Altar Of Eden

With the area secure, Jack cupped his mouth and whistled sharply. Randy did the same, calling out Burt’s name. The fire’s roar fought to drown their efforts. Jack circled out again, whistling and calling more boldly this time.

Halfway back around, a loud crunching and snapping erupted from the deeper forest. Jack tensed, raising his rifle in that direction.

Instead of the dog, their calls drew four others out of the woods.

Lorna’s brother and her colleagues came stumbling forward. They looked haggard and ragged, but happy to see them.

That is, all except one.

Kyle came at Jack as if he was going to attack. His eyes searched to either side, then toward the smoldering fire. His voice was a tearful croak. “Lorna…?”

“No,” Jack assured him, but he didn’t blunt the truth. “She got out, but the others took her.”

“Took her?” he echoed.

Before Jack could explain, a baying howl rose from deeper in the woods to the west.

Randy brightened. “Mon Dieu! That’s Burt!”

His brother set off into the forest. Jack followed, leading the others. He wasn’t about to leave the hound here. With the sky brightening, someone would quickly spot the column of smoke pouring into the sky. An emergency response team would be closing down on the place with sirens blazing. By that time, he wanted everyone together-and on the same page.

As they crossed through the forest Kyle kept step with him, cradling his broken wrist. “Why did they take my sister?”

“To interrogate her,” Jack said bluntly. “To cover their tracks. They’ll want to know how much was learned about those animals.”

Kyle grew pale. “Then what?”

Jack glanced to him. The question didn’t need to be acknowledged. They both knew what would happen afterward. Instead, he answered the question buried behind the other. “They’ll keep her alive at least for another day.”

Carlton joined him. “How do you know that, Agent Menard?”

“Because this was meant as a surgical strike. To get in and out fast. It didn’t turn out that way. With the deaths and all the mess here, they’ll retreat as far as possible before questioning her. Likely to their base of operations, wherever that might be.”

“I’d guess somewhere beyond the U.S. border,” Carlton stated.

“Why do you say that?” Jack asked. He suspected the same, but he wanted to hear the doctor’s estimation.

“What was done to those animals. The way they were treated. No lab on U.S. soil would be allowed to perform such abominations. But to circumvent such rules and regulations, American companies and corporations frequently set up clandestine labs just outside our borders. In Mexico, the Caribbean, South America. In fact, there are thousands of such unsanctioned labs around the world.”

Jack digested this information. He’d come to the same conclusion, mostly from the fact that the trawler had tried to enter the country through the bayou. It definitely had the feel of an attempted border crossing.

“So what do we do?” Kyle asked.

Jack faced the others, needing their cooperation. “If we’re right, Lorna’s best chance for survival hinges on the kidnappers’ continuing belief that we’re all dead. They’ll feel more secure, less panicked, if they think they’re holding the only witness. Can you all do that?”

He got nods all around, even from Zoë. Her eyes were puffy and red, but also raw with fury. Her grief had turned to a hard anger.

“Over here!” Randy called. He had run ahead of the others, following Burt’s bawl.

Jack hurried forward. He found the family hound circling a tall cypress, his tongue lolling, his tail high and proud.

Randy stood with his hands on his hips and stared up into the cypress. “What the hell did that old dog go and tree?”

Jack looked up into the branches.

Something stirred there, then called down threateningly and stridently.

“Igor!”

Jack took a step back in surprise.

Movement drew his eye elsewhere in the tree. A pair of small brown faces peered down at him through clusters of cypress needles. A feline hiss rose from another branch.

Jack gaped at the animals, trying to fathom this discovery. He’d assumed they were all killed in the fire.

“Lorna…” Zoë said, her eyes widening. “She must have released them before getting captured.”

Carlton stared up, both amazed and intrigued. “Bonded, they must have stuck together out here.” He took off his glasses and rubbed his nose. “I wonder if the terror of their flight bolstered that strange connection of theirs. Adrenaline flaming their neurons to a whole new level of synchronization.”

As the others spread around the tree Burt bumped into Jack’s leg, wanting acknowledgment. Jack now understood what had drawn the hound off into the woods. He remembered Lorna had used Burt to hunt for the cub’s littermate back in the bayou. And if Jack knew one thing about hounds, it was that they never lost their nose for a good scent.

Jack patted the hound on the side. “Good boy, Burt. Good boy.”

Kyle was not impressed. “What about Lorna? You’ve still not told us what your plan is to find her.”

“That’s because I didn’t have one.” Kyle’s face sank.

“But I do now,” Jack assured him.

For the first time since the power was cut off at ACRES, Jack felt a surge of confidence-not enough to wash away his bone-deep fear for Lorna, but it was enough.

“What do you mean?” Kyle pressed. “How are we going to find her?”

Jack pointed up the tree. “With their help.”

ACT THREE. BEASTS OF EDEN

Chapter 37

For once in her life, Lorna had no fear of flying. She stared at the sweep of sunlit blue water below the small plane. The sea stretched to the horizon in all directions, interrupted by a scatter of islands to the south. She felt no anxiety as the plane sped due south: no sweating palms, no palpitating heart.

She only felt numb.

Like a looped film reel, she kept picturing Jack’s truck exploding, followed a heartbeat later by ACRES disappearing into a hellish fireball.

All dead…

While she should fear for her own life at the moment, she felt nothing, hollowed out and empty. Even the pounding in her head seemed a distant thing. A goose-egg-size knot had grown behind her left ear. A vague ringing persisted on that side.

Tinnitus, she diagnosed, secondary to the injury.

They’d offered her a minimal amount of medical care, but mostly they’d been on the move. Her kidnappers had driven her to a clearing in the bayou. As the sun rose a helicopter had flown her to a waiting ship anchored beyond the barrier islands in the Gulf of Mexico, then she’d been transferred onto a seaplane. They’d been in the air for over three hours, heading as near as she could tell into the western Caribbean, possibly toward Cuba.