His eyes twinkled. “Took me all of two minutes of playing on the keyboard. Did you like it?”

“What did you promise Crayline he’d get from assisting with Stone’s journey … the mentor’s cut of redemption?”

“Bobby Lee helped Stone because of his love for a fellow warrior. A brother in arms. Bobby Lee might benefit, but never enough to be free.”

“You told me you hadn’t spoken to Bobby Lee since the Institute. Years.”

“Not aloud. You never mentioned correspondence. There are quiet corners of the Web, Carson. Places to meet. Bobby Lee notified me that he had a friend wanting to free himself by erasing the past. He needed a shaman to read the entrails.”

53

I looked at my watch, fear boiling in my belly. It was time to change the angle of my questions.

I stepped close to my brother, hands in my pockets, voice gentle.

“Stone has Cherry, Jeremy. He needs to kill her.”

He grinned. “That’ll certainly make things quieter around here.”

My punch caught him between the eyes, snapping his head back. He stumbled into the wall. My brother studied my face as his eyes refocused.

“Oh my,” he sneered, rubbing his forehead. “You finally slipped your tongue into the pie, Carson. Was it tasty?”

“Where’s Stone?”

“I have no idea.”

“I’ll say it one more time. Where’s—”

“You don’t understand, Carson. I didn’t know who Bobby was working with. Coordinates of, uh, various events arrived on my computer. I’d slip out and inspect. If the event had sufficient poetry, I signaled acceptance. All I know is the victims were people who tormented children and deserved what they got. People like our male parent.”

“Beale never tormented children. Neither did Cherry. They’re stand-ins for the dead.”

My brother did wide-eyed innocence. “You can’t expect me to have predicted that.”

I wanted to slam my brother into the wall. Instead I looked out the window and breathed slowly, controlling my emotions. I looked over his beloved garden, seeing a bright cardinal flash in the open sun. Beyond, the bees sizzled in their white hives. I saw the white chair where he sat in the shade and read his books. I’d never known my brother to feel a kinship with a locale before, one place as good or bad as the next. But something was different here: He’d set down roots, literally and metaphorically. It was a first step, but something in him was changing, perhaps even moving toward the elusive peace he seemed to seek in more rational moments, but never find.

“Do you like it here in the forest?” I asked.

“It’s my home. I’ve never been able to say the word before. I love it here.”

I checked my watch. “I’ll give you a three-hour head start beginning right now. Then I’m blowing the whistle.”

His mouth dropped open. “What?”

“You like anonymous calls? Here’s mine: one to the FBI that suggests a fast and close inspection of one August Charpentier.”

“YOU CAN’T DO THAT!”

I nodded toward the garden. “Kiss it goodbye and remember it fondly.”

“YOU CAN’T DO THIS TO YOUR OWN BLOOD!”

“Tempus fugit, Brother. Best get packing.”

He glared at me, fists clenching and releasing. “I KNOW WHAT’S GOING ON, CARSON. YOU WANT ME TO FIND YOUR LITTLE SCREECH OWL. CHECK THE GODDAMN RV PARKS.”

“Stone knows we know about them.” I glanced at my watch again. “You’re down to two hours and—”

“ENOUGH!” Jeremy howled, dropping his face into his hands. “LET ME THINK!”

I went to the porch and waited. It took ten minutes until Jeremy called me back. He was lying on the floor and looking up. It was his preferred manner of thinking: projecting thoughts and ideas on to the ceiling like watching a movie.

“Where is she?” I asked.

“If I tell you, I stay here. If I’m going to lose my home, I’ll lose it today. But you’ll lose …”

“Deal,” I said. “Tell me.”

He stared at the ceiling like he was watching a scene come into focus. “If Stone has entered a world where some-one related to a tormentor is a perfectly acceptable metaphor for the actual tormentor, he’s in a world of pure symbol. He’ll need to be at a magic node for the finale.”

“A what?”

“A place where the present intersects the past, and all is possible.”

“That’s useless to me,” I snapped. “Be more specific.”

“I can’t tell you where Stone is, Carson. I can only tell you how he is. What he needs right now is past and future together, Alpha and Omega.”

“The camp,” I whispered, seeing the completion of a circle.

I pulled out my phone to call Krenkler and the crew, but I couldn’t get my finger to press her number. Thinking she was racing to the solve, Krenkler had gone stormtrooper on the poor tormented Taithering, causing needless destruction. Stone was a man without limits; he needed to kill Cherry to regain his soul. There would be no bargaining, nor would he tolerate any form of stand-off. While Krenkler raised her bullhorn, Stone would butcher Donna Cherry, destroying the hated Colonel.

If I called Krenkler, the situation could turn bad in an eyeblink. On my own, I had control.

It took under twenty minutes to get to the rusted gate outside the camp. There was no other vehicle nearby and my heart sank until I realized Stone would use a back entrance; surely there was a hidden entrance. I parked at the gate, the dirt still puddled from the earlier storms. The air was blue with twilight, night falling fast. I checked my weapon, patted pockets filled with bullets, knife, and flashlight, climbed over the barbed wire, and began running to the camp.

Recognizing the final bend, I slowed. High ridges blocked the waning sun, making it seem an hour later here in the valley than in the highlands, almost full dark now. When I saw lights in the barn, I ducked low and sprinted to the tumbledown house for cover, crouching in the soupy dirt.

I heard dogs growling nearby, deep-throated rumbles. The sound chilled my spine. A whiff of dog excrement hit my nose, fresh. I peered around the corner and saw a bright RV, boats and bikes strapped aboard.

I sprinted to the corner of the barn and heard a dog start baying. I hoped it wasn’t announcing an intruder. The huge cage Cherry and I saw outside the back door was missing. I put my ear to the warped barn slats and listened. The growling of dogs. I crept another six paces, listened again. Heard a sound at my back and turned.

I saw a huge fist as if in slow motion.

Stars. Black.

54

Dogs barking. Followed by the reek of excrement. Followed by the smell of mud. I opened my eyes and saw I was caged in a six-foot cube of quarter-inch bars set four inches apart: the cage from the bushes behind the barn, now positioned beside what had been the bar area during fight days.

My gun was gone.

Stone stood two dozen feet away beside a similar cage containing a trio of black, snarling dogs, two Dobermans and a pit bull. He wore nothing but a white athletic cup, his overbuilt body gleaming with sweat. The metal-shaded lamps in the rafters produced a hard white light that lent the feel of a theatrical performance.

I studied the scene through a half-opened eye, twitching each limb slightly, testing for pain and response. Everything seemed to work. Stone had missed a chance to incapacitate me, totally focused on Cherry, perhaps.

Stone turned, pushed open the door and went outside, the dogs snarling and high-hackled. Dog excrement had been mounded around the floor, part of the symbolic tableau, I figured.

Seconds later, Stone re-entered the barn, tugging on a yellow rope with one hand, holding a wad of clothes in the other, throwing to the floor a blouse, jeans, panties, bra. Cherry followed, the rope tight around her neck. She was dressed in a man’s suit jacket, cream-colored and outsized, sleeves past her fingertips, the bottom inches above her knees. A tan hat was on her head, a dollar-store purchase resembling the hat Horace Cherry affected. I saw trails of brown crust in her hair and realized the hat had been glued to her head.