Atlas sheepishly scratched the back of his head. “I compete in sandcastle-building competitions every summer. Not the coolest of hobbies, but it’s something I did with my sister when she was younger. It seemed wrong to stop after she was gone.”
Every time I thought Atlas couldn’t get more interesting, I learned something new and weird about him. And I knew all too well what it was like to hold onto someone’s ghost. “I mean this in the most complimentary way possible,” I said, “but you are one big labyrinth of a human being.”
He considered this. “I think if you boil me down to what drives me—to what I truly want—you’ll find I’m not so complicated at all.”
“And what do you want, Atlas?”
He evasively rifled around in his truck until he found an electric lantern. As the bulb flickered and cast an orange orb of light out into the snowy darkness, I saw uncertainty in his eyes. “Right now?” he answered. “To dig.”
We walked in near silence for about a mile. The light powder accumulating on the trail dampened the sound of our footfalls. The maples lining the path had spouts hammered into them, where local farmers had tapped for syrup. At one point, I knelt and scooped a handful of loose topsoil, stuffing it into my back pocket for good luck. When Atlas raised an eyebrow, I explained, “A ritual my brother taught me. For safe passage.”
The forest eventually gave way to a clearing. The entrance was marked with a disquieting, weather-faded stone that read, “Site of Dana Common, 1801–1938. To all those who sacrificed their homes and way of life.” It was like seeing a grave marker for an entire town.
A gunshot sounded deep in the woods and I instinctively jumped toward Atlas, trying to flatten him to the ground. He caught me in his broad arms, and to my surprise, he smiled. “Probably just some local hunters. But it’s adorable to know that you would have taken a bullet for me.”
“Or maybe I intended to use you as a human shield.” Again, I felt that unwelcome urge to let him hold me longer than necessary. I slipped out of his grasp, embarrassed.
Not much remained of the village once known as Dana, just a creepy series of cellar holes overgrown with weeds. Atlas paused beside a deteriorating foundation that was larger than the others. “When we were under the assumption that the riddle involved Noah’s Ark, I figured watering hole referred to where the animals would go to drink. In actuality, it meant where humans go to drink.” He spread his arms and gazed around at imaginary walls. “This used to be the Eagle Hotel, which in its early days served as the village tavern.”
“Do you think this bar was owned by a murderous, immortality-seeking mobster, too?” I asked.
“I think you just described most entrepreneurs.” Atlas took out the ninth riddle and held it under the lantern’s glow. “Now, this part—ten paces to starboard and thrice that to bow—sounded like it was describing the dimensions of a ship. But since we’re clearly on land, starboard and bow could indicate directions on a compass rose, east and north, respectively. And the paces mean literal strides that we’re supposed to take.”
“Isn’t it a little imprecise to count steps?” I challenged him. “You, me, and the crazy riddler probably all have different lengths to our strides.”
Atlas’s face got that look like he was boiling over with excitement at the prospect of schooling me. “It’s incredibly precise. The Roman passus, or two steps, is equivalent to exactly one-point-four-eight meters. With some simple arithmetic and the handy digital tape measure app on my phone …”
We began at the defunct hotel’s northeastern corner, where the cornerstone was laid according to Freemasonry, and the starting point according to the riddle’s final stanza: So tread carefully, friend, off the cornerstone. From there, we walked due east, crossing the grassless path that had once been Main Street. Fifty feet later, the red light on Atlas’s phone blinked green, and we rotated ninety degrees to face north. This time we traveled for nearly half a football field, crossing into a broad clearing that was delineated with stone fence posts.
We were in Dana’s old graveyard, the one where the bodies and headstones had all been dug up and moved before the flood.
Only something else was buried here now.
Deep into the field, the digital tape measure pinged again. I dropped to my knees and swept aside the thin layer of snow, revealing a stone half-buried in the earth. It was charcoal gray, with white veins of quartz spiderwebbed across the surface.
“That’s soapstone,” Atlas said. “They used to mine it in quarries not too far from here.”
Curious, I carefully worked the tip of my shovel under the stone’s edge. With a little leverage, the small boulder popped free and flipped onto its back like a helpless turtle.
Its underside had been polished near smooth, except for five letters carved into the surface.
Chini.
Atlas ran a search on his phone for the word. “It’s Swahili. And it means down.”
Neither of us needed to be told twice. It was hard work—the soil beneath the top layer was dense and I had to use the heel of my boot to drive the shovel head downward. Atlas and I fell into a natural rhythm of spear, scoop, toss, repeat. The hole beneath us deepened and widened, as the mound of excavated earth grew taller beside us.
Six feet down, the tip of my shovel struck something hard, disengaging me from auto-pilot. Eager to excavate the object but knowing that my shovel could damage it, I scraped away the remaining earth with my bare hands. I exposed more of the same soapstone we’d seen before, this time on an item roughly the size and shape of a bowling pin.
It was a bottle.
Once I’d climbed out of the hole with our prize, I let some snow melt in my hand and scrubbed away the bottle’s coating of dirt. An image had been delicately etched into the soapstone, the leaves and petals of an orchid.
The top was plugged with a stopper, which it took Atlas’s muscular forearms to finally uncork. I cast the lantern light down the bottleneck until we saw what we were looking for: an old paper, the same color and texture of the other journal pages, rolled into a tight scroll.
Joy can be a powerful intoxicant. And in that moment, as Atlas and I both laughed excitedly, overwhelmed with relief, our chests still heaving hard from the exhaustion of all that digging, Atlas took one curious look at me in the lantern glow. Then he rushed forward, cupped my face in his hands, and kissed me.
I was so caught off-guard that I nearly fell into the gaping hole we’d dug. Atlas pulled away as suddenly as he’d swooped in, his jaw hung open in shock. He looked as surprised as I was about the kiss and more than a little guilty. “I …” he started. “I’m sorry. That was wrong. You’re my dead roommate’s little sister and I’m here to protect you, not to …” He trailed off, lost for words.
When I finally regained control of my tongue, I said, “It’s depraved and you should be ashamed of yourself.” I dropped the bottle into the snow and walked determinedly toward him. “Do it again.”
This time, there was no holding back. Any restraint had been dynamited away and our lips met in a kiss far deeper than the chasm we’d just scored into the earth, all of the want and need, and not a whisper of the shouldn’t. It was wild and lusty, lips in perpetual motion, hearts thundering, hands roving, teeth occasionally bumping.
It was me who finally put a hand to his chest and pushed him away just enough for me to get air. My fingers lingered on my raw lips, feeling the ghost of Atlas’s touch everywhere. We began to laugh again, our foreheads touching as we gripped each other, as though one of us might blow away in the cold wind. When I could bear the separation no longer, I grabbed a fistful of his shirt and yanked him down on top of me. Together, we collapsed against the mound of dirt we’d created.
We’d just hit the ground when our embrace was interrupted by the crack of a gunshot.
This one, unlike those I’d heard before, was not intended for a deer.
It was meant for the two of us.
The earthen mound beside us exploded
, sending a cloud of dirt spraying into our faces.
As time slowed down, a number of things happened. Atlas and I tangled with each other, our instincts both to shelter the other’s body with our own. His brute strength won out and he shoved me roughly forward, urging me to my feet and toward the line of trees ten yards away. Through the haze of earth, snow, and darkness, I saw the outline of a harsh-faced man briskly marching across the old cemetery toward us. It was Detective Grimshaw, and he was loading another shell into his break-action shotgun.
I slipped through Atlas’s grasp, running back toward danger to retrieve the bottle. My hand had barely wrapped around its soapstone neck when Atlas seized me by the waist and propelled me away from Grimshaw.
We both raced across the cemetery, only a few paces apart, and hit the edge of the forest as the second shotgun blast went off. The slug detonated the tree trunk three feet to my left, so close that a barrage of splinters pelted my cheek.
As we penetrated deeper into the forest, riding a surge of fear and adrenaline, I came to several concerning conclusions. First, losing Grimshaw in the woods was a hopeless endeavor. The snow was proving to be our greatest enemy, preserving a perfect record of our footsteps through the trees. While pedicabbing had sculpted my legs into peak physical shape, Atlas was bulkier and lacked my endurance. He was already starting to lag behind my pace—five feet, ten feet, then fifteen.
The trees spaced out in front of us and we abruptly hit the rocky shore of the Quabbin Reservoir. We cut a course along the waterline, but our new tact left us even more exposed to the hunter who was still in pursuit.
Ahead of us, a gnarled oak tree stood resolute on the banks of the Quabbin, clinging to its foliage late into autumn. Seized by a desperate idea, I slowed down to fall into rhythm beside Atlas. “If you want us both to live, you need to follow my next instructions exactly,” I said breathlessly. “I need you to keep running and don’t look back, no matter what I do.” Atlas opened his mouth to protest, but I cut him off. “Trust me. Remember who’s got the street smarts.”
Before he could argue, I dropped behind him, following his footsteps precisely through the snow so we would only leave a singular trail. As our path drew closer to the gnarled oak, I cast the soapstone bottle into the snow, took a deep breath, and leapt for one of the tree’s low-lying branches.
Success. I steadied myself against the trunk and rapidly ascended its spiraling limbs. My bicycle-toe boots, while less than ideal for running, helped me to find traction on the slippery bark.
Atlas must have had to fight all of his protective instincts not to turn around, but when I peered out through the foliage, I saw him racing up the shoreline as I’d instructed him.
I didn’t stop until I’d reached a perch twenty feet up, and not a moment too soon. Detective Grimshaw plunged out of the forest onto the reservoir banks, hot on the trail of our footprints. He spotted the bottle containing the riddle where I’d abandoned it and paused beneath my tree, taking the bait.
Meanwhile, up the shore, Atlas was losing steam. In his exhaustion, his foot snagged on a stone, sending him tumbling over the beach.
Grimshaw sensed an imminent victory. He raised his shotgun and glared down the sights. I could practically feel his finger settling on the trigger as he drew a bead on Atlas, who was frantically clambering to his feet.
So I pounced out of the tree, setting myself on a fast downward trajectory toward Grimshaw.
The rustle of the leaves gave me away and the detective snapped the shotgun barrel skyward, ready to fire. But gravity was my ally and I hit him like a cannonball before he could get a shot off. Pain exploded in me as we collided. Somewhere in the tangle of bodies, the top of his head rammed into my chest, and one of my ankles twisted torturously beneath me as I landed. I crumpled to the rocky shore.
Grimshaw got it even worse, though. The sheer velocity of my impact knocked the weapon from his hands and cast him backward into the shallows of the Quabbin.
I lifted my head from the snowy ground and saw the detective, dazed as he was, scrambling on his hands and knees toward where his shotgun had landed on the water’s edge.
I spotted the soapstone bottle in the snow between the detective and me. Knowing that Grimshaw would never miss at this close proximity, I sprung forward and scooped up the bottle. The detective let out a victory cry as his fumbling fingers found the shotgun’s stock and yanked it toward him.
He whipped the barrel around to face me, right as I cocked the bottle back and took a major-league swing at his head.
Crack. The impact of the bottle against his jaw was so loud that at first I thought the shotgun had gone off. It resonated through my fingers and up my arms. The light behind the detective’s eyes burst like a broken tungsten filament.
With that, he collapsed cheek-down into the shallows, his dislocated jaw hanging open idiotically. Three bloody, broken teeth bobbed to the surface of the water next to his face.
Lumbering footsteps snapped me from my stupor, a winded Atlas returning to the scene of the crime.
Not really sure what else to say, I held up the bottle. I’d hit Grimshaw with it so hard that the bottom had snapped clean off. The tenth riddle poked out of the base. “I, uh, opened it.”
Still panting hard, Atlas wrapped his arms around me and I squeezed him right back. This was my fourth brush with death in as many days, yet there was something infinitely more terrifying when someone you cared for was in the crosshairs.
Atlas nodded to the body in the water. “Before we even take a crack at that riddle, we should probably figure out what to do with our dead assassin friend.” He flinched when Grimshaw’s back rose upward in a sudden convulsing breath. “Make that half-dead assassin friend.”
“Half-dead cop, actually,” I corrected him. Atlas’s face blanched. “He’s on Nox’s payroll. Grimshaw covered up my brother’s murder in exchange for Nox paying off his gambling debts to some Armenian bookie. Must have been a rough week at the blackjack table if he was willing to hunt us down in cold blood for the riddle.”
I stepped into the shallows and pressed my boot to Grimshaw’s spine. As I applied pressure, a wheezy breath escaped his mouth. All it would take was a slight turn of the detective’s head and he’d drown in three inches of water without ever waking up.
“Sabra,” Atlas said softly. “I stand behind you no matter how you want to handle this. That coward tried to shoot us in the back, and I have no doubt the world would be a better place without him. But if his body turns up somewhere, we could be one DNA sample away from having both Nox and the entire Boston Police Department after us.”
He was right, of course. This forest was one big playground of forensics evidence. Grimshaw also didn’t magically teleport to the reservoir, which meant we probably had a car to get rid of, too. One that could have a tracking device installed in it.
On the other hand, we couldn’t leave him to wake up with a broken jaw and let him seek vengeance. We had no idea how he’d traced us here, and worst of all, he’d seen me with Atlas. It was only a matter of time before the Dollhouse was compromised.
What we needed was somebody to clean up our mess for us.
When I saw the answer, I whipped out my cell phone and dialed Rufus.
Atlas narrowed his eyes. “What’s with the light bulb hanging over your head, Thomas Edison? Who are you calling?”
“The maid,” I replied.
After three rings, Rufus picked up. Our connection crackled as wind whipped past the receiver on his end—he must have been on his pedicab downtown—so I was grateful when his singsong voice came on the line. “You’ve reached the Flintstones Taxi Service, how can I yabba-dabba help you?”
“It’s Sabra. Look, I’m sort of in a bind yet again. I need to obtain a private number that’s going to be next to impossible to come by, and I need it fast. Think you can do me another solid?”
He scoffed. “A single, measly phone number? Piece of crème brûlée. One sec while I take care of
something first.” On the other end, I heard Rufus slam on the bike’s brakes and curtly say to his passengers, “Get out, losers.” His fares started to protest about not being at their destination yet. “Yeah, well this taxi just ran out of gas. And you’re wearing Yankees jerseys in the wrong town.” He came back on the line. “Okay, babycakes, lay that name on me.”
I gave it to him, knowing full well he wasn’t going to like it.
He didn’t. “Jesus, Sabra. I was really hoping you just wanted the number of some guy you met at the mall. But this dude is straight-up bad news.”
“Believe it or not, he won’t be the most dangerous bastard I’ve dealt with this week. In fact, I don’t think he’ll even crack the top five. Text me that number as soon as you get it.” I hung up before he could try to talk me out of it.
I returned my attention to the other time-sensitive issue: Grimshaw. After flipping him over and searching his pockets, amidst a collection of faded stubs from the Suffolk Downs racetrack, I found two particularly useful items: his car keys and a small bottle of chloroform. He must have been prepared to capture us with more “peaceful” measures, but decided to save himself the trouble of taking hostages when he’d seen that we’d unearthed the tenth riddle.
Grimshaw was already starting to moan and stir. I uncorked the chloroform, soaked the edge of his coat with it, and held the wool over his mouth until the chemical fumes stilled his body.
Atlas and I positioned ourselves on either side of him and hoisted his body out of the water, with me holding his ankles and Atlas carrying him under the armpits. Together, we began the arduous journey of hauling the detective through the woods.
Fortunately for us, Grimshaw had circumvented the front gates and driven his unmarked Crown Vic down the pedestrian path, which meant we didn’t have to carry him another mile back to the main road. I made a quick stroke on his key fob, popping open the trunk, and we unceremoniously dumped the bastard on top of his spare tire. “Let me do the honors,” I said, then slammed the trunk door hard.
Nightingale, Sing Page 18