It was four in the morning, and no one was at Chris’s home.
Gerald had easily found the small house. A double-wide trailer surrounded by a swatch of tall firs standing alone on a small rocky plateau. He’d left his vehicle a half mile away in another group of trees and brush. He hadn’t seen another car since he left the town.
Talk about rolling up the sidewalks. The small town had shut off every light in the “city” area by eight p.m. Even the gas station had closed by seven. Last evening, he’d kept a distant view of Michael and Jamie as they’d eaten dinner at the diner. After that, they’d gone to a bed-and-breakfast and not come out. Apparently, they were waiting until the following day to meet up with her brother.
By the pale light of the moon, Gerald went through the drawers, pulling out everything. He figured if Chris wasn’t home by now, he wouldn’t be coming home at all tonight. Clothes piled at his feet as he ran his hand under and around each drawer. He was beginning to wonder if he had the right house. He wasn’t finding any sign that Chris Jacobs lived here.
He steamed. He’d had a plan, an expectation. And it was all going to hell. Every ounce of him wanted to put an end to the man who’d eluded him for years. And it looked like he’d slipped away again. His hands and psyche were aching for blood.
He stalked to the small kitchen and did the same number on the drawers in there. No scraps of mail, no bills, nothing with Jacobs’s name. There weren’t any photographs either. The only things hanging on the walls were the artwork of a child. Looking at the toys and clothes, it was a young boy. Younger than ten. Gerald bent over and started on the cupboards. Pots, pans, bowls. Nothing that indicated who lived in the house.
He opened the fridge. He’d seen those fake bottles before that people hid important papers or money in. He checked the small amount of condiments and found them all to be legit. He grabbed the carton of milk and peered at the date. It didn’t expire for another seven days, so someone had been here recently.
Would Jacobs have a child? He hadn’t found any women’s clothing or women’s touches around the house. The bathroom only held male toiletries. Where was the child’s mother? Divorced? Again, Gerald wondered if he had the right house.
He pulled the cushions off the couch, unzipped them, and ripped the covers off. Nothing.
Damn it!
There was no landline, no computer, but there was a desk that looked like it was missing a laptop. A printer sat close by, and there were several bookshelves full of computer programming books. He marched back to the main bedroom and stared, letting his eyes travel the room. What had he missed?
He scanned the blank walls. Whoever lived here, lived like they’d never settled in.
He froze as the thought hit him. Or lived like they were ready to leave at a moment’s notice, without leaving a trail.
No papers, no pictures.
Satisfaction flowed through him; he was definitely standing in the right house.
This was the house of a shadowman. Who now had a son to hide.
Within fifteen minutes of seeing the Ghostman on his laptop, his heart racing, Chris had Brian packed in the truck. The sleepy boy leaned against the side rest of his booster, unable to keep his eyes open. He hadn’t asked a single question about being awakened in the middle of the night. Chris was always ready to travel light. Every item he owned had a mentally attached tag of “take” or “leave” on it. Everything he’d ever bought, he’d considered whether it’d be something he needed to abandon if he had to leave town fast or if the item was light and necessary to pack.
He didn’t say good-bye to Juan. The old man was a light sleeper and had surely heard them leave. Years ago, he’d briefly told Juan that someday, someone might come looking for him, but he kept details to a minimum. The old man easily read between the lines, and he knew Chris would run without stopping if he thought Brian was in danger.
Through numerous mental dry runs and the occasional real one, Chris had packing and vanishing down to a science. And now it was paying off. He and Brian had made long car trips south into Mexico, and he knew exactly where he wanted to go. There was a tiny, sleepy town on the western coast of Mexico. Life was slow, and the people seemed kind and not nosy. Not like here. The town gossips tried to stick their noses in his life every now and then, pretending concern for how he was raising his son. He’d considered making the move a few years ago, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave the US. He’d lost almost everything. His parents, Brian’s mother. Living in the US was one of his last connections with his previous life.
Elena had shown him the small Mexican town. Her grandparents had lived there, and she’d visited often as a child.
Elena. His hands tightened on the steering wheel.
Her death had left a gaping wound in his heart. She’d been such an innocent. He’d fallen in love with her simple ways and immediate acceptance of his scars. She saw past them to who he was inside. Only she could calm his nightmares, and she brought him peace. He still felt that peace at times with his son. Brian was a little living piece of Elena.
He had a strong suspicion of what’d happened the night she died. Elena had been out of communication with her family for several years. Her brothers ran drugs, and violence surrounded their lives. She’d wanted nothing to do with it and had left. A few weeks before her accident, she’d finally been contacted by her oldest brother, who’d demanded that she return home. She’d refused. When the brother realized she was living with a man and had a child out of wedlock, he’d flipped. A strong Catholic, her brother increased the pressure.
That night, she’d gone to meet with her brother, the first time she’d seen him in three years. Chris didn’t believe her brother had harmed her in any way, but he’d known Elena was extremely upset by the visit. She’d called as she left her brother. Hysterical with tears, saying her brother had ordered her back to Mexico and called her a whore. Chris had made her hang up the phone because he wanted her to focus on driving.
Driving too fast? Possibly. Chris suspected her brother had been the one to see the accident first; perhaps he was driving behind her, following her after she ran out of their meeting. The next thing he knew, the sheriff was at his front door and Elena was gone. There’d been some tampering at the accident scene, which Chris suspected had been from the brother checking on Elena after the accident. She’d died instantly, according to the coroner. No immediate action could have saved her.
The brother had vanished. Chris hoped he lived with the vision of Elena’s death in his mind every day.
He’d never heard from her family. Their rejection didn’t bother him, but the idea that they’d rejected Brian as part of their family did. Not that he wanted his son to associate with criminals—or the man who possibly drove Elena to wreck her car—but every child needs to know they have extended family that cares.
Chris had Jamie. That was it.
Jamie was persistent about keeping in touch. But he ached for that larger circle of blood to call his own. His parents were gone. Wiped out in a single moment by a drunk driver. How ironic that the people he’d loved the most were all killed in car accidents. He forced himself to keep Jamie at arm’s length for her own good. And tonight was proving that he’d been right all along. Where he was, trouble would eventually follow. He had to keep moving.
He glanced at Brian in his rearview mirror. The boy’s mouth was open slightly, his black hair mussed from bed. Keeping Brian’s existence a secret from Jamie cut him deeply every day. But if she knew about his son, she’d force the two of them out into the open, where it was dangerous.
Chris looked at his son, and his heart ached. In a good way.
Brian was his number-one priority in life. He would do everything in his power to keep his boy safe. Safe from predators like the one who’d scarred him. The boy shifted in his booster, and Chris eyed the seatbelt to make certain it still crossed Brian’s chest in the right spot. How careful parents were these days. When Chris grew up, children had avoided seat belts, lying down in the backseat or in the back of station wagons. He’d had a friend who liked to lie down against the window above the backseat as his parents drove.
Today, a parent would get pulled over for a stunt like that.
His parents had shielded him from the outside world after he’d returned from the forest. Which was good. He hadn’t wanted to interact. He’d spent years simply wanting to stay in his room. School had been a nightmare. His mother had finally resorted to homeschooling. Actually, Chris did most of the learning on his own. He’d outline each month what he planned to learn, and his mother had approved. She was available if he needed help, but frankly, schoolwork was a breeze.
His brain was a sponge. He read history for pleasure, did math because he was curious, and studied computers because they fascinated him. His idols were Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. Their lifestyles were too public for his taste, but he understood how their brains worked.
When Jamie was studying fractions as a sixth grader and struggling to master them, he’d written a simple computer program for her to watch and interact with. Seeing her face light up as she finally understood had been like a hit of crack. He wrote more programs. And more. Back then, there were simple message boards that programming geeks posted on, asking other geeks for help. That became his social life. The other geeks couldn’t see the external and internal scars.
The Internet exploded, and he was perfectly positioned to take advantage. His simple websites for local businesses caught the attention of other businesses. By the time he was eighteen, he was making more money than his father. Life was spinning along quite comfortably. Plastic surgeries had improved his scarring…or so he thought, until he’d stepped out in public and caught the children’s stares and the quick glances of adults who rapidly looked the other way.
Only once had he asked to see some of the other children who’d vanished with him. He’d been lucid for a few days between surgeries, during the second month, and asked his mom if he could talk to David Doubler, who’d been released a few months after they’d been kidnapped. He still remembered the shock and pity on his mother’s face.
“David is still gone, Chris. No one but you has come home.”
He’d nearly blurted out that he’d seen the other children released one by one. But he bit his tongue in time. If he admitted he’d seen them released, he’d have to admit he remembered where they’d been held and describe who had held them.
He kept his mouth shut.
But the minute he had the ability to search the Internet when he was older, he looked for all of them. And found nothing. Except families who still waited and grieved for their children.
How many nights had the belief that his friends had been released helped him stay sane in that bunker? He’d hated the children who were released, yet he was overjoyed for them at the same time.
He would never study his son’s face on a missing-child poster.
Now he knew where all the children were. They’d been buried in the dirt for two decades while their families waited for their return. At least the families finally had their answers. At least now the families could give up hope that their children were still alive and move on. Living with the unanswered questions was the worst. He’d wanted to tell the families he believed the children were dead, but he had no proof. He didn’t know what the Ghostman had done with them. And he had to continue his charade of memory loss.
His heart clenched at the thought of Daniel’s family. Their son hadn’t returned home. His body wasn’t found with the other children.
What was that lack of knowledge doing to his parents?
Their wounds had been freshly reopened. No doubt, Daniel’s parents had learned to cope without their son for so long. But while all the other parents had answers, they still suffered from the unknown.
Should he tell them what had really happened to Daniel? How they’d escaped from the Ghostman together? For nearly two decades, he’d wanted to tell the senator and his wife what had happened to their son. But he’d had to keep his mouth shut. If he’d told, there would be blood spilled. Innocent blood and guilty blood. He didn’t give a damn about the guilty blood, but he would do his best to protect the innocent. That meant being silent.
It’d been an enormous burden to bear.
The quiet highway stretched out before him. He’d passed very few cars at this hour. The sun was just starting to peek over the horizon on his left side. The more miles he put on the road, the safer his son would be. He loosened his grip on the steering wheel. His fingers were cramping, he’d been holding on so tight. He forced a long exhale and tried to relax.
Just keep moving.
But his mind kept returning to the same question over and over.
How had the Ghostman found him in Demming?
The car jerked in response as a new realization shocked his system.
Jamie. He hadn’t given Jamie his new phone number.
He’d been in the process of setting up a new number for her to reach him when the news of the found children had started filling the Internet. He changed the number every few months, and he’d immediately changed it after Jamie had called to tell him the children’s bodies had been found.
Christ! Had she tried to call? What sort of panic would she be in if she couldn’t reach him? He steered the vehicle to the side of the highway and parked. He hit the button to call her house.
Shit! Voice mail. He couldn’t leave a message.
He tried her cell phone. Voice mail again.
He didn’t dare leave a message that anyone could hear. At least he’d had his number set up to show as a restricted number. Hopefully, that would let her know he’d at least tried to reach out to her. She knew he’d never leave a message.
What if she can’t get to her phone? What if the Ghostman already got to her? Is that how he found me?
Chris leaned his head against the wheel, heart pounding. Slow sweat started to drip down his temples. Could that have happened? Could the Ghostman have traced him through Jamie? He’d been so careful. But it made sense for someone to start with her if they wanted to find him. He’d always made certain Jamie knew nothing, and he’d hoped that was enough to keep her safe from anyone who decided to look for him. But what if someone wasn’t satisfied with her answers? What if they hadn’t believed her and decided to force answers?
He couldn’t move. How could he leave the US not knowing if she was okay?
He had to go back to Portland.
Bile churned in his gut, and a headache bloomed behind his temples.
He had to see for himself that she hadn’t been touched. A quick trip. He’d keep trying her phone numbers on the way. Then he’d head to Mexico.
He pulled a U-turn on the empty highway.