Factoring out all of the kidnappings for ransom, the abductions by estranged parents or family friends, and the crimes of opportunity, where the child was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, left Preston with a much smaller field to investigate. By narrowing his scope further to encompass only missing children from stable, two-parent, at least superficially loving homes, he winnowed the cases in his jurisdiction down to a handful each year. And of those, if he set the age range at Savannah's at the time of her disappearance, plus-or-minus three years, he was left with four cases annually over the past six and a half years. Not an average of four. Not three one year and five the next. Exactly four. And they were spread out by season. One child each year in the spring, another in the summer, a third in the fall, and a fourth in the winter. And all within two weeks of the four most important dates on the celestial calendar---the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, and the summer and winter solstices.
The kidnappings were the work of a single individual: The man who had stolen his daughter from him. The same man who had sent the photographs of him at the Downey house, who had been within fifty yards of him at a point in time when if Preston had known, he could have prevented the abduction of his cherished daughter, and the twenty-three children who came after her, with a single bullet.
Why could no one else see it? Why didn't they believe him?
Because he knew all too well that the parents of missing children would say or do anything if there was a chance of learning the fate of their son or daughter, even if it meant formulating a theory from a set of points that on paper appeared completely random, like forming constellations from the stars in the night sky.
Preston focused again on the house, but still couldn't bring himself to press the button on the garage door opener and pull the idling Cherokee inside. There was only solitude waiting for him within those walls, and the heartbreaking memories he was forced to endure with every breath he took. The house was a constant reminder of the greatest mistake of his life, but more than that, it was a beacon, the only location on the planet that Savannah had ever called her own. He still held out hope that wherever she was, one of these days she would simply appear from nowhere and return to her home. To him. It was the reason he would never allow himself to sell it. The one wish he allowed himself to pray would come true.
It was all he had.
He slid the gearshift into drive and headed south, pretending he didn't know exactly where he was going. Ten minutes later he was on the other side of town, parked in front of a Tudor-style two-story, upon which the forest encroached to the point of threatening to swallow it whole. Light shined through the blinds covering the windows. With a deep breath, he climbed out of the car and approached the porch.
The house positively radiated warmth, reminding him of what should have been. He pressed the doorbell and backed away from the door.
Shuffling sounds from the other side of the door, then a muffled voice.
"Just a second."
The door opened inward. A woman stood in the entryway, cradling a swaddled baby in the crook of her left arm. She brushed a strand of blonde bangs out of her eyes with the back of her right hand, which held a bottle still dripping from recently being heated in boiling water.
"Hi, Jessie," he said.
She still had the most amazing eyes he'd ever seen.
"Philip," she whispered. "You shouldn't be here."
"He's beautiful, Jess." He nodded to the baby. "How old is he by now?"
"Phil..."
They stood in an awkward silence for several long moments.
"You remember what today is?" Preston finally asked.
"Of course," she whispered. "Do you honestly think I could ever forget?"
He shook his head and looked across the lawn toward the forest.
"What happened to us, Jess?"
"I'm not getting into this with you again."
"Does he at least treat you well?"
"Who? Richard?" Anger flashed in her eyes. "He's emotionally stable, physically available, and isn't hell-bent on his own systematic destruction. And I don't cringe when he touches me. What more could a girl want?"
"But does he make you happy?"
She sighed. "Of course, Phil. I wouldn't have married him if he didn't." The baby started to cry, and quickly received the bottle. Jessie shuffled softly from one foot to the other in a practiced motion Preston remembered well. Only it had been with a different child, in a different lifetime entirely. "Why are you really here?"
"I needed to know that you were okay." He glanced back at her and offered a weak smile before looking away again. It was still impossible to think of her as anything other than the woman he had loved for the better part of his life, since the first time he had laid eyes on her. It hurt deep down to think of her as anything other than his wife. "That's all."
He had to turn away so she wouldn't see the shimmer of tears in his eyes, and used the momentum to spur his feet back toward his car.
"Phil."
He paused, blinked back the tears, and turned to face her again. Even with the recent addition of the wrinkles at the corners of her mouth and eyes, she was still the most stunning woman he had ever seen. And the baby seemed to make her glow. He couldn't bring himself to ask her his name.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
He shook his head, releasing streams of tears down his cheeks. No, he would never be all right ever again.
"Do you still blame me, Jessie?"
"You invited the danger into our home, whether intentionally or not," she whispered. "I will always blame you."
"So will I," he said, and struck off toward his car again. "I hope you have a good life, Jess. You deserve to be happy."
He heard her start to softly cry as she closed the door.
"Don't ever let him out of your sight," Preston said. "Ever."
His heart broke once more as he walked away from the love of his life.
III
22 Miles West of Lander, Wyoming
Les stood beside one of the cairns in the outer ring and watched his students perform their tasks as they had been taught. Jeremy guided the magnetometer in straight lines between the short walls that formed the spokes of the wagon wheel design. He wore the sensing device's harness over his shoulders and held the receptor, which looked like an industrial vacuum cleaner, a foot above the ground. It interpreted the composition of the ground based on its magnetic content, and forwarded its readings into a program on Les's laptop that created a three-dimensional map of the earth to roughly ten meters in depth. Every type of rock had varying content of ferrous material and left a different magnetic signature, as did extinguished campfires, the foundations of prehistoric ruins, and various artifacts lost through the ages. Often, one ancient site was built upon another when a more modern culture eclipsed its forebear, like the Acropolis in Athens rose from the rubble of a Mycenaean megaron. If there was an older structure beneath this one, they would be able to find and map it without so much as brushing away the topsoil, but of greater importance were the relics left behind by the Native Americans who had meticulously crafted this ornate design. Hopefully, these buried clues would provide some indication of the function of the medicine wheel, the identity of its creators, and the reason it had been erected in the first place.
The magnetometer would also serve a secondary function he had chosen not to vocalize. Primitive societies often built cairns to mark the burial mounds of individuals of significance. If there were indeed corpses interred under their feet, then the magnetometer would reconstruct their unmistakable signals as well in hazy shades of gray. Fortunately, they had yet to isolate any remains. Based on the condition of the stones and the level of preservation, he feared any bodies they discovered might not be as ancient as he might prefer.
So far, the only signals had come from rocks under the soil, in no apparent pattern and of varying mineral content, save one square object roughly a foot down, midway between where he stood now and the
central ring of stones. Breck and Lane had cordoned off the square-yard above it with string and long metal tent pegs, and had begun to excavate in centimeter levels. They were only six inches down, and had yet to sift through anything more exciting than the coarse dirt.
"I still don't think this thing is working right," Jeremy said. "I can't seem to get rid of that strange, streaky feedback a couple yards down."
"I told you that you were putting it together wrong," Breck said.
"You could always switch with me and lug this thing around, princess."
Les rolled his eyes and tuned them out. Their bickering was grating on his nerves. Besides, he needed to try to sort out his thoughts, to figure out exactly what was so wrong with this site.
"There's another one over here!" Jeremy called. "Same size, same shape, and same location within this section."
"Mark it and try the next section over," Les said. Two could be a coincidence. Three was a pattern. "Let me know immediately if it's there."
What was roughly five inches square, half an inch thick, and crafted from metal? He would know soon enough, he supposed, but the objects made him nervous. The Bighorn Medicine Wheel predated the development of Native American metallurgical skills. If what they uncovered was manmade, then this site wasn't nearly as old as it had been designed to appear.
The wind shifted, bringing with it a scent that crinkled his nose. It smelled like something had crawled off into the forest to die. He stepped around the cairn and walked into the wind, but the smell dissipated. A cursory inspection of the forest's edge didn't reveal the carcass he had expected to find. Perhaps the detritus had already accumulated over it. The breeze waned, and he returned to his post, where he resumed his supervisory duties.
"Right here," Jeremy said. "Just like the other two. What do you want me to do?"
"For now, just mark it and keep going with the magnetometer. I want to map as much of the site as we can before sundown."
"I could just dig it up really quickly."
"That's not how it works and you know it."
Les sighed. The impatience of youth.
"Can't blame a guy for trying," Jeremy said with a shrug, and went back to work.
Another gust of wind brought the stench back to Les. The breeze made a whistling sound as it passed through the stacked stones of the cairn.
He crept closer and the smell intensified. The source of the vile reek was definitely somewhere under the cairn. He leaned right up against it and tried to peer through the tiny gaps between the stones. At first, he saw only shadows, so he crouched and inspected the lower portion, nearer the ground. He gagged and covered his mouth and nose with his dirty hand.
There was a dark recess behind the stacked rocks. He could barely discern a smooth section of something the color of rust. A rounded segment of bone through which thin sutures coursed. Just the barest glimpse and he knew exactly what was entombed within those stones.
"We've reached the artifact," Breck called. "What do you want us to do?"
Les couldn't find the voice to answer. He craned his neck to see through another gap below the last. An eye socket in profile, the sharp stub of the nasal bones, crusted with a coating of dirt and blood.
A spider scurried over the cheekbone and disappeared into a small fissure in the ridged maxilla above a row of tiny teeth.
There was no doubt it was human. And it definitely wasn't thousands of years old.
His legs gave out and deposited him on his rear end in the dirt. He scanned the forest, expecting to find whoever had done this watching him from the shadows.
"Dr. Grant? What you want us to do with this?"
He whirled in her direction. These kids were his responsibility. He needed to get them out of here this very second.
Breck raised her eyebrows to reiterate the question. She and Lane knelt over the square hole in the earth, mounds of dirt to either side by the screens they had used to sift through them. They must have recognized something in his expression, for both of them backed slowly away from him.
"Gather your belongings," Les snapped.
"What about the magnetometer?" Jeremy asked.
"Leave it!"
Les crawled away from the cairn and shoved to his feet. He grabbed his backpack and strode toward where Breck and Lane cringed. Fear shimmered in their eyes.
"Get your backpacks. Hurry up!"
"But Dr. Grant---" Lane started.
"We don't have time for this!"
The graduate students scurried away from their excavation. Les heard a shuffling sound as they donned their gear. He knelt by the hole and stared into its depths.
A tin with rounded edges peeked out of the ground. He brushed away the loose dirt to reveal three rows of numbers and letters that had been crudely scratched into the metal.
19
3-20
V.E.
He pulled one of the tent pegs from the cordon and pried at the corner of the object.
The top portion of the tin popped open to reveal its contents.
A DVD-R in an ordinary plastic jewel case. The same series of numbers and letters had been scrawled on the disk in black marker.
There was blood smeared all over the case.
PREDATORY INSTINCT
MICHAEL McBRIDE
Now available in paperback and eBook
From Delirium Books
The fossilized remains of a previously unclassified hominin species are discovered in the Altai Mountains, prompting teams of scientists from around the globe to converge upon this isolated region of Siberia in search of further evidence to corroborate the revolutionary theory that a third proto-human ancestor coexisted with Neanderthals and primitive Homo sapiens.
What awaits them is anything but extinct.
FBI Special Agent Grey Porter leads the investigation into the mysterious circumstances surrounding the appearance of a factory trawler of Russian origin off of the Washington Coast. He finds twelve bodies; all of them exsanguinated through ferocious bite wounds on their necks. According to the manifest, there should have only been eleven.
Whatever killed them is no longer on board.
Elena Sturm of the Seattle PD is assigned to patrol the waterfront renovation project on Salmon Bay. While rousting the homeless from the underground warrens of the massive construction site, she stumbles upon the corpse of a man whose wounds are identical to those of the victims aboard the ghost ship.
Something has cut a bloody swath across the Pacific.
And it's already here.
PREDATORY INSTINCT
MICHAEL McBRIDE
(An excerpt from the new novel from Delirium Books.)
June 10, 12:35 PM EDT
Fossil skull DNA identifies new human ancestor
By RADLEY DUNHILL
Associated Press Writer
NEW YORK (AP) -- Scientists have identified a previously unknown ancient human through the analysis of mitochondrial DNA from fragments of skull bones unearthed in a Siberian cave.
A team of archaeologists investigating the Seima-Turbino Phenomenon, a spontaneous rapid and massive exodus of the indigenous peoples of the Altai Mountains into distant parts of Europe and Asia during the second millennium BCE, exhumed the fossilized remains from one of twenty-two distinct layers of strata. Thermoluminescent and radiocarbon dating of the surrounding sediment suggest that this unclassified hominin (human-like creature) existed a mere 35,000 years ago at a time when both primitive humans (Homo sapiens) and Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) cohabited this isolated region of Central Asia, raising the possibility that these three distinctive forms of human could have met and interacted.
Researchers at the Douglas Caldwell Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in New York extracted the mitochondrial DNA, which is inherited only through the maternal line, from the bones and compared the genetic sequence with those of modern humans and Neanderthals. The analysis revealed that the three last shared a common ancestor more than one million years ago, p
roving that the Altai individual, referred to publicly as the "Siberian Hominin" and as "Enigman" by the scientists in internal emails, represents a previously unrecognized African migration.
"Whoever carried this genome out of Africa is some new creature we never even suspected might exist," said Dr. Geoffrey Melton of the Caldwell Institute. "The evidence is convincing. We are dealing with a hitherto unclassified hominin, and quite possibly a new species entirely."
Without a more complete fossil record, scientists can only speculate as to what the Siberian Hominin may have looked like or how it may have behaved or intermingled with early modern humans. However, based on the size of the skull fragments, it more closely resembles its larger and more heavily muscled Neanderthal cousins than its human contemporaries.
"Paleontologists are scouring the northern region of the Altai Mountains for further evidence of the Siberian Hominin," Melton said. "While the cold weather helps preserve ancient DNA, the constant presence of so much snow at the higher elevations makes it like looking for a needle in a haystack the size of Texas. We're dealing with thousands of acres of the most inhospitable terrain in the world, and it's blanketed by snow and ice year-round. We may never find any sign of this miraculous new species again."
While archaeologists remain hopeful that their diligence will be rewarded, for now they can only look down from the sheer icy peaks like their ancestors must have done tens of thousands of years ago, and imagine a time when creatures simultaneously familiar and alien moved through the blizzarding snow.
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