Dark Rites by Heather Graham

Author:Heather Graham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin (UK) Ltd
Published: 2017-11-12T16:00:00+00:00

10

“I think that I definitely need to find the book that Milton Hanson wants and look it over first!” Vickie told Griffin.

They’d gone to her parents’ apartment. While the elder Preston pair were in Europe, Vickie felt as much at home in their place as she ever had, and completely welcome.

She adored her folks—and was really close to them. She was their only child.

But she was very grateful that her parents were away, that they weren’t there to fret and worry about her when it simply made them crazy and wasn’t helpful to anyone.

Griffin—for all of being a solid, talented, determined and striking agent—still was uneasy around her parents. He’d saved their daughter’s life twice, but still worried about their approval, she supposed. But, she told herself, that was because he cared. And that was okay.

Even their apartment made him nervous, it seemed. He appeared extremely uncomfortable, just standing near her father’s desk, while she plowed through the bookcases, looking for anything that might have been written by a man named Nathaniel Alden.

“Griffin!”

“What?”

“Help me.”

“Vickie, this is your father’s very personal space.”

“Dig in.”

“You’re his daughter.”

“There is absolutely no reason to be afraid of my father.”

“I’m not afraid of your father,” he assured her.

“Good.”

“I’m afraid of your mother.”

“Griffin!”

“Okay, okay, I’m not really afraid of your mother,” he said with a sigh. “Honestly, I just feel like I’m prying and—”

“These are his books, Griffin. Not his underwear.”

“All right!

He moved over to one of the endless rows of books and began searching through the titles.

“Alden, you said?”

“Nathaniel Alden. I believe the book was written during the Civil War. It’s out of print now. Hard to find, which is why Hanson needs our copy. It’s a study of social norms in the Massachusetts Bay Colony from the founding through the Age of Enlightenment and onward, to the abolitionist movement in Massachusetts to the Civil War and beyond, to our treatment of veterans who returned from the war, of those who were crippled by it and those who apparently went insane because of it. Remember all the stuff we learned about Dr. Boylston and the crude method of inoculations he promoted? And how Cotton Mather—not my favorite historical person!—actually pressed for the science of it, as well? They were coming into what was then the modern world. But I’m thinking that, somewhere in that book, there’s something that relates back to Jehovah.”

“It was written right around the Civil War—before the Quabbin was engineered.”

“Yes, but even though a number of the towns are gone, there will still be landmarks that are the same, or that compare to what is there now. There’s a map in this book. I can get a good map of the landscape the way it is now, and go by some of the descriptions. There’s a way.”

“Well, if there is, and Milton Hanson can find Jehovah, shouldn’t we let him?” Griffin asked her.

“He’s...smarmy. That’s what my dad says. But I agree that there’s something off about him.”

“You think that Milton Hanson could somehow be guilty in all this?” Griffin persisted.

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