Be Careful What You Wish For

By S.E. Madison

Be Careful What You Wish For

On the small island of Molokai in Hawaii, five lifelong friends set out on a trip to “Daggert’s Volcano Park.” Their destination is a secluded beach where they plan to enjoy some well-deserved rest and relaxation.
Each member of the trekking party is respected within Molokai’s close-knit community. All of them have been law-abiding citizens for the entirety of their lives. Though their jobs are hardly exciting on a day-to-day basis, their typical routines are unassuming; comfortable in their predictability.
Until now.
Somehow this short vacation changes everything for them when what should have been a simple hike turns them all into calculating, cold-blooded killers.
But that’s not the worst of it.
A skewed moral compass leads to them becoming pay-for-hire amateur assassins.
The troop is new to the game of rubbing out targets but the problems they encounter have nothing to do with their murderous skills.
Killing people is the easy part. It’s what they have to do afterward that becomes a revolving door of misery.
If they can stay one step ahead of the police, then they may come out on top in the end. The problem is it’s not just the law they’re up against, it’s themselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: S.E. Madison
• Release date: Dec 20, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463177891

Book preview

Chapter 1

PMS

PMS.

Yes, those are my initials.

Before you give me your condolences, you should know I was born Pamela Marie Stewart and have spent many years answering to such.

I don’t mind the abbreviated version of my name.

Sometimes it’s a relief in its simplicity and I’ve found over the years that no one has ever faulted me for any episodic mood changes I experience. In truth, I enjoy the individuality of the initials and revel in the slightly perplexed looks and awkward silences that subsequently follow my introduction.

Most of my adult years have been spent living near my five closest friends on the island of Molokai, Hawaii. Though our homes are on different parts of the island, the travel time to to visit each other never consisted of more than a few minutes at the most, so if you said you’d be over in a flash, well, that’s exactly what you meant.

Our small haven has only four main roads. If you wanted to travel from one side of Molokai to the other, you’d only have one option available to you, which was a fairly desolate two-lane highway that wound around the mountainous region on the outside perimeter of the island.

One could say we had a fairly low-key lifestyle. Not much of interest happened and life just kind of unfolded at a molasses pace. This made it easy to get into a set daily routine and frankly that has always been fine by me.

I would like to tell you I’m the leader of our small circle of friends. I’d like to tell you that but it would not be true and I feel it is important at this juncture in our relationship that I be totally honest with you.

The fact is that I enjoy being a tagalong. Understand that I always give my opinion when asked, but I don’t mind not being in charge of events.

I’m easygoing. I don’t care for drama or stress.

However, the short end of that stick is that being a sheeple can sometimes lead to all sorts of unintended personal destruction. Since it’s impossible to know the potential outcome of any situation and as they say, hindsight is twenty-twenty, all that can be said is if I had known then what I know now, I would not have followed along so readily with the plans.

The mess began when the five of us decided to go on the expedition of a lifetime. The idea was presented to us over a tri-tip dinner, along with twice-baked potatoes, plus spinach salad topped with warm walnuts, cranberries, and a raspberry vinaigrette dressing. A plethora of expensive red wine was available to us as well and we imbibed until that cloudy feeling that tells you it’s time to stop began to overwhelm our brains. Frankly anything, even a trip to hell, would have seemed like a good idea at the time.

I remember the gathering of minds clearly.

I remember the warmth of the night.

It wasn’t quite cold enough for a sweater yet it was too chilly for a simple light jacket. I recall the stars and the fact that I boasted to the group that Mars was the brightest light in the sky and not the North Star, as most people might claim. Whether or not that’s a fact I didn’t know, but at the time it felt like an important piece of information to share. We had a brief discussion on the topic, then ventured on toward the more cognitive meanings of life.

The prick of the mosquitoes’ stingers as they drew their fill of blood still is fresh in my mind. I can still feel the horrid creatures sneaking covertly under my clothing to find every spot that had been missed by repugnant insect repellant.

The discussion about our pending trip seemed more like a general sort of chat, at least in the beginning. The concept? A weeklong hike that would begin in the gathering area of Daggert’s Volcano Park.

In theory we were all up for the task.

Though the name implied a barren lava-encrusted destination, the park consisted of a beautiful ecosystem that contained lush green grass, trees, and bushes, along with some reasonable mountainous terrain. Sharp rock formations and areas of volcanic flow were interspersed throughout the area. The park consisted of five hundred acres on a remote section of the island. So really the name Volcano Park was a bit of a misnomer.

Our hike would begin with a moderate trek that would lead us up a winding ridge of hills, over some beautiful peaks that eventually traversed downhill along the shiny black volcanic fields. We were to end up at the gorgeous edge of the Pacific Ocean.

Once there, a secluded beach where one could camp and lollygag for hours awaited those who had earned its rewards. Daggert had shown us pictures of the area and pretty soon we were all eager to start the expedition. It sounded like a lovely vacation, at least while we were having a cozy dinner party inside by a fireplace.

But sometimes what sounds good on paper is not so wonderful when you are forced to experience it in real life.

Chapter 2

The Trek Begins

The reality of that night’s entertaining discussion came to light a couple of months later as we found ourselves walking up a sharply angled footpath along a two-foot-wide slippery dirt path in Molokai’s only privately owned volcano park. I wondered just how much wine I must have drunk the night of our dinner party to make this trip seem like such an unbelievable opportunity that I could not miss.

My co-hikers had become increasingly quiet during our trek and one could only hear strategic gasps of air being taken in every once in a while.

Putty Daggert was the sole owner of Daggert’s Volcano Park. He and his wife had separated about a year ago. One cool spring morning she walked into his study and informed him that she’d made a decision. She said that she felt it in her best interests to run off with a French millionaire she’d met. Putty became pretty sure that she’d been swayed by the fact that the Frenchman owned a Goliath-size construction company and seemed to have his fingers in almost every project known to man.

Though Daggert and she hadn’t finalized their asset division yet, they came to a mutual agreement that he would get to keep the park. I guess all things being what they were, one could say they had an amicable parting of ways.

Putty seemed to be in the best spirits of our group, probably because he was easily in the greatest shape out of all of us. This could be attributed to his age and vitamin-infused lifestyle. Having only logged forty years in his life, he was the junior of the rest of us by a few milestones.

He was a good-looking guy with a flop of brown hair that flowed freely on his head. The style he wore had always looked exactly the same to me and I wondered if he’d ever had a haircut or if his hair just somehow knew how to maintain itself because it realized he didn’t want to bother with it.

Daggert brought up the rear of our group.

I walked directly in front of him and his presence made me feel somewhat safe. I had no logical reason for my feelings; after all, what the hell would he do for me if I fell over the steep and jagged hillside? For though Daggert would do his best to help me, the reality was that he could not do very much for me should I trip and fall to my demise.

With this knowledge firmly in mind I placed each foot carefully on the precarious pathway that lay before me, counting the steps along the way one after the other; one, two, three. Then I began counting again from one, but stayed shy of going past three. After all, it seemed too much of a mundane task to count in a limited sequence of numbers, and my brain required more stimulation than that. Sure, I would probably lose a few steps in the overall final tally, but it didn’t matter to me. I’ve never been one to conform to the exactitude of the mathematical system. I was an English major in college.

Teva Madrid McIntyre walked ahead of me. She was known as the weakest link. Teva had never been a willing participant in the great outdoors. The closest she had ever come was a foray into her impeccably landscaped backyard to add some flower food to her award-winning fuchsia bushes. Even then, the bees offended her when they acted as though they had some ownership of her gorgeous bounty of flowers. To her mind, they were uninvited solicitors, crashing her property and using it for their own personal amusement and selfish needs.

That was unacceptable.

Teva called exterminators, a local company named Bee Be Gone. They arrived on her property the next morning. The owner of the business, a man who prided himself on being an honest sole proprietor, tried with all his breath to convince her that though the buzzing beasts might seem annoying, they were a necessity to the beautiful outcome of her bushes.

It was a futile effort. The owner of Bee Be Gone sighed and solemnly agreed to remove the pests from her life. After all, that was what he did and in life sometimes one must do one’s job and not complain. He was aware that if he did not agree with what she wanted, then one of his competitors surely would, and the bees would die anyway.

The bees were exterminated the following day and her yard was once again perfect for her personal usage. Teva never thought twice about the incident.

As I concentrated on my own advancement down the pathway, I couldn’t help but be pleased that no matter how miserable I felt, Teva was even more so. I have always held firm to the old adage that misery loves company. There truly is no better lift to one’s spirit if you are down and out than to find someone else who is even more miserable than you are. So in between my methodical footstep counting and my perspiration-induced fear of slipping off the footpath, I managed to conceal a small smile in the knowledge that Teva was feeling these same emotions ten times as strongly as me. It was a good feeling and I reveled in it.

Teva walked directly on the heels of Randy Robertson, our cleanly shaven gay friend. Randy was immaculate in his dress and manner and he had the uncanny capability of never soiling his attire. Even now with dust and dark dirt swirling all around, he sported a white polo shirt with a starched collar and it looked as clean as the day he’d brought it home from Saks Fifth Avenue.

Randy epitomized the definition of dapper. His shaved bald head was a perfect dome and everything about him looked symmetrical.

Directly ahead of Randy was his new Scandinavian boyfriend, Tex or Rex or some such other name. Randy had met and invited him along after our fated dinner party.

Tex or Rex barely spoke any English. This mountain trek constituted their second and probably last date. Please don’t think me callous in my flippant attitude toward the man. We were all aware that it did not matter if we learned the new beau’s name or not, because the simple fact was that Randy’s boyfriends were always temporary. Since I found myself forgetting what to call the man from one moment to the next, I made up something that might be fitting, and opted to call him T/Rex.

He didn’t seem to notice.

Frosty, my friend of over twenty years, was in the lead of our pitiful group of now six adventurers. Frosty, born David Leonard Evans Strauss III, was so aptly nicknamed at an early age due to his prematurely graying overabundance of jet-black hair. Frosty was one of those men who held a certain appeal even though he was not particularly good looking. There was something about his attitude that drew you into his world. One couldn’t help but want to stay by his side and wish that his unique pensive outlook on life would somehow rub off on you. His blue-gray eyes sparkled and his skin had that healthy tan glow often associated with the athletic, outdoorsy type.

Frosty had taught art history for over fifteen years at Simmons Junior College in Molokai. He was the type of professor that one would never forget. Eccentric, mischievous, and intensely dedicated to his God-given talent of passing on information he had stored deep within the vault of his memory. His students were either enthralled by him, or disgusted by the overabundance of excitement he brought to his lectures. The lucky ones could tap into Frosty’s unbelievably vast vat of knowledge and learn things about the world that only could come from Frosty’s individualistic perspective.

Frosty was the cause for our trip and at this particular moment I understood the love-hate thing. At trip’s end, if there would be one person to blame for the aching and swollen muscles, the blisters, the dehydration, and the third-degree sunburns, it would be Frosty. For though the initial offer to take us on the hike was not his but the brainstorm of Putty Daggert, the owner of this damned park, Frosty was the one who took to the idea with an obsessive compulsion and tried to con us all into going along.

He had dropped hints daily, attaching yellow sticky pad memos to our front doors, firing off random emails with long-winded articles of hikers who had reached their desired point of destination containing photo attachments depicting physically fit hotties. The hikers were all smiles and high-fived each other while celebrating with expensive bottles of Domaine Chandon exploding all around them.

One such article droned on, stressing the internal strength that the quest took. It spoke of the emotional toll on the hikers. The heartbreak and enormous core effort and how the trip had all been worthwhile in the end.

Sure, the articles were interesting to read and yes, somehow even motivated me. In retrospect, however, I wish that I had stopped reading them at a certain point. My curiosity got the better of me in one of the stories and I devoured the information. Unfortunately, the damn story took a nasty turn only a few paragraphs in and to this day I wonder if Frosty had advanced that far in his reading of that article. If he had, I would like to think that he surely would not have sent the horrid thing to me. On the second page of the inspiring tale, the author made note of the one poor soul in the group who could not handle the trek. There is, after all, always one poor sod who cannot hack it.

The article described in morbid detail the tribulations of the doomed hiker. It detailed his bloody appendage that the others in the group had to amputate due to the life-threatening gangrene that ravaged the host’s body into a state of temperature-induced delirium. I was hooked by the description of the surgical procedure which took place high in the mountains and lasted almost five hours, with no medical personnel in sight.

The section where the other hikers held the poor anguished man firmly in place, while his leg was methodically sawed off with a dull Swiss Army knife was gruesome yet captivating. It was impossible to put the essay down; I needed to know what would happen next. Of course, there was only one way the story could end and though I pretended not to have any idea, I knew what that ending was. The poor sap had to die. The last page of the article showed a photo of a gravesite with a headstone that the rest of the troop claimed they had spent an enormous amount of money on. It was etched with awe-inspiring words.

I am not ashamed to say at the story’s end that I shed a lonesome tear.

Now though, walking up this miserable winding way I couldn’t stop thinking about that article and wonder if I was going to be the sap who didn’t make it in this story. Would I be the motivation for my friends to complete the adventure in honor of my name? God, I hoped not! God, I really hoped not!

Frosty yelled over his shoulder to us, Keep going, guys! We’re kings of the trail now.

Fuck you! Teva spat the words venomously at him as she swatted a mosquito that had landed on her arm. Damn disgusting bottom-feeder, she grumbled, as if the insult would hurt the insect’s feelings and it would skulk away.

Teva, pull your claws in, my dear, Daggert said in his calm, soft- spoken way.

Fuck you too, Daggert, twice . . . painfully! Teva yelled over her shoulder.

Humph, Daggert said and sighed. Under his breath he added, So glad you came, my dear!

Heads up, keep the good faith! Randy said in a jovial tone as he walked on. Then he poked his new boyfriend playfully with his finger.

T/Rex laughed. He did not understand a word of what Randy was saying but he enjoyed the brief moment of attention. His steps became lighter and more animated. I watched as he attempted to swirl around and tweak Randy but he missed his mark. His hand landed two feet shy of its intended destination, swiping the air in a useless maneuver.

Randy chuckled and continued walking onward with a burning concentration; T/Rex resumed the intensity of the walk as well.

A hawk soared up above and we all looked skyward in awe of the ease with which the animal traversed the turbulent winds. The bird did not think twice about his actions. He just reacted to what was offered to him by elements that were out of his physical control. It was impossible not to compare the bird’s smooth movements that were effectively one with the environment, with our own mechanical bodies in motion. Each calculated turn the hawk made complemented the wind as it flew. In contrast it was almost an embarrassment to witness how the members of our small, insignificant troop struggled so intensely as we stumbled and bumbled along.

T/Rex muttered something while pointing to the winged creature above and sighed heavily. He observed the bird with a keen interest that can only be likened to that of a predatory animal, analyzing its every move, lying in wait for it to make a fatal mistake.

Over the years, I have learned that nature has its own ironic way of messing with you. Though it may not sound appropriate to say, nature will cheat to prove its point.

That’s right, nature doesn’t fight fair.

So what happened to us next was the great outdoors’ way of saying, I’m in charge here and don’t you forget it. Sometimes the lesson can be a gentle nudge reminding you of your place in the pecking order, but other times, Mother Earth can be a real jerk and slap the heck out of you if it feels you need a frying pan to the head kind of wake-up moment.

The hawk floated upward on a jet stream of air and then turned its head sharply to the right, staring down directly at Randy as if measuring him up. Its eyes widened as it tucked in its wings, fashioning itself into an aerodynamically perfect missile. There was a moment of silence as we all watched in awe and waited to see what would happen next; there came an ear-piercing screech as the bird dove and one could almost hear the wind parting as the animal sheared its way through.

What the hell! Randy screamed as he began to realize that he was soon to be impaled by some rabid creature’s dirt-encrusted beak.

Must be homophobic! Frosty mused out loud.

Randy glanced at him and shot him a clear view of his middle finger, then he yelled, The thing is coming right for me! while he tried to find an open spot to duck and hide. Since he was lodged somewhat precariously on a ledge not much wider than his shoulders and sandwiched between T/Rex and Teva, the task at hand was fairly impossible.

The bird torpedoed into Randy’s shiny bald pate.

We all watched in horror as Randy’s hands flailed wildly in the air attempting to grasp some part of the creature and wrestle it off him. After