“Agreed,” Patrick said. “I think we should get moving again.”
Jack got to his feet and put one hand on Ethan’s shoulder and used the other one to press the gun to the back of his head. He lifted Ethan by his shirt, and Ethan didn’t fight him, just released Luke Bowden’s hand and stepped away. He wished that Luke’s eyes were closed. The dead always seemed to prefer to watch, though. He’d noticed that with corpses over the years. They were looking for something in the end, almost always.
“I don’t know where the boy is,” he said. “Neither did Luke. He could have found him for you as well as I could have, don’t you see that? You should have just used him, killed me; it would have been the same. Neither of us knows where he is.”
“You’ll forgive me, I’m sure, if I say I have difficulty believing that,” Patrick Blackwell said. “I’ve been all day in these mountains, Ethan. I’ve covered some ground, and I’ve spent plenty of time with my eye to the scope. Either the boy is possessed of remarkable speed and endurance, or he managed to hide without a trace after leaving a clear trail for the first several hours of his journey.”
Eye to the scope. Ethan looked at his rifle then, that bit of machinery that gave the other man dominion. Ethan wasn’t much of a gun guy. He’d used them, of course, had trained with them in the Air Force, and he owned a few now, but he wasn’t even an armchair expert. It was a heavy rifle, that much was clear, bolt-action, maybe a.300 magnum. It would shoot long and it would shoot accurately, and with that scope, even an amateur would stand a killing chance. This man was not an amateur.
They began to move again, and Ethan walked numbly ahead. All his plans were gone; his ability to plan seemed gone. They walked away and left Luke in his own drying blood.
They were walking in a well-spaced formation, with Jack directly behind Ethan, and Patrick floating some twenty feet in the rear. The men hadn’t discussed this arrangement, just assumed it, and it was a good one. Ethan could tell, based on the volume of Patrick’s voice, that the man changed his pace now and then, sometimes stopping entirely, and Ethan imagined that was because he was scouting the darkness and responding to what he heard or felt or saw. Patrick knew something about tracking, there was no question.
And yet he’d been unable to find the boy. It wasn’t an irrelevant point, Ethan thought. Not at all. Ethan had spent time with Connor. The kid was fit, and he would have been running hard on adrenaline, but he was not adept at woodcraft. So how had he vanished?
“One bit of information I was able to glean before things took an untidy turn,” Patrick said, “was that the gentleman had decided to return to the fire lookout.”
“And why was that?”
“He didn’t have a chance to clarify, unfortunately. But I can tell you from my own experience that the boy’s trail was clear enough until the searchers were redirected by the lookout.”
“Then I’d say maybe the lookout lied.”
“I’d suggest we stop at the lookout, then. See what the situation there is and see if perhaps we can get a different version of events than the searchers received today.”
“I think that sounds fine,” Jack said. “Ethan? Your opinion?”
For a moment he wasn’t going to speak, had decided he was done responding to them, but then he thought of the woman from the fire tower and the possibility that the men were right, that she’d lied. There would have been one reason only for her to lie, and that was if Connor had convinced her to. If she’d lied to help him, it made sense.
“We don’t need to stop at the tower,” he said. “That would be foolish. We only need to consider that she lied.”
“And how better to know if she lied than to ask her?” Patrick said. “All due respect to your considerable skills, of course, but I doubt that you’re going to sniff the bark of a hemlock tree at just the right angle and know more about the lie than she does, Ethan.”
“It’s foolish,” he repeated. “A needless risk. She lied for a reason, just as you say. That means she’s prepared on some level. Nobody lies to a group of searchers about a missing child without cause. What do you think the cause is?”
Jack spoke in a mock whisper. “I suspect Ethan is suggesting that the boy has warned the lady of our imminent arrival, Patrick.”
“A damned clever man, he is. His talents are wasted in his current profession, I might say. Should have been a detective. Think of the lives that might have been saved.”
“Well, he’s trying to save one tonight. Give the lad a chance.”
“I’d love to. All the same, though…I simply feel we should speak with her directly. You understand?”
“I do. Allow me to convey it to our guide.” Jack cleared his throat and then spoke in a mournful voice. “I suppose we are going to meet with dissent here, Ethan. While your perspective is certainly appreciated, you have to grant my brother and me a little leeway. We are given to somewhat different methods of tracking than those to which you are accustomed. Surely, in time, we’ll all figure out how to work together. But for now, there must be a give-and-take, don’t you see? A bit of patience.”
“There’s no need,” Ethan said again.
“Patience,” Jack whispered, and nudged him with the gun.
31
It took only Allison’s signature to get them out of the hospital. She heard the words risk and liability on a loop as she nodded her head and said that she understood and signed her name again and again, an awkward, unfamiliar signature, crafted with her left hand.
They had given her pain pills but she didn’t take any yet. Not at the start. She wasn’t sure how bad the pain would get, and she’d always been taught that it was wise to save your bullets.
“Why didn’t he leave a way for you to contact him?” Jamie Bennett asked as they left the hospital. “It doesn’t seem like Ethan.”
Allison didn’t like how she said that-she didn’t know the first damn thing about Ethan-but she couldn’t argue either. It wasn’t like Ethan.
“I think he expected it to be fast,” she said.
“But it hasn’t been.”
“No.”
Jamie had rented a Toyota 4Runner instead of a Chevy Tahoe this time, but if she was less inclined to run a foreign car off the highway than a domestic one, it wasn’t obvious. Allison endured three stomach-clenching, tire-testing whips through the switchbacks before she said, “Imagine how Jace is going to feel when they rescue him and he comes home to find a dead mother.”
“What?”
“Slow down, Jamie. Slow the hell down.”
“Sorry.” In the pale light from the instrument panel, Allison saw the blond woman’s jaw clench. “It’s just that I don’t know what’s happening,” Jamie said. “He’s out there, and he’s alone, and…or maybe he’s not alone. Maybe not anymore.”
The way she said it, she obviously wasn’t thinking of her son’s having been rescued.
“Ethan will find him,” Allison said, but her words rang hollow. She knew as much about her husband’s situation right now as this woman did about her son’s.
“Right.”
“We’ll get you back to him.”
“He won’t be happy to see me.”
“What?”
She took another switchback, but gentler this time, actually aware of the brake pedal, and her eyes were hard to read in the darkness.
“Trust me,” she said. “He won’t be happy. Wherever he is right now, whatever is happening, he’s blaming me. And he’s right. It was my idea. Such a stupid one. Thinking he’d be safe from them up here? I sent him away, and I left him alone, and I told him he’d be safe.”
“All that matters is that he does see you. Let’s worry about that right now.”
“Okay.”