He had dozens of drones, the careful harvest of several years’ work, scattered across Indiana, Illinois, Michigan and Wisconsin. They had been actively involved in the hunt for Mary and Michael. It would take some of the drones longer than others to drive to Grand Rapids, but by the time Martin and his colleagues from DC arrived later that evening, he would have assembled another team.
In a half an hour, one of the nearest drones would bring him clean, serviceable clothes that would fit the monkey. He didn’t bother ordering anything too fancy. He had no plans to stay in this body a moment longer than necessary.
Once he finished the phone calls, he ordered a couple of pizzas and paid for the food with the monkey’s credit card. After all, like Warren Buffett, he believed that one of the best traits of the very wealthy was maintaining frugal financial habits. Then he was ready to sit down with his laptop.
The first thing he saw when he opened his in-box was an e-mail from Martin, with an attachment. Martin’s note was short and to the point.
Here’s the info on Crow. I have one of my staff digging around for more information, but in the meantime, here is the FBI file on our subject.
Smiling with satisfaction, he clicked on the encrypted attachment, punched in a pass code and opened the digital copy of a dossier on Nicholas. He began to read the contents.
Naturally Crow had excelled at everything from an early age. As a teenager, he’d had his choice of career paths. Several universities had courted him with football scholarships, but instead he chose to go the Ivy League route. He took a scholarship to study public policy and public administration at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. When he graduated, Crow joined the army, where he distinguished himself again.
Boring.
He stopped reading and started to scan. He already knew that Crow had been an exceptional man. Crow had to have been in order to have occupied the position he’d had.
No, he was looking for something else on Crow, something meaty that he could sink his teeth into, and hopefully shake something useful out of it.
Crow’s mother and father had been divorced from the time that he was six years old. He had lived in Chicago with his mother, who had been a nurse, and he had spent summers and Christmas vacations with his father, Jerry Crow, now retired. Crow’s father had owned a couple of antique stores, which he sold several years ago, and he was reputed to be a First Nation elder and active in his tribal community.
And the elder Crow lived in northern Michigan.
There we go.
There was the first little nugget of something to nibble on.
His mother had died in a car accident in the nineties when Crow had been serving overseas. His father, Jerry Crow, was still alive. The dossier even had a digitized photo of him, although it appeared to be at least ten years old. The man in the photo was around sixty or so.
He had terrible dress sense. He wore a flannel shirt and Levi’s, and he held a lit cigarette between the fingers of one hand. His gray-streaked black hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and his strong face was creased with laughter as he looked off camera.
“I think I need to pay you a visit, Jerry,” he said to the photo. He tapped the laptop screen with a blunt fingernail. “Offer my condolences on the loss of your son. I feel optimistic that you and I will have an interesting conversation.”
A knock sounded on his motel door. He strolled over to look through the peephole. The first of his drones had arrived, carrying packages of clothes. As he dressed, other drones arrived until within a couple of hours, he felt replenished with both energy and resources.
The state patrol had not yet reported any sign of the car Michael and Mary had been driving, but that had been a long shot anyway. It was more to keep pressure on the pair and make sure they kept moving than anything else.
In the meantime, he was clean, well fed, dressed and he had manpower, weapons and equipment. Plus he had a man in northern Michigan that he was very much interested in talking to. He set his drones to various tasks, then he settled on top of the bedcovers, folded his hairy monkey hands together and closed his eyes to focus on marshaling his forces in the psychic realm.
First he had to cast the net out. He needed to have a presence in every port town. Then he had to tighten the perimeters. Then they could concentrate on sweeping the countryside. He would tear this state apart with his bare hands, if that was what it took to find them.
Another knock sounded on his door. One of his drones answered it. He did not let the interruption disrupt his work until he heard Martin’s voice. Then he sat up in bed to watch Martin usher two other people into the room, a man and a woman. They both wore dark suits and were sharp looking, intelligent and fit. These would be Martin’s colleagues from DC.
As intelligent and as capable as they no doubt were, they had trusted Martin. They never stood a chance. The moment the door closed, several of his drones, including Martin himself, faced the two FBI agents with guns drawn.
Slowly they put their hands up. Martin stepped forward to divest them of their weapons, while their wary gazes darted from drone to drone, until finally they looked at him, as well they should.
He rolled off the bed and onto his feet.
“Hello, hello,” he said cheerfully. “It’s about time you showed up.”
Martin said, “We’ve been in dialogue with the director of the Michigan State Police about how best to direct the manhunt. I have set up a personal meeting with him in an hour, at the District Six headquarters in Rockford, and I told him that I would be bringing a consultant with me.”
“Excellent,” he said. “That should give us plenty of time to finish up things here. After I meet the director, we’re going to travel north to visit Nicholas’s father. You’ll need to arrange for air transportation. We have a lot to do and a lot of ground to cover before it gets dark.”
“Certainly.”
While drones might have their limitations, the more intelligent people were, the better-functioning drones they made, and really, Martin was the best example of what a drone could be.
“Martin,” the female said, “I don’t know what the fuck is going on here, but so far, you haven’t done anything that you can’t back out of.”
She kept her voice low and controlled. Her hard, composed expression said that she was ready for the slightest opportunity they might give her, and she would turn it to her advantage.
Oh, he liked her. He wanted to take her first.
He strode forward, one of the monkey’s paws outstretched.
“Please, allow me to introduce myself,” he said, smiling. “Although, there really isn’t any need for an exchange of names. I’ve had so many over the years, and you’re never going to remember what I tell you, anyway.”
Chapter Eight
MARY HAD LEARNED to count her life in small segments, and at the moment she was vastly contented with life. She didn’t have to drive anymore, her belly was stretched full with good food, her body no longer ached from bruises or any deeper injuries and she had a pillow. And a blanket. Sufficient unto the day.
She intended to pay attention to the passing scenery as Michael located a route back to Highway 131. But she did have that pillow, and somehow it found its way between her ear and the car door. She rested her eyes for a minute.
Nasty things whispered in the dark. She surfaced back to consciousness fast.
“That’s the fourth time I’ve woken up bad in the last couple of days. It’s starting to piss me off,” she muttered, before she opened her eyes. She sat up and sent a bleary gaze around, reaching out to touch Michael’s arm for comfort. “What’s happened? How did they find us?”
“It’s not how they found us,” he said. “It’s what we’re driving into.”
The dichotomy between how things felt in the psychic realm and how things looked in the physical realm was disorienting.
Visually everything appeared normal, even scenic. She hadn’t slept more than ten minutes. The architectural landscape had condensed and the early evening traffic had worsened. Michael’s arm felt warm and bulky with muscle.
She noticed his face had gone wary and still. His gaze held an alert expression she was beginning to recognize. The expression did peculiar things to his eyes, turning their gray color polished and impenetrable, like the hard, reflective surface of a drawn sword.
How many dead bodies had they left behind in the cabin’s clearing? Twenty? Thirty? They had been trained hardened soldiers, probably mercenaries. How many had looked into Michael’s executioner gaze as they died? A convulsive shudder ran through her.
He nudged her hand. “You wanted a vacation on the beach,” he said. “Tell me about it.”
She shook her head slowly as she watched the people in nearby cars. “At first I was shooting for a month, but after the last couple of days, I think I was lowballing it. I’m gonna go for a full summer.”
“During your summer off, you can sleep as much as you like,” he said. A slight smile softened the hard line of his mouth.
“There are no alarm clocks on that beach,” she told him. “Nobody hurries anywhere, because nothing urgent is happening. The most pressing thing I have to decide is whether I want a margarita or a mai tai. And all is right with the world.” She sighed. “It doesn’t matter where it is. The Bahamas, Mexico, Hawaii—I’m ready to go. Right now.”
“I am too.”
In an abrupt movement that startled her, he signaled and pulled into the parking lot of a liquor store at one end of a strip mall. Then he put the Jeep into park. With the engine idling, he crossed his arms over the top of the steering wheel and leaned forward to rest his chin on them. His light eyes moved over the scene.
She waited, her gaze moving from Michael to the nearby shops and the traffic that sped past them. Finally, she asked, “What now, Mister Enigmatic?”
“You keep calling me that,” he murmured. Thoughts shifted behind those steely eyes.
“I don’t mean it in a bad way,” she told him. She grinned. “Not anymore. I’m getting used to you turning all silent and mysterious. I think more caffeine might be a good idea. Do you mind if I buy more Coke while you use your spidey sense or inner periscope, or whatever it is that you’ve got?”
She gestured to the vending machines located outside the liquor store.
He swept the parking lot and the immediate area again with that sharp, assessing gaze. “Okay.”
“Want one?”
“Sure.”
She dug in her purse for change, climbed out of the Jeep and walked the short distance to the vending machines. Gray clouds mottled the sky. The temperature had turned sharp and chilly, while a brisk breeze blew off the nearby Lake and tugged at loose tendrils of her hair. She had been uncomfortable earlier in the heat of the day, but now she was grateful she was wearing the flannel shirt.
Her nerves jangled from the turmoil she sensed in the psychic realm. She felt exposed standing outside, even though she knew Michael was not more than thirty feet away and aware of her every move. Getting the Coke had been as much an act of bravado as practicality, but the small sanctuary of the Jeep suddenly seemed too far away. She grabbed the two cans and jogged back.
Once she’d climbed back inside, Michael said, “I’m sensing psychic movement in the direction of all the northern towns and cities, especially the closest ones—Petoskey, Charlevoix, Norwood and Traverse City. He’s concentrating on the ports. I’ll bet that all the local airports and landing strips are being watched too. There’s also a concentration of some kind of energy mass on I-75, in the direction of the Mackinac Bridge. He will have set up a roadblock on the bridge.”
Her stomach muscles tightened as a now-familiar sense of dread washed over her. The five-mile-long Mackinac Bridge spanned the Straits of Mackinac. It was the only route they could travel by car to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. A roadblock on I-75 meant they had been correct. The Deceiver did have powerful contacts in the police force. They had already been acting as if he had, but somehow it seemed worse to have their deductions confirmed.
“He’s done all of that already?” she asked in dismay. “It’s barely been twelve hours since we left the cabin.”
Michael shook his head. “I’ll bet a lot of this is something he set in motion earlier. It’s what I would have done if I were chasing someone who appeared to be traveling north on 131. It’s a logical strategy. Work to cut off the exit points, then quarter the area and search section by section.”
They fell silent for a few moments. She asked, “What about that thing you can do—the null space?”
“That will get us farther than we could get without it,” he replied. “But it won’t get us past any roadblocks.”
She stuffed his can of Coke into a drink holder. “I guess this might be the worse-before-it-gets-better part.”
“Something like that.” He rubbed his eyes. He looked as tired as she felt.
“Where are we trying to go, anyway?” she asked. “I keep meaning to ask, but then something happens.”
Michael pointed in a northwestern direction. “Right about there. You know where Beaver Island is?”
“I have a rough idea,” she said. Beaver Island was located almost directly north from Grand Traverse Bay and south of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. If she remembered right, it was barely more than a one-town island. She’d always thought the remote location sounded like the perfect place for a quiet vacation.
“There’s a cluster of smaller islands around it. Astra lives on one of them. We need a boat or a seaplane to get to her. I keep a boat docked at Charlevoix, which is about sixteen or seventeen miles west of Petoskey. I was hoping we could hook up to Highway 31, which follows the coast, and shoot over to Charlevoix to use the boat.” He grimaced. “It might be too risky for us to get to it.”
She rubbed at her temple where a tension headache had begun to throb. “We could always go to Cancun,” she muttered. “You know, try back in a decade or two.”
She knew that the Deceiver would never leave them alone for an entire decade. He would keep hunting until he found and destroyed them. She also knew Michael would never consent to hide while his enemy was loose in the world committing atrocities. And she knew her own conscience wouldn’t allow her to hide for that long either.
She was being truculent and illogical and unrealistic, and she didn’t care. She popped open her can of Coke and glared at it.
He glanced at her. “I was actually thinking about traveling south again. Not as far south as Mexico, of course. But there are smaller towns dotting the entire Michigan coastline, and almost all of them have marinas. Unless he has a good portion of the U.S. Army invade Michigan, there’s no way he can watch all of those ports. All he can do is patrol the water and the coastal highways.”
“Why can’t Astra come to us?” The image of that frail, elderly body stretched on a narrow bed came back to her. She gritted her teeth. “Never mind. She can’t.”
“No, she can’t,” he agreed. “So, south it is.”
He put the Jeep in reverse, backed out of the parking space and shifted into drive. Then he accelerated—directly into a transparent, blurred figure that appeared in front of the Jeep.
Mary cried out sharply, even as Michael slammed on the brakes. He was too late, and the car passed through Nicholas’s ghost.
Mary had accidentally passed through Nicholas’s ghost once before, and she felt it again, that sensation of warmness, of a strong male presence.
And just as she had before, she flashed on a knife rising on the periphery of his/her vision. He/she turned to combat the threat. The knife snaked out, and fiery pain flared at his/her throat. Wetness gushed down his/her front. He/she fell to his/her knees. . . .
Just as quickly as the vision hit her, it dis
appeared again. She was fully back in her own body, in the parking lot with Michael.
“Jesus,” she said. Belatedly, she realized that she had spilled Coke over her flannel shirt and jeans. She set the can in her drink holder, fingers shaking.
“It’s all right,” Michael said. “It was just Nicholas.”
She stared at him. He looked calm and unaffected. Either he hadn’t passed through any part of Nicholas, or he hadn’t gotten any vision when he had. He pulled into another parking space, unbuckled his seat belt and stepped outside.
She followed him out, walking around the hood of the Jeep to where Michael stood. As she reached Michael’s side, Nicholas reappeared in front of them.
The ghost was easier to see than he had been early this morning. In full sunshine, he was barely a glimmer. Now the strong, powerful lines of his body were distinct in the gray, cloudy evening.
He looked at Mary and seemed to hesitate. Had he felt something when she’d seen his death? She shuddered, hoping he would never ask, and Michael put a bracing arm around her shoulders.
“What is it?” Michael asked. “What’s happened?”
Michael and Nicholas had been, if not friends, at least colleagues. She might have frowned at Michael’s abrupt attitude, except that she saw how his gaze traveled over the scene again. He was as wary as she was of staying in one spot for too long.
Astra sent me with a message for you, Nicholas said. She said she knows of the traps the enemy has set for you. Don’t turn away from your course. Don’t turn south. Push through their barriers, and move quickly, because she is calling in all of her favors and sending help.
Mary waited expectantly for more, but instead of saying anything further, Nicholas fell silent.
She muttered, “Was that meant to be cryptic, or is it just me?”
The ghost said to Michael, She said that you would understand.