He picked her up in his official vehicle when dawn was just cracking open the sky. Liz was dressed and sitting on the couch, jacket buttoned up against the early morning chill. She and Tim didn’t talk as they walked out to his police SUV and got inside. Second-growth forest streaked by outside the windows as they drove. You couldn’t go anywhere in Wedeskyull without seeing trees, only now they weren’t parsing themselves into identifiable bark and foliage as they usually did for Liz. Instead they’d become sites of concealment.
“I pulled the accident report,” Tim said. He withdrew a tablet from the console, calling up a screen as he kept one eye on the road. “Look at this.”
Liz tilted the device. It showed an aerial view of a section of road with a downed tree lying across it, and a totaled car whose windshield had been punctured by the trunk. Imagining the physical devastation that would’ve occurred to the person sitting where the tree had come through made her stomach lift with a woozy pang.
Tim entered the location into his GPS and made the next indicated turn.
What Marjorie had meant about the road became clear as soon as Tim and Liz were on it. This was a remote mountain pass, twisting back and forth upon itself in a series of turns that were difficult even for the SUV to take. In the dark, with the buzz of a drink or two in you, flying off into oblivion on the other side of the mountain would be entirely too easy. But that wasn’t it, or not all of it anyway. The trees grew so thickly that they seemed to be snaring the SUV as it tried to pass through. Dense September foliage smothered both sides and a canopy loomed above, blotting out the sun. Wicket Road looked like a leafy, green trap.
Tim pulled the car up onto a hummock of earth—the road too narrow for a shoulder—and turned off the engine.
“Is this where the school bus incident took place?” Liz asked.
“No. That was a ways farther up.” Tim paused. “This was the site of the accident. I figure it’s the best starting point we have. There are a lot of acres out here.”
Liz looked right and left of the road, all the potential ground.
“The school bus driver?” she asked. “Will he be—”
Tim nodded. “Looks like he’s going to pull through.”
His face didn’t appear any more relaxed or at peace, though.
“I took his statement last night,” Tim went on. “Seems the guy who attacked the bus was trying to kidnap his son.”
Liz felt everything inside her go cold. Her jacket was too thin a barrier to protect against the chill evaporation of early morning dew from all these endless leaves.
“That’s part of why I’m here,” Tim said. “On the strength of a—we gotta admit—far-fetched hunch.”
Liz looked at him.
“A second father from the same town kidnapping his child in the space of a month?” Tim shook his head. “Coincidences.”
Tall trees stood like soldiers on both sides of the road, and with no reason to choose one direction over the other, Liz simply followed when Tim turned right.
“Paul’s right-hand dominant, correct?” he asked, holding a branch back for her as they entered the forest. “Most people go with that.”
“What are we looking for?” Liz said, grateful when Tim didn’t remind her that this was her idea.
“Any indication of disturbance,” Tim replied. “We’re not on a hiking trail—I doubt anyone’s passed this way in months. So look for broken branches, crushed plants. Could be from an animal, but you never know. We might get lucky.”
Something inside her flagged. It would be like stumbling on a bread crumb at the beach.
“You know how things grow,” Tim went on. “Look for signs that they’ve been interfered with.”
Liz felt a gust of confidence at his words. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll look at eye-level. How about you take the ground?”
Tim nodded approvingly, and tramped ahead.
But after a half hour of walking, the task felt hopeless. For one thing, they were introducing disruption themselves, try as they might to walk stealthily. And thirty minutes of blind focus on flora meant that it became hard to distinguish detail of any sort. There was an infinite banner of leaves. If Liz had been expecting to come upon some utopian installment—outbuildings, a water wheel in a babbling brook—she wasn’t going to find it here. These endless, unbroken woods didn’t look as if they housed any being more sentient than a bear or a coyote.
“Tim,” she said, and he stopped.
Futility was mirrored in his eyes and Liz turned away from the cool, blank sight.
He walked over to her. “Why don’t we try the woods on the other side of the road?”
She looked up at him. “Really?”
He nodded. “And you know what—that aerial shot gave me an idea. I know a guy with a helicopter. He uses it for crop-dusting and an air taxi business. I can’t justify a SAR, but I can ask this guy to go up as a favor, circle around.”
Liz clamped down on a dizzy spasm of hope. It would amount to the same thing as a search and rescue, just an unofficial one. “You can?”
“If I can get a signal, I’ll put a call in as soon as we get back to the road.”
The walk out took half as long as the way in. Tim removed his radio when they were still a ways from the car, starting a small trickle of anticipation in Liz. He had to walk to get a connection, and Liz listened to the distant, staticky exchange, her hands clenched. Tim was asking someone at the station to place a call for him. Liz set off into the expanse of woodland on the other side of the road, reassured by the thud of Tim’s boots on the packed soil behind her, and the thought of how glorious helicopter blades would sound biting into the air.
“Come here,” Tim said, after they’d been walking for another hour or so. He was crouching down, studying the ground, hands extended to avoid touching anything. He looked up at the sky, getting his bearings. “This is where I’ll tell my guy to start looking.”
Liz took the uneven ground at as fast a pace as she dared, rocks and bleached bones of branches tilting her off course. She skidded to a halt as Tim raised a warning hand.
A few minutes before she’d been falling behind, tired from beating back leaves in this near-impenetrable section of woods, spent from disappointment. But hope never really dies; it just goes dormant. As soon as Tim indicated this patch, seedlings began to send up shoots inside Liz again, and her feet felt airborne.
She instantly saw what he had. The earth here was different from the area through which they’d passed. It looked bare, almost brushed clean, and the undergrowth had all been cleared.
The ground felt as if it might be moving, quick and alive.
By mutual, unspoken agreement, they both went still, barely even breathing. Liz was suddenly aware that they were probably being observed.
Hairs pricked on the backs of her arms. She and Tim were encroachers, their presence unwelcome. At the same time, her children could be nearby, and so everything inside Liz was at war, fighting to look around while trying not to do anything that might prompt notice.
She strained at the soundless air, listening for a faint call, or regular beat of footsteps, any sound of human occupancy. Tim had his hand on his radio, but for the moment he merely turned his head, left with a pause to look, right with another pause, and finally straight ahead, before repeating the whole sequence.
Liz hardly dared to move. For the first time, the particulars—what could come after she found Reid and Ally—began to occur to her. Locating them might turn out to be the easy part. She hadn’t thought about what would happen when she tried to take them away from Paul, or anyone else out here.
The Shoemaker.
She heard an echo of his hypnotic, melodic voice, felt that single pressing finger on the cut on her arm, and something inside her shriveled. A bristly branch of fir caught her shoulder and she jumped.
Tim held out a steadying hand.
He stepped over to her with care, taking care not to disturb the bare ground. He lowered his he
ad and spoke into her ear. “This is what I say we should do …”
Liz felt a surge of desire for her children, a tug in her belly so strong that it hurt. She straightened so as to attend to Tim’s instructions, and that was when she saw.
She cried out.
Tim aimed a warning look in her direction, instructing her to be quiet.
Disappointment sent her to her knees.
Tim’s face changed, and he dropped down. “What is it?” he whispered. “What’s wrong?”
Liz stayed there on the ground, cold leaching into her jeans. She spoke at normal volume, puncturing the stillness. But her voice was dull and toneless.
“Those are Maker firs.”
Tim followed her gaze.
They were a rapacious, virulent species of tree, particularly dense and arched at the canopy, with no twigs or foliage descending the trunk. In effect, the Maker killed itself off the closer it got to its own roots.
“They’re the most acidic tree you can find,” Liz went on. “Nothing will grow beneath them.”
Tim looked down at the ground again.
“This area hasn’t been cleared,” Liz said. “In fact, for that grove of Makers to grow so thick, I would say nobody’s been here in years.”
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Liz sat on the couch with night descending. She held a throw cushion tightly between her hands, compressing the stuffing.
She’d been wrong. Stupidly, idiotically wrong to think she could outsmart Paul, the Shoemaker, and the whole Adirondack wilderness, which might or might not contain her children. They could be in any of six million acres within the blue line of the Adirondack Park. Or anywhere with woods.
She was never going to see Reid and Ally again.
A sob rose in her throat and she pulled the cushion to her face and bit down.
For the thousandth time that evening, she checked both her recently returned cell and the new disposable for incoming calls, before dialing the number Ally had called from. Liz had memorized it, but the disappointment that blanketed her each time the anonymous voicemail came on made her check and recheck Tim’s email, praying she’d gotten just one digit wrong.
The only person she could imagine talking to now was Jill. She didn’t care what her best friend had done anymore. Perhaps Jill had willfully not questioned Andy, but if so, it had only been to avoid upsetting him in his tenuous state. And maybe Jill truly hadn’t grasped the potential import of her son’s words. It didn’t matter. Especially since in actuality, those words hadn’t turned out to help at all. Liz’s fingers probed blindly for one of the phones. The devices skittered around on the sofa like live things.
Outside, a car door slammed.
Liz put down the sodden lump of cushion. She twisted to kneel on the couch, lifting the curtain from the window.
A pickup truck sat in her driveway. And the person getting out of it was the last one Liz expected to see. Not the phantom driver of that first pickup they’d encountered, streaking by at the terrible start to what had been deemed a vacation. The enraged face of that man flew into Liz’s mind as she watched this alien truck in her drive.
But it wasn’t him, nor was it Matthew, striding up the walkway in his stiff-legged gait.
It was Mary.
Her mother-in-law went around to the other side of the truck. The passenger door had been unlatched. Mary reached inside, then closed the door with effort, starting a bit at the thud. She was holding a shopping bag, which looked heavy from the way it pulled at her grip.
Liz got up and opened the front door. Mary climbed the porch steps one at a time, bringing both feet to rest before she attempted the next, and clinging to the railing for support.
“Elizabeth,” she said, not quite meeting Liz’s gaze. “May I come in?”
Liz stepped aside. “What are you doing here?” Asinine, she heard Jill say. She wondered what question Jill would’ve come up with to ask.
But Mary’s reply caused tears to strike. “I suppose I came because I’m a mother, too.”
Liz turned, going back into the house. “A mother who chooses to have almost no contact with her child. While I had no control over losing mine.”
Was that true? Or had Liz played a role in what Paul had done by allowing him to be what he’d become?
Mary’s hand wafted down, coming to a rest on Liz’s arm. “I didn’t have a whole lot to do with losing mine either.”
Liz jerked free. “I suppose you’re right. It was Matthew who called a stupid, tragic accident unforgivable. Saw fit to disavow your son over it.” Mary began to reply, but Liz spoke over her, surprising herself with her shaking rage. “Paul hadn’t even drunk that much. I saw the road they were on. Anybody could’ve crashed their car.”
“Matthew didn’t reject Paul because of the accident,” Mary said.
The pale timbre of her tone was hard to make out. Liz wasn’t sure she had heard correctly. She blinked, trying to bring her mother-in-law’s face into focus.
Mary set the bag she was holding down in the entryway. “I’ve always believed that the past belongs where time has taken it,” she said, so low she was almost whispering.
Liz leaned forward and took Mary’s wrists in her hands, surprised to find them strong as stalks. “Mary. This isn’t the past anymore. Please tell me why Matthew disowned Paul.”
Mary looked over her shoulder, the movement rendering her unsteady. She walked to the couch and sank down.
Liz followed but remained standing, looming over her mother-in-law’s bent back.
“That road is a monster,” Mary burst out. It was an utterly spontaneous eruption of words, spoken with uncharacteristic fervor. “We drove there after the accident, too. And Paul was so very young.” Mary raised a hand to her face, wearing lines and divots in it that hadn’t been there a moment before. “They were both so god-awful young.”
Tears seeped from Liz’s eyes; then she felt a charge of fury. Not at Mary, but at herself. What was she doing, standing around weeping instead of ferreting out the reason Mary had come? “What made Matthew turn his back on Paul?”
Mary looked up at her through cloudy eyes. “He called him a dirty, stinking coward.”
The brutality of the statement winded Liz like a fall, or a punch. What a hard, unyielding man Matthew was. And also, how similar were father and son. Only the nature of their denunciation differed.
“Oh yes,” Mary said, an odd note of merriment in her voice. “That’s what he said. Can you imagine saying that to your own flesh and blood?”
“Well,” Liz said. She turned and walked toward the door. “I suppose now I understand how Paul could do something as cruel and drastic as this.”
Mary bowed her head.
“I still don’t understand why you came,” Liz said, looking back. “Just to tell me how much Matthew hates his son? How helpless you were to do anything about it?”
“No,” Mary murmured. “That isn’t it.”
Liz’s hand stilled on the knob.
Mary got up and crossed to Liz at a halting pace. In the entryway, she lifted the shopping bag. Her fist gave a palsied shake.
Liz frowned, but a pulse of faint hope was starting to tick inside her.
“I thought we should both see what’s inside this.”
When her mother-in-law didn’t seem inclined to go on, Liz parted the folds of the bag and peered into the gaping space.
It held the missing lockbox.
THE DINNER HOUR
Abby was preparing dinner with the other women when they heard it. The blast split the deep quiet around them, inciting a cacophony of bird cries, followed by a high, tailing-off whistle. All three of them looked up at once, but Abby was the first to run for the barn door and heave it open.
“Cody!” she called, a note of alarm in her voice. “Children!”
“Yeah?” Tom shouted back. “Whaddaya want?”
His voice held a faint underlay of menace, but that seemed to be normal for Tom. The boy sounded ca
sual. Nothing wrong.
Abby threaded her way through the trees, coming out behind the barn.
The children were at work netting a berry patch so that it wouldn’t be picked clean before the fruit could ripen next season. Tom, the oldest, was driving stakes into the ground, letting out a karate-like “Hi-ya” as each one spiked the earth. Reid and his sister Ally cut lengths of net. Even Cody had been given a job. Abby felt a flush of delight as she watched her little boy solemnly hold a piece of netting so that Ally could affix it to the stake.
“Good job, Cody,” Abby heard Ally say.
Ally appeared to be a natural teacher, especially if the lesson had anything to do with plants. The way the kids were getting along promised to be a surprise bonus of this whole venture. Older ones teaching younger, younger reminding older of a sort of wide-eyed state of innocent delight. Cody, who was destined to remain an only child, seemed to take particular pleasure in the group he had joined. Abby felt more relaxed than she had in months, although she intended to keep a watchful eye, especially where Tom was concerned. He was a big kid, rough, but neither of those things were what concerned her. No, it was that Abby sensed a cold sheen beneath Tom’s loudmouth ways, as if his insides were made of chrome or tin instead of blood and pulpy organs. And the other moms seemed to be similarly wary, although they hadn’t talked about it yet.
In some ways, the reality of this place was turning out to be better than Abby had anticipated, the kids being the most shining example of this. But there were downsides she hadn’t imagined too, and Abby had wondered once or twice what she’d gotten herself and Cody into. This wasn’t some well-planned utopian compound; instead, it was a motley group of people who seemed to be figuring things out as they went along. She and Cody had only been here two days, and she could already tell how many holes there were, gaps that would have to be filled in, with winter fast approaching.
But what choice had she had but to come?
Abby had hoped that Sue, who had put Abby in touch with the women from the chat room, would also join them. Abby and Sue had met in a moms’ group four years ago. But Sue had never given any thought to meeting her cyber friends in person, let alone following where they led. That was an avenue she’d thought of for Abby, Sue explained, when Bill caused the situation to become so desperate.
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