Finding North by Claudia Hall Christian Page A

intelligence community and civilians in the Department of
Defense and the Department of State.”
    “ Yeah,” Alex said, without
looking up. “We have a different plan because I’m not a civilian.
But Col and Raz, they have that insurance, plus the supplemental we
carry.”
    “ And it’s called Compass
Rose?” Rebecca asked. “Weird coincidence.”
    “ I guess,” Alex
said.
    “ Are you finding
anything?” Raz asked.
    “ I’ve seen this mark
before,” Alex said. “In fact . . .”
    Alex went to the safe and
opened it. She looked around for a moment before finding Rebecca’s
father’s caliper. She took the cartography tool to the table and
held it under the magnified light.
    “ The same mark is on the
side of the caliper,” Alex said. “Even the eye.”
    So as not to disturb the
babies, she held the caliper in front of Rebecca. She pointed to
the mark and held it out to Raz.
    “ I’ve seen this
mark . . . somewhere else,” Alex said. “For the life
of me, I can’t place it.”
    “ My father had a ring with
the symbol on it,” Rebecca said.
    “ Any idea what it means?”
Alex asked.
    “ No,” Rebecca said. “He
had cufflinks and a tie tack with the symbol on it,
too.”
    “ I wonder if it’s his
symbol,” Alex said.
    “ I’ve seen this mark
before,” Raz said.
    Alex looked at him. His
face had drained of color.
    “ Are you all right?” Alex
asked.
    “ You look like you’ve seen
a ghost,” Rebecca said.
    “ I think I have,” Raz
said. “You remember me talking about my NYPD partner?”
    “ Dexter Zeno,” Alex
said.
    “ Great name,” Rebecca
said.
    “ He goes by Dex,” Alex
nodded. “Dex Zeno.”
    “ That’s an even better
name,” Rebecca said.
    Alex nodded.
    “ He was obsessed with this
symbol,” Raz said. “Or really two symbols — the outer star and the
eye with the eyebrow. See how the eyebrow goes up in the middle?
That’s what makes this eye unique. What made this particular
compass rose unique was the use of both symbols. I never paid that
much attention, but . . .”
    Raz shrugged.
    “ But?” Alex
asked.
    “ It was some kind of
family thing,” Raz said. “We’d been friends for a long time,
partners for almost ten years, when his father died suddenly. His
father passed to Dex something that had to do with this symbol. I
don’t know what. Dex said that his father had learned about it only
upon his grandfather’s death; his grandfather learned of it upon
his grandfather’s father’s death, and so on, all the way back to
the middle ages.”
    “ He could trace his family
that long?” Rebecca asked.
    “ It was in his father’s
belongings,” Raz said. “After his father died, Dex became obsessed
with this compass rose.”
    “ Compass roses are in the
legend of every map,” Alex said. “The eye and star on this one
makes it unique but not unusual.”
    “ It was the whole thing,”
Raz said. “The compass rose with the eight dark points, eight
shaded points, and the eye. Or one and not the other. The compass rose is
special in some way. Dex used to see the symbols all over the city
— on buildings, churches, everywhere.”
    “ The eight-pointed star
with the eye?” Alex asked.
    “ Both, and sometimes just
the eye. After his father died, Dex received a file from his
father’s lawyer,” Raz shrugged. “I don’t know. I had a lot going on
then, stuff with Vicki, work . . . I didn’t have
that kind of family so, honestly, I didn’t really understand his
fixation. It seemed insane. He seemed kind of . . .
nuts. I thought he was upset because his dad died so suddenly. But,
one night, just before I started working with Ben, he told me that
his father had been collecting all of this . . .
stuff.”
    “ Stuff?” Alex
asked.
    “ That’s what I remember
him calling it,” Raz said. “‘Stuff.’ I guess after Dex’s
grandfather died, his father became obsessed with this ‘stuff.’ Dex
didn’t know what to do with all of it.