Page 22 of Fury

Hearing that was a knife to the gut.

Yeah, a son that’d abandoned the people who cared about him most.

“Remember near the cabin, you and Hollyn found that nest with sparrow eggs that had fallen to the ground?”

Davis frowned. It was a strange memory to bring up.

“Hollyn was so upset and you comforted her. Stayed with her. We got the incubator, and you two checked on the eggs constantly until the day the nestlings hatched. Then fed them every day till it was time for the birds to fly away.”

Davis remembered. It had been the first summer he’d spent most of his days with the Reinhardts. He’d been eleven, still unsure if he should even be there. It’d been about a year after the accident. But Hollyn had been sure enough for the both of them.

Why was Ansel talking about this?

A serious expression came over Ansel. “Protect the sparrow, Davis.”

Davis paused the video. Sparrow? Did he mean Hollyn? Had to be. It was the nickname Ansel had used for his daughter.

“ . . . things . . . turned out differently than I’d planned . . . ”

Davis’s mind drifted to last night’s break-in. To the lab incident Randall had just told them about. Man, if a knot wasn’t forming in his gut right now. Were they connected? Seemed too coincidental not to be.

Video resumed, he rested his forearms on his knees. Shoulders taut. Hands fisted. Willed Ansel to tell him to stand down. That he was overreacting.

Instead, warning . . .

“It’s of the utmost importance now. Be watchful. Trust is earned, not given. First boy who was paired with Hollyn at the sixth-grade science fair, five eight.”

Do what? Davis paused the video. Ran it back and listened again. Okay, so he hadn’t misheard it, but it sure as heck didn’t make sense. He listened again. And again. A couple more times. What didthatmean? Tried to figure out that last sentence. Almost sounded like a Bible reference.

He roughed a hand over his face.

All these riddles. Clear sign something wasn’t right. Did the coded message mean he’d suspected it might fall into the wrong hands? Randall was the only one with access. Didn’t Ansel trust the guy? Or was he just being cautious?

Davis itched for a team to work this out with. Come up with a game plan—if that was needed. Maybe reach out to Chapel. With what evidence, though? At this point, all he had was a hunch.

Davis bounced his knee as he thought.

The video mentioned the science fair . . . He thought about sixth grade. Didn’t remember much of it. Wasn’t something he looked back on often. The face of Hollyn’s lab partner came to mind, but the name was slipping him.

That last line in Ansel’s video, and the way the last line sounded like a verse reference, stuck out to him. Hollyn’s dad was known for quoting scripture at the drop of a hat. Seemed to have a verse for everything. It’d been so foreign to Davis at first, then started to get ingrained in him as the years went by. Somewhere along the way, since joining up, he’d stepped away from that way of thinking.

He repeated the line to himself, running through possibilities.

Boy who was paired with Hollyn at the sixth-grade science faircould be a book of the Bible if the verse theory was correct.

Paul? Not a book of the Bible. Timothy? Peter.

Bingo. Davis pulled up the verse on his phone—the first letter of Peter, since the second only had three chapters. Hoped he was on the right track.

Couldn’t have given me a little clearer direction, could you?

“Be sober-minded, be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.”

He clenched his jaw. Any doubt in his mind about things not being connected was instantly incinerated. “Okay, Ansel.” He tapped Play once more. “Message received.”

“We want you to know how proud we are of you, Davis. Your commitment to God and country is extremely admirable.”

Talk about a punch to the gut.

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