Falling Light (Game of Shadows #2)(42)

An opened letter rested on top of the dresser. He recognized the official seal. It was Nicholas’s death notification.

This was Jerry’s bedroom.

He sat at the foot of the bed and contemplated the dresser.

For all that he worked to avoid it, he was intimately acquainted with death. He had killed so many people. Still, the aftermath of death was not something that he usually concerned himself with.

Nicholas had been killed just a few days ago. Because he had been murdered, there would have been an autopsy before the body was released for burial. He wondered where Nicholas’s body was, or if he had been cremated. Perhaps Jerry had requested that his son be brought home, or Nicholas might be buried in a soldier’s grave in Arlington National Cemetery.

If that was the case, Jerry might be traveling to the funeral.

He checked under the bed and around the room. Suitcases lay tucked in the corner of the closet.

The old Crow hadn’t gone far then. Perhaps he had taken an outing with the young male who stayed in the second bedroom.

An opened pack of Marlboro Reds lay on one of the nightstands, along with an old-fashioned metal lighter and an ashtray.

He helped himself to a cigarette, lit up and took a deep drag. Smoke filled his lungs. He could tell right away that his host body was no stranger to smoking. The nicotine hit his system. He settled back against the headboard of Jerry’s bed and relaxed with a sigh.

What to do.

Should he focus on this and let his forces churn through the process of the larger hunt? Or should he leave this to his FBI drones and focus on some other angle of the hunt?

Jerry Crow wasn’t so much a long shot as he was a wild card. He had no way of knowing if questioning Crow would lead anywhere until after he had done it. He turned the monkey’s head from side to side to stretch tight neck muscles.

The front door of the house opened and closed. Footsteps sounded in the hall. Alison appeared in the doorway. “One of Crow’s neighbors told us that he kept a motorboat down at the dock at the end of the road. She said she saw Jerry and his grandson head out early a few days ago, and she hasn’t seen them since. We checked the dock, and the space where he keeps his boat is empty.”

He finished his cigarette leisurely and tapped out the stub.

A few days ago Nicholas had died, and a notifying officer, along with a chaplain, had come to deliver the news. Jerry left the house soon afterward, and he hadn’t been seen since.

And he went out on the Lake.

They were such slender puzzle pieces to fit together. But they did fit.

He smiled at Alison. “I like this house, don’t you?”

Obediently, she said, “Yes.”

Of course, he knew she would say yes.

“We’re going to use this place as our search headquarters while we wait to see if Jerry returns anytime soon. One of you get on the computer in the office to see if there’s anything useful on it.” He scooped up the pack of cigarettes, the lighter and ashtray and got to his feet. “And do something less obvious with our SUVs, will you? Right now they stand out like sore thumbs.”

The drones got to work. Life was so peaceful when everybody did exactly what he said.

He wandered into the kitchen to see what Jerry had to eat in his refrigerator.

Chapter Fifteen

ASTRA WASHED DISHES with an excess of energy. As she flung items around, her mind operated on several different levels.

She had one overwrought healer tucked in the loft. One overwrought human boy asleep on the couch. One warrior sulking on the beach. One old man taking a nap. One anxious ghost.

Look at all of that drama, and none of it was relevant. May God protect her from a passel of fools. Worse, she was a fool to put up with all of it.

She looked out the window over the sink at the grove of fruit trees. She had planted those trees by seed so long ago. Now they were mature, and each year, they produced more bounty than she was able to use.

A long time ago, she had foreseen that she might need a sanctuary separate from the growing human population. She had searched until she found this small rocky island and made it her home.

The island was located north of Beaver Island and west of Garden Island. Only three-quarters of a mile long and little over a half a mile wide, it was absent from all but the oldest and most crudely drawn explorers’ maps.

At first, she had needed to expend energy to hide the island from other eyes. Then, as the spirit of the island grew more aware, it turned eccentric and secretive. It became a participant in the process and learned to cloak itself.

Over the years, ships and pleasure boats passed by with increasing frequency. While their occupants might register the island long enough to navigate around the dangerous, broken shoreline, they soon forgot about it as they moved on to other, more pressing matters in their lives.

Now, aside from Michael and Mary, only a dwindling handful of people remembered the island’s existence, or her existence either, for that matter. They were people who knew how to keep a secret—traditionally raised First Nation elders who sometimes went to their graves with a thousand years of knowledge locked in the treasure vaults of their minds because they hadn’t found pupils trustworthy enough to teach.

As she had told Mary, those elders used to bring creatures of all species to her, creatures so injured or broken in body or spirit Astra was their last chance for recovery. She did what she could for them.

Sometimes the healing worked and sometimes it didn’t. But the elders were always grateful she tried. They had kept her supplied with offerings of food, seeds for her garden, firewood and candles, clothing and other essentials.