Read Unwanted Company - Barbara Seranella for Free Online

Gd's hands.
    * * *
    It was twelve-thirty by the time Munch pulled into
her driveway. Asia met her at the door, still wearing her school
clothes and looking every bit as tired as Munch felt. Derek was
asleep on the couch with the television on and one of Asia's Cabbage
Patch dolls wrapped in his arms.
    "Can I go to bed now?" Asia asked.
    Munch scooped her up, carried her into her bedroom,
and helped her change into her pajamas.
    "I'm really glad Derek came over tonight,"
Asia said as Munch tucked her into bed and surrounded her with
stuffed animals.
    "You are?"
    " Yeah. I forgot how much I don't like him."
    Munch didn't say anything, but she knew what the kid
meant.
 
 
    CHAPTER 3
    The call to the police was the least he could do
after he dried his own body and did what he could to make the women
presentable.
    " There's been some killing done," he
whispered, partly to disguise his voice, partly to make sure they
listened carefully. "Fifteen hundred North Gower, unit lO3,"
he told the operator.
    Then he left the women's apartment, making certain no
one spotted him. He was exhausted physically, but the important part
of him—his soul, his spirit—roared with new life. Earlier, when
he had prepared to go out for the evening, he had filled his pockets
with everything he thought he would need. The checklist included his
own roll of Johnson & Johnson half-inch waterproof tape and a
four-inch dagger—his "stinger"—strapped to his shin.
Great men needed to be prepared for whatever the world threw at them,
and the way he had been feeling lately . . . Well, it was only a
matter of time.
    How simple the answer had been. How he had fought his
natural God-given yearnings. Did birds resist migration? Salmon their
spawning? The cold-blooded species their periods of hibernation? The
headaches should have clued him in—those stabbing pains were just
his body's way of telling him to not question his instincts, to let
go and let nature take its course. The truth—seeing it, knowing it,
embracing it—set him free.
    It was while still in college that he had first read
John Locke's lucid work, An Essay Concerning
Human Understanding . The gist of it was that
all thoughts arise from sensory experience. According to Locke,
thinking is an entirely involuntary process. There is no free will,
no innate concepts. A man can no more control the ideas his mind
generates than a mirror can "refuse, alter, or obliterate the
image of objects set before it. " People are neitheri "good"
nor "bad." One merely does the things that enhance pleasure
and avoid those that bring pain.
    He knew enough of the secret things that went on
inside people's homes to know everyone had their own private ideas of
pleasure.
    He studied the buildings courtyard. The security in
the building complex was a joke. It gave the residents a false sense
of safety. As if any person with criminal intent would be stupid
enough to make himself visible to the cameras mounted so obviously.
The joke, of course, was on them—the sheep.
    He stepped lightly toward the rear of the compound,
savoring the warm afterglow of satiation. He remembered his boyhood
credo, particularly his preamble to the Golden Rules for Control,
written years ago with a hopeful teenage hand. "I shall endeavor
through the application of psychology to adapt myself to the Golden
Rules and to attack human nature to my fullest extent." He
smiled at the memory of the sweet, naive boy that he had been. With
experience and seasoning, he had modified the Rules. He still
thirsted for understanding. The human mind still fascinated. Ah, but
the rest . . .
    He climbed the cinder-block wall that surrounded the
building's trash enclosure. Easily vaulting the perimeter fence, he
landed lightly on his feet and found himself in a narrow, dark alley.
Perfect. He followed the alley to where it joined a small side street
and turned so that he was heading toward the neon extravaganza of
Sunset Boulevard. As he walked, he threw back his