Chapter Nine

The nightmare was always the same.

Edward Leland spent a few minutes lying still, listening to the soft instrumental music that had been programmed to wake him. The dream itself never did. And as always, it lingered now: a memory from thirty years earlier that played out as a series of jerky and indistinct images in his mind, as though he were watching newsreel footage from the distant past. Some mornings, he even fancied he could hear the rattle of film in an old projection wheel.

The quiet trick of his footsteps on the tiled floor of a long corridor. A single bright window far ahead. The police officer walking on one side of him; the nurse on the other. The nurse could sense his grief and loss and wanted to put a consoling hand on his shoulder, but she resisted, perhaps sensing something else about him as well.

The open door far ahead.

Are you sure you're ready for this, Mr. Leland?

Yes. I need to be sure.

And then the sight that awaited him inside that room.

He had stood there for some time, gradually becoming aware of a terrible sound building in the air. It had made no sense at first, but then he had realized the noise was coming from him. It was something between a scream and a sob, and it grew louder and more desolate as he stood there, staring down at the thing—he could no longer think of it as a child—that was lying before him.

Finally understanding what had been done to his son, Nathaniel.

That was a long time ago now, of course.

Leland slid out from beneath the silk sheets, then walked a little stiffly across the heated floorboards. Lights set into the ceiling bathed the room in calm blue light. At the bedroom door, he slipped on the robe that was hanging there, knotted it tightly at the waist, then stepped through into the chamber beyond, the music following him and gradually wafting away the last traces of the nightmare.

A freshly delivered tray of toast and coffee was waiting for him on the table, along with the usual pile of carefully folded morning newspapers. A clean suit and his laundered gym clothes were hanging on the oak wardrobes that filled one wall. He sat on the leather couch, ate his breakfast, and then drank orange juice and coffee as he worked his way through the papers.

The business news first, of course.

His gaze moved steadily over columns of figures, lists of stocks and shares, reports of market fluctuations and boardroom restructuring. That whole world moved so quickly that most of the information was better gleaned online, but to Leland that always felt like watching a video that never paused. He preferred to start his day by studying individual frames. Frozen moments.

After the business pages, the general news.

Political stories interested him vaguely. While patterns of power could occasionally be discerned between the lines, nothing truly important would be reported here; newspapers were, after all, designed for the cattle's consumption. The photographs could sometimes be worthwhile. Every now and then, he recognized a face in the background, usually caught by accident behind whatever politician or adviser was the intended focus of the shot. They always reminded him of the pictures you saw of innocent, smiling subjects, the photographer failing to notice the predator lurking in the bushes behind.

Finally, he moved on to the crime stories.

Even after so many years, Leland was not dead to the effect of these. There was always a trace of excitement as he flicked through the pages. For some reason, the reports of war and associated atrocities held little appeal. It was the smaller, everyday items to which he gravitated, and over which he lingered. Today's news brought a familiar list. A teenage boy stabbed in a park; a man found deceased in woodland; a woman beaten to death by her boyfriend. The papers rustled quietly as he worked his way through them. Tragedy was its own unending video, and there was satisfaction to be had in concentrating on individual frames here as well.

The terrible things that happened because they were meant to.

Because God had written them.

He found only a single mention of Alan Hobbes. It was a short column in the local newspaper, and it gave very little detail. A former university professor and businessman—not even named yet—had been found dead in his home. Police had opened an investigation but were not making further comment on the situation at this time. The scarcity of information did not particularly surprise Leland. Even in death, men like Alan Hobbes—and indeed himself—were adroit at staying out of the public eye.

Leland drained the last of his coffee.

Remembering.

You can't do this.

Their father had told them both many things over the years, including something that Leland had understood implicitly: that he was special and his brother was not. Because he was the one who did as he was told. He was the one who was destined for the grandest things in life.

And he still remembered the anger he had felt as he watched Alan walking away from him down the corridor.

Stealingwhat he had.

And because of that, what was right and meant to be had become crooked.

Leland looked down and realized his hand was trembling.

He put the cup down carefully on the tray.

A long time ago now.

Except Leland knew better than most how little meaning time had in the grand scheme of things.

After breakfast, Leland put on his workout clothes, left the house, and made his way past the greenhouse and down the vast garden behind. He was walking a route that predated him: a flagstone path that had been there since he had been brought to the property as a twelve-year-old boy.

It was a cold morning. The sky ahead was gray and implacable, and there was bite and sharpness to the air. Although the gardener had trimmed the lawn earlier that week, the grass was already patchy and disheveled, its colors muted. The trees that edged the property grew more skeletal with every passing day, and all that remained in most of the flower beds were brittle, shivering stems, just a few wilted petals still clinging on stubbornly here and there.

Halfway down the garden, Leland stopped and stared back at the house behind him, which had once belonged to the man who raised him as a teenager. A good man. A rich one, as well—his father had been correct about the greatness that would be delivered to Edward. Giles Leland had done his best to raise Edward, just as Edward had done his best to hide his true nature from him. He had bided his time. And now it had been close to two decades since Giles Leland had been forced to cede control of the family's businesses to his adopted son, and then been confined to a nursing home to live out the handful of years remaining to him.

Leland had visited him only once. The man had been barely recognizable at that point: a distressed figure, sobbing uncontrollably, unable to understand what he had done wrong. How had this cuckoo arrived in his nest without him realizing? Edward had stared down at him without compassion. The only pity he had been able to summon was for the fact that, even then, the man still believed the choices he had made might have been different.

Somewhere in the gray distance now, the sky rumbled.

Leland turned and walked down the path.

He reached the bottom of the garden and turned right, ducking beneath an arch of sharp brambles and then following a path constrained on either side by tight coils of foliage. A minute later, he emerged into the hidden garden beyond. The gardener was not allowed here, and the grass ahead was thick and tangled, but a rough path was worn through it, leading to a squat building at the center.

When Leland reached the door, he looked to his right.

There was an area at the edge of the garden where the grass was absent and the soil was exposed. He had turned and flattened it numerous times over the years, always under cover of darkness. A short distance below the surface lay the remains of the angels he had made over the years.

As God has written.

He turned back to the door and opened it.

The garage was wired up to the main building, and he reached into the darkness and flicked the switch. The strip light suspended from the roof began humming, growing slowly in strength, and the shadowy interior before him gradually transformed into a bloodred sea crisscrossed by black lines. The building was full of old iron: benches, frames, racks of old weights. The crimson light created a fractured web from their interweaving angles.

Leland left the door open and made his way through to the weight bench at the back of the room. This was one of the earliest presents from his adoptive father. The body of the bench, made from hard wood, had been polished smooth by years of sweat and pressure, and the iron struts were speckled with rust. The bar resting across was flaky, the weights on either end locked and immovable, the metal fused into place.

Leland laid down and pressed out twenty repetitions.

While he remained stronger than he looked, he was in his seventies now, and the weights he lifted had diminished with age. The bench had deteriorated too. He could hear it protesting with each repetition, and then the rattle and shudder when he placed the bar back on the struts. Every day, the structure felt more and more precarious, as though it might collapse beneath him at any moment. But it was wrong to fear that. Worse than wrong—a blasphemy. Because whatever would happen would happen. The story was already written, and it would unfold in the way it had been intended, just as the flower contains the seed that contains another flower.

Deus scripsit.

Leland sat up. His view of the corrugated ceiling above swung backward out of sight, replaced by the bright rectangle of the open door at the front of the garage. A large man was standing there, waiting patiently and politely. Mr. Banyard, one of his more trusted associates.

Leland beckoned him in.

"It's done?"

Banyard nodded and handed him the cell phone he had taken from Alan Hobbes's apartment. The phone was scant compensation for what he had really been sent to retrieve, but it might offer a route to it. It had been locked, of course, but when you have the necessary resources that becomes a simple matter of time, and breaking the security in this instance had taken less than thirty-six hours.

"Thank you," Leland said.

The man nodded once, then turned and picked his way back through the garage. Leland's expression remained blank as he watched him leave, but a fire was burning inside him at the thought of what was to come. For now, though, he put the phone to one side and lay back down on the bench.

It trembled as he began pressing the weight again.

But it stayed firm. The past held and the present played out.

As God has written.