A
s he pulled the truck up
to the Pilot Creek trailhead, Ethan felt relief. They were coming home. Out of the burned man’s terrible truck and into Ethan’s lovely mountains, which could also be very terrible, especially to those who failed to respect them.
“We’ll start here,” Ethan said. “And we’ll need to walk fast.”
The burned man gazed out the window without interest. They were surrounded by high peaks and steep slopes but Ethan was sure the man saw no threat there because he had no intention of getting into a situation where he might fall off a peak. But he would, Ethan believed, allow himself to get into a situation where he climbed toward one.
What Ethan needed was a slope that rose on them abruptly, and for a short length. One that they could walk along until suddenly they needed to make a short scramble to the top. Enough to force the holstering of the gun and demand the total attention of the hands.
Republic Peak offered that opportunity. It was a long, leg-burning hike, but a hike all the same; you could keep your hands free. Until you reached ten thousand feet. There it leveled out to a wide plateau that overlooked a glacier to the west and the drainage of Republic Creek to the north. The country to the south was blocked by the peak itself, but it wasn’t a terrible climb to the top, and for that reason Ethan often used it as a summit for the amateurs he brought into the mountains. No ropes required, no technical experience or gear. Anyone in decent physical condition could make it to the top of Republic Peak—but you couldn’t just walk to it. It required a little hands-and-knees work; you had to pick your way among the rocks. At the summit, there was an extraordinary view of the surrounding countryside. There was also, as was common in these mountains, a stack of stones marking the summit, a small pyramid of rocks left by triumphant hikers who wanted to acknowledge their journey to the top of the world, or as close to it as they’d yet been. Ethan’s boys had added to it over the years. Heavy, rounded stones and flat, jagged chunks. Killing rocks, in the right hands.
But can I beat Luke? How fast is my clock ticking now?
He was sweating even though they hadn’t yet started up the trail. It was all out there waiting for him, he could take care of the man easily if he was left alone, but he might not be left alone. He hadn’t counted on the wild card, Luke. He hoped Roy had actually radioed Luke and told him to get the hell out of the mountains.
Then you’ll meet him coming back down. And then…
“Ethan? What’s our plan? You seem distracted. What’s on your mind? Is it Allison? Ah, such a sweet thing, true love. But let’s not let it disrupt our focus.”
“We’re going to have to get high, and do it fast,” he told the burned man as they left the truck. “He’ll have a light going as soon as it gets dark. If he’s on the move, it will be his headlamp or a flashlight. If he’s in one place, it will be a fire.”
“If he’s hiding, as you believe, why would he have a light?”
“Because I spent the past several days scaring him. In order to get the kids to take things seriously, I share some war stories. Trust me, none of them are comfortable up here at night. Not at first. And if he’s moving, which he may be, then a light is simply required. He’ll have to see where he’s going. I watched this boy start a fire. He’s good at it, and he likes it. I’m sure he’ll want one going. The fire will give him a sense of strength, of security. You’d be surprised at the feeling that comes with starting a fire.”
“Oh, I’m rather familiar with it, Ethan.”
Ethan didn’t look at him, didn’t react. Told himself not to think of Claude Kitna. Not to think of the source of the smoke they’d passed. Instead, he thought of the fire that Allison had started. That was a survivor’s fire. That was the heart that he had to match.
“So we hike fast, and we get high,” he said. “I’m telling you this so you won’t question where we’re going or what we’re doing.”
“I’ll question everything, actually. But carry on.”
The wind freshened and blew at them warm and dusty from its journey over dry terrain. There was a thickness to it, a humidity that felt misplaced in the high mountains, and Ethan knew there was a storm behind it. The days had been too hot and too dry for too long this early in the summer. It had fed the fires, and now rain would come in and maybe help, maybe hurt. A good drenching downpour would be a blessing to the firefighters; a lightning storm might be a disaster. This wind did not feel as if it came from a savior. “Feel that?” Ethan asked.
“The breeze. Yes, Ethan. I feel it.”
“Not a breeze. That’s a warning.”
“Is it, now?” The burned man managed to keep his voice drawling and uninterested even when he should have been out of breath. He was hurt and they were moving fast and it had likely been some time since he’d slept, but he did not show any of that. Ethan was concerned by this. Ethan had the feeling that the burned man was a survivor himself, and that was trouble.
“It’s coming ahead of a storm,” Ethan said. “And we’re two miles up in the air. It doesn’t take long for lightning to connect with the earth when you climb this high to meet it.”
“I’ve come through a fire already today, Ethan. I’ll welcome the storm.”
They continued to work their way along the trail, flashlights on now because darkness had settled, and when the burned man moved, he was loud, too loud, and Ethan smiled. No, this was not his world. Ethan had made the right choice. They would reach Republic Peak and there the burned man would die. It was a matter of hours, that was all. Two hours, maybe three. That was all the burned man had left, and he did not know it. Ethan had made the right choice, and he would prove it in blood.
“You say the searchers have not sighted him, but the fire lookout did,” the burned man said. “Yet we aren’t going to the lookout. You’re ignoring that. Seems unwise.”
“I’m not ignoring it. One person has seen him. How? By having the elevation advantage. If we get to Republic Peak, we’ll be higher than him, no question. I don’t know how you’re feeling, how much you’ve got in you. If you want to sit it out and let me make the climb, then we’ll do it that way. Running away from you won’t help me, so you know I’ll come back down for you.”
“Your concern is touching,” the burned man said, “but I have plenty in me, Ethan. Don’t you worry about my resources. You just set the pace, and I’ll keep up.”
This was the answer Ethan had been expecting, and it was good. He’d wanted to goad him a little bit. Ethan would attempt to discourage him from the summit again when they were closer, and the burned man would hear that and commit to reaching the top because he would not want Ethan to think he was weakening.
“You believe he hid from the searchers, don’t you, Ethan?”
“Yes. Because he thinks you’ll be with them, or near them. An ordinary boy would try to get out of the mountains as fast as possible. He’d seek help. Connor—that’s the name I know him by, at least—is not interested in finding help, because he doesn’t trust help. From anyone. As long as he knows you’re here—and he does—then he will not willingly give himself up. He made that clear when he ran off last night.”
“You can find him?”
“I will find him.”
“And what do you think will happen to him then?”
Ethan hesitated. “I’m not sure.”
“Yes, you are, Ethan. Yes, you are. So admit it. If you find him, what will happen to him?”
Ethan was silent, and the burned man said, “You’re wasting time. Answer the question.”
“You’ll likely kill him.”
“I certainly will kill him. It’s not a matter of likelihood. It’s a matter of certainty. And you know this, but still you’ll find him for me. So you are willing for him to die.”
Ethan turned back and looked at him. The burned man was smiling, his face pale in the glow from the flashlight.
“I don’t desire it,” Ethan said. “But I also don’t know him. I don’t love him. I love my wife. If sacrificing him allows me to save my wife…”
“A noble husband.”
Ethan turned from him, away from that smile. He looked again at the shadow of Republic Peak and thought that they could not get there fast enough.
“Let’s get to it,” he said. “We need to cover ground.”
The voice that floated out of the blackness then was so calm, it didn’t even startle Ethan, though surely it should have. It just entered the conversation as if it belonged there.
“Would you prefer I join your party at this juncture, or should I stay with the others?”
Ethan looked in the direction of the sound but the burned man did not. His eyes remained on Ethan.
“If they haven’t found him yet,” the burned man said, “I suspect it’s unlikely that they will. And I have the utmost confidence in my friend Ethan here. So why don’t you join us.”
“My pleasure.”
The way they say things. Like they’re alone in the world. Like it was built for the two of them and they’re lords over it,
Allison had said. And then she had begun to cry.
The second man emerged from the woods soundlessly. He was armed with a rifle. Ethan watched him walk and realized that he had heard nothing from him until the man had wanted to be heard and he understood then with immediate, terrible clarity that these men were the same in awful ways and also different in awful ways. The burned man was not familiar with the wilderness. His partner was. As bad as it was that there were two of them, it was far worse to know the nature of the second man. All of the advantages Ethan had believed he held were gone now.
The second man walked to within ten feet of them and then stopped. He was shorter and more muscular and had close-cropped hair but he looked a great deal like the burned man. Brothers, Ethan thought, they were brothers.
“Good to meet you, Mr. Serbin,” he said. “Had the pleasure of making your wife’s acquaintance last night. You weren’t at home.”
Ethan didn’t speak. Far ahead, Republic Peak stood against the night sky. The perfect place to kill one man.
Not two.
I
t was never full dark
in a hospital room. There was always the glow of some monitor, a night-light in the bathroom, a bright band under the door. Allison eyed the shadows and hoped for sleep and had no luck, and then the old shadows vanished and new ones emerged as the door eased open a few inches.
For a moment, it held there, just cracked, and whoever was on the other side was silent. Allison knew then that it was them, knew that they’d finished with Ethan and had returned for her, and she wondered how it was that this was a surprise to her, because of course they were not men who let you walk away; it was not enough for you to be burned and beaten. They meant to put you in the ground, and she wasn’t there yet.
There was a scream in her throat when the door opened wider, and then it stopped again and there was something so tentative in its motion that she was certain it didn’t belong to either Jack or Patrick, her last nocturnal visitors. They moved in unusual ways, but never tentatively.
The door opened farther, letting a broad beam of light fall into the room, and Allison blinked against it as a tall blond woman entered.
Allison said, “You bitch.”
“I know,” Jamie Bennett said, and closed the door behind her.
The room was silent for a few seconds, and dark again, and Allison thought,
Do not say that you’re sorry, I don’t want to hear that, don’t you dare say it.
Jamie Bennett said, “May I turn on the light?” A click of a switch, and there she was. Tall and blond and beautiful. Unbeaten and unburned.
“Do you know where my husband is?” Allison said.
“I was hoping you might.”
“I don’t.”
Jamie nodded. Allison looked at her face, saw the red eyes and the deep fatigue, and was pleased by them. At least it was costing her something. Not enough, but something.
“They came because of you,” Allison said. “Because you screwed up.”
“I know it.”
“Do you?”
“Yes, Mrs. Serbin. I know more than you do about how much blame there is for me.”
“No,” Allison said. “You don’t know more than I do about it. Have you heard them speak to each other?”
Jamie Bennett stayed silent.
“I didn’t think so. Until you’ve heard them, you don’t know.”
She was both surprised and disappointed that the other woman had begun to cry.
“He was your problem,” Allison said, though her heart was no longer in the attack, and she hated that, because, damn it, she was entitled to her anger. “It was
your
job to keep him safe. Not anyone else’s. You were supposed to do your job like a pro. Look at what’s come of your game.”
“I couldn’t do it like a pro,” Jamie Bennett said.
“Obviously.”
“I wanted to. You don’t believe that, but I wanted to. There was nothing I wanted more in the world than to keep it professional. But it is absolutely impossible to do that with your own son.”
Allison opened her mouth, felt the sting along the lines of stitches, closed it, and tried again. Speaking softer now. “Your son?”
Jamie Bennett nodded. One tear traced her cheekbone.
“That boy who is missing, the one they came for, that’s your child?”
“That’s my child.”
Allison didn’t say anything for a long time. Outside, a cart squeaked by and someone let out a too-loud laugh and the patient in the room beside them hacked a wet cough and the two women sat there and stared at each other in silence.
“Why?” Allison said finally.
“Why to which part? Why am I here? I’m trying to find him. That’s the only thing that I—”
“Why do they want him?”
Jamie Bennett crossed the room and sat in the chair where Ethan had been earlier.
“He saw them kill a man. He found a body, and then he saw these men appear with another man, and they killed him, and Jace saw it all.”
“Jace.”
“That’s his name, yes. He was Connor Reynolds when you met him.”
“Yes. Ethan’s gone after him. He left me here and went back to find him.”
“I’ve been trying to reach Ethan. I haven’t gotten through.”
“You don’t get a cell signal in the wilderness, Jamie.”
“And they haven’t found the men who…who did this to you.”
“No. They have not.” She lifted a finger to her face and touched the bandages and said, “Who are they?”
“I have no idea. I have their physical descriptions, and I have the names they call themselves, and beyond that…nothing.”
“They’re brothers,” Allison said.
“I understand that they look alike.”
“More than looks. They’re brothers. The names might be lies, but that part is not. They go together. It’s a shared blood.”
“I’d like to promise you that we will find them,” Jamie Bennett said. “But I’m done making promises.”
“Who did they kill? Who did…Jace see them kill?”
“Witnesses. My witnesses. For a federal trial, one that was supposed to put seven people in prison, including three police officers. I was hired to do part of the protection assignment. I failed.” She took a long breath, brushed hair out of her face, and said, “My witnesses—they weren’t just killed. They were taken to Indiana, to the place where my son lives with my ex-husband, and murdered there. They’d sent me a note indicating the location. I was supposed to discover the bodies, or have them discovered. Instead, my son saw it. And now…now they have to address that.”
“Why would they have done that? Killed the men and dumped the bodies by your family?”
“To prove that they can’t be touched, and I can be,” Jamie Bennett said. “I’m sure the message was a threat, and one that entertained them. It’s their pattern, or what we understand of it. They’re very good at what they do, but they’re of…more creative minds than your typical hired killers. More like sociopaths than professionals, frankly. They like to entertain themselves while they work. Killing the witnesses I had promised to protect and then leaving them so close to my son…I think that pleased them.”
“They know that he saw them.”
“Yes.”
“But they didn’t kill him. Why not?”
“They didn’t find him. He hid well that day, and they ran out of time. I got him away then. To a safe house. The sort of thing I told you his mother wouldn’t trust. Remember that, the night I met you, that night in the snow? It wasn’t a lie. His mother didn’t trust the safe house. His mother had just lost two witnesses from one. Do you remember when I said I would protect the boy for free if I thought I could?”
Her voice broke and she turned from Allison. That was the only motion she made, but somehow she seemed to continue retreating.
“His mother was never a very good mother,” she said. “That’s why he lived with his father. But his mother still loves him. She loves him more than…” She stopped talking and gave a sob of a laugh and then said, “You like that? How I still have to talk about myself as if I’m not the mother?”
“I understand it, at least.”
She turned back to Allison and said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Serbin. I’m so sorry. I should never have involved your husband. Or you. It was just an idea that came to me in a desperate time, and I remembered your husband, remembered that training and how good he was and how remote this place was, and I thought…I thought it might work. For long enough, anyhow. Just enough time for them to be caught. I’m so sorry you’ve paid for my mistake.”
Allison stared past her and out the window to where the lights of the town glowed. On the other side of the lights, the mountains lived in blackness, and somewhere on them were Jamie Bennett’s son and Allison’s husband and the two men who smelled of smoke and blood.
“You might have made a lot of mistakes,” Allison said. “But coming to Ethan wasn’t one of them. I can promise you that. I can’t promise you that he’ll get your son back to you safely. But I can promise you that nobody has a better chance.”
“I’m going after him.”
“No, you’re not.”
“It’s why I’m here. That’s my
son.
You heard me say it; you’re the only one who knows. I’m going to help find him.”
“No, you’re not,” Allison repeated. “You don’t know how. If you were with Ethan, maybe. Without him…you’ll just get stopped.”
“Then help me. Tell me where Ethan would have gone.”
“I
don’t know!
If I knew, I’d be there myself! To tell him to quit.”
“How would Ethan have started? So far, all I know is that he’s gone to search. You
have
to know more than that. This is what he does. What has he told you about the way he does it?”
He would have gone to the last place he’d seen the boy. He would have hiked back up the Pilot Creek trail and found their camp, and there he would have begun to track him.
“Would he have listened?” Allison said.
“What?”
“Your son. Was he the type of kid who would have paid attention to what Ethan said? Would he have listened and retained, or would he have been too scared? Would he have been concentrating only on staying with his false identity and hoping that nobody came for him?”
“He would have listened. It’s one of the reasons we…one of the reasons
I
picked this approach. I wanted him off the grid, yes. But I also thought that your husband would help him. Mentally, emotionally. That he wouldn’t be alone in the way he would have been in other situations.”
Allison looked at the dark mountains again and said, “It will probably be too late.”
“I’ve got to try. Mrs. Serbin, if you have an idea, then you’ve got to let me try. Just tell me where to go or who to talk to and I will leave you alone, I will—”
“We’ll go together.”
Jamie Bennett didn’t say anything, just looked Allison up and down. Taking inventory of the damage.
“I’m burned, and I’m sore. I’m not broken. I can move.”
“You don’t need to—”
“Bullshit. Your son is out there, and my husband. And I hate hospitals.”
“You’re in one for a reason.”
Allison pushed herself upright. It wasn’t pleasant—there were throbs of pain from places she hadn’t known were hurt—but she could do it. She swung around and got her feet down on the floor. All that was required now was standing. That was all. Tango had been standing for three months. How many people did she need to explain that to? Only one. Herself.
“Stop,” Jamie Bennett said, but there wasn’t much heart in it.
“Ethan gave them escape routes this summer,” she said. “Every night, at every campsite. He said Connor—sorry,
Jace
—fell back when they were hiking last night. If he hasn’t been found yet, then he’s not on a trail. They would have found him. If he went into the backcountry, and if he was the type of kid who listened, then he might have tried to get out using the escape route. It would have been the only option he knew.”
“So where would he be?”
“Trying to hike into Silver Gate down the back of a mountain.”
“Silver Gate,” Jamie Bennett said. “That’s…that’s where the fire is.”
“Yes.”
“Would it be close to him?”
“I have no idea what’s happening in those mountains. Now, I know you can drive fast. You’ve demonstrated that. So drive fast again, but this time stay on the damn road, all right?”