Earl looked down at Jesse MacCarthy as he lay on the shoal at his feet.
His clothes were torn ragged, stained with mud and grime. One of his boots was missing, his bare foot bloodied and filthy, while the remaining boot was torn to shreds. His hunting jacket was hanging from his frame, one arm torn off at the sleeve, but it was his face that enraptured Earl.
Jesse looked like a zombie from one of those old flicks from the seventies, his eyes wide and staring, his jaw hanging slack and his lips flecked with dried saliva and mud. From somewhere came a feeble, keening cry of despair as Jesse’s eyes settled onto Earl’s and registered the faintest signs of recognition.
‘Jesse?’ Earl knelt down alongside the kid. ‘Can you hear me?’
Tears began spilling from Jesse’s eyes as he mumbled an incoherent stream of noise that might once have been words. Earl frowned and looked at Meister.
‘Where’d you find him?’
‘I din’ find nobody,’ Meister replied. ‘I was emptying my nets when he just walked out of the woods and collapsed right here.’
Earl looked back down at Jesse. ‘Where were you, Jesse? Where’s Cletus?’
Jesse’s trembling lips spurted a quivering reply.
‘Fox Creek. Cletus is dead. It got him.’
‘What got him?’ Earl asked.
Jesse’s sobs grew louder as he jabbered incoherently.
‘It got him. The monster got Cletus.’
3
Ethan Warner was not a nervous kind of guy. He had known fear, and plenty of it. Ethan had stared death in the face several times and, so far, had survived to tell the tale. But the corrosive, gnawing anxiety grinding through his guts right now was far worse for him, especially as it was entirely irrational.
The restaurant looked out over the glittering expanse of Lake Michigan, slate-gray waves flecked with white crests rolling their way south. A pair of cutters were carving their way north against the blustery wind, tacking hard to make any progress. Watching them helped to distract Ethan from the impending confrontation. He spent several minutes wishing the moment would arrive, and then when it did he wished he had more time to prepare.
‘You’re looking good, Ethan.’
The brunette who strode confidently toward his table was a couple of inches shorter than he was, her long hair flowing across her shoulders, but there was a familiar arrogance to the set of her frame and a recognizable icy-gray gleam in her eyes as though they were reflecting Lake Michigan’s frigid waters.
Ethan stood and hugged her. Some of the anxiety thawed inside him.
‘Natalie.’
He hadn’t seen his sister in four years. Natalie Warner had studied politics in New York City while Ethan had been working overseas as a journalist. An internment at the White House had followed after her honors degree, and now she worked as an analyst for Congress at the Government Accountability Office in Washington DC.
She sat down opposite him. Although only twenty-five years old she was already wrapped in a cloak of authoritative confidence that belied her years. Ethan could picture himself in her from years gone by, the same determination they shared that had gotten him into the US Marines as an officer and later through the greatest tragedy of his life. Natalie’s clear eyes and flawless skin were only marred by the wide jaw she shared with Ethan, making her attractive if not beautiful.
‘So,’ she began, her voice husky like his own, ‘to what do I owe this honor?’
Ethan leaned back in his chair as the waiter poured sparkling wine into their glasses. The restaurant was out of town and half-empty, which was why Ethan had picked it. Most people were at work. Ethan worked for himself, and Natalie was on vacation for a week to visit their parents.
‘Been a long time since I last saw you, and Pa said you were in town.’
‘You two are talking?’ Natalie’s eyes sparkled. ‘Did Mom pay you both?’
‘I called home a while back.’
‘Jesus, is it terminal?’
Ethan laughed. Natalie had a forthright way about her. The laugh faded away as he recalled why it had been so long since he’d been home.
‘It’s been a tricky couple of years.’
‘Want to talk about it?’
‘Kind of why I’m here.’
Natalie sipped some of her wine and set the glass down before replying.
‘You’re off the grid for four years, then you turn up when you want something? Ethan, you live in the same city as Mom and Pop yet you’ve barely spoken to them in all that time.’
‘I wasn’t myself,’ Ethan said, keeping his voice even. ‘Things are better now. Kind of.’
Natalie merely raised a questioning eyebrow and sipped again at her wine. Ethan sighed heavily, not touching his drink.
‘Joanna might still be alive,’ he said.
Natalie froze in motion, her glass touching her lips and her eyes staring into Ethan’s. She set the glass back down.
‘And you know this how?’
‘Can’t say much about it,’ Ethan replied. ‘Some of the people we’re contracted to have access to high-level intelligence. I did some work for one of them and in return I got information. They had footage of her, Nat. Not much, but enough.’
‘How old was the reel?’ she asked him.
‘No more than six months old at the time. Nearly a year now.’
Natalie stared at her glass for a long moment, and Ethan could tell that the sudden revelation wasn’t provoking the kind of excitement in her that he had hoped to see.
Joanna Defoe had been Ethan’s fiancée and business partner. Working as investigative journalists in some of the world’s most dangerous places, they had exposed corruption and in the process saved dozens of victims of abduction and incarceration from lonely, unjust deaths. But their achievements had finally caught up with them in the sinister, sun-scorched alleys of Gaza City. Joanna Defoe had vanished without trace four years previously, presumed abducted by militants. Ethan’s life had collapsed in the aftermath of her disappearance, all of his money expended in a futile search for her across the Middle East. Distraught, broke and driven by little more than alcohol and bitterness, Ethan had been given the chance to search for her again in Israel just a year previously by a friend who had been his commander in the US Marines during Operation Iraqi Freedom. That had led to his work with the Defense Intelligence Agency and the information that had recently identified Joanna as alive. Among other things.
‘What do you want?’ Natalie asked.
She wasn’t looking at him. Ethan chose his words carefully.
‘I need somebody to look into where she might be, do some digging in places that I can’t.’
Natalie kept her eyes on her wine glass.
‘Can’t you just ask your friend? Surely they would know where to begin better than I would?’
‘His help was a one-off,’ Ethan explained. ‘I can’t go back to him without having to risk my neck again for the chance of more information.’
Natalie finally looked up at him. ‘What the hell are you involved in, Ethan?’
‘It’s complicated. We’re bail bondsmen by trade, but we also do investigative work for the government.’
Natalie leaned forward. ‘Who?’
Ethan paused as he figured that there wasn’t much harm in telling her. Christ, she worked for Congress — she could probably find out herself with a single phone call.
‘Defense Intelligence Agency,’ he said. ‘We pick up cases that the other agencies write off as unworkable.’
‘Unworkable how?’
Ethan shrugged. ‘Budgets don’t justify the work, or the manpower’s not available because agencies are focused on counterterrorism. We get called in to investigate in their place.’
Natalie was watching him with a steady gaze as though trying to peer through the DIA’s veil of secrecy and uncover the bizarre things that he had seen.