leaped through the phone to hug him. He made sure that his sixty-foot yacht was fueled and stocked and was happy to play the game that Jack was still dead. He told the head of the marina that Frank Archer and a friend would be picking up his boat that night and not to expect it back until the next day.
They sped into the rain-soaked marina to find the boat already running and the harbor master standing in wait. Frank quickly greeted him, slipped him a hundred, and hopped aboard.
“Listen,” Jack said to Joy as they got out of Frank’s car, holding an umbrella over her. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the cancer.”
“So, what’s this mean, you come back from the dead only to have death waiting around the corner? I can’t go through that again. You don’t know what it did to me to hear you and Mia had died.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No.” Joy calmed down and wrapped her arms around Jack. “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now. I love you, Jack, and I love Mia. And I will go on loving the both of you till the day I die.” Joy wiped away a tear. “Please bring her back safe.”
Jack handed Joy an umbrella as one of Mitch Schuler’s town cars arrived in the parking lot next to them. She got into the backseat and, without another word, closed the door, and the town car drove away.
Jack ran through the rain, down the pier, and jumped onto the boat. He quickly released the stern line and ran to the bow.
Frank was at the wheel, familiarizing himself with the controls, when his cell phone rang. He quickly answered it as he revved the motor. “Yeah?”
“Frank, it’s Matt Daly.”
“What’s up?” Frank said, entirely distracted with flipping knobs and levers.
“You wanted me to call you if we found anything.”
Frank froze in his tracks. He hadn’t thought about Matt since his last call, forgetting that he was probably still in his dive gear, dragging the river for bodies that weren’t there. Everything had moved so quickly; quite honestly, it didn’t really matter now if the world found out that Jack and Mia weren’t in the river. But there was an urgency in Matt’s tone that unnerved him; he stopped fiddling and focused all attention on the call. “You found something?”
“Yeah, we’ve got a body.”
Frank spun around and looked at Jack, who was casting off the bow line. “Whose body?”
“We’re not sure yet. It’s wedged in the spillway. It may take some time to get it out. It’s real tough working underwater at night.”
“I’m sure it is.” Frank was hardly listening as confusion began to wrap around him. “Do me a favor and call me as soon as you have an ID.”
“You got it.” And Daly hung up.
Jack turned toward Frank as he cast off the last line and pulled in the bumpers. “Who’s on the phone?”
Frank struggled for words. “Just my wife.”
CHAPTER 41
As Mia looked out across the water, the slim chance of escape was not what scared her. What tested her mental stability was what she saw across the body of water, two miles away to the west. She understood now where the photo of her daughters at play that Cristos had left her was taken from. It was clear that he had her children under surveillance this whole time. The site she was staring at was the distant beach house where Jack was raised, the house of her in-laws, the place where her daughters now slept.
While sitting on the sandy beach behind his boyhood home, Jack would tell her tales of his youth, stories of a time before he was born, of the great island across the water, where the abject poor were buried in unmarked graves on the southern side, while for fifty years the opulent estate of Marguerite Trudeau hosted the rich and powerful at her weekly summer parties.
Mia was two miles from shore, a swim she could easily make, but it would leave her an easy target for the men who were closing in. She could hear the approach of her pursuers, and without another thought, she turned and headed back into the woods.
She headed in the direction of what she believed was south, away from the mansion, working her way through the woods for five minutes. She could hear her stalkers not far behind, the sound of their footfalls coming from two different directions. Clearly, they had split up and were closing in.
The rain began to fall in large, soaking drops. Mia was drenched in thirty seconds. The thunder was close enough to shake the ground she ran on, the deep, engulfing rumble startling her with every strike.
Before she knew it, she was in the overgrown potter’s field, a world of the dead, countless souls buried beneath her feet, forgotten to the world. Brush had overtaken the footstones, and trees had sprouted long ago, their roots digging down deep into death, carrying it out of the earth, and filling the woods with an ominous cloud of foreboding.
With the storm’s full force nearly upon her, the dark clouds blotted out the moonlight, plunging her into near- total darkness. She stumbled, falling hard to the ground, scrambling through the mud to regain her footing. With the sounds of the driving rain, of the constant thunder, she could no longer hear her pursuers. She spun around the potter’s field as a terrible fear crept up within her, as though she was on the edge of death. She waited for the bullet to strike.
And through the sounds of the storm, she once again heard them, less than ten yards away. She froze in place, holding her gun high, her finger on the trigger. Waiting for death.
Thunder exploded, the flash of lightning briefly illuminating the darkness around her: shattered foot-and headstones, felled trees, overgrown bramble. The brief bolt left her eyes momentarily scarred with spots, inhibiting what little sight she had.
Another sound, this one just feet away. She pulled the trigger in the direction of the sound, and her gun exploded, the flash lighting her surroundings for the briefest of seconds. She saw them, two of them, rain running down their angry faces, their hair plastered to their heads. They both spun and began rapid-firing in the direction of her shot.
Mia spun left a half-second before the gunfire was returned. She raced without direction, tripping, stumbling, her legs weak with fright. She crashed into a broken headstone, her ankle twisting in pain. She hunkered down, enveloped in fear, hiding among the dead.
Mia held her gun as if it would ward off her attackers, ward off evil, blindly pointing it. She never felt so alone, so close to death.
She thought she heard movement again, but this was different. It was a rumble from beneath the ground, as if the souls of the departed had been disturbed.
And then, without warning, Mia was suddenly sucked into the ground.
Cristos stepped from the large speedboat onto the dock, the churned-up ocean waters sending the floating wharf rolling around, the two boats banging against their moorings as the waves washed over everything, trying to drag it all out to sea. Ignoring the growing storm, he stalked up the gangway onto shore, where he was met by Jacob.
“What the hell are you doing out here?” Cristos said.
“The woman escaped.” A bruise was welling up on the side of his rain-soaked head. They continued walking up to the estate.
“Off the island?”
“No.”
Walking in silence, they arrived at the front door. Cristos saw the spent bullet casings on the ground and spun around into Jacob’s face.
“They shot at her?” Cristos’s words were measured and angry.
Jacob said nothing.
