The Ackerman Thrillers Boxset: 1-6 Read online

  ACKERMAN THRILLERS BOXSET

  THE ACKERMAN THRILLERS BY ETHAN CROSS

  I am the Night

  I am Fear

  I am Pain

  I am Wrath

  I am Hate

  I am Vengeance

  THE ACKERMAN THRILLERS BOXSET

  Ethan Cross

  An Aries book

  www.headofzeus.com

  This omnibus edition first published in the United Kingdom in 2020 by Aries, an imprint of Head of Zeus Ltd

  I Am the Night Copyright © Ethan Cross, 2011

  I Am Fear © Ethan Cross, 2012

  I Am Pain © Ethan Cross, 2014

  I Am Wrath © Ethan Cross, 2016

  I Am Hate © Ethan Cross, 2019

  I Am Vengeance © Ethan Cross, 2020

  The moral right of Ethan Cross to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 9781800243828

  Aries

  c/o Head of Zeus

  First Floor East

  5–8 Hardwick Street

  London EC1R 4RG

  www.headofzeus.com

  To my best buddy, Gizmo, for literally being by my side when all of these books were written. May you rest in peace, my friend…

  Contents

  The Ackerman Thrillers by Ethan Cross

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  1. I am the Night

  2. I am Fear

  3. I am Pain

  4. I am Wrath

  5. I am Hate

  6. I am Vengeance

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  An Invitation from the Publisher

  I AM THE NIGHT

  Ethan Cross

  An Aries book

  www.headofzeus.com

  Contents

  Title Page

  PART ONE: THE FLOCK

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  PART TWO: THE WOLF AND THE SHEPHERD

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  PART THREE: THE ROD AND THE STAFF

  Chapter 36

  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

  PART FOUR: THE WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Chapter 60

  Chapter 61

  Chapter 62

  Chapter 63

  Chapter 64

  Chapter 65

  Chapter 66

  Chapter 67

  Chapter 68

  Chapter 69

  Chapter 70

  Chapter 71

  Chapter 72

  Chapter 73

  Chapter 74

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 76

  Chapter 77

  Chapter 78

  Chapter 79

  PART ONE:

  THE FLOCK

  1

  Jim Morgan watched as reflections of the patrol car’s flashing lights danced across the front window of the remote gas station. He strained to see beyond the strange and ominous shadows into the building’s interior. Although the call from dispatch warranted only a routine robbery report, for some reason, an irrational yet overwhelming feeling of dread crept over the edges of his consciousness. He couldn’t explain the sensation—cop instincts, intuition, or premonition—but he knew something wasn’t right. He took a deep breath and released a prolonged and deliberate exhalation. As he exited the vehicle, he forced away the feeling that something dark awaited him.

  He noted the absence of the moon. The darkness seemed solid and eternal beyond the pool of radiance cast by the lights of the cruiser and gas station. He felt as if he sat on the edge of the world, and nothing else existed in the universe. Turning his gaze back toward the station, the feeling took root again.

  He couldn’t pinpoint the source of his fear, which frightened him even more. For Jim, the worst kind of fear had always been one without a name. Out of trepidation, he considered calling to check on his wife, Emily, and their daughter. He consulted his watch and decided against it. He didn’t want to wake them.

  His partner, Tom Delaine, said, “You okay? You look like somebody pissed in your cornflakes.”

  “I’m fine. Let’s get this over with. It’s past my bedtime, and I just want to go home.”

  The look of concern was still evident on Tom’s face, but he nodded and walked toward the front door of the station. Neither man had drawn his weapon, since they knew from dispatch that the assailant had already fled the premises. Nevertheless, a proper report needed to be filed, and the station’s attendant had seemed adamant that someone should come right away.

  As they entered the building, Jim caught the hint of a strangely familiar smell, but he was unable to identify it. He pushed the thought away and focused his mind on the task at hand.

  Once inside, he scanned the room. The station’s counter rested along the back wall, parallel to the door. A man with dark hair and haunting gray eyes sat behind it. The attendant’s midnight black t-shirt stretched tight across his chest, firm muscles bunched underneath. The man didn’t say a word; he simply stared without expression at the two policemen.

  As their gazes locked, Jim instinctively moved his hand closer to the pistol holstered at his side.

  “Nice night, huh?” the attendant said. “The darkness tonight is … oppressive. It has weight.”

  He couldn’t comprehend the logic that associated an oppressive darkness with a nice night, and he distrusted the man possessing a mind in which the two were linked. The significance of such a statement was apparently lost on his partner. Tom just raised his eyebrows and replied with a drawn-out, “Okay.” After a pause, he said, “Were you the one who reported the robbery?”

  “No,” the man said,
“I reported a murder.”

  Upon hearing the statement, Jim’s breath caught in his throat. He moved his hand over his gun but didn’t draw the 9mm Glock semi-automatic from its holster.

  “Who was murdered?” Tom said.

  The attendant didn’t answer, and although Jim couldn’t be sure, he thought a suppressed grin had passed over the man’s face. Instead of a reply, the attendant leaned forward and shifted his gaze down one of the station’s aisles.

  Jim followed the man’s stare to where a gruesome image caught him unprepared, bombarding his senses.

  The dead man at the end of the aisle had been stripped naked. Blood was everywhere. Numerous lacerations ran along the length of his body, but the frenzied slashes were most prevalent around the heart, lungs, and sexual organs. His eyes had been gouged out.

  Without hesitation, both troopers drew their weapons and pointed them at the strange man behind the counter. Tom took a step forward and said, “Get your hands where I can see them!”

  The suspect made no attempt to bring his hands up from beneath the counter. In fact, the formation of a smile constituted his only movement as a malicious grin spread across his face. The smile held no joy, nor love, nor warmth. It was cold, making Jim feel like a fly trapped in a spider’s web.

  Tom took another step forward and repeated himself with no better results. He had now advanced to no more than three feet from the counter. Jim, on the other hand, had taken a step back and wanted to scream at Tom that he had moved too close. The thought dissipated when the man behind the counter spoke in a calm, yet commanding voice. “Do you like it? It’s my version of a killing by Andrei Chikatilo, Russia’s Rostov Ripper. You’re probably not familiar with him. While you were learning about Lincoln and Washington, I was learning about Jack the Ripper, Albert Fish, Ed Gein, the Zodiac. Those were just a few of my founding fathers.” The killer’s eyes darted between them. “You boys don’t recognize me, do you?”

  Tom screamed at the man with even greater ferocity. “I don’t care who you are … just put your hands on your head. NOW!”

  The killer shot Tom an uninterested glance and said, “You should show me a little more respect. After all, I am a bit of a celebrity. My name is Ackerman.”

  Jim felt his breath stripped away once again. When he had first laid eyes upon the man, he had noticed a vague familiarity. Now, his synapses fired, and he made the connection. He had seen the man’s face on television, a two-hour special presented by one of those network news shows. He tried to remember the name of the special. It was something along the lines of An Experiment in Madness, but he couldn’t remember the exact title. He did, however, remember the description of the man and his hideous crimes. The program had described the kind of monster that was only supposed to exist in the minds of Hollywood’s most creative—not a person of flesh and blood who found substance in the real world.

  Tom repeated his ultimatum, but this time he spoke the words in a soft voice, as if beseeching the madman to submit and end the confrontation without a fight. “Put your hands where I can see them. I’m going to count to three, and then—”

  “I wouldn’t do anything rash, officer. If you’re not careful, my pretty little hostage might get her pretty little face blown off.”

  “What hostage?”

  Ackerman redirected his gaze from Tom to Jim. “The one under this counter with the sawed-off shotgun strapped against her right temple. It’ll make a real mess of her, believe me on that. I’ve seen it before. It’s not pretty. And I know exactly what you’re thinking. You think I’m bluffing.” He turned back to Tom. “And you’re thinking that even if I am telling the truth, you can probably put one between my eyes before I could get my shot off. You’d be wrong, though. My finger’s resting right on that trigger and, as soon as your bullet struck, my muscles would clench and her head would be blown out the other side of this counter. So, gentlemen, it appears that what we have here is a Mexican stand-off.”

  Ackerman took a deep breath and continued in his honeyed tone. “Isn’t this fun? You both began your day like any other. You kissed your loved ones good-bye, enjoyed a cup of coffee, maybe read the morning paper, but little did you know that this would be the most significant day of your lives. Today is a day that makes or breaks everything you’ve ever said or done, everything you’ve stood for or believed in. At some point, we all come to a place where we have to choose whether to be the hero, the villain, or to walk away and remain one of the sheep. This is one of those moments, gentlemen.

  “I’m going to give you both a choice. You can walk away now and continue on with your lives. Maybe I have a hostage under this counter that I’m going to carve up the second you walk out that door, and maybe I don’t. Maybe you can catch me and make a name for yourselves, or maybe you’ll die trying. There’s no way you can know for sure, but that’s the beauty of it, isn’t it? There’s no meaning. Good doesn’t triumph over evil. There’s just random chance and death. You were the unlucky ones who got the call tonight. The gentleman down the aisle was the unlucky one who was working the station tonight. We like to walk around and think of ourselves as being so damn evolved, so much better and more intelligent than all of the other wildlife. But you know what?”

  Ackerman looked at the two men as if he was a hungry animal and they were his next meal. He lowered his voice. “In the end, no matter how many delusions of grandeur we blind ourselves with, we are all either hunters or the hunted, predators or prey. Life is just one big game, gentlemen. The winners survive and the losers rot. The choices we make determine our fate. So … make your choice.”

  Jim stood at rigid attention, entranced by the madman behind the counter. Ackerman had recited the speech with passion, as if the killer were a politician rallying the constituency behind some noble cause. He had never seen a man with two guns pointed at his face remain so impassive. There was no fear in him. Fear to Ackerman seemed as alien a concept as an airplane to a Neanderthal. More than that, it appeared as if the man felt in complete control of the situation.

  Despite the gun in his hand, the realization of that fact made Jim feel defenseless.

  Tom’s voice cracked and contained a noticeable tremor. “There is no hostage,” he said. “There were no other cars out front. Now, you put your hands where I can see them, or I swear to God in heaven, I will put a bullet right between your eyes.”

  Jim wasn’t convinced by Tom’s statement, and neither did it seem to influence Ackerman. He knew that Ackerman would have most likely stashed his own car in back, in order to keep up the appearance of being the attendant. If some woman had stopped and come across the killer, he would have moved her car to the back with his own. The possibility that Ackerman had brought the hostage with him in his own car also occurred to him.

  He wasn’t sure whether his partner had overlooked those scenarios, or if Tom’s actions merely represented a desperate attempt to end the situation. Either way, he knew it wouldn’t work. Ackerman wouldn’t allow this to end without things getting messy. He could see that much in the killer’s eyes.

  Ackerman sighed. “Well, darling, they apparently don’t believe you’re real. Why don’t you scream for them?”

  With Ackerman’s last word, the front of the counter exploded outward, sending pieces of wooden shrapnel in all directions. The shotgun blast tore into Tom’s left side, sending a spray of blood into Jim’s face and dropping Tom onto the linoleum.

  Jim dove into the closest aisle. An instant after he was clear, the end cap display of Dorito chips erupted from a second blast.

  He regained his feet and fired two shots in quick succession around the corner. He barely had time to see his shots strike the counter when the shotgun answered, sending him back to cover.

  He could hear Tom crying and cursing. His gun must have been lost in the confusion, he thought. And Tom must have been half delirious with pain since he wasn’t even attempting to find cover. Jim knew that his partner wouldn’t survive if he didn’t immediat
ely end the confrontation and get help.

  “Trooper down. Send medical,” he said into his portable packset radio. He didn’t bother to announce his name or location. The radio carried a unique code that dispatch would identify while the GPS in the patrol car would alert backup units of their position.

  But, unless he acted now, he also knew that he and Tom would be dead by the time backup arrived.

  He tried to stay focused, but he couldn’t keep his thoughts from wandering onto his wife and daughter. Will I see them again? Will I get to watch my daughter grow up? He thought of brushing the golden, curly locks of hair away from her face and kissing her on the forehead. He thought of the way her eyes lit up with awe and wonder as she sat on his lap and listened to him read.

  He thought of his wife kissing him good-bye and telling him to be careful. He thought of holding her, skin against skin, and running his fingers through her raven black hair.

  I have to be strong. I have to make it home to them. He tried to tell himself that he would see them again, but somehow he knew better. At that moment, he would have given anything for one more chance to hold them.

  The smell of gunpowder mixed with the aromas of scented cleaning fluids attacked his senses and made him feel lightheaded. It was that or the adrenaline. Either way, he felt as if he was in a washing machine on spin cycle. He tried to get himself under control, but he was terrified beyond reason. He had no idea of what to do next.

  He knew that he wouldn’t survive a frontal assault against the shotgun, so he decided his best option would be to move around to the back of the aisles and perhaps catch Ackerman off guard. Plus, the greater the distance, the more advantage his 9mm would have over the less accurate shotgun.

  Moving as quietly as possible, he made his way down the aisle. Reaching the opposite end cap, he peered around the corner into the next row.

  All clear.

  He dashed to the next end cap.

  So far, so good.

  There were only four rows of food in the small station, which meant that if he made it to the next end cap without Ackerman seeing him, he would have an unobstructed view of his opponent’s hiding place.