With "The Cedar Valley Covenant" now available at all your favorite book sellers, take a quick sneak peak at the first two sample chapters!
CHAPTER 1
The Handlers had relented. At last they gave in and they would let the Predator have her. He couldn’t function if he couldn’t have her. He couldn’t carry out his mission if he wasn’t allowed to dream about her. She had taken over his fantasies. She had come to possess him, to take over and control his thoughts as much as he needed to take over the thoughts of his targets tonight.
But the Predator’s Handlers had given in. They, too, after all, were in his head. They understood the condition he was in. They understood his need.
If the Handlers wanted the Predator to kill the two men sitting across the restaurant, they had to let him take the payment he demanded.
Jessica.
Her name rang through the chambers of the Predator’s mind. He was picking up flashes of her, images of her, the closer he got to his targets.
He needed Jessica.
It they wanted the Predator to go through with it, they had to let him take Jessica.
Sure, the Predator realized, they could just as well kill him and find someone else to carry out the hit, but that would take too long. They needed the Predator for his very special qualities. They needed him for his very special modus operandi. They couldn’t let all of his previous work go to waste. It would take too long to set up another assassin to take his place.
For now, the Predator had the upper hand. The Handlers needed those two men—sitting there and drinking, discussing science and philosophy, teaching methods, the price of South Illinois real estate—dead as quickly as possible. They especially needed Dr. Nelson Danziger dead. His companion, Dr. Brock Randall, was merely a secondary target. The Handlers hadn’t cared about Randall originally. Or, rather, they didn’t care about him enough to want him dead just now. But the Predator had the power to force Randall’s execution. If the Handlers wanted Danziger eliminated, they had to let him go after Randall too.
Brock Randall had to die because of what the Predator had discovered in his mind. When he read Randall’s thoughts, the Predator found Jessica. From the moment he found her, everything changed.
Jessica. Brock Randall’s beautiful daughter. Randall and his estranged daughter had started talking to each other again. The Predator knew because he scanned Randall’s mind every day. He could see Randall looking at Jessica’s pictures when he was on the phone with her. The Predator saw her exquisite photo sitting on the desk in Randall’s office. When the Predator shared Brock Randall’s vision, when he intruded into his thoughts, he saw Jessica, he heard Jessica, he saw her photos all over Randall’s house.
But Jessica was so far away. The Predator had to get to her. He needed to bring her to Cedar Valley right now. She had become his addiction, his madness. He knew that Randall’s sudden tragic death would bring Jessica to town.
The Handlers wanted Danziger dead and the Predator was going to kill him before the night was through. But Brock Randall would die at the same time. The Predator would not be denied. Not even the Handlers could stop him now.
CHAPTER 2
“Brock, to tell you the truth…” Nelson Danziger said and looked Randall square in the eyes. He paused, raised his snifter of scotch and smiled affably. “The impression Cedar Valley State has made on me is really great…”
Brock Randall swirled the rum around the bottom of his glass. He thought he heard a “but” about to be tagged onto the end of Danziger’s remark. Of course, Randall wasn’t supposed to be the one apprehensive about what Danziger was about to say. Randall, a representative of Cedar Valley State University, was supposed to have been the one with the upper hand here. They were the ones about to offer Danziger a job.
Except the truth was that Danziger, no doubt, had several other offers waiting for him. He wasn’t a desperate new Ph.D., fresh out of grad school with a few years of adjunct teaching, a pile of student loans and maybe one or two conference presentations under his belt. Nelson Danziger’s CV read like a novella. He already had five books published, two of them with commercial houses in New York. And, despite the subject matter he wrote about, his mainstream success only stood to help the school, to boost enrollment. That success was the reason a small school like CVSU was willing to spend as much money on Danziger as had been allocated for him in the hiring budget.
“Glad to hear that, Nelson,” Randall replied but paused quietly. He could sense Danziger had more to say.
“So now I wait and hope for the best. I hope the search committee’s been impressed,” Danziger said.
“Oh, I’m sure about that.”
Although Randall had been asked to take Danziger out for his farewell dinner, he wasn’t actually sitting on Danziger’s search committee. Danziger was interviewing for one of the rare full-professor openings in the Psychology Department. Randall was an interpersonal communication specialist. Cedar Valley State being so small, however, almost made the school a big family. Every department took an interest in every single full-time faculty hire. Danziger’s guest lectures, his research presentation and discussions with the Psychology Department’s search committee, had been observed by representatives from every other department.
Now that Danziger was about to go home to Tampa while the search committee deliberated, Randall had been asked to take him out for a farewell dinner.
“You have to admit, though,” Danziger said and paused.
Here came the “but,” Randall thought. He was annoyed by how much trepidation he felt, but the fact was that this entire interview process had been a seller’s market. And Danziger was the seller. The college needed him desperately.
Randall just raised his eyebrows and waited for Danziger to complete his thought.
“They did ask a lot of nervous questions,” Danziger said.
“Nervous?” Randall asked and sipped some rum.
“I think they’re asking themselves if they’re hiring a psychologist or a writer from a supermarket tabloid.”
“That’s not the case at all,” Randall said and chuckled, regretting the words the moment they came out of this mouth. He made himself sound defensive. The key to this entire hiring process was not to make Danziger feel too powerful, too needed.
“Well, how do you think they feel about my work?” Danziger asked bluntly. “I’m sure my books have impressed the school to a certain degree, and I guess at this point it’s up to the Psych Department’s search committee to make its final decision, but they take input from all the faculty members who’ve observed me.”
“I think they’re trying to figure out how to deal with…with the implication that you don’t seem to think people who’ve experienced the…”
“The unexplained?” Danziger asked and drank some scotch. “That they’re not all insane?”
“Well, you’ve got to admit that your arguments for the objective reality of parallel worlds and the spirit world are fairly radical,” Randall said.
“Yes, I suppose they are,” Danziger said and stared off into some distant corner of the nearly empty restaurant past Randall’s head. Then his focus came back onto Randall. “I suppose they really are,” he reiterated. “But I don’t necessarily think it’s a bad idea. Do you?”
“What do you mean?” Randall chose to evade Danziger’s question.
“Our line of work. Research, higher education, isn’t it supposed to be a battlefield of ideas? Nothing is supposed to be too radical. We’re supposed to throw all ideas out there and see how they can be defended.”
Randall shrugged. “Well, you don’t really have a hostile audience here, you know. My department has a couple of committed post-modernists.”
“Aha, the post-modernists,” Danziger said and chuckled. “Nothing exists, nothing is real, we can’t trust any rules and any reality. So my candidacy’s not entirely a lost cause.”
“It’s the people in your own hard-sciences you have to watch out for,” Randall said and finished the rest of his rum.
“Should I be very worried?” Danziger asked and smiled lightly.
Randall thought he smiled a little bit too lightly. There was a cockiness emerging from this guy now.
“You must have met Tom Lancaster from the Physics Department, right?” Randall asked.
“Can’t recall his face.”
“Tall, dark-haired, good looking…”
“Snappy suits, right…?”
“Yeah, break those scientist stereotypes. No pocket protectors on that one.”
Danziger laughed. “Looks like a yuppie stock broker.”
“Yeah, that’s the one,” Randall said and guessed that Danziger must have been wondering how many students Lancaster was sleeping with. Randall, though, was certain that the answer was none. Lancaster was a real stand up you guy, he had to admit. He always pegged him as highly ethical, if not a bit stiff. He was, of course, a zealot when it came to certain aspects of his work, but he was a straight shooter, nonetheless. Maybe that’s why Randall thought he would have been happy setting him up with Jessica.
“But anyway,” Randall continued, “he wrote a book a while ago called The Naked Ghost.”
“Yes, of course,” Danziger said with a knowing smile. “Now I remember.”
“Well, he’s still trying to save the world. Shining the light of science.”
“Yes, he’s the one,” Danziger said quietly. “Good for him if he’s trying to save the world, though. Even if sometimes he writes outside of his area of expertise.”
“He would probably take issue with some of your ideas.”
“Who knows,” Danziger said and shrugged lightly.
Randall thought he could sense that cockiness again.
“Maybe he, too, believes in that battlefield of ideas,” Danziger said.
“I’m sure he probably does.”
“Yeah,” Danziger said slowly and drained the last of his scotch. “I remember the reviews of his book. Very zealous guy, indeed. His book was pretty successful.”
“Not as successful as your books,” Randall said.
Danziger returned a humble smile. “Well, whatever differences I might have with someone like Tom Lancaster, I hope CVSU will decide it’s a big enough place for a diversity of opinions,” he said diplomatically and leaned back in his chair.
It was time to wrap up this farewell dinner, Randall realized, glancing at his watch. He still had to drive Danziger to Cedar Valley Municipal Airport, from where he would take a commuter flight to Chicago and catch his connection down to Tampa.
After settling the bill to be placed on the school’s account, Randall and Danziger left the nearly empty restaurant.
Only one other patron haunted Bertucci’s Tratoria this late at night, Randall noted as they headed for the front door. A man sitting in the farthest, darkest corner of the restaurant seemed to be staring at a barely-touched plate of pasta in front of him.
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