Darkest Instinct

EPILOGUE

Seven Days Later

Athens and Rome were stunning, and it was delightful to get away from the profundity of both her work and the horrors of the Night Crawler case. James had arranged everything down to the last detail, and he had managed to make her forget all about Warren Tauman and the atrocities he had created in his wake. Their vacation was complete, for she cleared her mind of what might or might not be going on back in the Cayman Islands, Miami and Quantico. She hadn’t given a whit’s thought to the collection and delivery of evidentiary materials from Tauman’s boat to the microscopes at Quantico. She felt confident that John Thorpe could do a more than adequate job in her place, and besides, hidden away in a secret compartment was a book, a diary of sorts which Tauman kept. It was mostly a captain’s journal of ports of call, places he and his ship had been, and on the surface of it, there was nothing incriminating there, since he spoke not a word about the killings. He had put all his passion about the killings into his notes to newspapers, apparently. There were, however, names of every port he had visited, along with the dates, and this placed him at every locality where some young woman had disappeared. And there were vague references to his god, his belief system, a belief system that was more than simply scattered and confused and out of focus. There were vague references to his having given “offerings” to his god. But there was nothing whatever that pointed to what exactly he had offered up or how he went about these obscure rituals. However, there was one thing about the journal that was most clear indeed-it was written in the same mad script as the hand of the Night Crawler. Eriq Santiva was satisfied about that the moment his eyes fell upon the script.

This alone was not enough, however, so the book was also dusted for fingerprints, and several of them were lifted from its leather coverlet. Tauman’s prints were also found on the consoles and on the speargun he’d left behind, the weapon believed to have killed Marine Patrol Officer Man- ley back in Tampa. Other evidence would take more time to construct and reconstruct at the microscopic level, and Jessica was banking on the section of stain she’d noticed while aboard the death ship, hoping that it might be matched to Rob Manley’s or Ken Stallings’s blood type and DNA.

It was a foregone conclusion that, in time, they would prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it had been Warren Tauman aboard the boat they’d boarded, and that Tauman was Patric Allain, and that both were one and the same as the Night Crawler. Being the Night Crawler was perhaps the only time he felt whole.

So it was with an easy mind that Jessica, after having worked out some preliminary negotiations with Ja Okinleye and several of the highest-ranking officials on the islands, had left Eriq to his own devices in Cayman. That had been a week earlier, and neither she nor James had been bothered by headquarters, newspaper reporters, politicians or ghosts, other than those that roamed the Aegean Sea and the ancient ruins of Greece.

Amid the beauty of Greece and the solitude of anonymity, which they prized above all else here, Jessica and James rekindled their passion and renewed their unspoken vows to always love one another, no matter the distance between them or the circumstances they found themselves in.

Jessica now lay out at the pool of the Hilton in Athens, beyond which blinked the gorgeous blue Aegean Sea. With James beside her, she merely baked, soaking up the sun as if it were water, realizing that they’d both been absorbing its effects for over an hour. It was nearing noon and hunger had begun to bite, but Jessica felt a deeper hunger arising in her when she looked over at James, his body spread with buttery oil.

“ Let’s go back up to the room,” she suggested. “Already?”

“ Trust me…” He perked up at the tone of her voice. “Trust in the doctor,” she seductively added. “You know you’re the author of my desires,” he replied. “It probably sounds like a corny cliche, but you know…” She waited for his final words, but seeing that he’d swallowed them, she pressed, “Go on. I like corn.”

“ I’d go to the ends of the earth for you, Jessica.”

“ Seems you have… seems you have…” She took his hand in hers, tugging him to his feet and leading him across the pool deck as others watched the two American lovers, some quite envious of what they apparently shared.

They located the closest elevator that would take them up to their room overlooking the Aegean. In the elevator, she passionately kissed him and said, “You know, what we have is extremely rare, maybe as rare as emeralds and diamonds.”

He breathed her in. “I couldn’t agree with you more.” He returned her kiss and they became even more passionate, the doors opening on an elderly couple, who both giggled and blushed before them.

“ Bravo,” said the old man in a European accent.

His aged wife pulled him past the young couple, a warm smile on her face as well.

Jessica and James made for the privacy of their room, and once the door was closed, they began to kiss and caress one another in a fumbling, less than well-orchestrated dance for the bedroom, their passion coming before the choreography. Falling, stumbling into a wall, trying to sidestep an easy chair and a coffee table, they simply were not going to make it to the bedroom. They silently agreed to this fact. Jim allowing her to slide down onto the carpeted floor of the hotel room, where she began to fire his already heated passions even further

Jessica, hungry for him, pulled him down beside her on the soft beige rug, and there they continued making love. Her hunger, the fire within her, raged and burned, and she found James equal to the task. He made her feel whole again; made her feel invincible and energized and strengthened and alive all at once. He made her feel safe from all harm and all ugliness in the world. His arms were like a corral into which she willingly, wantonly enslaved herself.

Out of passion’s enslavement came a sexual fulfillment like none she had ever known before, like none she would ever know again.

“ I want you, Jim, forever,” she cried as he penetrated her.

“ I’ll always be yours, Jess… always…”

Always and forever… impossible notions, she knew, but love was impossible from its inception-like trying to see one’s true self in a reflecting mirror only to witness the magic that was a mirror, the magic that never reflected back the same image as seen by others. Like the looking glass, love had nothing whatever to do with logic or science or intellect. Love mirrored only instinct, and her instinct for the moment was to love James Parry and to hold on to him for as long as God and James allowed.