Diary of a Predator is now available in the Kindle, Nook and Google stores. Please enjoy this excerpt.
I could easily be Bundy i think he had the same fucked up brain the release was never Achievable. What realy hurts me deep is that there are a few things and people I can sincerely care for and love and would never hurt but the rest of Gods Green earth is fair Game. I am truly a fucked up dangerous person and were the opportunities to present themselves I would act. It hurts me to admit this. I am sorry for hurting all those other people, Truly but how can i be any kind of Good or decent if i cant stop my mind from Working Like it does. I look back to when i was a kid and i realy think i went crazy. Death is the only solution to this.
—From Brent’s journal
August 2004
Going to work again every day was still feeling awkward and oddly formal, as though the newspaper and I were weary exes now embarrassed by the intimate secrets we had once whispered to each other.
I had worried that my editors would tiptoe around me, hesitant to assign me any more tough crime stories for fear I wasn’t ready. After all, it had been four months. Yet that wasn’t the case. They didn’t assign me anything at all. So during those first few weeks, I would go through the motions of putting on a suit, makeup and some jewelry, show up, dial a few perfunctory phone calls at my desk, take a long walk around the dirty Gotham City that is downtown Denver and leave early.
It was at the start of one of those uneventful days that I stepped into the crowded elevator on the ground floor of the twenty-two-story, mud-brownDenver Post building at 16th and Broadway in the heart of downtown. The newsroom for the Post was on the fourth floor, and as the elevator groaned to a stop at each level for people to trundle out and begin their day, I had the distinct feeling someone was watching me. Glancing over my left shoulder, I was taken aback by a man staring at me with the intensity of a cobra.
He was about my height but muscle-thick, with military-short hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and dark, penetrating eyes. He wore a cheap, rumpled gray suit that fit like it belonged to someone else.
And he wasn’t just glancing at me curiously, as if he somehow knew I didn’t quite belong there. Nor did he casually drop his eyes, as most people do when busted for ogling. Instead, he held my questioning look with a flinty stare both unabashed and unwavering, almost as if he were . . . calculatedly appraising me. Like a wolf assessing its next meal.
Human beings are living, breathing Rorschach tests I read for a living. This one said “Darkness! Danger!” Although I pride myself on never dropping my eyes first during a confrontation, I did so now, quickly turning to face front again as my gut alarm tripped and my heart started to pound.
Instinctively deciding I didn’t want him to know which floor was mine, I tensed my muscles and tightened my grip on the heavy black bag at my shoulder. When the elevator thudded to a halt at the next level, one floor below mine, I waited as two men shouldered their way out. Then just as the doors began to whine close, I darted after them, feeling the stranger’s disconcerting stare continue from inside the elevator after the doors slid shut behind me. I felt like a laser had burned holes in my back.
I ran around the corner and up the stairs, taking them two at a time, adrenaline-fueled fear making my feet fly.
For the rest of the day, I couldn’t help but search the newsroom for the frightening, heavyset man in the wire-rimmed glasses. As the hours passed and I didn’t spot him, I began to relax, thinking, It was a random encounter. He’s gone, and you’ll probably never see him again.
I was so very wrong.
Diary of a Predator 