Half-Past Dawn

by Richard Doetsch

  Jack closed his eyes, trying to draw up his memory. He could see the swollen river, moonlight shining down upon him…

  “Did you give her the necklace, Jack?” the man whispered.

  And Jack finally knew who the man was, who had emerged from the woods, who had written on his arm, who had saved him.

  And it was impossible…

  … for the man died this past week.

  Toulouse paused from his writing, finally looking at Jack, staring into his eyes.

  “You did not answer me, Jack. Did you give her the necklace?” Toulouse asked.

  Something fell on Mia’s shoulder. She flinched and kicked back in the ever-rising water until she heard someone calling her. She reached over to find a rope dropped down in the pit beside her. She could see nothing above but knew that if she didn’t grab hold, she would surely die, and no one would ever find her.

  She held tight and was hauled up. It was only ten feet, but it felt like forever; the pit collapsing behind her as her feet dug into its muddy walls.

  She finally crested the rim, bloodied, bruised, and covered in mud. Standing there, holding the other end of the rope, was Cristos.

  Standing beside him were Jacob and a taller middle-aged man. Jacob’s face was bloodied, his right eye swollen. “If Jacob had carried out his orders, you wouldn’t be here right now,” Cristos said as they began walking back to the estate.

  The rain had let up. Lightning still flashed, although its rumble was seconds behind the glow.

  “I’m glad you survived,” Cristos said. “Your husband is on his way, and how would it look if you died before he got here?”

  CHAPTER 42

  SATURDAY, 3:15 S A.M.

  Trudeau Islandl oomed on the horizon, intermittently appearing and disappearing behind sheets of rain and drifting fog. The seas were rough as Frank piloted the boat through the six-foot choppy swells.

  The storm burst from the dark clouds in five-minute onslaughts of horizontal rain before falling back to a fine mist. Against every regulation, they cut through the waters without running lights, invisible to anyone watching from the island and also to any other approaching vessel. Jack and Frank kept their eyes peeled for on-coming boats and ships, but it was difficult with visibility waxing and waning.

  The trip out was nearing an hour when Frank passed the outer edge of the island. The tall white lighthouse on the north ridge came into view, its beam cutting through the stormy night like the sharp blade of a sword. They circled the island twice, confirming that the lights of the mansion were lit and that the estate was occupied.

  After quick debate, they approached from the western side and weighed anchor fifty yards from shore.

  Within the salon of the boat, Jack checked his gun, ejecting the clip, verifying his bullet count. He cleared his pockets, throwing his money, his wallet, and the envelope with the letter to Cristos-the one he still couldn’t remember writing-onto the table. He opted to hold on to Charlie’s rabbit foot-he chose to believe in every talisman he could at the moment-and the small jewelry box with Mia’s pearl choker inside. It was like having her with him, something he could draw strength from.

  Tucking his gun back into his pants, he caught a glimpse of the envelope on the table. There was nothing written on the outside.

  Confused, Jack grabbed it, opened it, and withdrew the note. He looked at it, turned it over in his hand three times, and felt his head spin. It was his stationery, no doubt about it. It was the letter he had stuffed into his pocket, the one he had read in Cristos’s Suburban… but it was blank.

  Frank and Jack took the small skiff to the sandy beach on the western shore, far out of sight of the estate. The storm had picked up, visibility barely reaching the Hatteras one hundred fifty feet away. Jack looked over his shoulder, trying to see the distant shore two miles away where his daughters were sleeping in his parents’ home. He couldn’t suppress the creeping fear that Cristos was so close to them.

  Working off of twenty-year-old memories, Jack led the way through the woods, finding the pathway of his youth nonexistent but his direction still accurate as they emerged at the overgrown side yard of the estate.

  Staying within the shadows, they worked their way toward the docks, finding two high-speed cigarette boats in the slip. There were no guards walking around, no one in the boats.

  Rounding the outer perimeter of light wash, Jack and Frank raced around the grounds to the far eastern edge, where the outbuildings, communication center, and generator were located. Frank examined the thirty-foot-square generator, a ten-ton unit capable of generating power for the house plus enough electricity to power a neighborhood. On the far side, adjacent to a separate deep-water dock, was a 25,000-gallon fuel tank, its meter indicating that it was recently topped off.

  “You have no idea where she is in there, do you?”

  “No.” Jack shook his head.

  “How the hell are we going to find her without getting killed?”

  Jack looked around, at the generator, the stone mansion, the stormy ocean, until his eyes were finally distracted by the sweeping light on the north side of the island.

  Frank stood on the deck of the first high-speed cigarette boat. He opened the fuel spout on the two-hundred-gallon tank and punctured the line, allowing the gas to pour along the deck, seeping into the forward cabin. He followed suit with the second boat and ran back to the communication house.

  Beyond the satellite dishes and centralized communication systems, most of the thousand-square-foot house was for storage of everything from lawn-maintenance equipment to food and supplies offloaded from the nearby deep-water dock. He grabbed several gas jugs and filled them from the 25,000-gallon fuel tank, pouring and scattering them along the concrete floor.

  Heading back outside, he returned to the tank and opened the lower fuel drain a quarter of a turn to allow the gas to flow out in small streams toward the main house.

  Frank turned to the generator, glanced at his watch, and, laying his hand on the kill switch, watched as Jack arrived at the front door of the mansion.

  • • •

  Jack stood before the large mahogany door when the lights went out, plunging the entire estate into darkness. Jack looked at his watch; the second hand just swept past 1:30 a.m.

  He pounded his fist against the door.

  Five seconds later, a young dark-haired man with a bruised and battered face opened the door and pointed his pistol in Jack’s face.

  “Bravo,” Cristos said as he stepped into the doorway. “You figured out where I was.”

  “Where’s Mia?”

  “Where are my father’s possessions?”

  “Where is my wife?”

  “She’ll be dead in thirty seconds if you don’t give me what is rightfully mine.”

  “Then in thirty seconds, you will never see those items again,” Jack said quietly.

  “Do you think I’m bluffing?” Cristos stood there defiantly.

  “Do you think I am?” Jack said, his eyes on fire. “I want to see my wife. Now.”

  Cristos stared back before finally nodding to the man on his left. “I said I wouldn’t hurt her if you did what I asked. And you haven’t done what I asked all day.”

  “Your sense of morals and honor is twisted.”

  “And you ran off thinking you could, what, trick me? Leave me with an empty box? Don’t talk to me about honor and morals.”

  “You killed your father.”

  “I had no choice.”

  “No choice?”

  “I chased him, sought him out, begged him to tell me.”

  “Tell you what?”

  “My future.”

  “Seriously?” Jack laughed.

  Cristos glared at Jack. “A naive man laughs at what he can’t understand. Those two books?”

  “Yeah?”

  “My father’s is where the future is written. He could remember the future as easily as the past.”

  “Really,” Jack said skeptically
, although he had seen the fateful drawings of himself and Mia.

  “You don’t understand the power of fate.”

  “There is no such thing as fate. No one’s future is preordained. You can’t tell me some writing in a book controls destiny.”

  “Your mind can’t grasp what it can’t comprehend.”

  “Once someone knows their future,” Jack said, “just the fact that they know it could change their actions and thereby change your so called divination.”

  “That may be true for some but not for my father’s foresight. He was never wrong.”

  “Then why didn’t he use it?”

  “He did, foolishly, in the way he saw fit. Do you understand what one could do with that power? The control one could have?”

  Jack laughed. “Are you hearing yourself?”

  “My father would only write down what he chose to, and he wrote down in the last pages of his book my future. He lured me here with it, back to the United States, in hopes of either bringing me home or having me captured, having me brought to justice for all that I had done. For all of the embarrassment I had caused him.”

  “And so you killed him?”

  “And got nothing for it, until now,” Cristos said. “Did you look at everything in that box, all of my father’s things?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Do you understand what it held?”

  “Your future,” Jack said, mocking.

  Cristos laughed. “Besides that.”

  “His books, passport, money, some papers… a prayer necklace-”

  “It’s there?”

  “Yeah.”

  Cristos smiled in satisfaction.

  “What is it, a magic necklace?” Jack taunted him.

  “Sometimes the simplest of things can hold the greatest power. Like that cross around your neck,” Cristos said as he pointed. “There is no greater power than faith.”

  Jack just stared.

  “My father, our priests, have the power to heal, the power to keep one alive in ways you couldn’t understand.”

  “And a cheap necklace is going to-”

  “I can use it to stave off death,” Cristos snapped at Jack. Then he quietly calmed himself. “Use it to save myself from my fate.”

  “You said fate can’t be changed,” Jack shot back.

  “Right. And you said we control our own destiny.”

  Jacob came from the rear of the mansion, holding Mia by the elbow.

  Mia stood there, her eyes red from anger and tears. Her dress was torn, wet, and muddy, her sweater buttoned up, pulled tightly around her.

  “Are you all right?” Jack asked.

  “Don’t worry about me.” Mia nodded, breathing heavily as she fought being overcome with emotion.

  “Her condition is not my doing,” Cristos said as he saw Jack’s rising anger. She tried to escape, but I guess she thought twice about taking a swim. Now I would like proof that you have my father’s things.”

  Jack reached into his back pocket, pulled out Toulouse’s passport, and tossed it to Cristos.

  Cristos flipped through the pages and smiled.

  “You haven’t heard my terms yet.”

  “There are no terms.” Cristos grabbed Mia by the arm, dragging her with him. “You will take me to my father’s things, now.”

  Jack followed them across the foyer and out the front door into the rain. They had stood on the front porch for a moment when an explosion rocked the house. A roar like thunder echoed throughout the island as an orange glow lit up the night, flooding the grounds, pouring through windows as flames licked the sky.

  “That’s the first,” Jack said as he looked at his watch.

  “What do you mean?” Cristos demanded.

  “You will let Mia go and allow her to board my boat. Once she is away and she radios me that she is safe, then I will give you your things.”

  “Not a chance.”

  A second explosion ripped apart the night.

  “The flames move quickly… the third one is right next to my knapsack. You have me. Let her go now, or-”

  “Or what?”

  “It’ll all burn.”

  Frank had watched Jack emerge from the house-the prearranged signal for the first explosions-and lit the fuse to the communication center so that the building exploded into a maelstrom of flame. He counted down thirty seconds as he raced for the dock, firing his gun at the deck of the first boat and igniting a firestorm that tore the two vessels into enormous balls of splinter and flame. The heat set the dock ablaze. The blast threw Frank to the ground. All around him, the fire sizzled and popped as the rain fell on it, sending plumes of gray and black smoke into the night sky.

  He climbed to his feet and he ran back to his position under the trees near the main fuel tank, watching as four men came rushing out of the house. They stopped at Cristos’s side, looking at the nearby fires.

  Suddenly, his cell phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out, ready to hit ignore when he saw the number and answered.

  “Frank,” Matt Daly said.

  “Yeah,” Frank whispered.

  “We got the body but…”

  “But what?”

  “It’s not Jack or Mia.”

  Frank fell silent. “Then who is it?”

  “No idea. He’s got dark close-cropped hair. Maybe Asian. Looks like he was shot in the stomach, and there is some kind of black ooze running through his veins and circling his heart.”

  “How long has it been there?”

  “Not long, less than twenty four hours.”

  Mia and Jacob arrived at the western beach, finding the inflatable skiff pulled up on the sand tethered to a small claw anchor that was dug into the sand. Cristos had relented to Jack’s demands but under his terms. He had pulled Jacob aside, giving him explicit instructions before escorting Mia.

  Jacob pulled out his cell phone.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Cristos has no intention of letting you leave this island.”

  “What?”

  “You’re going to tell him that you’re safely away.”

  “Or what?”

  “I’ll kill you right here.” Jacob held up his gun. “Then take the boat across the water, pull your kids out of bed, and let them beg for their father, let him hear them scream.”

  CHAPTER 43

  SATURDAY, 4:10 A.M.

  Jack and Cristos stood on the front steps of the house, the orange glow of flame dancing around them.

  Cristos held his cell phone in his hand, awaiting the call.

  The minutes dragged as Jack awaited word of Mia’s safety. And in his interminable wait, everything began to cascade through his head: waking up to the announcement of his death, the tattoo on his arm, the unraveling of the day’s mysteries, racing through the Tombs, his father, Jimmy Griffin, the stranger in the psych ward who told him to hold on to his mind. Jack realized that as the day had progressed, the mystery of finding Mia, of saving her, had only produced far greater mysteries.

  Ryan’s diagnosis of madness echoed in Jack’s head.

  He vividly remembered his dog being run over in the driveway. He remembered his sad, pleading eyes, uncomprehending his broken body. Jack remembered as his last breath escaped his body… yet he also remembered him in his kitchen that morning, playing with him, the smell of his breath, the sound of panting, his warm eyes.

  Jack’s hand went to his chest, rubbing his wound. He realized that as the day went on, the pain was growing, the wound feeling new. Despite the nurse telling him she had redressed the bandages, Jack felt as if it was attacking him from the inside. He assumed it was somehow related to the tumor, to his enhanced senses.

  And his senses… despite the darkness around him, the subtle glow of flame seemed to light the whole world for him. He could hear what seemed like every raindrop’s fall; he could hear Cristos’s breathing, the sound of distant thunder as it escaped out to sea.

  He knew that his psyche was at the brink of fa
ilure, the tumor, the smallest of things, chipping away at his mind, the disease momentarily blessing him with a new view of the world while wiping away his sanity.

  But it didn’t matter. Mia would soon be safe. She would grab their girls and whisk them into her arms, far away from Cristos and all this madness.

  Frank watched from his position by the fallen tree, hidden in the shadows of the glowing fire, his gun trained on Cristos.

  One of Cristos’s men had left with Mia, presumably escorting her to their boat, while the other three went back into the dark house. Frank had no idea of the possible significance of the body Daly had found, but that could be dealt with later.

  There was still a nagging sensation running through him that he couldn’t put his finger on. He shook it off and trained his gun on Cristos. He knew hell was about to be unleashed.

  With the rain falling around them, the distant mainland coming in and out of view, Mia sat on the edge of the inflatable skiff next to Jacob as he began dialing the phone.

  She had no intention of letting him or anyone near her children.

  With Jacob focused on his phone in the teeming rain, she grabbed the anchor rope and threw it over his head, pulling it tight with every bit of energy she had. Jacob’s hands went for the rope, dropping the phone and his gun. Mia held tight, leaning back, keeping up her leverage, keeping the rope taut around his neck.

  But Jacob outweighed her by seventy pounds. He grabbed the rope, pulling it forward, gasping for air. And suddenly, he launched himself backward, throwing back his head, smashing it into Mia’s face, stunning her, knocking her back onto the sand.

  Suddenly free, Jacob scrambled to his feet, searching for his gun, but as he turned, Mia spun around like an Olympic hammer thrower, holding tight to the small anchor, hitting him upside the head, knocking him into the skiff.

  Mia took off running into the woods.

  Jacob struggled to his feet. He found his gun, but before taking chase, he turned and shot out the inflatable skiff, plugging it with two bullets.

  Mia raced through the forest, the clouds above parting; streams of moonlight poured down with the now sporadic rain. She felt a horrible sense of deja vu, but this time, she could see… but so could Jacob. She saw the semiclearing up ahead and pushed toward the old graveyard.