The Trinity Game

it, just pull yourself up for a little peek…”
    The man started to rise, reached up to grab the security bars outside the window. He jerked against the bars, convulsing violently as a high-voltage crackle shattered the quiet. He convulsed again, his mouth open in a silent scream, and finally let go of the bars and collapsed to the ground, smoke rising from his dead hand.
    The white guy on the porch said, “What the fuck?” and squared his body to the front door. He lifted his right leg and pivoted on his left foot and kicked the door handle. After a quarter-secondof silence, there was a muffled
pop
and a thin metal blade two feet wide shot out from the door and embedded itself in the man’s abdomen. His guts came out in a shower of blood.
    Pap!
One shot from Pat’s rifle and Samson Turner’s head exploded. He shifted his aim to the man by the car before Turner’s body even hit the ground.
    Pap!
The man’s brains splattered against the black SUV.
    Pat clicked the safety on, handed the gun to Daniel, and took the helm, cranking the airboat’s motor to life.
    “Leave it,” he said to Trinity, and Trinity let go of the aluminum pole that was holding them in place. Pat gunned the throttle and they took off down the bayou, the flat hull of the airboat skimming over thick vegetation, Daniel and Trinity holding onto the gunwales with each turn, wind whipping their hair.
    A few minutes later, Pat cut the throttle and pulled up to another narrow spit of land, this one overgrown foliage and a rickety old cedar-shingle fishing cabin that listed to one side, braced from falling by three four-by-four beams that angled up from the ground.
    Edgar jumped ashore first, followed by the men. Pat tied the boat to the exposed root of a cypress and led them to the cabin. “My safe house,” he said.
    “Doesn’t look so safe,” said Trinity.
    “That’s the whole point,” said Pat, digging a key ring out of his pocket. He put out a hand and stopped Trinity. “Wait.” He pressed a button on the key fob remote, and the entire front wall of the cabin began to rise like a garage door.
    Behind the decrepit façade was a cinderblock structure with a metal garage door. Inside, another green Subaru Forester. Largemetal cabinets lined one wall, and a Fort Knox gun safe stood in the corner.
    Pat tossed the keys to Daniel. “You’ll find clothes and bottled water in the cabinets. I’ll go home and clean up the mess, meet you in New Orleans tomorrow.”
    “There could be another guy or two waiting for you. We didn’t see if someone went around back.”
    “Be dead by now. Once I set the defense system, nobody gets off my property alive.” Pat let out a grim smile. “Gotta go feed the gators.”
    “OK. I’ll call your cell.”
    Pat took the pistol off his belt, handed it to Daniel. “You’ve shot this one before, you know how it works.”
    Daniel stared at the gun in his hand. The same gun he’d killed three men with in Honduras.
    It felt better in his hand than it should have.

“T im, there hasn’t been another car on the road for eight miles,” said Daniel. “Put it in the glove box.”
    “Oh,” Trinity sounded distracted, “OK, good idea.” But he didn’t.
    “Or keep fidgeting with it until you accidentally shoot one of us.”
    “Right. OK.” This time he put the gun away. “Sorry. Guess I’m a little rattled, now it’s sinking in. That was…that was pretty close back there.”
    “Yes it was.”
    Trinity lit a cigarette. “Those men sure died ugly.”
    “Yes they did.”
    They rode in silence for a while. Trinity turned on the radio and found a talk station.
    …and the Tim Trinity sightings just keep on pouring into 9-1-1 centers and newsrooms across the nation. The latest one, believe it or not, from Anchorage, Alaska. Elvis Presley, watch your back, I’m tellin’ ya...
The radio jock chuckled at his own joke.
Speaking of the King, a blurry YouTube video that some jogger in Memphis claims to be of Reverend Trinity has gone absolutely viral on the Interwebs and is now drawing so-called “pilgrims” to Tennessee by the tens of thousands…
    Trinity turned the radio off, shaking his head. “Memphis? What the hell would I be doing in Memphis?”
    “Hey, it’s good news,” said Daniel. “The more people think you’re in Memphis, the better.”
    They fell back into silence for a minute. Trinity shifted in his seat. “Danny, I, uh…” He gestured to the glove box. “I asked Pat about