The Collector

But David didn’t see any reason to change just because God apparently saved his kid. He wasn’t building his kingdom in some make-believe heaven. With interests throughout Orange County, he’d made damn sure his charitable donations worked for him. Like now, with Condum-Cox. His campaign contributions to the current mayor were about to pay off, big time.

And this house…It was one of thirty-two exclusive homes on Bay Island, right down the street from Roy Rogers and Dale Evans’s old place. Not to mention what was once the John Wayne estate. David Gospel could afford the best.

He’d never believed that the-meek-shall-inherit-the-earth crap of his wife’s. If David believed in a god, it was himself. He had the power.

At first, it was all about the money. Hell, why not? Money was an easy way to keep score. And he’d enjoyed the gauntlet his father had thrown down to his three sons. Be better….

Only, as it turned out, the money thing hadn’t been much of a challenge. David’s marriage had given him money to play with. Soon enough, he’d moved into politics. Not as a candidate, no way. Who the hell wanted some asshole looking into his tax returns? He was the puppeteer, pulling the strings behind the screen.

The amazing part? That, too, hadn’t taken long to conquer. The whole thing turned into just another rubber-chicken dinner, with some blowhard sucking up the oxygen in the room.

That’s when David started his collection.

He’d learned pretty early on he had the power to make and break lives. The people who worked for him owed him their livelihood, and they were fucking grateful for it.

So why stop there? Why limit his goals to the here and now? There was power to be found beyond what the sheep on this earth coveted. He just had to know who to pay to get it.

He’d started by looking into secret sects—Freemasons, Rosicrucians—and for a while, he’d gotten off on the lure of being one of the chosen, an initiate in a secret society. But theirs was not the kind of enlightenment David sought. Fuck universal peace or cosmic consciousness.

He began looking into more obscure sects, surprised at the number of powerful men willing to put on costumes and parade around, reenacting rituals from ancient Babylon and Egypt.

But then David began to realize it was more than the illusion of supernatural powers that he coveted. He needed something more solid, a physical object of power.

He started reading about psychic archeology, a branch of anthropology that used the paranormal to uncover ancient sites of archaeological importance. The more he learned about the discipline, the more David started to think, What about the artifacts themselves? Certainly, there must be objects of power that had survived through the ages, buried somewhere for him and his considerable resources to find.

Sure, he’d hit a hiccup or two along the way—Owen being his number one pain in the ass. But it wasn’t supposed to be easy. Look at the search for the Holy Grail and the Ark of the Covenant. If it was easy, every sorry ass out there would have what he had.

He looked again at his wife. There she sat, her bony butt swallowed by that sofa. She hadn’t moved since he’d told her he’d called Rocket, those bug eyes of hers just staring at him.

Watching her now, he thought about all those nature versus nurture arguments. Maybe the only thing wrong with Owen was a case of bad genes.

He heard the doorbell and Maribel, their housekeeper, answering the door. Meredith turned anxiously toward the entrance, twisting her wedding band round and round on her ring finger.

If Owen looked like his mother, it was as if someone had taken a dim bulb and turned up the wattage. Shit, the kid could have been a model, he was that handsome. Tall, with blue eyes and sandy blond hair. David remembered Meredith having eyes like that once. Now her eyes were a flat, dead blue.

Owen had been born with this condition. His eyes just didn’t blink. Something about the muscles of the upper lids being weak. The condition had been mild enough that they’d gotten away with cosmetic surgery when Owen was just five. There’d been a few follow-up surgeries, as well.

Owen had to wear sunglasses all the time, even indoors. And he put drops in his eyes. David thought it gave his eyes a special gleam.

Entering the room, Owen tossed his coat on the settee. He flopped onto the cushions and rested the heels of his Esquivel ankle boots on the armrest. Owen had good taste in clothes, leaning toward the more cutting-edge designers. He had the build for it.

“I bought the most amazing piece of art today.” He glanced over at Rocket, who stopped near the door. “I don’t think Rocket approves. And Mom will have a seizure if she sees it.”

He held his finger up to his lips and winked at his father.

David could feel his stomach turn. The kid looked so fucking normal….

He’d had a couple of drinks earlier, thinking to relax a little, maybe simmer down before Rocket hauled Owen in. It hadn’t worked.

Slowly, his son’s smile faded. Those pretty blue eyes narrowed, giving Owen the look of someone searching for the nearest exit.

“What’s going on?” he asked.

David still had the newspaper on the coffee table, turned to the article about Mimi. With just the slightest tilt of his chin, he pointed out the Register.

Owen stared at the headline for a minute, looking almost perplexed. David knew the exact moment his son realized where the conversation was headed.

“You can’t think—”

“Don’t be an ass, Owen. Of course that’s what I think! What else, for Christ’s sake!”

Owen jumped to his feet. For an instant, he looked as if he might actually try to run for it. Instead, he began pacing across the room. He raked his fingers through those platinum highlights. “So every time a body shows up around town, you’re going to point the finger at me?”

Rocket made himself scarce, not one to linger in these types of situations.

“I think the connection is a little tighter than that, Owen. Mimi Tran was a psychic in my employ. Just like Michelle—”

“Jesus Christ, are you kidding?” Suddenly, Owen was bent over, laughing. “Another one of your psychics, Pops?”

Owen’s expression turned feral as he walked over to David. The younger man placed a hand on each side of the armchair, leaning menacingly over his father.

“Do you know how stupid you sound sometimes? I have magic objects that make me all-powerful, all-knowing.” His tone was a solid imitation of David’s deeper voice. “You can hire a fleet of psychics and you’re never going to be God, old man.”

“Don’t push me,” David warned.

Owen narrowed his eyes, making them look almost colorless in the room’s dim lighting. “Who really believes that shit, Daddy dearest? Not anyone with half a brain. But you, you travel around the world, buying your collection.” He leaned closer, saying in a stage whisper, “You know something, Pops? I think even Rocket knows you’re a fucking head case.”

David smiled up at his son. He could feel those martinis pumping inside him.

He exploded out of the chair, taking Owen with him. He had him on the ground, pinned by the throat, before the kid even knew what hit him.