It had been years since Creed had been up here. Not much had changed. Wylie usually invited a handful of colleagues for an annual fishing excursion that ended with a fish fry and all the beer you could drink. Creed had missed a few. Grace had never been here, but he noticed her nose already working the air.
He pulled up alongside Wylie’s pickup. Several different tire tracks crisscrossed in the mud. Creed realized the sheriff might not be alone.
“Would help if you returned phone calls,” Creed muttered.
Grace cocked her head at him.
“Nothing to worry about,” he said to the dog.
There were no lights on inside the cabin. But even on a dark and dreary day the place probably had enough natural light for a miser like Wylie.
As Creed got out of the Jeep, he looked for the river between the trees. There was a footpath behind the cabin. From here he could see the water and the old wood dock. But no fisherman. No surprise. The clouds looked like they could burst open again at any minute. What did concern Creed was that Wylie’s boat wasn’t at the dock.
Creed raised the Jeep’s tailgate and Grace met him. He expected her to be squirming and excited. Instead she stood stock-still, her head back and nose twitching. Her ears were pitched forward. That was when Creed realized how quiet it was. There was only the rumble in the clouds. No birds. Nothing flapping in the breeze. No humming of a generator.
It was too quiet.
Creed clipped a leash to Grace’s collar and lifted her out and onto the ground. He hadn’t given her any instructions or commands, but she was straining at the lead, pulling him toward the back of the cabin.
“We’re not staying for dinner,” he told her when he got a whiff of a recent wood fire.
Grace’s nose would be able to smell not only the ashes, but what had been cooked on that fire, even if it had been the previous night.
There were several pairs of footprints in the mud. Different soles. Different sizes. Wylie had probably invited some of his fishing buddies. And now Creed was starting to regret crashing a party he hadn’t been invited to.
Still, something didn’t feel right.
He followed Grace’s lead. He was a bit surprised when she passed the fire pit without giving it an extra sniff. She was headed for the water. By the time they got to the boat dock she was breathing fast. Her tail was straight up. She didn’t change her pace even as she jumped up onto the rickety boards and marched to the edge, where she came to a dead stop.
Then she looked back at Creed, staring straight into his eyes.
He wasted a few seconds checking the riverbank. Another precious minute or two went by as he dropped to his knees and looked down around and under the dock.
In the meantime, Grace was getting impatient with him. Her paws danced and her head bobbed almost as if she were trying to point her nose in the right direction.
His eyes started darting across the surface of the water. There was a gentle swish. He listened to the breeze skimming through the tops of the pine trees. Again, the clouds above rumbled.
This part of the river was only about a hundred feet from bank to bank, but around the bend Creed knew it opened up wider. Tree branches leaned down in places. Some had toppled into the water, making a natural habitat for beavers, insects, and water moccasins. But Creed saw nothing.
He looked back at Grace.
She stared at him again, then poked at the air with her nose.
“I’m trying,” he told her.
This time he focused on the bend where the river curved, about three hundred feet away. Close to the opposite bank he saw something, an object in the water. A red object that caught his eye. It bobbed on the surface but didn’t appear to be moving with the current. He couldn’t think of anything that grew or bloomed red in these parts at this time of year.
Creed pointed in its direction and looked down at Grace.
She pranced on the edge of the dock, and Creed’s pulse quickened. Grace was never wrong.
28
Creed peeled off his hiking boots, then his vest and shirt, shedding everything that might bog him down.
“You have to stay, Grace.”
She twirled.
“I’m serious.”
She twirled a second time.
“Stay, Grace.”
The water was cold. Creed was glad he had left on his jeans. In places the river ran waist-high, but through the middle Creed knew it was as deep as twenty feet. It ran shallow on the other side of the bend, where it spilled into a much wider area. It wasn’t a problem. Creed was an excellent swimmer. His facility housed an Olympic-sized pool for him and his dogs to train in. But almost as soon as he started swimming, the sky darkened. What had been a soft rumble overhead now crackled with electricity. The Florida Panhandle witnessed more lightning strikes than anywhere else in the country, and spring was the most unpredictable season.
Creed needed to be quick about this. He raised his head. Still couldn’t make out what the red object was.
A flash of lightning.
He kept his head down and increased his pace. At one point he glanced back at Grace. She was waiting at the end of the dock, right where he had left her. Right where he had told her to stay. And he knew she’d stay even when the downpour started, even when the crackles became crashes. Loyal to a fault. That was his Grace.
He hated leaving her out in the open for some wild-goose chase. Then he reminded himself that Grace had alerted at the water’s edge. He hadn’t asked her to search out anything, and yet she had alerted to something.
Closer to the bank now, Creed dug his feet into the sand and raised himself up. The water lapped against his thighs. The current had gotten stronger. The breeze had kicked up a notch.
The red object had disappeared from sight. Or the current had taken it.
His eyes darted over the water’s surface. Then he searched the overhanging branches that dipped into the river. It looked like a pile of debris-tangled brush, broken branches all twisted together. He was about to give up and head back when the flash of red bobbed up just three feet in front of him.
It was a red baseball cap with the letter A, what Creed recognized as the University of Alabama’s logo. Wylie was a huge Bama fan.
His heart started pounding. Was the sheriff somewhere in the water? Had he knocked himself out and off his boat?
The water was shallow enough here for Creed to swipe his hands underneath the surface. He hadn’t gone far when he saw the boat on the other side of the debris pile. And now he knew Wylie had to be here somewhere.
He dived his head beneath the water’s surface, but it was too dark to see anything other than roots and branches.
“Wylie!” he called out.
If the man was injured maybe he could hear him.
He looked back at Grace. She pranced around, agitated.
Creed shoved his way around the debris pile, his eyes focused on the small boat. It was wedged between the pile and the bank. Maybe Wylie had gotten caught underneath.
He made his way to the boat and was about to dive underwater again when something above caught his eye. Something in the trees up on the riverbank. Something swaying with the breeze, hanging from one of the branches.
It was Wylie.
29
NEW YORK CITY
Christina set out to the streets just as her watchers expected her to do. Her first stop was a little shop on the corner. They had made sure that she had plenty of cash. She usually left most of it in her hotel room, dividing it in three wads and stuffing the wads inside socks, then stuffing the socks into the toes of her shoes. Today she’d stuffed some of it inside her clothing.
She tried to take as much of it with her as she could fit. Some of it was flat against her shins inside her knee-high socks. A couple layers filled her bra, making her so buxom she wore a baggy sweatshirt she
had bought from a street vendor on her first day. Last, she ripped a seam in the lining of a baseball cap and tucked in as many bills as she could. Then she put her hair in a ponytail and weaved it through the open back of the cap to make it more secure on her head.
She did all this in case she decided not to come back to her hotel room. She’d need money for another hotel room, food, and maybe a ticket to get back home.
It wasn’t until the man in the crowd—the man who had slipped the flash drive into her pocket—had talked about her death as though it were a foregone conclusion that Christina realized that perhaps the watchers were not necessarily her allies. And now she realized she wouldn’t be able to go back home.
She wasn’t stupid. She knew that all the information and all the help the watchers had given her so far was simply for her to be able to go out and spread whatever version of the cold or flu they had infected her with. But the more she thought about it, the more she realized that no one had talked about them helping her get better after this experiment.
Sometime during the night, while she tossed and turned in her sweat-drenched sheets, it occurred to Christina that maybe she was really stupid. What if this time instead of providing her with an antidote, they meant for her to simply die?
Was that possible? Or was the fever starting to make her paranoid?
Safe inside the small shop, tucked in the back aisles, she reached through the neckline of her sweatshirt and the T-shirt underneath. She fingered the bump on her upper left arm. The tiny microchip was barely visible. It was put there months ago. Another experiment. For something different.
But what if it wasn’t? What if it was being used to track her?
She bought a carton of orange juice, a small bottle of Tylenol, and three protein bars. While she walked down the street she forced down two of the bars. She stopped long enough to pop three Tylenol and washed them down with the orange juice.
Yesterday she had accidentally gotten off on the wrong floor of the hotel. She remembered seeing computers and printers in a room—a business center. But there had been several men and women inside. And the watchers were always slipping notes under her room’s door. They were obviously here at the hotel. There was no way she’d be able to use one of the computers.
But other hotels must have similar business centers. She’d go out and pretend to walk the streets just as she did yesterday. Somehow she’d find a computer.
She slipped her hand deep down into the pocket of her jeans and made sure the flash drive was still there. She wanted to see what was so important.
30
THE PLATTE RIVER VALLEY
SOUTH-CENTRAL NEBRASKA
Nebraska didn’t have the snow that Chicago had gotten. Brown grass, tinted with the beginning sprigs of green, surrounded the lake. The sky was a brilliant blue turning to deep purple at the horizon as the sun began its descent behind the trees. As the SUV pulled closer, O’Dell couldn’t help but think that the surface of the lake looked like it was covered in snow.
The birds were crammed so tight and so close that not a sliver of water could be seen. Some of them even lay on top of one another.
There was no one else around. No traffic. No buildings or homes for miles. Not even any other birds in the trees. The only sound was the breeze whispering through the tall grasses.
“I thought it was best that we wait for the results before we start handling the birds,” Rief told her. She pointed out the few tire tracks. “We even made the news media walk from the main road and limited how close they could get. Not that difficult since, as you can see, there’s not easy access.”
“Still, I’m impressed you were able to limit them.”
“National news agencies picked up the local feed. So far they’ve been satisfied with running with that.”
They parked on a field road and walked the rest of the way. With the sun low on the horizon the breeze started to turn cold. O’Dell was glad she had put on her coat. Mud sucked at the soles of her boots. In the distance she could hear a train whistle. There was a hint of musk in the air, but not at all what she expected. The cool weather had kept the birds from decomposing quickly.
“I’m not sure what I hoped to see or find,” she told the biologist.
“Maybe you just needed to see it.”
On closer inspection the birds looked as if they had lain down to rest in the water and simply died. There didn’t appear to be any trauma. No deformities. No molted feathers. No injuries or blood. They looked quite peaceful.
They were headed back to the vehicle when Rief put her arm out in front of O’Dell to stop her.
“Just stand still.”
O’Dell didn’t understand until she saw the coyote coming out of the trees. He was approaching the lake, slowly. He seemed to be focused on the dead birds and paid little attention to the women.
O’Dell glanced at the biologist only to find her looking in the opposite direction. From the other stand of trees three more coyotes were making their way to the lake. When she looked back she saw that two more were following the first one she had seen.
“What do we do?”
She kept her voice low and soft. In her own head she could barely hear it over the drumming of her heartbeat. She knew from working with Ryder Creed that dogs could actually smell human fear. Something about hormones and chemistry. None of it mattered right now because she imagined that a coyote’s sense was probably even more heightened. Her fingers automatically slipped inside her jacket only to find that she hadn’t put on her shoulder harness and weapon after the flight.
“Just keep still,” Rief instructed with a steady and calm voice.
O’Dell was feeling anything but steady and calm. And “keeping still”? That was easier said than done. O’Dell couldn’t help noticing that they were caught between the lake and the coyotes. And their vehicle was about a hundred feet away. About the same distance as the nearest coyote. It would be a sprint that she imagined might end badly.
The biggest one turned to look at them. The others didn’t seem to care. All of them were more interested in the dead birds. O’Dell realized that made sense. It was less work for them to snatch and grab food that was already dead than to challenge the humans. Still, she tried to access her memory bank for any information about coyotes attacking people.
“Were they here last night, too?”
“No. They don’t like fresh meat,” Rief said. “They’ll leave dead stuff until it starts to decompose a bit. Easier to digest.”
“They have a lakeful. So we’re okay?”
Just as O’Dell asked, another coyote looked over at them.
“Depends,” Rief said.
She waited for the biologist to continue.
“Usually a lone coyote won’t attack, but a pack can be more aggressive.”
It was not what O’Dell wanted to hear.
Soon the sun would be sinking behind the tree line along with O’Dell’s stomach. She hoped coyotes couldn’t smell fear, because she was certain she was starting to reek of it.
31
FLORIDA PANHANDLE
Creed sat on the boat dock with a blanket wrapped around him. He didn’t remember which crew member had given it to him. Grace sat next to him. It had taken almost two hours for anyone to arrive. Too much time for Creed to sit and wait and think.
His initial reaction was to get Wylie down.
He had started to climb the riverbank. He’d climb the tree if he had to just to get the sheriff to stop hanging by his neck. But he stopped himself, knees buried in the mud. Halfway up the bank he realized he might destroy crime scene evidence. And he wanted to believe that a crime had been committed. He did not want to believe that Wylie had done this to himself.
So Creed had stayed there, staring up at the body. His eyes couldn’t look away.
“You didn’t do this to yourself, did you, Wylie??
??
The rope had been thrown up over the branch. One end looped around the sheriff’s neck. The other was attached to the boat. Creed could see the skid mark in the clay bank. The boat had been on the bank. All it would have taken was a shove to make it slide down into the water and make the rope act like a pulley. The weight of the trolling motor and the downward slide looked like it was enough to yank Wylie’s body up and keep him there. If his neck wasn’t broken by the impact, he might have struggled. Creed didn’t want to think about how long it could have taken.
At the same time he reminded himself that sometimes things weren’t what they seemed. There were so many easier ways to kill yourself. Like Tony Briggs’s way of jumping nineteen stories. Or putting a .22 to your temple like Creed’s father had done.
Creed didn’t want to think about that right now either. He’d spent the last eleven years of his life trying to forget. Sometimes it was too much work to stop it. Too painful to juggle the memories, to decide which ones to release and which to lock away. Brodie’s disappearance. His dad’s suicide. They leaked into each other.
In his head he could still hear the play-by-play of a football game. It was on the car radio. It was the reason his dad hadn’t gone with Brodie to the bathroom at the rest stop. Because his dad couldn’t miss a goddamn second of the game. And it was the reason Creed couldn’t go with her either, because he was supposed to keep the dog quiet so his dad could listen to the game.
Creed always wondered if it was some sort of odd poetic justice that when he found his dad a football game was playing on the television. His dad was slumped over on the sofa as though he’d fallen asleep watching.
Grace nuzzled him and only now did he realize he was breathing hard, taking gulps of air. He needed to slow down, steady himself before he started to hyperventilate.