It took him a few seconds to adjust to the bright sunlight of the spring afternoon, so it wasn’t until the man running toward him was only a few yards away that Cam saw the fear and panic on his face. A few times a year someone approached Cam to ask for an autograph, thinking he was the Boston-born actor Matt Damon. This was clearly different.
“Hey, you a lawyer?” he gasped, eyeing Cam’s dark suit and briefcase.
“Yeah, I am.”
“Buddy, you gotta help me!” The man shoved a green and yellow lottery ticket into Cam’s chest and turned, scanning the urban streetscape behind him.
“I’m sorry, what?’ Cam said. The guy was about average height, like Cam. Fit, maybe thirty. His blue eyes bore into Cam’s.
“This ticket’s a winner,” he blurted, pronouncing winner as if it ended in ‘ah’ rather than ‘er.’ “But the guys from the neighborhood heard about it and they want half.” He angled the ticket into Cam’s chest a second time and backed away, leaving the glossy cardboard strip caught between Cam’s suit coat and shirt. “Well, fuck ’em.” He licked his lips. “I’m trusting you to do the right thing, you know? I’ll be back in an hour, after I lose these guys.” He gestured with his chin down the street. “Meet me in the Dunkin Donuts bathroom, the one on Causeway Street, okay?”
Cam blinked, his hand involuntarily catching the ticket as it slid. “I don’t know.” He tried to hand the ticket back.
“Please, man,” he replied, refusing the ticket. His eyes bore into Cam’s, pleading. “Just an hour. What’s that saying, do a random act of kindness? I really need that now. I’ll give you a thousand bucks.”
Something about the man’s desperate urgency touched Cam. And he couldn’t really think of a reason to say no. “Well, okay. But I don’t want your money. You can just buy me an iced coffee.”
The man smiled and patted Cam on the shoulder. “Thanks, man. You got it. An extra large.” He turned. “Really, thanks,” he yelled over his shoulder as he sprinted toward the parking garage across the street.
The entire encounter took less than thirty seconds.
Shaking his head, Cam resumed the walk to his car. What had he got himself into? It had happened so quickly that he didn’t really have a chance to think it through. He glanced at the ticket, wondering what would possess someone to hand a winning lottery ticket to a total stranger. And also wondering what he would do if the guys from the neighborhood showed up. Actually, he knew what he’d do—he’d hand them the damn ticket.
He fed the meter and, with an hour to kill, bought a newspaper and found a bench near the TD Garden sports arena. He examined the glossy rectangle of cardboard—as the man claimed, the scratch ticket was an instant winner, for $500,000. Half a million bucks, just like that. He looked back toward the parking garage, shook his head and, tucking the ticket into his breast pocket, phoned his fiancée Amanda. “You won’t believe what just happened,” he said, chuckling.
As the hour passed, Cam grew alternately curious and resentful about the lottery ticket incident. Curious that someone would give a winning ticket to a complete stranger rather than settle for half, and resentful that he had been inconvenienced—and perhaps put into danger.
He walked the half block to Dunkin’ Donuts, replaying the encounter in his mind. Skilled at reading facial expressions, a talent honed over years of reading juries, Cam sensed there was more to the story than the man had let on. He considered simply turning the ticket over to the police, but the hour was almost up and his curiosity won out. And, arguably, the man had entrusted the ticket to Cam in Cam’s capacity as an attorney, which imposed upon him a duty to act as a fiduciary in the man’s best interests. Arguably. He would turn the ticket in and be done with this if the owner didn’t show up soon.
By 2:30 the Dunkin Donuts was mostly empty. Cam scanned the dining area, did not see the man and followed a hallway toward the restrooms in the rear of the building. He pushed the door open and entered. Empty. Sighing, he unfolded his newspaper, leaned against the wall and waited.
Ten minutes passed. Nothing. He couldn’t wait much longer. Though he was a lawyer by trade, he had developed an expertise in the history of European exploration of America before Columbus; tonight he was scheduled to give a lecture at a Masonic lodge as the guest of a local veterinarian who had taken an interest in his research.
Cam checked his watch again before finally deciding to do the obvious: He urinated. As he was zipping up the door swung open. He tensed at the sound of heavy feet approaching quickly. He began to turn, but someone dropped a black hood over his head and pressed a sharp blade against his neck in what seemed like a nanosecond.
What the—?
“Don’t move, or I’ll cut your throat.”
Cam’s first impulse was to resist, but the strong hands of his assailant, plus the cold metal of the blade, froze him in place.
A cloth covered Cam’s nose and mouth, and he smelled a sickly-sweet odor like melting candy. A wave of dread washed over him. Chloroform. He began to struggle.
“Just relax, skipper. Everything will be okay.”
Cam felt his body sag. His last thought was that the man pronounced skipper as if the word ended in ‘ah.’
Cam awoke, his heart pounding but his brain unable to ascertain why. Smoke filled his nostrils and a loud beeping assaulted his ears. A few seconds passed as his cogency returned. His body jolted. Fire.
Adrenaline surging, he sat up and looked around. A dimly lit room, a couch underneath him. Gray smoke billowed from some source against the far wall, sunlight causing the dark particles to dance. Sunlight. He turned. Light poured in from a window next to him. Cam yanked; the window opened easily, leading to a black metal fire escape. Exhaling, he began to climb through.
“Waaah.”
He froze.
The sound came again, audible between the wails of the fire alarm. “Waaah.” There. From behind a door opposite the couch. A baby. Cam did not hesitate.
Using the lapel of his suit coat to cover his mouth and nose, he strode across the room and shouldered open the door. The space was dark, the crying sound louder. “Waaah.” Fumbling, he found a light, his eyes burning. The room was small, no bigger than a glorified closet. A pantry perhaps. No crib, no bed, no furniture. And no baby. “Waaah.” He focused in on the sound over his own coughing. There. Sitting on a shelf next to a box of spaghetti. An MP3 player with a pair of small speakers next to it. What the –? Cam punched the stop button. The crying ceased.
Swatting the MP3 off the shelf, Cam spun and fought his way back toward the open window. The smoke had thickened, so he dropped to his hands and knees and crawled, the taste of ash filling his mouth and the lack of oxygen dizzying his head. The light from the window beckoned like a beacon, but the ten-foot span of the room felt like a football field. Finally he reached the couch, pulled himself onto it, and rolled out the window onto the fire escape.
Panting, his eyes still burning, he allowed himself a few seconds to breath. But fire or not, he needed to get out of here.
Presumably whoever had abducted him would be back. He pulled himself to his feet, ready to descend the metal stairs. On his first step the rusted metal of the landing dissolved beneath him. He grabbed for the frame of the stairway, clawing for something to keep him from falling, but his fingers found only air. He barely had time to look down to see himself crash, feet first, into a large container of some kind. Cardboard boxes cushioned his fall, but a stab of pain shot up his left leg.
Panting, Cam slowly shifted his body atop the boxes. Other than his leg, he seemed to be okay. Looking up at the fire escape, he saw he had only fallen one flight. Smoke billowed from the open window, and the fire alarm continued to caw. He tried to stand, using his right leg; a box gave way beneath him and he lurched to the side, falling against the side of what he guessed—based on the familiar smell—was a plastic garbage dumpster.
As he began to stand again, the top of the dumpster swung down and slammed shut over him
, plunging him into darkness. “Hey,” he yelled, pushing upward at the lid. A loud click froze Cam—the sound of a padlock snapping into place. Desperate, he shoved upward again, smashing at the secure plastic cover with his shoulder and arms.
As he pounded futilely, the dumpster began to roll.
The everyday sounds of the city echoed within the dumpster, taunting the entrapped Cam as he rolled along, bumping occasionally over curbs and potholes. He exhaled slowly, trying to control his racing heart. His afternoon had transitioned quickly from baffling to stupefying to mind-numbingly dangerous. His leg throbbed, he couldn’t stop coughing and the dank smell of rotting food caused his stomach to heave. He had no way to escape the rolling dumpster, and no idea of why he was in it in the first place.
Sweating both from the heat of his confinement and from fear, Cam felt around in the darkened dumpster for some way to escape. Shoving the boxes aside in the approximate six foot by four foot space, he groped and found a drain hole, plugged with a plastic stopper, in the bottom of the container at one end. He reached into his breast pocket, relieved to find his Swiss army knife nestled inside his handkerchief—his captors had taken his cell phone but must have missed the knife. After removing the drain plug and discarding his jacket, he stretched on his stomach, wedged the blade into the hole and sawed into the hard plastic, fighting to enlarge the opening as the dumpster bounced along. It was slow going, the plastic thick and the blade increasingly dull. Cam figured he needed an opening at least a foot-and-a-half in diameter to slither through. But he had no idea how much time he had.
The sweat now pouring off his face, his nose and mouth only inches from the stench at the bottom of the dumpster and the scurrying of rat paws audible from the far corner, Cam carved and sawed. As he panted and coughed, his stomach turned and he vomited, the turkey sandwich from what seemed like a lifetime ago mixing with bile and acid and blackened saliva; he was able to turn his head in time to direct the spew onto a box, which he pushed aside. A couple of times he dug the blade too far down and the knife kicked back off the pavement, dulling the edge and once gashing his palm. Blood now mixed with sweat and vomit and stench as he worked the knife fiendishly, stabbing at the thick plastic like a slasher in a teenage horror film.
The dumpster stopped, jolting Cam from his task. He sat up, his senses alert. Seagulls cawed and, even through the stench of the dumpster, he smelled the salty air of the harbor. His chest tightened, fearing what might be next. A few seconds passed and the dumpster began rolling again, accelerating as it descended down a slope. For some reason an old golf adage popped into his head: Everything rolls toward the water. The wheels hit a bump and the container went airborne and tumbled. He braced himself. He knew he did not have much time.
The splash both confirmed his fears and drove home the point that he had no time for fear. If he didn’t think quickly and rationally, he would soon drown.
Water poured through the hole. Though the dumpster for now bobbed atop the waves. the opening—his intended salvation—had become a gaping liability. Realizing he had little time, Cam threw his weight against the side of the dumpster. It tipped partially before righting itself. As it did so, he threw himself against the opposite side. Again, the dumpster swayed before settling back to its original position. Cam was like a weighted keel in a sailboat, keeping the vessel from overturning. But Cam wanted to overturn. Needed to overturn before the water swamped the container and turned the dumpster into a coffin. Continuing to throw his body alternately against each side—rhythmically, like rocking a car out of a snow bank—Cam finally toppled the dumpster onto its side. He exhaled and peered out the opening. The hole sat a couple feet above the water line.
But his relief was short-lived. With the dumpster now on its side, the ocean seeped in through the lid joints. Not as fast as through the hole, but already almost a foot of cold, dark water sloshed at his feet. The dumpster wouldn’t remain buoyant much longer. Cam took a deep breath. He had bought himself both a few minutes and hopefully the chance for a cold swim. Grabbing the knife, and working with even more desperation than before, he sawed and jabbed at the opening. Using his hands to rip back the jagged plastic, he finally succeeded in folding back a section of his prison wall.
Light and air poured in as Cam glanced out. The bottom of the hole rested less than half a foot above the water line. Taking a deep breath, he squirmed through the opening, the sharp edges of the plastic cutting through his shirt and piercing his chest. Gritting his teeth against the pain, he thrust forward with his legs, the plastic clawing his skin. With a final push he tumbled out, splashing into the cold spring waters of Boston Harbor.
The cold numbed him, and the salt water stung his cuts, but the sunlight and air on his face felt glorious. Treading water, and on the lookout for yet another attack, he saw he was less than fifty feet from a stone retaining wall protecting the city from the ocean tides. A small crowd had gathered. With so many eyes on him, he sensed he was, finally, safe.
Floating on his back, exhausted, he kicked toward the retaining wall. A policeman yelled to him, and a few seconds later a firefighter dropped a rope ladder down the side of the wall.
“You okay?” the cop yelled.
The firefighter looked ready to jump in. “Yup,” Cam waved weakly, his teeth chattering. He turned on his stomach and swam the final few yards, his hands no longer feeling the cold sting of the water. He grabbed for the ladder and blinked the salt water from his eyes. “But you’re never going to believe my story.”
Cam knifed across the wake, his water ski sending up a rooster tail made orange by the setting sun. He angled toward the beach, released the rope, and sank in waist-deep water, thankful that the lake was fifteen degrees warmer than the ocean had been three days earlier.
Amanda waded out in her shorts and kissed him. She didn’t compete anymore, but she maintained the grace and toned figure of a world class gymnast. “Not bad for an old man. Happy fortieth birthday.” She handed him a red plastic cup. “Cheers.”
“Captain Morgan?” he asked.
She grinned. “No, Metamucil on the rocks. You’re at that age now, Cameron.”
He tilted his head and tried to knock the water from his ear. “Very funny. Sure you still want to get married?”
Amanda shrugged. “It would be bad form if I walked away now.” She clinked her cup to his. She was a decade younger than him, and her long blond hair and princess-in-a-fairy-tale features often turned heads. “Perhaps I’ll just take a young lover.”
“Speaking of which, Happy Beltane.” Today was May 5, the date of the old pagan fertility celebration.
She arched an eyebrow. “Hmm. So it is. As a Brit, I should have known that. Beltane and your birthday on the same day. Even you could get lucky tonight.”
He held her green eyes for a few seconds like a smitten sixteen-year-old. As she smiled back at him, he rotated his shoulder, which ripped at the scabs on his chest and completely ruined the moment for him. The whole abduction earlier in the week still made no sense to him, from the lottery ticket to the fake baby to the dumpster being rolled into the harbor.
Cam sipped his rum and stepped out of the ski, his left ankle still tender from the fall from the fire escape. The advantage of an early May birthday was that he could spend the morning on the ski slopes in Vermont and still have time to water-ski in the evening at their Massachusetts lakefront home in Westford, thirty miles north of Boston. The disadvantage was that his forty-year-old body ached. But in a good way. He exhaled. “I’m starving.”
Amanda tossed him a towel. “The grill is fired up. A burger and corn on the cob, just like you requested. Astarte should be home from soccer practice any minute.”
“And ice cream for dessert?”
She rolled her eyes. “Yes, and a pony ride also.” She handed him a thick white envelope as he stepped ashore. “This came in the mail today; I thought it might be important. And the detective called from Boston.”
“Did he have any
news?”
“They have security camera footage showing some bloke carrying you out the back door of Dunkin Donuts and tossing you into a plastic dumpster in an alley. Then further down the block another camera shows him pushing the dumpster along. Then nothing.”
“Can they see the guy’s face?”
“Not really. He wore a cap and kept his face turned away from the cameras. Same build as the chap you described.”
“It makes no sense. If the guy thought I wasn’t going to give the ticket back, I guess I can understand him knocking me out with the chloroform. But why the rest of it?” Cam shook his head. He didn’t expect they would catch the guy if they hadn’t done so by now—because Cam wasn’t seriously hurt, it would not be a high priority case.
He focused instead on the letter. The return address indicated it was from the Middlesex County Registry of Deeds. Someone had handwritten his name and Westford home address across the front. “I wonder why it came here instead of my office.” As a real estate attorney he often received documents from the various county registries. He dried his hands, opened the envelope, and unfolded a two-page document entitled ‘DEED’ across the top.
“What is it?”
Cam scanned the document, flipped to the second page, then rescanned the first page. It made no sense. “It’s … a property deed.” He shook his head. “To some land in Groton.”
“You seem confused.”
“I am.” He shook the papers. “The deed is to me, in my name. Cameron Thorne.”
Amanda’s green eyes widened. “As in, the property is now in your name?”
“Some company in England just deeded me six acres.”
“It’s Groton, Massachusetts, not Groton in England, right?”
The Isaac Question: Templars and the Secret of the Old Testament (Templars in America Series Book 5) Page 2