The Dark Remains - Mark Anthony [69]
“What can I help you with, Mitchell?” she said, picking up a pen in a small hand just in case. It behooved one to stay a step ahead in life.
She listened carefully to the deep, musical, slightly twanging voice on the other end of the line. It wasn’t often that she spoke to Davis or Mitchell Burke-Favor as the two were occupied most of the time by their ranch south of town, although she did listen to Mitchell’s radio show if she happened to be at the sheriff’s station on a Wednesday night. As long as she had known them, the two men had run a good operation. They were polite to their neighbors and kept their hired hands in line. Castle County could use a few more citizens like that.
She adjusted the phone in the crook of her shoulder and wrote in a blocky shorthand on the pad of paper. “So two men came to your ranch early this morning?”
Affirmation from the other end of the line.
“Did you know them prior to their coming?”
Hesitation, then a negative.
“And can you describe these men to me, Mitchell?”
Jace started to jot down notes as the voice on the other end continued. Then, carefully, she set down the pen and pushed the pad of paper away from her.
“I see. And did these men from Duratek tell you what it was they wanted?”
Jace only heard two words before Mitchell’s voice was drowned out by a roaring that seemed to rush through the wire and into her ear.
Travis Wilder.
Jace knew that sound. It was the roar of the ocean she dreamed about at night—the great, roiling sea that was neither solid nor liquid, neither dark nor light. The dream had first come to her as a girl in sixth grade, precisely one year after the day she wheeled her pink bicycle into the garage, had noticed an oddly swaying shadow, and had looked up into the swollen, violet face of her father.
She had still been standing there—clutching the handlebars of her bike, gazing at her strong, handsome father, who had hanged himself from the rafters at the age of thirty-six in a place where he knew his daughter would be the first to find him—when the door to the garage opened and she heard her mother’s scream.
For most of her life Jace had had the dream rarely, only after a particularly unsettling day. And those were rare enough—for her entire adult life, from junior college to truck driving to law enforcement, had been an ordered series of steps as easy to manage as the files on her desk.
Then things had changed, and all her logic, all her preparation, was nothing against what would be. For the last two months, the dream had come to her nearly every night. Ever since Maximilian Bayfield perished in the blaze that consumed the Mine Shaft Saloon. Ever since Travis Wilder had vanished.
She still had the newspaper clipping from last June, the first one to bear a headline about the new Black Death. That Max had had the disease there could be no doubt; all the symptoms had been evident. But the newspapers had been wrong on one account. It was not a plague of “unknown origin.” Jace knew exactly where it had come from.
I was just wondering if you’d seen Max today, Travis had said to her that day at the Mosquito Café. The last day she had seen him. The last day of Maximilian’s life.
Marriage and kids had been next on the checklist of Jace’s life, and Maximilian had been healthy, cute if not handsome, smart for certain, and—perhaps most importantly—gentle of nature. Love was one thing Jace was pretty sure had been removed from her list that day in the garage, but she had cared for Maximilian. And she had been able to do nothing for him.
It doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it, Jace? Travis had said.
He had seemed so genuinely concerned. For a moment her heart had softened. Then