A deadly trap.
But there were many reasons to suggest that I actually wasn’t.
For starters, when I’d told King that he meet me at a Starbucks just outside downtown Phoenix, he had actually agreed to it. I told him that I would need to record the meeting for my own security, and he was fine with it—as long as I understood that meant he would have to limit what he said. I told him that I could only meet for thirty minutes, and that as soon as the meeting ended, I would go back to work.
King was fine with all of it.
So fine, in fact, that it left me wondering what loopholes I had failed to close, what gaps in my requests I’d made that I had failed to realize. I’d done my research on King after his voicemail and after texting with Satan that Monday, and the more I learned, the more terrified I felt. The only reason this man wasn’t more wanted than Osama Bin Laden back in the day was because he put enough rings around him to make sure he never faced any criminal prosecution.
Oh, there were rumors everywhere that were almost certainly true. There were stories of him funding violent MCs, mafias, cartels, and individual criminals. He apparently had at least half the police force in Las Vegas on his payroll, which probably explained why he hadn’t been arrested. He felt to me like Al Capone, a man who would be more likely to wind up in jail for tax evasion than for the crimes he was rumored to have committed and funded.
And also, he apparently wore a white suit everywhere he went. So at least he would be easy to find.
I showed up at the Starbucks about two minutes before the arranged meeting time and took a seat in the corner. I looked around the room. It looked completely normal, but I caught a few people in my peripheral vision looking at me. I strongly suspected that King had undercover security and guards working for him here; if anyone thought they had an open shot at him because he had gone in public, he’d be mistaken.
But this led to a curious question.
Why had he come to Phoenix?
If King was as big and bad a man as they said, why would he show his face and not send a crony instead?
By the time the clock struck ten minutes after twelve, I was starting to believe that things would soon be blowing up to a level I could not understand—nor would I want to.
But before I could ponder the thought any further, the door to the Starbucks opened, and the man in the white suit entered.
The first thing I noticed was the enormous contrasts that seemed to define his appearance. He was impeccably dressed, but he had long, golden hair reaching down to his body. He had the face of a man who had seen much and experienced much, but he moved gracefully, almost athletically. He was not that tall, perhaps five-foot-eight, maybe nine, but his presence was such that even those “undercover” noticeably got smaller around him.
“The nice thing about your job,” he said in a smooth-yet-older voice, “is that I don’t need to ask if it is you, Miss Cook. You’re as recognizable as any celebrity, athlete, or billionaire unfortunate enough to have fame accompany their wealth.”
“You make it sound like a bad thing,” I said, trying to hide my nervousness.
“Would you want to be recognized everywhere you go?”
Come to think of it, no, I did not. King extended his hand. I took it. He…had a normal grip. But it seemed like he wasn’t squeezing as hard as he could, like he was toying with me.
“The greatest gift life could ever give you would be to be rich and anonymous,” he said, keeping his firm but not painful grip on my hand. “To be poor and anonymous is to feel useless. To feel poor and famous is to invite endless derision and shame. To be rich and famous is to invite envy and jealousy, often to a murderous degree. But to be rich and anonymous? One can rule the world without the world ever knowing it.”
He gave a short, uncomfortable laugh before taking a seat across from me. I wondered if he was trying to tell me something by saying he was ruling the world without us knowing it, but it wasn’t my job to analyze. It was my job, I had decided for myself—for Satan and his club—to collect and gather and share.
“You seem to suggest that I am famous and poor.”
“Locally, yes,” King said. “It isn’t as painful on a small scale. Obviously, the larger the scale, the more profound the consequences.”
He cleared his throat. A barista came over and placed a green tea drink in front of him. It occurred to me that King had no phone on him, no smartwatch, and had not gone up to the counter to place an order. I didn’t dare ask him how he pulled that off, though.
“Now then, enough philosophical chatter that would make the Stoics envious, which would be ironic enough,” he said with a smirk. “Tell me about your report, Miss Cook.”
“What about it?”
“Oh, don’t play dense and coy with me,” he said, but he said it in a gently teasing manner, like an uncle playing with his niece. “You’re very good at your job, which means you’re able to see very clearly when people are lying to you or trying to direct you. It also means you know how to do those things. For that reason, Miss Cook, I’m asking you not to.”
I nodded and sighed. I wasn’t smart enough to know what to say and what not to say. Fortunately, I didn’t know much that would compromise the Devil’s Patriots.
I hoped.
“I got tasked with working on the Devil’s Patriots for a news update about six months back, but the piece just felt so cliché. Anyone can talk about the horrors of biker clubs and make parents of teenage daughters sweat, but I wanted to dig a little bit deeper. My boss gave me permission to build a longer piece, and I managed to talk to Satan and some of the Devil’s Patriots—”
“And how did you manage to talk to them, Miss Cook?”
