Page 1 of So Twisted

PROLOGUE

Marcus Reeves hated animals. Seriously, he freaking hated them. So, of course, he chose a career that involved being around them all the damned time.

“What a genius you are. Just like your father.”

Marcus Reeves’ father was Damon Reeves, the former owner of a used car dealership and current most annoying resident of the Nebraska State Penitentiary. Had Marcus not managed to call in some favors from a few moderately placed individuals in the state government, Marcus would be the second most annoying resident. Probably. No one had told him he was annoying to his face, but he could see the way people looked at him.

“Still working in a cage, buddy,” he reminded himself.

He had to admit that it was a pretty big perk that he got to go home to his own apartment after this. It was a shitty apartment, the literal cheapest apartment in Omaha, but it was his, and it wasn’t a prison cell, and he didn’t have any animals within several hundred yards of where he lived since the entire complex didn’t allow pets.

Marcus had at one time been a millionaire. He had taken advice from his father, who warned him that the used car business was a racket. “Become a zookeeper instead. Animals are cheap, and people will pay a lot of money to stare at them.”

Good advice. Animalswerecheap, and peopledidpay a lot of money to stare at them. The problem was that animals were only cheap if you didn’t care about them and didn’t mind that they died at a rate the good people of the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service called “alarming.”

Well, they were alarmed enough to shut Marcus’s zoo down. He avoided the felony by calling friends and basically agreeingto publicly admit that he was a piece of shit. It cost him enough money that he sold his four-million-dollar house and moved into the shitty little apartment.

But he had an apartment. He could not express enough how much better that was than a prison cell.

If only he could get another job.

The chimpanzees rushed for him, shrieking. “Jesus!” he cried out. “Goddamnit!”

The chimpanzees crashed into the fence, and Marcus stared in amazement, hand over his pounding heart, as the apes screamed in frustration at the fact that their fence prevented them from tearing Marcus’s face off.

“And people think these monkeys are cute,” he muttered.

He flipped the chimpanzees the bird and moved on to the next cage.

That’s right. Marcus Reeves was no longer the owner of the Wild World Animal Adventure Park. He was the night security guard at the Council Bluffs Animal Rescue Sanctuary, a little zoo that specialized in taking animals too screwed up to live in normal zoos and making them Marcus’s problem.

But they paid him, and apparently, they were the only business in the Omaha-Council Bluffs Metropolitan Area that was willing to pay him. He wasn’t a felon, but his friends were only moderately placed, and they couldn’t expunge the fact that he had been convicted of misdemeanor negligence and failure to comply with state and federal animal care requirements.

“News story probably had something to do with it,” he said.

From time to time, Marcus received death threats from fine, upstanding citizens involved in animal rights activism. Because the animals were the ones who needed the damned activism. Forget about all the people who needed help. Forget about the kids starving in Africa. It was the gorillas who really need the attention.

As he had that thought, he remembered his ex-wife’s challenge to that very complaint.And what have you done for the kids in Africa, Marcus? Huh? How much did you donate?

And he, in his infinite wisdom, had grabbed his crotch and said, “I’ll donate this. How about that?”

How about a divorce? How about he gets to live alone for the rest of his life, hated by everyone except for the few who pity him?

But hey, he had an apartment.

He sighed and stopped in front of the gift shop. That was the last place he had to check before he went home. It also was one of the only places he had to check that didn’t have animals. Without needing to worry about getting attacked or spit on or screeched at, he had time to reflect on what a truly terrible person he was.

And he was a truly terrible person.

“I’ll turn it around,” he said. “I’ll fix it. You’ll see. I just need to stay clean, work on myself, do my job and be kind to people and animals. That’s all. I lost my way, but I’ll find it again. I can do it.”

He looked up at his reflection in the glass of the gift shop and forced a smile. He didn’t look like he meant the smile, but he was faking it, at least. That was a start.

And he would find his way again. He wasn’t a bad person. He’d just made mistakes. He could be a good person. He just needed time to—

He caught a shadow moving in the reflection. Something sleek and black and large moving on all fours behind him. He frowned and turned around, drawing his flashlight and shining it at the object.

The “object” turned out to be the sanctuary’s black panther. It stalked him, moving slowly closer and growling low in its throat.

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