“You cannot do this, Cal!” she screamed.
He ordered her into the car, gesturing directly with the gun. She obeyed. They drove onto Old Travis and had gone a quarter mile when she saw a large black truck racing past them. And then another dark truck following at a distance, but this one with Shiloh at the wheel. She glanced in the rearview; she had memorized his license plate. It was him. Shiloh. No. She assumed Shiloh was heading to the lake house. This had all gone wrong.
“Listen to me,” she said. “I made a mistake. That attack on Amari Bowman and Matteo Vasquez, I know that wasn’t you. It was Shiloh. He’s trying to make Jane and her mother look guilty. He’s out there, Cal, and he’s going to hurt someone.”
“Drive.”
She did, following, she realized, the same path her son and Jane had followed. At his direction, she turned onto High Oaks. But before she reached the crash site, he said, “Turn in here.” It was one of the three large houses on the road, its gates open.
The one man who had heard the crash and called the police. What was his name? James Marcolin. She turned in and the gates swung shut behind her.
58
SHILOH COULD HEAR the blond boy running through the lake house, calling Jane’s name again and again. Oh, yeah, some affection at work here. All Shiloh had to do was wait and the idiot would just barrel out the door and Shiloh could take him down with one solid home-run swing. He tested the weight of the crowbar in his hand. Mimi had been taken from him; if this boy was Jane’s version of Mimi, the one she cared about, then he would take him from Jane.
In the back of his mind he kept thinking how Perri Hall was going to react to this, if she would be suspicious of his hand in it. Didn’t matter. She hadn’t called the cops on him for Bowman and Vasquez. She wasn’t an idiot. She would shut up as soon as he made it clear she was part of this, as much a conspirator against the Nortons as he was. He wondered what she’d be like in bed.
He slapped the weight of the crowbar into his hand, thought of the blond boy’s head caving like a melon.
The sound inside stopped. No more calls for Jane. It gave Shiloh pause. Maybe something interesting was in the house? He resisted the urge to rush inside. Wait for it. Wait. There was a second-story window directly above him. Had the blond boy seen him or his truck? He cussed and waited.
He listened: the soft ripple of the water on the lake, a distant dog barking, the hum of a boat’s engine far down a bend of the lake. But he heard the door open on the other side of the house. He turned and ran around the house, the crowbar cocked back to deliver a crushing blow, and there was the blond boy, holding a wooden baseball bat, swinging with equal force at him. Shiloh barely got the crowbar up in time as the bat slammed down into him and then into his face. He felt his lip split but he pushed past the pain, like he’d told the patients to do as he stitched and held them together, and shoved back against the kid. The blond boy was big but Shiloh was strong and low to the ground, and the big kid didn’t really want to hurt him.
That was the mistake. That, Shiloh thought, was why he would win.
They tumbled back and the blond boy started to yell, “Where is she?” in an enraged voice. But he was down, and Shiloh was on top and he swung the crowbar, connecting with the boy’s shoulder. The boy howled. Shiloh raised it again, grinning, and the kid kicked out and Shiloh went flying back into the dirt.
The blond boy, his right arm useless, staggered to his feet.
This was bad. He’d gotten a good look at Shiloh’s face. That had not been part of the plan. Shiloh had thought it would go like Vasquez and Bowman, where neither had gotten a look at his handsomeness. OK. So be it. The decision to murder this boy was quick and not barbed with a lot of regret. Mimi was as good as dead to him, wasn’t she?
Shiloh swung again with the crowbar. The kid had moved the bat to his left—clearly not his dominant hand—parried with the bat, and Shiloh laughed—this was like a redneck swordfight. It would make a great story except he really couldn’t tell it to anyone. He swung and caught the boy’s hip, heard the crack of glass and plastic taking the blunt of the blow. He swung again and the boy stopped the blow, but the bat splintered, leaving a long, sharp shard in the boy’s hands.
“Where is she?” the blond boy demanded, like he still had a weapon, still was in the fight.
Shiloh decided to play a bit. Make it last. Make the blond boy’s ruddy face go full crimson. “What’s it like to bone an amnesiac? Does she remember it the next day? Five minutes later?”
The boy didn’t say anything. Shiloh laughed at his own joke and swung again, but the kid, moving faster than a big guy should, stepped into the swing and pile-drove a fist into Shiloh’s gut. It hurt. He thought of all the football players he’d hated in high school, and then the thought got knocked clear of his brain when the blond boy hit him again, sharp and hard, with an uppercut that lifted him off his feet and caught his tongue between his teeth. He collapsed, in shock that he had been beaten. Through the pain in his center and in his head he felt the tip of the crowbar press against the hollow of his throat.
“Where. Is. Jane?”
He spat blood. “I don’t know.”
“Why are you trying to hurt me? I looked out the window and saw you waiting for me.”
Shiloh didn’t answer.
“Where is she? The inside of the house, did you break into those rooms?”
“I don’t know where she is.”
“Is this what happened two years ago? When they left here? Is this the same?” the kid said, his voice rising.
Shiloh didn’t know what the blond boy meant. Everything hurt. He didn’t have Mimi, he didn’t have anything. He lay back on the grass and waited for the boy to pummel him. It was what he would have done.
The blond boy took the crowbar away from Shiloh’s throat. He hit Shiloh’s right arm once, breaking it, and Shiloh howled. The blond boy got into his truck and drove off.
Shiloh lay on the cool grass, writhing in pain, furious. He had certainly misjudged the blond boy. He dug his cell phone out of his pocket and called her number. “Mimi? Please. Please, wait. I need to go to the hospital. Please. Yes, really, I’m hurt. Will you come get me?” He listened, staring at the sky. “No, don’t call an ambulance. You come, please, please. I don’t know the address.” He started to cry. “I’m not kidding, help me, please.” Then he heard her saying, “I’m not falling for this, don’t call again,” and then he listened to the quiet of the lake, the distant birdsong, and knew he was going to always be alone. Always.
59
JANE?”
Jane shivered to full wakefulness, drool spilling from her mouth. Her head lay in Perri’s lap. “Where are we?”
“In a house on High Oaks. Up from the crash site,” Perri whispered.
“Where is Cal?”
“He left.”
“We have to get out of here.” Jane raised her head slowly.