She smiled at him, a smile filled with such hope and confidence— in him.
When SAC Beau Chumley arrived by helicopter an hour later twilight, the local sheriff and his three deputies were already there, along with the white van of the county forensic team. The first words out of Savich’s mouth were “Can you take over for us here, Beau? We’ve got to get back to Bricker’s Bowl to arrest Mrs. Shepherd Backman.” He looked toward the forensic team, who looked both grim and resigned, and was thankful he didn’t have their job.
47
TITUS HITCH WILDERNESS
TITUSVILLE, VIRGINIA
Ethan cleared away enough brush so he could slip through onto a narrow stone ledge beneath an overhang and into the cave he’d named Locksley Manor when he’d been seven years old, reading Robin Hood and exploring with his grandfather. The cave was well hidden since he’d planted bushes all across the front of it, hoping to prevent hikers from finding it, which had worked, and keeping animals out, which hadn’t. A bear hibernated in this cave most every winter, but it was August now and quite empty, thank God. It smelled like bear, not a bad smell, just thick, kind of oily. The chamber was small, unremarkable, really, giving no hint to the several magnificent chambers to be found deeper in the mountain, each of them with ceilings so high you couldn’t see the top.
He made his way out through the bushes and brought in Autumn and Joanna. Then he pulled the bushes back into place, covering all signs of a cave entrance.
He pulled off his backpack as he watched Joanna and Autumn’s faces in the pale light of their sanctuary. He said, “It looks pretty humdrum out here, but as it burrows farther back into the mountain, it becomes quite spectacular. I’ll bring you guys back here to explore it. Let me show you the goodies I brought.” He pointed to his bulging backpack that he’d slung onto the cave floor. “You never know when a tourist is going to get into trouble, and so all of us officers around here are prepared. My backpack is basically a survival kit—water, a half-dozen PowerBars, first-aid stuff, three of those high-tech sleeping bags that weigh a few ounces and keep you warm at twenty below. Not our problem, but it will get cold tonight, cold enough to appreciate them.” He reached in the pack and pulled out a plastic bag. “And the most important, coffee and a couple of mugs.”
“But we don’t have—”
“Oh ye of little faith,” Ethan said as he pulled out another small package and opened it. He took what looked like a metal disk, un-folded it into a cylinder, shoved another piece of metal into a bracket at the side, and within a few seconds he was waving a small pot in front of him.
Without thought, Joanna threw her arms around him. “That is miraculous, simply—”
She broke off, quickly stepped back, only to hear Autumn say, “I don’t drink coffee but I think you’re miraculous too, Ethan.”
They all laughed. It felt good to smile, to feel a little wash of relief pour through you. It put the fear aside, if only for a moment or two.
Ethan looked at the stack of logs he’d left here last year. Above the logs were twenty-five deep scratch marks in the stone, marking each year since he’d found the cave.
He decided against lighting a fire, not wanting Blessed and Grace to smell the smoke. He made do with a small Coleman burner just large enough to hold his pot.
Joanna boiled water, Autumn spread out the high-tech space sleeping bags, and Ethan checked all their weapons.
Ethan looked at the three sleeping bags in a neat line and said, “Here, Autumn, I’ve got your dinner. Eat slowly, you only get two bars, okay?”
It was quiet, and soon it was nearly dark in the deep wilderness. The trees were so thick that night fell quickly. Autumn fell asleep inside one of the sleeping bags, her hands cupped beneath her cheek.
When Ethan seated himself beside Joanna, his legs stretched out in front of him alongside hers, his back against the cave wall, he said, “Jonnna, have you thought about how Blessed and Grace found you and Autumn here in Titusville?”
She shook her head, then sighed, leaned back against the cave wall. “Well, of course I have. I really don’t know, Ethan, but I know without a doubt they’ll find us. You know it too.”
He nodded. “When Autumn was talking to Savich earlier, Savich told her to tell me he was going to see Mrs. Backman again, to cut off the snake’s head.”
“A good name for the old witch.”
“Is he thinking it’s Mrs. Backman who’s the tracker, not Blessed and Grace, that she somehow directs them? Do you think that’s possible?”
“I’ve thought about it, but when it comes down to that it’s so outside anything that makes sense to me, to any of us, it makes my head ache.”
“What we already know about them is remarkable enough. Truth be told, I don’t know why they haven’t tried to take over the world. What Blessed alone can do—why isn’t he president? Or dictator small country?”
“I’m thinking he’s got to have limits. Maybe he can stymie only a couple of people at a time. Maybe the hypnosis fades after a day, two days, whatever. Maybe there are a whole lot of people he can’t stymie—both Dillon and Autumn can resist him, after all.”
Ethan said, “Limits—that sounds reasonable, if anything can be considered reasonable about what Blessed does.”
“And Grace. We don’t even know what he can do. It’s interesting the Backmans never moved out of Bricker’s Bowl to look for a larger canvas. Mr. Backman left but always came back, again and again It’s like they’re somehow tied to Bricker’s Bowl, they’re afraid to leave, or can’t leave.”
Ethan poured them each another half-cup of coffee. “That’s the end of it. Do you like it?”
“It’s the best coffee I’ve had today.”
He chuckled and raised his cup to hers in a toast. He paused a moment, then said, “I meant to tell you, Joanna, I really like your freckles.”
Her hands immediately went to her cheeks. “Freckles, the bane of my existence. You said you like them?”
“Yeah, I do.”
“They breed in the sun.”
Her dark brown hair was pulled to the back of her head and held in a big clip. Hanks of thick hair fell around her face. He would have told her he liked her mouth too, and how her smile filled the very air with pleasure, but it really wasn’t the time. He prayed there would be a time. He couldn’t remember a more dangerous situation, and he knew he couldn’t fail. It wasn’t an option. Ethan watched her pull out the clip, smooth her fingers through her tangled hair, gather it all up again, and hook the clip back in. He said, “Autumn is the picture of you.”
“What? Oh, no, she’s beautiful. I’ve always thought she looked more like my mother.”
“Nope, she’s a copy of you. There’s nothing of her father in her?”
“She’ll look at you sometimes with her head tilted to one side, like she knows what you’re going to say and is waiting for you to get on with it. That’s her father. And when she’s mad, her cheeks turn redder than a sunset. That’s her father too.”
“Ready to tell me about Martin Backman?”
She swallowed, shook her head.
Ethan waited, saying nothing more, and sipped his coffee, so thick with grounds now it was probably growing hair on his tongue.
“He was a mean drunk, that’s what he told me when we dated, and that was why he didn’t drink. He said something snapped inside him when he drank, and he lost it. He hadn’t had a drink in seven years. I admired him because he’d recognized the problem and dealt with it.