“I was dead wrong about you, Gannon.” George Wilson removed his glasses and winked. “But you know, you’re only as good as your last story.”
Gannon wrote about Gretchen Sutsoff’s life, her genius and her descent into madness. It was the tale of a brilliant scientist who came within a heartbeat of committing one of the most devastating acts in history.
Sutsoff was buried next to her mother, father and little brother in a small cemetery in the Virginia countryside not far from where she was born. The ceremony was arranged by a distant relative. Gannon was among the few people present. Lancer, Winfield and Kenyon were there. None of Sutsoff’s relatives were present when her coffin was lowered into the ground. The woman who wanted to erase the world was not mourned.
Gannon never forgot the people who’d helped him. He thanked Oliver Pritchett and Sarah Kirby and everyone along the way. And in a feature about Gabriela Rosa, Marcelo Verde, Adam Corley and Maria Santo, he honored the dead.
Gannon arranged through Roberto Estralla to send bonus money he’d received to Pedro and Fatima Santo in the Rio favela of Ceu sobre Rio to set up a scholarship in the name of their murdered daughter, Maria.
About a month after Emma and Tyler were reunited, Gannon accepted Emma’s invitation to visit them in Big Cloud.
The three of them got into Emma’s car and headed across Wyoming’s high, rolling plains. They went to one of Emma’s favorite spots, twenty miles north of town alongside the Grizzly Tooth River. Emma had packed a lunch, and while Tyler threw pebbles into the river, she turned to Gannon.
“The other day I was given a gift, Jack.”
Gannon could not begin to guess what it was.
“After we found Tyler, he was examined thoroughly by so many doctors, goodness. He’s perfectly fine, but when they double-checked his DNA they found that he’s Joe’s biological son.”
“Really?” Gannon grinned.
“Yes. Somehow, in all of this, a miracle happened.” Emma looked at the sky. “It means Joe is still with us, you know?”
“Sure.”
“What about you, Jack?”
“What about me?”
“Ever think of settling down?”
Gannon shrugged. “I almost got married once, to a reporter at the Cleveland Plain Dealer.”
“What happened?”
“Didn’t work out. I guess I’ve always been a loner.”
“Well, you’d better watch yourself.” She smiled. “You never know what’s coming for you.”
“You never know.”
He smiled back, watched Tyler toddling after a butterfly, then reflected on Sutsoff and her lonely funeral. That got him thinking about how he really had no one in his life except his sister, Cora.
But he’d lost her long ago.
He looked toward the mountains.
If she wasn’t dead, she was out there.
Somewhere.
As he considered the snow-crowned peaks he thought that maybe it was time to find her.