his eyes. “He lived near Dr. Driscoll,” he answered with a non-answer.
“Ah. Well, I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help.”
“No, you’ve been a great deal of help. If you think of anything else, please give me a call.”
“Absolutely. Good luck, Agent Gallagher.”
Mark hung up the phone and then sat staring, unseeing, at his computer for minutes.
He tried to convince me that we should start doing research on people.
Mark had a sinking feeling about what Isaac Driscoll’s research had focused on. Or rather, who.
To raise him until Mr. Driscoll is ready to train him.
Was Driscoll studying Jak? Or just “training” him? Both? To what end? He’d found the notes on the strange animal observations in Driscoll’s cabin, but nothing more. He’d go back and look under all the floorboards, in the rafters, he decided, before officially clearing it as a crime scene. There had to be more. If Jak wasn’t mistaken, the man had had cameras set up, for God’s sake.
Jak . . . he has secrets in his eyes.
“What secrets are you still keeping from me, Jak?” he murmured to himself. Did he know more about what Driscoll had been doing? Or had he himself done something he was ashamed of?
The picture of The Battle of Thermopylae that he’d printed was on his desk, half obscured under a pile of papers. He picked it up, gazing at it for a few moments, remembering what he’d read about the Spartans.
They’d trained their children to become soldiers, they’d made them endure harsh survival exercises to strengthen them, to discover their worth.
Children . . . not child.
He pictured the cabin where Jak lived, the unused beds. The dormitory setup that only housed one person. If Driscoll had set the place up like that, who else had he intended Jak share it with? And why hadn’t they?
Mark dug out the “map” that had been found in Isaac Driscoll’s drawer, looking again at the one word printed at the bottom: Obedient.
Isaac Driscoll had been fascinated with the Spartans, had possibly been doing his own studies on children, somehow mixing up the ancient rituals with his current project, whatever that might have been. The possibility was almost too sick to consider, too demented to contemplate the details until Mark had more answers. He did another Google search, this time looking for phrases related to Thermopylae and the word obedient. After a few minutes, he found it, a monument that was erected to the soldiers who’d died at Thermopylae: Tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie.
A monument to the dead. Obedient soldiers. A map that marked the places they lay?
A cold feeling wound its way around Mark’s bones. He could be wrong. It was just a word. Just a . . . hunch based on unconnected pieces to the puzzle that was this case. This was going to be a shot in the dark. Still . . . he picked up his phone, dialing his office, willing to put his ass on the line. His blood was humming in that way it did when he knew he was onto something. He asked for his boss and when he picked up, Mark got straight to the point. “I think we need to get some cadaver dogs out to Isaac Driscoll’s land.”
CHAPTER FORTY
She almost didn’t recognize the man in the khakis and the white button-down shirt as he came toward her, but it was him. She knew that stride, the way he seemed not to walk but to prowl. And then he smiled—that boyish unpracticed grin full of open pleasure—and her heart leaped. She rushed forward and he did too, taking her in his arms, both of them laughing, as though they hadn’t seen each other in months, when in fact it had only been three days.
He swung her around once and she laughed, leaning forward so he could kiss her. He did, both of them sighing as their mouths met. When the kiss ended, he placed her back on the marble floor of the Fairbanks’s foyer.
“You shaved,” she said, bringing her hand to his smooth cheek, just the bare hint of dark stubble underneath his skin. He was ridiculously handsome, his jawline strong, his cheekbones high and sharp, but a part of her mourned. It was the first outward proof of his changing. She knew it was inevitable now that he was living as part of society. She knew it was good and positive. She knew he’d learn and grow