Kiss of the Sun (8 page)

“Sorry I wasn't able to call ahead,” Jarrell said. “We're in a no-transmit mode.”

“Some kind of trouble?”

“Yeah, we've just run into a situation we need to get straightened out. You got a room open for a couple of days?”

Slinky tilted up his sunglasses and looked around. “Well, we're actually pretty full right now, but”—he pointed to one of the larger cabin cruisers—“as luck would have it, I've got the Heron's Nest available. It's one of our finest accommodations. It's got a flush toilet and a sink that works.”

“That sounds like a good deal, Slink.”

“No problemo. Mi casa es su casa. I'll never forget what you did for me over at Wilmington Island, my friend.”

“We drove through the night, so we're pretty beat. I brought you some gasoline for the generators.”

“Excellent,” Slinky said. “You cats go ahead and get yourselves situated. I hope you can join us for a little soiree we're having this evening. We're going to have some music and boiled shrimp.”

They unloaded supplies, and Martha followed Jarrell onto the deck and through the sliding door of the thirty-four-foot cabin cruiser. A piece of driftwood wired to a chrome rail above the door was painted with the words
HERON'S NEST.

The interior was cozy, with a kitchenette, a sofa built into one wall, a galley table, and sleeping quarters partitioned by a curtain.

“Not exactly the Ritz,” Jarrell said, sliding open a curtain to reveal the sleeping berth, which was occupied entirely by a full-sized bed. “But at least we can take a nap. I'll take the sofa, and you can have the master bed.”

The nervous exhaustion Martha was feeling weighed on her like a wet rug. She slipped off her shoes and crawled into the berth. The ceiling was low and a porthole the size of a dinner plate hung next to her face. Through it she could see the hull of the next boat, rocking slightly, and beyond, the surrounding green wilderness. It was a sight that made her feel centered, hopeful again. Maybe Goodwin was right. She should have never left this region. Maybe she never would again.

Martha heard the sound of a motor somewhere far overhead. Perhaps an airplane or a helicopter. She lifted her head from the pillow and listened. The sound grew louder, then it gradually receded and was gone.

Martha lowered the blind on the porthole and could hear the gentle lapping of the water against the hull of the boat. She didn't remember falling asleep.

When Martha awoke, the cruiser was rocking slightly, squeaking as it rubbed against an adjoining boat, and she could hear the faint thump of music from somewhere nearby. Martha opened the shade over the porthole. The sunlight through the tiny oval window had brightened.

She could smell the aroma of coffee. She peeked through the curtain into the main cabin. Jarrell was there, pouring coffee into a mug, replacing the pot. As she paused and watched him, a fantasy flashed through her mind—the two of them, sharing the routines of life. Weekends at home, relaxing, making breakfast together…

Don't kid yourself.

She shook off the reverie, got up, brushed her teeth in the tiny head, and then went up onto the deck, where Jarrell was sipping his coffee.

“How was your Heron's Nest experience?” he asked.

“Refreshing,” Martha said, stretching.

“C'mon. Let's go for a walk. I'll show you around before we get to work.”

They took the slanting ramp down to the island and followed a sandy path past the hammocks into a stand of hardwoods. The marshland nearby peeked in and out of their view, the creeks reflecting the afternoon sun. Frogs trilled in the reeds.

They rounded the bend and reached a sandy glade with an open view of the estuary. An ibis, cotton white against a field of deep green wiregrass, walked slowly, scanning the grass for food. They sat on the trunk of a large fallen oak and gazed at the water.

It was an idyllic scene, but despoiled in her mind by the nightmare images of the past day—the lieutenant murdered next to her, his blood and brains on the dashboard. And the feeling that whatever malevolence they had stirred up was still out there, hovering like a shadow beyond the horizon.

“Jarrell, I'm sorry about this,” Martha said.

“Why?” He took a sip of coffee.

“I got you involved. Whatever it is, this thing that's happening to us.”

“It's not your fault,” Jarrell said. “Going down there to Lineville with you was my idea. You never asked me to go. Now we're both involved, so we both need to figure this out.”

“None of it makes any sense,” Martha said. “If you weren't here, I might think I was having a delusion.”

“No, this isn't a delusion, unless I'm—” Jarrell paused.

“Unless you're crazy, too?” Martha looked ahead at the water, rubbing her knees.

“Martha, I don't think you're crazy. The Geechees think you have some kind of weird talent. I'm one of them.”

“Unfortunately, the rest of the world doesn't think the same way.”

Jarrell took a sip of coffee, then rested the mug on his knee. “Martha, I need to tell you something.”

“Yes?”

“About those letters you wrote.”

“Don't worry about those. I know you were busy.”

Jarrell turned toward her. “That's not why I didn't write back.”

She looked at him. “Then why not?”

“I guess I was afraid.”

“Of what?”

“Of where things might lead.” Jarrell looked toward the water. “I just have a lot of plans. I want to make a difference in the world, you know?”

Martha nodded. “Me too.”

“I didn't want to get distracted. But I've thought about you a lot. I would be embarrassed to admit how often.”

Martha felt a warm flush blooming inside, working its way outward toward the tips of her fingers. “I've thought about you a lot, too.”

“What do you think about?”

“I think about that day I first saw you.” Martha's mind traveled back to that morning. The terrible day when she found Lydia Dussault murdered. The day Jarrell rescued her and took her to the secret island. Took care of her while she healed. “There isn't a day goes by that I don't think about that.”

“Same here. But I always ask myself, why was I there? What caused me to be at the right place at the right time? And now here we are, thrown together again.”

Martha watched as a light breeze briefly rippled the surface of the marsh grass. “The Geechees have a saying: Sometimes you have to make a wrong turn to end up in the right place.”

Jarrell nodded. “Maybe our lives are connected somehow, interwoven in some way that we can't fully understand.”

“Or maybe I'm just bad luck.”

He took her chin in his hand, turned her face toward him, and looked into her eyes. Martha felt as if someone had released a netful of butterflies in her stomach. Jarrell leaned forward and kissed her. His lips were soft, his touch gentle and exploratory.

“No. You're good luck,” he said. “And whatever this thing is that keeps bringing us together…I've decided I'm not going to fight it anymore.”

Martha felt the warm glow radiate throughout her body. The beauty of their surroundings and the beauty of the man sitting next to her were all of a piece.

“Let's not overthink it,” Jarrell said. “We need to just take things one day at a time. The first thing we've got to do is figure out what the hell happened back there in Atlanta. I think we should start from the beginning and go through everything.”

“Okay. I've been taking notes.” Martha pulled her notebook from her back pocket, flipped it open. “I've got the whole timeline right here.”

“So, this really started when the old couple came to you for help. Did you tell them you were coming to Atlanta to investigate?”

“No. I was only going to tell them if I found something useful, or if going to the site of Peavy's abduction produced any new insights.”

“Did you tell anybody else about Peavy, about your plans to go looking for him?”

Martha looked out toward the water, considered. “I don't think I told anyone. I told one of the island residents that I was going to Atlanta for a couple of days, because she's watching my cat. But I only told her I was going, not why, or what I would be doing there.”

“What about your psychiatrist?”

“Dr. Goodwin? I told her that I wanted to go, but she told me not to. She basically forbade it.”

“How could she do that?”

“She told me I wasn't ready.”

“And you told her about the visions?”

“Yes, I told her about the mansion, the glass animals, and then the boy lying in the shallow depression.”

“You think that was Peavy?”

“Yes, I thought it was him, but older. No longer a child. That's what made me think he might be still alive.”

“It was after that you had the dream?”

“Yes, after I saw Dr. Goodwin I had the dream. I visited Lady Albertha and then I saw that symbol, the glyph, floating in the sky.”

Jarrell held the mug between his hands and gazed at the marsh. “You know, that symbol is the one common thread through all of it—Peavy's abduction, your visions, the amulet, the police lieutenant's murder, even the slaying from a year ago that Somis told us about. We've got to find out what it represents.”

“How can we?”

“Well, everything's on the Internet.”

“Yes, but how do you search for an image if you don't know what it's called?”

Jarrell downed the remains of his coffee, slung the grounds onto the grass. “There's one person here who might know just how to do that.”

The “business center” at Slinky's Shangri-la consisted of a couple of Dell workstations hooked up to a satellite Internet connection and a printer on a galley table inside one of the defunct cabin cruisers. A shelf above the workstation was piled with dusty stacks of circuit boards, hard drives, cables, and old programming manuals.

Slinky pulled up another folding chair and sat at a terminal. The tiny metal seat virtually disappeared under the hemispheres of his massive bottom. “Welcome to my inner sanctum. What is it you would like to find?” he asked, pulling his sunglasses up onto his knit cap.

Jarrell showed him the photo of the amulet on his smartphone. “We think there's an organization that uses this symbol. They're giving us a hard time. We just want to find out who the hell it is.”

Slinky connected the iPhone to the computer with a data cable, then clicked an icon on the desktop that showed a cartoon eye behind a monocle. Seconds later, the browser window was filled by a white screen with a larger version of the monocle cartoon and the heading
FUZZY EYE.
In smaller letters next to the name was the word
BETA.
Below that was an upload button.

“It's a reverse image lookup,” Slinky said. “The software isn't one hundred percent legal. But that doesn't stop us around here.”

“Why isn't it legal?” Martha asked.

“Well,” Slinky said, “the cops and other people are already using it, but you need a license. It uses an image recognition algorithm to find approximate matches to photographs.”

“How did you get it, Slink?” Jarrell asked.

Slinky turned and shot him a sly grin. “Sometimes it's best to not ask too many questions, compadre.” Slinky uploaded Jarrell's photo of the amulet, then began the search for matches. A green progress bar began to slowly populate.

“The problem with the software is, you can use it to find out all sorts of information about someone. You don't need their name, email, or anything else. All you need is a decent picture of their face, and nine times out of ten you can find them. In the wrong hands, this software could open up new frontiers in stalking. Of course, I don't use it that way. I only use it to afflict the comfortable.”

The screen said
SEARCHING…
for a few seconds, then filled with rows of images similar to the amulet. There were fifty-seven results—images of stained-glass windows, mandalas, and circular pendants and other jewelry. Slinky scrolled down the page to the end. Nothing was an exact match.

“Hmm,” Slinky said, leaning back and folding his arms. The metal chair creaked, and Martha marveled that it didn't collapse under the strain. “Well, let's take this search a little deeper.”

Slinky adjusted some of the program's settings and ran the search again.

“What now, Slink?” Jarrell asked.

“Now it's searching the deep web.”

“Is that the same as the dark web?” Martha asked. It was something she had learned about in her digital journalism class—it was the hidden underbelly of the Internet, not indexed or searchable by conventional search engines. The domain of illegal drug and pornography markets, secret organizations, terrorist groups, and God knew what else.

“Same difference,” Slinky said.

In a few seconds, Fuzzy Eye displayed a fresh grid of image search results. This time there were only seven hits, and the first one was a perfect match: a metallic circle surrounding two triangles, enclosed by points.

“Look familiar?” Slinky said with a Louis Armstrong chuckle.

“Yeah, that's the glyph,” Martha said.

Jarrell leaned forward. “No question.”

“Onward, ladies and gents.” Slinky reached for the mouse.

Jarrell put a hand on Slinky's arm. “Are you sure this setup is off the grid? Otherwise this could be dangerous.”

“Does a possum have teeth? Yeah, we're safe here. I've got Tor installed.”

“Tor?” Martha asked.

“It's software that uses a stack of communication protocols, all nested like the layers of an onion. We use it for everything here. It protects your location and usage from anyone conducting network surveillance. Anything that happens here is untraceable.”