Southern Cross (26 page)

09:00:42

I
woke at three o’clock, surprisingly refreshed considering I’d had an hour and a
half of sleep in the past thirty-six. Juarez was already up and dressed.

“What
did Blaze have to say when you met with her?” I asked from the bed.

He
came in tying his tie and shook his head, both pups on his heels. Einstein
hopped up on the bed without waiting for an invitation; Grace sat very politely
on the floor.

“She’ll
brief us when we meet up. We’ve got another few minutes. I figured I’d hold off
as long as I could.”

I sat
up and rubbed my eyes, scanning the room for some sign of my underwear. Juarez found them under the bed and handed them to me with a sheepish grin.

“Looking
for these?”

“As a
matter of fact, I was,” I said. He kissed me lightly, then went back to the
bathroom to finish dressing.

“I
already walked the dogs,” he said, raising his voice to be heard from the next
room. “I know you usually like to…”

“No,
that’s good. Thanks. How long have you been up?”

“Half
hour, maybe,” he said. I got up and joined him. He stood in front of a
full-length mirror mounted on the bathroom door, mangling his tie. I turned him
toward me and pushed his hands away. I perfected the art of the Windsor knot
with my father when I was a kid; being married to a stodgy professor for six
years kept me in practice.

Despite
the domesticity of the scene, there was something off about Juarez again—a kind
of coolness that was totally out of character for him. I started to call him on
it, but there was a knock at the door. The dogs went nuts.

“I’ll
get it,” he said. Which was good, since I was standing there in his t-shirt and
nothing more. I took care of business while he went into the other room. When
he came back, I was just pulling my jeans on.

“What
is it now?” I asked over my shoulder. My hair was a catastrophe. “Locusts?
Streets running with bile and viscera?” I turned when he didn’t answer. “Jack?”

He
didn’t say anything.

“What
happened?” My adrenaline had already kicked in, just at the look on his face.

“It’s
Diggs—” he started.

Those
two words were all I needed. I ran from the room and up the stairs with Juarez and the dogs on my heels.

I
stopped at the head of the hallway. The world slipped out of focus. Private
Abbott sat in the exact spot where I’d left him, his head tipped back against
the wall. The only difference was the blood spilled across his shirtfront and
the way his throat gaped open. I walked past him, slower now, and only stopped
when I reached Diggs’ door.

The
room was in shambles: a full-length mirror shattered, a dresser overturned. His
clothes were still on the chair, Cameron’s file on the bed.

“How
did they get in here?” I demanded when Juarez caught up to me. Buddy Holloway
and half the National Guard were with him. “The place was supposed to be
guarded—it’s like a friggin’ fortress here. How the hell did they get in?”

“There’s
another guard dead in the back,” Juarez said. “They came through that way—we
were already stretched thin because another fire was called in about an hour
ago, but we had the place covered. They knew exactly what they were doing:
where our weak spots were, who was stationed where... The whole process of
taking him was carried out with the precision of a military operation. We never
thought they’d attempt something like this considering the police presence in
the hotel.”

“But
they did,” I said. “Because getting Diggs was worth the risk.” My voice
cracked. I thought of Diggs’ words after Wyatt’s funeral:
I’m the one who
got away. The only one who never bought into any of this…
Of course Barnel
would come for him.

Einstein
whined and followed me into Diggs’ room, sniffing at the glass on the floor. I
pulled him back to keep him from getting cut. Grace stood in the doorway
watching us, head and tail down. She wouldn’t cross the threshold.

“Do
we know how long ago they took him?” I asked.

“Forty-five
minutes, maybe,” Agent Keith said. I hadn’t even realized he was there.

“We
have people out there, though,” I said. I was starting to feel unhinged.
“Right? The National Guard is checking vehicles; there are eyes on every street
corner. Someone must have seen something.”

Juarez
didn’t say anything. No one said anything.

“What?”
I finally demanded.

“A
woman reported two men in black loading a blond male into a truck. He was
unconscious,” Juarez finally said.

“Well—that’s
good, then. When? Where did they go? Do we have someone following them?”

Juarez
looked ready to punch something. Buddy shifted
uncomfortably.

“It
seems like maybe the call went to voicemail,” the deputy said. “We don’t have
nobody answering phones right now… and with the electricity out and a cell
tower down, communication’s not what it usually is.”

“Right,”
I said. “What with the end of the world and all. So, does anyone have anything
at all? Any idea where they might have gone?”

No
one spoke. Juarez looked at me uneasily, as did everyone else in the room. I
started to say something more when he noticed the file on Diggs’ bed and moved
to pick it up. I grabbed it before he could.

“What
is that?” he asked.

“Just
a story he’s—we’re working on,” I said. “It doesn’t have anything to do with
this.”

“You’re
sure about that?”

I
nodded. He didn’t look convinced, but he didn’t push it for the moment.

“So,
what do we do next?” I asked. “Search houses? Bring in helicopters? Search and
rescue?”

“Maybe
you should get dressed,” Juarez suggested gently. For the first time, I
realized I was standing there in bare feet, blue jeans, and Juarez’s t-shirt.
“And then we can take it from there.”

06:40:09

For
the next three hours, nothing happened. I don’t mean to say no one
did
anything: they searched vehicles; ransacked houses; went through Barnel’s
compound with a fine-tooth comb. Jessie Barnel was still unconscious. The kids
who’d been rescued from the cellar didn’t seem to know anything about anything,
except some loons in black had taken them into the woods, locked them in a
cellar, and then played UNO with them until all hell broke loose and people
started dying.

We
went back to Mae’s house, but it was deserted. I peered in the windows,
searching for some sign of life. There was none. George was still gone, his
bunnies staring listlessly out at us. I opened the cage and put more pellets
in, checking to make sure they had enough water.

The
window was still broken out in George’s shed. I thought of Diggs in my arms as
we rode to the hospital our first night in Justice, his hand in mine.

“No
one’s here,” Juarez said.

“I
know.”

“They’re
staying with Ashley. Do you want to talk to her?”

I
really didn’t. I had no idea what else to do, though. I was panicking, I
knew—there were too many angles to the story, too many players, and only two
possible outcomes:

We
either stopped this from happening at midnight, or we didn’t. Diggs lived, or
he died. I took a deep breath.

“Whenever
Diggs and I are working on a story that seems too big, we take a step back and
try to deconstruct the whole thing.”

“Sounds
like a good approach,” Juarez said. He sat on the front steps of George’s cabin
and patted a spot beside him. “Where do we start?”

I got
out my pen and spiral notebook, something that never fails to amuse Juarez. He didn’t look amused today, though. I sat beside him and stared at the blank page
in front of me.

“Jessie
said Reverend Barnel was going back to the beginning,” I began, thinking of her
words during the standoff.

Juarez
nodded. “Yeah—Allie’s on that, actually. They have a
transcript of the whole thing… we’re assuming he was talking about Billy Thomas
and the murders in 1963, since Billy was the first victim who turned up with
the inverted cross, and everything Barnel’s set up revolves around the
fifty-year anniversary of his death.”

“Billy
took the girls while they were in city hall, right? And that would certainly be
a public enough target—I mean, blowing up that place would be one hell of a statement,
regardless of whether it’s full or empty.” I stopped. “Of course, now that
Barnel’s taking all these people, I guess it doesn’t really matter whether the
town’s been evacuated. He’s chosen the people he thinks should pay for their
sins, and they’re the ones who’ll presumably die in this thing.”

Jack
lay his hand over mine, twisting our fingers together. “Are you all right?” he
asked.

“Yeah,”
I said, too quickly. “I’m fine. I just want to find him.” I amended that at the
look in his eye. “Them, I mean. Everyone.”

He
didn’t say anything, but I knew he was watching me. I felt like I was under a
microscope since Diggs had been taken; like Juarez was analyzing my every
reaction, and I had no idea how to reassure him that I was still his when the
only thing I could seem to think of was the feel of Diggs’ body pressed to mine
and his breath in my ear; the thousands of conversations we’d had over the
years and the thousands more I’d always assumed we would have.

“So…
what about city hall?” I prompted again.

“They’re
already on it,” Juarez said patiently. “They’ve got bomb sniffing dogs going
through the place, but so far no one’s found anything.”

“Okay,”
I said. “What about where Billy was born? Or the place where Barnel branded
him?”

“They’re
looking at all of it,” Jack said with infinite patience. “They’ve got his file,
baby. They’re going over Jessie Barnel’s transcript. They’re looking through
everything at the compound.”

“What
about the dynamite?” I asked. “I mean, people don’t just give up that many
explosives, right? Someone had to get them from somewhere.”

“Everything
was homemade—it’s easier to get hold of that stuff than something like C4.
Fertilizer, household cleaners, found items… there’s no way to trace most of
it.”

“Well,
that’s great,” I said. I pushed my notebook aside and stood. “I don’t
understand where the hell everyone’s gone. It’s not like this is a huge
place—how are all these people just vanishing right under our noses? You’d
think we were trying to find Bin Laden, for Christ’s sake.”

Jack
picked up my notebook and pen and started writing.

“What
are you doing?” I asked.

“You
said you and Diggs deconstruct, right? We haven’t really done that yet.”

Right.

I
nodded and forced some air into my lungs. This was just another puzzle, I
reminded myself. I was good at puzzles.

“Okay,
so… key players,” I said.

“Jesup
Barnel,” Juarez said immediately. I nodded. He wrote it down.

“And
whether or not Barnel had anything to do with their deaths, those first
confirmed victims with the inverted crosses…”

“Billy
Thomas, Marty Reynolds, Wyatt Durham, and Roger Burkett,” Juarez said.

I
thought about that for a minute. “What do we know about Marty Reynolds?” I
asked.

“He
was a bad guy who may or may not have killed his wife,” Juarez said promptly.

“But
I still don’t understand that,” I said. “There are two thousand, three hundred
and eighty-six guys on Barnel’s list—and plenty of those guys have criminal
records. Why Reynolds and no one else? Why no deaths from 1963 to 2002, then
Reynolds gets axed and there’s not another victim for eleven years?”

Juarez
was looking at me strangely.

“What?”
I asked.

“That’s
a very specific number,” he said. “Twenty-three hundred and eighty-six. How did
you know that?”

“Diggs’
files,” I said carelessly. “He’s been keeping tabs on Barnel for years…” I
stopped. I was an idiot.

“These
files—they’re on his computer?”

“They
are,” I agreed. “Back at the hotel.”

Jack
got on the horn to his people to tell them to grab Diggs’ computer. When he
hung up, he came back over while I stared at George’s rabbits and tried to
quell a growing sense of impending doom. He started to put his arms around me,
but I shrugged away. There wasn’t time to sit around and be comforted—not when
Diggs was missing and the clock was running down.

“We
should get back to HQ,” I said. “I’ve got a couple of ideas I want to check
out.”

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