Snuff Tag 9 (A Nicholas Colt Thriller Book 3) Read online

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright © 2012 Jude Hardin

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Thomas & Mercer

  P.O. Box 400818

  Las Vegas, NV 89140

  ISBN-13: 9781612184470

  ISBN-10: 1612184472

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Acknowledgments

  About The Author

  Dear Mr. Colt: You’re dead...

  I broke the seal on a bottle of Old Fitzgerald, generously bathed some ice cubes, and took a sip. Satisfied the subject line couldn’t possibly be true, I opened the e-mail.

  It was spam, an advertisement from a company called Plots with a Twist. They were trying to sell me a hole to be buried in and a high-tech grave marker—a solar-powered, weatherproofed video screen embedded in a slab of granite. When your loved ones walked up and pressed a button, they got to watch all the good times you had when you weren’t a stiff yet.

  I decided not to get one. When I kick, I want to be jettisoned into outer space, like the guy who played Scotty on Star Trek. I always wondered if his publicist set that up, just for the good press. You never know about those Hollywood types.

  I finished my drink, closed the laptop, and headed down to the lounge. I had a one o’clock appointment with a guy named Nathan Broadway.

  I’d driven to St. Augustine and checked into the Holiday Inn the night before, thinking a couple of days at the beach might be good for my soul. My adopted daughter Brittney was living in one of the dorms at the University of Florida in Gainesville, and my wife, Juliet, and I had been separated for some time. Juliet was living near Jacksonville, in the house we once shared, and I was back in my 1964 Airstream Safari travel trailer on lot 23 at Joe’s Fish Camp. It got lonely out there sometimes. I missed my daughter, and I missed my wife.

  At 1:05, Nathan Broadway still hadn’t shown up. I took a seat at the bar.

  It was Sunday, October 9, and the Jacksonville Jaguars were playing the Cincinnati Bengals on the big-screen television. There was a free buffet table set up against the back wall. Pigs in blankets, fried cheese, potato chips, and a bunch of other greasy, salty fare designed to make you hang around and buy more six-dollar beers. A dozen people stood in line, waiting to cram as much food as possible on paper plates slightly larger than drink coasters. Near the front of the queue a tall woman in a business suit kept rubbing her nose with a handkerchief. When she sneezed in the general direction of the hot wings, I decided I wasn’t hungry.

  “What can I get you to drink?” The bartender’s name tag said Sheri. She had a long blonde ponytail I guessed to be fake and a gold stud in her tongue I guessed to be genuine. Nice smile.

  “Old Fitz on the rocks,” I said.

  She made the drink and I started a tab. Jacksonville scored a touchdown on their opening drive. While they were getting set to kick the extra point, Nathan Broadway walked in and sat on the stool next to mine. He ordered an Amstel Light and said, “Mind if we move to a booth?”

  I shrugged, got up, and followed him to the table farthest from the television. A few people cheered when Jacksonville made the extra point. It was seven to nothing. Nathan Broadway and I sat facing each other. I guessed him to be in his early thirties. He wore a crew cut and jeans and an orange polo. Clean-shaven, looked like he went to the gym. He pulled an envelope out of his back pocket and handed it to me. There was a letter inside, typed on a single sheet of white paper, and a hand-drawn map.

  Dear Nathan Broadway: You are cordially invited to come and play a game called Snuff Tag 9. We have provided a map for your convenience. You will need a vehicle with four-wheel drive to get there. Come alone. Pack as you would if you were going to stay at a hotel overnight. We will be expecting you on October 11 at approximately 8:00 p.m. If you choose not to come, you will die. If you try to trace this letter, or try to get the authorities involved in any way, you will die. If you show this letter to another living soul, you will die. This is not a joke. We will kill you. Thank you for your cooperation, and we look forward to seeing you on the 11th. Sincerely, The Sexy Bastards.

  I looked at the envelope. No return address, no postmark, no stamp.

  I laughed. “Snuff Tag Nine. Sounds like some kind of secondrate action movie.”

  “You’re kidding, right?” Broadway said. “It’s one of the most popular video games on the planet.”

  “I don’t play that shit,” I said. “So I wouldn’t know.”

  “It’s really cool. Violent as hell. You can play alone or you can go online and play against other people. I’ve even played against people in foreign countries. I signed up for a tournament a while back, so maybe that’s where these sexy bastard people got my address. I don’t know.”

  “You found the letter in your mailbox?” I said.

  “Yesterday. I opened it and, I don’t know, it scared the hell out of me. I thought about calling the police, but I was afraid whoever put the letter in my mailbox might find out and really kill me. I thought it would be safer to call a private eye. I appreciate you meeting me on a Sunday, Mr. Colt, on such short notice.”

  I took a sip of my drink. “How many other private investigators did you call?”

  “Only two.”

  I tried my best to look crushed. “So I wasn’t your first choice?”

  “You were third in the phone book.”

  “Must have been an old phone book.”

  “What do you mean?” he said.

  “I mean it must have been an old phone book. I’m not a private investigator anymore.”

  He looked confused. “What are you, then?”

  “I’m nothing. I don’t have any sort of license anymore. Long story. If it makes you feel better to call me something, call me a security consultant.”

  “I thought I was going to be dealing with a licensed professional. Now I’m not sur
e. I mean—”

  “I was a licensed investigator for a long time,” I said. “I know what I’m doing. And apparently I’m the best you’re going to get on a Sunday on short notice.”

  He nodded. Took a swallow of beer and wiped his mouth with the cocktail napkin he’d brought from the bar. “OK, so what should I do? You think someone is really aiming to kill me? They said it’s not a joke.”

  “They said that, but it probably is a joke. These kinds of letters make the rounds from time to time. If it was me, I would wad it up and throw it in the trash can.”

  He fidgeted with the napkin, twisting it into a skinny rope. “I don’t know. I don’t want to take any chances. I don’t like threats, you know? I mean, I can take care of myself, but—”

  “So what do you want me to do?” I said. “There’s no way to trace the letter. We could take it to a laboratory for fingerprints and DNA, try to find the sender that way, but it would be expensive as hell and I doubt anything would show up. I imagine whoever handled the letter and the envelope used gloves. The way I see it, you have three choices: you can ignore it, which is what I would recommend; or you can rent a jeep and follow the directions on the map and find out for yourself that it’s only a prank; or you can hire me for a hundred dollars an hour, plus expenses, and I’ll drive out there for you and report back that it’s only a prank.”

  “A hundred an hour?”

  “Yeah, and the clock started ticking at one.”

  “So I owe you fifty bucks just for sitting here and talking?”

  I looked at my watch. “That’s about right. So what’s it going to be?”

  He stared at his mutilated cocktail napkin for thirty seconds or so, and then said, “How about we ride out there together?”

  “Nope. I don’t take clients on jobs with me. If I go, I go alone. I’ll need a thousand-dollar retainer up front. If there’s any left over, I’ll refund the difference.”

  He reached into his pocket and pulled out a checkbook.

  “I’ll need cash,” I said.

  “Where am I supposed to get a thousand dollars cash on a Sunday?”

  “At the front desk. I already asked, and they said it shouldn’t be a problem.”

  “How will I even know you went out there to check it out? You’re so convinced it’s a hoax, you could just—”

  “I’ll take pictures and e-mail them to you from the site. That good enough, sweetie pie?”

  He studied the label on his beer bottle, ignoring my sarcasm.

  He was starting to piss me off. When you hire a private investigator, or a former private investigator who lost his license over a narcotics conviction and now calls himself a security consultant, or any professional, there’s a level of trust involved. If you don’t trust them to do the job you want done, don’t hire them. Simple. Broadway had gone down the alphabetical list in the phone book. That had been the extent of his research. Going down the alphabetical list in the phone book is a stupid way to hire a chimney sweep or a house painter or a guy to pump out your septic tank. Never mind someone you think might save your life. But Nathan Broadway’s stupidity was his problem, not mine. I needed the work, and if he wanted to fork over a thousand bucks to send me on what I figured would almost certainly amount to a wild goose chase, then I wasn’t above taking it.

  “Can I at least see your driver’s license?” he said.

  I took it out of my wallet and handed it to him. He glanced at the surgical scars on my left hand but didn’t say anything.

  “Satisfied?” I said. “I have references too if you need them. All you have to do is ask.”

  “That’s OK. It’s just a lot of money, that’s all.”

  He took a deep breath, looked over at the television for a second, and then wrote the check. We walked to the front desk together, and the cash went from his hand to mine.

  I told Broadway I would be in touch. We shook hands and he left the hotel.

  I went back to my room and did some searches on the computer, but I didn’t find any organization called The Sexy Bastards. Snuff Tag 9 was a different story. I got over a million hits on Google. I clicked on the Wikipedia article and skimmed through it. The premise seemed simple enough: There are 999 characters, and you get to choose which one you want to be. Once you choose, seven others are randomly assigned as opponents, and at some point during the game a ninth character is dropped into the fray. You and your opponents are given two weapons each from the “secret vault.” The secret vault contains ten different weapons: a length of tow chain, a slingshot, a survival knife, a nightstick, a set of brass knuckles, a pair of nunchucks, a stun gun, a can of Mace, a bullwhip, and a fifty-caliber blowgun with three darts. You choose the weapons blindly, so you don’t know what you’re going to get, and the weapons you select are automatically replaced, so it’s possible for other characters to have one or both of the same weapons you have. Your only objective is to kill the other eight characters. If you kill them all, game over. You win. If one of them kills you, game over. You lose. A master of ceremonies named Freeze orchestrates the battles and keeps everyone in line.

  Freeze is actually a billionaire sadist who has kidnapped the characters and is forcing them to play the game. That’s the story line. The characters are being forced to play the game against their will. If you refuse, you die automatically. The playing field is a remote island two miles in diameter, so there’s no chance of running away.

  The premise reminded me of a story I read in junior high called “The Most Dangerous Game” by Richard Connell. The folks who developed Snuff Tag 9 even mentioned that story as one of their inspirations.

  But Snuff Tag 9 was way more complex.

  According to Wikipedia, there are twenty different levels of difficulty to choose from based on your proficiency at the game, level twenty being the highest. As of the date on the article, only four people in the world had ever won the game at level nineteen, and nobody had ever won at level twenty. Nobody even knew what level twenty looked like, except the programmers. Rumor had it your final battle in level twenty was against Freeze himself, but nobody knew for sure. The article said Snuff Tag 9 was listed as one of the top ten most violent video games ever produced and was rated M for mature players only.

  I poured myself another drink and sat there for a while and thought about it. Someone had taken the time and trouble and risk to hand-deliver a letter and map to Nathan Broadway’s mailbox, just to lure him to a remote location to play a video game. The whole death threat thing was bullshit, I was sure of it, but maybe the note had an underlying sinister purpose written between the lines.

  I called Broadway’s cell phone number.

  “I forgot to ask earlier, but what kind of work do you do?”

  “I’m an accountant,” he said.

  “Make good money?”

  “I do all right.”

  “You have a nice house? Nice car? Nice things?”

  “Mr. Colt, I—”

  “And you’re single,” I said. “Listen, I want you to stay at home Tuesday night.”

  “Why?”

  “I’m thinking whoever put that letter in your mailbox is planning to burglarize your house. All that Snuff Tag Nine crap was just to make sure you were away for a few hours after dark. That’s my guess, anyway. There was a similar case down in Tampa a few years ago, only in that one the letter told the recipients they’d won a seven-day cruise. The targets were single people. Educated. Affluent. All they had to do was show up at a certain time and place to collect their prize, but the address they’d been given turned out to be a vacant lot. While they were gone, the crooks waltzed in and bagged their cash and jewelry and laptops, anything of value that could be carted out easily.”

  “Were the thieves ever caught?” Broadway said.

  “Not to my knowledge. Hell, it might be the same ring.”

  “So you think I should stay home Tuesday night? What if they come anyway? Should I buy a gun?”

  “When they see your car i
n the driveway and lights on in the house, they’ll go somewhere else. I guarantee it. They probably cased a dozen houses and delivered a dozen of those letters, maybe more. The people that fall for it are the ones they’ll hit. Do you have a dog?”

  “No.”

  “An alarm system?”

  “No.”

  “Professional burglars look for those things and target residences that don’t have them. Just stay home Tuesday night and you’ll be fine.”

  “You sure?” he said.

  “Yeah, but you might want to think about having an alarm system installed sometime soon.”

  “I will. I sure will. Are you still going to drive to the spot on the map?”

  I hesitated. “I’ll go out there, just to check it out. But I would lay odds there’s nothing there. Shouldn’t take more than four hours tops, so I’ll be giving you back quite a bit of the retainer.”

  “Wow, that’s great. I appreciate it, man.”

  “No problem. I’ll give you a call Tuesday night.”

  We disconnected. It was going on three o’clock, and I still hadn’t eaten lunch. Come to think of it, I hadn’t eaten breakfast either. I had a three-bourbon buzz and didn’t think it would be wise to drive, so I locked the room and walked out to the beach and headed toward the pier.

  A mile or so south and two blocks west there was a bar and grill called The Oasis. I’d been there before, and the fish sandwich was consistently good and reasonably priced and the draft beer was ice cold. I took my Topsiders off and trudged through the loose sand until I got to the firmer part by the shore. From there I put the shoes back on and treaded easily. There were people throwing Frisbees and playing volleyball and surfing and jogging and walking their dogs. It was low tide, sunny, and eighty degrees. People up north get the leaves changing and frost on the pumpkin and all that, but to me this was the perfect autumn day.

  Perfect, that is, if I’d had someone to share it with.

  Eighteen months after an overwhelmingly traumatic time in Tennessee and California, where I was brainwashed by a Christian militia group called the Harvest Angels and used for some shockingly abominable activities, my wife Juliet still hadn’t found it in her heart to forgive me for one night with a record company receptionist named Ericka. I explained to her a million times that I wasn’t myself at the time, that it was meaningless, but there was something about the Filipino culture she’d been brought up in that made it very difficult to work through marital infidelity, even in extreme circumstances like mine. I kept telling myself she just needed more time, and I sincerely hoped that was the case.