The Sign (55 page)

He nodded, and slipped on his socks and lace-up shoes. Matt came over. He put a friendly hand on the old man’s shoulder. “My name’s Matt Sherwood, Father. Everything’s going to be fine. Just stay close to Gracie and try not to make any noise, okay?”

The old priest nodded his readiness, the deepening creases in his forehead betraying his unease. Matt glanced at Gracie. They exchanged tight nods, then Matt opened the door and stepped out.

He didn’t see it coming. The strike came flying out from the right, his attacker hugging the wall closely. It nailed him just behind his right ear, a downward blow that had a hard leading edge to it, as if the fist had been balled around a hard stump. It lit up the inside of his skull. Matt thudded heavily to the floor as Gracie screamed at the sight of Brother Ameen moving swiftly out of the shadows and landing a heavy kick on Matt’s midsection.

Matt grunted heavily as the kick lifted him off the cool tiles of the hallway. He slammed back against the wall, unsure of where the next blow was coming from, his vision blurred. He sucked in a sharp breath and pushed himself onto his hands and knees in time for another kick to explode across his ribs and send him flying back into the wall. Then the monk was right up against him, his thin, taut arms like steel cables around his neck, choking the life out of him. Matt struggled to suck in some air, but the monk’s grip wasn’t about to cooperate. The energy was seeping out of him fast. He tried hitting back with his elbows, but they only found air, and every thrash was draining the little strength he had left in him. He tried to fight off the encroaching dizziness and drew on his last reserves to try a rear head butt, snapping his neck back as hard as he could. The monk saw it coming and jerked his head sideways to avoid it, then tightened his hold on Matt even more. Matt felt his throat getting crushed, felt all kinds of cartilage in there popping and tearing and twisting, felt his lungs retching for air. He gasped, struggling to breathe now, his eyes feeling like they were about to pop out of their sockets—

Then he heard a loud shriek and a dull, crashing thud and felt the monk’s grip slacken. He sucked in a barrel-load of air and sprung backward, shoving Ameen, and turned to see the monk spinning off him before righting himself and shaking his head back to life. Gracie was standing there, her face locked with surprise and fear, the lamp from the old priest’s bedside table now upturned and tightly gripped in her hands, its shade all bent out of shape. She was holding it up like a baseball bat, ready for another swing, her body all tight and curled and hunched like a predator’s about to pounce. The monk wasn’t cowed and he didn’t give her another chance. He swung a lightning arm out and whipped the lamp out of her hands, then brought his arm back with its knuckle out again and caught Gracie on the left temple. The blow landed with a sharp crack. It sent her flying back into the room before she hit the ground hard.

Matt shook some clarity back into his own head and leapt at the monk just as he was turning to face him again. Matt was much bigger and bulkier, but Ameen was a tight coil of hard muscle and knew where and how to hit. They wrestled and punched their way across the hallway, then the monk’s fist found Matt’s bullet wound. A gush of pain erupted across him, causing a momentary blackout that pulled down his defenses and opened him to a frenzy of sharp jabs. Matt recoiled, his body jerking with each blow as if bullets were drilling through him. He was at the edge of the stairs when he heard Gracie scream his name. A flash of lucidity broke through the encroaching darkness, and he saw the monk’s fist racing down at his head for a final, crippling blow. He jerked sideways without thinking, tightened every muscle he could still control, and grabbed the monk’s arm, twisting it savagely and spinning it around like it was a spoke on a six-foot wheel. The move caught the monk by surprise and bent him forward, lifting him off his feet as his shoulder tore out of its socket. Matt kept a tight grip on the monk’s arm and fed his momentum by twisting it even higher in a circular sweep. The monk’s head came down and his feet left the ground as he vaulted over the railing backward and flew into the air, before landing in a heavy, sickening crack at the bottom of the stairs.

Matt creaked his body upright, edged over, and looked down. The monk’s body just lay there, slack and silent. Matt glanced back at Gracie. She stepped over to him, closely followed by a shell-shocked Father Jerome. She looked down. Frowned. Then nodded.

“Come on,” Matt whispered, his voice hoarse. “We don’t have much time left.”

They slipped down the stairs, past the Croatian’s corpse. There was no need to check for a pulse. The man’s head was bent at an angle that precluded life. They threaded their way back out of the living room, past the pool and the tennis court, and skirted the edge of the fairways just as the sign faded out and plunged the neighborhood back into darkness.

By the time they got back to the Lincoln, it was loaded up and waiting for them. They all crammed into it and slipped away, a pregnant silence enshrouding the car as they wondered how the city—and the world—would react to their Christmas surprise.

Houston, Texas

M
addox blocked out the pain as he watched the ER team deal with his own Christmas surprise. He’d told the admitting nurse he’d had an accident while fixing up his lawn mower. A valid and well-stocked credit card had taken care of the rest. The surgeons had been working on him for over three hours, cutting and drilling and screwing and sewing away at his mangled arm while a couple of tubes snaked into him and replenished the blood he’d left among the trees by the stadium.

He’d insisted on only having local anesthesia, deciding he’d had enough unexpected surprises for one night and knowing full well that he could have even managed without it. They’d just about succeeded in saving the arm, but he wouldn’t have any use of it for a long time, and even then, the doctors had told him that he’d have very limited use of it. The blades had hacked their way through muscle and tendons with abandon. When all was said and done, his arm would be little more than a decorative limb. His right arm. His good arm. In his simmering anger, he’d been tempted to get it over with and have them shear it off at the elbow, but he’d pulled back from the idea, not wanting to make his appearance even more grotesque than it already was. He’d settle for one working arm. He’d just need to train it to compensate.

Even in his weakened, half-drugged state, he registered the commotion in the hospital as news of the sign’s appearance over Reverend Darby’s house had spread. The news was troubling. He knew that wasn’t part of the plan. Which meant someone was going off piste. He wondered if Drucker was behind it, and if so, what he was doing. He realized things were unraveling from all fronts, but he accepted it stoically and knew better than to let his mind fester on what had gone wrong. He knew he needed to focus on the way forward—on completing the task he’d set for himself and, with a bit of luck, on his own freedom and survival. He knew when the time was right to cut one’s losses, when it was better to find a new boat than to keep bailing out a sinking ship. And with Rydell, the Sherwood boys, and that reporter running free, that ship wasn’t just sinking, it was about to be torpedoed into smithereens.

He knew what he had to do: push forward, press on, and, worst case, live to fight another day. It was what he was trained for. He thought back to Jackson Drucker and the rest of his men, thought of their chewed-up bodies littering that Iraqi ghost town, thought about how he’d failed them all. But he’d lived and he was fighting on, and he had to keep doing that. And that didn’t involve him spending any more time in that ER ward than he had to. Which is why, less than an hour after they’d finished patching him up, he was already outside the hospital and making his way to downtown Houston.

They were still debriefing Father Jerome by the time dawn finally made its appearance over the western suburb of Houston, all five of them—Matt, Gracie, Rydell, Danny, and Dalton—helping each other out in the difficult task of telling the frail old man how the last twelve months of his life had been one big lie.

They told him about Rydell’s original plan. About the smart dust and the launchers and the planet reaching its tipping point. About Drucker’s taking hold of it and perverting it to his agenda. Then they got into the more sensitive topic of what Drucker’s people had done to him. The treatments. The drugs. The
LRAD
talking to him up on the top of the mountain. And with every new revelation, with every additional detail, his bony shoulders sagged further and the creases in his weathered face got deeper.

By the end of it, he looked thoroughly bewildered, but he was holding up better than Gracie had expected. She’d been worried about how he would take it, but he hadn’t fallen apart. He’d seen a lot in this life, she reminded herself. Bad things. More than most people could ever imagine. For all his physical frailty, the man seemed to have a remarkable inner strength. And yet . . . surely, it all had to be devastating, she told herself. Then she remembered his comment on the plane, and wondered what his inner voice had been telling him all along.

“The voice on the mountain,” he finally said, looking vaguely into the distance. “It was amazing. Even though it didn’t make sense that it could actually be happening to me, it felt so . . . real. Like it was inside my head. Like it knew what I was thinking.”

“That’s because they put those thoughts in your head in the first place,” Gracie told him, her tone careful and soft.

Father Jerome nodded, a sanguine acceptance darkening his face. He sighed heavily, and after a moment, he lifted his gaze toward Rydell. “And you’re going to say it was all your idea?”

Rydell nodded.

Father Jerome’s brow furrowed with a dubious shrug.

Gracie caught it. Her eyes darted across to Matt, who seemed to catch it too, then she swung back to the priest. “What is it?”

The priest didn’t answer. He seemed to be in his own world, processing everything he’d been told, weighed down by it all.

“I’m tired,” he finally said in a hollow voice. “I need to rest.”

GRACIE
AND
DALTON
retreated to their room, Rydell to his. In the fourth room, Danny and Matt stretched out on their beds, staring at the ceiling, sharing a moment of peaceful reflection. They’d caught the early morning news on the in-room TV. The top story was, as expected, the sign’s appearance over Darby’s mansion and the subsequent frenzy, but there was no mention of Father Jerome going missing. So far, they were keeping it quiet.

After a while, Danny asked, “What are you thinking about?”

“Same thing you’re thinking about,” Matt said.

“Drucker?”

Matt replied by way of a slight grunt.

“It just really gets my goat, you know?” Danny said. “The idea that he might weasel out of this without damage.”

“Look, the guy’s a dirt bag, no argument. But there’s not much we can do, short of putting a bullet through his skull.”

Danny didn’t answer.

After a beat, Matt asked, quite matter-of-factly, “You want to go put a bullet through his skull?”

Danny tilted his head to one side, gave Matt a maybe look, then stared at the ceiling again. “Not really my style.”

“Didn’t think so.”

“But if Rydell doesn’t take care of him in a big way, I might want to reconsider.”

“We could grab him and lock him up in my cellar for a couple of years as payback,” Matt remarked flatly. “Just feed him dog food and toilet water.”

Danny pursed his lips and nodded, mock-mulling it over. “Nice to know we’ve got options,” he said with a smile.

Matt tilted his head over to him. “It’s good to have you back, man.”

Danny nodded warmly, then turned to stare at the ceiling. “It’s good to be back.”

IN
HIS
ROOM
, Rydell wasn’t staring at any ceiling. He was pacing around, racking his brain, trying to think of another way out. He needed to call Rebecca. He needed to hear her voice. He checked the clock on his cell phone. It was still too early on the West Coast. Especially for Rebecca. That thought brought an inkling of a smile to his face. It also released a tear that trickled down his cheek.

He wiped it off with his sleeve and sat down on the edge of the bed. What an end, he thought. Everything he’d achieved. A true master of the universe, self-made, from nothing. And it was all about to be flushed down the toilet.

He had to talk to Rebecca. He tapped an
R
into his contacts list, pulled up her number. Poised his finger on the call button. But couldn’t do it. Not because of the time difference. Because he didn’t know what to tell her.

He set the phone back down next to him, felt his eyes filming over, and watched his hands shiver.

IT
WAS
ALMOST
NOON
when Matt stepped out of his room to hit the vending machine again. Gracie was out there too, leaning against the grille of the Navigator, a cold can of Coke in her hand. He downed some coins and pulled out a can of his own. Snapped the lid open, took a long sip, and joined her.

“Can’t sleep?” he asked.

“Nope.” She smiled. “My body clock’s so out of whack I don’t even know what day it is.”

“It’s the day after Christmas,” Matt said with a knowing smile.

“Really?” She grinned and looked around. “Not exactly a white one this year, huh?”

Matt nodded. Took another sip. Said, “You should get some rest. You’re about to have the most intense few months of your life. Of anyone’s life.”

“What, even worse than the last few days?” she quipped.

“Oh yeah.” He shrugged. “That was a cakewalk.”

“Some cakewalk,” she said, dreamily. She caught his glance, then looked away, staring through the scenery around them, her mind wandering off.

“What?” he prodded.

She shrugged. After a quiet moment, she said, “It seems like such a waste, don’t you think?”

“What?”

“All those people, at the stadium. Around the world. Hanging on his every word. Singing. Praying. Did you ever hear anything like that in your life?”