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  Prologue

  PART I – Shattered

  Present Day

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  PART II - Sidekicks and Enemies

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Part III - Forced Entry

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  PART IV - Rats

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Epilogue

  END

  Author’s note

  Stitches

  Insatiable Series Book 5

  Patrick Logan

  Prologue

  Pike crouched low, his feet not making a sound as he slid through the tall, yellow grass.

  From his vantage point, he could clearly make out the large house at the bottom of the hill, its perimeter surrounded by a wrought iron fence. While Pike couldn’t make out the address from where he crouched, he knew this was the right place.

  The eighteen men he counted positioned around the fence were a dead giveaway. And these were no rent-a-cops, either; even at his distance, Pike could tell that these were hard men. Hard men, but they weren’t the most experienced; at least not at defense.

  If it were him inside, and not Walter Wandry, and knowing how many people were out to get him, Pike would have hired a team experienced at protection, rather than using his own men—the bikers.

  But it wasn’t him inside, and from everything that Carter Duke and Sheriff White had told him, he should have expected this. After all, Walter was just a deranged junkie, and not a seasoned drug overlord.

  Still, Pike took no chances. Chances led to mistakes, and mistakes to serious consequences. He had seen as much in the boxing ring and fighting pits in which he had cut his teeth.

  Something rustled to his right, and Pike immediately dropped to his stomach, silently lowering himself with his thick, muscular arms. Completely hidden in the grass, he kept his head low, resisting the urge to lift his gaze to determine who or what had made the noise.

  Less than a minute later, a voice answered his questions.

  “Why you think the Crab wants us to walk around these fucking fields, anyway? Sabra never had us doing these stupid walks.”

  As Pike listened, he snaked his hand down to his hip and slid the pistol equipped with the silencer out of his belt. He hated guns, even ones as silent and beautiful as the one in his hand now, and would use it only as a last resort. He much preferred to use his hands and feet.

  Guns had a tendency to jam, to misfire, to miss their mark.

  His body, on the other hand, was always true.

  Besides, this was a recon mission—he was given specific instructions not to engage.

  So while he took the gun out of his belt, he didn’t raise it. Instead, he remained silent, motionless, and just listened.

  “Sabra didn’t have no enemies, that’s why,” another voice replied.

  “No enemies? Of course Sabra had enemies. Shit, I mean, before we joined him, we were his enemies. And all of the Skull Krushers were his enemies.”

  The two men were within a half dozen feet of Pike now, trudging slowly through the grass. Pike closed his eyes and slowed his breathing. The dry grass atop the hill was tall, but if they looked his way, the men would clearly notice the depression that his body made.

  Pike’s finger slipped from the trigger guard to the trigger itself.

  “Yeah, but Sabra… Sabra paid… Paid his, uh, his dues, you know?”

  There was a short pause, and Pike sensed the men coming even closer now—within a few feet. He tensed, priming his body for action.

  “No, I don’t know—you keep saying the same thing. What dues? What you talking about?”

  “I’m not gonna say it, man—doesn’t do nobody no good to say it. Let’s just put it this way: Sabra don’t make the drugs himself.”

  There was another pause, and Pike allowed himself a shallow breath as the footsteps receded.

  “Oh.”

  “Get it now?”

  “Yeah, I get it the Mex—”

  “Don’t say it man.”

  Pike relaxed for a moment, and drew a full breath.

  “So what does that mean for us? What does that mean now that the Crab has taken over?”

  There was a pause, one that went on for so long that Pike feared that the men had seen him, that his presence had silenced them.

  But then he heard mumbling in the distance, and the tension left his muscles, for which he was grateful. He was a trained fighter; he knew that being tensed for too long, being too prepared, was a recipe for fatigue.

  Pike waited three minutes before opening his eyes, and two more before daring to raise his head.

  In the distance, he could make out the silhouettes of the two men, their gray jean vests emblazoned with the words ‘Skull Krushers’ fading in the distance.

  There were eighteen bikers guarding the perimeter of the mansion, and two more were combing the area around the compound.

  A footstep from his left caused Pike to drop to one knee and whip the gun in that direction.

  There was a man pulling himself out of the grass, much like Pike had minutes ago. And he too was staring at the bikers that walked back down the embankment toward the estate.

  The man was short, maybe five-foot-five, with heavily tanned skin and a shaved head.

  Pike didn’t need to see his face to know who he was; or, more specifically, who he represented.

  Sabra paid his dues.

  Pike, his pistol still trained on the unsuspecting man’s head, slowly raised himself to his feet and took several small, silent steps backward.

  His mouth twisted into a frown as he continued to back out of sight. Something in the back of his mind told him that the other man knew he was being watched, but refused to turn and look at him.

  This man, too, was doing recon.

  And only recon.

  Father Carter was not going to be happy.

  The presence of the Mexican cartels outside the Crab’s Estate made things more complicated.

  Much, much more complicated.

  PART I – Shattered

  Present Day

&n
bsp; Chapter 1

  “What in God’s name are we doing just sitting around?” Coggins shouted at the five other men at the table with him. He rose to his feet, toppling the chair behind him.

  None of the other men stood with him, and he quickly scanned their faces: first Dirk, then Deputy Williams, Reggie, Father Carter, and lastly Sheriff White. Paul’s face was heavily lined, the dark skin on his cheeks chapped from all of the tears he had shed over the past few days.

  Paul wasn’t cut out to do this job, Coggins realized. But this was far from an admonition. After all, given what had happened, he doubted anyone was.

  Except for maybe Dana, but he was long gone.

  Coooome

  Under any other circumstances, the sheriff would have taken a leave of absence, recuse himself from the situation. But this wasn’t any other circumstances.

  This was something else. Something horrible. Something truly and utterly evil, something that rivaled even what he had seen all those years ago in the Wharfburn Estate.

  Coggins shook these thoughts from his head and pressed his hands against the table in the basement of the Askergan Police Station.

  “We need to get out there—we need to go get this fucking prick,” he said. His voice broke with the words, and when tears formed in his eyes again, and spilled down his cheeks, he quickly wiped them away. When he spoke again, his words were barely above a whisper. “We need to make him pay for what he did to Nancy.”

  A low sound, something akin to a growl formed in Sheriff White’s throat and his eyes narrowed.

  “You think—you think that I don’t want that? For fuck’s sake, Coggins, they fucking put her head in a—in a—in a fucking bag! You think that Nancy, what, meant nothing to me?” His voice escalated with every word. And then he too shot to his feet. “Coggins, you better—”

  “We need to stay calm,” Father Carter interjected.

  Coggins whipped his head around to face the priest.

  “Who the fuck are you, anyway? You fucking come in here, spouting all your bullshit—God, Jesus, motherfucking faith bullshit. Don’t tell me to stay calm. What I—what we—need to do is get out there and get Alice back. That’s what I—” he turned and glared at Sheriff White, “—we need to be doing.”

  “Deputy Coggins, I realize—”

  “Oh, fuck off. You realize shit, you know that? You’re not from here. You’re not one of us.”

  Reggie reached over and placed a hand on his shoulder.

  “We don’t need to be from Askergan to know what’s going on, to help. You need us.”

  Coggins shook him off.

  “I don’t need any of you. All I need is to find Alice and get her back…I need…” his voice broke. “I just want to get her back.”

  Coggins slumped backward, and Reggie righted his chair just in time for him to fall into it.

  After what had happened, after all that had happened, he had vowed never to return to Askergan—the place was cursed.

  But there was just something about it, a pull of magnetic proportions that just kept drawing him back.

  We should have just let the place burn… we should have let the gas station burn and let the entire fucking town turn to soot.

  “Pike is out there, doing recon,” Father Carter continued, ignoring Coggins’s comments. “He should have more information about Walter’s place, about how he’s set up there in Sabra’s estate. And we also have Dirk…”

  At the sound of his name, Dirk Kinkaid unfolded his arms from across his chest and leaned forward. Coggins observed him as he stared across at the priest. Dirk had secrets, of that he was certain. And there was something else there, a dark secret burning behind his eyes.

  But who didn’t have secrets, especially in Askergan?

  “Dirk?” Sheriff White said, raising an eyebrow.

  “I told you everything I know already,” he replied at last, his eyes remaining locked on Father Carter the entire time. “Walter—the Crab—is holed up tight. There is only one way in, and it’s heavily guarded. We’re talking twenty, thirty armed men. Even with the psycho parishioners, I severely doubt we can gain entrance.”

  Father Carter closed his eyes and breathed deeply at the term ‘psycho parishioners’. It was an odd gesture, and Coggins couldn’t help but feel that it was fake, somehow.

  Looking about the table, he was reminded of when it had just been him, Paul, and Dana sitting upstairs. Playing cards, shooting the shit.

  Things had become so… complicated.

  “Anyone heard from Greg? Greg Griddle?” Sheriff White asked suddenly.

  Coggins shrugged.

  “Last I heard he was at the church, around the same time they grabbed Corina. The bikers could have grabbed him, or he might have just left the county. But, as we all fucking know, you can’t really leave, not for good. For some reason, everyone will be sucked back into this horrible void.”

  A silence fell over the group, one that lasted for a full minute.

  “What about the FBI? State Police?” Deputy Bradley Williams chimed in at last.

  Sheriff White shook his head.

  “The FBI sent over some pathologist… all they can spare right now. As for the Staties? I can send a call out, but we saw how that went when Tyler was missing—useless as tits on a bull.”

  Coggins massaged his temples.

  “Fuck—this is so fucked. I thought…I thought after what happened at the Wharfburn’s that nothing could be worse. And now they have Alice. How wrong was I?” he raised his gaze. “How fucking wrong was I?”

  Deputy Williams leaned in close.

  “What did happen at the Wharfburn Estate, Coggins?”

  Coggins shut his eyes and ignored the question, trying to fight images of the horrible beast, the thing that had consumed Oxford, the thing that had laid the fucking eggs that had given birth to the crackers, that threatened to flood his mind.

  Coggins was suddenly reminded of the man that he had seen beside Father Carter outside when the two bikers had tossed the bag.

  “Jared? Jared Lawrence—what happened to Jared?”

  Father Carter smiled.

  “He is with the others, with the congregation. He is on our side, Deputy, rest assured.”

  Coggins trapped a scathing response behind his teeth.

  Reggie was right, they needed Father Carter and his parishioners to get to Walter. But he didn’t like the smarmy bastard. There was something about him, something that was wholly and completely untrustworthy.

  He thought back to when he and Jared had peeled away from the Lawrence home, blasting the crackers that erupted from the culvert with a shotgun.

  Father Carter was wrong; Jared was with him.

  “You aren’t the only one who has lost, Sheriff White and Deputy Coggins. Lest you forget that Jared’s niece, Corina, has also been taken from us.”

  Sheriff White slammed his hands down on the table.

  “I haven’t forgotten about Corina! I know that that thing—the Crab—also has Corina!” he shouted.

  Father Carter recoiled at this unexpected anger, and even Coggins took pause. Paul was unraveling before their eyes.

  Not that he blamed the man; after all, he had come undone long ago, back when he was working on the other side of the law.

  “Goddamn it!” Sheriff White cried. “I haven’t forgotten about Tyler, about Kent, about Corina, Mrs. Drew, Dana, Oxford, Cody, god-fucking-damnit I haven’t forgotten about Nancy!” He jabbed a thick finger in his chest. “This is Askergan, and I haven’t forgotten about anybody!”

  Just when it looked as if the large, teary-eyed man was about to come across the table and grab the priest, the door opened and the sharply-dressed man that they only knew as Pike stepped into the room.

  “We have another problem,” he informed the group, his expression grim. “A big problem.”

  Chapter 2

  Doctor Eliza Dex prodded the Cracker splayed out before her with the tip of a scalpel. It was a horrible, di
sgusting looking thing with six heavily jointed legs and a hard, crustacean-like shell measuring about eight inches across. But as strange as it was, and despite not being able to find anything remotely close to it on any website or textbook, she was fairly confident that it was terrestrial and not aquatic.

  Where the hell it had come from and what it was doing suctioning to the bodies of the dozens of victims she had seen was another story altogether.

  Eliza reached over and took a sip from the aluminum flask on the workstation, wincing at the harshness of the whiskey as it traveled down to her stomach.

  Flipping the scalpel around, she used the blunt edge to probe at the orifice, pushing and lifting back the thin membrane that housed the oscillating teeth.

  A shudder ran through her at the sight of the hundreds of tiny, razor sharp teeth. She removed the scalpel, and the orifice relaxed, the membrane folding over, hiding the teeth within.

  Up to this point, her best guess was that the chitinous creature was some sort of parasite who had remained undiscovered until recent construction had disturbed their habitat.

  It was a reasonable, and popular consensus, applicable to either the elimination or the discovery of new species during recent times.

  Another explanation was that these creatures had been previously discovered, but that they had surfaced so long ago that the records of such an event hadn’t survived. Eliza was about the furthest thing from an entomologist, and if the shelled-creature before her was an insect, it was by far the largest and most horrible she had ever seen, but she had grown up on a farm. As a little girl, her father had repeatedly warned her to expect that every seventeen years all of their crops would be destroyed in the course of one afternoon.

  The devil will awaken from his slumber and reach up and blot out the sun, he used to tell her.

  As she grew into a teenager, she would laugh at her father, call him silly for believing in such nonsense.

  But then, on the day before her fifteenth birthday she was in her bedroom reading when a breeze suddenly came in through her open window. A chill ran up Eliza’s spine, and she quickly rose to close it.

  She made it just in time.

  Billions of cicadas rose from the earth, their wings producing such force that several shingles dislodged from the roof.