Riley felt something touch her shoulder and her eyes snapped open. She gasped and jerked up into a sitting position. She shook her head, trying to clear away the nauseous tremors and to calm her hammering heart.

She had reached one man that day. Danny Hutchinson. Her fellow prankster, the guy she’d watched Blazing Saddles with more than a dozen times, laughing so hard she’d almost peed in her pants. Hutch had looked like a human torch when she ran into the entry of the burning house, but he was still alive. She threw her damp towel over his head and hoisted him over her shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

Now, she touched the same shoulder, running her fingertips over the tender ridges of the scar. When she’d lowered Hutch to the grass in front of the house, his eyes stared without blinking. The fire had burned through her shirt, melting both his flesh and hers.

That was Lima, Peru where she had been posted for nearly a year as an MSG, or Marine Security Guard, at the US Embassy, where she had fallen for the handsome ex-pat Yalie only to find out later he was a spook and their affair was strictly forbidden. By the time she found out his real identity, though, no rules could have kept them apart.  She had never opened her heart and her life to a man like that before.

But after the bombing at the Marine House, she’d spent weeks at Bethesda in the burn unit waiting for the call that never came. She’d played it all over and over in her head. When they discharged her from both the hospital and the Corps, she told herself that she had been a fool to think he’d loved her the way she’d loved him. He had used her, and to what extent, she still wasn’t sure. It had been over two years since the bombing, and tomorrow she intended to get the answers she hoped would make these dreams go away.

She checked the horizon for boat traffic. Nothing. She’d dozed off for — she checked her watch — shit! Nearly an hour. Her fingers went to the spot just past her scars where she had felt or dreamed her brother’s touch. He was always careful not to hurt her.

“Thanks, Mikey.”

It had been weeks since she’d last dreamed of the fire. The sailing had been so good for that — much better than her life back in DC — but no matter how many miles she put between herself and that life, the flames followed her.

Riley raised her arms over her head and stretched her aching muscles. Thank goodness Mikey was always there to look after her.

She lifted the sextant and placed the 6x scope to her eye again. The sea was unusually flat. Facing southwest, she swung the instrument around looking for the sun. Just when she found the glowing orb and started to slide the arc to bring it down to the horizon, she was startled by something waving from the surface of the sea.

Blinking, she lowered the instrument and squinted against the brilliant sunlight dappling the surface. No doubt about it, there was a guy in the water out there about a quarter mile off, waving his arms at her. She glanced over her shoulder at the island. She was close in but still at least three miles off shore. What the devil was he doing swimming out here?

CHAPTER FOUR

New Haven 

April 16, 1992

10:10 a.m .

“Skull and Bones, accept or reject?”

Diggory Priest nearly spilled his cafe latte all over his copy of Thus Spoke Zarathustra. A hand gripped his shoulder as the deep voice spoke behind him. He attempted to squash the flinch he always felt when a stranger touched him. Though he had been expecting them, he hadn’t even heard them enter his room. He didn’t want to look rattled – didn’t know if he should turn and look at them, or continue facing forward, staring at the stars and stripes on the Bush/Quayle poster he’d hung on the wall above the desk.

“Accept,” he said.

The word had barely cleared his lips when a paper packet landed on his textbook and then, although he could not see them, he felt they were gone.

Dig reached for the packet and closed his eyes for a moment. He’d waited three years for this. He exhaled, then opened his eyes. The folded paper was heavy, red, and wrapped with a black silk ribbon. He ran his fingers over the smooth black silk. It felt rich. When he turned it over, he saw the seal pressed into black wax: a skull, two crossed bones, and the number 322.

He touched the insignia.  Most of them got here by birthright, but his father had denied him that, denied even that he was his son. And now he had proven to the old pater he didn’t need him. He’d earned this all on his own.

The words inside were written in black ink, the letters formed like those on an ancient parchment.

This evening, at the hour of VIII, go forth wearing neither metal, nor sulfur, nor glass. Look neither to the right nor to the left. Pass through the sacred Pillars of Hercules and approach the Temple. Knock thrice upon the sacred portals. Remember well, but keep silent, concerning what you have read here.

The streetlights were on but few stars had appeared when he turned off Chapel and onto High Street. He looked up at the ominous stone pillars on each side of the gate that led to the Old Campus and the Tomb. The dark clouds massing in the sky behind Harkness Tower were still tinged with an eerie sanguine glow, and a cool wind had come up from the river. In spite of the dust and leaves dancing in the gusts, the evening was pleasant. Unusual for that hour, there was not a soul to be seen on the street.

The blue blazer had seemed the right choice back in his rooms, but now on this spring evening, he was sweating. Perhaps he was overdressed. They would notice. They would notice everything about him on this night.

Diggory approached the steps leading to the massive wooden doors, wondering if he was being watched. He pounded three times with his fist.

The door opened a crack but it was too dark inside to make out who was there. He wasn’t sure if he was supposed to say anything, so he raised the red paper invitation to the crack.

A deep voice spoke from inside. “Neophyte Priest?”

He started to answer, but a thick arm reached out and pulled him through the half-opened door. Someone jammed a black cloth hood over his head before he had a chance to see anything in the darkened room. Iron-like fingers clenched his arms from both sides, and he stifled the urge to squirm out of their grip. It was hot inside the room, hotter yet under the hood, and he heard heavy breathing from all directions. He couldn’t guess how many of them were there.

The crowd propelled him forward, pulling this way and that, trying to make him lose his balance. When his feet got crossed, they held him up and dragged him through various rooms of the house until he managed to get his feet back under him. Other hands were grabbing at his arms, his shoulders, pressing into his ribs, and when his hands brushed against their bodies, he felt slick, sweaty skin. He gritted his teeth and squeezed his eyes shut, trying to maintain control, trying not to demand they stop touching him.

At last, they stood still and it grew silent around him.

Then from far ahead in what sounded like another room, he heard a deep voice call out, “Who is it?”

All around him a wave of voices shouted, “Neophyte Priest!”

They shoved him forward and the arms supporting him vanished. He nearly stumbled. From behind, someone yanked off the hood.

Diggory blinked to clear the sweat from his eyes. He was standing in front of a table in a darkened room lit only by candles and a fire in an enormous fireplace. On the table was a parchment scroll and behind it stood a man in a robe wearing a grotesque Halloween mask of the face from the Edvard Munch painting, The Scream.

As Priest turned his head to take in the room, he saw others dressed in skeleton costumes with jeering masks. To his right was a man seated in a throne-like chair and dressed as the Pope. On the far side of the room was another in the costume of a Spanish knight. Behind him, standing in the doorway through which he had come were four huge fellows dressed only in jock straps, high-top sneakers and their skeleton masks. The sweat on their skin glinted in the candlelight. In all, there must have been twenty of them in the room, and every one of them wore a mask. Except him.