Sumpter looked longingly at his nearly untouched steak and sighed. "I'll come with you."
CHAPTER TEN
Charles River Yacht Club, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Wednesday, September 22, 2004
The Charles River Yacht Club, as its name suggested, was on the Charles River alongside Memorial Drive in Cambridge. It required Atticus to hunt for a parking space and then walk across four lanes of fast-moving traffic. None of the fifty or so boats tied up seemed to be the Nautilus,so he detoured into the marina's office.
A young suntanned woman sat behind the counter, taking a detailed message, with a series of "uh-huhs" as she scribbled on a message pad. He judged her to be nineteen or twenty. She had her blond hair braided into two short pigtails, and she grimaced with her wide, mobile mouth as the caller continued to talk. She wore deceptively simple clothes whose quality material meant money, and a large diamond engagement ring.
She rolled her eyes, held up a finger to indicate he was to wait, and finished with, "Okay, I'll let her know. Thank you."
She ripped free the message, shoved it into a bin on the edge of the counter, and looked expectantly to Atticus. "Can I help you?"
"Thomas James DeMent rents a boat slip here," Atticus said, giving her Parity's real name. "Can you tell me the boat's current location?"
She wrinkled up her nose. "I-I-I don't know if I'm allowed to do that."
He pulled out his ID and showed it to her. "I'm not going to search the boat; I'm just trying to determine where it is."
"Oh!" She thought a moment, eyes focused over the water, her tongue tracing over her upper lip. Atticus wondered if she knew how erotic it appeared, and if it was the cause of the engagement ring. "I suppose that can't hurt."
A moment of checking books, and she found the information Atticus wanted.
"He's still renting slip number ten. His boat is the Nautilus." She hiked herself up onto the counter and leaned far out to study the pier. "She's not down there."
"She?"
"The boat. It's the second slip to the end." She pointed.
"Do you remember the last time it was tied up?"
"I'm not sure. I think it was there yesterday. The phone's been ringing off the hook this morning, and I haven't been paying attention. You can check with the dock staff."
***
Between the thick fog and the bitter cold, it came as no surprise that the docks were nearly empty. The only person in sight was a man waxing the flying bridge of a fifty-foot yacht.
"Nice boat," Atticus called up to him.
"Thanks," the man said without stopping. "It's a lot of work, though. It's taken me three days to wax the whole thing. Some vacation."
Atticus pointed down the jetty to the empty slip. "Do you know anything about the Nautilus?"
The man halted to look down at Atticus. "Who's asking?"
Atticus produced his ID. "DEA."
The man shook his head. "I keep my nose out of other people's business."
"Look." Atticus held out Parity's photo. "The kid who owns the boat is in trouble. He fell into the wrong crowd and last weekend his parents' house was firebombed and he's gone missing. It's possible he's dead. The Nautilusmight be the only clue we have to finding him—helping him."
The man frowned at the photo. "He wasn't one of the men who took the boat out this morning."
"This morning?"
"Yeah, there were, like, five men and a woman. They pulled out maybe an hour ago."
Atticus took out his PDA and brought up the scanned copies of the artist sketches for the cult. "Are any of these people the ones who took the boat?"
The man clambered down off the boat to study the PDA screen. "Yeah. This one. And him. Maybe him. And she's the woman. I really didn't get a good look at the other two men." He'd picked off Ice and the cultists named Mouse, Link, and Ether. "They seemed to have scuba gear with them."
"Did you see which way they headed?"
The man waved toward the fog-shrouded river. "They would have gone downriver. The Nautilusis too tall to fit under the Harvard Bridge."
Atticus took out his business card. "Do me a favor—if they come back, call me. Don't try to approach them—they're quite dangerous."
The man looked dubious but took the card.
The river water gurgled quietly under the wooden planking as Atticus walked down the dock to the empty boat slip. While it was doubtful that the cult left any clues to where they were headed, they might have slipped up somehow. Wedged in the cracks of the decking, Atticus found a hypodermic needle filled with a clear liquid, its tip capped with wax. He recognized veronol, a powerful barbiturate sedative, from traces of drug on the outside of the syringe.
The cult was out hunting their demons again. But what was the scuba-diving gear for?
Atticus called their hotel rooms, eyeing the hypodermic in his hand. Thrusting the needle into flesh obviously would push the tip through the protective wax. How safe would it be to carry in his pocket?
Kyle answered with a faintly suspicious, "Yeah?"
"Ice was here an hour ago and took the boat out." Atticus filled him in on the other details.
"I'll get hold of the coast guard and have them keep an eye out for the boat, but in this fog, I don't know what luck they're going to have."
The Longfellow Bridge was just a smudge in the fog, crossing the water into whiteness. Atticus heard more than saw the T train cross over it along with the heavy Boston traffic. "That's the truth. I'm going to head back and hook up with Ru at the DEA."
"Ru called a little while ago. He's out in the Explorer somewhere."
"Somewhere?"
"Something about making a wrong turn onto Sorrow Drive, which is limited access. I'm not sure why he called, he hung up after telling me he was lost."
Unlike the Jaguar, the Explorer didn't have a navigation system.
Atticus sighed. "I'm heading for the DEA. Let him know."
As Atticus hung up, a blare of horns came from Memorial Drive. A man was crossing the four lanes of traffic, barely noticing the cars honking at him. He had an odd, mechanical gait. As Atticus watched, a second man made his way across the street. For a moment Atticus thought them twins, and then realized with a start that body-wise, they were nothing alike—only the second man had managed to completely mimic the first man's way of moving.
". . . it's like they're one person wearing borrowed skins."
Atticus scanned the area quickly. If these Ontongard had the same abilities as the Pack, they'd be able to match Atticus's speed and strength. And Rennie, at least, could match him too in fighting ability. He spotted at least three more on the other side of the highway, stiff and awkward as stick puppets.
Shit!Well, he would have to bluff his way through them. Zheng had walked into them and managed to slip away unnoticed.
Atticus started forward. A blond boy in a black running suit crossed the highway and joined the two males on the dock. The boy met his gaze and recognition jumped between them.
Parity?
For a supposedly kidnapped man, he seemed unfettered.
The boy looked startled, saying, "Wolf boy!"
Alerted, the two adult males focused on Atticus. A presence that was like Pack, and yet totally different, hit him, and the recognition went to a full knowledge of what he was. An all-encompassing hate followed the understanding, a flood of rage with the intent to destroy.