She paid Cory, ignored Chris's sidelong leer, and wheeled the cart out the door. The Cobalt sat under the flag pole at the post office, empty. Monica tossed the supplies into the cab between the stick shift and the car seat, hoisted Adam onto her shoulder, and crossed the street to the post office.
She walked in past the rows of lock boxes and pushed through the door into the customer service foyer.
Sandy greeted her with a huge grin, her curly, gray hair tumbling over the shoulders of her official USPS uniform. "Hey, darling. No packages today."
Monica shrugged, peering back into the PO Box room—empty—before leaning on the counter. Sandy reached out and lifted Adam away, and for his part he smiled and grabbed a fistful of gray curls. Sandy kissed his cheek and returned his grin ten-fold.
Monica kept her voice low, even though they appeared to be the only people in the building. "Y'all have any idea who owns that Chevy under the flagpole?"
Sandy craned her neck to better see out the window. "No clue. Why? They ding ya?"
Monica shrugged. "No big reason, I guess. He was parked just past the driveway, followed me into town."
"Well that's weird. Ain't nobody lives out that way owns a Chevy."
A brown-haired man, just scruffy enough to be sexy, walked up to the car from the direction of the grocery store, smiling. In a tan turtleneck and jeans a hair too tight, he cut a handsome figure more Hollywood than Tennessee.
"Know him?" Sandy asked as he unlocked the door.
"Nope. Sure is cute, though."
He got in, checked his rear-view mirror, and lingered a little too long on Monica's truck across the street.
A nervous tingle crawled up her spine, turning to an electric jolt when he locked eyes with her through the window. His smile didn't seem so handsome right then. It reminded her more of Chris's leer, only a flatter, more dangerous sort of hunger. A small nod, a turn of the key, and he backed out and drove away.
Sandy clucked her tongue, a rapid-fire clicking, and handed Adam back to her. "You packing, honey?"
She took the weight and hugged him. He squealed and squirmed, reaching out for Sandy. "Packing?"
"Pistol, Mon. You got a gun?"
"I do, but not with the baby. Don't got anywhere to put it."
Sandy "tsked" and pointed down at her bag. "I carried every day when I had the boys. Diaper bag’s got room for more than diapers."
Monica ran her tongue over her front teeth. "Yeah. Diaper bag. I'll have to consider that."
* * *
The Imperator's specs didn't do it justice. Two hundred and thirty meters as an abstract concept meant nothing. It smothered the horizon, the biggest boat Matt had ever seen, short of an aircraft carrier. Somehow, approaching it from the water made it seem larger even than those.
"Good God. How do we get up there?" Matt asked.
Mark Talmer rolled his eyes and used his cigarette to point at a door in the hull, thirty feet above the water line. "We don't, dumbass." The motion exposed a tattoo on his forearm, a cybernetic cat's head, half orange and half black.
"Ah," Matt said. Playing dumb didn't seem so hard when he had no idea what to do.
In their three days together, Mark's interactions with Matt had been limited to grunts, insults, and sarcasm. Mark hadn't joined their poker games, electing instead to wander the deck alone, and ate lunch by himself. Given Mark's three-pack-a-day habit and conspicuous lack of a toothbrush, Matt couldn't feel bad about it, but something about his behavior went beyond taciturn.
They pulled up alongside the enormous drillship, massive airbags inflating to keep the hulls from scraping. Men threw down huge ropes from the deck of the larger ship. Once tied together, the door on the Imperator opened. A small man with black hair stepped out of the way to allow them through. His choice of jeans and nothing else revealed an endless string of swirling tattoos, covering every inch of his chest, arms, even his bare, dirty feet.
Matt hesitated, expecting some form of ceremony asking and granting permission to come aboard.
"Come on," the black-haired man said. "I ain't holding the door all fucking day."
Jim stepped through, followed by Greg, Mark, and finally Matt. The sharp smell of bleach and ocean salt overpowered a faint hint of body odor.
"Welcome to the Imperator. You hungry? We got a shipment of blue crabs straight from Maine, fresher than you'll ever see in the stores."
They all shook their heads.
He led them through a warren of narrow tunnels, and down two flights of stairs to a massive common room filled with cots bolted to the walls and trunks bolted to the floor. "Stow your gear and get comfortable. We ain't even pumping right now, so you're likely getting paid to sit ass and play cards. Hope you brought cards."
He walked out.
The casual and abrupt departure surprised Matt. His experience on ships all entailed meeting the captain as one of the first orders of business, just to get sized up if for no other reason. Here, they didn't even get their guide's name before being left to their own devices. Investigation might prove easier than he thought.
He claimed a bunk and lay down, hands behind his head. You didn't make it through military service without learning how to wait. Or sleep.
* * *
Monica gave the chain wrench one final tug, then opened the tank valve. Water trickled into the filter housings, clean and clear. Once full, she opened the filter valve the rest of the way. She stood, wiped greasy slate from her hands on an old washrag, and turned on the valve to the hot water heater.
Hard water sucked, but it beat sulfur ten ways to Sunday. She washed her hands in the mud room sink, wiped them on her jeans, and walked into the living room. Adam beamed at her from his gated pen, the floor a chaotic mess of typing paper and crayons. "Hey, little man!"
She plopped down on the couch, turned off The Wiggles, and clicked through the channel guide until she found an Outlander marathon. She sat back to enjoy the show, then noticed a rock outside on the deck, something white just visible underneath it. Bassets were supposed to bark at everything, but Ted snored under the coffee table, oblivious to his very existence.
She peeked outside. Nothing moved but the wind in the pines, and no strange shapes appeared in the shadows beneath the boughs. She opened the door, tossed the rock into the woods, and snatched the note from the ground.
Once inside she unfolded the square of typing paper. Her throat closed at the scribble of green crayon, like the one Adam held in his fist, and she stumbled back into the counter. She couldn't read it through a sudden stream of tears, couldn't think through the tightness in her chest. Instead she went to the diaper bag, pulled out the .357, and sat on the loveseat facing the glass doors.
And shook. Madness submerged her under a wave of craving, a desperate need for escape that crushed her bones and jellied her organs, something, anything to take the edge off. Her mind raced for something in the house; they didn't even have any vanilla extract, much less a cigarette or joint or hit of meth or coke or heroin. Matt's fault, and it made her so angry and helpless and hopeless, and so terribly grateful.
Something brushed her leg, and the craving fell to a ruthless gnawing in the pit of her stomach, present but not all-consuming. She looked down at her son, who'd stretched through the gate to clutch at her jeans. He looked up, his gaze sharp and clear, devoid of the wide-eyed curiosity or worry of a near-toddler.
She wiped the tears from her cheeks and smiled. "Hey, little man."
He laughed, bursting her heart with sheer joy. She tried to return his smile but couldn't. Instead, her gaze traveled to the right, to the green scrawl on white paper.
EXODUS 22:18
The living room shelf held three Bibles: a leather-bound gift from Matt's father on their wedding day, a child’s bible not even a year old—a gift from Pastor Joe—and a tattered, dog-eared paperback, the last memory she had of her grandmother. She'd never opened any of them.
She pulled the leather-bound book off the shelf
and flipped to Exodus.
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.
She read it again, and the passages before and after, a list of old-time laws and rules from when the Jews had fled Egypt across the Red Sea. What the note meant wasn't clear, but she knew a threat when she saw it. She put her hand on the gun, then on the phone. She dialed Matt with no hope of reaching him in the field. His voicemail kicked on, and she almost cried again at the sound of his voice.
"You've reached Matt Rowley, Office of Special Threats. Leave a message."
It beeped.
"Baby, you got to call me right away." She hit "End" and stared at the phone. After a long moment she dialed another number.
The volunteer receptionist at St. Martin's church in Franklin, Kentucky, took her name and number with a promise to relay them to Father Rees. Adam scribbled, curls and loops and lines from one piece of paper to the next, content enough with the paper that little crayon marred the hardwood floor.
The phone rang five minutes later. She clicked "Talk."
"Jason?"
His cold reply contrasted with the desperate plea in her voice. "I'm not supposed to be talking to you."
Fuck you. You owe me. "I have a problem."
"He told me he'd kill me and leave me to rot in a ditch. I believe him."
"He don't bluff, but he's out of the country."
"Even more reason not to talk to you."
Monica looked at the ceiling and tried not to scream. "You called me back, so shut the fuck up a minute, huh?"
Silence. A big improvement.
She licked her lips. "What can you tell me about Exodus 22:18?"
"Uh . . . Exodus 22 is a bunch of rules to live by." Pages rustled in the background. "Yeah, eighteen . . . . 'Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live.' Yeah, that one gets a lot of play these days, especially from people attacking the Church for intolerance. Lots of other stuff about marriage and hairstyles and mixed-fiber clothing. What is this about?"
"Someone came into my house and left a note with that on it. While Adam was home." She looked down at Adam, scattering papers across the floor on his hands and knees.
"That's weird. What's witchcraft have to do with you?"
"I don't know."
"Hmmm. Humans for Humanity equated Gerstner Augmentation with witchcraft. They took credit for destroying all the witches last year through the power of prayer. Big parties, lots of enthusiastic press conferences, massive funding drives."
"I saw it on the news. But why would they be here?"
Jason didn't say anything. He often didn't, let her feel out where her thoughts were headed without interrupting.
"Do you think they're after Matt? You didn't say anything, did you? How would they even know he's still Augged?"
"He's still Augged?" The shock in Jason's voice carried through the connection.
"Maybe you're not supposed to know that . . . but maybe somebody does, and they don't like it so much."
She glanced down and gasped. Adam stared at her from the jumble of papers, where the squiggles and lines made an unmistakable image.
A fallen crucifix lay on the ground, Jason lay nailed atop it, mouth open in a wordless scream, limbs twisted to unnatural angles.
"Holy shit." She reached out her arms. "Adam, baby, stay there."
"What's wrong?" Jason asked, the edge of concern in his voice.
She wiggled her cell phone out of her pocket. Adam moved, the papers shifted, and the image disappeared. "No, wait, DAMMIT."
"Are you all right?"
"No. Yeah. Shit, I don't know."
"What happened?"
She didn't doubt for a second what she'd seen, but knew she didn't want to tell him the truth. "Nothing. Thought I saw something outside."
"Call the police. Right now. I'm hanging up."
The phone clicked dead.
She set it down and looked at her child. Chubby cheeks, big grin, not a sign of anything amiss.
"Did you do that, kid? Or did something else?"
She called 9-1-1, then spent ten minutes trying to piece together even part of the image. When Jason called back she told him the cops were on their way. An hour later, after the cops had left, a charcoal gray Chevy Cobalt rolled past the driveway, toward town. She left the gun on the counter in easy reach.
* * *
"No, you goddamned idiot, over there!" Jim Chambers played his cover almost too well. Matt grinned his dumbest grin and carried the steel pipe in the direction Jim pointed, toward the moonpool, a massive opening in the center of the ship that provided access to the water. The water shone black under the midday sun, the blue of the sky smothered by the Imperator's bulk.
A giant crankshaft rotated under a gantry, or whatever they called it, spinning all the way around once every few seconds. The other end of it lay eight thousand feet under the water, just starting a test shaft to probe for oil under the ocean crust. Matt didn't know the terminology of boats or oil and without trying had solidified his reputation as the dumbest meathead aboard during his first twelve-hour shift.
Still, he couldn't shake the feeling that the attention the other crewmen paid him went beyond wariness of a newbie onboard. Untrained personnel could be dangerous and as such provoked a certain hostility, but the reactions of the established crew went beyond exasperation or even worry. Not one offered help or guidance, not one spared him a kind word after terse introductions, not one even shook his hand. The black mood pervaded every inch of the ship, even the cafeteria and the game room, where sullen men played pool, darts, and cards without banter or laughter. For blue-collar men earning six figures with overtime plus hazard pay, the malaise didn't fit.
He set the pipe down and went for another. In truth he could carry a half-dozen at a time without breaking a sweat, but didn't want to draw any more attention than he already had. His true goal had nothing to do with getting work done, and working a few days without trying anything suspicious couldn't hurt his chances of breaking away unseen.
The stop work bell rang at seven p.m. sharp. All work ceased—drilling, welding, even ship maintenance, everything but the kitchen staff, who kicked into overtime to feed the famished crew. Matt stood in line with his tray, took three scoops of pulled pork with extra bread and a carton of orange juice. The spooks sat with four other pipe layers, chowing down without much conversation, so Matt chose an unoccupied table.
The small room filled, absent the chatter one would expect in a cafeteria. The hair stood on the back of his neck as every table filled but his. Four men stood against the wall, eating off trays held in their hands rather than sitting at his table. He ignored them all, concentrating on his sandwich, muscles primed and ready to spring into action at the slightest hint of hostility.
A shadow darkened his tray. He looked up. The black-haired man who'd let them on board scowled down at him.
"What are you doing on my ship?"
Matt chewed a few more times than necessary, then swallowed. He set down his sandwich before looking up. "Trying to make a living. You Captain Galatas, then? You don't sound Greek."
"Galatas fell ill. I'm Krick, and I asked you a question."
Matt shifted his shoulders, almost a shrug. "I answered you, Captain. Not sure what else you want." Faherty and Chambers tensed in his peripheral vision.
Krick snaked out and grabbed his wrist. Matt let him, and turned his palms up, revealing a half-dozen Band-Aids he'd added to his disguise. Krick reached out to grab a bandage, and Matt jerked his hand free.
"Who hired you?"
Matt nodded toward Jim and Greg. Krick would know that from his paperwork anyway.
"Gloves or not, you've worked three days without a blister and without slowing down. What are you doing on my ship?"
He couldn't say that Jim hadn't warned him about his hands.
"Tell you what, Captain, why don't we finish this conversation somewhere private? I don't want to start any trouble."
"Too late for that, I think."
Matt held up his hands in what he hoped Krick would take as a placating gesture. "You sure?"
Krick's eyes turned jet black. Creeping black lines wormed beneath his skin.
Silver flashed to Matt's right and Greg Faherty fell away from the table, a fork buried in his neck, the oil-worker next to him grinning like a maniac with eyes as black as the captain's.
Matt dove left, away from a swipe from Krick's claws. Around him, the rest of the crew attacked, several launching themselves at Greg and Jim, the rest joining Krick.
Claws? Definitely claws, black and cruel, an extra inch at the end of each finger.
Matt sprang up and waded through the crowd toward Greg and Jim, crushing knees and cracking skulls with blunt, clinical fury. Bodies fell in his wake. Claws raked his arms and chest, ragged tears that burned well beyond physical injury, but for each one he returned a killing blow.
A moan erupted, a deep resonance that reverberated through the room from every crewman. Matt shattered a skull with a knife-hand strike, pulled back, and took a Taser to the stomach. He stumbled, gritting his teeth against the jolting paralysis, and Mark Talmer pressed his advantage. Eyes jet black, grinning like a maniac, he pulled away the Taser and grabbed Matt's neck with an iron grip.
Free from the electric shock, Matt leaned back, grabbed Talmer's wrist left-handed, then brought his right hand up into the elbow. Talmer didn't scream, didn't even react, as the joint hyperextended. Matt twisted it behind his back, forcing him to his knees, and Talmer gnashed his teeth in fury, still moaning with the crowd.
Matt brought his weight down on his elbow, driving it into the base of Talmer's neck. His body crumpled as vertebrae shattered, and Matt wasted no time. He swept the legs out from under another assailant, flipped to his feet, and struck another in the jugular. His rigid fingers pulled free in a spray of sticky fluid as black as old motor oil. A vinegar tang stung his nostrils, and his fingers burned.
Greg lay on the ground, eyes wide, throat a massive blue bruise, fork still protruding from his windpipe. Matt couldn't see Jim in the press of bodies. His flesh burned white-hot where he'd been scratched, and a hint of fatigue flooded his muscles, a sensation he hadn't felt since he left his crutches on the hospital floor.
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