Blood Trust

a pen and a sheet of paper any day, he used to say.” Her expression turned pensive. “It was horrible what happened to him. I mean, he was a good guy, Jack. He just wasn’t for me.”

“There are lots more guys out there, Alli. And you have plenty of time.”

She looked away, abruptly uncomfortable.

* * *

EMMA CAME to Jack in the darkness of the plane, while everyone around him slept and he was staring out the Perspex window at the unending darkness. Far below him, great ships plowed through the waves with their cargos of oil, electronics, washer/dryers, and cars. Men smoked and ate, slept and joked and played cards, or watched porn on their portable DVD players. That was another world, one he’d never been a part of, even when he was younger. He’d been born an outsider and an outsider he remained.

He felt his daughter first as a waft of chill air, then as a stirring of the hairs on his forearms, and then she was beside him, while, three rows back, Paull sucked in deep drafts of sleep.

“You were there, weren’t you,” Jack whispered, “in that underground house of death?”

“Yes.”

—Why?

“I have no choice in these matters. I’m tied to death, recent death, when it involves you or Alli.”

Jack ran a hand across his face, as if he could scrub away this hallucination or manifestation of his mind, or whatever it was.

—I don’t want this. I want you safe.

Emma laughed.

“If there’s a safer place than this, I don’t know about it.”

I want to hold her, Jack thought. I want her back. He spoke to her instead.

—These murders are linked. I can see a pattern forming, Emma, but there aren’t enough pieces yet to put in place. Like who tortured and killed Billy Warren. Like who killed those two men at Twilight. I’m sure Dardan could have answered those questions.

“Dad, I thought you’d have gotten it by now. I’m not a seer.”

—You can see certain things. You knew about your mother and me.

“I’m connected to both of you. How could I not know you were splitting up?”

Jack didn’t understand a thing about this arrangement. How could he; it was beyond human ken.

“You don’t miss her, Dad, do you?”

—I don’t, no.

“But you do miss Annika.”

—You’re wrong, Emma.

“I’d like to say I don’t mind that you can’t admit it to me, but the fact is I do.”

—She’s evil.

“You know that’s not true.”

—She murdered Senator Berns.

“How many people has your friend Dennis Paull murdered, I wonder?”

—Self-defense or mission-specific. All understandable, all within protocol.

“Oh, Dad, protocol? Really? Okay, if you want to go that route. Annika’s murder was protocol: mission-specific—for her grandfather.”

—Now that man—Dyadya Gourdjiev—is the devil.

“As opposed to her father?”

Jack sighed. The late, unlamented Oriel Jovovich Batchuk, who had stolen her away from her mother and kept Annika locked up, committing unspeakable acts of sexual violence on her body.

—It’s all in the past, so what’s the point?

“From where I stand, there is no past, no future, no present. It’s all the same. Time is just something human beings made up to keep themselves from going crazy.”

He smiled.

—Were you always like this? So damn philosophical?

She laughed.

—Yet another aspect of you I missed, Emma.

“Everybody missed it, Dad, except for Alli.”

He was suddenly very tired.

—I want to sleep, but I don’t know whether I’ll be able to.

His daughter smiled her translucent smile.

“That I can help you with.”

She spread her arms. His eyes closed.

“Rest now, Dad.”

THIRTEEN

MARTIAL DRUMMING sounded in Andrew Gunn’s dream. A long gray line of skeletal people with fire-bombed faces was marching toward him along the banks of a snaking river. The river was on fire, bright flames and crackling sparks shooting upward. The clouds of heat were palpable. Blackhawks whirred and banked precipitously, bristling with weaponry in the brassy sunlight, but not a single helmet was visible. The trees overhanging the river were full of flame, the skin of the skeletal people curled and blackened and fell off. Oblivious, the long gray line advanced to the beat of the invisible drum, which became more and more insistent, until …

Gunn started awake to the pounding on his front door. For a moment, still enmeshed in the dream, he sat still in a rumple of bedclothes. The pounding became more than insistent—it seemed frantic.

Rolling out of bed, he pulled on a pair of paint-smeared jeans and a cotton shirt, not bothering to button it as he passed through the living room, into the short entryway, where he pulled open the door.

“Jesus Christ,” he said, “didn’t I tell you never to come here?”

“Fuck you, too.”

Vera Bard pushed past him. She wore a wide-belted iridescent black trench coat that came down so far the hem almost concealed her black high-heel shoes. She didn’t look like any FBI recruit he’d ever seen.

Sighing, he closed the door and walked after her into the living room where early morning sunlight poured in through the south-facing windows. Far below, Washington and the Potomac glimmered in a flat, hazy light patterned in grays and faded browns.

“What are you doing here, Vera? How did you get out of Fearington?”

Alli’s roommate looked a good deal better than she had when Jack had visited her in the Fearington infirmary yesterday. Her long, dark hair had regained its extraordinary luster and her upswept chocolate eyes were again bright with a fierce intelligence.

“I’m on a week’s medical furlough.” Her nostrils flared. “I got a visit from a guy named Jack McClure. You know him?”

“By reputation only.” Gunn shrugged. “What of it?”

“I think he suspects something.”

Gunn laughed. “How could he suspect anything?”

“How the fuck should I know? You’re the brainiac of this little venture.” Vera Bard’s cherry mouth turned sullen. “I don’t like him. I don’t want him anywhere near me. It feels like he’s crawling around inside my head.”

“That must be painful.”

“Joke all you want,” she said hotly. “Just make sure he stays the hell away from me.”

Gunn sighed. “You could’ve told me this using the encrypted cell phone I gave you.”

“True enough.” Her hands were at the trench coat’s belt. “But then I wouldn’t be able to show you this.”