QR Code Killer (2 page)

She would bring Zeus to justice if it took
the last breath in her body to do it.

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Erik Moore took a deep breath of the
hay-scented air and raised his golden eyes heavenward.

Watching a fluffy white cloud float across
the cerulean blue sky, he removed his John Deere ball cap, wiped
the sweat from his brow, and tugged the hat back in place.

"This won't get the work done any faster,
will it, Boone?" Erik addressed the question to his bird dog and
faithful companion.

His answer was a happy bark as the dog
rubbed against his leg.

Giving the dog an affectionate thump on the
side, Erik returned to his task of moving irrigation tubes. He knew
a lot of the local farmers were upgrading to new methods of
irrigation, but this particular field was small and hard to get wet
from one end to the other. He still used irrigation tubes, which
had to be hand set one at a time. He didn't really mind though. He
loved the outdoors, loved the land, and loved every speck of rich
soil on his farm.

In his family for generations, he was the
last of a long line of Moores to work this farm. The land had been
passed from father to son since his great-great-grandfather moved
to Ontario, Oregon, more than a century ago. He worked hard to
break the ground, taking the land out of sagebrush, as he built a
legacy that would be handed down from one generation to the next.
The Moore men were doers and dreamers.

Dreaming big dreams, Erik hoped to one day
pass this farm on to his son.

Smiling to himself, he couldn't believe he
was finally going to be a father.

Erik and Sheila, his wife of a decade, had
wanted a baby for years. Just when they decided to give up trying,
Sheila became pregnant. Two weeks ago, they found out the baby was
going to be a boy and Erik had a hard time keeping his thoughts on
anything but the fact that they were having a son.

He and Sheila discussed names, nursery
colors, and baby announcements. He knew he shouldn't be so
interested in all the trappings that went along with a baby’s
arrival, but he wanted to relish every detail of this pregnancy. It
was nothing short of a miracle, and he didn't want to miss out on
anything.

Nearly finished setting the tubes, the sound
of brakes squealing followed by the eerie grinding of metal
pummeling metal filled the morning air.

Jerking his head up, he could see a cloud of
dust down the road. Running for his four-wheeler, he jumped on and
started it up; racing for what he was sure was a wreck.

At the place where their lane made a "Y"
with the main road, there had been many near-accidents over the
years. He'd warned Sheila repeatedly to slow down and carefully go
around the blind turn onto the road, but she tended to take it too
fast and hope for the best.

A sick feeling of dread settled over him as
he bounced across corrugates and sped down the lane toward the
road. Sweat trickled down his back and he suddenly felt chilled to
the bone.

From the rise in the road, he could see a
car smashed into a feed truck. Driving faster, dust flew out behind
him as he hurried to something he knew he never wanted to see, even
in his worst nightmares.

Screeching to a stop, he jumped off the
four-wheeler and raced to what was left of Sheila's car, protruding
from beneath the side of the truck. Their neighbor and good friend,
Mike Griffith, was already trying to pry the top away from the
flattened body. The front of the car was smashed in. The driver’s
side was beneath the truck and so compacted, there was no way
Sheila could have survived.

"Erik, I'm so sorry. She came out of nowhere
and slammed into the truck. I didn't see her, honest, I
didn't."

"It's not your fault, Mike," Erik said,
wanting to yell and scream. Instead he asked, "Did you call
9-1-1?"

"As soon as it happened," Mike said
returning to his efforts of prying open a space at the back
passenger side door. "I've got another crowbar in the truck. Do you
want me to get it?"

Erik nodded.

Mike opened the truck door and dug around a
few minutes, finally finding the crow bar.

Running back around the little bit of the
car not stuck under the truck, Erik grabbed it from him and wedged
it against the bar Mike had been using.

"On three," Erik said. "One, two,
three!"

Grunting and straining, they both threw all
their weight and strength into it but nothing budged.

“I’m going to climb under the truck and see
if I can get to her,” Erik said, running around to the driver’s
side of the truck and sliding underneath. The car looked even worse
from this view than it did from the back.

Twisted metal, glass and shredded plastic
ground into the bottom of the truck bed. What he could see of the
driver’s side didn’t look promising. The top of the roof had
collapsed down on the rest of the car. He prayed for a miracle. It
was going to take one to get Sheila out alive.

He crawled up next to the driver’s side door
and put his hand against it, willing his wife to be breathing.

“Sheila, baby, I’m here. Everything is going
to be fine.” Eric sat in the dirt and talked to Sheila just like he
would have if she was sitting next to him, telling her how much he
loved her, how much he appreciated her, how glad he was that they
had spent the last ten years together.

“I love you, baby,” he said, his voice
growing raw with emotion.

The scream of ambulance sirens could now be
heard in the distance, growing louder with every passing second.
Erik climbed out from beneath the truck and stood next to Mike.

“I called and let them know they need to
bring out the Jaws of Life. They said the truck is already on the
way.”

Erik couldn’t speak, just nodded his
head.

By the time the truck arrived and the
firemen pried open the back of the car, Erik could see blood
pooling at the side of the door into the dust where he had been
sitting.

“Please hurry,” he whispered, then felt
Mike’s hand rest on his shoulder and give it a squeeze. Looking
over, he noticed his friend stood with his head bowed as he sent up
his own set of prayers.

A few other neighbors stopped to see if they
could help, but there was nothing they could do at this point other
than offer Erik encouragement.

Metal screaming in protest, the roof of the
car peeled back enough one of the firemen could crawl inside. He
cut away the seat belt and tried to move Sheila, but she was still
pinned in by the steering wheel. Working with the seat lever and
pulling for all he was worth, he finally got the seat to move a few
inches, giving him just enough room to tug Sheila free and drag her
back to the opening. Hands gently lifted her out onto the awaiting
gurney.

Erik stepped up next to her, unprepared for
the grisly sight that met him. Blanching white as a sheet, he
choked, tears stinging his eyes.

"Baby?" he whispered. "Please be alive."

A large gash on her forehead was bleeding
profusely, the steering wheel had been pushed back into her so far,
her stomach looked flattened and a ragged piece of metal protruded
from her collarbone. Her face was covered in slivers of glass and
there was blood everywhere.

"Oh, baby," Erik rasped, grasping her cold
hand in his.

“We’ve got a weak pulse,” the EMT said.
“Let’s get her loaded and on the road. We’ll need to life flight
her to Boise.”

Climbing in the ambulance beside the gurney,
Erik held her hand that was not being punctured with needles to
hook up to life-sustaining tubes.

Mike hollered in the door, that he would
have someone meet Erik at the hospital.

Erik continued to talk to Sheila, repeating
what he said before, telling her again how much he loved her and
needed her.

Her eyes fluttered open. Glazed with pain,
Erik saw in their depths that this would be goodbye.

“Just hang on, baby, you’ll be fine.” He
tried to sound reassuring, but knew he was falling short of the
mark.

She blinked her eyes open and closed.

Leaning close to her, he saw her eyes open
again and focus on his.

"Love you,” she whispered. "So…sorry."

“Sheila, don’t leave me. Stay with me!” Erik
pleaded as she drew a final breath.

The EMT’s did everything they could to keep
her alive as they pulled up at the hospital. Rushing the gurney
into ER, three doctors bent over Sheila trying to bring her back,
but it was no use. She was gone. So was the baby.

Erik slid down the wall, unable to stand,
and sat unmoving, unseeing. Pain seared through him to the very
core of his being. He felt like he was going to fly into a thousand
scattered pieces that would never be able to be put back together
again. Not with his heart dead and gone.

Two Years Later

Mad Dog Weber was experiencing a very
disturbing sense of déjà vu.

Dressed as a homeless woman behind a seedy
bar on the waterfront, she adjusted the grip on her Glock and
waited. Zeus was supposed to be meeting a contact about a large
heroin deal and she wasn't leaving until he was either in custody
or dead. At this point, she didn't really care which. Hunting him
for the last two years with a ruthless intensity, some of the
others in her department thought she was truly living up to her
nickname. She and Danny were now partners, and she would do
anything to protect him from suffering the same fate as Devin.
Although this time, she kept her heart from getting involved with
her partner.

Losing Devin had nearly killed her.

Some days she wished it had.

A day didn’t go by that she didn’t miss
Devin’s laugh, his wit, the way his blue eyes would spark when they
were alone and off duty. Although it was getting harder to picture
his face, she could remember how warm his hand felt on hers, the
tang of his forest-scented after shave, the way she felt in his
arms.

Gone. It was all gone.

Sucking back a sigh, Maddie thought back to
Devin’s death. The department had a funeral service for Devin,
although his body was never recovered. Maddie's captain asked her
to take some time off, but she refused, working day and night
trying to catch the elusive Zeus.

Zeus toyed with her, taunted her. Randomly
sending her QR codes with cryptic messages or videos, he somehow
managed to stay just one step ahead of her.

The chase was starting to wear on
Maddie.

Returning her focus to the present, she
tried not to breathe too deeply. How the department got the clothes
so filthy and rank was beyond her ability to imagine. As seasoned
as she was to undercover work, just thinking about the clothes made
her skin crawl. Instead she turned her thoughts to catching Zeus,
playing over the scenario in her mind. If she still prayed, she
would ask God to deliver him into their hands.

"All okay, Danny?" Maddie whispered as she
pretended to dig through the rickety shopping cart next to her.

“Yep. You okay?” Danny asked, knowing Maddie
was nearing the end of her rope. Her laser focus on catching Zeus
was about to drive her beyond both physical and mental endurance.
She would never admit it, but he could sense the weariness in her.
Like all of them working the case, she just wanted it to end.

“Peachy,” Maddie whispered, then started to
sing an off-key tune in a warbley voice.

Danny smiled in spite of the situation. No
one would go near Maddie with her singing like that. They’d think
she was completely deranged. The concert ended abruptly and all
grew quiet.

“That was lovely,” Danny teased. “Care to
give an encore?”

“No,” Maddie said. Two thugs came through
the alley toward the back door of the bar. They gave her a quick
once over and moved on when she started singing. She had been on
this case long enough to realize at least one of them was a
bodyguard for Zeus. She could see their holsters as they stood in
the light spilling from the back door of the bar. “We’ve got two
coming in the back, fully loaded.”

“Copy that,” Danny said, adjusting his
position at a corner table so he could watch Zeus’ men come through
the back hallway. “Two more are at the bar. He’s got as many troops
here tonight as we do.”

“No doubt,” Maddie said, contempt dripping
through her voice. In addition to her and Danny, they had three
guys out front, two in the alley behind her, and six inside the
bar, including one undercover as the bartender. All wired, all
tired of this cat and mouse game, all ready to take out Zeus. “He
must really be planning to show up with all the muscle he’s sending
in.”

Maddie relished the thought of taking the
whole bunch of them down. She wanted Zeus to suffer. To feel the
pain he had caused others. To spend his lifetime, and eternity,
regretting every wicked thing he had ever done. Then she could
rest.

“On your toes, Mad Dog. He’s here.”

No one had ever seen the elusive Zeus. All
they knew was that he was tall, well-built and muscular. He had
dark hair, no heart and a genius mind corrupted by evil. Maddie
found herself anxious to see his face.

Sensing her thoughts, Danny tried to keep
her updated. “He’s just a shade over six-feet tall. Muscular, for
sure. Looks like he does weight training or maybe something like
kickboxing. He’s wearing sunglasses and a fedora. Scruffy, dark
beard hides his face. Dark skin, but almost looks like a designer
tan. Broad cheekbones, thin straight nose. New porcelains on his
teeth.”

Danny was quiet for a moment then Maddie
heard him mutter, “Great. Just great.”

“What,” Maddie said, starting to get
worried.

“He’s got on gloves. No fingerprints. Very
smart,” Danny said in a whisper. He sank back farther into the
shadows enveloping his table and watched the entourage surrounding
Zeus. It looked like there were half a dozen body guards, all the
size of small mountains. Strolling into the dive, Zeus appeared to
look around, size up the situation, and find it agreeable before
sitting down at a table. His groupies stood behind him. A small man
with a wiry mustache and a nervous twitch, sat down at the table.
Their snitch had better pull himself together or he was going to
blow their cover.