Another piece of jerky slipped between the cage bars." And we're not going to tell anyone about you. No, no, we're not going to let big, uncaring government with its Jerry Falwell ethics get ahold of you. I'm not going to let that happen to you, my little Mowgli. I'm going to keep you safe. . ."

And up through the days that followed as this woman, Ukiah's adopted mother, showed stunning patience, gaining the wild child's love and gentling him. A second woman merged into the memories, a beautiful sunny blonde, as strong and caring as the first.

" I did research on autistic and feral children. I think"— the blonde paused to accept a snuggling hug from the boy who was discovering the joys of physical affection—"the reason the radio and television bother him is he's suffering from sensory overload. You didn't say how cute he was."

" It was hard to tell under all the dirt and matted hair."

" Well, it's a good sign that he's showing affection."

" Thank you for saying yes, kitten; I know it wasn't fair to ask you to take on a teenage wolf boy."

Teenage wolf boy? Atticus jerked up out of the memories, to stare at Ukiah. "How old were you?"

"Thirteen."

Atticus suffered a sudden flash of guilt—he'd left the baby in the woods and it never found its way out. There's nothing I could have done differently,he told himself. But there were still disquieting echoes deep inside him, plans to search the woods, made and abandoned several times in the last twenty-five years. I knew there was someone I lost.

On the heels of that, he did the math. Thirteen? Ukiah's driver's license claimed he was twenty-one. That meant that Ukiah had been part of civilization for only eight years. No wonder he struck Ru as childlike.

"Food's coming," Ru warned Atticus, and they sat silently as the waiter unloaded his tray onto the table. Ru, though, watched Atticus closely. "Well?"

Atticus had to think back to the last spokenconversation, which seemed like a lifetime ago. Ah, yes, he was sneering at the idea of the Ontongard being bogeymen. "The Ontongard are complete monsters. The Pack is right to be doing whatever it takes to stop them."

Ukiah eyed his plantains and tasted them cautiously. "They're fried bananas?"

"More or less." Atticus swallowed down his unease along with a bit of the sweet fried fruit. Only eight years.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Boston Harbor Hotel, Boston, Massachusetts

Thursday, September 23, 2004

Atticus and his team had just gotten Ukiah tucked into the extra bed in Kyle's room when there was a loud knock at the door.

Atticus stilled and focused. In his memory, he found Sumpter's familiar stride coming down the hall, and could now catch his scent. "Oh, shit. It's Sumpter. Other room."

Atticus went last, closing the connecting doors behind him. Sumpter was knocking a second time when he opened the hall door. "We're over here."

The problem with his and Ru's room was the king-sized bed. While he and Ru didn't lie about their relationship, they tried to keep it fairly low-key, which usually meant keeping Sumpter out of their bedroom. The bed made it a little too obvious to miss.

"Where have you been?" Sumpter shied from the bed as if it were a sex act, heading for the connecting doors.

"We had a lead on the cult," Atticus said, blocking him. "But it was blown to smithereens."

"Let's go in the other room and you can brief me."

Atticus sighed. Trying to keep Sumpter in the dark would only make him more hostile. "We have a civilian sleeping over there. My younger brother."

"What the hell are you thinking?" At least Sumpter stopped trying to flee the room. "What does he know?"

A lot more than I do."Everything."

"Everything? What you are and what we're doing here?"

It took Atticus a second to realize Sumpter meant he was DEA, not that Atticus was an alien. "The whole shebang."

"That's just fucking perfect," Sumpter snapped. "What were you thinking?"

"I think I'm doing my job. Don't come here half-assed, without a clue about what the fuck is going on, and start raking me over the coals."

"If you bothered to keep me briefed, then I wouldn't be reaming you a new one. You didn't mention this when I saw you earlier today."

"That wasn't Atticus," Kyle said quietly. "That was Ukiah you talked to."

"Ukiah?" Sumpter asked.

"My brother," Atticus said.

Sumpter looked at them as if he thought they were lying and walked into the next room. Ukiah lay in quiet testament that they were telling the truth. "Well, I'll be damned. But why the hell did you bring him into the middle of this?"

"The cult kidnapped him," Ru volunteered, weaving truth and fiction. "They took his wallet and threw him overboard to drown. The Coast Guard picked him up while we were at the cult's hideout this afternoon. He has no money, no place else to go, and a lot he can tell us about the cult."

Sumpter gave Atticus a look that was both calculating and suspicious. Chances were, he was wondering if the entire case was a vendetta to wreak vengeance for Ukiah's kidnapping.

"Can you trust him to keep his mouth shut?" Sumpter finally asked.

"Yes," Atticus said.

"So where do we stand?"

***

They did more than dance around the truth. They dressed up half-truths and waltzed them past Sumpter to divert him from the things they were covering up. It proved useful, though, as it focused on what they knew without the distraction of all the weirdness.

"We know that the cult is using the drugs to fund their terrorist activities. We've heard rumors that they plan something large-scale aimed at the companies they've been wiretapping. Today's bombings were at the offices of six of those companies."

"Why them?"

"We don't know," Atticus lied. "We think it might have to do with a construction project that is common to all six companies."

"The cult thinks they're eeevil," Ru said, dancing closer to the truth.

"This was the island where the cult was hiding." Atticus gave Kyle the GPS coordinates. "It wasn't on Indigo's—Agent Zheng's—list of cult properties. We should find out who owns it; it might lead us to other sites. According to what they told my brother, their drug lab is somewhere in the immediate Boston area."

Kyle nodded and focused on the search. "I think I found it," he said after several minutes. "The same account that bought the island also purchased a warehouse and pays for the electric and such. It's in South Boston, just across the channel."

***

Ukiah woke alone. On the doors and the bathroom mirror, post-it notes commanded: Stay Put!!!Triple exclamation points and no clues as to where they'd gone or how long he should wait.

The thing about his perfect memory was that it didn't turn off while he slept. There, stored with the shifting shadows across his closed eyelids, he found their conversation with Sumpter. They talked about a warehouse in South Boston, planning to put it under surveillance, and what they would need to get warrants and enlist backup from the police to stage a raid.

They had taken Kyle's laptop—source of a nearly constant clicking of keys—and the maps they'd crinkled and rustled, but left behind a series of satellite photos printed onto plain paper. The grainy photos zeroed in on an untidy sprawl of warehouses and parking lots beside a dry dock and rimmed by water. While the address meant nothing to Ukiah, one of the photographs jogged recognition. The cult had a similar picture with a building circled in red and labeled VB6. When he saw it earlier, there wasn't enough in the photo to identify the location, but linked to the other photographs, now part of a whole, Ukiah could guess where the site lay.