A
light became visible
in the tower when they were still a mile from it, and Ethan saw the glow and stopped walking, only to be nudged again by the pistol.
“Guess she’s home,” Jack said. “That’s marvelous, don’t you think? Would hate to find that we’d missed our chance.”
Ethan looked at the light and thought of the woman who waited with it and tried to imagine a scenario in which he could protect her.
Came up empty.
The path was clear to them now, they knew the way even without him, and so he was expendable. They were keeping him on hand in the event that they needed him later, but that need was not so great as to save his life if he did something dangerous. And all of the options left to him were dangerous. Fight or flight, that was what he had, primal as it got, and he’d passed on better opportunities to make both choices before. He’d waited to reach Republic, only to be reminded of that thing that every survivor had to always consider—disaster was never a destination, but always a detour.
“The best thing to do is to let me talk with her,” he said. “I’m the one who understands that boy, and she would know about me by now.”
“Interesting option, don’t you think, Patrick?”
“Fascinating. But I have to say that I don’t care for it.”
“You feel the need to be involved in the discussion, is that it?”
“Well, I’ve come all this way.”
“True. Would be a shame to endure so much and watch from the shadows while Ethan reaps the rewards.”
“Indeed.”
“I suppose we’ll put it to a vote then. All in favor of staying together?”
Both men said, “Aye.”
“All opposed?”
Ethan didn’t speak. Just kept walking toward that light.
“Two in favor and one abstains. Not unanimous, perhaps, but as close as you’ll get.”
When they finally broke out of the woods and headed across the final stretch leading uphill to the lookout tower, Ethan could only hope that she was watching. If the light was on, she was likely awake. If she’d lied about the boy, she knew there was a threat, and maybe…maybe Connor was up there. It was possible she was hiding him now, trying to figure out what to do. Or waiting on help. Something. She might not be alone.
Jack was just behind Ethan, and Patrick floated some fifteen steps back and to the right. They reached the base of the stairs and all of them looked up, studying the cab. No shadows moved inside of it. They went up, turned at the first landing, up again, turn, up again, turn.
Forgive me,
Ethan was thinking, a silent whisper to the woman above them.
I had planned it to go another way.
He came to the top and there the wind blew hard enough that he wanted to grab the handrail. For the first time, he could see clearly through the windows. There was a table, a stove, an empty cot. Nobody moved inside.
“Open the door and then step out of the way,” Jack said. The musical good-natured tone was gone from his voice. All bloody business now.
Ethan opened the door. Stepped aside and then glanced behind him, expecting to see that Jack had drawn the pistol and was in a shooter’s stance. Instead, Jack stood casually, the black hat cocked low on his head, one hand on the guardrail. It was Patrick, down on the landing below them, who had the rifle to his shoulder.
“Go on in and say hello,” Jack said.
Ethan turned and walked through the door and called out hello, and though he had expected the answering silence, he did not expect to see what he did.
The lookout’s radio was demolished.
“Something went wrong here,” he said, and he was genuinely puzzled. He’d anticipated some possibilities—Connor’s presence, for example—but not this. He reached out and picked up a broken plastic fragment and then a severed cord. Why would she have destroyed her own radio? Her only chance to call for help?
“Are you sure you’re the only ones looking for the boy?” he said. “Besides the right people, that is?”
Besides Luke Bowden, his blood still hardening in the mountain breeze. Besides Ethan.
“Well, this is interesting,” Jack said. “She’s gone, brother. And she destroyed her radio before she left. Apparently she didn’t want us to be able to report her poor job performance.”
Ethan moved away from the radio, studying the room. Saw the Osborne fire-finder and saw the empty glass beneath it. The map was gone.
“They’re on the move,” he said. “
She
didn’t destroy the radio. He did.”
He understood it now. The broken radio, the lie to the searchers. Connor did not trust help. Connor did not trust anyone.
“How are you so sure?” Jack said.
“Her life revolves around that radio. It’s her job and her lifeline. To him, though? It would have been the scariest thing in the room. He found his way here because it was easy to navigate to. If she turned on the lights, like she did earlier? You can see it for a long ways. So he saw it, and he came here, and once he was here, she went to call it in. That would have been the natural reaction.” He pointed at the remains of the radio. “And there we have the unnatural reaction. That would be Connor. He wouldn’t want his location broadcasted.”
“Why lie to the searchers, though?” This was from Patrick.
“I’m not certain about that.” Ethan moved to the window, stared out at the dark expanse of mountains. There were faint red ribbons down below, where the fires coiled and burned. “But she believed him. He told her what he was running from, and she believed him.”
“The lights went on less than an hour ago,” Jack said. “They’ve not gone far.”
Ethan could see his own face reflected in the glass, seemingly part of the maze of dark mountains and ribbons of fire. He watched his mouth begin to smile as if it were something beyond his control.
“I can find them,” he said.
“I’d hope so. You’re rather worthless to us otherwise.”
“I can find them,” he repeated, but again he was whispering in his head to this anonymous woman from the lookout, not an apology this time.
Thank you. I will not fail you now.
Jack looked up. His burns glistened under the light. Ethan had grown used to seeing him in darkness, had forgotten the power of his hard blue eyes.
“Well, the job is yours if you want it. If not…”
“We can’t find them standing here,” Ethan said.
“No, I would think not. But before we head off into the night, Ethan, I’d like to hear your ideas. They’ve left the safety of the tower, which would suggest they feared our arrival. Where do you think they’re going?”
“Republic Peak.”
Jack looked at him for a long time. He did not speak. When the silence was broken, it was broken by Patrick, standing at the door with his rifle raised.
“They’re going to climb?”
Ethan nodded. “It’s the highest point they can reach. There, in the morning, they can do two things: see if anyone is pursuing them, and get the clearest possible location to signal for help.”
Jack waved a hand at the radio. “Signaling doesn’t seem to be a desire.”
“She might be able to change his mind. Another night alone in the woods might change it too. But regardless, he’ll want to get high, not low. He’s already proven that, coming up here. He wants to be able to see where the threat is.”
Republic Peak did not hold the appeal it once had, as a kill site. But going there still accomplished a few things. It would surely take him away from the boy. Connor wanted out of the mountains. The woman from this lookout wanted out of the mountains. You didn’t get out of them by going higher. So they’d go low, and if Ethan could keep these bastards going high, the odds of intersection were nonexistent. After that, it wasn’t a matter of killing anyone, though he’d certainly enjoy it. It was a matter of killing time. The burned man had used Ethan’s knowledge of his brother to convince Ethan to bring him to the boy, selling a story that the other man waited inside the hospital, a killer poised for action at Allison’s door. Now they were all together, which meant that no one waited outside Allison’s door. The ticking clock was a ruse, a con. There were only two brothers, and they were both with Ethan now. He didn’t have to kill them, just outlast them. Back in Billings, things had to be happening. New search parties gathering, new information being collected. Jamie Bennett would be involved by now. Facts would be replacing fiction. The ticking clock was for these men, not Ethan.
“How far to Republic?” Jack asked.
“A couple miles. It won’t be an easy walk, though.”
“It hasn’t been so far.”
“That’s where they’ll go,” Ethan insisted. “And not just because it makes sense. Because it’s what he’s been taught. Him coming here today, finding elevation, checking his back trail, and then adjusting to his pursuers? He’s listening to my advice. And from Republic? He knows how to get down without using a trail.”
“How?”
“The way we planned it. That was our escape route. Getting to Republic one way, and getting down another. He knew what he was supposed to do. Now that you’ve passed him by once and given him the chance to do it, he’ll take that chance.”
This was more of the truth than Ethan wanted to tell them, but it would put him exactly where he wanted to be when the sun rose. Lost-Person Behavior 101: Those in need of rescue in the mountains tend to walk down even though they should walk up. Why walk up? Because you were far more visible to searchers.
These two men had been invisible for too long.
Jack Blackwell swiveled to look at his brother. The burned side of his face was exposed to Ethan, who took a strange satisfaction in the deepening color of the blistered flesh.
“Well, Patrick?”
“Two of them walking in the dark will certainly leave a trail. I could find it. But let’s see if Ethan can, and faster. If he’s right, then he should have no trouble with that. Otherwise…”
“He’s of little use.”
“Substantially less valuable, yes.”
“The crucible looms, then.”
“So it does.”
Patrick stepped away from the door and motioned to Ethan, who walked back out into the night wind and toward a second chance. It was the old test, his favorite training exercise, and his most familiar role: he was the wilder again.
It was no longer a killer’s game. It was a survivor’s game.
I
t took Ethan nine minutes
to find their trail.
He knew, because the Blackwell brothers timed him. Patrick had suggested Ethan should be able to find it in five, Jack had countered with fifteen, and they had settled on ten. All of this covered in one of their standard conversations, washing over Ethan. In truth, he believed he had the trail located within those first five minutes, but he didn’t want to look too good, too fast.
It was not a hard trail to find, though it would be tough to follow soon. The plateau was rimmed by tall grasses that fell away to a tree line and then to rock, and each stage would increase the difficulty. Grass was one of Ethan’s favorite tracking terrains. You might not be able to find the distinct prints that mud or even dry soil offered, but you could move fast, because grass held the evidence of disturbance longer. It bent, broke, and flattened. The stories it could tell you, it told you quickly. The taller the grass, the quicker the read.
There were two paths into the grass from the lookout, and Ethan used the flashlight to determine which one was the right one. In so doing, he learned a great deal about Patrick Blackwell. The man had some level of training, certainly; he was better than his brother, but he wasn’t elite. Either he’d not received first-rate tracking instruction or he’d forgotten it swiftly, in the way that someone did if not called upon to practice the art.
In the first of the two impressions leading away from the lookout and into the tall grass, the track appeared lighter than the surrounding, undamaged vegetation, a pale beam headed west. The second was reversed: the pale grass on the outside, the beam of the path a shade darker. Subtle shifts, the sort that the untrained eye wouldn’t pause at but that a tracker’s eye had to pause at.
Patrick Blackwell studied each of them, gave each of them the same scrutiny.
That was all Ethan needed to know. Anyone who gave that darker path any kind of inspection was not capable of understanding a track. Finding it, maybe. Understanding it, no. The dark path had been left by someone walking toward the lookout. This was a fundamental rule and the simplest of tricks, one Ethan had learned from a British SAS member. It was a matter of reflected light, easily understood by anyone who observed the lines left behind a lawn mower from different angles. It was also the sort of fundamental rule that you forgot under pressure unless you practiced under pressure.
“They went this way,” Ethan said when the clock was at nine minutes, and he indicated the light path. “I’m sure of it.”
“Sure of it,” Jack said. “Ah, the confidence. Encouraging, isn’t it, Patrick?”
“Immensely,” Patrick said. He was looking at the trail with distaste, though, and Ethan understood why—he wasn’t convinced that it was the right one.
“It leads southwest,” Ethan said. “It leads toward Republic. Just as I told you. The other is older, probably left by some backpackers a few days ago. You see that, right?”
Patrick nodded.
Excellent, you prick,
Ethan thought.
You have no idea what you’ve missed. You might be able to see that it’s an older trail, but you had to examine it far too long to get that, if you even did.
“Onward, then,” Jack said.
They crossed through the grass and on toward lightning that was becoming more frequent. The wind that had been blowing steadily during the day was now only sputtering in uneven gusts, like an engine running out of gas. This was good for tracking, since strong, steady winds could quickly return the grass to its natural position, but bad for their destination. There were storms coming. The fast-and-hard breed. Unlikely to do much to help the early-summer drought conditions and guaranteed to be treacherous up on the peaks. On any other day, Ethan would be taking precautions now, looking to get lower and get a shelter built. Today, he hiked on and up.
Once off the plateau and through the grass, they found a stand of pines perhaps forty feet deep. Here was where an inexperienced tracker would lose himself almost immediately, and Ethan stopped once more and panned his flashlight across the area. Again he watched Patrick Blackwell from his peripheral vision, wanting to see what he did. This time, he did the right thing—ignored the ground entirely and looked at the trees.
This was critical because it was the first thing their quarry would have done. Reaching a change in terrain, with no trail to guide them, lost people paused to assess the obstacles, and then, nine times out of ten, they chose the path of least resistance. Or anyway, the path that
appeared
to offer the least resistance.
One of the pines had fallen, probably taken down by a lightning strike in a storm similar to the one they were walking into, and it lay horizontal. Nobody climbed over a tree unless he had to, so Ethan looked to the tree’s left and right and found the terrain unchanged and the slope no steeper on one side than the other. That determined, he drifted to the right. Most of the world’s population was right-handed, and he knew that Connor was too. Turning in the direction of your dominant hand wasn’t a lost person’s first instinct—taking the easiest path was—but it was common. Combine that with the fact that when you drove a car in America, left turns were far more likely to force you to cross traffic and thus far more dangerous, and Ethan believed that most people would default to the right if given no clear reason to turn to the left.
Off to the right of the fallen pine, then, and there he found the ground covered in lichen and saw the first prints. He moved to the side, careful not to disturb them, knelt, and studied them with his flashlight.
Two hikers, two sets of impressions. He put his own foot beside each one even though he didn’t need to—he did it because it was a good time waste, and his job was to waste time and last until sunrise—and demonstrated to the Blackwell brothers that each track was substantially smaller than his own.
“Woman and boy,” Jack Blackwell said in a musical, nearly cheerful tone. “That’s the idea, I believe.”
“I believe it is,” his brother said.
They moved on a few feet; the lichen faded to dirt as it led up to the rocks and now the imprints became distinct, and Ethan knelt again, and for the first time since they’d left the tower, he felt true surprise.
These were not Connor Reynolds’s prints.
The size was about right, and the depth of the impression indicated someone of about the right weight, but neither imprint matched Connor’s boots. Ethan had paid careful attention to boots. They were required gear, but despite that, kids often arrived in sneakers or basketball shoes, and he had to outfit them with boots, because broken ankles were easily acquired on a mountainside. This year, every boy had worn boots, and Connor’s had not been a wise choice. They weren’t for hiking; they were cheap imitation military-style boots, black and shining and sure to cause problems, because they weren’t broken in. Ethan had packed extra moleskin with Connor Reynolds in mind, in fact, expecting the boy to get blisters fast.
Neither of the prints he was looking at matched Connor’s. One appeared to be from a hiking boot tread, and the other was more unique. A fine boot, but heavier.
“Perhaps if we give him enough time, he will detect their foot odor,” Jack said. “A veritable bloodhound, our Ethan.”
“Sadly, we don’t have that sort of time,” Patrick answered. “We should be moving along, don’t you think?”
“I do. Any chance that we are on the wrong track?”
“None. They’re proper size, but more important, they’re very fresh prints. I rather doubt two people of similar size decided to leave the lookout tower in the night for a mountain hike.”
“Agreed. And yet our tracking expert seems perplexed.”
“I have a theory on that. I’m beginning to question his pace.”
“You think that he’d waste our time?
Ethan?
”
“I’m merely saying I’m curious.”
“We certainly couldn’t have that. Time is valuable to us. More so than to Ethan.”
He let them talk, and then finally he straightened and turned to face them. Patrick was closest to him now, Jack standing well removed. A reversal of position because Patrick was better equipped to judge Ethan’s work, or so they thought.
“It’s them,” Ethan said, though he knew that it was not, and he tried to keep the gratitude at this providential discovery out of his voice. Other hikers had passed this way, rare in the backcountry, and they were headed in the direction he wanted to go. His job had just been made immeasurably easier. He no longer had to convince them that he was following a trail that didn’t exist. He simply had to follow the wrong trail.
Hell, he could even pick up the pace.