Mr. Shepherd? What’s wrong?”
Agent Njeim shouted through the snow and the roar of the helicopters and the neighbor who demanded to know what was going on here.
I glanced back at her, at the men lined up on the road, and held my hand up for her to wait. I turned back to the doorway. Already some snow was cascading inside.
The heads of my daughter-in-law and grandchildren were lined up on the couch inside the front door. My daughter-in-law’s head in the middle, my grandchildren’s heads flanking her.
I stepped inside, closing the door behind me.
Despite the three choppers outside, the house was silent. In a room somewhere nearby a grandfather clock ticked.
“Hello?”
No answer.
I started deeper into the house. The next room I came to was the kitchen. Norma Greene lay on the floor with a single bullet hole in her head. She stared at the wall nearest her with wide, glassy eyes. Her blood had spread across the linoleum floor.
Behind me, the front door opened and Agent Njeim stepped inside.
“My God.”
“Norma Greene is in here.”
“How long has she been dead?”
“Looks to be in the past twelve hours.”
Agent Njeim closed the door behind her. She stared at the three heads on the couch for several long seconds without speaking. Finally, she blinked and looked up at me.
“Who knew that you grew up here?”
“Outside my father and mother and grandparents? Nobody. This was my grandparents’ house, you understand. My grandfather worked at the paper mill most of his life. My mother was born in this town, but she had always wanted to live in New York City. That was why she ended up there.”
“What brought her back?”
“Me. And the Reaper, though by the time I was born the Reaper had been killed. But my father didn’t put it past the military to send someone else after him, and he wanted to keep my mother and me safe, so he sent my mother to live up here with her parents. This was where I was born, in this house. My grandparents knew a local doctor who delivered me and who managed to get me a birth certificate. My father’s name wasn’t on the certificate. As far as the entire town was concerned, for those who noticed such things, I was born out of wedlock. My father sent money whenever he could, he wrote, but he never visited.”
Agent Njeim stepped into the kitchen. She crouched down next to Norma Greene, being sure to keep out of the circumference of blood. She stood back up.
“So nobody knew you had grown up here?”
“No. I went to school here until I turned ten. That was when my father decided it was time for us to come to the city.”
“When did you … start to display your powers?”
“Probably much sooner than I remember. My mother watched me carefully from the moment I was born to see whether or not I was different.”
We started through the rest of the house, Agent Njeim with her gun in hand.
“My mother had told my grandparents because she felt they had a right to know. My grandparents were good people. They helped raise me. Then I turned ten and my grandfather died of a heart attack. A couple months later, my father wanted us to come back to the city.”
“Did you have friends?”
“I was friendly with some of the kids at school, but nobody who was close.”
The bathroom was empty, as was the dining room. Down the hallway, the bedroom door stood open.
“My mother had explained to me early on how I was different. She told me I had to do whatever I could to keep my differentness to myself. I knew about Temple then—every kid my age did—but she didn’t tell me the connection because she feared I would brag about it at school.”
“Anything odd ever happen to you while you were here?”
“What do you mean?”
“If the only people who knew you lived here were your parents and grandparents, I’m trying to figure out how these people knew about the place. Why they would go to all the trouble of bringing your daughter-in-law’s and grandchildren’s heads here.”
We continued down the hall. Neither of us was surprised to find Frank Greene in the bedroom. Based on the way his body had fallen, it looked as if he had run into this room. Away from his wife. Letting his wife die first. Or maybe he had been in the bedroom when the intruders broke into the house. If so, his body had more bullet wounds than his wife. Three in the back, one in the head. His hand was outstretched toward the bed.
I stepped into the room.
In my head, I pictured him rushing into the room for some reason, bullet holes already in his back. He stumbles, falls to the floor, but still keeps trying to crawl forward. Reaching for something on the bedside table when the shooter enters the room and places one final bullet in his head.
Agent Njeim prompted, “Nothing unusual happened to you?”
“No.”
I stared down at Frank Greene and the layout of the bedroom.
“Well, yes, something unusual did happen. The reason my father decided it was time for us to come back to the city, now that I think about it.”
“What?”
“I decided to walk into town by myself one day. My mother had given me money for the corner store and I wanted to buy candy. The shopkeeper had always been friendly to Negro kids. And there was this boy who stopped me on the way. He didn’t say anything, just pushed me. I tried to walk past him, and he pushed me again. Then when I tried to walk past him a third time, he punched me in the stomach. It … it didn’t hurt, not like being punched in the stomach hurts most people, especially kids, but still, it was the first time it happened. It surprised me, and I fell to the ground. And the boy, he started kicking me as hard as he could. And despite his size and age, he was strong. And mean. He never said anything. There was nobody else around. But then a car stopped and someone shouted at the boy and the boy took off. The person in the car got out, maybe to try to help me, but I jumped up and ran back home. My mother wanted to know what was wrong, so I told her, and that was when she sent a letter to my father, and he decided it was time to bring us back to the city.”
“Who was the boy?”
“No idea. I had never seen him before. I didn’t know him from Adam.”
I stepped over Frank Greene’s body to inspect the bedside table. There was nothing on top except an alarm clock and a Blake Crouch paperback and a glass of water.
I opened the top drawer. Inside was a large Bible, nothing else. I closed the drawer, went to open the bottom drawer, but paused and opened the top drawer again. I picked up the Bible. Held it in my hand for a moment, weighing it, and then opened the cover.
The Bible had been hollowed out. In fact, it wasn’t even a Bible. Just the outside was meant to look like a Bible. Inside was a Smith & Wesson pistol.
I took the pistol out, dropped the magazine. The thing was fully loaded. Which meant Frank Greene was coming to protect himself against the people who had broken inside to kill him and his wife.
The house was so quiet and still that we both heard the front door open. One of the men shouted.
“Agent Njeim?”
I put the gun back in the Bible and put the Bible back in the drawer. We returned to the front of the house.
The man was staring at the heads on the couch.
Agent Njeim said, “What do you have for me?”
“The neighbor says an SUV showed up here six hours ago. Two men got out, one of which was carrying a large black bag. They went inside and came back out ten minutes later and left.”
“What did the neighbor do then?”
“Nothing. Turns out he doesn’t believe in getting involved in other people’s business. But when we showed up, he thought he should say something.”
The man looked back at the couch.
“Who do the heads belong to?”
I said, “My family.”
“Why are they here?”
Agent Njeim said, “We don’t know. That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”
The man shook his head. He muttered as he headed back outside.
“Goddamned wild goose chase.”
I turned to Agent Njeim. I could see in her face she was thinking the same thing I was.
I said, “Three teams. We took three teams away from the city.”
Agent Njeim nodded. She reached into her parka and brought out her disposable. She flipped it open and punched the only number programmed into it.
Time seemed to slow. The grandfather clock in the next room was extraordinarily loud.
Agent Njeim listened to the phone, and relief crossed her face at once when she spoke.
“Thank God, Roger. Yes, we made it, and we found … well, the heads of Mr. Shepherd’s daughter-in-law and grandchildren. But has anything happened there?”
She listened for a long moment, then shook her head at me as she spoke into the phone.
“Good. We just wanted to check.”
I asked, “Al-Naser is still at the black site?”
“Roger, please check that al-Naser is still in custody.”
She waited. A minute passed. I watched her face the entire time. I could tell the instant Roger spoke again. I saw her eyes widen slightly, and her lips part. She spoke quietly before closing the phone.
“We’re on our way back now.”
“Al-Naser?”
Her face had gone ashen.
“He’s escaped.”