Within half an hour he’d hailed a yellow cab. “Airport,” he instructed, climbing behind an Asian driver.

“Which airline?” the man asked, pulling into the street.

“Just the main terminal,” Casius answered. He pulled the bag against his leg and gazed out the window. He had covered his bases. There was no way for them to trace him now. They would scour his house of course, but they would find nothing.

He was going down into the jungle and one way or another he would put Jamal to death.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Friday

THE GOOD news was that Sherry slept long and hard that night.

The bad news was that her sleep was filled with a hollow scream that could only have been shaped in hell itself.

Sherry doubled over on the sandy beach, throat raw and wailing.

Oh, God! Oh, God, save me! Oh . . .

She was running out of breath and panicking and unable to stop her shrieking. She was dying—a slow death caused by the acid that sizzled on her skin. The pain raged to her bones, as if they had been opened and molten lead had been poured into them. All around her the people were crying and toppling onto the sand, skeletons.

Sherry bolted upright in bed, still screaming. The room echoed with her hoarse voice and she clamped a hand over her mouth. She breathed heavily through her nostrils, eyes peeled at the soaked bed.

She wasn’t dead.

The vision had come back. Stronger this time. Much stronger.

“Oh, God,” she whimpered. “Oh, God, this is worse than the box . . . Please . . .”

Helen!

Sherry didn’t bother brushing her teeth or dressing. She threw her bathrobe on and ran for the car.

Helen answered on the second knock, as if she’d been waiting.

“Hello, Tanya.”

Sherry walked in, still trembling.

“You look a bit ragged, my dear.” Helen looked her over and then walked for the living room. “Come on, then. Tell me again.”

She walked in and sat.

“You did not like the bile, I take it,” Helen said.

The bile?

Helen must have seen her expression. “The stomach of the whale. Jonah. The acid.”

“The bile,” Sherry said. She dropped her head and began to cry.

“I’m sorry, my dear,” Helen said gently. “Really, I am. It must be painful. But I can assure you that it won’t end. Not until you go.”

“I don’t want this!” Sherry cried.

“No. But you’re not sweating blood yet, so I suppose you’re all right.”

Sherry stared at her through blurred vision, at a loss for what she could possibly mean. “I can’t go through another night like that, Grandmother. I mean . . . I really don’t think I can. Physically.”

“Exactly.”

“This is mad! ”

“Yes.”

Sherry lowered her head and shook it. Helen began to hum an old hymn and after a while it had a settling effect on Sherry.

Wiping her eyes, she lifted her head and studied the older woman.