It was from Cade.
But then it hit him, almost as hard as the knowledge about Kilroy. What was missing from his earlier farewell with Cade. Cade was empty-handed. But Cade always took a trophy. Always.
Unless he didn’t really believe that Nolan was the Boogeyman. Unless he knew that his prey was still out there.
Cade had sent him two files, both tagged as urgent. The smaller one, a voice memo, was marked “Listen to This First.”
He put the phone to his ear.
“By now you’ve dealt with Holt,” Cade said. “I apologize for acting without you and misleading you. But you’ll understand, even if you do not approve, once I tell you what I believe.”
Zach listened. He felt rage well up in him, both from Cade’s deception and his ability to predict Zach’s behavior so perfectly. It was a stark reminder that Cade knew him better than he knew Cade. More insulting was the added realization that Cade knew him better than he knew himself.
Cade explained himself in clipped tones. His even, calm voice did nothing to quell the rising sense of panic Zach felt. He checked his watch, wondered if he could possibly hit the brakes on everything, send Cade’s plans to a screeching halt. But it was already too late. It was already happening.
“Believe me when I say this is the only way, Zach. But if it’s going to work, I need your help.”
Cade outlined what he wanted Zach to do. Zach fumed. He was boxed in. Even if he called the president right now, there was no alternative. He almost hung up the phone. But he forced himself to listen to the end.
“Before you carry any of this out, however, you have a decision to make. Play the video file. You’ll understand what I mean.”
There was an uncharacteristic pause.
“It’s been good working with you,” Cade said. Then the message ended.
Zach wondered if Cade was simply emulating the awkward goodbye. Or if he genuinely grappled with his feelings. Either way, Zach had to watch the video to know what to do next. He hit his brakes, causing the drivers behind him to lean on their horns in protest, and skidded to the side of the highway. He suspected this was going to require his full attention.
He tapped the icon for the video. A dark and shaky picture came up on the screen; it looked like a handheld camera in the woods. Then he recognized the voice.
It was Megan Roark.
Zach didn’t need to see any more. He knew what the video would show, why Cade wanted him to see it.
But he watched the whole thing anyway. Just to be sure.
August 28, 1872
The White House, Washington, D.C.
After sunset, Cade rose from the coffin on the dirt floor of the White House basement and went to the president’s library for his latest set of instructions.
He walked freely through the White House despite the soil on his suit and his unnatural pallor. Over the past few years, Cade had become the White House’s ghost. He was seen only at night, occasionally wandering the halls, sometimes on the grounds. Attempts to question the president about him were met with Grant’s trademark silence. In that era, that was enough for the staff—and even Grant’s family—to know that the topic was not to be broached again.
Washington was quiet. In the summer, the city was a sweat lodge and the population dropped by half as anyone who could afford it abandoned their homes for cooler temperatures.
The First Lady was no exception. Grant’s wife, Julia, was away, visiting relatives back in Missouri (and no doubt savoring, at least a little, their discomfort as they were forced to admit that the low-ranking Army reject she’d married had made something of himself).
Cade entered the library and found the president slumped behind his desk.
Grant was drunk.
Cade knew, on some level, this never would have happened if the First Lady or his family were there. Grant had not taken a drink—not even wine, which was served at every meal in the White House—since becoming president.
Grant’s eyes were closed. He stank of whiskey. He leaned back so far in his chair that he was almost parallel with the floor.
“Mr. President?”
Grant sat up without any hesitation or clumsiness, his eyes wide open and awake. The reflexes of a drunk and a soldier, combined; the ability to simulate sobriety at a moment’s notice. Grant looked at him, seemed to take a moment to place him. Whatever memory came to him left a sour look on his face.
“There are some men who have to die,” he said, no preamble. “Quite a few of them, in fact.”
He picked up a sheet of paper. Cade crossed the room and took it.
It was a long list.
“You can remember their names?”
Cade nodded.
The president took the paper back, drew a match from his pocket and flicked it to life, then touched it to the paper. He set it in his ashtray to burn as he used the match to light another of his endless supply of cigars.
“You waiting for something?” he asked when he looked up and saw Cade still standing there.
“Yes,” Cade said. “Some of those names—they include whole families. Prominent families.”
“Yes,” Grant said. “Not all humans side with the human race. You’d do well to remember that.”
“Women. Sons. Daughters.”
“Old enough to know what they’ve done.” Grant’s eyes narrowed and glinted with a sudden meanness Cade had never seen in the president before. “You turning parlor soldier on me, Cade?”
“I simply want to know if it’s necessary.”
There was a brief flare of anger in the president’s eyes. Then it subsided and he gave Cade his typical enigmatic smile—it appeared for a fraction of a second as a quirk of the mouth before vanishing. “Because the general is in his cups this evening, you mean.”
“My duty is to protect you first.”
“Even from myself.”
Cade didn’t have to reply to that.
Grant opened a drawer of his desk and took out a near-empty bottle. He poured the last of the liquor into a cup and then stood.
“Come with me,” he said. “Air’s a bit thick in here.”
They walked out into the night, which was only cooler than the interior of the White House by a few degrees. The sky was clear. Grant had horses grazing on the South Lawn. It was a moment of absurd peacefulness.
Grant puffed on his cigar for several minutes before he spoke again.
“Why would you question the chance to spill blood?” he asked Cade.
A remnant of pride welled up at the implication. “I am not an animal, sir.”
“Of course you are. You’re worse than an animal. Because you can think. You know what you are doing. And you do it anyway.”
“I have no choice.”
“There’s always a choice. And like it or not, you choose to survive. You choose to kill. Because the alternatives are worse. I’ve thought long and hard about every name on that list. Which may explain why I’ve decided to revisit old habits tonight.”
“Who are they?”
“They are the members of a conspiracy dedicated to the end of the United States. They’ve been active since before the war. Possibly much longer. They had a hand in the assassination of the president, of that I’m certain.” Grant may have held the title himself, but in his own speech, only Lincoln was the president. “They helped push us into the war. They may have done much worse. But I don’t want to see what else they can do. This is my attempt to wipe them out completely. I know that it will mean many deaths. I know a few of them—perhaps more than a few—might not deserve to pay the full price for their actions. But I cannot take the chance that they will carry on. This conspiracy has hidden in the shadows too long already. It cannot survive. And neither can anyone connected to it. I’ve taken each name onto my conscience. It’s my weight to bear.”
“If you’re wrong, you’re asking me to bear the weight as well.”
Grant drained his whiskey. “Do you think guilt changes anything?”
“You know my sin.”
“Everyone sins, Cade.”
“Not like I have,” Cade said, surprising himself with his sudden vehemence. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to kill your friends? To batten and grow fat on their blood?”
Grant gave him the almost-smile again. “Thousands of them. I killed more men than you ever have. Possibly even more than you ever will, no matter how long you live. I sent boys to die, and worse, I sent them to kill and become killers. And I was celebrated for it. I became a hero. I was given this country’s highest honors for that river of blood. You have a long way to go before you can equal the number of bodies I’ve put in churchyards, Cade.”
Cade felt a stirring of something he thought dead inside himself. He felt shame.
“I apologize, Mr. President,” he said.
“I don’t want your apology. I want you to understand. I take no pride in the deaths I’ve caused. It was necessary. I did it because I believed the world that would come after the war would be better than the one before. And I hoped, in so doing, I would prevent more death.”
“I understand.”
“No, I don’t think you do,” Grant said, still puffing on his foul-smelling cigar. “I am telling you that in this world, we have little control over the circumstances that shape us. We do what we can with what we have. I am telling you that for whatever reason, you and I were given the responsibility and duty of killing to protect others. So I am going to tell you how I decided I must deal with that.”
He put the cigar under his boot and then looked directly into Cade’s eyes. The drunk was gone; the soldier remained. “When they come and the guns are thundering and the men are falling all around you, there is only one way you will stop it. You are going to have to kill. So you be the best goddamned killer there is.”
Cade nodded. Grant gave him that half-smile again.
“Well, then. Get to work,” he said.
And Cade disappeared into the night.
Sometimes I feel like a vampire.
—Ted Bundy
Cade woke from a dream of blood. Warm, red rivers of it, pulsing from living wounds into his throat, down into his guts, filling him to the ends of each vessel and nerve.
He shook himself violently. The coffin shifted around him in response.
For a moment, he was consumed by self-loathing. He had not felt such hatred since he’d first woken in a cell one hundred forty-five years earlier with the same realization that he’d fed on a human. Only this time, he had the special sting of knowing he’d discarded all those years of resolve and made them a joke.
Cade did not believe evil could ever be mitigated by good. They were simply incomparable. Any attempt to place them on the same scale was an idiot fumbling to reconcile what could only be justified by God. The sins of a man stretched out from their moment of commission into past and future, and impaled their owner on the spit of eternity. That was the belief of the church he’d been raised in; that was also what hard-earned experience had taught him after he’d stopped being human.
For a split second, he indulged himself in despair. Why did he fight his own nature so hard? Why not simply be what he was and bury himself snout-deep in the blood and entrails of his prey? There was no one to judge him for it. At least, no one who would judge him any more harshly. No president would begrudge him a few meals as long as he fed only on the nation’s enemies.
Perhaps it was time to give up the charade and simply be the monster.
It was tempting. But it also stank of cowardice and arrogance, both at the same time.
The world had not changed. Cade was fallen and evil, but he couldn’t end himself. Not until he’d ended everything like himself first. Even if he lost, the fight was the only thing that gave the scattered chaos of blood and ruin any meaning. Even if he lost, the ideal was still worth fighting for.
Cade was not human. He was a monster. Nothing would ever change that.
But it didn’t mean he could ever stop trying.
He thought of Grant, reclaiming sobriety a day or so after his only bender in the White House. “Just because you slip and fall in the mud doesn’t mean you have to live with the swine,” he’d told Cade.
Enough, he told himself. You’ve had your moment of pity.
Now get up. It’s time to go to work.
The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on.
—Ulysses S. Grant
Cade entered the main body of the plane through the emergency access panel in the floor of the crew cabin. As he expected, Butler was there. He was scheduled to rotate to another position in fifteen minutes.
“Son of a bitch,” Butler said, turning at the sudden sight of Cade. His eyes went wide with recognition and relief at the same instant. “Cade. What are you—”
Cade hit him. Butler crumpled into a heap. He believed he had a fairly good estimate of the man’s durability. But he wasn’t an anesthesiologist and his precision was less than surgical. It was possible that Butler would never wake up. Cade didn’t have much experience with less-than-lethal force.
Still, the Secret Service agent seemed to be breathing well when Cade stuffed him into the storage closet.
If Cade failed, it wouldn’t matter. Everyone on board would die anyway.
CADE RISKED FORCING the door to the flight deck. It snapped easily, but the sound could have alerted someone even with the noise of the engines.
He braced himself and pushed inside. He had to be sure.
Sunlight streamed through the windshields. Cade recoiled as if struck, feeling his face and hands burn. Above the clouds, the sky was achingly blue and bright. He forced himself to withstand the glare as he checked each body.
All dead. The flight crew were still strapped in their chairs, heads twisted nearly 180 degrees on their necks. The killer had not wasted any time.
Cade knew he never had a chance to save them. Even if he’d been in the cockpit, the daylight would have left him helpless. The only chance would have been to spread a warning before the flight, and he had decided against that from the start.
He closed the door.
He didn’t fool himself. Cade knew he’d taken a risk and these men had died for it. Their lives were on his conscience.
They had plenty of company there.
Then the lights went out.
He felt feverish and weak. He wished he had more time to recover from the sudden, dazzling sunlight. He hoped the sun would weaken his prey as well. Too many people were dead already. But again, he wasn’t about to fool himself.
He was headed into a fight where the odds were against him.
It was time for the main event.
OH, IT WAS ALL SO PERFECT.
The Boogeyman felt as close as he could come to true joy. So many warm bodies all trapped in a giant steel container with him. It was his own little canned game preserve.
He knew he should have taken more time with them, but he really was anxious to get rid of the Secret Service so he could start on the First Family. The jet’s oversized fuel tanks would keep them in the air for seventeen hours. He wanted to use as much of that time as possible on the people closest to the president.
He intended to land the plane himself and leave the bodies for everyone to see. He wanted Cade to know just how badly he’d failed. He wanted to tear out the president’s heart without laying a hand on him.
But first things first. Mood lighting.
He found the control panel for the lights on the bulkhead by the crew compartment. He turned them off, then smashed the panel with his fist.
The plane plunged into darkness.
Much better.
IN THE GUEST SECTION just behind the staff area, Candace flipped through pages on her iPad, not seeing them at all. All she could focus on was the clock at the top of the screen. She was strung tight enough by the waiting. Her little brother certainly didn’t help.
>
One of Robbie’s action figures landed on her screen. Again.
“Robbie, for God’s sake, stop throwing your dolls around.” She flung it back to him on the couch across the cabin from her.
“It’s Rob,” he said, puffing his small chest up as much as he could. “And it’s not a doll. It’s an action figure. And I’ll do what I want with it.” He went back to watching one of his favorite movies on the huge flat-panel display. She looked up just in time to catch a particularly gruesome disembowelment.
Candace drew a deep breath through her nose and exhaled slowly. It wasn’t his fault, she reminded herself. Robbie was born just after her father had been elected to the Senate. Their mother had proudly campaigned until a doctor put her on bed rest; they had lost other pregnancies, and this was their last chance. He came out healthy and perfect. And from the time he’d been six weeks old, he’d been shuttled between D.C. and Illinois. He had more friends on the flight crews than he did at any school. His whole life was spent competing with voters for their parents’ attention.
He didn’t get any of the time Candace had, before politics became all-consuming, when she and her father would spend a whole afternoon making pizza by hand and then watching old movies. She could still remember going to the mall with her father to buy school clothes without anyone bothering them or even recognizing him.
Robbie didn’t get any of that. His life was harder. That had to affect him.
The doll hit her screen again, this time leaving a deep gouge.
When she looked up, he was flipping her off with both hands.
Of course, it was also possible he was just a little shit.
“Robbie…” she said.
“I told you: it’s Rob,” he yelled back.
Their mother, Rachel, poked her head into the cabin from the press area. It was empty this flight, which was why she was doing a phone interview with People magazine there. “Honestly, Candace,” she said. “You’re supposed to be the grown-up.”
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