BoneMan's Daughters

by Ted Dekker

“For starters, you’re in violation of the court’s order,” Welsh snapped.

  Ryan’s last restraint was severed. “My daughter has been kidnapped!” He thundered the last word, face flushed and hot. “And no one even bothered to call me?”

  “I’m sorry, Captain,” Ricki said. “I know these aren’t ideal circumstances for you, but we have to be careful.”

  Celine had taken several steps backwards, where she stood against the couch, trembling. “What are you doing, Ryan?”

  “Don’t stand there shaking as if I was the one who broke your finger. Our daughter’s out there!”

  “Why didn’t you tell Agent Valentine the truth about your association with the BoneMan in Iraq, Captain?” Welsh asked, head tilted down slightly.

  “I… What association? It’s classified. I don’t see what that has to do with—”

  “You just happen to come out of the desert spinning tales of your nightmares about the BoneMan and now he takes your daughter as his next victim after a two-year absence? Forgive me if it doesn’t all seem just a bit much.”

  The man was accusing him? “He… Serial killers! He was comparing us to serial killers. I said BoneMan for effect. Why did you tell the media about my claims? That’s how he found me!”

  “Is that right?” Clearly the man didn’t believe a word he said.

  Ryan turned to the Ricki. “What about you?”

  She shrugged. “There are a lot of questions that need answering.”

  Ryan turned on Celine, furious and unable to hide his anger. “How could you think this?”

  But her eyes were fired with fear and he knew that something very definite had convinced her that he might present a danger to her.

  “You just, what, left the alarm off so that he could walk in here and take my daughter!?”

  “I’m waiting for your full file, Ryan,” Welsh said. “But I really don’t need to see it to know that the BoneMan killings just happen to line up with the dates you were between tours.”

  “Don’t be asinine! That’s pure coincidence.”

  “Is it? And when you broke Celine’s finger, you told her to tell me it was payback. Is that what all of this is, Captain? Payback for your own bitterness?”

  A uniformed police officer had presented himself in the doorway leading to the kitchen, blocking any escape. Surely they didn’t really think he was the BoneMan!

  “If you’ve read my file, then you know I was a victim of torture, not the torturer. You’re wasting time while he’s out there with my daughter.”

  “It must have been hard, watching all those children die,” Welsh said. “I can understand why you snapped.”

  “That is irrelevant!” He was breathing hard. “We only have six days to find him—”

  Ricki’s right eyebrow arched. “Six days? Care to elaborate?”

  “He called me. He said that it took the father seven days to create her and now he was going to give me seven days to save her.”

  “Really?” Welsh smirked. “He just happened to call you?”

  So that was it, then. Between Celine’s harrowing experience the night of the kidnapping during which BoneMan had broken her finger and Ryan’s experience in the desert, the DA was ready to pin the abduction on him.

  A jealous father suffering from PTSD, caving in to his true nature by taking his own daughter.

  He looked at Ricki. “You buy this?”

  “Like I said, there’re some questions that need answering. Do you mind telling us where you were two nights ago?”

  “Home. Asleep.”

  “Alone?”

  Something else occurred to him. BoneMan had issued him a personal challenge. Bethany’s life hung in the balance of his choices now. And looking in the DA’s eyes, there was little doubt that the man had no intention of letting Ryan walk from this room a free man to make any choice at all.

  He stared at Welsh and saw him for what he was, an obstacle to saving his daughter’s life.

  “Alone? No, actually, I was with some good friends who stayed over after a night of poker. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind if you called them.”

  “We will. Father Hortense tells me you’ve been pretty much a hermit these last two months. Hard to imagine you having a whole passel of close friends.”

  Both doors were now blocked. Where the second cop had come from, Ryan didn’t know, but he was hemmed in.

  “None of this should be that difficult to settle,” Ricki said. “You say he called you?”

  “Yes.” Ryan nodded and eased closer to the kitchen entryway. “He left me a message.”

  “Where’s the message?”

  Erased, he almost said.

  “At home.”

  The urge to panic was now fully grown and biting its way out of his chest. He had to get out!

  Follow me where the crows fly alone. As in, where the crow flies by itself.

  Or was it Follow me where the crows fly, alone? As in, come by yourself.

  Either way, he had to get out and he had to get out now!

  “Then you don’t mind going with me to get it,” the agent said.

  “It’s… I live in Waco now.”

  “Then we should get started.”

  The DA stepped forward. “I’m sorry, Agent Valentine, I can’t allow you to take this man out of my custody.” He nodded at the cop behind Ryan. “He’ll have to tell you where it is. I’m sure you can appreciate my concern, but—”

  Ryan threw himself backwards into the cop. His back was met by a startled shove, precisely the reaction he’d hoped for. He ducked and spun while the cop’s hands were still up, blocking his charge.

  The forty-five semiauto slid out of the man’s holster like butter. And then Ryan was by the wall, gun up, trained on the cop who guarded the front door.

  “Gun on the floor, gun on the floor, now! You too, Agent Valentine!”

  The man glanced at the DA, then slowly complied.

  Ricki eyed him. “This is no way to save your daughter, Ryan.”

  “You, Agent, know nothing about me or my daughter. Put your gun on the floor and kick it over to me. Now!”

  She slipped a nine-millimeter out of her shoulder holster, slowly set it on the floor, and kicked it over.

  Ryan grabbed the gun and stuffed it behind his belt. He motioned to both cops and nodded at the wall. “Against the wall. All of you.”

  Welsh cursed bitterly.

  “Get. Against. The wall!” Ryan shouted.

  The man reluctantly stepped up to the wall next to Celine, who was whimpering. They stood five abreast now, facing the wall.

  “On your knees.”

  Ricki began to protest, but Ryan told her to save her breath.

  The room quieted while Ryan spun through his options. Beyond this point he hadn’t considered any elaborate plans. He knew that he had to find Bethany, he knew that he would do anything and everything in his power for even one chance to stop BoneMan. If need be he would gladly sacrifice his or any of these five lives for Bethany’s life.

  The thought stopped him behind them. Would he?

  But he couldn’t think straight enough to answer the question. He backed to the front door.

  “Stay there,” he said. “Just stay there.”

  Then he slipped out and ran for his car.

  19

  THE EARTH FILLED her nostrils, a damp, cool smell that might mean she was in a pit or a grave or a root cellar somewhere. But Bethany couldn’t see. A blindfold prevented the light from reaching her eyes, assuming there was light.

  She was alone, she was pretty sure of that. Tied to the metal post behind her so she could only slump over for rest with some pain to her shoulders and back. He’d come and gone several times, but mostly he was gone. And when he was with her, he said nothing aloud.

  He’d whispered in her ear several times, telling her that she was beautiful and the perfect lamb to take away the sin of the world.

  He untied her once and led her to a commode to do her bus
iness.

  Bethany wasn’t sure how much time had passed, a day at least, enough time so that the initial terror of her abduction had passed, replaced by a dull anguish, a certainty of the inevitable pain awaiting her.

  She’d been taken by the BoneMan. Her mother’s new lover had brought BoneMan upon them and it was only a matter of time before he began to break her bones.

  A slight medicinal odor lingered from BoneMan’s last visit, hours earlier. He’d wiped lotion on her face and neck and quietly rubbed it in. She couldn’t shake the thought of a butcher marinating his choice cut before lowering it over the flame.

  But she’d held her tongue and he whispered something in her ear then that gave her the first narrow thread of hope she’d been able to grasp since he’d taken her.

  “You’re much braver than the rest.”

  It was the tone of his voice more than the words that made her think he had just shown a weakness. He respected her courage. Even seemed taken back by it.

  And true, the images from horror movies of victims trembling in their own waste did not fit here, not with her, at least not now that she was thinking clearly again.

  Bethany remembered opening her eyes in her bedroom the moment before the dark figure over her shoved the needle into her neck. Twisting to stare into the eyes of a tall stranger with a strong, fleshy, pale face and blue eyes. The drug had immobilized her almost immediately and the next time she dragged herself into a conscious state she’d found herself bound up and gagged on the floor of a pickup truck.

  She’d panicked and thrashed about, screaming raw through the gag, and a boot or a bat had silenced her with a single hard blow to her temple.

  The next time she’d come to she was here, sitting on this concrete floor strapped to the pipe behind her. The gag had been removed and she’d screamed for help for an hour before finally concluding that anyone as meticulous and accomplished as the BoneMan had surely thought of that.

  She leaned back and rubbed her head against the pipe, attempting to dislodge the blindfold again, to no avail. Her neck ached, as if it had been broken, which she knew was an impossibility.

  A shudder passed through her bones. The truth was, fear had stalked her like a lion and no matter how strong she pretended to be, it was eating her raw.

  The argument she’d had with Celine about moving to New York sat at the edge of her mind, a ridiculous little lump of history that felt so distant now, she couldn’t be sure it had really happened. The very idea of modeling in New York now struck her as an obscene joke. However irrational it might seem, she put the blame for BoneMan on Ryan as much as on Burt. Both men, both lousy father figures, both offering a false sense of security.

  She ground her jaw and groaned. If only she could see. Anger flared through her gut, her chest, and her face, and she suddenly wanted to scream. So she did. She screamed her frustration at the darkness that surrounded her.

  Pointless, she realized, and closed her jaw.

  Her knees.

  The thought stopped her cold.

  She could remove her blindfold with her knees, couldn’t she? Why hadn’t she thought of that before?

  She folded her legs and leaned over her knees. Her forehead made contact easily enough, and it was only a matter of seconds before she was able to push the blindfold up over her eyes.

  Dim light filtered into a large concrete room from several cracks in the ceiling corners. A wooden door was shut, twenty feet away. Several ammo boxes sat on a table to her right. A folding chair. A metal bed with a thin gray mattress sat unused against the far wall.

  She was underground, she guessed, in a bunker or basement.

  She stared at the bed, wishing she could lie and rest while she waited. But then a new thought occurred to her, one that was mixed up with the sounds of James Caan having his legs broken while he lay in bed in that movie Misery.

  She swallowed hard and tried to relax. Her blue plaid flannel pajama bottom was smudged but not ripped. She wore a white T-shirt that was surprisingly clean. Bethany stared at her bare feet.

  The problem with the character in Misery, as with so many characters in horror movies, was that they didn’t think clearly. Bethany could understand why, seated here, strapped to a metal pole in a cement basement, waiting for BoneMan’s return.

  But she would not allow herself to give in to her emotions the way all of those other girls probably had so that he could send them straight to hell in a bucket of broken bones.

  She would engage him, work his respect, draw him out, and if she could—if she found even the slightest opportunity to do so—she would bash his skull in and send him straight to hell.

  That was one side of it. The other side of it was that she was finally getting what was coming to her. A bit extreme, but her whole life had been a bit extreme. What goes around comes around and this was life coming around. One day in New York, the next day in a lunatic’s basement.

  She was having some difficulty piecing together exactly why she deserved to be in this place, but she wasn’t stupid enough to deny that in the end life was cruel and didn’t pay attention to what was fair.

  Bethany sat back and let out a long breath. No, no, that was ridiculous. She no more deserved this than she deserved to be abandoned by her father. If only he’d been there…

  She closed her eyes and clenched her jaw. Stay calm, Bethany. It’ll work out. It’ll all work out.

  RICKI VALENTINE HAD seen her share of type A raging bulls, but Burt Welsh had the unique ability to make even the twenty percent of those in society who were type A cringe.

  She should know, she was a type A, and she felt as uncomfortable around the DA as a kitten in a cactus patch. Not that she had any trouble telling him what she thought, only that she had trouble believing that he cared one iota what she thought.

  He leaned over a desk in the downtown police station, running down a list of demands on the phone with the chief of police and mayor. The DA had little business running an investigation, and of course Welsh would insist that he was doing no such thing. But he might as well be—the local authorities ate out of his hand when he asked them to.

  To be fair, the BoneMan case was now as much a political and social issue as a matter of the law. The whole city was neck deep in fear because Burton Welsh had put the wrong man behind bars and the right man had just taken another high school student.

  Ricki sat back against the desk and watched, judging, thinking.

  “Every road, Bill. I don’t care if it’s a dirt road that leads to a vineyard off 183; I want a hundred-mile noose around this city… . Then get more men!”

  He spun to Ricki. “Where are those agents from Dallas?” he demanded.

  “On their way. This is a thinking game, not a pissing match.”

  Welsh glared at her. “I’ll call you right back, Bill. Fine.” He set the phone down and walked up to her.

  “Whatever this attitude is, lose it. You might be FBI, you might be the freaking Secret Service or the NSA. You might be whoever you like, but we just got handed a gift, Agent Valentine. How he managed to get out of Barton Creek before we could stop him, I don’t know, but I’m not going to let him slip through our fingers again. Either get on board, or run along home.”

  One of these days she would have to slap the man just to see his reaction.

  She nodded. “Are you done?”

  “For now.”

  “Fine.” She stood and faced the room. A dozen officers, agents, and detectives assigned to the joint task force were working over their desks or speaking quietly into phones. Ricki clapped her hands.

  “Okay people, listen up. The FBI is still taking the lead on this, but the task force’s mission has not changed.”

  The room quickly stilled as the officers turned their attention toward her. Mark Resner eyed her from where he stood by a large wall map, working with two detectives on plotting a network of blockades.

  “He’s been out there for”—she glanced at her watch—“an hour and
ten minutes, which puts him within sixty miles of Barton Creek without traffic. We have an all-points bulletin on the Toyota Camry. Over two hundred uniformed officers are now actively engaged in the search. We have eyes in the air, four helicopters searching four grids. As of ten minutes ago, all four major affiliates went live on the air with photographs of Mr. Ryan Evans. By now half the city knows what BoneMan looks like. But we still don’t have the slightest idea what happened to him. I hope I’m not the only one who sees this as a unique challenge.”

  She had their attention now, all of them.

  “I’ve eaten, slept, and breathed BoneMan. His disappearing into thin air shouldn’t come as a surprise. There’s a reason he’s remained at large.”

  “You’re sure this is the guy?” a Detective Richardson asked.

  “He’s the guy,” Welsh said.

  Ricki nodded. “Everything we have points to him, yes.”

  “Someone once said the same about Phil Switzer.”

  Welsh turned on the man. “We have a witness with a broken finger this time. He spoke to her before he snapped her bone. Then he took her daughter. This is the first time we have a live witness. Ryan Evans is BoneMan.”

  “That is the assumption we are all working under at this time,” Ricki said. “Naval Intelligence. Been through some pretty nasty stuff. He’s reportedly suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder; I wouldn’t put anything past him.”

  Captain Bradley, who headed the city’s Special Weapons teams, shifted on his polished black boots. “What are the rules of engagement?”

  “Use all necessary force to apprehend. Do not terminate. Corner him, but do not shoot unless fired upon. Use of nonlethal force is authorized. He’s got a hostage out there, people. Our top priority right now is to bring his daughter back alive.”

  The mention of his daughter brought stillness to the room.

  “Sick freak,” someone muttered.

  Something about the connection between Ryan Evans and BoneMan’s latest victim, Bethany Evans, struck Ricki as disjointed. She’d sat with the man in his hotel room for an hour, watching him come apart at the seams over the prospect of losing his daughter. An obsessed man, broken by the war, she’d assumed.