Deeper Than Red (Red Returning Trilogy) (17 page)

He’d just returned to the kitchen when Henry appeared in the doorway, a plaid bathrobe slung loosely over his lanky frame, his face filled with something unlike his earlier irritation. It was dread, as if he already suspected.

Ian jumped right to it. “Our girl’s in trouble.”

Henry’s eyes blazed but Ian gave him no time to respond. “Now you just sit right down and hear me out before you go shootin’ off in every direction at once.” Ian pulled two chairs from around the kitchen table, lingering only a second on Liesl’s initials she’d carved on top with a fish hook at age eight. Henry hadn’t missed the stolen glance, though. When Ian looked back at him, his eyes were fixed on the childish scrawl. But they soon snapped to attention on Ian.

“You’d better tell it to me straight, Ian,” Henry said, stiffly lowering himself to the chair beside Ian, who was now spreading the map over the table.

“I’m going to.” Ian feared he was about to unleash the tempest holing up inside Henry Bower for too long. The man had struggled to suppress it ever since resurfacing into his daughter’s life. After a gunman had opened fire on Liesl six months ago, just a few steps from her front door, it had taken every warning the O’Brien men, the CIA, and the FBI could issue to keep her father from charging after her and the shadowy Russian who’d whisked her from death. What had finally contained him, though, was his mother’s final days, feverishly reaching for him. That and the assurance of everyone on Liesl’s case that Henry’s intervention would only jeopardize their efforts to find and protect her.

But this was different.

“I got to Ava’s early last night thinking I’d help her cook. I don’t ever do this and don’t really know why I did last night, but I just went on inside without knocking. She obviously didn’t hear me come in because she kept talking to someone on the phone in her study. You know, it’s down that little hallway behind the kitchen.”

Henry nodded impatiently. “Get to it, Ian,” he urged.

“Well, I was about to announce myself when I heard the phrase, ‘If Ivan Volynski is alive.’”

Henry looked dumbstruck. “That monster didn’t die?” His face reddened.

Ian raised a “hold on” hand. “I didn’t dare budge, only listen, though whoever was on the other end was doing most of the talking. But I heard enough, and here’s the convoluted sum of it: Ava and this person, probably another agent, think Volynski just might have avoided that chopper explosion in New York. And if so, Liesl and the younger Max Morozov might still be at risk, or so Ava thinks. Evidently Max’s father is also alive and well, and perhaps coming after his son. Ava’s worried about the concerts he and Liesl are giving these next two weeks. And—”

“We’ve got to get Liesl home!”

Ian shook his head. “So she can be shot at right here? Again? Now listen. There’s more. Twice I heard Ava mention ‘the weapon.’ Just snatches about it. She said, ‘if the weapon is inbound.’ Then she said the president knows about ‘the weapon’ and that there’s some kind of FBI investigative team heading to ‘the camp.’”

“Well that really narrows things down,” Henry snapped.

“I’m not finished. Stick with me here. I heard her say that Volynski had been spotted in the Keys about two years ago. Got to mean Florida. She listened a long while, didn’t say anything else I could make sense of, then she ended the call. So I hurried back outside the front door, then knocked like I was just arriving. I should be ashamed, but there’s no time for that right now … because of what else I discovered.” Ian took a labored breath. “After dinner, I excused myself to the bathroom next to her study. While she was washing dishes, I stepped inside the door and did a quick survey of her desk. On a notepad next to her phone was the reason we’re not going to church this morning. It said
Anhinga Bay Spiritualist Camp.”
Ian reached over and jabbed a finger down on the map. “I’ve fished Anhinga Bay a hundred times. Nobody knows it better than I do, and certainly not some FBI type who’s never even been there!” He jabbed again. “That’s where we’re headed.”

“To do what?”

“That’s the camp she was talking about! It’s got to be. And everybody around those parts knows about the psychic folks who live there. People say you don’t want to mess with them. But we’re going to. Something’s going on down there and, directly or indirectly, it’s tied to whoever’s been gunning for Liesl.”

“Then let’s go!” Henry fairly leapt from the table, but paused a moment. “My old car won’t make it that far.”

“Don’t need a car. We’re taking the boat. Just a couple of clueless fishermen with a hankering to get their fortunes told. Anything to get us inside. Now go get your gear. I’m already packed.”

A couple of hours later,
Exodus II
motored from Charleston Harbor into Wapoo Cut and the Intracoastal Waterway beyond. They were headed south to the Florida Keys with enough provisions for a week. Ian had left Ava a voice message telling her that he and Henry had decided to take off for a few days to fish on their own. He’d call her later. It was the truth and Ian was content with it. Of course, she wouldn’t approve of what they fished for. She believed terrorists belonged on government radar, not Ian O’Brien’s.

While Henry drove, Ian read a long computer printout on spiritualism and the Anhinga Bay Spiritualist Camp. “You know, Henry, it would be real easy to dismiss the folks at that camp as just misfit weirdos. Plenty of people do and I’ve been guilty of it myself. But there’s more to it than that.”

Henry slid a wary glance at him. “Don’t tell me you buy into that stuff.”

“Palm reading, fortune-telling, tarot cards, crystals? No. And no doubt there’s plenty of carnival phonies peddling those kinds of tin-can thrills. But there’s something else out there that’s real enough for God to warn us away.”

Henry nodded slowly and a bemused grin spread over his weathered face. “That’s right. You and God talk a lot.”

“Got that right. That’s why you and I are hauling our puny selves to Florida right now. When he says go, I go.”

“I thought it was because of Liesl.”

“Well, she’s his child, too.”

Henry cut hard eyes at Ian. “You just read your fairy tales and let me drive the boat.”

“It’s where you’re driving us that you need to know more about, so listen up.” Ian returned to the damp pages in his hand, to the text that was so disturbing to him. “This camp doesn’t allow all that carnival stuff. It says here that only ‘licensed mediums of the highest integrity’ are allowed to practice there.”

“What kind of test do you think they have to pass to get that license?” Henry snickered.

Ian ignored the taunt, though he was glad to see Henry’s mood lift even slightly. “They don’t even allow hypnosis. Although they talk a lot about the trances these clairvoyants go into while they’re summoning up the dead and communicating with other beings in the spirit world, which they call the etheric planes.” Ian read on silently a moment. “Ever hear of ectoplasm?”

“I don’t recall the subject ever coming up in my circle of drunks and homeless bums.” The grin had now faded from Henry’s face.

Ian looked up at the man he’d known so short a time. Yet Ian had seen the depths of tragedy in his haggard face, in the brutal scorn he still inflicted upon himself. Ian took the man to church with him, talked to him, tried to break through all the locked chambers surrounding the heart of this ravaged soul, but seemed no closer today than when Henry first returned to Tidewater Lane. Every morning since, Ian wondered if they would find Henry gone again. Ian closed his eyes and uttered yet another silent prayer for the man now hunkered over the wheel of the boat, trying to stay the course on a turbulent sea-lane.

Ian ended his prayer and kept reading, for both their sakes. “It says here that ectoplasm is something like smoke or a hazy aura that rises off the body of a medium when a spirit—or spirit guide—makes contact. This spirit from another plane can use the medium’s body to materialize or convey a message, speaking through the medium.”

He looked up to see Henry’s probing eyes on him. “What’s the matter?” Ian asked.

“You think these powers are real?”

Ian didn’t know the intent of the question, but answered as clearly as he could. “I believe that some people who pursue these forces—and may sometimes receive certain powers from them—think it’s for the good of mankind. That they are helping others find peace or direction in their lives. That the forces are godly.”

“So again, what do you think?”

“That they’re dead wrong. That the forces are real, all right, but they’re not from God.”

Henry stared quietly ahead. After a long while, he asked. “Ian, you ever kill anybody?”

Ian studied Henry’s sharp profile and the severe set of his face. “No,” Ian replied warily, fearing what was to come.

Without looking at him, Henry said, “There’s not much difference between killing and causing a death. I’ve done both.” His mouth pinched hard against itself. “And I did it all by myself.” He paused. “I’ve taken a man’s head in my hands and snapped the neck bone like a dry twig. I got drunk and let a spear gun get away from me, then watched my aunt bleed to death. No force anywhere in the universe could stop her blood. So it doesn’t matter much to me what powers might be out there, what they can or can’t do, or who they come from. God or Satan. I’ve got no use for either one of them.”

Ian lowered the pages onto his lap and folded his hands on top of them. At that moment, there were no words to speak.

S
pencer Fremont left by the side gate to the camp early that Sunday morning and hurried along the trail to the University of the Spirit. The fewer people who saw him leave the better. Though Curt Vandoren had alienated most everyone in the camp with his flamboyance and arrogance, Spencer had found him just another hurting human, but with powers that both repelled and intrigued the benevolent widower.

A squall line had mounted along the eastern horizon and was advancing toward shore. By the time Spencer reached the main gate to the university, pellets of cold rain began to fall. He entered his employee code and the heavy wrought-iron gate hummed mechanically. The handle turned easily in his hands and he pushed against it, wasting no time getting to shelter. A different code was required to enter the shining glass lobby, which was empty at this hour. From there, he entered a short hallway that ended at the school’s library. Long before classes began at the University of the Spirit, Curt Vandoren recruited Spencer to work part-time. Anhinga Bay’s celebrity medium had been impressed by the older man’s competence and efficiency in his work at the camp bookstore. The fact that Spencer didn’t participate in the metaphysical disciplines of the camp, having entered its tightly knit community on his wife’s coattails, didn’t seem to bother Vandoren. It still didn’t, and he’d given Spencer more and more responsibilities about campus, even encouraging him to leave the camp and work solely for the university.

But Spencer was content with his dual allegiance to camp and university, though it wasn’t an allegiance to their missions, but to the possible rescue of those who wandered innocently into either. Camp residents had always considered this amiable old clerk as harmless in his subtle rejection of their ways, and they had even grown affectionate toward him. But they didn’t know it was Spencer Fremont who’d led more than one medium and client out of their dark journeys into the spirit world, after that world had turned on them and threated to devour their minds. It had been Spencer who’d met secretly with at least three camp practitioners over the years, teaching them God’s truths from his Word and helping them find their way. After each left the camp, no one, to Spencer’s knowledge, suspected he’d had a hand in their defection. Under the camp’s very nose, he’d quietly launched a counterattack against the “powers of the air” that spiraled about the whole of Anhinga Bay, masquerading as benevolent and nurturing, but whose ferocious appetites would eventually claim the souls of all but God’s own. Spencer was certain of this.

The man who’d failed to extract his own wife from those clutches had determined that surely someone would listen to the truth. And so, he had reported each day to the bookstore, pausing in prayer before entering and asking for God’s protection against enemy forces and those who channeled them.

The day Curt Vandoren approached him about organizing the university library, Spencer believed that God himself had opened that door. For what purpose, he wasn’t sure, not then. Was it to expand his reach to those who sought Vandoren’s teachings? Or something else? He would know in time.

Spencer began his service to the university in its library, but was soon tasked with ordering books and supplies for classroom use. He would occasionally man the reception desk and even do some gardening, bringing starter plants he’d rooted at home to the bare beds scattered about the small campus. It’s not that he took pride in the school or was grateful for the extra paycheck, which he didn’t need. He’d believed all along that there was a particular reason why God had placed him there. Each time he’d arrived on campus, he hoped for a glimpse of that reason. Now, he was certain it had something to do with what he and Tally had seen at the airstrip two nights ago.

Spencer unlocked the library and walked in, sniffing the familiar musk of old books, the sterility of the new. He hung his damp umbrella on a coat hook behind the door and headed for his desk to check the work schedule that day, specifically who was on duty and when. Because his job of ordering books often meant receiving and inspecting the shipment, he’d been cleared for access to the small loading dock and warehouse at the far end of the building nearest the service road … and the airstrip.

Because it was Sunday, Spencer didn’t expect to see anyone in shipping-and-receiving, no one to halt his inspection of the warehouse where surely they’d stored the large wooden crate he’d seen transferred from the plane to the tractor-trailer rig Friday night. But the schedule did show a few employees on duty about the building. He scanned the hallways for them now as he left the library and headed for the warehouse, where he entered yet another code at the door and, before pushing it open, took one more cautious look down the empty hall behind him.