Richard Doetsch - Half-Past Dawn

And then she heard them, getting closer, closing in.

Jack was at a loss. It was after 1:30 in the morning. He had less than four and a half hours to get to Mia, and yet he had no idea where she was. He was so sure he could get it out of Peter, and that was his only option.

Jack racked his brain, trying to focus, to see if there was some clue he had missed. He thought he had all of the cards. He had the books that Cristos wanted, he had the passport and the prayer necklace. He examined them, wishing that they would speak to him, give him some direction.

He looked at the two fateful pictures, of him lying dead along the river…

And it hit him. It was there all along. He looked closer at the drawing of Mia, at its exacting detail. The drawing of Jack on the riverbank was so precise, down to the wet errant hairs on his head.

If there was any truth to these drawings, if the drawing of Mia was done to the same standard as Jack’s, then Mia’s depiction was the compass that would lead him to her.

A momentary blossom of hope welled inside him as he looked at the picture. He knew the area where she lay. He knew the rocks and the trees. He knew the sandy beach like the back of his hand.

The white hateras yacht belonged to Jack’s friend, Mitch Schuler. They had graduated from law school at the same time, but Mitch had never been bitten by the justice bug, heading straight into Wall Street and millions. When Jack called in a favor, Mitch never hesitated. And this time, finding out that his friend was still alive, Mitch almost leaped through the phone to hug him. He made sure that his sixty-foot yacht was fueled and stocked and was happy to play the game that Jack was still dead. He told the head of the marina that Frank Archer and a friend would be picking up his boat that night and not to expect it back until the next day.

They sped into the rain-soaked marina to find the boat already running and the harbor master standing in wait. Frank quickly greeted him, slipped him a hundred, and hopped aboard.

“Listen,” Jack said to Joy as they got out of Frank’s car, holding an umbrella over her. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about the cancer.”

“So, what’s this mean, you come back from the dead only to have death waiting around the corner? I can’t go through that again. You don’t know what it did to me to hear you and Mia had died.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No.” Joy calmed down and wrapped her arms around Jack. “I’m sorry. I can’t imagine what you’re going through right now. I love you, Jack, and I love Mia. And I will go on loving the both of you till the day I die.” Joy wiped away a tear. “Please bring her back safe.”

Jack handed Joy an umbrella as one of Mitch Schuler’s town cars arrived in the parking lot next to them. She got into the backseat and, without another word, closed the door, and the town car drove away.

Jack ran through the rain, down the pier, and jumped onto the boat. He quickly released the stern line and ran to the bow.

Frank was at the wheel, familiarizing himself with the controls, when his cell phone rang. He quickly answered it as he revved the motor. “Yeah?”

“Frank, it’s Matt Daly.”

“What’s up?” Frank said, entirely distracted with flipping knobs and levers.

“You wanted me to call you if we found anything.”

Frank froze in his tracks. He hadn’t thought about Matt since his last call, forgetting that he was probably still in his dive gear, dragging the river for bodies that weren’t there. Everything had moved so quickly; quite honestly, it didn’t really matter now if the world found out that Jack and Mia weren’t in the river. But there was an urgency in Matt’s tone that unnerved him; he stopped fiddling and focused all attention on the call. “You found something?”

“Yeah, we’ve got a body.”

Frank spun around and looked at Jack, who was casting off the bow line. “Whose body?”

“We’re not sure yet. It’s wedged in the spillway. It may take some time to get it out. It’s real tough working underwater at night.”

“I’m sure it is.” Frank was hardly listening as confusion began to wrap around him. “Do me a favor and call me as soon as you have an ID.”

“You got it.” And Daly hung up.

Jack turned toward Frank as he cast off the last line and pulled in the bumpers. “Who’s on the phone?”

Frank struggled for words. “Just my wife.”

As Mia looked out across the water, the slim chance of escape was not what scared her. What tested her mental stability was what she saw across the body of water, two miles away to the west. She understood now where the photo of her daughters at play that Cristos had left her was taken from. It was clear that he had her children under surveillance this whole time. The site she was staring at was the distant beach house where Jack was raised, the house of her in-laws, the place where her daughters now slept.

While sitting on the sandy beach behind his boyhood home, Jack would tell her tales of his youth, stories of a time before he was born, of the great island across the water, where the abject poor were buried in unmarked graves on the southern side, while for fifty years the opulent estate of Marguerite Trudeau hosted the rich and powerful at her weekly summer parties.

Mia was two miles from shore, a swim she could easily make, but it would leave her an easy target for the men who were closing in. She could hear the approach of her pursuers, and without another thought, she turned and headed back into the woods.

She headed in the direction of what she believed was south, away from the mansion, working her way through the woods for five minutes. She could hear her stalkers not far behind, the sound of their footfalls coming from two different directions. Clearly, they had split up and were closing in.

The rain began to fall in large, soaking drops. Mia was drenched in thirty seconds. The thunder was close enough to shake the ground she ran on, the deep, engulfing rumble startling her with every strike.

Before she knew it, she was in the overgrown potter’s field, a world of the dead, countless souls buried beneath her feet, forgotten to the world. Brush had overtaken the footstones, and trees had sprouted long ago, their roots digging down deep into death, carrying it out of the earth, and filling the woods with an ominous cloud of foreboding.

With the storm’s full force nearly upon her, the dark clouds blotted out the moonlight, plunging her into near-total darkness. She stumbled, falling hard to the ground, scrambling through the mud to regain her footing. With the sounds of the driving rain, of the constant thunder, she could no longer hear her pursuers. She spun around the potter’s field as a terrible fear crept up within her, as though she was on the edge of death. She waited for the bullet to strike.

And through the sounds of the storm, she once again heard them, less than ten yards away. She froze in place, holding her gun high, her finger on the trigger. Waiting for death.

Thunder exploded, the flash of lightning briefly illuminating the darkness around her: shattered foot-and headstones, felled trees, overgrown bramble. The brief bolt left her eyes momentarily scarred with spots, inhibiting what little sight she had.

Another sound, this one just feet away. She pulled the trigger in the direction of the sound, and her gun exploded, the flash lighting her surroundings for the briefest of seconds. She saw them, two of them, rain running down their angry faces, their hair plastered to their heads. They both spun and began rapid-firing in the direction of her shot.