Craning his neck up, Ellis stared directly into the camera for a full thirty seconds. Let ’em try. His life of hiding was over.
He knew it with each turned page when he first found the diary. He could see his family’s—his real family’s—legacy. All their work. They were scholars.
Back then, Ellis thought the Mark of Cain was a cross or a horn or something on Cain’s forehead. But his family knew the true story of the Book of Lies.
From there . . . with the names . . . it wasn’t hard for him to track the Leadership. So much of their rank and strength had been decimated over the years. But a few remained. Judge Wojtowicz remained. And therefore, so did the dream. The dream guided him. It still did. His mother’s dream for him.
That’s what it took to be Ellis.
It was a simple goal—the birthright—the Book—would help him reclaim his life—but it wouldn’t be easy. The Judge said as much . . . tried to turn him away. Even threatened him. But as he learned at the lake with his father, fear makes the wolf bigger than he is.
And that was where he began: with the wolf.
“Hey, bud,” a rental car employee with a handheld computer called out, “what’s wrong with your dog? She carsick?”
“She’s fine,” Ellis insisted, still staring at the security camera.
“You sure?”
Ellis leaned down into the back of the car. Benoni twisted her head slightly. Her eyes were glazed. Something was definitely wrong.
It had taken Ellis less than three weeks to find Benoni. That path was clear. The first pariah dog was Abel’s . . . and then . . . then eventually Cain’s. Cain’s first true mark. His first gift from God. But not his most vital one. That was the one still hidden—hidden and buried for centuries—then uncovered by the Coptic monks, redeemed by the Leadership, and stolen by the soldier—young Mitchell Siegel—so long ago. Stolen, then hidden again by Siegel’s own child. Parent and child. Always parent and child. Just like with his mom.
Patting Benoni’s head with both hands, Ellis glanced at his tattoo—at the dog, the thorns . . . and the man embraced by the moon. . . .
Parent and child. God’s perfect symmetry. It made even more sense when the Prophet told him what Cal had found. The Map. The address. Of course. Siegel’s son never hid the Book of Lies. He kept it. And now . . . that original address . . . Of course they were going to Cleveland.
“Hjjjkkkk . . . hjjkkkk . . .” At first, Ellis thought it was a sneeze. Then, still leaning in the back door, he saw Benoni’s head jerk down, then up, then down again. A slobbering waterfall of drool poured from the dog’s mouth. Her legs shook.
“Benoni!” he screamed, fighting to pull the dog out.
“Hjjkkk . . . hjjjkkkkk . . . !” The convulsing quickened, and the dog’s legs buckled as she collapsed in the backseat. She was having a seizure.
“Benoni!” Frantically gripping her legs, her body . . . he lifted her out through the back door.
“Hggggguuh . . .” There was a loud splash as a clear, mucousy liquid erupted from Benoni’s mouth, spraying the concrete and pooling on the garage floor. Benoni hacked and coughed a few times, jerking her head as though she were trying to twist it off. Ellis held Benoni close, embracing her as the acidic smell hit. Vomit. Not a seizure. For her to throw up like that, she was choking on something.
There. On the floor of the garage: A small, bright orange gob peeked out of the shallow puddle like a chewed piece of gum. But as Ellis reached down for it—
He pinched the dripping, mangled gummy worm with two fingers . . . and saw the gray, flat oval disk that was stuck in its half-chewed web.
A transmitter. She put a—
Ellis’s phone beeped, and a text message appeared on-screen:
Too late.
We’re off.
Next flight is 1 hr.
—The Prophet
In his lap, the dog sneezed, then whimpered slightly as she finally caught her breath.
“Yeah, I know, girl—Cal’s gone,” Ellis said, patting Benoni’s stomach and squinting hard at the oval transmitter. “Don’t worry, we’ll use the time. The Judge should be able to find her easily.”
Benoni again coughed a wet cough.
“Exactly, girl,” he said as he tweezed two fingers toward the transmitter’s battery. “I don’t want to hurt her, either.”
But that’s what it took to be Ellis.
38
There was a high-pitched bloop as the red triangle blinked and disappeared.
“Craparoo,” Naomi whispered to herself as she looked down at the GPS screen.
“You need to grab that?” Chief Benny Ocala asked through the phone as Naomi’s car zipped toward the rental car building.
Naomi stared outside, where a dozen passengers—most of them tourists—buzzed like bees from the rental car bus and flooded the front doors of the modern white building, making it far too hard to see. Based on Ellis’s last signal, he was close, but . . . No, there’s no way he knew Naomi was following. And to track her that fast? No way. But that didn’t stop her from staring at each and every passenger.
“Agent Molina?” Ocala asked.
“Sorry . . . I was—” She tucked the GPS back in her jacket and followed the signs for Departures. If she was lucky, Scotty would be calling in soon with the right terminal. “So you were telling me about Cal.”
“No, you were asking me questions about Cal. I was simply being courteous and trying hard not to embarrass you. Agent Molina—”
“Naomi.”
“Naomi, even when you dial our phone number, it’s like you’re entering sovereign land, as in sovereign nation, as in the most utilitarian use for your badge right now is as a Halloween costume, though to be honest, we Native Americans don’t much like Halloween.”
“See, I hate Halloween, too—my son dressed up as a Thug Life rapper this year, whatever that is. But I got a potential homicide I need to ask your pal Cal about.”
“Homicide’s a state crime. You’re a federal employee. Wanna try again?”
“The victim is a guy I partner with—Timothy Balfanz—he’s a friend,” Naomi explained, hitting the brakes at the crosswalk and carefully watching the small group of passengers that were now passing in front of her, on their way to Terminal 2. “So no offense, Chief, but if someone went up to one of your people—say, that sweet girl with the lisp that I left my message with—if someone nabbed her on a dark road and chopped her into hors d’oeuvres . . . I’d like to think, if it was someone you cared about and you needed my help, I’d do more than tell you off and bad-mouth Halloween.”
Ocala was silent as Naomi noticed a sudden blur in her rearview, where a tall man in a windbreaker stepped out of the crosswalk and cut behind her car.
“I just wanna know what Cal called about,” Naomi pleaded, glancing over her shoulder and out the back window. The man was already gone. And being out here, exposed to every passing airport stranger, she knew she wasn’t being safe.
“Y’know what the Seminole word for guilt is?” Ocala finally asked. “You.” She heard a sudden thunk through the phone. Like a file cabinet being opened and shut. “I got the bullet here that they pulled from his dad last night.”
“His dad?”
“Cal asked me to run it through the ATF folks, who traced it back to Cleveland and some obscure gun that was used to kill a man named Mitchell Siegel—”