by Brett Adams
I lifted my gaze to find Kim and Tracey seated opposite me on the RV couch. Mother and daughter, so alike in their haunted looks.
“So,” I said, “we finally get the family road trip you always wanted.”
I didn’t expect laughter, but Kim didn’t even have scorn. That scared me more than anything Hiero had done or said.
“Jack,” she whispered, glancing feverishly toward the front of the RV, where Hiero and Rhianne sat murmuring. Headlights from the car following us, driven by Ghost, slid in shifting bars on the ceiling above us. Kim leaned toward me in the half-dark, “What is this?”
“This?” I wracked my brain for an answer. I couldn’t say, ‘I told you so.’ “This is the delirium of a very ill boy.”
“The exchange student?” She looked sick with disbelief. I nodded.
“I think that’s his girlfriend you arrived with. How . . .?”
Her story was depressingly short.
Rhianne had arrived at Kim’s South Berkeley house just after noon the previous day.
All morning Kim’s head had been full of the arguments she would put to the faculty board that afternoon to allow her to fail four of her Bioinformatics students. They’d scored below forty percent on their final, but the board was putting up a fight.
Then DCI Lacroix called and worry over Jack erased all that.
Then a knock at the door interrupted the call.
Through the spyhole in the front door, Kim eyed the young woman on her doorstep, and was disarmed by how unlike a saleswoman or charity collector she looked. The nattily-dressed young lady peered into the spyhole and said, “Ms Sparkes?”
“‘Ms’, huh?” I interjected. “Stuck dynamite under your Captain Crunch.”
Kim fell silent. I couldn’t read her mood under her fear. It was then I realized she was still dressed in grey sweat pants and a faded khaki hoodie. She wouldn’t be caught dead on the street in her house clothes, yet she’d come halfway across the continent wearing that. That fact, curiously, scared me most of all.
“So I opened the door,” she went on. “The first words out of her mouth were not a PhD proposal, or a misconduct complaint, or any of a billion things I’d now give—” Her voice caught. I thought she was on the verge of breaking down.
“Kim,” I coaxed. “You’re no lamb to be led silent to the slaughter. What happened?”
Visibly steeling herself she continued. “She said, ‘Your daughter is dead if you don’t do exactly as I say.’”
The next thing Rhianne did was pull out her cellphone. She said if she failed to check in every hour, even once, gave the wrong code, indicated she was under duress—anything to indicate all was not peachy—Tracey was dead.
And her first command? Take a pee, and get in the car.
What followed sounded like a cross between National Lampoon’s Vacation and Fargo. They stopped twice at bland McMotels to sleep for about four hours. Rhianne paid with cash for doubles, and slept like a cat both times. Kim managed a fitful slumber at the edge of exhaustion at the second stop. Her red eyes and pasty skin told better than words how weary and overwrought she was.
“Halfway across the country, and I thought we were going all the way to New York, to Tracey, and she made me pull off. She walked out of earshot, and had the longest phone call yet.”
“Where was that?”
“I’d lost track. Too many names on too many signs. But I remember this one, because we pulled off right under the sign—Garden City. Ironic name, but then I guess it would seem a garden coming from the west.”
“You don’t remember passing”—It was hard to say—“Holcomb?”
She shrugged.
It didn’t matter. Why did I even ask?
“Oh, Mum.” Tracey wrapped her arms round Kim, as if she were the mother comforting her child.
But Kim stared at me with an intensity that belied her fatigue. Maybe she was running on rage, too.
“This girl,” she said. “You’ve seen her before.”
Had I?
I remembered a house in Nedlands, and Rhianne Goldman’s fraught limbs hugged to her like a scared spider. That image didn’t reconcile with the woman who had strode from the darkness toting a gun. But they were one and the same.
“Yeah. Rhianne, if that’s her name, was the first ‘assault’ perpetrated by Hiero. She was the hook Hiero set. But I don’t know her. I have no idea how she fits into this.”
I glanced at Kim. “You were jammed into that Prius with her for 24 hours. You must have talked. Who is she?”
Kim sighed. “She was a rock. I tried everything. Told her we could turn around any time, no cops. We could pretend it was a practical joke. I told her she was beautiful. I told her I didn’t have a daughter (bit late). She gave me nothing but silence.”
Kim paused, and made a curious gesture with her naked ring finger. “Then I noticed she wore a ring. It looked like an engagement band, but its setting was empty. Just a claw, good for nothing but catching threads and scratching skin. And I asked her what it was . . .”
A faint rumble of laughter came from the driver’s cabin. The silhouette of Rhianne’s head obscured my view of the onrushing road lines as she leaned over to kiss Hiero.
Kim lowered her voice further. “Her reply didn’t make sense. She said the ring was her embellishment. She said it was for her hero. That her own quest had taken her into Hades, whatever that means. And on a hunch, I said ‘Are you ready to go to jail for the rest of your life for this hero?’”
Kim fell silent.
“And?” I said, impatience making my voice harsh.
“She said, ‘Yes.’” A gentle shake of her head, like an echo of her first response to hearing that reply. “She turned to me, and her eyes dared me to call her a liar.
“I tried another tack. I said her parents must be worried about her. That made her laugh. Her mother organizes dog shows in Hollywood, she informed me, and would be more upset if two prize dogs rutted on stage than if her daughter kidnapped someone. Her father, she said, is a hedge fund manager, and if a thing didn’t divide into the categories of profit and loss, risk and reward, it didn’t enter his mind.
“But you’re taking a heck of a risk, I told her. For what reward?”
“‘Risk?’ she said. ‘Great art demands great sacrifice. It’s a writer’s job to turn blood into ink.’”
“—Hiero, ” I groaned.
“—T.S. Eliot,” said Tracey.
Rhianne was a true believer.
“Tell me what’s going to happen, Jack. What do these children want with us?”
She said it with her look of old. Not nasty, just the look that brooked no crap. She knew I was scared to the core. No point in lying.
I swallowed, and opened my mouth, ready to introduce her and Tracey to the real nightmare.
—When the RV turned sharply and crunched to a stop.
The engine died and a vast silence swallowed us.
The side door flew open, and Hiero poked his head in.
“Let’s go, campers,” he said, a huge grin winking in the dark.
Kim and I shared a mute glance, then we all filed out of the RV.
My shoes met the telltale grip-and-slide of gravel. The night was silent but for the hiss of wind in a sea of grass. Above me the Milky Way blazed in a band across the sky. The moon hadn’t risen, the galaxy was our only light.
Even so, I was pretty sure the squat shed twenty paces away was no Holcomb farmhouse.
“Where the hell are we?” I said.
“Acte trois,” came Hiero’s voice out of the dark. “Climax.”
“Ah.” I nodded sagely. “Merde.”
A rattle of chain broke the silence. A tiny light shone against the shed door, revealing Rhianne and Ghost bent over. There came a clatter and a creak, and a dark hole appeared in the shed wall. The light disappeared as they moved inside.
A moment later it reappeared, and in it I saw Ghost pull a thumbs up.
“Inside,” said Hiero, and he pr
odded me in the side with the gun I’d stolen from the British Bobby. Kim and Tracey followed without being asked, and I was relieved to see Hiero let them.
A tiny hope flared inside me. Was he going to lock us in and leave?
We reached the shed, and Kim entered, hands out front, walking like a blind woman into the darkness. Tracey clung to her side.
“Wait,” said Hiero. We froze. “Professor,” he continued, and something in his tone raised my hackles. “You hate novels written expressly to spark controversy. You pilloried Sophie’s Choice, American Psycho, The Da Vinci Code. But you know, for a while now I’ve thought you’re wrong. Dead wrong.”
He leaned close. His face seemed to hover before me in the darkness. The world was silent a moment, but for the sighing of wind in the grass. Then he spoke.
“Who says fiction can’t blend the real world in any way it sees fit? It spawned an idea, and the irony is you’re the one that gave it to me. Let’s call it Jack’s Choice.”
My hands were clutching at his throat before I knew it. Hiero moved fast, brought the gun smashing down on my brow. Sparks burst behind my eyes, and I found myself sitting on the ground in the doorway.
I had to blink away the quick hot flow of blood. Tracey screamed, and I felt Kim crouch over me, hands on my shoulders in a vain attempt to pull me away.
“What’s he talking about, Jack?” Her voice was hoarse in my ears.
Drops of blood tickled my chin as they fell, and not for the first time I wished for my comfortable Hobbit hole and a pipe of Longbottom leaf.
Hiero bent over me and looked into my eyes. “Shit, Jack. Don’t fall in a heap now.”
He straightened and said, “Mrs. Griffen. Kim. Three enter this shrine tonight, but only two may leave. The choice of who stays is Jack’s: wife or daughter.”
Kim didn’t correct him.
“But no matter what, one dies tonight.”
He kicked me in the chest, and I fell through the door, piled atop Kim. The door creaked shut.
My arms protested as I extricated myself from the tangle with Kim.
Tracey’s soundless tears shook the darkness.
83
Profilers are trained to spot anomalies.
Marten knew she was supposed to feel the grit in her eye, and want to pluck it out. The trouble is, life is a sandstorm, and without a filter, grit is all there is.
She needed that filter if she was to get the jump on Hiero, but had no idea where to find it. She’d turned over every clue from the last few weeks, every detail—however inconsequential it seemed—and found nothing.
She rubbed dry eyes, and squinted down the aisle of the 737 carrying her to Garden City, Kansas. She looked for inspiration, but all she saw were ranks of chairs marching down the cabin to the bulkhead, and here and there a head jutting above a chair back, or lolling into the aisle.
Sleep. If only.
Glancing to her left, she counted three of the six occupants of her row asleep. One man’s chair was tilted back as far as it would go. A baseball cap was tugged down over his face, and his Adam’s Apple jutted conspicuously in the dim light.
Marten had wondered why on earth a person would want a baseball cap in a plane, at night. Mystery solved; the cap was just another way to hide.
Caps can be used to hide.
That was another bit of grit.
Because the next connection Marten’s restless mind made was to the young man tagging along with Hieronymus Beck. Hadn’t the FBI tech, Nick Alvero, even called him Cap Guy?
She saw again the security camera footage of Cap Guy forestalling Jack Griffen on the pavement outside a café in Manhattan. He’d taken the gun from Jack’s hand, and all the while, seemingly by accident, his face lay hidden in the shadow of his cap’s brim. In the café, he sat with his back to the street camera.
Pretty astute.
But the guy wasn’t a machine. He was human, and to err is human.
Marten pulled her phone from the seat pocket in front of her and swiped her way through the photo gallery to the one she wanted.
She scanned it and smiled.
“You erred your butt off barely a half an hour later when you let your guard down.”
She was looking at the photo Jack had snapped over his shoulder of the three on the back seat of the taxi, Tracey, Hiero, and Cap Guy—whose head was tipped back enough to reveal his face.
It was a young face. Thin lips. Strong nose. Dark brows arching over darker eyes. No hint of crows feet.
With the photo, it would only be a matter of time and she would know his name. But it struck Marten that she hadn’t asked what should have been the most obvious question: what was he doing in this picture in the first place?
This wasn’t his show. This was the Hieronymus Beck show. He was writing a novel, according to Jack Griffen. Not that Marten fully understood that, but she trusted his judgment.
Cap Guy was like a puzzle piece that had fallen into the wrong box.
But there was an even more fundamental question, the real piece of grit: why is this guy, whoever he is, taking pains to hide his face when Hiero is not?
Two conspirators. But did they have the same conspiracy?
Moments later Marten dialed Perth, Australia, on the satellite phone, and got Matt Price.
“Marten? It’s really—”
“Shh. No time. I can hear the dollars evaporating through this thing, but even more, Professor Griffen’s life expectancy is down to hours unless you can help me.”
There was silence. Then, “That’s my inviting silence. Are you going to fill it?”
Marten quickly told Matt what she knew of the new player. He was of similar age to Hiero and Tracey. Always toted a laptop. She was attaching his photo to an email, and Matt’s job was to find anything he could on this guy.
“Can you do that? In—” She checked the in-flight channel for the estimated arrival time. “—seventy-eight minutes?”
Matt’s only response was, “A laptop, you said? I’m all over it.”
When the plane landed, an excruciating seventy-nine minutes later, and the all-clear for cell telephony was given, she found an email from Matt waiting for her. It began, “Does this guy strike you as a nature lover?”
84
A silence like no other I had ever heard.
Two pairs of eyes glinted in the dark, fixed on me. I couldn’t bear it any longer.
“We have ourselves a three body problem,” I said.
“Call him in.” Kim’s voice. “Do it now. Tell him it’s—”
“You? Forget it, Kim. I’m not playing his game.” I held up a forestalling finger, a useless gesture in the dark. “Not even if I thought for a second he would honor his word, and let the rest of us go.”
“It’s worth a shot.”
“No, Mum, it isn’t.”
I silently thanked God for Tracey’s support. It held the man, Jack Griffen, in the room, banished the child threatening to enter.
“We need a light,” said Kim, and I caught the faint relief in her voice. It made her all the more a hero in my book.
“Dad, your arm.” It took me a moment to realize Tracey meant the faint orange glow leaking from my sleeve, my Medline. I rolled my cuff up over it, and its little beating heart blazed crisply in the darkness. Eighty-seven bpm. Not chilling, it said, but not redlining either, which is what I had expected. Maybe I was experiencing that calm before inevitable death, the peace gifted to creatures with eyes to see its approach.
Lifting my forearm before me like a burning brand, I played the Medline’s light over the shed wall. It revealed bare sheets of corrugated iron, and the pale blur of a spider scrambling up a thread toward the roof. Its shadow loomed crazily across the wall. Dust hung in the air, tickling the back of my throat. Tracey gave the wall an experimental rap with her knuckle. It sounded solid.
“What are you looking for?” With a crunch of gravel, Kim squatted cross-legged in the dirt. “He won’t have left anything useful. H
e’ll have thought of it. He thinks of everything.”
I returned to my search, stepping crabwise along the wall. “You only just met the guy. Don’t buy Rhianne’s propaganda. I want to know where we are.” Under my breath, I added, “And Hiero doesn’t think of everything. Not even close.”
My foot rapped something that gave off a hollow bang, and I nearly tripped. A 55 gallon drum sat against the wall. A crust of dried liquid surrounded the rim of its lid.
I heard a sniff, and Tracey left my side. A quick glance told me she was squatting by Kim, with her arms wrapped around her. The two women shuddered together as though one body, sobbing in time.
Intent on my search, I didn’t notice at first when Kim’s tears became laughter. I stared, dumbfounded. Tracey rose, and felt her way to my side. Eventually Kim found breath to speak.
“I remember, once, saying you would be the death of me, Jack Griffen.”
“I remember.”
I returned to my search, reached a corner of the shed, and played the light over the steel beams that met there. They were thick with cobwebs and constellations of dried-up moths. “Long, long ago, in a land far, far away.”
“And this lunatic wants to write a story,” Kim said. “And we’re the lead characters.”
“He does, and we are . . .”
So why, after all the trouble he had gone to, was he not here now?
Why miss the last words of antagonist and antagonist’s estranged ex-wife? It didn’t make sense. Locking us in here, out of sight. Out of earshot.
“Dad.” Tracey was pointing at the roof. I leaned, twisting my neck to see where she pointed. I saw nothing at first, then the faintest patch of red, not-quite-black touched the underside of a rafter. But it was only visible if you stood where we were standing, and only if you were looking for it.
Bingo.
Quickly I tipped the drum and walked it, scrunching through the gravel, to the spot directly below the light. Reading my intention, Tracey steadied me as I stepped onto it and gingerly reached a hand up. The touch of cobweb sent a tingle down my arm, but I pushed through it, sent my fingers spidering along the upper side of the rafter until I found what I was looking for. A small, blocky object was stuck to the top of the rafter. I tugged, and it tore free.