Blood Trust - Eric van Lustbader [29]
Crouching down, Jack pried open the fingers one by one. Something bright and shiny dropped to the floor. He picked it up and, rising to his feet, took it over to the light streaming in through one of the windows flanking the front door. It was a small metal badge, such as one would pin to a lapel or a collar. It was octagonal and had some writing on it, but all Jack’s brain saw was the shape. The writing itself was a tiny whirlpool of moving units. He tried to concentrate, as Reverend Myron Taske had taught him to do, by creating the entirely quiet spot in the air just to the right of his head. He tried looking at the badge from that viewpoint, which allowed him to calm the whirlpool of mysterious symbols, painstakingly turn them into the three-dimensional letters he had learned to identify, so he could read. All he could discern was that the badge contained no words in English. As to what language the words might be, he had not a clue. He had learned to speak many languages, perhaps in compensation for his difficulty in reading, but it was moments like this, when he was confronted by the wall of his dyslexia, that still vexed him.
Fighting the intense frustration and helplessness that threatened to overwhelm him, he picked his way to the plate-glass window, as if daylight and the passing traffic could calm him. He wondered why the club manager had been so desperate to hold on to the badge, to keep it hidden from his killers. At the same time, he was calculating who to take the badge to—a linguistics professor, an expert in local criminal gangs, or an underground slacker. The possibilities were virtually endless and made his head hurt.
He stared out the window. It had begun to rain, rather a soft gray mist that muted colors and softened edges so that everything seemed the same, like time-abraded soapstone, the present already faded into a past that could never be retrieved.
All at once, he felt a cool breeze stroke his cheek.
“Emma?”
“I’m here, Dad. It seems easier to be near you when…”
Jack, hearing his dead daughter’s voice in his head, stared at the corpses.
—When I’m near someone dead, I understand.
“Not dead. Newly dead. Before the body has cooled. While the spirit is still undecided about whether to go into Darkness or into the Light.”
—But, you, Emma, you’ve chosen neither. How is that possible?
“How is life possible? How is any of this possible?”
—I have no answers, Emma.
“Neither do I.”
—Nevertheless, I’m happy you’re here.
* * *
OUT ON the street, McKinsey and Naomi split up. McKinsey went east, Naomi west. McKinsey had been seconded into the Secret Service after a stellar six years as a Marine in first the Horn of Africa and then Fallujah. Again and again, he had engaged the enemy at whites-of-their-eyes range and lived to not tell the tales. Those grisly tales were locked away in his brain, under lock and key demanded by the various security acts his government imposed on him. He was proud of those secrets, proud of the kills he’d made in the service of his country, for he fervently believed in protecting America, whatever it took. He would have willingly given his life for that belief, but, when it came to war—and specifically guerilla warfare—he was too smart, too wily. The Marines were sorry when he was rotated out for the second time. Then the DoD decided it had a more important task for him.
McKinsey walked easily and loosely, without a trace of military bearing, blending perfectly into the foot traffic on the streets. At the same time, his well-honed radar—an ability to sense anything out of place on the field of battle or in enemy territory—combined with his keen sight to vet each person he glimpsed, even if it was only for a second. He quartered his immediate environment with military precision while appearing to window shop. It was important, he knew, to check the interior of shops, cafés, and restaurants, because contrary to how movies and television shot these things, foot chases were more often slow and plodding, more