Page 19 of Nineteen Seventy-Six

Connor was quiet in the back seat. He seemed to take his cues from Elizabeth, which could be good or bad. Great when Elizabeth was in an understanding mood, not so much when she was laying into Augustus.

He didn’t wait for them to follow him into the house before he headed upstairs, Ana sleeping on his shoulder. She needed a nap, and so did he. The few hours spent outside the house, outside the city, exhausted them both.

Augustus closed and locked his bedroom door. One look of judgment from Elizabeth would be enough to send him clear over the edge.

When Ana was nestled into an arrangement of blankets on his bed, he crawled in beside her. He never tired of looking at her; of seeing the spirit of his ancestors under her soft, sleeping face. She was ethereal; not quite real, which only made his fears of losing her that much more acute. She had the delicate bones of her mother, but did she also possess the delicate spirit? When would he know? Would he be too late?

“Daddy loves you,” he whispered. She squinted her face, tiny hands balled into fists, as she adjusted in her sleep. Where did she go when she slept? He’d do anything to go there with her.

Only with Ana did he feel alive anymore.

Only with Ana did he fear dying.

But neither of those sensations were greater than his soul-deep, absolute belief that he would somehow fail her, and that failure would be irreversible.

She squeezed his index finger with her fist. “I’m here,” he promised, words that meant so much more.

Anasofiya’s little mouth puckered as she relaxed back into dreamland. He loved her more in the span of the half-second gesture than he’d ever loved anyone else, across the space of his life.

Augustus pressed his face into his pillow as the tears flowed. The scream trapped in him since the death of his wife disappeared into the soft cotton.

CHAPTER 5

More Than a Feeling

If one of Augustus’ employees had asked to bring their infant child to work, he would’ve ordered them to find the appropriate childcare. There was a time and place for children. The workplace was neither.

He’d been skirting the edge of his own decision for months. Although he’d returned to work, he worked lean hours, so much so that he felt out of touch with the current events and the growth projections he’d set in motion. He could no longer speak confidently about anything happening at Deschanel Media Group, and while a part of him was okay with this, content to disappear into his old home with his daughter until he had a plan to protect her from the world, DMG was also his child, in a way. He’d created it from nothing, and, layer by layer, turned it into a successful venture that had prospective employees and investors chomping at the bit to get in on the hottest new act in town.

Bringing Anasofiya to work with him was the only way to both care for her and his business, and if anyone dared point out the hypocrisy of the boss making his own rules, they’d see a new side of Augustus Deschanel.

But no one did.

The women in the office took turns admiring Anasofiya’s shock of red hair and crimson lips, while the men told him they were glad to have him back, and glad to see him find a way to balance his life priorities. If anyone was thinking that Augustus was out of order bringing his baby to work, they neither said it, nor conveyed it in another way. Both his secretaries even offered to watch Ana while Augustus slipped into meetings throughout the day. He was hesitant to do this, but both had children of their own, and this wasn’t the battle worth fighting.

In the morning, both Augustus’ head of finance, as well as his marketing director, came into his office to brief him. They glanced at the baby in the bassinet, but Ana wasn’t a distraction, only a change to the scenery. By afternoon, when people stopped treating him like a new father and more like the head of the company he’d created, Augustus started to relax. Day one could’ve been a disaster, but instead, it was validation.

He could do this. Run a business and raise a daughter.

More importantly, he didn’t need anyone’s help.

Evangeline anxiously watched the clock. The Midnight Marauders would break soon, and when they did, she’d have to walk across the dark campus, in the middle of what police were calling Terror in the Tech. Seven students missing, all young women. But now four of their bodies had been found. All strangled with some sort of ligature, but not before they were brutally and violently raped.

Including the smiling Darcy Banks, whose face Evangeline greeted every morning and evening, pinned to her apartment fridge.

Police had imposed a curfew for anyone out alone after nine in the evening. For women, they stressed that, even in groups, the risk was too great. All seven of the missing girls were college students. Two from Harvard, one from Boston College, and the remaining four, from MIT.

But Evangeline needed the Midnight Marauders. It was the closest thing she had to a friend group, and the presence of others with like minds, who expected nothing more than what she could offer, was her tether to sanity. Increased campus patrols surely improved the safety on campus, but most of the students had been taken near the campus boundary, not within it. The route to her apartment, once she crossed that boundary, wasn’t well lit, a fact that had never occurred to her, or concerned her, until now.

“They say he’s handsome,” Janice said, breaking the silence.

“Who says?” Evangeline said, resisting the urge to roll her eyes straight to the ceiling. “The missing girls? Or the dead ones?”

“Evie,” Cassie cautioned, but she, too, was annoyed.

“He’s probably a student,” Janice went on. “You know, like one of those losers who were bullied by the pretty girls.” She waved her pencil in the air. “Or he’s an old, ugly fogey who fantasizes about what he can’t have.” She nodded to herself. “Yeah, that’s probably more like it.”

“The police haven’t released a thing about him, so anything you think you know is just speculation,” Cassie chided. “And we’re all scientists. We know the danger of speculation.”

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