Luke would be armed. Luke would be armed and he would move like the night breeze. He might be watching them now. It no longer mattered whether he’d found the boy or not. All that mattered was that he saw the boy’s pursuers in time.
He will have to come this way. Either he’s still trailing, in which case we will catch up to him eventually, or he will pass this way when he heads back out of the mountains. He will see us, and he will know what to do.
Even better, Ethan could tell him what to do. Ethan realized he was thinking like a passive man, which was both deadly and unnecessary. He wasn’t helpless. He knew an ally existed out here, and the Blackwell brothers did not. He could signal Luke; he could do things that only someone who knew Ethan and knew the mountains would notice. Noise would be good, for one thing. Light signals, for another. He had only one light, but its beam could tell a story.
When the burned man spoke again, there was a trace of amused pleasure in his voice.
“He must have determined that there is no difference between himself and his wife and the boy from our perspective, so he has surely wondered what the endgame is. I believe he’s been wondering about it for many hours now. Virtually since we met. He’s had, as I mentioned, opportunities to change our path. Instead he chose to carry on, knowing that each hour brings his wife closer to death, and yet each step toward the boy does the same. It’s fascinating to watch. Fascinating to consider. Because he’s seen it all clearly, weighed his options, and made his decision. He will pursue the boy because if he doesn’t, it simply speeds us toward the inevitable. We will kill him for lying and wasting our time, and what good would that do his wife?”
“What do you make of this, then? Knowing these things, what would you say Ethan is thinking right now?”
“Well, he has no intention of finding the boy or allowing his wife to die.”
Ethan ignored them, let them talk while he continued to hike. As he walked, he passed his palm over the beam of the flashlight. Quick, flickering motions, his hand moving like a Las Vegas blackjack dealer’s. He did it in sets of three. Sets of three meant one thing to a trained searcher: distress. Luke Bowden was a trained searcher.
“That’s my conclusion as well,” Patrick Blackwell said. “Which means…”
“He intended to kill me.”
“I believe so. He wasn’t counting on me, then. I’ve hindered him. This is the reason for his apparent antipathy toward me.”
“He doesn’t seem to have taken to you, no.”
“Third wheel. It’s often been my curse.”
“But I don’t sense he’s a beaten man just yet. An unhappy one, yes, quite disgruntled about your joining our quest, but not beaten. And so he may still try, Patrick. I’m telling you, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if he tried to kill us both.”
Ethan stopped and looked back at him. The burned man was smiling, and when he saw Ethan’s face, his smile turned into a laugh. Loud and genuine and delighted.
“You’re going to try,” he said. “Good for you, Ethan. You are going to try.”
Ethan shook his head. “No,” he said. “I’m going to succeed.” It was important to keep their attention on him. Let them not even consider the idea that there might be a watcher in the woods.
The burned man turned to the other and said, “You hear that? He’s going to succeed.”
“It will be fun to see, won’t it?”
“It certainly will. Let’s walk along and see how his confidence holds up.”
Ethan didn’t understand the full weight of that remark for another quarter mile. That was when they found Luke Bowden’s body in the rocks.
30
He was on the side of the trail, stretched out on his back, blood pooled around him, eyes to the stars. Ethan stopped walking when the shape of the body came into view, and though he recognized him immediately, his mind tried to reject it. Not Luke, no, it couldn’t be Luke, because Luke was too good and Luke was also the wild card that was supposed to tilt this back in Ethan’s favor. The last best hope.
His first reaction was a foolish one-try to help. He went to the body and dropped onto his knees beside it and reached for Luke’s hand, thinking he might find a pulse, and if he did, it wasn’t too late. He had Luke’s cold hand in his own when he finally focused on the source of the blood. A diagonal line was laced through Luke’s throat, and in the flashlight glow, Ethan could see the cartilage of the larynx exposed, the blood around it already drying and collecting dust from that endless western wind.
“A bit late for medical attention,” Patrick Blackwell said. “Let’s not linger too long, because I can assure you, it is a pointless exercise. You’ll not breathe any life back into him.”
“Damn you,” Ethan said. The words were soft and choked. “This wasn’t needed. All you came for was-”
“I’m aware of my own goals, thank you. And on the matter of what was needed, I’d differ strongly. He was a curious man, and he had a radio, and I’m afraid that was not a pleasing combination for me.”
Ethan didn’t speak. There was no point to it. Words from him would do nothing but bring more from them, and he believed their words would drive him mad soon. He looked at his old friend’s body. Luke had been done; he could have called it quits along with the rest of them, but he didn’t, because he was a rescuer. The search had not been successful and so he had doubled back after a long, hard day and continued on in the darkness, looking for the lost boy.
Ethan’s lost boy.
“You didn’t need to,” he said again. He couldn’t help himself, looking at that throat wound, thinking of the waste of it all. Thinking of Luke’s wife, who’d danced with her husband at Miner’s Saloon just a few weeks ago, full of laughter. She was always laughing, seemed as if she’d never stop.
This would stop her.
“Did you extract anything of use from him?” Jack Blackwell said. He’d joined Ethan in the dusty rocks and was looking at the body as if it were a discarded cigarette butt. “Or were the circumstances not favorable for talk?”
“He wanted to do most of the talking, I’m afraid. I gathered only that he was looking for the boy. He was, as I said, curious about me. Particularly my rifle. I was hoping to ease his concerns, as you can imagine-”
“Of course.”
“-and so I offered him the rifle so that he might be reassured. At this point it became clear that he desired to speak with some people on his radio, and I thought that was less than ideal.”
“Understandable.”
“From there, we had little chance for conversation. But since he returned this way, I can only imagine he did so because he believed the search party had taken a wrong turn earlier.”
“Ethan’s theory as well.”
“I had some time to think about that. I have to ask: How would a boy fourteen years of age, with limited knowledge of the mountains, manage to elude a quality search party that was familiar with the terrain?”
“Your suggestion seems to be that Ethan knows more than he says?”
“I’ve wondered, at least. It would seem that the boy had a contingency plan, would it not? And if such a plan was in place, well, it would most likely require Ethan’s expertise.”
“Ethan, your thoughts?”
This came from the burned man, the one called Jack, and Ethan was so numb to them now, he almost didn’t respond. It took him a moment to realize the question had been directed at him. He was still holding Luke’s hand.
“You’d like my thoughts?” he said.
“Indeed.”
“I think that you should die slowly. With every hurt in the world.”
The burned man smiled sadly and sighed. “Ethan. There’s no time for this.”