Mystery: Satan's Road - Suspense Thriller Mystery (Mystery, Suspense, Thriller, Suspense Crime Thriller) Read Online Free Page B
that he was a closet queer and threatening his exposure, you owned his puny life. Today, they might just as easily out themselves before you even had a chance to make a profit from it. He'd seen it. And then gain votes doing it. What the hell was that all about? Gideon thought.
Second best was always a woman-abuser. But not the boozy battle hounds who brag about it over a couple of beers. Gideon preferred the slick executive types, or the local preacher with something to protect. They were better. You could cash those guys out faster than a five-dollar bill. And a wife-beater like that, threatened with being thrown out into the streets, his mug in the tabloids, his career blasted off the face of the earth . . . those were the kinds of people you could work with.
Then along came OJ, and now you couldn't deny there was a certain glamorous patina to the whole sordid process of spousal abuse. It was enough to make him sick.
People were sheep. That was clear. A good reason for wanting to control their instincts. But what frightened them had changed; you had to take constant stock, keep polishing the tools, as his father used to say. You had to be constantly on the lookout for their psychological wounds.
Gideon had soldiers everywhere moving his plans forward. Some would call what they did bribery, extortion and murder. But it was all for the cause. Wiping the board clean took sacrifice. Building one church took tens of millions of dollars, and it had to come from somewhere. Politicians had to be bought or controlled. The rich, the people who really controlled the world, had to be frightened and subjugated.
The churches’ enemies were surprisingly few and far between – considering the scale of Gideon’s operation over the past five years. For example, this collection of professors who had seen a glimpse of his plans, were so easy to exterminate. And very little interest so far from the local constabulary. If that became a nuisance, Gideon had hundreds of friends in police forces all across the U.S. eager to lend a hand. And the feds, who always seemed to be lingering about like mindless gnats, had even less power. Their major weapon, the courts, were hopelessly bogged down. And that made them a hollow threat.
Gideon sat in the front room of the building his followers called 'the farmhouse'. It was a sprawling affair, over ten thousand square feet, not counting all the associated buildings; the guest houses, cabins, sheds, machine shop, shooting range, community hall, aircraft hanger and bunkers. The land the farmhouse sat on in Virginia included two thousand acres of grassland, forest and a small man-made lake, an area the locals called Parkhurst , after the name given the land by its original owner in the early 1900's.
Parkhurst used to be a cattle ranch, but the cattle were long gone. Gideon's followers were strict vegetarians, by his decree, and he knew some of them didn't like it – knew it didn't really fit in with the rest of his philosophy, but he didn't give a shit. It gave his leadership an edge.
Parents made rules, and you followed them or something nasty happened.
That's how it worked when he was a kid. When he burned down the family garage, his father held his left hand under the flame of an acetylene torch for fifteen seconds. One second for every thousand it cost to rebuild. He never forgot that lesson, which is surprising considering the depth and the volume of the lessons he learned at the hands of his parents until he was eighteen.
Gideon was born in a commune in Ohio. It was the only life he knew – sucking at a dozen tits until he was the age of three, a blur of parental figures from then on; his real father's image as clear as a dark bell. Did he have sisters or brothers? He never knew and hardly cared.
He rocked in the expensive hand-made shaker chair, the wood creaking against the glossy shine of the inlaid flooring. The room looked exactly the way a room should look in the 1850's, only
Second best was always a woman-abuser. But not the boozy battle hounds who brag about it over a couple of beers. Gideon preferred the slick executive types, or the local preacher with something to protect. They were better. You could cash those guys out faster than a five-dollar bill. And a wife-beater like that, threatened with being thrown out into the streets, his mug in the tabloids, his career blasted off the face of the earth . . . those were the kinds of people you could work with.
Then along came OJ, and now you couldn't deny there was a certain glamorous patina to the whole sordid process of spousal abuse. It was enough to make him sick.
People were sheep. That was clear. A good reason for wanting to control their instincts. But what frightened them had changed; you had to take constant stock, keep polishing the tools, as his father used to say. You had to be constantly on the lookout for their psychological wounds.
Gideon had soldiers everywhere moving his plans forward. Some would call what they did bribery, extortion and murder. But it was all for the cause. Wiping the board clean took sacrifice. Building one church took tens of millions of dollars, and it had to come from somewhere. Politicians had to be bought or controlled. The rich, the people who really controlled the world, had to be frightened and subjugated.
The churches’ enemies were surprisingly few and far between – considering the scale of Gideon’s operation over the past five years. For example, this collection of professors who had seen a glimpse of his plans, were so easy to exterminate. And very little interest so far from the local constabulary. If that became a nuisance, Gideon had hundreds of friends in police forces all across the U.S. eager to lend a hand. And the feds, who always seemed to be lingering about like mindless gnats, had even less power. Their major weapon, the courts, were hopelessly bogged down. And that made them a hollow threat.
Gideon sat in the front room of the building his followers called 'the farmhouse'. It was a sprawling affair, over ten thousand square feet, not counting all the associated buildings; the guest houses, cabins, sheds, machine shop, shooting range, community hall, aircraft hanger and bunkers. The land the farmhouse sat on in Virginia included two thousand acres of grassland, forest and a small man-made lake, an area the locals called Parkhurst , after the name given the land by its original owner in the early 1900's.
Parkhurst used to be a cattle ranch, but the cattle were long gone. Gideon's followers were strict vegetarians, by his decree, and he knew some of them didn't like it – knew it didn't really fit in with the rest of his philosophy, but he didn't give a shit. It gave his leadership an edge.
Parents made rules, and you followed them or something nasty happened.
That's how it worked when he was a kid. When he burned down the family garage, his father held his left hand under the flame of an acetylene torch for fifteen seconds. One second for every thousand it cost to rebuild. He never forgot that lesson, which is surprising considering the depth and the volume of the lessons he learned at the hands of his parents until he was eighteen.
Gideon was born in a commune in Ohio. It was the only life he knew – sucking at a dozen tits until he was the age of three, a blur of parental figures from then on; his real father's image as clear as a dark bell. Did he have sisters or brothers? He never knew and hardly cared.
He rocked in the expensive hand-made shaker chair, the wood creaking against the glossy shine of the inlaid flooring. The room looked exactly the way a room should look in the 1850's, only
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