and he picked it up just as Detective McFee arrived. The big man dwarfed Morrisette and Reed couldn’t help but think of Lurch of the Addams Family on seeing McFee in the morning light. Not only was he large and rawboned, but his skin was sallow and his eyes deep-set. Reed introduced the two detectives, noticed how Morrisette gave McFee the once-over, and mentally chastised himself. Why was it Sylvie “tough-as-nails” Morrisette, four times divorced, still sized up every man she met as if they might be the candidate for number five?
    Grabbing his jacket, he decided he’d never figure it out.
     
     
    A slow smile crept across The Survivor’s face as he watched the morning news. The late-night reports had been sketchy, but as the day had broken, more information was surfacing about the discovery in the ravine near Blood Mountain. It was the lead story.
    Balancing on the edge of his ottoman, he recorded and watched five different screens, all with different reporters, but all telling essentially the same tale. There was footage of the grave site, taken from helicopters that had hovered above the bottom of the ravine as dawn crept over the forest floor. Crime scene workers were still searching the ground for evidence. The area around the grave had been marked in a grid, and the workers painstakingly sifted through every inch of soil, dead leaves and dry grass. As if they’d find anything.
    His blood quickened at the thought that he’d caused this confusion. That all these people were working because of him. That Pierce Reed’s life had been disturbed and he’d been dragged up north to the place he’d been born. Reed had spent the first few years of his life in a two bedroom house outside of Dahlonega. A bonafide, dyed-in-the-wool Georgia cracker, though most people assumed he’d started life somewhere in the Midwest and Reed did little to disavow this misinformation. The man was a fake. A phony. A slimeball.
    But he was about to get his comeuppance.
    One of the screens flickered with the image of the dead buck—the deer that lunatic kid had killed. Some of The Survivor’s joy diminished…He hadn’t counted on the hunters. Had thought he was alone along the windswept deer trails.
    He climbed to his feet and could barely stand up in this small room where the televisions dominated one brick wall and their flickering screens offered the only light. One wall was all shelves, floor to ceiling filled with all of his electronic equipment. Microphones. Video cameras. Surveillance gear. And hundreds of movies he’d purchased on tape and DVD. Movies about heroes who had beat the odds, who had survived and avenged, who had taken justice into their own hands, who had meted out their own kind of payback.
    Charles Bronson.
    Bruce Lee.
    Clint Eastwood.
    Mel Gibson.
    Keanu Reeves.
    Actors who had portrayed tough men were his idols. Stories that told of men enduring horrid pain, then wreaking vengeance. Mad Max, Rambo, The Matrix…those were the films that made his blood run hot.
    He had few clothes hidden here, though, in his other life, the one he let the world see, he had suits and jeans, dress shirts, Dockers and even polo shirts. But here, his needs were simple. Basic. Hooks held his camouflage outfit and wet suit. A steel door hid a closet he’d fashioned himself, small, confining, dark. With no doorknob on the interior side. A perfect place to keep someone alive. His furniture was sparse—a worktable, a battered chair and ottoman facing the screens and his prize, an antique dresser and mirror he’d salvaged from his mother’s home.
    He walked to the bureau and saw his reflection in the cracked oval mirror. Backlit by the flickering screens, he studied his image. Icy eyes stared back at him—eyes that had been labeled troubled, or sexy, or bedroom or cold. Rimmed with spiky lashes and protected by thick brows, one of which was split and bore a small scar. Even that imperfection had added to his allure