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see anything.”
    Jake pointed them out again. “There, there, there, there. Then again here, here, here, and here .”
    Conway’s face shifted into puzzlement when he saw them. “Holy shit. What are those?”
    Jake tried not to roll his eyes.
    “Suitcase feet,” Hauser said from behind.
    “Suitcase feet?”
    “Someone took two suitcases out of the closet.” Jake raised his finger, pointing at the bar above his head filled with the empty wire hangers. “And all the clothes.”
    “Why would they do that?”
    “Just take the fucking pictures, okay?”
    That was when Jake realized that something else was missing—toys. You didn’t go anywhere with a child that size without toys. Even if you were only going for five minutes.
    Jake turned away and went over the room with is eyes, taking in every object, surface, and detail, forming the space into a 3-D model in his skull that he could walk through later when he needed something. He ignored the coppery sweet smell of blood mixed with the bitter gag of feces and the smell of his own fear—ignored that he was in a room where a child had been skinned in front of his mother and she had been taken apart like a bloody present. He dismissed that Hauser’s boys were outside probably contaminating the crime scene. He was even able to forget the photographer, squatting down on his static-free haunches and snapping photos, great drafts of incomprehension coming off him like steam. He was even able to forget the dead.
    But he was unable to ignore the little voice that had begun chattering away in his mind like some fevered ghost on speed. He’s been waiting for you to come home, Jakey. You thought that he was gone. Maybe even dead. Didn’t you?
    Well, guess what?
    He’s back.
    And you, my friend, are fucked.

5
    1,260 miles east of Nassau, Bahamas
     
    Every now and then Mother Nature assembles a performance to show off a little. Or a lot. Scripture labels it Judgment, usually laid down by a vengeful God to keep Man humble. But through progress made in earth sciences, it is now known that natural catastrophes are nothing more than a synchronous assembly of coincidental atmospheric conditions. All that is necessary is patience and the right combination of events.
    In mid-September, roughly 500 miles southwest of the Azores island chain, a massive thunderstorm stalled over the ocean. This stall was precipitated by three storm fronts moving in on one another, and they pinned the thunderstorm in place.
    The water that fueled this malevolent beast had been lifted off the ocean by solar heating, driven up into the atmosphere in the form of condensation. The act of evaporation generated energy that quickly increased wind speeds over the tropical waters, and the faster winds caused increased surface evaporation, feeding the thunderstorm with even more condensation. This hoarding of fuel swelled the pregnant belly of the beast and the storm clouds mushroomed into the atmosphere, forcing more condensation to form, and a self-feeding monster was born.
    The system, affected by the earth’s rotation, began to spin, a massive heat-engine with an endless supply of fuel. The metamorphosis from large thunderstorm to hurricane was complete.
    There was more heat.
    More evaporation.
    More wind.
    More condensation.
    More.
    More.
    More.
    Then the atmospheric pressure dropped several millibars.
    And the hurricane began to move west.
    On its journey its eye dilated to the largest in history, outsizing Carmen by over sixty miles. In the tradition of political correctness, the storm had been identified as male, and given the title of Dylan.
    Hurricane Dylan was now surging toward the American coast and the water in its path was hammered into eighty-foot waves by winds that neared 200 miles an hour. And he hadn’t really started putting on his war paint.
    He was saving that for landfall.

6
    Day Two
Montauk, Long Island
     
    Jake stood just above the ridge of foam and seaweed that the Atlantic had