“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.
27
It 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.”