Half-Past Dawn

CHAPTER 23

"Hello,” Frank said into his cell phone as he got into the car.

“Frank, Matt Daly.”

“Hey.”

“No bodies yet; we’ve got a torn shirt, probably Jack’s,” Matt said.

Frank had completely forgotten about Matt Daly’s team dragging the river.

“Listen,” Frank said, “you’ve got to do me a favor. Try to keep things from the press as long as you can. And keep it local. Byram Hills cops only. Think you can do that?”

“I’ll do my best. We’re working toward the spillway, probably eight hours before we reach it. Though there’s a good chance their bodies could be hung up in the rocks.”

“Thanks.”

“And Frank, there’s a bullet hole in the shirt, right above the heart. This was no accident.”

“I know.”

“I thought you’d say that. You’re digging into this, aren’t you?”

Frank’s silence answered the question.

“I’ll keep things under wraps as long as I can,” Matt said. “You need any more help, you call me.”

“Thanks again.” Frank hung up the phone, slammed the door, and started the Jeep.

J ACK LEAPED INTO the Audi. He looked at the gas gauge, near empty, and shook his head before he drove out of the driveway as fast as he could, the garage door auto-closing behind him. He headed east down Banksville Road, in the opposite direction that Frank would be coming from. Frank went out the door pissed and would arrive back any minute even more pissed when he found out that Jack had slipped away again. But Jack wasn’t going to risk Mia’s life by involving Frank or anyone else in what he was about to do.

Jack was on his way to meet a dead man. He had wondered what in his life had set him on this path. Was there a singular moment that made this day inevitable? Was it karma, fate, payback for a bad decision in his youth?

His mind jumped back to that night so many years ago when Apollo died, when he killed those two teens. He thought about the promise to himself never to kill again. He thought of how hard he had dedicated himself to fighting crime without a gun, doing whatever it took to get a conviction.

While he was so disturbed by the deaths in that loft building, the lives he took, the life he couldn’t save, swearing off his gun, he realized that he didn’t need the gun to kill. He had done it with the power of the justice system. And while he felt it was justified and within the constraints of the laws of the state, he had still taken the life of a man.

Now that man, Nowaji Cristos, had somehow returned and was exacting his revenge.