Chapter 65

The logical next step was to contact the authorities, report what had happened, and let them clean up the mess. With Dexter sought for homicide in three states, law enforcement would be eager to get their hands on his remains.

Rachel’s phone was out of service, but she said that her neighbor should have a working landline. After giving themselves a once-over in a bathroom mirror—both of them looked weary and war-ravaged—they left the house through the front door.

Leaving the porch, Joshua heard an unexpected sound on the wings of the wind. The distant, rhythmic thumping of helicopter blades.

He stopped. “You hear that? Could someone in the neighborhood have already called the cops?”

Arms folded over her chest, Rachel gazed at the sky, frowning. “People here aren’t presumptuous like that—they would have come to the house first to see what was going on. Anyway, with the way the wind’s been shrieking, I doubt anyone’s heard anything.”

The sound of the chopper was growing louder. Joshua examined the cloud-strewn night sky, but didn’t see the aircraft.

“Then what’s going on?” he asked.

A realization lit up Rachel’s eyes. She grabbed his arm. “Out back. The beach!”

They hurried inside the house and raced down the hallway to the kitchen, where a kerosene lantern glowed. Joshua started to open the patio door, but Rachel stayed his hand.

“Wait,” she said. “Let’s stay inside.”

He didn’t understand her request, but he was too weary to argue. They stood at the glass, and watched.

The helicopter wheeled into view above the beach, the rotor blades spinning up wraiths of sand and making the windows, walls, and floor vibrate. The craft was painted eggshell white. “Infinity Defense Systems” was emblazoned across the fuselage in blue, and there was a strange, blue and green symbol beside the text; circles within circles within circles, to suggest infinity, perhaps.

Silently, Rachel doused the kerosene lantern, to offer them greater concealment.

Outside, the copter’s cabin door opened, and two masked men in black, military-style uniforms rappelled to the shore, dark cables swinging around them like jungle vines.

“What the hell is going on?” Joshua asked in a whisper.

The men had assault rifles strapped to their backs, and Joshua was thankful that he’d heeded Rachel’s warning to remain indoors. These strange men—he was inclined to think of them as soldiers—had an air of cold, ruthless efficiency and purpose. He doubted they would have hesitated to dispatch of someone they regarded as a threat to their mysterious mission.

“Definitely not cops,” Rachel said in a low voice.

Moving swiftly, the men unfurled a large black bag and used it to collect Dexter’s smoking corpse. They hooked one of the cables to the end of the bag; the body bag was quickly sucked upward into the cabin. The men mounted their rappel cords and ascended into the aircraft. The helicopter rose into the sky and thumped away into the night, leaving behind only mounds of disturbed sand.

The entire operation had taken less than one minute.

Joshua and Rachel looked at each other. Neither of them spoke.

“I don’t think we should call the police,” he finally said.

* * *

The next morning, they returned home. Eddie had suffered a nasty, broken ankle and electrical shocks delivered from his own Taser, but he was healthy, and in good spirits.

Coco was fine—Eddie said the little dog had gone into hiding when Bates had arrived—and she squealed with delight when she saw Rachel. “Yes, Mommy’s home,” Rachel cooed to the dog, and she looked at Joshua when she said: “Mommy’s never, ever leaving again.”

A few days later, on the morning of Christmas Eve, Joshua sat in his refurnished home office, using his new laptop to surf the internet. He’d found a Web site for Infinity Defense Systems, the company name he’d seen on the helicopter.

Known by the acronym IDS, the organization was involved in top-secret molecular manufacturing studies, under the aegis of the United States military. The site included such high-level, sparse detail it was a wonder that they bothered to maintain a Web presence at all.

But he remembered what Dexter had told him.

You can’t protect her from me. No one can. Not after what they’ve given me . . . the power I have . . .

IDS had done something to him, mostly likely during his incarceration. Secret weapons research, the nature of which was beyond Joshua’s comprehension. It didn’t excuse what he had done, didn’t condone his violent, deranged actions, but it explained his unusual talent for stealth, and his extraordinary regenerative capabilities.

It also prompted Joshua to wonder: how many other individuals like Dexter Bates might be roaming the country, pumped full of experimental substances, and then set free to see what happened?

Perhaps he was getting carried away, allowing his vivid artist’s imagination to create wild, speculative ideas.

But the thought chilled him.

He closed the Web site, and checked his watch. If he left the house now, he could hit the stores in time to finish his Christmas shopping. A far more pleasant activity than reflecting on the evil that men did to one another.