Only the blade didn’t lash with him. It stayed back, the free end caught in the other man’s fist. Claude didn’t want to let go, it was the only weapon he had, and so he hung on and stumbled after it, right into the man’s foot, and tripped and fell on his ass, and this time he lost the blade. Claude was down then, unarmed, staring up at them, the two giant shadows turned to two average-size men but now twice as menacing.
“The man on the snowmobile? What was his name?” The long-haired man with the gun was speaking, and his brother looked disinterested, studying the chain-saw blade and blowing on it to clear bits of dust. There was blood pooling in his palm but he didn’t seem to care.
“I ain’t saying it,” Claude told him. He made sure he looked right into the son of a bitch’s face, right into his arrogant blue eyes. “Not ever. Not to the likes of you.”
“‘Not to the likes of you.’ Very good, Claude. Very tough. Do you prefer to be called Sheriff? I can respect your authority if you wish. Is that the reason this isn’t going well? Is it a perceived lack of respect?”
“Leave now,” Claude said. “Just go on down the road and whatever this is, take it with you. It’ll be trouble otherwise.”
“Trouble has arrived, you are correct. Trouble will leave with us, you are also correct. But Sheriff? Claude? We won’t be leaving until we have what we’ve come for. So put any notion of our leaving without it far, far from your mind. Focus on reality here. Reality is standing before you and reality has a gun. So you focus on that, and then we’ll try again. Tell us the man’s name.”
“Go to hell.”
The long-haired man smiled and said, “Ethan Serbin. That’s his name.”
Claude was puzzled. All of this, the threats and the violence against an officer of the law, for what? A name they already knew?
“There you go,” he said. “You’re smart boys. Don’t need any help from me.”
“Ethan Serbin,” the long-haired one said, “usually has a group of boys on his property. Troubled boys, delinquents. The kind that the local sheriff would have to be aware of. The boys are gone, they are in the mountains, it seems, and considering that these boys have had struggles with the law…”
He paused and his brother picked up seamlessly. “It would seem the law would want to keep track of them. Our understanding, Claude, is that you’re aware of the routes they take.”
Ordinarily, he was. Ordinarily, their understanding of the world would have been accurate. But the world was different this summer, for reasons Claude didn’t understand. Ethan Serbin had refused to give him a detailed itinerary, had simply told him that any questions should be directed to Allison. It was unusual, but Claude trusted Ethan as much as any man he’d ever known, and so he’d let it ride. If he needed to reach him, he’d go through Allison. It wasn’t so difficult.
Now, though…
“Where are they?” the long-haired one said.
“I honestly do not know.”
“We’ve been told otherwise, Claude. And, contrary to your perception of me, I prefer to be an honest man. I suspect you’re of the same breed, so we’re compatriots, you and me. We’re honest men. Maybe guided by different stars, but I believe it is safe to say we share an appreciation for the truth. So let me share some truth. I could wait for Mr. Serbin to reappear. I could go into the woods and search for him. I could do any number of things, but, Claude? Sheriff? I am short on time and patience. You know the routes he takes. I’m going to need that information.” He paused and gave Claude a long, measured stare before saying, “There’s my truth. What’s yours?”
“I don’t know where he is.”
The long-haired man let out a sigh and exchanged a look with his brother, and then they advanced on Claude like wolves on a downed elk, prey so easy it hardly piqued their interest. Claude thought he got himself upright before the blackness came. He was pretty sure he’d cleared the ground at least.
10
The sun was still visible above the mountains when Ethan Serbin handed Jace a knife called a Nighthawk. It was all black except for a thread of silver along the razor-sharp edge of its eight-inch-long blade. Ethan wore it on his belt at all times, but now it was in Jace’s hand. It looked like a twin of the one he’d seen pulled through a man’s throat not that long ago. He was afraid his hand was shaking, tried hard to steady it.
“You hold the knife by the blade when you’re passing it to someone,” Ethan said.
“By the blade?”
“That’s right. Using the underside, just like this, keeping the dull portion in your palm. You don’t ever want to point the blade at the person you’re giving the knife to. That’s how an accident happens. You keep control of it until you’re sure he has control, right? So take it by the bottom, like this, so your palm and fingers aren’t near the sharp edge. Then you pass it over, and say, ‘Get it?’ Wait for the other person to say, ‘Got it.’ Then you let your hand fall away and say, ‘Good.’ You wait on all three-get it, got it, good. Because if anyone pulls too fast or gets sloppy, people get cut. We don’t want people getting cut.”
Jace glanced at the rest of the group and saw all the boys watching with interest.
“All right,” Ethan said. “Let’s do this.” He passed the knife over. “Get it?”
“Got it.”
“Good.”
Ethan let his hand fall away from the knife and then the Buck Nighthawk was in Jace’s control. The feel of the knife gave him a strange sense of power. Let’s see Marco try something now. He wanted one of his own, on his belt just like Ethan’s.
Ethan said, “Do you remember what you’re doing with the fire?”
“Yeah.”
“Then get to it.”
Jace sat on his knees in the dirt and cut strips of tinder from a piece of something that Ethan called pitch wood, carefully selected because the waxy substance inside the timber acted almost as a burning fuel, helped your flame catch and hold. He cut a series of long, thin curls of tinder and then, at Ethan’s instruction, he turned the knife sideways and scraped, creating a shower of small shavings. The rest of his fire materials were gathered and ready; all he needed to do was spark the flint and get his tinder to start burning.
He knew it wasn’t going to start, though. He’d watched Ethan do it, the whole thing looking effortless and easy, but he knew it really wasn’t. He would spark the stupid fire-steel tool for an hour and nothing would happen and then Marco would make some wiseass comment and everyone would laugh and Ethan would take his tools back.
“Get that bundle a little tighter,” Ethan said. “Think of it like a bird’s nest.”
Jace formed the tinder into a cluster with his hands, and then Ethan said, “Give it a shot.”
“Want somebody else to do it?”
“What?”
That had sounded too much like Jace Wilson, too nervous, and so he tried to find Connor again and said, “Why do I have to do all the work? I made the kindling, let somebody else do the rest.”
“No,” Ethan said, “I’d like you to do it, thanks. If you’re ever alone in the woods, Connor, you’re not going to be able to share the workload.”
Jace wet his lips and picked up the Swedish fire steel, a tool with a thin tube of magnesium and a metal striker. He braced the striker with his thumb and pushed down and sparks showered as soon as he began, but nothing caught. The sparks died in the air, just as he’d known they would.
“You’ve got to hold it lower,” Ethan said. “All the way down against the tinder. Brace it on that platform piece, that’s why we have one. And don’t flick at it. However fast you want to go, make yourself do it at half that speed. Think of yourself in slow motion. The tool will do the work for you; it’s not a muscle move, it’s a control move. Yes, just like that. Again. Again.”