by L. C. Shaw
Taylor looked up, trying to remember. “My mother told me that her parents died in a car crash a few years before she got married, but she never mentioned having a sister. Why would she keep it a secret?”
Jeremy shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe it was too hard for her.”
“We can use that tape to prove he kidnapped her,” Jack said.
“It’s not enough. It’d be impossible to authenticate. He could say it was fake. Plus, you never see his face,” Jeremy answered.
He handed a piece of paper to Taylor. “This is a letter she wrote to your mother. I guess she knew it would never get mailed, but she wrote it anyway. I found it when I was searching my father’s office before I left.”
Taylor took the paper from Jeremy with a shaking hand and read aloud.
February 11, 1976
My darling Eva,
He has shown it all to me. It is appalling how easily he has managed to manipulate the people who work for him. They are zealots who actually believe in the philosophical rhetoric he uses to blind them. There are already dozens of his graduates placed in key positions—politicians, judges, doctors, captains of industry, media executives. They are everywhere. There are files on all of them, evidence of his empire and all those who have done his bidding to build it. Brainwashing, torture, even murder—there is no method that is beneath him. He took great pride in sharing his collection of memoirs with me.
His favorite topic these days is how, through his efforts, it will one day be legal to decide who should live or die based on their worth to society. Life will have no intrinsic value. The so-called bioethicists, a term he uses with malicious irony, will succeed in convincing otherwise intelligent people that the greater good is served by weeding out the weak. Those with incurable illnesses and diminished mental and physical capacity are better off being released from this world, so resources can be better used for the healthy and firm.
My time is coming to an end. I have so many regrets. I never got to say good-bye to you and to Mama and Papa. I wish I could tell them that I returned to my faith—and that I love them. How difficult it can be for a person of intellect to accept the things of God. If it couldn’t be scientifically proven, I had no use for it. Now I see how small we are in relation to God, yet how interested he is in us personally. The magnitude of his grace is beyond my comprehension. I am grateful that this temporary detour to hell has brought me to my senses. I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that when my usefulness to Damon is gone and he kills me, I will be sent into the arms of Jesus. And I will be at peace at last.
All my love always and forever,
Maya
“I’m so sorry. So very . . .” Her voice broke and the tears fell. She took a deep breath and put her hand on Jeremy’s. “They’re together now.”
“Your mother was a believer?”
Taylor smiled. “Yes. Her faith defined her.” She gave Jeremy a long look. “So our mothers were sisters? We’re first cousins?”
Jeremy didn’t answer.
She leaned over and embraced him. “I thought I felt a connection when I met you.” She laughed. “Not to mention that we have the same green eyes.”
Jeremy looked at her somberly.
“I have something else to show you.” He opened up a drawer in the table next to her and pulled out a photograph. “This is my father, Damon Crosse.”
Staring back at her was a man with emerald-green eyes—eyes the exact color of hers.
Chapter Forty-Seven
NATHAN TRIED TO IGNORE THE TWITCHING IN HIS EYE. Count to ten, he reminded himself. Shut up. Shut up. They’re looking at you. One, two, three four, five, six seven. Breathe, breathe, look normal!
She’d come for him a few days after she got out, just like she’d promised. The first thing he did was what she’d told him. Go to the Beans and Leaves coffee shop in Woodstock, New York. He was in line, getting ready to give them his order. Regular coffee, no sugar, light on the cream. Regular coffee, no sugar, light on the cream. It was his turn.
“Regular coffee, sugar, no cream,” he stammered. “No! Wait! No sugar, light cream.” Phew. He’d almost messed up. Think right, think bright, light, sight, might. STOP IT! One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Breathe, breathe. “Thank you.”
He looked around suspiciously. There were lots of them everywhere. He could tell. They thought they were so smart, that they could fool him. Ha! He knew better. He narrowed his eyes at a particularly tricky one. She was masquerading as an innocent old lady, but he saw through her. He thought about smacking her right in the head, but he had been warned not to make a scene.
He found a seat at one of the tables in the back, just like she told him. He tapped his foot while he waited, his eyes darting around the room, surveying everyone in the crowded café. Where was she? Wouldn’t wait forever. Couldn’t wait for never. Thought she was so clever. Someone’s head to sever. STOP! One, two, three, four, five, six. Breathe, breathe, breathe.
“Hello, Nathan.”
His head jerked around. She had come! He grinned, and a relieved laugh escaped his lips.
She sat down across from him. “Good boy. You did exactly as I asked. I’m very proud of you.”
He beamed.
“Did you bring it?”
He nodded his head excitedly. “Yes, wanna see it now?”
“Not here!” she snapped.
He tensed, and a scowl replaced his smile.
She patted his hand with hers. “What I mean, my dear, is it’s not safe here. I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble.”
He relaxed, and his shoulders fell back into their usual slump. “Okey dokey, smokey. Where should we go?”
“Come with me and I’ll show you.”
They walked outside into the bracing air. Nathan had no coat and shivered as the cold wind nestled under his thin shirt.
He began to sing. “Freezing, wheezing, cold, old, sold, fold.”
She stopped at a black Jaguar. “Here we are.”
He backed away from the car as if it were alive.
“No black. I don’t like black. It’s black, it’s black, attack.”
She grabbed his arm hard.
“Ow,” he yelled.
“Stop it now. Count. Do you hear me? Count. It’s fine. Get in.”
He gave her a terrified look but obeyed. She was being mean. He would ignore her. That would teach her not to be mean. They drove in silence for the next twenty minutes. She stopped the car at a warehouse.
There was a big car sitting out in front of it. “What’s that?”
“That,” she said, “is your gateway to freedom.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I’m taking you to a place where the doctors can help you.”
He screamed. “No doctors! No needles! Needles! Beetles! No more!”
She turned to look at him. “Eyes.”
He looked at her.
“Have I ever hurt you?”
He shook his head.
“These doctors are different. They’re going to help you think clearly. No medicine. No machines. No needles.”
The door to the large car opened and the driver emerged. “Mr. Crosse would like to know the reason for the delay. He is eager to be on his way,” the man said. He talked funny.
Dakota gave the man a fast nod, got out of the car, and walked around to open the passenger door. “Come.”
He looked around. She was moving toward the car without him. He didn’t want to be left alone.
“Wait.” He hurried to catch up and followed her into the big car.
Chapter Forty-Eight
TAYLOR WENT COLD. “ARE YOU TRYING TO TELL ME THAT Damon Crosse is my father? How can that be?”
“He is nothing if not thorough. He had his people spy on Maya’s family—your mother, your grandparents. He arranged for your grandparents’ death. When your mother married Warwick Parks, he made sure they were watched—and that people who worked for him befriended them, e
ven worked for Warwick at the paper. When your mother couldn’t get pregnant, their family doctor steered them to a fertility clinic in England that performed the IVF treatments. It was one of Damon’s clinics. Instead of your father’s sperm, they used Damon’s,” Jeremy said.
Taylor’s hand flew to her mouth. “How do you know this?”
“He bragged about it to me. He said Maya would be horrified that he was the father of her sister’s child, too.”
“But why? Why did he want my mother to have his child? He’s never been in my life.”
“He talked about some sort of power in your family’s blood.”
“What are you talking about?”
Jeremy cleared his throat. “Taylor, do you know anything about some silver coins that have been held by your family?”
“What?”
“My father is obsessed with them. It’s the reason he chose my mother in the first place. He wanted to know what her family had done with them. Damon has been searching for thirty pieces of silver that Judas received for betraying Jesus for many years. He believed some of them were hidden by Saint John on that island.”
“I’ve never heard anything about them,” Taylor said.
“Okay, so why was he looking for these pieces of silver?” Jack asked.
“My adoptive grandfather, Fred Crosse, was a German scientist. He’d been on Patmos during the war and told my father about them. By the time I was old enough to know him, he was completely bedridden. He had MSA-P, multiple system atrophy, a debilitating illness resembling Parkinson’s. I used to visit with him when I’d come home from school on breaks. He talked about the old country sometimes, and made mention of the war, but nothing coherent. I found out later that he came after the war and worked for the government for a while before he got sick. He was convinced that my mother’s family had them, that they’d brought them to America when they left Greece. He’d been in Greece at the same time. Before he died he started referring to himself as Friedrich, not Fred, though my father would get angry and tell him his name was Fred.”
Taylor’s heart began to pound. The thoughts were coming too fast now. She took a deep breath. “What year did this Friedrich come to the United States?” Taylor asked.
“Some time in the 1940s, I think.”
“What kind of scientist was he?” she pressed.
“A geneticist.”
Taylor’s heart raced. It was all making sense now. “Have you ever heard of Operation Paperclip?”
Jeremy had a blank expression on his face. “Operation what?”
“Paperclip. It was a covert operation where the United States smuggled in Nazi war criminals, whitewashed their histories, and made them citizens.”
“Why would they do that?”
“Because they were more afraid of Russia at the time and wanted to get the best scientists and spies before the Soviets did. I’m wondering if Friedrich was one of those scientists,” Taylor said.
“Are there any photos? I think I’d recognize him as a younger man. Besides, how many geneticists named Friedrich could have come over?”
Jack walked over to the corner of the room where their belongings were huddled in a corner and got his laptop.
“Can we narrow it down through a search?” he asked Taylor. “Look for geneticists and see the names?”
“Maybe, but there were over sixteen hundred scientists and doctors, and I don’t know that we’d find them easily using Google. But I do have all the names from a piece I did years ago for Karen Printz’s show. I save all my research.” She deflated. “Of course, it’s all at home, filed. I did that story almost ten years ago.”
Jack’s fingers were tapping the keys. “Let me see what I come up with.”
“Do you remember anything odd about Friedrich? Anything he had that could be tied to the Nazis?” Taylor asked.
Jeremy jumped up. “He had a ring. I remember because it fascinated me as a kid. He told me I’d have it one day. But when he died and I asked my father about it, he said it belonged to him now. He wears it all the time. I got so used to it, I almost forgot.”
“What did it look like?”
“Silver. Like a large signet ring with a symbol in the middle, a sort of stick with a line wrapped around it and it had two German words, one on each side.”
“Were the words Ahnenerbe and Deutsches?” Taylor asked.
“That sounds right! How did you know?”
“That’s the ring given to members of the Ahnenerbe, a Nazi occult group. He must have indoctrinated Damon into the occult. If we can prove that the Institute was founded by a Nazi, that will bring it under scrutiny, shine a light on what’s been going on there,” Taylor said.
“The Ahnenerbe? Isn’t that the Nazi group that hunted down religious relics in Indiana Jones?” Jack asked. “Why did they want the coins so badly?”
“They believed the coins would give them power. The lore surrounding these religious relics is very potent. It says the coins represent evil triumphing over good and that whoever possesses them has the power to accomplish whatever they desire.”
“According to this, the coins were hidden in the temple of Solomon.” Jack slid the laptop over to Jeremy and Taylor, and they leaned in to look at the web page.
Taylor read aloud. “Medieval apocrypha. What is that?”
“A Greek term for secret teachings that could not be shared publicly,” Jeremy answered.
Taylor continued to read, fascinated. “According to this, the coins originated with Abraham. Abraham’s father made them, and Abraham gave them to his son Isaac to purchase a village. From there the coins were given to the pharaoh who sent them to Solomon for the temple he was building. Solomon placed them around the door of the altar.”
Jeremy broke in. “That’s where they stayed until Nebuchadnezzar took over and enslaved the Israelites. He took the coins with him to Babylon where he gave them to some Persians who gave them to their fathers. When Christ was born, they took the coins with them to give as gifts with the frankincense and myrrh, but fell asleep and left the pieces there without realizing it. Some merchants found them and used them to purchase a beautiful garment to give to King Abgar. When the king questioned how they had come upon such a beautiful garment, they told him they had found the money. He sent for the shepherds who now had the pieces and took the silver from them and gave both the garment and coins to Christ, who kept the garment, but gave the coins to the Jewish treasury because he knew they would be used to secure his betrayal.”
Jack gave a low whistle. “So the coins that Judas received to betray Christ can be traced back to Abraham, the father of the faith? That’s some history.”
“Yes, many powerful hands have touched them. But what makes them capable of evil is that Satan entered Judas and when Judas held them, Satan’s power was conveyed to the coins.”
Taylor was staring at Jeremy. “You seem very familiar with this story,” she said.
“I’ve heard it all my life from Damon. He has ten of the coins, but he’s determined to find the rest of them, and he believes our family is the key.”
Jack’s expression grew worried. “He’s not going to rest until he finds Taylor and those coins. Do you think her family knew about them?”
“He told me that he interrogated and tortured our grandparents,” Jeremy said gravely. “They admitted that they had brought them over from Greece and hidden them, but they wouldn’t tell him where.”
Taylor turned white. “He tortured our grandparents?”
“What exactly does he believe he’ll be able to do once he finds them?” Jack asked.
With all seriousness, Jeremy replied, “Unleash the power of hell.”
Chapter Forty-Nine
NATHAN’S NOSTRILS WERE BURNING. THE SMELL OF THE leather interior of the car nauseated him and he felt as if he were drowning. Stop, stop, drop. Stop, drop, and roll. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. “Smell!”
Dakota was giving him a mean look. Why was
she looking at him that way? He breathed in the way the nurse had taught him—in through the nose, out through the mouth. In and out. In and out. The car stopped in front of a gigantic house. It looked scary. The big gates opened, and Nathan put his hands over his eyes.
“Huge, huge, huge. Where are we?” His voice rose, and he felt a firm hand come down on his arm. He looked at Dakota. Her mouth was a straight line. He didn’t like that. He was scared. Laired. Faired. Mared. They kept driving down the long driveway until finally the car stopped. Dakota opened the door and came to fetch him.
“We’re here. Come with me.”
“This place is too huge. Too huge. Like a luge. Deluge. One, two, three, four, five.” He tapped the side of his head with his hand.
“NATHAN!”
His bottom lip trembled, and he looked up at her from the corner of his eye.
She lowered her voice. “Focus. I’m right here. We are home now. Everything is going to be okay.”
This wasn’t home. “Don’t want to.”
Dakota smiled and took his hand. “Have I ever lied to you?”
He shook his head.
“Come on now. It’s all going to be fine. No one will hurt you.”
She was being nice now. He followed her to the front door.
They were greeted by another stranger who led them into the tremendous marble foyer.
Within seconds a big, bearded man appeared and nodded at Dakota. He looked like a grizzly bear. Nathan didn’t like bears. He backed away as quietly as he could.
“I will take it from here,” the bear said in a funny accent.
Dakota let go of Nathan’s hand.
What was she doing? He looked at her in shock and began to stammer.
The bear stuck him with a big, long needle.
Before he passed out Nathan’s eyes widened, and he gave Dakota a pitiful look.
“You promised no needles!”
“I lied.”
Chapter Fifty
THAT SOUNDS COMPLETELY INSANE. THE POWER OF HELL? What exactly is Crosse’s endgame?” Jack asked.
“Control. Manipulation. Corruption. He serves a dark master, and his mission is nothing short of the obliteration of all that is good. He wants to destroy the family, the individual, and, most importantly, all connections to God,” Jeremy told him.
