Atticus needed only one shot to take down most men. Still, better to take no chances.
He readied himself for a fight, but it never came. The priest moved forward, still smiling, hand extended.
Atticus didn’t take it. “You’ve got thirty seconds.” He didn’t have to add a threat. His eyes did that for him.
The man in the awful shirt snickered. Atticus shot him a look that said, “You’ll get yours.”
The man’s smirk faded ever so slightly.
“Dr. Young,” the priest said, “I am Father O’Shea.” He motioned to the other man. “This is my associate, Remus. We’ve been sent to retrieve you by our employer.”
Atticus didn’t say a word. He didn’t even acknowledge that he’d heard anything.
“He’s very eager to meet you.” The priest grew nervous. “He wants to help you.”
“Help with what?” Atticus’s voice boomed like lion’s bellow. “Bury my daughter? Psychoanalyze me? Put me on The Today Show and get my teary story?”
O’Shea backed off a little, “No, nothing like that. He wants to help you kill it. He wants to find the beast…and he wants you to kill it.”
Atticus sized the men up. They were clearly not military. The Remus character might have been at one time, but it must have been a while. He couldn’t conceive of a reason they might be lying, but he wondered how anyone could possibly help him kill such a thing. “What’s his name?”
“He would prefer to remain anonymous.”
“His name or I walk.” Atticus moved toward the door.
“Trevor Manfred.”
The odd name struck Atticus as familiar. Where had he heard it before?
“He’s the fifth richest man in the world,” Remus added proudly.
Then Atticus remembered. He’d read an article in Time a few years back. The man was a recluse, living on the ocean in some kind of superyacht. While being well-known for funding scientific expeditions as well, Manfred’s track record for success was sketchy. Few artifacts were ever recovered and very few scientific discoveries had been made. Most believed that the man kept most of the finds to himself and, as a result, he was unwelcome on the shores of many nations. But, if he could help…
“You know where I live?”
The men nodded. He knew they would.
“Take me home.”
13
Rye, New Hampshire
Leaving the van and two strangers at the street, Atticus moved, like the living dead, toward his home. Every step Atticus took felt like a conglomeration of old and new wounds, opening and festering together, making him ill. He hadn’t made it past the slate walkway, when he felt he couldn’t continue. Just the sight of the white Victorian home with its navy blue shutters had knocked the wind out of him. What would he be able to endure once inside? The photos. The smells. The memories would assault him worse than any weapon mankind had yet to devise. Standing before his house, Atticus knew that a torture worse than any faced on the battlefield awaited him inside.
Then he stepped forward. He’d been trained to enter hell and come back out.
The front steps creaked underfoot as they always did.
The first memory hit. Giona had learned to read on those steps when she was three, long before her classmates. She had astounded them as she suddenly read Goodnight Moon to them on the steps. She was reading James and the Giant Peach by five and never slowed down.
It had only been a day since he’d been home, but after opening the front door and entering, he felt he’d walked into an alien world. Nothing seemed right: the arrangement of shoes and sneakers, two different sizes lining the front hall; the dirty pans in the kitchen; the Sudoku puzzles spread out on the coffee table. He and Giona might not have had the best relationship over the last two years, but they worked on the Sudoku puzzles separately, trying to outdo each other. It was a silent game, a competition between father and daughter that bridged the gap.
And then there were the pictures.
He’d grown used to seeing pictures of Maria around the house. He’d never taken them down, feeling it was totally inappropriate to try to forget her. Love was love. You couldn’t erase it, mask it, or forget it. So why try?
You could, Atticus thought, avenge love lost…love stolen.
He paused at the pictures; each one brought with it an emotional rush that felt like an extreme allergic reaction, building pressure deep in his skull, between his eyes. He scanned each memory, each adventure, traveling back in time to Giona’s birth, his wedding to Maria. Last on the wall was a photo of his entire family, including his parents and his brother.
Oddly enough, it was those pictures, images of the still living that hit him the hardest. He hadn’t called them yet. It crossed his mind that they had no idea Giona was gone; they would still be planning to see him and Giona in two days.
He dialed the number slowly, his hand shaking.
“Hello?” It was a slight voice with a kind tone.
“M-om?” Atticus’s voice cracked, and it’s all he needed to say.
“Oh, baby. I’m so sorry.” She was crying on the other end. “We saw it on the news; I can’t imagine. Oh, baby…”
Atticus looked at his answering machine. Sixteen messages. They’d been trying to reach him. “Sorry I didn’t call sooner.”
“Sweetie, don’t you worry about that.” She had begun sniffing, obviously congested from crying. “Conner is on his way there; should be there any time.”
Atticus took a deep breath and held it. He would have liked nothing more than to see his brother. Few people on the planet understood him, thought like him, but there wasn’t time to waste, and the two people waiting for him outside didn’t want to draw too much attention to themselves, or their employer. “I won’t be here,” he said.
“Why…why not?”
“I have…things to do.” He couldn’t think of any other way to say it. He certainly couldn’t tell his mother that he was going to risk his life-risk putting her through more of what she was already experiencing. “I’ll leave the door unlocked. He can hold down the fort while I’m gone.” His mind raced to change the subject. “Is Dad there?”
There was a pause on the other end. He held his breath.
“When the news came on…and we heard your name…and we saw you on the stretcher…he was near hysterical, shouting and ranting. Then they said Giona was… he passed out. He’s at the hospital now for observation. They’re worried about his heart. But he’s fine. Made me come home in case you called, and it’s a good thing he did.”
Atticus’s mind swirled with emotion. Concern for his father and mother and the desire to see them waged war with his thirst for vengeance. In the end, it was the image of Giona’s being swallowed that forced his hand. “I have to go, Mom.”
She sighed. “All right…and, baby?”
“Yeah, Mom…”
“When you find the thing, put an extra bullet in it for me.”
Atticus couldn’t help but smile. His mother was a fighter. She’d always been, and most people who knew the family well believed that if women could have been Navy SEALs, she’d have been Atticus’s drill commander. “You know me too well.”
“Don’t tell your father I said that.”
“Do me a favor and call for me. I’m out of time.”
“Of course. I love you.”
“You too.”
