"Weather can get rough over there."
"So I've been told. That's why I'm leery of leaving the place to the elements for nine or ten months a year."
"And you're looking for someone to keep an eye on your house."
"You got it."
Heth narrowed his eyes. "Well, just so happens I do a bit of that. But how'd you know?"
Jack shrugged. "Someone in one of the realty offices gave me your name. Would you be able to fit another place into your schedule?"
"Sure. What did you have in mind?"
"Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves here. I don't wish to offend you, but before we come to an agreement, I'll need some references. I hope you understand."
"Course I do. Only a damn fool would hand his house keys to a stranger without knowing something about him."
"So you can provide references?"
"Sure can. Come on inside."
Okay, Jack thought. So far, so good.
He was burning clock here, but he reminded himself that he wouldn't be able to make a move on the safe house—wherever it was—until after dark.
The ranch was cramped inside and smelled of fried fish, but its pine walls and floor were clean and polished. Mrs. Heth poured coffee as they sat down at the dining table. Heth pulled a ledger from a drawer and began thumbing through it.
"I caretake nine places—all shapes and sizes, from a brand-new ocean-front in Surfside to the old Lange place over on Cliff Road. I charge a monthly retainer."
He seemed pleased to be able to say that he received retainers.
"Can you provide contact numbers for your clients?"
Jack figured a guy who liked receiving retainers would also like the idea of having clients.
"All nine?"
"Well, I'll need only a couple of responses, but who knows how many will reply?"
Heth nodded. "Good point. I'll write 'em down for you." He reached for a scratch pad. "Matter of fact, you can ride over to one of the places right now and ask them in person."
Jack kept his tone casual. "Is that so?"
"Yep. It's on the other side of the harbor head. This is the first time I've known them to show up since I been working for them."
"Really."
"Interesting history to the place. You can see it from here—sitting by itself on that strip of land I pointed out to you, you know between the harbor and the Atlantic. Been there fifty-sixty years or better but the present owners done some strange modifications."
Jack's ears pricked up.
"Such as?"
"Well, you see, the house sits over a wash-away garage."
"I'm not familiar with that term."
"Means the living space of the house proper sits on a bunch of pilings. The under part is enclosed as a garage, but not all that sturdily built. That's so, in a real bad storm, should the ocean have a mind to jump the land and pay a visit to the harbor, the walls of the ground level will wash away, leaving the flood waters swirling around the pilings while the house sits safe above it all."
Jack was disappointed. "Not such a strange modification."
"That was the original design. I'm talking about other stuff. The original design also had a set of stairs running from the garage up to the first floor. But these folks tore that out and covered the opening with steel plate. In fact, the entire flooring of both levels is reinforced with steel plate." He shook his head. "That's not gonna protect you from no storm."
Jack agreed. But it would protect from anyone shooting through the ceiling below.
Jack leaned forward. "So how do they get in?"
"You gotta go up an outside stairway to a door. Get that? No matter what the weather, you've gotta leave the garage and go outside to get inside. Don't make sense."
Made lots of sense if you wanted to limit access.
"Who are these strange folks?"
"Nice people. Said they won't need me coming around while they're here but they're gonna keep paying me my retainer. Lucky thing they're here, too, otherwise you might have trouble getting hold of them."
"Why's that?"
"The place is owned by some sort of foundation." He checked his ledger. "The MV Foundation, whatever that is. It hired me and pays me."
Jack resisted pumping a fist. He'd just taken a giant step closer to the new 0.
"I'll put these folks first on my list."
5
Over Darryl Heth's objections, Jack left him with a Ben. The man might have protested more if not for the take-the-money-and-shut-up look his wife was giving him. A man's time was worth something. He'd taken up some of Heth's, and Heth in turn had saved Jack a lot of his own. A hundred bucks for that seemed the deal of the century.
He'd given Jack directions, warning him that he'd need four-wheel drive to reach the house. So Jack took Pocomo back to Wauwinet Road where he made a left and followed the harbor head's shoreline.
He had no intention of bracing the yeniceri in daylight, but he wanted to get a look at the house, scope out its shape and size and possible routes of access.
Far along he passed a little guard shack with a stop sign and a warning that only residents and four-wheel-drive vehicles were allowed past this point. But the shack was empty and Jack kept going.
Past the shack he found a hotel of sorts on the left: THE WAUWINET—AN INN BY THE SEA.
Past that the pavement narrowed, then vanished, replaced by sandy ruts. Jack levered the Liberty into four-wheel drive and pushed on. Eventually the scrub pines vanished, leaving nothing but sand and brush. About half a mile out on the isthmus between the wind-whipped, white-capped Atlantic and the frozen head of the harbor sat a big lonely house.
Was this the place? He looked down at Heth's directions. He'd followed them to the letter. And the house looked just as he'd described it: two stories atop a two-car garage.
Shit.
The isthmus looked about four hundred feet wide—certainly no more than five hundred—and had no access other than the sandy path that passed it on the ocean side. Jack's map called the path Great Point Road, named he guessed after the finger of land that jutted out from the island's northeast corner.
The perfect safe house. No way to sneak up on it during the day; if they had floodlights—which he assumed they did—no way to sneak close enough to matter at night. They could zero in on any approaching car and keep it covered until it was well past. Same with hikers, although Jack doubted there'd be many of those in this weather.
He pulled out his compact binoculars and focused them on the place. Two garage doors faced him. The set of stairs Heth had mentioned ran up to a door on the harbor side of the second level. Two decks jutted from the top level, one facing the harbor, the other the ocean.
Jack imagined the views in the summer must be fabulous. Be great to rent it some day. Gia and Vicks would love—
What was he thinking? They weren't going to see another summer if he didn't find a way into that house for a little face time with the 0. And even then… if she couldn't put him in touch with the Ally… or if she could but the Ally wasn't into making deals…
So many it's…
He focused on the stairway landing and the deck not quite directly above it. From this angle he couldn't tell how much space separated them.
It began to snow. Small, scattered swirling flakes, but the sky promised more. Much more.
Shit.
He seemed to be saying that a lot lately.
6
Cal had given up on calling Miller or hearing from him. He sat at the kitchen island with Novak, watching the hulking, dark-haired man spread Skippy super-chunky on Ritz crackers and shove them into his mouth. Grell stood at the counter over by the window, whipping up some sort of chicken thing to cook later for dinner.
Lewis and Geraci had another half hour to go on their guard shift. Come four o'clock, Cousino and Finan would be on till midnight, after which Cal and Dunsmore would take over. Three eight-hour shifts covered by four teams of two allowed everyone to rot
ate through each shift.
A few hours earlier Cal had driven to the Stop & Shop and stocked up on nonperishables like canned chili and Spaghetti-Os, bottled water and soft drinks and such. He'd also bought lots of crackers and peanut butter. And a hand-powered can opener. The house had an electric model, but that wouldn't be much use if the storm knocked out the power. Yeah, they had a generator, but it never hurt to be prepared for anything.
Diana was taking a nap—she hadn't got much sleep last night. Cousino and Dunsmore were playing cards. Finan was reading. They'd spread out the thousand pieces of a puzzle of one of Monet's lily ponds on the dining room table. Diana spent a lot of time with it, and everyone else tried to fit in at least one piece as he passed.
He looked out through the sliding glass doors at the inch of snow that had already collected on the top-floor deck. The Boston TV weathermen were predicting a bad one. Who knew how long they might be stuck here? Days, or maybe not at all. Either way, none of what he'd stocked in would go to waste.
Novak washed down a cracker with a mouthful of Pepsi and said, "What're we going to do, Cal? Nice as this place is, we can't stay here forever."
Cal knew what he was feeling. He felt it too. Only a couple of days here and already island fever was setting in.
"You're right. We can't, and we won't. But this will have to be Home until the camps send reinforcements."
Grell turned from the counter. "And when will that be?"
"I talked to Idaho. They're stretched pretty thin already. Everyone they've got is green and raw."
"Did you tell him we're down to eight?" Novak said around a mouthful or Ritz and PB.
"Of course. He's going to do what he can."
"Which is?"
Cal shook his head. "Wish I knew."
Grell rinsed his hands and perched his long, angular body on a stool at the counter.
"Welcome to Cretaceous Park."
Cal looked at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"
"Obvious, don't you think? Yeniceri are dinosaurs and the big meteor that's going to make us all extinct is breathing down our necks."
"Well, aren't you Mister Cheerful," Novak said.
"Just stating the facts. No use in kidding ourselves about Miller and Gold and Jolliff and Hursey. They're not coming back. We started off the week with twenty guys. Now we've got eight." He shook his head. "The writing's on the wall. All you've gotta do is read it."
Cal knew what he meant. They were losing—losing big. He looked for a way to put a positive spin on it, but couldn't find one. If Oculi kept dying at the present rate, by this time next year they'd be extinct. And that would leave the surviving yeni§eri—assuming any remained—adrift, with no purpose, no place in the world.
Ronin.
He looked at Grell. "So what do you think we should do? Give up? Walk away and leave Di—our Oculus unprotected?"
Grell stared at a corner of the ceiling. "Well, why not? Might be the best thing for her. With no yeniceri to answer her Alarms, there'd be no reason for the Adversary to bother with her."
"Don't count on that. She's one of the Ally's eyes."
"Until she gets her heart torn out."
"But what if the Adversary's plan is to blind the Ally? Okay, I doubt he can do that, but taking out all the Oculi could sure as hell make it myopic."
Grell shook his head. "I still think she'd have a better chance—"
"Forget that she's an Oculus. She's a scared little girl, terrified and alone. Who's going to take care of her? She was crying last night. I went in and sat with her and talked to her. Since I've got the midnight shift, I won't be able to do that tonight. One of you might have to."
Grell looked uncomfortable. "What do you say to her?"
"You say what I did: That she should think of us as family and that we're always here for her and that we're ready to die protecting her."
Grell nodded. "Oh. You mean like the truth."
Cal loved him then.
"Yeah. The truth."
7
Jack checked the weather through the dormer window of his second-floor hotel room. Dark as night. His watch said it was almost five, which meant that it pretty much was night. Or twilight. Not that it mattered a whole lot. The clouds had lowered even further and the local weatherman said the snow was falling at better than an inch an hour. Good.
He'd picked the Wauwinet Inn because it sat on the head of the harbor just a few hundred yards from where the pavement ended, and about half a mile due south across the ice from the yeniceri place. Like every structure elsewhere on the island, it had cedar-shake siding and white trim. Could have been any of the oversized two-story houses he'd seen, only much larger.
He'd taken a second-floor room to see if he could spot the yeniceri house. Early on he'd found it with the field glasses. As the snow had thickened, it disappeared, but not before he'd been able to determine that the third-floor deck was not over the stairway landing.
Bummer. That would have made things easier.
Easy or not, the house was going to have an uninvited guest tonight. What he had to decide was when: Now, with relatively little snow but everyone in the house up and about? Or fight the deeper snow later to arrive when all but the guards were asleep?
He couldn't see that it mattered. No one would stay asleep for long once he made his presence known. Besides, the clock was running.
He stepped to the bed and surveyed his day's purchases spread out on the flowered coverlet.
After finishing his long-distance survey of the house, he'd driven into town to do some shopping, scouring Main Street and the surrounding area for any kind of white clothing. Not many stores open, and the ones he found were closing early because of the snow. He did find a place with a skiwear section, but the men's sets were all red or blue or yellow or a combination of the three.
Lots of white on the women's rack, though. He checked out the largest sizes he could find and garnered strange looks when he tried them on. He settled on a white parka with a fur-lined hood, and white ski pants, both too small but big enough to squeeze into. Then he bought a white king-sized down comforter. As a final touch he picked up twenty feet of half-inch nylon rope from a marine outfitter near the docks.
To all that, he now added the two H-Ks he'd picked up over the past couple of days. He'd have preferred his trusty Glock, but these babies came fitted with high-quality suppressors. He wanted to keep the noise to a minimum.
One last thing before he left: a call to the trauma unit. Stokely was there.
When he asked her his perpetual question, she said, "Not good, I'm afraid. Your wife has developed an arrhythmia and—"
"Her heart?"
"Correct. We're keeping it from getting out of hand, but it's only a matter of time."
"I hope you're not asking me to pull the plug."
"No. That won't be necessary."
A deep, shuttered part of Jack had suspected that, but to hear it put into words…
"No hope?" He could barely hear his own words.
"There's always hope, but…"
Jack knew what she'd left unsaid:… but not enough to matter.
"I don't know where you are," she said, "but I advise you to get here while you can, before the snow keeps you out."
He wanted to be there—she'd never know how much. But Dr. Stokely and all her staff offered no hope. And maybe that house out there on the isthmus didn't either, but it offered a chance of hope. So that was where Jack had to go.
"I'll be there. Soon."
He hoped.
Jack's sense of urgency couldn't push to a higher level, so he blanked it out and concentrated on the moment. He wound the rope around his waist, then wrapped his purchases plus a few other goodies in the comforter and hauled everything out to the Jeep in the lot across the road. He knew his furry white parka would attract attention in the hotel so he put it on in the car.
As for the rest of the night, he very much doubted that whatever went down at that house—wh
ether yeniceri deaths or his own—would ever be reported to the police. The yeniceri had their own laws. So did Jack. Neither would bother with anyone else's.
Still, he wanted to avoid attracting attention. It wasn't a strategy; it was a way of life.
All geared up, he rolled up the comforter, stuck it under his arm, and stepped out of the Jeep. He opened the double gate that led to the lawn. Not until he reached the north side of the hotel did he feel the full force of the storm. A blast of snow-laden wind staggered him. He leaned into it and pushed forward.
The ferocious gale made it hard to tell how much snow had fallen. Some areas of the front lawn were bare down to the dead grass, others had drifts eighteen inches high. And the storm was barely five hours old.
Jack had heard of a whiteout; this was the first time he'd been in one.
He followed the sloping lawn down past a raised deck that sat like a wooden island in the dune grass, then to the water's edge. No problem telling where land ended and harbor began: The wind had buffed the ice virtually clean of snow.
Jack pivoted and looked at the Wauwinet. All he could see was the glow of its outdoor spots. Could have been a hotel or a beached commercial fishing boat with its running lights on.
He turned back toward the head of the harbor and felt his heart pick up its pace when he saw nothing but darkness ahead. He knew the angle he had to travel from the hotel to reach the house, but after moving a hundred feet out on the ice he'd lose the hotel as a landmark. Without bearings he could wander around in circles out there until he froze to death. He needed a compass but hadn't brought one—who could have imagined this situation?—and hadn't been able to find one in town.
Shit.
The only way of surprising them was to come in off the harbor. They wouldn't be expecting anyone from that direction. Probably weren't expecting anyone from anywhere in this storm. But after everything that had gone down this week, they had to be paranoid as all hell. They'd keep their guard up no matter what, especially where the road was concerned.
He stared out at the impenetrable darkness of the ice. Suicide to go out there without a compass. He kicked at some drifted dune grass. God damn it!
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