Page 99 of Fire and Bones
Time passed.
My eyes roved my surroundings. My pulse did overtime.
I glanced at the star map spread across the monument’s base. At the paper clutched in the statue’s hand. I could read the inscription now. It summarized three of Einstein’s most important scientific contributions: the photoelectric effect, the theory of general relativity, and the equivalence of energy and matter.
Right. I knew that.
A man crossed the grounds, tall and gangly, with wiry hair the color of dead grass in winter. I watched him move from the street to the building, unlock and enter through a side door.
No woman appeared.
I read the three quotations on the bench under Einstein’s bum. One struck me as germane to the question both Thacker and Doyle had posed.
The right to search for truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true.
That was the answer. The reason for my commitment to the subcellar lady.
I saw it as my duty to find her truth.
That’s not your whole truth, my subconscious interjected with brutal honesty.
Suppressed for years, the memory roared into my forebrain. I was lying bound, gagged, and blindfolded in a sack on a bank of the Tuckasegee River, the captive of a demented group calling itself The Hellfire Club. For a moment, the long-ago feelings engulfed me anew. The rage, the helplessness, the terror of dying in that bag.
I’d survived my ordeal. I was uncertain what had happened to the tiny subcellar woman. But I knew that she hadn’t survived hers.
At four o’clock, I positioned myself at the monument’s center, looked directly at Einstein, and said, “Screw this.”
My words echoed back as promised.
I headed for my car.
CHAPTER 23
Doyle suggested we share an early meal together. I was starving again. And had no viable plan for feeding myself.
We decided on Mexican. I offered to drive.
We were halfway to Maïz64 at Logan Circle when Doyle’s mobile rang.
“Doyle.”
A voice buzzed for a long time on the other end of the line. Probably male. Definitely excited.
Doyle listened, a zillion expressions colliding on her face.
“You got names?”
More buzzing.
“Good work. Get me more.”
After disconnecting she pressed the phone to her chest.
Inhaled deeply.
“Freakingfuckonafreakingduckfuck!?”
“Bad news?”