Or had it?
Was it possible that Danny was still alive?
Bellinger had made a convincing argument for it. And he’d been grabbed seconds after making it. That had to mean something.
Whether Danny was still alive or not, the idea that they’d all been lied to, that someone knew the truth and had kept it from them—the idea that someone, not fate, had taken Danny away from them—felt like acid in his throat.
He wasn’t about to let it slide.
He took the Willard Street exit and turned into Copeland after the roundabout, and his fury swelled even more as he thought back to how the news of Danny’s death had devastated their parents. It was bad enough their eldest son was a convicted felon. To lose Danny too—their pride and joy, the redeemer of the family name—was too much to bear. Their mom had died a couple of months later. Despite the complicated medical terminology the doctors insisted on using, Matt knew it was simply a case of a broken heart. He also knew he was partly to blame. He knew the havoc raging in her veins started the day he’d been arrested that first time, if not earlier. His dad hadn’t fared much better. Danny’s job came with life coverage, and though the insurance payout paid for the nursing home and allowed their dad some minor touches of additional comfort, he’d been left a demolished man. He and Matt had hardly spoken at his mom’s funeral, and Matt hadn’t been out to see him since that bleak day in January. Then almost a year to the day later, the local sheriff, a craggy old nemesis, had managed to track Matt down to his garage in Quincy and given him the news of his dad’s death. A stroke, he’d said, although Matt had his doubts about that too.
Bellinger’s words echoed in his mind. Someone had taken Danny, and it was linked to something that just happened in the skies of Antarctica. It sounded outlandish and surreal. Only it clearly wasn’t. The guys he’d just gone up against were very real. Highly professional. Well equipped. Ruthless. And not overly concerned with discretion.
The implications of that last point were particularly worrying.
He coasted east on Copeland, the Mustang’s forty-year-old headlights struggling to break through the swarm of cottonlike snowflakes. With no other cars around, the snow had had time to settle, covering the road ahead with a thin, undisturbed white duvet. He passed Buckley and motored on until he reached the 7-Eleven and the turnoff into the alleyway that led to his shop, and just before turning into it, a remote corner of his mind registered a set of tire tracks in the fresh snow.
They belonged to a single car that had veered off Copeland. He couldn’t see down the alley. His shop was tucked away about a hundred yards back from the main road, and there were no streetlights that way, but the tire tracks were more than enough to trip his internal alarm, as they could only have been heading to his place. There was nothing else down there.
Problem was, he wasn’t expecting anyone.
Which didn’t bode well for the rest of his magical night.
Chapter 17
Amundsen Sea, Antarctica
“You need to come here. There’s something you need to see.” The caller wasn’t a native English speaker, and Gracie couldn’t place his accent. And although he spoke slowly and deliberately, his words were laced with an urgency that came through loud and clear, despite the less-than-crystal clarity of the satellite link.
“Slow down a second,” Gracie said. “Who are you exactly, and how’d you get this number?”
“My name is Ameen. Brother Ameen, if you like.”
“And you’re calling from Egypt?”
“Yes. From Deir Al-Suryan—the Monastery of the Syrians, in Wadi Natrun.”
Her internal kook-alert monitor, which had already moved up to yellow before the man had even started talking, got a slight nudge up to blue.
“And how’d you get this number?” she asked again, a slight edge to her voice now.
“I called your Cairo bureau.”
“And they gave it to you?”
Much as her vexation was clear, the man wasn’t going out of his way to placate her. Instead, he simply said, “I told them I was calling on behalf of Father Jerome.”
The name bounced around Gracie’s tired mind for a moment, before landing on the obvious association. “What, the Father Jerome?”
“Yes,” he assured her. “The very same.”
Her monitor took a step back to yellow. “And you’re calling on his behalf from Egypt? Is that where he is?”
It suddenly occurred to her that she hadn’t read anything about the world famous humanitarian for quite a while. Which was unusual, given his highly public, if reluctantly so, profile, and given the huge organization that he’d founded and still ran, as far as she knew.
“Yes, he’s here. He’s been here for almost a year.”
“Okay, well, now that you’ve got me on the line,” she said, “what’s this about?”
“You need to come here. To see Father Jerome.”
This surprised her. “Why?”
“We saw your broadcast. You were the one to see the sign. You brought it to the world.”
“ ‘ The sign’ ? ”
Dalton and Finch were eyeing her curiously. She gave them an I’m-not-sure-where-this-is-going shrug.
“For whatever reason,” Brother Ameen said, “divine or otherwise, you were there. It’s your story. And, of course, I’m familiar with your work. People listen to you. Your reputation is solid. Which is why I am telling this to you and you only.”
“You haven’t told me anything yet.”
Brother Ameen paused, then said, “The symbol you witnessed, there, over the ice. It’s here too.”
An altogether different alarm blared inside her, one that sent her pulse rocketing. “What, you’ve got it there too? In the sky?” Her words also visibly snagged Dalton and Finch’s attention.
“No, not in the sky.”
“Where then?”
“You need to come here. To see it for yourself.”
Gracie’s kook monitor fluttered upward again. “I’m going to need a little more than that.”
“It’s hard to explain.”
“Why don’t you try.”
Brother Ameen seemed to weigh his words for a moment, then said, “Father Jerome’s not exactly here, at the monastery. He was here. He came to us several months ago. He was . . . troubled. And after a few weeks, he . . . he went up into the mountain. There’s a cave, you see. A cave that provides the basics—you know, a shelter with a bed to sleep in, a stove to cook on. Men of God go there when they’re looking for solitude, when they don’t want to be disturbed. Sometimes, they stay there for days. Sometimes, weeks. Months even.”
“And Father Jerome is there?”
“Yes.”
Gracie didn’t quite know what to make of that. “What does that have to do with me?”
The man hesitated. He seemed uncomfortable with what he was about to tell her. “He’s a changed man, Miss Logan. Something . . . something we don’t quite understand has happened to him. And since he’s been up in the cave, he’s been writing. A lot. He’s been filling one journal after another with his thoughts. And on some of their pages, there’s a drawing. A recurring drawing, one he’s painted all over the walls of the cave.”
Gracie’s skin prickled.
“It’s the sign, Miss Logan. The sign you saw over the ice.”
Gracie’s mind scrambled to process what he’d just told her. An obvious question fought its way out of the confused mire. “No offense, Brother, but—”