Then I was thinking of a steaming hot bath, a cool glass of Chardonnay, maybe a baked potato with Wisconsin Cheddar—life’s
little rewards. I was feeling kind of proud of myself. I hadn’t felt that way for a long time, not since David’s death changed
just about everything in my life.
I was about to go inside when I realized that there was a car in the lot, a shiny black Jeep Cherokee.
The door opened and a man slowly got out. Headlights hit him from behind and for a moment he was haloed in light.
He was tall, slender, but muscular, with lots of blond hair. His eyes quickly took in the place. The big porch deck festooned
with hummingbird feeders and a couple of wind socks. My trusty-dusty mountain bike. Wildflowers everywhere—mountain lupine,
daisies, Indian paintbrush.
Now this part is more than a little weird. I’d never seen him before. But my limbic brain, a dumb little organ so primitive
it bypasses logical thought, locked on to his image and stayed there. I stared at him, and I felt a rush of something akin
to recognition. And my heart, which has been stone-dead for the past few years, sputtered, caught, and jumped into life for
at least a couple of seconds. That kind of ticked me off, actually.
I figured that whoever he was, the mystery man was lost.
“We’re closed for the night,” I said.
He stared at me, unapologetic about the intrusion into my front yard.
Then he called me by name.
“Dr. O’Neill?”
“Does she owe you money?” I said. It was an old Comedy Store line, but I liked it. Besides, I needed a passable joke after
the euthanasia of the doe.
He smiled, and his light blue eyes brightened, and I found that I couldn’t look away from them. “Are you Frances O’Neill?”
“Yeah. It’s Frannie, though.”
I took in a face that was cool yet had a touch of warmth. The directness of his eyes sort of nailed me to the spot. He had
a fine nose, a strong chin. His features held together too damned well. A dash of Tom Cruise, maybe even a little Harrison
Ford. Something like that, or so it seemed that night in the bloom of the Jeep’s headlights.
He brushed off his slouchy hat, and a lot of sandy-blond hair shifted and gleamed. Then he was standing in front of me, all
six two of him, like a glossy photo from an L. L. Bean catalog, or maybe Eddie Bauer’s. Very serious-looking, though.
“I’ve come from Hollander and Cowell.”
“You’re a real estate broker?” I croaked.
“Did I catch you at a bad time?” he asked. “Sorry.” At least he was polite.
“What makes you think that?” I asked. I was all too aware that my jeans were soaked in blood. My sweatshirt looked like a
Jackson Pollock painting.
“I’d hate to see the guy who lost the fight,” he said, surveying my appearance. “Or do you dabble in witchcraft?”
“Some people call it veterinary medicine,” I said. “So, what’s this about? Why did Hollander and Cowell send you at this time
of night?”
He hooked a thumb toward Bear Bluff’s center, where the real estate office is.
“I’m your new tenant. I signed the papers this afternoon. They said you left everything in their capable hands.”
“You’re kidding. You rented my cabin?”
I’d almost forgotten I’d put the cabin on the block. It’s a quarter of a mile back in the woods behind the clinic, and it
used to be a hunting shack until David and I moved in. After David died, I started sleeping in a small room at the clinic.
A whole lot of things changed for me back then, none of them good.
“So? Can I see the place?” L. L. Bean said.
“Just follow the footpath behind the clinic,” I told him. “It’s a four- or five-minute walk. It’s worth it. Door’s not locked.”
“I don’t get the guided tour?” he asked.
“Much as I’d love to, I’ve still got a couple of chickens to kill and some spells to cast before I sleep. I’ll get you a flashlight—”
“I’ve got one in the car,” he said.
I lingered in the doorway as he crunched back to his Jeep. He had a nice way of walking. Confident, not too cocky.
“Hey,” I called out to him. “What’s
your
name?”
He looked back—hesitated for a half second.
“Kit,” he finally said. “I’m Kit Harrison.”
I
WILL NEVER FORGET what happened next. It was such a shock for me, a hard kick in the stomach, or maybe even the side of my
head.
Kit Harrison reached into the Jeep—and he did the unspeakable—he pulled a hunting rifle off a silver-metallic gun rack. That
son of a bitch.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. My flesh crept.
I yelled at him, loudly, which is so unlike me. “Wait! Hey! You! Wait right there, mister! Hold up!”
He turned to face me. The look on his face was serene, cool as it had been. “What?” he said. Was he challenging me? Did he
dare?
“Listen.” I let the big screen door bang shut behind me and marched fast and hard across the gravel beachhead. No way was
I going to have somebody with a hunting rifle on my land. No way! Not in his or my lifetime.
“I’ve changed my mind. This is no good. It’s not going to work. You can’t stay here. No hunters. No how, no way!”
His gaze returned to the Jeep’s interior. He snapped the glove compartment shut. Locked it. He didn’t seem to be listening
to me at all.
“Sorry,” he said without looking at me. “We made a deal.”
“The deal’s off! Didn’t you just hear me?”
“Nope. A deal’s a deal,” he said.
He grabbed a torch lamp from inside the car door, a reddish duffel bag, then he took up the hideous rifle in his other hand.
I was apoplectic, kept sputtering, “Look here.” But he ignored me, didn’t seem to hear a word.
He kicked the Jeep door shut, flicked on his Durabeam flashlight, and casually headed down the path into the woods. The woods
sucked up the light and the sound of his retreating footsteps.
My blood was knocking hard and fast against my eardrums.
A goddamn hunter was staying in my house.
I
T WAS NEARLY DARK and the hunters still hadn’t found the girl’s body. They were bitterly cold and hungry and frustrated as
hell, and they were also scared. There would be unfortunate consequences if they failed.
They had to find the girl.
And the boy as well—Matthew.
The five of them walked through the thickly wooded area where they believed the girl had fallen. She should be right there!
They had to locate the specimen called Tinkerbell and destroy her, if she wasn’t already dead from her fall and the gunshot.
Put Tinkerbell to sleep,
Harding Thomas was thinking as he led the search team. It was a euphemism he used to make moments like this easier
:Put somebody to sleep. The way they do with animals. Not death, not murder—just peaceful sleep.
He thought he knew the precise area where the girl had dropped like a shot from the sky, but there wasn’t any dead body flattened
on the ground, or hung up in the towering fir trees.
They certainly couldn’t leave her out here, couldn’t risk hikers or campers finding the body. What a titanic disaster that
would be.
“Tinkerbell, can you hear me? Are you hurt, honey? We just want to take you home. That’s all.” Thomas called in the gentlest
voice he could manage. It wasn’t so hard: he had always liked Max and Matthew well enough.
Tinkerbell
was a code name, and it was what he’d always called her.
Peter Pan
was young Matthew’s code. He was
Uncle Tommy.
“Tinkerbell, where are you? Come out, come out. We’re not going to hurt you, sweetheart. I’m not even angry at you. This is
Uncle Tommy. You can trust me. If you can’t trust me, who can you trust?
“Can you hear me? C’mon, kiddo. I know you’re there. Trust Uncle Thomas. There’s no one else who can help you.”
S
HE WAS ALIVE. Amazing, amazing, amazing!
But Max was hurt, shot, and she didn’t know how bad the wound was. Probably not too bad, since she hadn’t passed out yet,
and there didn’t seem to be much blood.
She’d been hanging on to the top of a tree for hours, hidden in thick branches. At least she
hoped
she was hidden. She tried to be still. Silent, too. Invisible, three.
Max was shivering, and the whole thing was crashing out of control.
She really, really wished Matthew was with her. They would give each other strength and hope and words of wisdom. It had always
been that way with the two of them. They were inseparable at the School. Mrs. Beattie, the only truly nice one there, called
them “inseparable at birth,” and the “Bobbsey Twins”—whoever the heck they were. When Mrs. Beattie died, everything had gone
bad. Real bad.
This
bad.
The woods were crawling with men. Bad ones—the worst creatures imaginable. There were at least a half dozen of them.
Hunters—killers.
They were frantically searching for her, and also for Matthew. They had rifles and flashlights.
Uncle Thomas was one of them, and he was the worst. He had pretended to be their friend… but he was the one who would
put you to sleep.
He had been a teacher, a scientist, and now he was just a killer.
“We’re not going to hurt you, sweetheart.”
She mimicked his voice, his phony, insincere manner.
The one good part was that she didn’t need to
see
them walking in the woods. Her hearing was incredibly acute. It was capable of separating sounds as close together as a thousandth
of a second. It was one of her very coolest gifts. She could hear the tiny hum of distant mosquitoes, and the angry twitter
of a wren. She heard aspen leaves rustling a half mile away. She wondered if Matthew was anywhere nearby. Was he listening,
too?
“Tinkerbell, can you hear me?”
Yes, she could hear the pathetic sickos as they hunted for her. She had heard them when they were far away. She heard every
footstep, every little cough and sniffle, every hot, smelly breath they took, wishing it would be their last.
One of them spoke, and she recognized a particularly insensitive guard from the School. “We shoulda brought dogs with us.”
“Shoulda, coulda, woulda.” One of the others ranked on him and laughed. “She’s a kid. They both are. If we can’t find a little
kid we better pack it in.”
Dogs!
Max bit down on a cry. Dogs would find her. Dogs were better at this than men. Dogs had special powers, too. Humans were
the weakest species. Maybe that was why they could be the meanest animals.
The wind came up again, angry and howling, and she was reminded of how cold it got out here. She gripped the tree hard, listening
intently, until she couldn’t hear the hunters at all. For the moment, they were gone.
Slowly, painfully, she shimmied down the pine tree and stepped cautiously out into the woods.
Then she ran. She had to find cover. She had to find Matthew before it was too late.
H
IS THREE-YEAR-OLD BOY, little Mike, used to like to say that he was “sore afraid of the dark.” Kit had just loved that expression.
He would roar and hug Mike the Tyke against his chest whenever he said it. He could still feel those sweet baby hugs. The
thought of it all left him sick and empty, as if he’d been hollowed out and the core of his being tossed away.
Of course, he was feeling all kinds of things right now. He was investigating what he believed was the most important case
of his career—and he wasn’t supposed to be here. He had been taken off the damn thing. He wasn’t even sure if the case was
active at the moment.
So yeah, he was “sore afraid.”
He put away his mountain gear and clothes in the cabin, but only so that everything would look normal if he was being watched,
or if someone happened to search the room. It was possible, even likely, that Frannie O’Neill or someone else would be watching
him.
The cabin was modest, not overly decorated, but surprisingly homey and warm. There was a Rumford fireplace built with local
granite. Hammered tin lanterns covered most of the mantel. A cozy sheepskin was thrown on the bed.
He pulled down the shades and quickly undressed. Then he turned off the lights and climbed into bed. Slid the rifle underneath.
The gun was part of his cover story as a hunter, but he didn’t mind having it around as extra protection. It couldn’t hurt.
I’m supposed to be in Nantucket on vacation. Cooling my jets; getting my head on straight. May be I should have gone there.
But I didn’t, did I? Second time I screwed up on that.
August 9, 1994, was the first screwup.
He closed his eyes, but he didn’t sleep. He waited.
With his eyes shut tight, he remembered a private talk he’d had with the assistant director of the FBI. He’d gone over the
head of his superior to get the meeting.
He remembered the highlights, as if it had happened yesterday.
The assistant director had a
look
on his face, as if he were incredibly superior, and he couldn’t believe his time was being wasted by a field agent.
“I’m going to talk, you’re going to listen, Agent Brennan.”
“That would seem to defeat the purpose of the meeting,” Tom had said.
“Only because you don’t understand the purpose of the meeting.”
“No sir, I guess I don’t.”
“We are trying to cut you some slack because of a tragedy in your personal life. You are making it hard for us, damn near
impossible. Hear this, and hear it well. Let your wild-goose chase go. Let the witch hunt end today. Let the case with the
missing doctors go, or we will let you go. Understood?”
Kit lay in the dark, and he remembered the meaning, if not the exact words of the assistant director. And yes, he understood.
So here he was in Colorado. He’d obviously made a choice. He’d gone with conscience over his career.
He was a goner.
I
T WAS QUARTER PAST ELEVEN that night when he threw off the sheepskin cover and climbed out of bed.