by Jen Blood
“We’re in,” I said.
Cameron took a deep breath, nodded, and pulled the list toward him.
“There have been ten team leaders that I know of over the years—represented by the initials on this list. Dexter Mandrake, Jeff Anderson, Chris Marlin, Jim Jones, Max Richards, Lilah Waters, Susan Stargill, Isaac Payson, Ben Cutler, and me.”
“Hang on—Isaac Payson was one of the team leaders?” I said.
“Before he left in ’76.” Cameron pointed to about a dozen scattered entries with the initials IP at the end. “He was very effective in his time. I was just coming up, so I worked under him a few times.”
“And how many of those team leaders you listed are still with the organization?” I asked.
Cameron hesitated. When he finally spoke, I couldn’t shake the feeling that he was holding something back. “Jeff, Lilah, and Ben, to the best of my knowledge. It’s possible some of the newer recruits have been promoted in the past couple of years and I never heard about it, though. The organization is very insular now—at J., it’s rare for the right hand to know what the left hand is doing.”
“Or to even know there is a left hand,” Diggs said dryly.
“I know Jenny was slated to become a team leader last year,” Cameron continued. “And Lee—the big man who was killed in Coba. The two of them were high up in the organization. Obviously, J. has taken a few hits since you came on the scene.”
“Well, I guess that’s something,” I said. “So—Max Richards was a team leader, too?” Max Richards was the lunatic who’d nearly killed Diggs and me up in Northern Maine, after tracking and killing young girls for forty years.
“He was at one time,” Cameron confirmed. “But the organization got rid of him when we realized what he was doing. He continued to run his experiments supposedly in J.’s name, but he’d been cut off from the project for years.”
I thought of the J. that had been carved into the chests of Richards’ victims for all those years.
“When we met him, Max called himself J,” I said. “That’s how his second-in-command—Will Rainier—referred to him. Rainier was with the organization?”
“He was one of the early subjects in Maine,” Cameron confirmed. “They weren’t happy to learn of any of Max’s activities. And when Adam contacted me to say Max and Rainier had you in their sights, it was clear what I needed to do.”
I remembered being in the woods with Rainier’s belt looped around my neck; the things he’d said he would do to me while Diggs watched. I suppressed a shiver, and moved on when the memory of Rainier’s voice got to be too much.
“Okay,” I said. “But Max Richards is dead. And you say you know of three team leaders now, for sure. Do you have any idea how to find them?”
“No. Everyone within the organization is adept at keeping a low profile.”
Sure they were. That’s like Diabolics 101. “We can’t find the team leaders, and we don’t have a clue who the head of the project is anymore. Where does that leave us?”
Cameron studied me. “To be honest, I was hoping you might have some ideas.”
“Me?” I said. “How the hell would I know? My father didn’t have anything to do with J. when I was growing up, remember? And even if he did, he wiped my memory. I don’t remember a thing.”
“But you’re starting to,” Diggs pointed out.
“There are a few things, sure, but they’re fuzzy,” I said. “They don’t make sense. I definitely don’t know the political infrastructure of your psychotic organization.”
“You said there are a few things,” Cameron said. “What are they?”
“I told you—they’re fuzzy.”
“It doesn’t matter if they’re fuzzy,” Diggs pressed. “What are the impressions you get?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know what they are, I don’t know what they seem like. They’re just…things.” Things I wasn’t ready to talk about, with anyone.
“What happens when you try to remember?” Cameron asked.
“Uh—I can’t do it. Jesus, am I speaking a foreign language?”
“No,” he said patiently. “Physically, what happens? Are you experiencing any pain?”
“Headaches,” Diggs said. I’d been trying to keep the migraines I’d been getting over the past year under wraps, figuring it was just a side effect of near-constant terror and emotional anguish. “She hasn’t said anything,” he continued, “but they get bad.”
“Is that true?”
I met Diggs’ gaze before I looked away. “Yeah,” I said. “Nothing big. But when I push too hard, things get a little jagged in there.”
“Why is she getting them?” Diggs asked. “Is this something they did?”
“No—this isn’t a sci-fi movie,” Cameron said. He smiled at me. “Your brain won’t implode if you start remembering.” That, at least, was a relief. “But your father buried the memories deep in your subconscious, and I expect there are a lot of painful associations that go with them. The effort of dredging that up can manifest in physical symptoms. Intense ones, I suspect.”
Another legacy to thank dear old Dad for: migraines that could potentially melt my brain. Thanks, Pop.
“You should have said something,” Diggs said to me. “I wouldn’t have pushed so hard before.”
“You heard Cameron,” I said. “It’s not like my brain will implode.”
“No,” Cameron said. “But that physical distress can be severe. We’ll take our time with it. I’ll help you work through the memories.”
I scoffed. “Take our time? People are dropping dead left and right. I’m done taking my time. What are we supposed to do? How do we stop it?”
Before anyone could address that question or come up with any semblance of a concrete plan, Einstein catapulted into the room barking like a banshee. My heart kicked up into my esophagus and remained lodged there until I heard Monty in the kitchen.
“We come in peace,” he shouted as he came through the kitchen door. I heard Einstein’s nails on the wood floors as he scrambled back into the meeting room, Monty close behind him. Monty took in the picture of me with Diggs and Cameron in a glance before he nodded toward the door. “Looks like the party’s finally getting started.” He shifted his focus to me. “We could use a hand, princess, if you don’t mind.”
I shot a look at Diggs before I nodded and followed Monty out again. Cameron and Diggs weren’t far behind me, Einstein in the lead.
We were just past the path to the greenhouse when I stopped. Jamie was to one side of the trail, squatting on the balls of her feet beside a dark-haired man seated on a tree stump, his head lowered as they talked quietly. His hair was nearly to his shoulders, dark and lank. He looked up.
Holy shit.
I picked up my pace.
“What’s going on?” I said.
Jack Juarez looked up, smiling weakly. “I’m fine—I just got dizzy, that’s all. Wanted to take a break.”
I crouched beside Jamie and took Jack’s hand, my fingers slipping to the side of his wrist. His pulse raced. If he was a hummingbird, he’d be doing great. He had a full beard, his shoulders thin beneath a wool coat that wasn’t nearly warm enough for the weather. While Diggs and I had immersed ourselves in the land down under, Juarez had apparently gone full-on hobo.
“He just got dizzy?” I asked Jamie, sensing there was more to the story.
“He was at the Reynolds’ place when the meth lab exploded this morning. He breathed in some of the fumes…then refused to stay at the hospital.”
“My lungs don’t hurt,” Jack said. “I just got dizzy—I’m not nauseous. My head’s clear. I just… I think I just forgot to eat.”
“For how long?” I asked.
Hesitation. Maybe a hint of embarrassment. “I’m not sure. A few days. I bought a sandwich at the Co-op on Tuesday.”
Today was Saturday.
“Let’s start by getting you some food, then,” I said. I stood. Diggs had reached us by
then. He extended a hand for Jack.
“Jesus, Juarez,” Diggs said. “We would have come back eventually. You didn’t have to go on a hunger strike.”
Jack leaned against him on the way up the path to the house. They talked too quietly for me to hear the words, though I heard Jack laugh at one point before we reached the door.
We got inside and went straight back to the meeting room, while Carl and Jamie went to the kitchen to round up some food. Jack sat heavily at the picnic table, his face gone gray.
“You heard about the Reynolds family,” he said. He looked at me, then Diggs.
“Yeah,” I said. “Any idea who might have attacked their place?”
“Not me,” he said. He wasn’t looking at me, but Diggs. Diggs smiled at him.
“We figured that. Or Solomon did, actually. But I didn’t fight her too much on it.”
Cameron sat down next to me wordlessly. Jack went killer quiet across from me.
“It’s okay,” I said. “He’s with us now.”
“Excellent,” Jack said, his eyes cool. “And now that you’ve bought that, there’s a bridge in Brooklyn I’m selling at a great price.”
“We haven’t forgotten who he is,” Diggs said.
“I have no illusions about your views of who I am and what I’ve done,” Cameron said. “But we don’t have time for me to prove myself. Things are moving more quickly than I expected—thanks in no small part, I suspect, to my daughter. Have you seen her?”
“She was at the site last night, and again just before the second explosions,” Jack confirmed. “Seems she’s on a mission.”
“She’s being pretty damned sloppy about it,” I said. “Collateral damage isn’t a big concern of hers, I guess.”
“J. taught us that the goal is paramount; whatever it takes, we get the job done.”
“Even if kids could have died,” Diggs said. “Even if half the people J. is using don’t have a clue what’s going on—what they’re part of.”
“She’s trying to stop them,” Cameron said. “I don’t know what her strategy is, but I have no doubt she has one. If I had to guess, I’d say she’s simply trying to force their hand—make it so that they have no choice but to take some kind of action against her.”
“So she’s luring them out of hiding,” I said. “You think that could work?”
Cameron shrugged. “Two of their triggers are decommissioned, and this next mission is an important one. They won’t just let that go.”
I thought back to the entry on the list. “The initials attached to the Maine mission are LW—Lilah Waters, you said? So there’s a possibility she could show up here.”
“Back up,” Diggs said before Cameron could answer. “Why is Maine so important? Do you have any idea what their target is?”
Cameron shook his head. “I’m not certain.”
I searched his face. A niggling unease crawled under my skin, but he didn’t look away. He would know how to lie, though; of any of us, Mitch Cameron would be able to make us believe anything he wanted us to believe. At the thought, I suppressed the urge to kick him out and bolt all the doors and windows.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I said. “Do you think Lilah Waters might come here?”
“It’s a strong possibility,” he confirmed.
I noticed that Jack was still watching Cameron, his expression unreadable. Cameron noticed, too.
“What have you been remembering?” Cameron asked him.
Jack shook his head, eyes never leaving Cameron’s. “Nothing.”
Unlike Cameron, Jack was always a crap liar.
“So, the explosion…” I prompted. “You were there?”
He broke the stalemate with Cameron to refocus on Diggs and me. “I’d been watching the Reynolds place for a couple of days—knew it was the next likely target.” He glanced at Diggs. “I’m sorry about your father. I wasn’t there in time to stop it.”
“Thanks,” Diggs said. “So does that mean you just got to town? Or you’ve been here a while?”
“I’ve been here for a couple of weeks,” Jack admitted. “I just didn’t want anyone to know, for now. Wanted to see what was happening.”
Jamie came in then with a bowl of the chicken soup from the night before, a hunk of homemade bread with it.
“Take it slow,” I said to Jack as Jamie set the food in front of him. “Between the whole meth buzz and this new diet of yours, it’ll go right through you if you don’t pace yourself.”
He got half the soup down and all the bread before he pushed the bowl away. His eyelids kept drooping. He’d stopped talking a while ago.
“Maybe it would be best if you got some shuteye for now,” Diggs suggested. “We can go over the rest of your story later.”
Jack nodded gratefully, then asked if I would show him to a room. I agreed with a glance at Diggs. The ex-and-the-current-boyfriend thing should have been awkward, but not much ever seemed awkward between Diggs and Juarez. Half the time, I got the feeling they’d toss me out of the life raft first if it came down to it. Or, more likely, just jump out together.
I took Jack up to a room that used to be reserved for the single women in the church. The place had been stripped down, the single beds once there now replaced with one double bed with an antique wood frame. Rose-patterned wallpaper, patchy and faded, still clung to the walls.
“Do you have any clothes?” I asked.
“Back on the mainland. I left my duffel in my car.”
“That’s all right. Diggs can loan you something, hang on.”
I went across the hall and grabbed a pair of sweats and a jersey. They’d be loose on Juarez right now, but at least they’d keep him warm. When I returned to his room, he was still seated on the bed staring into space. I handed him the clothes.
“You okay?” I said. To the man who’d lost a good thirty pounds in the past nine months and been blown up in a meth lab this morning.
“I’m glad to see you,” he said rather than answering. “You look good. You and Diggs both—despite everything. I’m happy for you.”
I sat down beside him. “Jack, what the hell happened? The last time I talked to you, you were on suspension—”
“Which, in the Bureau, is code for fired.” He paused. “It was all right, though—it was what I needed. A wake-up call. As soon as it registered what had happened, all that I still needed to understand about who I am and where I came from, I let it go. The Bureau’s in the past. There were other things that had to be addressed.”
“Such as?”
“I went to Nicaragua,” he said.
Nicaragua. Where six years ago, three men raped and murdered his wife—something he’d just learned, thanks to Diggs and me, had been orchestrated by J.
“Did you find anything?” I rested my hand at the small of his back. He didn’t move—toward me or away. Just sat there, frozen.
“I saw where she died,” he said. There was no inflection in his voice. “I’d seen before, of course. I was there before. The men who did it are dead. I never got the chance to question them; they were killed by the police before I even reached the country. I think now, though, that it was probably J. who took them out.”
He wet his lips. Massaged the back of his neck for a second before he continued. “This LW—you said the name is Lilah Waters?”
“That’s what Cameron said. You know the name?”
“No. Just the initials.”
I nodded. He didn’t have to elaborate—I already knew. LW were the initials of the team leader who’d overseen his wife’s murder, too. Apparently, Lilah Waters was a busy bee.
“I spoke with a nun this time, when I was away,” Jack continued. “A woman who knew Lucia; worked with her. I spoke with others who knew her. No one could tell me anything. No one ever heard of J. No one knew why someone would want to kill my wife.”
He stopped, his gaze fixed on the ground. “She was pregnant, you know. We’d been fighting—I told her she should come home. S
even months pregnant. They would have known. The men who attacked her. She was showing. It was part of the reason she believed she was safe. ‘No one hurts a pregnant woman, Jack,’ she told me.”
“Jack—”
“They killed her because of me. And I don’t even know why. Were they trying to send a message? Trying to prove something? Trigger something? What was killing her like that supposed to accomplish? Have I done what they expected me to, all this time? Everything I do now, I wonder: is this what J. had planned all along?”
I stood to face him and lay my hand on his cheek, which was more bearded than I’d ever seen it. Even with the mountain man look going, he was a handsome guy. He looked at me with those dark eyes, and I felt like I was seeing clear through to his soul. It wasn’t an easy sight.
“We’ll figure this out, Jack. I still don’t know how the hell we’re going to do it, but we’re taking these sons of bitches down. Whatever they think they had planned, they don’t know who they’re messing with.” I ruffled his greasy hair and kissed his forehead. “Change into the clean clothes, huh? You smell like a grizzly bear. Then try to get some sleep—we’ll talk more later.”
“Right,” he said with a nod. When I started to go, he stopped me with a hand on my arm. “Erin. What do you know about Cameron?”
“Not much. That he worked for J. Knew my father. Was a handler for J. for the better part of forty years before he went rogue. I’m pretty sure that of all of us, no one wants to take them down more than he does.”
“You trust him?” Jack asked.
I considered the question for only a moment before I shook my head. “No. I wish I did, but…no. There’s something he’s not telling us. And he said it himself: J. teaches that the ends always justify the means. He wants to take them down—I’m not sure what he would do if any of us got in the way of that.” I looked him in the eye. There was a vaguely mad glint there. “Why? Did you find something out?”
“No. But…I think I remember him. Or something about him.” He closed his eyes, his hand going to his temple. I thought of the conversation with Diggs and Cameron earlier. If I was having those killer headaches, I wondered if Jack could have the same side effect.
