Strong Cold Dead (Caitlin Strong, #8)(29)

“A man dies as he lives, boy,” White Eagle said, before Dylan could respond. “Even I will die someday, once my granddaughter here is ready to assume her rightful place—two centuries is enough for any man. But there is one more battle to fight first.”

“So, who did send those gunmen in 1874?” Dylan asked him. “Who were they really working for?”

The old man lumbered to his feet, pushing off Dylan’s shoulder and accepting Ela’s help.

“Time for you to leave,” White Eagle told both of them. “The night has given all it has to give.”

“What happens now?” Dylan asked, rising and brushing the dirt and brush off his jeans, glancing toward the shed, where he was sure he’d heard something again. That made him think of the flickering shadow he’d spotted in the mouth of one of the caves overlooking White Eagle’s property, but when he looked back it was gone.

“Nature has a way of setting things right. Like it did here, all those years ago.” The old man hesitated, seeming to sniff the air. “Like it will again today. Nature knows no time. Go now, boy, and don’t come back until someone smarter wears your shoes.” White Eagle’s eyes locked on Ela, piercing in their intensity, as she finally succeeded in dragging Dylan away. “Make sure he doesn’t trip in the woods.”





23

AUSTIN, TEXAS

Daniel Cross sat on a bench in the grassy courtyard section of the Domain, a mall in north Austin, feeling the heat bleed out of the air as night settled in. He was hungry, but all the food places he could afford were still too crowded to risk standing in line. Since he couldn’t return to his apartment, Saflin and Zurif had given him money for some clothes and a motel room. He’d found some jeans and shirts on sale in one of the clothing stores and sat now with a pair of bags on either side of him so nobody could share the bench, while he watched the crowd some more before checking into the motel. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do right now, and he kind of enjoyed watching people coming and going from the more upscale stores he’d never set foot in.

If only they knew …

Cross was particularly enjoying himself tonight, given that this snippet of humanity reminded him so much of the kids who’d made his youth a living hell, all grown up. The kids who’d giggled and whispered as he passed, or pulled his shorts down in gym, or drew caricatures of him on the blackboard, with blotches dotting his long, narrow, cartoonish face. The kids who’d christened him Diaper Dan.

He’d have his revenge on each and every one of them now. Make their lives a living hell, just like they’d made his.

Because what they didn’t know was that Daniel Cross had an IQ pushing one hundred sixty. That he was smarter than any of his science teachers by the time he hit tenth grade, already bored out of his mind. That reality instilled in Cross a smug self-assurance that made him feel superior to the faceless trolls who came and went through the doors of the assorted stores around him. His tormenters all grown up, with no conception of the power he held over them.

“Eenie, meenie, miney, mo,” he said to himself, pointing to a few shoppers exiting Neiman Marcus. “Oh, that’s right, you’re all gonna go.”

The accidental rhyme brought a smile to his face. Making the drive out to the Comanche Indian reservation had actually saved him from the men who’d showed up at his apartment. That made him think back a few weeks to the first time he’d met Razin Saflin and Ghazi Zurif, when he responded to a knock on his apartment door.

*

“We’d like to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“The posts you’ve been leaving on certain message boards, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.”

“Are you following me?”

Zurif and Saflin looked at each other.

“Because I’ve only got, like, fourteen followers.”

“We know who you follow,” Zurif said.

“That’s why we’re here,” Saflin added. “Because we follow Allah and nothing else.”

“He sees your message as divine providence in pursuit of His will.”

“You guys aren’t cops, are you? If you are, you’d have to tell me.”

They looked at each other again.

“One of your messages said you could serve Allah,” Saflin started this time. “We’d like to know how.”

“I never mentioned Allah.”

“Our cause is His cause. Serve us, and our movement, and you serve Him.”

“Do I need to convert to Islam or something?”

“Your service is testament to your faith,” Zurif said. “Your actions before Allah are an acceptance of His grace.”

“Now explain what you wish to place before Him to fulfill His word,” Saflin added, in what sounded like an order. “How you think you can help us.”

*

Cross had told them, holding nothing back. Let it all spill out behind the pressure released from a lifetime of pent-up frustration, the only way to escape the shadow of Diaper Dan. How his expertise in chemical engineering had landed him a freelance job on the Comanche reservation. How he’d uncovered a blight of dead animals in the course of his analytical work. With his curiosity piqued, how he’d conducted his own methodological study of the land to ascertain what was killing wildlife that included birds and small game. He had been amazed by what he found, and not about to share it with a soul until he was sure—amazed to the point of giddiness when his own experiments provided confirmation that he had found an ancient, deadly, and unstoppable weapon.