“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
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.