Like theatrical punctuation in a high school play, the lights dimmed and Jake heard the three officers hold their communal breath. Jake ignored the brown-out, connected the MacBook, and hooked up to the server. He was past hoping for anything and running on autopilot at this point.

Skillen’s eyes were glued to the network monitor. “You’re on, Special Agent Cole.”

Jake brought up the FBI mail service and uploaded the video he had taken—half with Kay, half with Spencer. The status bar began an agonizingly slow crawl across the bottom of the screen.

“You really think that this is a portrait of the killer, Jake?” Hauser asked from the doorway.

Jake shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s another dead end. But Dad went through a lot of trouble—a lot of mental gymnastics—to do this. And I can’t believe it was simply the artist in him talking. He was trying to tell me something. With that portrait he arranged in the carpets, with the painting he did in his own blood, with the Chuck Close he chopped the eyes out of. They were all messages—hints—that I had to look at things from a different perspective. From his perspective.”

“Your dad gave you a lot of credit,” Hauser said slowly.

Jake hadn’t thought about it in those terms but when Hauser laid it out like that, he realized that the man was right; this was not the kind of Easter-egg hunt that most people would be able to follow. The old man had put a lot of trust into him.

He sat watching the status bar, feeling like time was running in reverse. Then it hit 3 percent…3.5 percent.

The only noise was the rage of the storm outside, now at its zenith, and Hauser was waiting for the eye to pass over, giving them a few hours of much-needed time to recharge their batteries. Then the weather would descend back into biblical tragedy and Act II would rip over Long Island, tying up loose ends, finishing any manmade buildings that had had the audacity to remain standing. If they were lucky, they’d all be here when this was over.

But the word lucky was slowly being purged from Hauser’s lexicon. He had seen a string of bad luck before—the time his knee had been crushed on the football field had been a study in the butterfly effect gone wrong—but this thing with Jake and the Bloodman had crossed bad luck the moment his mother had been killed all those years ago. As far as the sheriff was concerned, this was more of a curse.

And he knew that curses have a way of finishing things off on their own terms.

71

Frank and Jake headed east on 27, toward the point, sticking to the empty oncoming lane because it was farther from the shore, if only by a few feet. Off to their right the ocean was boiling up fifty-foot swells that slammed into the beach and snow-plowed the hundred yards to the highway where they detonated against the embankment, launching tons of water into the air. A three-foot surge pulsed over the asphalt, and Frank held the wheel to the right to keep the heavy truck out of the ditch. Every now and then the wash would lift the Hummer just a little, drifting it sideways; Frank would wrench the wheel and hit the gas, hollering for more purchase. So far this had happened three times in four miles and both of them knew that if they kept at this long enough, the law of diminishing returns guaranteed that they’d get washed off the highway. But maybe—just maybe—with the storm past its worst, they’d make it. So they kept going. For Jeremy and Kay and for the simple reason that there was nothing else they could do. It was that old Destiny thing again.

The bottom foot of the truck was filled with water—a design detail that ensured the Hummer didn’t lose traction in flash floods or swampy conditions. Jake’s feet had been wet for hours now and he wondered if they’d ever be dry again.

Hauser had asked them to remain at the station but Jake had insisted on leaving. He knew that the chances of the highway still existing were as slim as the house still standing but something told him that he had to go there. At least he’d be findable at the beach house. Not that that had made much of a difference up until this point. Still, it was all he could think to do.

The Old Testament wall of water that shot up over the road made Jake understand how primitive man had seen storms as God’s wrath. A thick blanket of seawater hit the rock-strewn ditch beside the road, shot straight up in the air, and came down into the pavement with a muffled smack. Frank steered into the surge and the tires managed to stay connected to the road; a smaller vehicle would have been washed off the highway and it was only Hauser’s call that had got them past the roadblock that cut off access to the tip of Long Island.

Frank negotiated the truck over enough debris to build a small city. It looked like ground zero for a nuclear test; at least a dozen homes were sprawled across the asphalt like smashed shoe boxes. Everything from crushed lampshades to a thirty-foot section of cedar deck blew across the road and Frank kept petting the dashboard and telling the truck she was a good girl. And when that didn’t work, he called her other things.

Jake worked on a cigarette and decided that when this was all over he was going to crawl into a bottle until he stopped knowing who he was. He had had enough. And without Kay and Jeremy, none of it mattered anyway.

Jake felt they were moving at the speed of plate tectonics but when he looked outside at the black world illuminated by the bright glow of the LEDs and found a landmark, he realized that they were actually making good progress. At this clip they’d be back at the beach house in another ten minutes.

Then the real waiting would begin.

Jake put the data through his head, crunched the numbers, and he knew he was missing something—something that would make sense of why things had happened the way they had.

“I want to know why,” he said out loud, not meaning to.

“What?” Frank steered the Hummer around a twenty-five-foot cabin cruiser lying on its side in the wash, each slam of the waves coming in off the Atlantic nudging it a little further toward the opposite side of the road.

A wave reached out of the dark and rose up beside the truck like the wall of a cliff. Jake flinched as it came down and Frank steered into it. The front of the truck bucked as it took the impact, then bounced back up. Frank hammered down on the gas to gain a little more purchase and the truck miraculously stayed on the road.

When he caught his breath, Jake said, “This guy took my mother. Now he’s taken everything else. Why?”

“The same guy? After all this time? He’d be old—I mean, she was killed thirty-three years ago.” Frank’s cigarette glowed orange as he sucked on it. “Christ, where did the time go? I remember the day she was killed like it was yesterday. Your father had a big show in New York and he had nailed it. Sold out. He wanted to stay in town and get ripped and talk with his painter buddies and his good-time party friends. Your mom wanted to get back here to you. She worried about you, you know.”

A small smile creased the corners of Jake’s mouth.

“She left the city. I put her in her car and we drove back together. We ran out of smokes but she didn’t even want to stop at the Kwik Mart because she wanted to check on you. Wouldn’t even drive me down my street, I had to get off at the corner and walk.” Frank smiled.

“It sounds like you miss her, too, Frank.”

Frank nodded and smoke came out of his nose and teeth. “I do, Jakey. You know, I never told anyone this, but I envied him Mia. He thought I was in love with her but that wasn’t it. Your mother was just something special. Whoever took her from your old man effectively killed him, too.”