Exodus 2022 (13 page)

Joe shrugged. Smiled. “At least we get to go back to the San Juans.”

Ella looked at him, exasperated. “Joe! This isn’t funny.”

“I know. It’s just…I almost died.”

Ella said nothing.

“But I
didn’t
die, Ella. And I still have you.” He studied her face. “With all the things you’re telling me, I know I
shouldn’t
feel happy. But I do. I can’t help it. I just think everything will work out.” Almost as an afterthought he said, “And at least the medical care was free.”

“Right. The
Northern Mercy
,” Ella replied. “I almost forgot.”

Joe caught the sarcastic edge in her voice, and his smile vanished. “Wait. What? It’s not free? You mean Beck’s gonna charge me after all?”

“No. No. It was free. The flights, too. All gratis, apparently.”

“So—” 

“So it was also really weird.”

“What was? I thought you said you liked the docs.”

“I said the doctors seemed
qualified
,” Ella replied. “And the gear was top-of-the-line—better than most hospitals.”

“Yeah, so—”

“So it was still weird. Just the fact that the ship was there—it’s a military ship.”

“Luck,” said Joe. “On its way to a deployment. You heard what they said.”

“And that whole spiel Gliss gave us, about Beck donating your care because you’re a priest. That’s weird.”

“He’s religious.”

Ella shook her head. “Joe, I researched Beck, okay? The guy doesn’t have a page on Wikipedia, he has his own book. He made his fortune—or, actually, added to his family’s fortune—as a defense contractor. Big-time defense contractor. He and his dad and sister run a bunch of companies, but the main one—Erebus Global Patriot—”

Joe arched an eyebrow. “Erebus Global Patriot?” He knew nothing about Beck, aside from the platitudes Gliss had volunteered on the
Mercy
.

“That’s the name. They recruit private soldiers—mostly former Navy SEALs and Army Rangers—then deploy them around the world, in places where the Pentagon doesn’t have enough regular military.”

“I’ve read about military contractors,” said Joe. “It’s controversial.”

“That’s putting it mildly. And Erebus is in the hot seat more than the rest. Been accused of acting outside the law, doing whatever they want on the battlefield. Killing civilians when it suits them.

“One article I read says Beck’s core team is made up of rogues. Misfits. Special forces guys who got zero medals—which is unusual. And general discharges.”

“General discharges?”

“Means they’re bad eggs,” Ella replied. “It means they did stuff the military didn’t like. Even if there weren’t specific charges leveled.”

“This is the guy who offered me free medical care?”

“Oh, you haven’t heard anything. According to the entries, Beck is also a far-right Christian wing nut. Anti-gay, antiabortion, anti-women’s rights. Not the kinda guy that would be likely to show up in your church on Sunday. No offense.”

“Maybe he’s moderated since the entries were written. Or maybe he just heard that a priest was in need and extended a hand without really knowing anything about me or my church.”

“Fine,” said Ella. “Maybe it’s all good. But there’s also this: I asked to see Beck when I got to the
Mercy
—to thank him for all he was doing. But Gliss told me he wasn’t there. That he was in Europe.”

“Yeah,” said Joe. “Told me the same thing.”

“But he
was
there, Joe. I saw him for a second—through the glass—up in the wheelhouse, when I got off the helicopter. I recognized him from the Google searches.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“Why would Gliss lie? Doesn’t make sense.”

Ella nodded. “Neither did their questions. They asked me tons of questions.”

“About what?”

“Your hallucination, about the sequence of events leading up to it. Really detailed, off-the-wall stuff: What were we doing in the San Juans? Why exactly were we there? How long had we been there? When did you start to flip out? What were you doing just before you flipped out? Had you ever mentioned the little girl before? Did you know anyone named Lorna Gwin? On and on. Over and over. The same questions again and again from different people. And then—oh yeah—tons of questions about water.”

Joe frowned. “Water?”

“They went on and on about it,” Ella replied. “Had you been swimming in the sound? Had you been diving? Could you have gone swimming or diving without me knowing about it?”

Joe shook his head.

“Weird, huh? See what I mean? I told them we’d been kayaking and they were all over that. Asked where we went, asked if you’d fallen out of your boat. Asked if you’d jumped in for fun, rolled the kayak.”

“That makes no sense.”

Ella leaned forward. “Here’s the weirdest thing of all. I think so, anyway. Remember that nurse on the boat? Navarro?”

“Yeah, sure,” said Joe. “She was really sweet to me. Didn’t say much, but—”

“She was scared.” 

“Scared?” Joe raised his eyebrows again, which tugged on his stitches and made him wince. “Of what?”

“I don’t know. And I can’t prove it. That’s just how she seemed to me. Nervous. Frightened. Maybe of Heintzel and Gliss. Did you notice she kind of averted her eyes when they were in the room?”

“Yeah,” Joe said, “now that you mention it. I did wonder about that. Thought maybe she was just really shy.”

“Do you remember right before we all left your room and walked to the helicopter? I went into the hall—to the little galley thing—to fill my water bottle?”

“I remember you left for a minute, yeah.”

“Yeah. Well, she followed me.”

“Navarro did?”

“Right. She looked pale, Joe. Really scared. Trembling. Kept glancing around like she was worried someone would overhear us. She put her hand on my arm when I was filling my water bottle and leaned really close and whispered to me. Said ‘Mr. Stanton is the fourth one.’”

“Fourth one what?”

“I don’t know. Just ‘Mr. Stanton is the fourth one,’ with these really big eyes and scared expression on her face. Her accent is thick but I’m sure I heard it right. I asked her what she meant, and she started to talk—but then Gliss walked into the hall and she practically ran away.”

“Fourth one?” Joe repeated. “I wonder what…” His voice trailed off.

“I know it makes no sense,” said Ella. “But the fear in that woman’s eyes was real enough, Joe. I could feel it.”

Joe leaned back into the sofa, puzzled. Thinking.

“You asked me to tell you what was wrong. Are you sorry you asked?”

Joe shook his head. “No. I can handle it. I want to know what’s going on. I
need
to know.”

Ella smiled and kissed him. Then she said good-bye and drove to her apartment to drop things off and check her mail. 

The cameras and microphones Beck’s men had placed around Joe’s house worked perfectly, capturing Joe and Ella’s conversation in its entirety. Beck and Collins watched the couple on Collins’s laptop.

“Smart bitch,” said Collins.

Beck nodded. “Yeah. But they have no idea what’s really going on. And they’re not gonna figure it out. We’ll download as much as we can from Stanton—as fast as we can—and then get rid of them both.”

Collins smiled, “Could keep the girl around for a few days. Just for fun.”

Beck ignored the remark. “Make sure Ring has everything he needs. Phelps is here to assist, but Ring’s running the investigation.”

“Understood.”

Beck’s demeanor hardened. “The nurse, onboard
Mercy
.”

“Navarro?” said Collins. “The one who tried to talk to Stanton’s girl?”

“Yeah.”

“Already taken care of.”

Forty-five minutes later Ella was back at Joe’s house with pad thai, chicken satays, and more of Joe’s favorite dishes from Lila Ri’s Tip Top Thai restaurant. She found Joe crashed out on his bed, snoring softly, face serene. Every light in the house was on and he was still fully dressed.

TWO A.M.
A soft, persistent chime woke Orondo Ring in his cabin aboard
Marauder
. He pawed the nightstand for his glasses and found his iPhone—the source of the chiming. Five minutes later he was at his workstation inside
Marauder
’s cavernous War Room.

The cool, dark room glowed like a fighter-jet cockpit. Machines hummed. Fans whirred softly. He saw what was on his computer screen, and his heart began to thump. He paused. Stood there in front of his sprawling desk, breathing deeply. Letting his mind clear.

He was close to understanding the mystery. Very close. He’d been the first to see the pattern: the link between the Erebus divers and the gillnetter from Yakutat.

He’d set the War Room’s computers to troll for other incidents, which is how they’d found Stanton in Friday Harbor.

He’d urged Beck to run thought captures on all the men—despite the hassle and risk—and that had led to the discovery of the chamber images, the sound accompanying the images, and the matching sound in the deep ocean.

Ring sat down and saw two new folders waiting like neatly wrapped presents in the upper right hand corner of his huge monitor. The names read simply JSTANTON1 and JSTANTON2. Progress bars below the folders showed that more data—much more—was still coalescing. 

Ring double-clicked on the first folder, and watched as images—captured thoughts from deep inside Joe Stanton’s subconscious—unspooled across the screen. He gaped but uttered no sound, fingers fumbling across the touch pad. He dug his phone out of his jeans pocket and called Beck.

JOE AWOKE IN THE QUIET DARKNESS
of his bedroom to find Ella sleeping peacefully beside him. He guessed it was the middle of the night but he felt alert. Aware.

He remembered that he’d fallen asleep still dressed, with the lights on. And he remembered something sweeter: Ella helping him, gently, tenderly, out of his clothes and into the sheets. Ella leaning over him. Kissing him. Checking the cuts on his head.

He lay still now, and his thoughts began to drift to the painful experiences of the previous days.

No.
Not gonna think about that now.

Shoving his worries aside, he focused on a subject far more pleasant. One he found endlessly fascinating: Ella.

He slid closer to her and curled against her back. Traced the smooth curve of her right hip with his fingers and kissed her gently on the neck. The rhythm of her breathing changed slightly but she didn’t wake.

Joe lay there, intoxicated by the feel of her body and the delicious scent of her skin and hair—hair still damp from a shower. The woman was a dream. Beautiful. Smart. Athletic. Funny. He loved her for all of those things and for reasons far deeper.

He couldn’t quite explain it, but in the ten months that they’d been together she’d somehow become a part of him. He
needed
to see Ella Tollefson every day like he needed air and light and water. Needed to touch her and hold her. Look into her mesmerizing green eyes. Hear her voice. Her laugh.

He’d had other girlfriends. Been in other serious relationships. But he’d never experienced anything like this. And the fact that Ella seemed to feel the same way about him only added to his amazement.

Joe lay there in the dark, thinking about a trait that had attracted him right from the start. Ella was strong and confident, gregarious and self-assured, no doubt. But her strength was balanced with a sweet vulnerability. A vulnerability tinged with sadness, tinged with loss. He hadn’t understood the sadness until weeks after their first encounter, and learning the full story had only made him love her more.

I’m not the only one healing
, he reminded himself, as he lay next to her in the dark.

He listened to Ella breathing, and his mind went back to the day they’d met.

The sky was blue, vivid blue, the smell of rain strong in the air.

The foreman shouted, straining to make himself heard over the roar of the river “On three! Everybody! Put your back into it. One. Two. Three!”

Joe and his crew pulled the heavy rope attached to the griphoist, the slack between the pulleys tightened, and the last stringer on the new bridge thudded into position atop the sills, next to two other massive Douglas fir logs.

They were deep inside Olympic National Park—Joe and a group of eight volunteers from St. Anthony’s Episcopal Church—helping a team from the Seattle Mountaineers rebuild a washed-out bridge in a gorgeous valley known as the Upper Big Chinook.

The church group had signed onto the trip for the public-service component, and because they thought it would be a good team-building exercise. A way for some of St. Anthony’s leaders to bond—with each other, and with their new priest.

The work had proven to be physically demanding. Grueling. Exhausting. Joe’s back hurt. His muscles ached. And he’d never in his life been happier.

Being in the wild, hanging out with friends, and building useful stuff seemed like heaven to Joe Stanton. The group had eaten well, swapped stories and jokes, talked faith, and grown close. At night they retired to a cluster of tents in a corner of a vast meadow paralleling the creek, and slept like the dead.

Four days into the weeklong trip, another group of volunteers strolled into the worksite, and Joe’s life changed forever.

He noticed her immediately. Every guy on the site noticed her.

She was tall and graceful, with a gorgeous smile, perfect features, creamy skin, and abundant red hair pulled back in a ponytail.

Her group—a half-dozen volunteers with axes, shovels, and other tools strapped to their packs—stopped to chat with the foreman and then edged single file onto the temporary bridge deck, bound for the meadow, where they would set up camp.

Joe was splitting rails on the opposite bank of the creek. He watched as she crossed the unfinished bridge, realized he was staring—ogling, in fact—and went back to swinging his axe. He couldn’t resist looking up again, though, and when he lifted his eyes, she glanced his way and smiled.