The Dream Virgin: A Ventures Nest Thriller Read online

  THE

  DREAM VIRGIN

  THE

  DREAM VIRGIN

  Book One

  A Ventures Nest Thriller SERIES

  Don Quine

  Gecko Group Books

  Maui

  Copyright © 2017 by Don Quine

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  ISBN 978-0-9998574-0-3 (print)

  ISBN 978-0-9998574-1-0 (electronic)

  Printed in the United States of America

  Gecko Group Books

  180 Dickenson Street, Suite 207

  Lahaina, HI 96761

  www.GeckoGroup.org

  For

  The Dream Makers

  Table of Contents

  EIGHT YEARS AGO

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  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

  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

  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

  CHAPTER 80

  CHAPTER 81

  EIGHT YEARS AGO

  “Look, Reimer, it’s against the law and I don’t want this going on around my son. I’ve asked you nicely, now I’m telling you.” She told him he could forget about the back rent, just pack up his stuff, put the videos back in the cupboard and leave before Chip got home.

  Reimer pointed a tin box at the RV’s built-in table. “Raedeane, please sit your dumb ass down and let me explain how your peeping Tom pal gave us a pension.”

  “Stop it!” Raedeane stood by the huge wolfdog with piercing orange eyes and took out her cell phone. “I want you and your drugs out of here and I’m not interested in any blackmail scam! Put the videos back and leave now or I’m calling Sheriff Harry, and this time I swear to . . .”

  Reimer slapped the phone out of her hand and shoved Raedeane against the RV’s kitchen counter, which upset the fresh batch he had cooking in the Pyrex meatloaf dish.

  Before her head banged against the stove, Raedeane was able to cry, “Shadow!” and the wolfdog leaped from her cardboard bed and yelping pups with a savage snarl.

  Reimer was lucky to get his forearm in front of his throat before the white fangs sunk through his long rubber gloves. He screamed, flashed a set of weird dentures, and grasped for a hunting knife with his free hand.

  Then the meth fumes exploded.

  Reimer drove past the dangling Nature Lovers Retreat sign and parked the truck near a desolate office building with a withered front door notice: Clothing Optional. Designed along the lines of the Spaceship Earth architecture popular in the Peace and Love Sixties, the aluminum frame and Plexiglas panels of the office were still distinct after years of neglect.

  Reimer got out of the flatbed, slung a backpack over his shoulders, grabbed an ax off the floorboard, and slid it into a slot on the right side of his utility belt next to a big machete.

  A gruesome-looking man in his late-thirties with a runny nose and a ponytail beard, he peered around the wooded area cautiously, his left arm wrapped with a blood-stained dish towel, face dark with smoke and charred at the chin.

  He cocked his head to one side. Listened to something he thought he heard and scratched the scar on the rear of his skull that was shaped like an upside-down cross. He looked in the back of the beat-up truck, giving the bed a quick once-over, but his head was back at Raedeane’s RV, making him mutter, “Dumb bitch.”

  Reimer closed off a nostril with his thumb, blew snot, hefted the backpack and headed toward an overgrown footpath that led past the office entrance into the woods.

  A minute or so went by, then a muffled yelp broke the surrounding stillness.

  In the back of the truck, past a dirt bike, a chainsaw, and animal traps, up by the cab with the racked rifles, a tarp covering camping equipment rose slowly.

  A little boy with red hair peered out with a wolfdog puppy in his arms. Removing his hand from the pup’s snout, the boy whispered, “Shhh, Timber,” and looked toward the footpath, tearful and frightened.

  The abandoned nudist colony lay untouched in the middle of an immense meadow fenced by a forest and broken by the brook that ran through it.

  There was still enough early autumn light in the meadow to spot Reimer trudging past a group of collapsed picnic tables and rusted outdoor showers toward a break of aspen on the far side of the meadowland where woodpeckers churred alarms.

  Reimer moved with purpose and disappeared into the trees.

  Moments later, the little boy scurried across the camp to where Reimer went.

  A majestic Douglas fir dominated a clearing in the forest. Nearby was a small, barely noticeable airplane landing strip. Long ago the giant tree was hit by a thunderbolt and harbors a hollow in its huge trunk almost five feet off the ground from the strike. Twenty feet higher, SCARFACE was beautifully carved high in the tree. The trunk whittled with hearts and initials.

  Reimer stretched to shove the box of videos down deep inside the tree trunk. He carefully placed a steel trap on top of the box. Stones and sticks and gunk axed out of the hollo
w were picked up and stuffed back on top, fiddled with to make it snug and secure and look untampered so nobody would think anything was stuck down in there.

  If for whatever reason they nosed around, there’d be a jagged surprise waiting.

  Appraising his effort, Reimer drew a canister from his pocket, popped the top, and pinched a snort with his left hand that lacked a pinky and ring finger. He grinned, patted the tree trunk, picked up the backpack, and headed toward the break in the woods by way of a thicket.

  Then he stopped at the sound of the distant yelp.

  Slid his machete from its sheath.

  Waited.

  Hearing the dog bark again, he put the knife away.

  When he stepped out of the woods back into the twilit meadow, the boy and the dog were nowhere to be seen.

  Reimer walked over to the rusty showers with a well-whistled tune and sat down on a moss-covered stone bench. After a minute, the puppy barked again nearby.

  “Wanna help me make a fire, Chip?” Reimer said, all bushy tailed. “We could roast us some weenies.”

  He picked up some twigs and branches to make a nice woodpile. Removed a bottle of booze from the backpack, took a swig, and then another that he spit on the pile. He lit the kindling. Reimer made this happen quick and easy.

  After the fire got going and Reimer added some larger branches, the little boy holding his puppy slowly appeared from behind one of the broken-down changing rooms.

  Reimer looked over and patted the moldy bench. “Come sit yourself down by the campfire, Chip,” he said, all nonchalant.

  The boy walked tentatively over to the bench and sat on the edge of it, his puppy barking at Reimer.

  “Got a big yap for such a little trap, don’t he?” Reimer said, sliding around to face Chip.

  “So how ’bout you tell me what the fuck him and you are doing out here in the nudie camp?” Not sounding casual anymore.

  “I’m scared,” Chip said.

  Reimer tossed more branches on the flames, looked suspicious. “Scared a what?”

  Chip cried out, “The trailer caught fire and you ran out, then you ran back in!”

  The little boy stood up, shouted at Reimer, tears rushing down his cheeks, “Was my mom in there? Did you leave her and—”

  Reimer swung his hand and slapped Chip off the bench.

  “Little pussy!”

  The wolfpup tried to bite Reimer, who grabbed its neck.

  Reimer’s fire was now large enough to roast a pig.

  The boy sat on the stone bench with his hands tied behind his back and his mouth gagged with a pinecone.

  “So you came home from taking your pup for a walk, saw the RV was burning, saw me go back for something, then hid in my rig cuz you was a chickenshit?”

  “That about it?”

  Chip nodded in pain.

  Reimer took a snort, pissing into the crackling fire.

  A soiled white shoelace hung over one of Reimer’s ears and the pupils of his eyes were wide.

  “Then you followed me on into the nudie camp cuz you figured maybe I knew something about your mom, cuz I been staying in the trailer, sharing it with her fucking wolf and the bitch’s litter?”

  Reimer held up his bandaged arm.

  “See this?”

  Chip nodded again, terrified.

  “This is what the bitch did, trying for my fucking throat.”

  “But you know what?”

  Reimer slid his hunting knife from its sheath fast, did some air slicing and stabbing. “I turned that wolf bitch into dog meat!”

  He laughed, then shot some snot.

  “You probably aren’t clued in on Raedeane being a bitch like her wolfdog. All huffy-puffy after I try to show her how to cook up a nice little living for herself. That’s what I get.”

  Reimer pocketed his canister, zipped up his fly.

  “Yep. Just another dumb bitch like most bitches are when you stop to think about it.”

  Reimer sat down next to Chip and pointed the knife.

  “Did you follow me into that clearing over there? Watched where I went?”

  This time Chip shook his head.

  Reimer reached over, turned the pinecone, caused Chip’s lips to bleed more.

  “You sure you didn’t?” He held up his hand. “Scout’s honor?”

  Chip nodded and his eyes closed. Reimer studied him a long while.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re sure, boy, but the problem is I ain’t. So I got to make sure you don’t go around blabbing nothin’ to nobody. You know what I mean?”

  Stepping away from the fire, turning his back to Chip, Reimer spoke to himself in confidence.

  “Offin’ the kid’s gonna be a pain in the ass. Burying the body and all.”

  Reimer grinned darkly.

  “Maybe ship him off to Daddy-O, a boy toy for the slaves to play with.”

  Then, like he was slapped, Reimer said in a deeper voice, “Stop fucking around like you got nothing but time, lard ass!”

  Reimer nodded quickly, “Right, okay,” turned back and lifted Chip off the bench by the shoulder.

  “C’mon over here, I wanna show you something.”

  Reimer dragged Chip over to the rusted showers, the child tripping in his laceless sneakers.

  When they got to the outdoor shower, Chip let out a cone-muffled scream.

  Hanging by its hind legs from the showerhead was Chip’s puppy, struggling feebly. It could only whimper because its lips were stitched tight with one of Chip’s blood-soaked shoelaces.

  Reimer looked at the boy and pulled out his ax.

  “You wanna know why your wolf pup’s in the fix it’s in?”

  Chip was dumb with horror.

  “Cuz he couldn’t keep his trap shut. Same with you, can’t have you shooting your mouth off, saying things about me.”

  Reimer grabbed Chip and turned him upside down. Tied his feet like his hands with some rope from the pack and hung him on the showerhead opposite the dog.

  Reimer moved up close to Chip, fluffing his hair.

  “Now if I knew for sure you’d keep your lips zipped,” Reimer said, “I wouldn’t need to do this to you.”

  In a swift swing of his ax, barely looking, Reimer chopped the puppy’s head off. Then he reached down, picked it up, dangled its head in front of Chip, laughed and flaunted black dentures embedded with ivory letters; six teeth on the top front, five on the bottom: BEAVER EATER.

  Reimer unscrewed his canister, took a snort and mused at the shock his custom teeth produced on people’s faces, especially young bitches.

  But the real payoff came when he’d go into some town and come across a bitch or two, maybe at a 7-Eleven getting some smokes or wine. He’d give them a twisted smile, a lewd look, watch them come undone and hurry out the store.

  Then he’d follow them outside and say, real politely, “Excuse me, ladies, did you happen to forget this?”

  They’d almost always turn around to see what was up, maybe they’d left their purse or something, but what they’d see was BEAVER EATER. Then he’d chomp the dentures and twirl his long tongue. Go cross-eyed.

  The bitches would almost always scream.

  But Chip wasn’t screaming.

  He stared at Reimer’s dentures like they weren’t there. Eyes vacant.

  Reimer liked what he saw. Knew the nowhere look. He tossed the pup’s head on the ground and pulled the shoelace off his ear.

  “It’s gonna be harder to stitch your lips than your mutt’s, and then when I chop off your head it’s gonna make a big mess I gotta clean up.

  So I’d like to make a deal with you.”

  Reimer paused for a snort.

  “Wanna hear it?”

  Chip didn’t respond.

  “I figure you’d lik
e me to run it by you, so here’s the deal.”

  Reimer moved close to Chip’s ear. Whispered confidentially.

  “Promise to never tell nobody nothing, keep your lips sealed nice and tight, and I won’t kill you. But if I find out you said something to anyone, even if it’s just a teeny tiny anything at all, then what happens is I’ll come and find you and after I tear out your tattletale tongue, I’ll cut off your head like I did with your little wolf puppy. And you won’t be able to hide inside like you’re doing now, cuz I got lots of monster pals to come and get you when you try to hide, no matter where. Even when you’re sleeping.”

  Reimer made some scary faces and voices, snapped his dentures, then stepped back, studied Chip’s face, lifted his eyelids, and frowned.

  “I might of overdone it,” Reimer said, fluffing Chip’s hair. “Whatcha say, kiddo? I know you can hear me, so just give a nod and I’ll figure you want the deal, knowing what happens if you blab. So you give me a nod now, I’ll let you down, we drive outta Lake Meadows, head on over to Enterprise for some Dunk-A-Roos.”

  Reimer twisted Chip’s hanging head around.

  “We got us a deal?”

  Chip didn’t respond.

  “C’mon. Time’s wasting. I need a nod if you don’t want your head to get chopped off.”

  Reimer pulled out his Bowie. Shrugged.

  “Oh, well.”

  Reimer was ready to swing the blade when Chip slowly opened his eyes and nodded faintly.

  Chip stuffed the head and body of his puppy in the backpack, expressionless, as Reimer smiled and kicked foliage over the bloodstained ground, steel-toed boots stomping out the campfire.

  “Know what, little pard? I got a doctor friend. Maybe he can sew Timber’s head back on.” Reimer laughed, poking Chip. “Ah, you know I’m just fooling with you.”

  Along the footpath, past the crumbling camp office, toward the flatbed, Reimer shined his flashlight to see where they were going.

  Chip lugged the backpack barefoot, struggling to keep up with Reimer in the early evening darkness.

  Headlights suddenly cut through the night and a sharp voice over a bullhorn said, “Gore, I need you to get down on your knees, put your hands on your head, and don’t try anything stupid.”

  Reimer held the left hand of his bandaged arm up, squinted against the lights, looking confused.