The Impaler

authorities was too risky for the former 187th Infantry Screaming Eagle. And that’s what had the General worried.

“But the seal-tailed lion left the FBI a present back in Greenville,” the General said, raising the binoculars to his eyes. “If they find it before I get to Markham, I’ll have to consult the Prince again. Either way, we’ll know exactly when the FBI figures out Andrew J. Schaap is missing.”

The General fingered the focus knob and trained the binoculars on Sam Markham’s front door. And in an instant he felt his worry drain away; for although there was still so much about the Prince’s plan that had yet to be revealed to him, one thing was certain:

Sam Markham was now part of the equation, too.

Chapter 75

Markham arrived at the Resident Agency to find Andy Schaap’s office empty. He flicked on the light and sat at his desk—stared grimly at the scattered papers before him and picked up a stack with a yellow Post-it note on top.

First batch just came in, the note read. Markham stuck the Post-it to Schaap’s computer screen. It was a fax from the Marines—a list of Iraq War veterans from units that fit Dr. Underhill’s insignia profile, and who had undergone psychiatric counseling before, during, and after tours of duty beginning in April of 2003 through June of 2004.

Markham looked at the time and date stamp.

“Yesterday afternoon,” he muttered.

He found two more faxes: another from the Marines and one from the Army. Both were stamped from earlier that morning and had been tucked underneath the first fax.

Markham ruffled absently through the other lists of servicemen that Schaap had strewn across his desk— faxes and printouts and PDFs from all the branches of the U.S. Armed Forces. There were some other lists, too, and Markham quickly deduced that Schaap’s computer program had begun priori- tizing the names according to various criteria. On one of the lists, Markham discovered, Schaap had narrowed down the names further by inputting birthdays that fell under the astrological sign of Leo.

Still, there were a lot of names—hundreds of them.

“Oh, it’s you,” said a voice, and Markham looked up, startled.

It was Big Joe the Sox Fan Connelly. He stood in the doorway.

“Sorry, Sam,” he said. “I thought you were Schaap. Another batch of those medical records just came in. Air Force is being a bit of a bitch, though.”

He handed Markham the fax.

“You know where Schaap is?” Markham asked.

“I haven’t seen him since before noon yesterday. Said we’d start checking the lists against each other when you got back.”

“You know if he checked out the taxidermy shop?”

“Taxidermy shop?”

“Schaap sent me an article this morning about the theft of a lion head over in Durham. Happened in November of last year. He didn’t tell you about it?”

“I haven’t seen him today. Something you want my team to look into?”

“No, no, I plan on heading out there tomorrow.”

“Tech will have the Google Earth setup ready for us tomorrow morning,” Big Joe said. “Schaap’s already begun narrowing down his lists by probability of location. Wants to divvy up some addresses and have our boots on the ground by noon.”

Markham nodded.

“I’m gonna jet now if you don’t need anything. Kid’s got a soccer game.”

Markham gave him a thumbs-up, and Joe left. He sat there for a moment staring at the yellow Post-it on Schaap’s screen. He returned the note to its proper place, then went into his office and turned on his computer— signed into Sentinel and saw that Schaap had not updated anything since Friday.

Markham sat back in his chair and closed his eyes—hundreds of names, unreadable, but scrolling upward, white on black like credits at the end of a movie.

“What are you up to, Andy Schaap?” he whispered.

Chapter 76

Bradley Cox felt as if his head were about to spin off his neck—the deafening pump of the Clone Six song over and over again, the flash of the strobe light threatening to drive him insane.

He was naked and strapped to a dentist’s chair in the man’s cellar—the cold, the writing all over his body, the newspaper articles taped to the wall. And his nose still hurt from where the man rammed him with the rag. However, along with his feelings of encroaching madness, Bradley Cox’s senses were sharp. And, despite the swelling, his nose still worked fine; could smell the chemicals and taste the bitterness in the back of his throat. He could also smell Pine-Sol and something else—something faint, but foul and rotting underneath it all. He found that focusing on the smells helped him keep it together. He would need to have his wits about him when the motherfucker in the ski mask returned.

“How could you think? How could you think?

Tell me how could you think, I ’d let you get away?”

Despite the ski mask and the bloody tattoo on his chest, Bradley Cox knew who’d come for him—knew it as soon as he woke up and the son of a bitch asked: “Will you know him when he comes for you?”

Cox had recognized that slow Southern drawl at once—but somehow, amid his growing terror, he was able to heed the advice of a voice inside his head. Stay calm, Bradley, it whispered. As long as he thinks you can’t identify him to the police you still have a chance.

Cox had pleaded to be let go—repeated over and over that he had no idea what the man in the ski mask was talking about—but the dude had kept asking:

“Will you know him when he comes for you?”

“Yes,” Cox had said finally, exhausted. “Whoever you want me to know I’ll know, okay? Just let me go!”

“And do you accept your mission?”

“What the fuck are you—”

“Do you accept your mission?”

“I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about!”

“The nine to three,” the man had said, pointing to the large numbers on either side of the chamber’s doorway. “The three to one. Do you see them?”

“Yes,” Cox had whimpered, “but I—”

“You are the nine, I am the three. You are the three and I am the one. Your destiny is written all around you, in the stars. The equation is in everything and always was. It is why you must accept. Do you understand?”

“I’m not accepting shit, you sick motherfucker!”

The man in the ski mask had deflated for a moment, seemed to sigh, and quickly left.

A minute later he returned with the razor blade.

Bradley Cox gritted his teeth as the searing pain in his chest reminded him what the man in the ski mask had done. The man in the ski mask—a.k.a Edmund Lambert, a.k.a Vlad the Impaler. The fucking symbols he’d written all over his body, just like the ones on the Internet—it had to be him!

However, through all his hours of screaming—even through his ordeal with the razor blade—Bradley Cox had not let on that he knew the identity of his captor. A childhood spent watching countless episodes of America’s Most Wanted and Unsolved Mysteries with his father had taught him that.

As long as Lambert doesn’t know I’m on to him, he kept repeating to himself,