Long lost

1

It had been more than a quarter of a century since my mother and I had been forced to leave Woodford to live with her parents in Columbus. Payne had told me that the town was now a flourishing bedroom community for the encroaching city. But I hadn't fully realized what that meant. After I steered from the interstate, following a newly paved road into town, I tested my memory. I'd been barely fourteen when Mom and I had left. Even so, from all the times that she and Dad had taken Petey and me to visit her parents, I remembered that there'd been a lot of farmland on the way to the interstate. Much of that was gone now, replaced by subdivisions of large houses on small lots. The panoramic outdoor view that owners had initially been attracted to had been obliterated by further development. Expensive landscaping compensated.

On what had once been the edge of town, I passed the furniture factory where my dad had been a foreman. It was now a restaurant/movie theater/shopping mall complex. The industrial exterior had been retained, giving it a sense of local history. Downtown-a grid of six blocks of stores-looked better than it had in my youth. Its adjoining two-story brick structures had been freshly sandblasted, everything appearing new, even though the buildings came from the early 1900s. One street had been blocked off and converted into a pedestrian mall, trees and planters interspersed among outdoor cafes, a fountain, and a small bandstand.

The area was busy enough that it took me a while to find a parking spot. My emotions pushed and pulled me. When I'd been a kid, downtown had seemed so big. Now the effect was the same, but for different reasons-helplessness made me feel small. Despite the passage of years, I managed to orient myself as I passed a comic-book store and an ice-cream shop, neither of which had been in those places when I was a kid. I came to the corner of Lincoln and Washington (the names returned to me) and stared at a shadowy doorway across the street. It was between a bank and a drugstore, businesses that had been in those places when I was a kid. I remembered because of all the times my mother had walked Petey and me to that doorway and had taken us up the narrow echoing stairway to our least favorite place in the world: the dentist's office.

That stairway had seemed towering and ominous when I'd climbed it in my youth. Now, trying to calm myself, I counted each of its thirty steps as I went up. At the top, I stood under a skylight (another change) and faced the same frosted-glass door that had led into the dentist, except that the name on the door was now cosgrove insurance agency.

A young woman with her hair pulled back looked up from stapling documents together. "Yes, sir?"

"I… When I was a kid, this used to be a dentist's office." I couldn't help looking past the receptionist toward the corridor that had led to the chamber of horrors.

She looked puzzled. "Yes?"

"He has some dental records I need, but I don't know how to get in touch with him because I've forgotten his name."

"I'm afraid I'm not the person to ask. I started working for Mr.

Cosgrove only six months ago, and I never heard anything about a dentist's office."

"Perhaps Mr. Cosgrove would know."

She went down the hallway to the office that I'd dreaded and came back in less than a minute. "He says he's been here eight years. Before then, this was a Realtor's office."

"Oh."

"Sorry."

"Sure." Something sank in me. "I guess it was too much to hope for." Discouraged, I turned toward the door, then stopped with a sudden thought. "A Realtor?"

"Excuse me?"

"You said a Realtor used to be in this office?"

"Yes." She was looking at me now as if I'd become a nuisance.

"Does he or she manage properties, do you suppose?"

"What?"

"Assuming that Mr. Cosgrove doesn't own this building, who's his landlord?"

2

"You mean the Dwyer Building." The bantamweight man in a bow tie stubbed out a cigarette. His desk was flanked on three sides by tall filing cabinets. "I've been managing it for Mr. Dwyer's heirs the past twenty years."

"The office Mr. Cosgrove is in."

"Unit-Two-C."

"Can you tell me who rented it back then? I'm looking for the name of a dentist who used to be there."

"Why on earth would you want-"

"Some dental records. If it's a nuisance for you to look it up, I'll gladly pay you a service fee."

"Nuisance? Hell, it's the easiest thing in the world. The secret to managing property is being organized." He pivoted in his swivel chair and pushed its rollers toward a filing cabinet on his right that was marked D.

"Dwyer Building." He searched through files. "Here." He sorted through papers in it. "Sure. I remember now. Dr. Raymond Faraday. He had a heart attack. Eighteen years ago. Died in the middle of giving somebody a root canal."

After what I'd been through, the grotesqueness of his death somehow didn't seem unusual. "Did he have any relatives here? Are they still in town?"

"Haven't the faintest idea, but check this phone book."

3

"… a long time ago. Dr. Raymond Faraday. I'm trying to find a relative of his." Back at my car, I was using my cell phone. There'd been only two Faradays in the book. This was my second try.

"My husband's his son," a suspicious-sounding woman said. "Frank's at work now. What's this got to do with his father?"

I straightened. "When my brother and I were kids, Dr. Faraday was our dentist. It's very important that I get my brother's dental X rays. To identify him."

"Your brother's dead?"

"Yes."

"I'm so sorry."

"It would be very helpful if you could tell me what happened to the records."

"His patients took their records with them when they chose a new dentist."

"But what about patients who hadn't been his clients for a while? My brother and I had stopped going to Dr. Faraday several years earlier."

"Didn't your parents transfer the records to your new dentist?"

"No." I remembered bitterly that after my father had died in the car accident and it turned out that his life-insurance policy had lapsed, my mother hadn't been able to afford things like taking me to a dentist.

The woman exhaled, as if annoyed about something. "I have no idea what my husband did with the old records. You'll have to ask him when he gets home from the office."

4

The baseball field hadn't changed. As the lowering sun cast my shadow, I stood at the bicycle rack where my friends and I had chained and locked our bikes so long ago. Behind me, the bleachers along the third-base line were crowded with parents yelling encouragement to kids playing what looked like a Little League game. I heard the crack of a ball off a bat. Cheers. Howls of disappointment. Other cheers. I assumed that a fly ball, seemingly a home run, had been caught.

But I kept my gaze on the bicycles, remembering how Petey had used a clothespin to attach a playing card to the front fender of his bike and how it had created a clackclackclackclack sound against the spokes when the wheel turned. It pained me that I couldn't remember the names of the two friends I'd been with and for whom I'd destroyed Petey's life. But I certainly remembered the gist of what we'd said.

"For crissake, Brad, your little brother's getting on my nerves. Tell him to beat it, would ya?"

"Yeah, he tags along everywhere. I'm tired of the little squirt. The friggin' noise his bike makes drives me nuts."

"He's just hanging around. He doesn't mean anything."

"Bull. How do you think my mom found out I was smoking if he didn't tell your mom?"

"We don't know for sure he told my mom."

"Then who did tell her, the goddamn tooth fairy?"

"All right, all right."

Petey had nearly bumped into me when I'd turned. I'd thought about that moment so often and so painfully that it was seared into my memory. He'd been short even for nine, and he'd looked even shorter because of his droopy jeans. His baseball glove had been too big for his hand.

"Sorry, Petey, you have to go home."

"But…"

"You're just too little. You'd hold up the game."

His eyes had glistened with the threat of tears.

To my later shame, I'd worried about what my friends would think if my kid brother started crying around them. "I mean it, Petey. Bug off. Go home. Watch cartoons or something."

His chin had quivered.

"Petey, I'm telling you, go. Scram. Get lost."

My friends had run toward where the other kids were choosing sides for the game. As I'd rushed to join them, I'd heard the clachclackdack of Petey's bike. I'd looked back toward where the little guy was pedaling away. His head was down.

Standing now by the bicycle rack, remembering how things had been, wishing with all my heart that I could return to that moment and tell my friends that they were jerks, that Petey was going to stay with me, I wept.

5

Unlike the baseball field, the house had changed a great deal. In fact, the whole street had. The trees were taller (to be expected), and there were more of them, as well as more shrubs and hedges. But those changes weren't what struck me. In my youth, the neighborhood had been all single-story ranch houses, modest homes for people who worked at the factory where my dad had been a foreman. But now second stories had been added to several of the houses, or rooms had been added to the back, taking away most of the rear yards. Both changes had occurred to the house I'd lived in. The front porch had been enclosed to add space to the living room. The freestanding single-car garage at the end of the driveway had been rebuilt into a double-car garage with stairs leading up to a room.

Parking across the street, seeing the red of the setting sun reflected off the house's windows, I was so startled by the change that I wondered if I'd made a mistake. Maybe I wasn't on the right street (but the sign had clearly said Locust) or maybe this wasn't the right house (but the number 108 was fixed vertically next to the front door, just as it had been in my youth). I felt absolutely no identification with the place. In my memory, I saw a different, simpler house, the one from which my dad and I had hurried that evening, scrambling into his car, rushing toward the baseball diamond in hopes of finding Petey loitering along the way.

A wary man from the property next door came out and frowned at me, as if to say, What are you staring at?

I put the car in gear. As I drove away, I noticed half a dozen for sale signs, remembering that in the old days everyone on the street had been so dependent on the furniture factory that no one had ever moved.

6

Mr. Faraday had thin lips and pinched cheeks. "My wife says your brother died or something?" "Yes."

"That's why you need the dental records? To identify him?" "He disappeared a long time ago. Now we might have found him."

"His body?" "Yes."

"Well, if it wasn't something important like that, I wouldn't go to the trouble." Faraday motioned me into the house. I heard a television from the living room as he opened a door halfway along the corridor to the kitchen. The quick impression I got was of excessive neatness, everything in its place, plastic covers on chair arms in the living room, pots on hooks in the kitchen, lids above them, everything arranged by size.

Cool air rose from the open cellar door. Faraday flicked a light switch and gestured for me to follow. Our descending footsteps thumped on sturdy wooden stairs.

I'd never seen a basement so carefully organized. It was filled with boxes stacked in rows that formed minicorridors, but there wasn't the slightest sense of clutter and chaos.

Two fans whirred: from dehumidifiers at each end of the basement.

"I can't get rid of the dampness down here," Faraday said. He took me along one of the minicorridors, turned left, and came to a corner, where he lifted boxes off a footlocker.

"What can I do to help?" I asked.

"Nothing. I don't want to get things mixed up."

He raised the lid on the locker, revealing bundles of documents. "My wife complains about all the stuff I save, but how do I know what I might need later on?" Faraday pointed toward a stack of boxes farther along. "All my tax returns." He pointed toward another stack of boxes. "The bills I've paid. And this stuff…" He indicated the documents in the locker. "My father's business records. The ones I could find, anyway." He sorted through the bundles and came up with a stack of file folders. "What was your brother's name?"

"Peter Denning."

"Denning. Let's see. Denning. Denning. Ann. Brad. Nicholas. Peter. Here." His voice was filled with satisfaction as he held out the file.

I tried to keep my hand steady when I took it.

"What about these others? Do you want yours? Who are Ann and Nicholas?"

"My parents." I felt heavy in my chest. "Yes, if it's okay with you, I'll take them all."

"My wife'll be thrilled to see me getting rid of some of this stuff."

7

By the time I got back to the car, dusk had set in. I had to switch on the interior lights so I could see to search through Petey's file. No longer able to keep my hand from trembling, I pulled out a set of X rays. I'd never touched anything so valuable.

Back in Denver, when I'd gone to the dentist to get a copy of the X rays he'd taken of the man who claimed to be my brother, I'd made sure to get a duplicate set in case the FBI lost the ones I gave them or in case I needed copies in my search. Now I could barely wait to get to a motel. Driving to the outskirts of town, I picked the first one I saw that had a vacancy. After checking in, I rushed to my room, too hurried to bring everything from my car except my suitcase, which I yanked open, pulling out the X rays from Denver.

A child's teeth and an adult's have major differences, which made it difficult to tell if these X rays came from the same person. For one thing, when Petey had been kidnapped, some of his permanent teeth would not yet have grown in. But some of them would have, my dentist had said. Look at the roots, he'd said. On a particular tooth, are there three roots or four? Four are less common. Do the roots grow in any unusual directions?

With the adult's X rays in my left hand and the child's in my right, I held them up to my bedside lamp. But its shade blocked much of the illumination. I almost took off the shade before I thought of the bathroom and the bright lights that motels often have there. Hurrying past the bed, I found that this particular motel had a large mirror in front of a makeup area. When I jabbed the light switch, I blinked from the sudden glare above the mirror. After raising both sets of X rays to the fluorescent lights, I shifted my gaze quickly back and forth between them, desperate to find differences or similarities, frantic to learn the truth. The child's teeth looked so pathetically tiny. I imagined Petey's frightened helplessness as he was grabbed. The adult's. Whose were they? Slowly, I understood what I was looking at. As the implications swept over me, as the various pieces of information that I'd found began fitting into place, I lowered the X rays. I drooped my head. God help Kate and Jason, I prayed. God help us all.

8

An organ blared as I opened the church's front door: a solemn hymn I didn't recognize. To the right of the vestibule, stairs led up to the choir loft. They creaked as I climbed them. It was shortly after noon. I'd been to eleven Protestant churches before this one. With only six more to go, I was losing hope.

The choir loft was shadowy except for a light above the organ. As the minister finished the hymn, in the gathering silence my echoing footsteps made him turn.

"Sorry to bother you, Reverend." I walked nearer, holding out the photograph. "The secretary at your office said that you were almost done getting ready for choir practice. I'm trying to find this man. I wonder if you recognize him."

Puzzled, the minister took the photograph, pushed his glasses back on his nose, and studied it.

A long moment later, he nodded. "Possibly."

I tried not to show a reaction. Even so, my heart hammered so loudly that I was sure the minister could hear it.

"The intensity of the eyes is the same." The minister put the photograph under the organ's light. "But the man I'm thinking of has a beard." He pointed toward my own.

Beard? I'd been right. He'd grown a beard to hide his scar. "Perhaps if you put your hand over the lower part of his face." I tried to sound calm, despite the tension that squeezed my throat.

The minister did so. "Yes. I know this man." He looked suspicious. "Why do you want to find him?"

"I'm his brother." I managed to keep my hand steady as I shook hands with the minister. "Brad Denning."

"No. You're mistaken."

"Excuse me."

"Denning isn't Pete's last name. It's Benedict."

I didn't know what struck me more, that Petey was using his own first name or that he'd taken the last name of the minister who'd wanted to adopt him after the fire. My stomach soured. "So he still won't use the family name."

The minister frowned. "What do you mean?"

My heart pounded harder. "We used to live around here. But a long time ago, Pete and I had a falling-out. One of those family arguments that cause such bad feelings, it splits the family apart."

The minister nodded, evidently familiar with what that kind of argument had done to some families in his congregation.

"We haven't spoken to each other in years. But recently, I heard that he'd come back to town. This was the church we used to go to. So I thought someone here might have seen him."

"You want to be reconciled with him?"

"With everything that's in me, Reverend. But I don't know where he is."

"I haven't seen him since…" The minister thought about it. "Last July, when Mrs. Warren died. Of course, he was at the funeral. And before that, the last time I saw him was… Oh, probably two years. I'm not even sure he's in town any longer."

"Mrs. Warren?"

"She was one of the most faithful in the congregation. Only missed one service that I can remember. When Pete showed up two years ago and volunteered to do handiwork for the church for free, Mrs. Warren took a liking to him. She was amazed by how completely he could quote Scripture. Tried to trick him several times, but he always won."

"That was my dad's doing, teaching Pete the Good Book."

"Well, your father certainly did an excellent job. Mrs. Warren finally offered him a handyman's job on her property. Our loss, her gain. When she missed that service I mentioned, I was convinced she must be sick, so I telephoned her, and I was right-she had a touch of the flu. The next time she came to church, Pete wasn't with her. She told me that he'd decided to move on."

"Yeah, Pete was always like that. But you say he was here for her funeral?"

"Evidently, he'd come back and was working as her handyman again. In fact, the way I hear it, she left her place to him."

"Her place?"

"Well, she was elderly. Her husband was dead. So were her two children. I suppose she thought of Pete as the closest thing she had to family."

"Sounds like a kind old lady."

"Generous to a fault. And over the years, as she sold off portions of the farm her husband had worked-it was the only way for her to survive after her husband died-she made sure to let eighty acres around her house go wild for a game preserve. Believe me, the way this town's expanding, we could use more people like Mrs. Warren to preserve the countryside."

"Reverend, I'd appreciate two favors."

"Yes?" He looked curious from behind his glasses.

"The first is, if you see Pete before I do, for heaven's sake don't tell him that we've spoken. If he knows I'm trying to see him, I'm afraid he'll get so upset that he might leave town."

"Your argument was that serious?"

"Worse than you can imagine. I have to approach him in the right way and at the right time."

"What's the second favor you want?"

"How do I find Mrs. Warren's place?"

9

Two miles along a country road south of town, I reached a T intersection. I steered to the left, and as the minister had described, the paved road became gravel. My tires threw up dust that floated in my rearview mirror. Tense, I stared ahead, hoping that I wouldn't see a car or a truck coming toward me. The countryside was slightly hilly, and at the top of each rise, I was afraid that I'd suddenly come upon an approaching vehicle and that he'd be driving it. Maybe he wouldn't pay attention, a quick glimpse of another driver, but maybe he paid attention to everything. Or maybe he wouldn't recognize me with my beard, but if he did, or if he recognized Kate's Volvo (Jesus, why hadn't I thought to bring another car?), I'd lose my chance of surprising him. I'd have even less chance of finding Kate and Jason.

Sweating, my shirt sticking to my chest, I saw the expanse of thick timber and undergrowth that the minister had said would be on my left. I passed a mailbox, a closed gate, and a lane that disappeared into the forest. Mrs. Warren's house was back there, the minister had said, where she could watch the deer, the squirrels, the raccoons, and the rest of what she'd called "God's children" roaming around the property. Relieved that I hadn't seen anybody and hence that no one had seen me, I kept driving, more dust rising behind me. At the same time, I couldn't help worrying that the reason I hadn't seen any activity was that Petey wasn't there, that he'd moved on. Petey. Yes.

Each X ray had shown a particular tooth with four roots that grew in distinctive directions. The child's had been smaller and less pronounced than the man's. Nonetheless, it hadn't been difficult to see that one had evolved into the other. Not that I'd relied on my opinion. Before going to the various churches, I'd made sure to be at a dentist's office when it opened. With cash I'd gotten from a local bank, I'd paid the dentist a hundred dollars to examine the X rays before he attended to his scheduled patients. He'd agreed with me: Man and boy-the X rays had belonged to the same person.

So there it was. The man who'd claimed to be my brother had told the truth. The FBI had been wrong. Lester Dant hadn't assumed Petey's identity. Petey had assumed Lester's. But that disturbing discovery settled nothing. The reverse. It prompted far more unnerving questions to threaten my sanity.

This was clear. After Petey had tricked the police into thinking that he was heading west through Montana, he'd taken Kate and Jason in the reverse direction-back to Woodford. Because he no longer had to lay a false trail by abandoning vehicles that he'd car-jacked, it wouldn't have been hard to avoid capture. All he had to do was carjack a vehicle that had a license for a distant state. The driver wouldn't have been expected for several days. By the time he or she was reported missing, Petey would have reached Mrs. Warren's property and hidden the car. Meanwhile, he'd have switched license plates several times and hidden the car owner's body somewhere along the interstate.

Mrs. Warren. Petey had been confident that he could intimidate her, because that's what he'd done a year earlier. At the church where I'd learned about Petey and Mrs. Warren, the minister had mentioned that Petey was Mrs. Warren's handyman, that she never missed Sunday service except for an uncharacteristic absence one Sunday two years earlier, one year before Petey took Kate and Jason from me. Petey must have done something so dismaying to Mrs. Warren that she found it impossible to go to church that Sunday. When the minister phoned her, certain that only something dire would have kept her away, she'd claimed that she had the flu. The next Sunday, she'd been in church again. Meanwhile, she'd said, Petey had left the area.

The minister's phone call had probably saved Mrs. Warren's life. His concern for her must have made Petey think that the minister was suspicious, must have driven Petey away. But when Mrs. Warren felt safe, why hadn't she confessed the horrors that had happened out there? The answer wasn't hard to figure. Like Mrs. Garner in Loganville, she'd been ashamed to let the other church members know what Petey had done to her. What's more, Petey had no doubt terrified her with a threat to return and punish her if she caused trouble for him.

Maybe she started feeling secure again, but then, to her fright, Petey came back a year later. He might have found a way to hide Kate and Jason from her. No matter-her torment resumed. He intimidated her severely enough to make her put him in her will. "He feels like a son to me," she'd have been forced to tell her lawyer, coached to sound convincing. Petey would have stood next to her in the lawyer's office when she signed the document, a reminder of his warning that if she turned against him, he'd make sure that she spent her remaining years in agony. Then he'd have kept her a prisoner at the house while he dropped a word here and there among the congregation that she hadn't been feeling well lately. That way, people would have been prepared when she died. After all, as the minister had said, Mrs. Warren was elderly. Maybe one night she passed away in her sleep-with help from a pillow pressed over her face.

As I sped back to town, I used my cell phone to call Special Agent Gader, but his receptionist told me that he wouldn't be in the office for a couple of days. I phoned Payne's office but got a recording that said he wouldn't be in the office for the rest of the week. I had a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach that told me his wife's biopsy hadn't been good.

That left getting in touch with the local police, but when I parked outside the station (the same brick building from years ago), I had a disturbing image of policemen piling into squad cars and rushing out to Mrs. Warren's. I feared that their arrival would be so obvious that if Petey was in that house, he'd notice them coming and escape out the back. I might never learn what he'd done with Kate and Jason. Even if the police did manage to capture him, suppose he refused to answer questions? Suppose he denied knowing anything about where Kate and Jason were hidden? If they were still alive, they might starve or suffocate while he remained silent. Think it through, I warned myself. I needed more information. I couldn't trust the police to go after him until I knew exactly how they should do it.

10

The pilot said something that I couldn't quite hear amid the drone of the single-engine plane.

I turned to her. "Excuse me?"

"I said, Woodford's over there."

I glanced to the right, toward where she pointed. The sprawl of low buildings, old and new, stretched toward the interstate.

She put so much meaning into the statement that I shook my head from side to side. "I don't understand."

"You told me you wanted to see how the old hometown looked from the air."

"More or less."

"Seems like less. You've barely looked in that direction. What you're interested in are those farms up ahead."

We flew closer to the eighty-acre section of woods and underbrush. Although the day was sunny, there was a touch of wind. Once in a while, the plane dipped slightly.

"You're a developer, aren't you?"

"What?"

"We've had our share of development the last five years. Seems like every time I look, there's a new subdivision."

It was an easier explanation than the truth. "Yeah, too much change can be overwhelming."

I stared down at the large dense section of trees. I saw the lane leading into it from the gravel road. I saw a clearing about a hundred yards into it where a brick house was surrounded by grass and gardens.

I'd bought one of those pocket cameras that had a zoom lens. Now I pulled it out and started taking photographs.

11

Back in my motel room, I spread out the eight-by-tens on a table. I'd paid a photographer to stay open after hours and process them. Now it was after dark. My eyes ached. To help keep me alert, I turned on the television-CNN-and as an announcer droned in the background, I picked up a magnifying glass and leaned down over the photographs. They were slightly blurred from the plane's vibration. Nonetheless, they showed me what I needed.

One thing was immediately obvious. No one would have noticed it at ground level, where the front, sides, and back of the house couldn't be viewed simultaneously. But when seen from above, the grass and gardens in back of the house looked different from those at the sides and the front. They seemed to have had work done on them recently. The area seemed slightly lower than the others.

Sunken? I wondered. As when ground settles after it's been dug up and then refilled?

In the background, the CNN announcer explained that a distraught man with a gun was holding his ex-wife and his daughter prisoner in a house in Los Angeles. A police SWAT team surrounded it. With greater intensity, I stared through the magnifying glass at the photos, confirming that a section of grass and garden in back of the house did appear slightly lower than what was around it.

I noticed a blue pickup truck parked next to the house. I studied a stream that wound through the middle of the woods in back. But what I kept returning to was that area behind the house. The grass seemed greener there, the bushes fuller, as if they were getting more attention than those at the front and the sides.

I set down the magnifying glass and tried to calm myself. There was nothing sinister about relandscaping, the police would say. A blighted lawn and old bushes had been replaced with healthy ones. But what if the lawn and bushes had been replaced because something had been built under them?

On the television behind me, the announcer reported that the hostage situation had ended badly. As the police tightened their circle around the building, the man had shot his daughter and his ex-wife, then pulled the trigger on himself. I stared at the television.

12

When I'd driven past Mrs. Warren's property, I'd made the mistake of using Kate's Volvo. Petey might have recognized it. This time, I drove only to the outskirts of town, where I left the car among others at a shopping mall. I put on my knapsack and hiked into the countryside.

As in most midwestern farm communities, the road system was laid out in a grid that contained squares or rectangles of land. Avoiding the road that fronted Mrs. Warren's property, I took an indirect route that added several miles, coming at the wooded eighty acres from the road behind. Under a bright, hot sun, I hiked past fields, past cattle grazing, past farmers tending their crops. I adjusted my baseball cap and moved my fanny pack to a more comfortable spot on my waist, trying to look as if I didn't have a care in the world, that I was merely out for a pleasant day of walking. In truth, I wanted desperately to run. The adrenaline burning through me needed exertion to keep it controlled. If I didn't do something to vent the pressure swelling inside me, I feared I'd go crazy. To my right, across a field, the woods got larger. Nearer. Kate and Jason. They're alive, I told myself. They have to be.

Worried about being noticed crossing the field toward the woods, I waited until a car went by and there wasn't any other traffic. The stream that I'd seen in the photographs crossed the field and went under the road. I climbed down to it. Its banks were high enough that I was out of view as I walked next to the water. In contrast with the stark sun, the air was cool down there.

After five minutes, the stream entered the trees. I ducked under a fence, climbed the slippery bank, and found myself among maples, oaks, and elms. The noise I made in the undergrowth troubled me, but who would hear me? Petey wasn't going to be patrolling his fences, guarding his property against intruders. The logical place for him to be was at the house. Or maybe he'd be off somewhere, committing God knew what crimes.

The forest cast a shadow. A spongy layer of dead leaves smelled damp and moldy. I wiped my sweat-gritted face, took off my knapsack, and pulled out a holster that I'd bought that morning. It was attached to the right side of a sturdy belt. My spare fifteen-round magazine was in a pouch to the left, along with two other newly purchased magazines. A hunting knife went next to it and a five-inch long, thumb-width flashlight called Surefire, which the clerk in the gun shop had shown me was surprisingly powerful for its size. I took the pistol from my fanny pack and shoved it into the holster. The weight of the equipment dug into my waist.

Thirsty from nervousness, I sipped water from one of three canteens in the knapsack. I ate a stick of beef jerky and several handfuls of mixed peanuts and raisins. Uneasiness made me urinate. Then I put on the knapsack and pulled a compass from my shirt pocket. Unlike a year ago, I'd taken the time to learn how to use it. Remembering the photographs, estimating the angle that I needed to follow in order to reach the house, I took a southeast direction, making my way through the trees.

All the while, I listened for suspicious noises in the forest. The scrape of a branch might have been Petey creeping toward me, but it turned out to be a squirrel racing up a tree. The snap of a twig startled me, until I realized that it was a rabbit bounding away. Birds fluttered. Wary, I scanned the undergrowth, studied my compass again, and moved cautiously forward.

The next time I stopped to get a drink, I checked my watch, surprised to find that what had seemed like thirty minutes had actually been two hours. The air felt thicker. Sweat stuck my shirt and jeans to me. I took another step and immediately dropped to a crouch, seeing where the trees thinned.

On my stomach, I squirmed through the undergrowth, the moldy smell of the earth widening my nostrils. I crawled slowly, trying not to move bushes and reveal my position. From having designed homes for wealthy clients, I was familiar with intrusion detectors. I watched for anything ahead of me, motion sensors on posts or a wire that might be attached to a vibration detector. Nothing struck me as unusual. In fact, now that I thought about it, an intrusion detector would be useless in the woods. The animals roaming about would trigger it.

Animals? I suddenly realized that for a while I hadn't noticed any animals. Nor a single bird. The sense of barrenness reminded me of what I'd felt at the Dant farm.

Snakes? I studied the ground ahead of me. Nothing rippled. Taking a deep breath, I squirmed forward. The trees became more sparse, the bushes less thick. Peering through low branches, I saw a clearing. A lawn. A flower garden.

In the middle was the redbrick house. I'd come at it from its right side. The two-and-a-half-story wall had ivy. White wooden lawn furniture and a brightly colored miniature windmill decorated the lawn.

I took binoculars from my knapsack and made sure that the sun wasn't at an angle that would cause a reflection off the lenses. Then I focused them and studied the downstairs and upstairs windows. All had lace curtains. Nothing moved beyond them. In the photographs I'd taken, the pickup truck had been parked on the opposite side of the house, so to find out if it was still there, I'd have to crawl around to that side.

I stayed as flat as possible while I shifted through the undergrowth. When I came within view of the back of the house, I still didn't see movement in any of the windows. I stared at the open area behind the house, which from ground level seemed to have a natural slope, its slightly sunken outline no longer apparent. An unsuspecting visitor would have noticed nothing unusual about it, except that the lawn and gardens were attractive. If there was indeed a room beneath it, I assumed that Petey watered and fertilized that area frequently to compensate for the shallow roots that the underground structure would cause. If so, today wasn't his day to work in the garden. He wasn't in sight. The place seemed abandoned.

I dared to hope that I'd gotten lucky, that he wasn't home. But as I crept through the bushes toward the other side of the house, my stomach soured when I saw the pickup truck where it had been the previous afternoon. Angry, I continued through the undergrowth on that side of the house, coming to a view of the front, where a roofed porch had a rocking chair and a hammock, homey and inviting.

But no one was visible there, either, and I retreated to a sheltered spot that gave me a view of the side, part of the back, part of the front, and all of the truck. Bushes enclosed me. I eased out of my knapsack, sipped from one of the canteens, ate more beef jerky, peanuts, and raisins.

And waited.

13

Hours later, I was still waiting. The sun eased below the trees. Seeing a light come on in a downstairs window, I felt my muscles compact. Then a light came on in an adjacent room, and another farther over. I strained to see movement through the curtains, but the house continued to seem deserted. For all I knew, the lights were controlled by timers. When an upstairs light came on and a shadow moved past a window, I held my breath for a moment.

A man's shadow. I was certain of it. I'd caught only a glimpse, but the broad shoulders and forceful stride obviously didn't belong to a female. Several seconds later, the shadow appeared downstairs, going from one room to another. Raising my binoculars, I strained to see through the windows and suddenly focused on a man with a beard. His face was toward me for only a few seconds before he went through an archway into the kitchen.

But a few seconds were all I needed. Regardless of the beard, I couldn't fail to recognize him. Even through binoculars, the solid shoulders and the intense eyes were unmistakable.

The man was Petey.

"Go home," I'd told him. After a lifetime of being lost, he'd done exactly that. He'd come back to Woodford. Did he ever drive by the house where we used to live? Did he ever go to the baseball field and remember that afternoon, brooding about how different his life would have been if I hadn't preferred my friends over him and sent him away from that baseball game?

Stop thinking like that! I warned myself. Get control! Guilt and regret weren't going to change the past. They were a weakness. They could get me killed. They could get Kate and Jason killed.

Petey wasn't my brother any longer.

He was my enemy.

My impulse was to crawl from my hiding place, reach the window, wait for him to step into view again, and shoot. But what if I missed? My hand was shaking enough to throw off my aim. Or what if Petey noticed me outside the window before I could pull the trigger? Suppose he ducked out of sight and used Kate and Jason as hostages? Or what if I did manage to shoot him, but Kate and Jason weren't where I suspected they were?

Shoot to wound him? How did I know the wound wouldn't be more serious than I intended? Petey might die before I could question him. I'd have lost the chance to find Kate and Jason.

Stay put. Think it through, I warned myself. If I make a wrong move, it'll be the same thing I was afraid the police would do.

I had to keep watching the house. I needed to get a sense of his patterns. When I phoned the police, it had to be at the right time.

When the situation was in my favor.

Sure. And when the hell will that be? I wondered.

In the darkness, the air was damp and chill, making me pull a woolen shirt from the knapsack and put it on. It didn't warm me. As Petey's indistinct shape prepared food in the kitchen, I told myself that I should eat also, but I didn't have any appetite. Acid burned my stomach.

Eat! I told myself. I forced a chunk of beef jerky into my mouth and reluctantly chewed. The side dish was another handful of nuts and raisins, the dessert dehydrated apples. I had thought about bringing sandwiches, but I'd been worried that they would spoil and make me ill. After all, I had no idea how long I'd have to stay in the woods and watch the house. That was why I'd brought three canteens of water. Determined to conserve it, I took only a few sips to help me swallow the dehydrated apples.

How long would the police have been willing to hide like this? I wondered. They'd have swatted at the mosquitoes buzzing around them. They'd have felt the cold seeping through their clothes, the dampness sticking their pants to their legs. They'd have thought about hot coffee and a warm bed, someone to share it with. They'd soon have lost their patience and stormed the house.

I buttoned the woolen shirt all the way to my neck but still felt a chill. Raising the binoculars again, I stared through a window, through an archway toward the kitchen, which was on the far side of the house. There, Petey continued to prepare food. Eventually, his silhouette disappeared.

My muscles cramped from not having moved in quite a while. My arms and neck ached from keeping the binoculars raised. Minutes passed. I checked the luminous dial on my watch. A quarter of an hour became half an hour. When a full hour had passed, I couldn't ignore the pressure in my bladder. I crawled back from where I was hiding, stopped among trees, and urinated close to the ground, doing my best to make as little noise as possible.

The moment I returned through the bushes, the light went out in the kitchen. I tensed, watching Petey's shadow move from room to room downstairs, turning off the lights. A minute later, one of the upstairs lights went off also. I spent an hour gazing at the remaining upstairs light. Then it, too, went out.

The sky was overcast, hiding the stars. The house remained dark. I hugged myself, trying to keep warm. My eyelids grew heavy. I fought to keep them open, turning from the house toward the murky lawn and garden in back, under which, I was certain, Kate and Jason were imprisoned. So close. Have to get to them. Have to… My eyelids fluttered shut. I sank to the ground and drifted into sleep.

14

A door banged, jolting me from a nightmare of being whipped. My eyes snapped open. I jerked my head up enough to be able to see through low bushes toward the house. The clouds had passed. The sun was behind me, glinting off windows across from me. The reflection stabbed my eyes, aggravating a headache. A breeze from the day before had strengthened, ruffling bushes. The movement of the leaves around me must have been the source of my nightmare about being whipped.

I stared toward the back of the house, where I'd heard the door bang. Petey came into view. He wore a light green shirt, which contrasted with his dark beard. I recognized the shirt. It was one that he'd stolen from me a year earlier. The wind tousled his thick dark hair. He peered around, assessing the woods, then pulled a hose from a hook on the wall and went over to the area behind the house. Watering several bushes, he confirmed my suspicion that something beneath the ground caused shallow roots in need of frequent care. The wind sometimes sprayed the water back at him, eventually annoying him enough that he dropped the hose, went to the back wall to shut off the water, and returned to the house.

The sun's reflection off windows prevented me from seeing what he was doing inside. After a half hour, the wind had parched my lips so much that I reached for a canteen, only to stop when I heard another door bang, this one at the front. Petey came onto the porch. He'd changed his spray-soaked green shirt for a gray one. It, too, had belonged to me. He raised his head, almost as if he was sniffing the breeze. That's what my brother had become: an animal assessing if there was danger. Because of me.

Stop thinking that way! I again warned myself.

He came down the porch steps and rounded the house, making my pulse quicken when he got into the truck and fastened his seat belt. The truck was faced in my direction but away from the sun's glare, so that I saw his beard and his stark eyes through the windshield before he made a U-turn. Dust blew as he drove down the lane, the blue of the truck soon vanishing among the windswept trees.

For a moment, I was sure that my mind had played a trick on me. Had I actually seen what I most wanted to see? Was the sound of the truck actually diminishing in the distance? For several long minutes, I didn't move. Perhaps Petey had only gone to check the mailbox at the road and would soon be coming back. Or perhaps he had somehow suspected that someone was watching the house and had driven away in order to lure an intruder into the open. As soon as I started toward the house, would he shoot me from where he'd sneaked back and was watching from the trees?

The sun rose higher. The wind grew stronger, buffeting the bushes I hid among. But it didn't cool me. Instead, the morning seemed unduly warm. Sweat dried immediately on my dust-caked cheeks. Nervous, I checked my watch and saw that fifteen minutes had passed. If Petey had merely gone to the mailbox, he'd have been back by now, I told myself. I scanned the woods where the driveway disappeared into them. But the wind kept shifting the leaves and prevented me from noticing any movement where he might be hiding, watching for an intruder.

I stared toward the bushes behind the house. The police. Use the cell phone, I thought. But as I reached for it, I worried that if Petey was watching from another part of the forest, he'd hear me. Instead of muffling what I said, the wind might carry my voice directly to him.

Or what if Petey wasn't alone? What if someone else was in the house and would hear my voice as I used the phone? To prevent that from happening, I'd have to retreat several hundred yards into the forest before I felt safe using the phone, but that would mean losing sight of the farmhouse, and there was no telling what might happen while I was away.

The sun rose higher, no longer reflecting off the windows. Nothing moved beyond them. Last night, I'd seen no other silhouette, only Petey's. Was it safe to assume that he was alone? The police wouldn't be able to get here in time before he got back. Damn it, this might be my only chance. I crawled through the undergrowth toward the back of the house. If Petey was watching from the trees in front, he wouldn't be able to see me approach from the rear.

Squirming through low branches, I came to the edge of the clearing. I checked again for any movement behind the lace curtains. Then I drew my pistol and hurried into the open. The wind tried to push me back. I reached a lilac bush, used it for cover, then darted toward a grape arbor, which screened me while I studied the house a final time. I sprinted to the back wall and pressed against its sun-warmed bricks.

Steps rose to the back door. At the top, I raised my head warily to peer through a window. Beyond gauzy curtains, I had an indistinct view of a kitchen, cupboards, a sink, and a stove on the right, an archway and a refrigerator on the left. A small table was in the middle. A single chair suggested that Petey lived by himself. What I started worrying about now was that Petey might have a dog, a pit bull, for example, trained not to show itself until an intruder entered the house, at which time the dog would tear the intruder apart. It would make sense for Petey to have one, but the more I thought about it, the more I doubted that he did. I'd been watching the house for over twelve hours, and Petey hadn't let a dog out to relieve itself. True, Petey might have done so while I was asleep. But wouldn't the dog have picked up my scent and attacked me? And unless Petey was superscrupulous about cleaning up after his dog, wouldn't I have seen dog droppings on the lawn? Besides, a dog locked in the house would limit Petey's ability to stay away for periods of time. He could leave food for Kate and Jason in their prison. But it would be harder to leave enough for a big dog to survive for any length of time, and that didn't take into consideration the mess that the dog would make in the house.

No, I was increasingly convinced that Petey didn't have a dog. But on the off-chance that he did, I prepared to shoot it.

I tried the back door. No surprise-it was locked. I was going to have to smash the window, reach through, and open the lock from the other side. I changed my position so that I could look down through the window and see the area above the doorknob. The handle of a lock came into view. After I smashed the window, all I needed to do was reach through, twist the lock's handle, and…

Maybe only an architect or somebody in construction would have been bothered. The lock was a deadbolt, a type that I recommended. On the outside, the only way to get in was to use a key. But on the inside, there could be two ways to open the lock, depending on how it was installed. If there wasn't a window through which an intruder could reach, a handle on the lock was both convenient and safe. But in the case of a window, the secure way to install the lock was to use another key arrangement rather than a lock with a handle. That way, even if an intruder broke the window and reached through, he couldn't free the lock unless he had a key.

So, did it make sense for Petey to have a superior lock and an inferior installation? Granted, Mrs. Warren might have been the one who'd had the lock put in. But would Petey, with every reason to be cautious, have ignored the security lapse? I doubted it.

As I brooded about the problem, something else troubled me. The door had been installed so that it opened toward the cupboards on the right rather than toward an open space on the left, an inconvenient arrangement that prevented the door from being opened to its full range and that risked damaging the cupboards if the door was opened forcefully.

Nervous, I used the butt of my pistol to smash the window. With the barrel of the pistol, I carefully pulled the curtains toward me. Once they were outside the window, I yanked them loose, gaining a clear view of the kitchen, at least of the parts that I could see. I went back down the steps. Exposing myself to the wind, I found a dead branch on a shrub, broke it free, and snapped off the twigs. I wanted a dead branch rather than a live one because I needed the branch to be stiff. I climbed the steps again and peered down through the gap in the window. Careful not to show my head or hands, I put the branch through the broken window and pressed down on one side of the lock's handle, which was horizontal rather than round and thus could be manipulated with the stick. Moving, the lock made a scraping sound. Ready with my pistol, I turned the doorknob, stayed where I was, and pushed inward.

The shocking blast made me flinch as a ten-inch jagged hole appeared in the opened door. My ears hurt as if they'd been slapped. The stench of gunpowder widened my nostrils.

Taking a deep breath to steady myself, I inched my head forward and peered cautiously through the doorway. To the left, I saw a pantry area, where hinges on a doorjamb showed that a door had been taken off. In the pantry, a shotgun had been mounted to a worktable. A strong cord had been attached to its trigger. The cord went around a pulley behind the shotgun, then up to another pulley, and finally overhead to a metal hook at the top of the door on the inside. The tension on the cord had been adjusted so that the shotgun would go off only when the door was opened a certain distance, allowing for the intruder to show himself before the shotgun detonated.

The massive hole in the door made me wonder what the blast would have done to my midsection. Sickened, I warned myself not to get distracted. I still couldn't be sure that Petey didn't have a dog.

Uneasy, I aimed toward the only other entrance to the kitchen: the archway on the left. The ringing in my ears prevented me from hearing anything else. I saw no movement.

I stepped into the house.

15

The wind strengthened. When I shut the door, the gusts came through the broken window and the jagged hole beneath it. As urgent as I felt, I moved slowly. When I passed the kitchen table, my architect's training again warned me about something. The archway on the left was the only other entrance to the kitchen. That didn't make sense. There should have also been a door straight ahead that would give easy access to what I assumed were stairs in front leading up to the second story. The way the rooms on the ground floor were laid out, someone coming down from the second story had to take an indirect route from the front hall, through the rooms on the other side of the house, and finally into the kitchen. Mrs. Warren, who was elderly, wouldn't have tolerated the inconvenience. The wall straight ahead wasn't being used for anything. It would have been easy and logical to install a door there. Why hadn't it been done?

Maybe there had been a door in that wall at one time, I thought. I stepped closer, noticing a slight difference between the top molding on the wall in front of me as opposed to the molding on the wall to my left. The white paint on the wall ahead of me looked slightly brighter than the white paint to my left. The plaster felt smoother. Someone had put a new wall over the doorway, preventing access to the front hall.

Had Petey done it? Why? Even for a young man, the indirect route into the kitchen would be a nuisance. Why had he deliberately wanted it?

The only answer I could think of was that Petey had blocked the other door because he wanted to force an intruder to go the long way through the house. He'd set other traps.

Of course. The kitchen didn't have a door that led down to the basement. The entrance to it must be in the front hall. But to reach it, an intruder would have to go through the other rooms.

As the wind howled, I stared through the archway toward the room on my left. I noticed a broom next to the refrigerator and waved it through the archway, moving it up and down and from side to side, checking that there weren't any other triggering devices (electronic beams, for example) linked to weapons.

Nothing happened.

I pressed the hard end of the broom onto a carpet that led through the archway.

The floor was solid. I entered the dining room, scanned its long table, chairs, and sideboard, saw no obvious further traps, and stepped toward another archway. Through it, I could see old padded chairs and a sofa in what Mrs. Warren would probably have called the parlor.

I tested another section of carpet and stepped toward the front room.

Crack! The floor gave way. My stomach surged toward my heart. Plummeting, I lurched forward, slamming my chest against the edge of the trapdoor. As the pistol and the broom flew from my hands, I clawed at the wooden floor. My hands slid. I hooked my fingers over the edge and dangled. Frantic, I peered down at a section of the basement that had been enclosed. Through a wooden platform below me, knives protruded, four inches apart in every direction, so that it wasn't possible to land among them and not be injured. One end of the carpet was attached to the floor, dangling rather than falling onto the points below and preventing them from impaling me. I'd have bled to death if I hadn't died instantly.

My arms ached as I strained to pull myself up. But I tested the floor! I thought. How the hell did I get fooled? The trapdoor must have been rigged to spring open only if a certain amount of weight was applied to it. Petey must have stepped over it when he passed through the archway. I strained harder to pull myself up and managed to prop my elbows on the trapdoor's edge. Slowly, I squirmed into the parlor. On my back on the floor, I breathed deeply. Trying to steady myself, I listened to the wind.

Petey might come back any minute, I thought. I reached for the pistol and the broom, which had flown from my hands when I'd fallen. But caution instantly controlled me. Trying to subdue my too-fast breathing, I scanned the faded furniture, the ceiling, the corners. Nothing seemed to threaten me. Through the front windows, I studied the lane leading into the windblown forest. Petey's truck didn't speed into view. Keep moving! I told myself. Staying to the edge of the room, I pushed a chair ahead of me, wary of other traps.

To the right of the front windows, an archway led to a corridor. Stairs went up. On a landing beyond the front door, another shotgun had been rigged. As before, a cord was attached to the trigger. The cord looped back through two pulleys and connected to a hook on top of the door. When the door was opened and someone stepped through, the shotgun would blow the intruder in half. It wouldn't have been difficult for Petey to attach the cord to the hook as he pulled the door shut or for him to unhook the cord when he returned and opened the door just enough for him to reach his hand up. For anyone who didn't suspect, though, death would have been instantaneous.

Had I found all the traps? Straining my eyes, I studied the corridor. I fixed my gaze on a door beneath the stairway. I was sure that it would take me down to the basement. Kate and Jason were only a couple of hundred feet away.

The floor had no carpet. It looked solid. Nonetheless, I stayed to the edge of the hallway and inched along. When I came to the door beneath the stairs, I tested the knob. It turned freely in my hand. But another trap might be behind it. So I pulled the flashlight from my belt, gently opened the door an inch, and scanned the light up and down, looking for a cord.

The area beyond was totally dark. Warily opening the door a few inches farther, I smelled something bitter, like camphor.

Mothballs.

I opened the door farther, aimed the flashlight, and saw coats and dresses on a rod. A closet. No! Furious, I used the blunt end of the broom to prod among the clothes. I tapped the floor. The walls. Nothing sounded hollow. Where the hell was the entrance to the basement?

Hurry! I thought.

I remembered the previous night when I'd watched Petey's silhouette through the window. He'd been cooking. Then his silhouette had disappeared. I'd assumed that he'd been eating in an area of the kitchen that was out of my view.

But what if he'd taken the food to Kate and Jason?

In the kitchen? How? There wasn't a door to the basement.

A shock of understanding hit me. Trying not to let my eagerness make me careless, I returned the way I'd come. I paused only once: to look through the front windows, past the windswept shrubs, and check if Petey's truck was returning. Then I stepped over the open trapdoor between the parlor and the dining room, rushing into the kitchen.

The pantry. I tapped the walls behind the canned goods on the shelves. They sounded solid. I glanced down at the floor, realized what Petey had done, and grabbed the workbench upon which the shotgun had been secured. Tugging it away, I saw the outline of another trapdoor. This one had a ring. I pulled upward and stared down at wooden steps descending into darkness.

16

"Kate! Jason!"

The names echoed back to me.

No one shouted in return.

I tilted the trapdoor back so that it rested against the shelves behind it. I positioned the workbench so that if the trapdoor accidentally fell, it would be stopped before it slammed down and possibly locked. Then I aimed my flashlight into the darkness, saw a switch on a post about five steps down, and tested the first step as I eased down to turn on the basement lights.

No, I warned myself. Petey wouldn't booby-trap the ground floor and not do something to the basement, as well. I'd gotten this far because I'd put myself in his place. I thought like him. What would Petey have done to protect the basement?

The broomstick remained in my hand. I tilted it downward, flicked the switch…

And stumbled back from an arc of electricity that shot from the switch, blackening the stick. The flash was blinding, the force so great that it knocked the stick from my hand. I felt a tingle in my palm where the current had started to reach me.

Smoke rose from the fake switch. Smelling burned wires, I aimed the flashlight again and went cautiously down a few more steps. I eased my weight onto each of them, always gripping one behind me for support in case a step broke away. The lower I got, the less I heard the wind. I scanned the flashlight across the basement, seeing boxes, a handyman's bench, tools on the wall above it, shelves of preserves, a washing machine, a dryer, an oil furnace, a laundry tub, and a water heater. A window above the laundry tub had been boarded over. The walls and floor were old concrete. The ceiling had pipes, wires, and joists exposed. Everything smelled of mold.

I eased lower and saw a switch on another post, this one at the bottom. Reaching it, I picked up the broomstick where it had fallen. Once more, I flicked with the stick, and this time, the switch was real. Lights glowed in the basement's ceiling: dim lights-sixty-watt bulbs-but nonetheless they made me squint.

"Kate! Jason!"

Again, my shouts echoed.

Again, no muffled voices answered me.

I oriented myself. The wall that faced the area behind the house was on my left. There wasn't a door, only a tall object like a bookshelf on which there were jars of preserved peaches and pears. I studied it from various angles, looking for another trap. I stepped protectively to the left and pushed with the broomstick.

The shelves slid away.

I inched my head around the corner, peering into the opening. The tunnel was about fifteen feet long. Its concrete was smooth and new-looking. Petey had imitated the arrangement that Orval Dant had used, with the difference that instead of a wooden ceiling, Petey had chosen concrete.

At the end was a metal-covered door. It had a deadbolt lock, but this one didn't have a knob that needed to be turned. Instead, it had a slot for a key, and I didn't have a doubt in the world that the door was locked.

I wanted to rush to it, but I hesitated. Why had Petey gone to the extra effort of building the tunnel instead of putting the cell directly next to the house? The latter setup would have been quicker and easier. Had Petey merely been imitating the arrangement that Orval had used? Or did the tunnel contain an additional trap?

I studied the bare floor, the walls, and the ceiling, unable to see a threat. About to yell to Kate and Jason again, I abruptly understood the purpose for the tunnel. If a stranger came down to the basement, Kate and Jason would be too far away to hear or be heard.

But how was I going to open the door? Noticing that its hinges were on the tunnel side, I turned to the right, toward the workbench. I grabbed a hammer and a chisel…

And stopped, a sound paralyzing me.

Something dripped. In the stillness of the basement' the slight noise seemed magnified. I focused on the laundry tub, but its taps were secure. No water leaked from them.

Drip. I turned, trying to identify the direction from which the sound came. Drip. Drip. Steady. Relentless.

My attention focused beneath the stairs. On a pipe projecting from the wall. Drip. Drip. Then I smelled it. Drip. Gasoline. Trickle. Gasoline was coming from the pipe, spreading across the concrete floor. The flow must have been activated when I'd pressed the fake switch on the stairs. Petey's final trap. If all else failed, when enough fuel emptied onto the floor, a detonator would ignite it. The house and the intruder, the evidence against Petey-everything would be obliterated.

Clutching the hammer and the chisel, I raced into the tunnel. My frenzied movements echoed as I tried the doorknob and confirmed that it was locked. I held the chisel beneath the head of a hinge pin and hammered upward, freeing it. The pin clanged onto the floor. I did the same to the two other pins and pulled at the hinges, straining to free the door.

"Kate, I'm here!" I pounded on the door. "Jason, it's Dad! I'll get you out!"

But they didn't pound on the other side of the door. I didn't hear any muffled shouts answering me.

The door wouldn't budge. I stared at the key mechanism, hoping that I could unscrew its plate and disassemble the lock, but Petey had drilled the heads off the screws.

I used the chisel and the hammer to pound at the concrete next to the lock. Chunks flew. My arms ached as I pounded harder. Larger chunks fell away. I worried about causing sparks that might detonate the fumes, but I didn't have a choice. I had to do something, anything, before the house exploded. I hoped to expose the lock's bolt, but what I came to was a stout metal sleeve into which the bolt had been seated. For all I knew, the metal sleeve went several feet into the side of the wall. It would take me all day to pound away that much concrete.

I ran back to the workbench and scanned the tools above it, looking for a crowbar. There wasn't one. I swung toward a shovel and a hoe next to the bench, looking for an ax with which I could try to chop through the metal-covered door.

There wasn't one.

The smell of the gasoline was stronger. I saw a three-foot section of pipe on the floor, probably left over from a trap. I ignored it, stared again at the tools above the workbench, looked back at the pipe, and grabbed it. Gagging on fumes, I raced along the tunnel. I used the chisel and the hammer to pound at the concrete next to the middle hinge. Again, chunks flew. My arms cramped. Ignoring the pain, I hammered more fiercely against the chisel. My aim missed. I struck my fist, screamed, ignored the blood oozing from my knuckles, and pounded the chisel with greater force. When a hole opened, I dropped the hammer and chisel, rammed the pipe into the hole, and levered with all my weight. Sweating, I pushed relentlessly against the pipe. Suddenly the door budged. I strained. The gap widened. I stumbled, nearly falling as the door popped loose, leaving me sufficient space to squeeze through.

17

Please, God, let them be alive, I prayed.

I lurched into a room the size of a garage. A woman and a boy cowered, straining to get away from me. Each had a five-foot-long chain that led from a shackle on a wrist to a metal ring secured to the wall.

"Kate! Jason!"

They looked dazed. The pupils of their eyes were unnaturally large, black squeezing out the white around them. I could think of only one thing that would do that. Gader had told me that one of Lester Dant's numerous crimes had been drug dealing. I looked down at something I'd knocked over when I broke in. A waste can. Empty vials and used syringes had tumbled from it.

You son of a bitch, you drugged them! I inwardly screamed.

Kate and Jason kept cowering. They wore the kind of clothes that I associated with going to church. Kate had dark pumps, a knee-long modest blue dress, and a matching ribbon in her hair. Jason had black Oxfords, black trousers, and a white shirt topped with a bow tie. Their hair was meticulously combed, with the not-quite-natural look when someone else does the job. Their faces were pale, with hollows under their eyes. Kate wore lipstick, which was smeared.

The only furniture was a bed they'd been slumped on until the noises I'd made crashing into the room had terrified them.

"Kate, it's me! It's Brad!"

They cringed, desperate to keep a distance from me.

"Jason, it's Dad!"

Moaning, the boy squirmed back to the limit of his chain.

They'd never seen me with a beard. The drugs had so fogged their minds that they didn't recognize me. All they knew was that the violence of my entrance made me a threat.

"Listen to me! You're safe!"

I returned to the tunnel for the hammer and chisel. When I rushed toward Kate and Jason, they thrust their arms over their heads to protect themselves.

"You don't have to be afraid anymore!"

Their whimpers were obscured by the clang of the hammer against the chisel as I struck next to one of the metal rings embedded in the wall. Concrete flew. The fumes from the gasoline hadn't yet reached the chamber. For the moment, the danger of sparks didn't worry me as I slammed harder at the ring and the concrete around it. No longer whimpering, Kate and Jason were speechless with terror. Suddenly the ring to which Jason was anchored thumped onto the mattress.

I redirected the chisel toward the ring that held Kate. As I struck concrete above her head, she trembled. She reminded me of a dog that had been intimidated so often that it cowered at the sight of its owner.

My God, that's what she thinks, I realized. I imagined the drugged haze through which she and Jason must have been seeing me. My beard was the most pronounced thing about my appearance. Petey's beard was the feature they'd have most noticed in the swirl of their half-consciousness. Sweet Jesus, they thought I was Petey.

In outrage, I realized what had happened. Petey had tried to condition them, to make Kate call him Brad and Jason call him Dad-more important, to make them believe it. He'd drugged them until they didn't know who they were. Day after day, he'd persisted in the same routine, determined to take away their will and resistance, to mold them into the obedient, worshipful wife and son of his fantasies. He didn't want a wife and son who had minds of their own. What he needed were puppets who acted out his delusions.

"It's me! It's really me!" I pounded the chisel against the wall. "It's Brad!"

Their eyes widened with greater terror.

"Jason, I'm not who you think I am! I really am your father!"

I didn't have time to explain. I had to get them outside before the fumes spread farther and the house exploded. With one last frantic blow, I knocked away the ring that held Kate to the wall.

She and Jason were too frightened to move.

I grabbed their chains and dragged them toward the gap in the doorway. I squeezed into the tunnel and used their chains to-pull them through one at a time. Immediately, I felt light-headed, realizing that the fumes were starting to suffocate me. Tugging Kate and Jason along the tunnel, I was again reminded of dogs that refused to go with their master. I reached the basement, seeing smoke billow from the fake light switch that had almost electrocuted me. The detonator. When it burst into flame, the house would blow up.

Daylight gleamed through the open trapdoor.

"You're almost free, Kate! Jason, you'll soon be out of here!"

But as we started up the stairs, Jason gaped and jerked back. He screamed. Above us, a shadow loomed into view, blocking part of the light. Then the light was blocked totally as Petey slammed the trapdoor shut.

18

Smoke billowed thicker from the fake light switch. I coughed but couldn't clear my lungs. A rumble above the trapdoor warned me that Petey was sliding the heavy workbench onto it. I drew my pistol and shot toward the noise. As four bullet holes appeared in the trapdoor, I realized in dismay that the muzzle flashes from my pistol might detonate the fumes.

My ears rang from the shots. Gasoline now covered most of the floor. Frantic, I looked around for a way to get out. Above the laundry sink, the boarded-over window caught my attention. I ran back for the hammer, raced toward the laundry sink, and pried the boards from the window.

It was the type that had to be pulled up on an angle and held in place by a hook in the ceiling. When I opened it, I heard the wind, which had become even stronger since I'd entered the house. Feeling a gust hit my face, I lifted Jason. He struggled as I pushed him through the opening. I lifted Kate, shocked by how little she weighed. The sight of the outdoors, of freedom, gave her some life. With greater energy, she squirmed through the window's opening, desperate to get away from me.

Any moment, I feared, a searing blast would rip me apart. I climbed onto the sink, and just as I shoved my chest through the opening, the sink pulled away from the wall, crashing under my weight. I grabbed a branch on a shrub and dangled. The branch bent. I sank.

I clawed at the earth, kept slipping back into the basement, braced my elbows against each side of the window, and stopped. Below me, the concrete wall tore my jeans as I kneed against it, struggling to squirm upward. Even with the wind at my face and the smoke coming past me through the window, I smelled the gasoline.

I grabbed another branch and pulled myself hand over hand through the opening. But the buckle on my gun belt wedged against the sill. I tried to raise my hips, working to ease the buckle over the sill. I heard it scrape on the concrete. I sucked in my stomach, raised my hips as high as I could, felt the buckle slip free, and tugged forward harder, inching through the opening. My hips came through. My thighs. As soon as I was on my handstand knees, I surged up.

Adrenaline burned my muscles as I raced from the bushes at the side of the house. I saw Petey's truck, which the boards over the window had prevented me from hearing when he'd returned to the house. I didn't see Kate and Jason, but I was certain that, even dazed, they'd have known enough to run in the opposite direction from the truck. I whirled to charge after them toward the back of the house, to cross the clearing and reach the cover of the forest…

And found myself ten feet from Petey, who aimed a shotgun at my chest.

He trembled with rage.

I couldn't draw my pistol and shoot before he pulled the trigger. Even if I hit him, my 9-mm bullet might not kill him, but with a shotgun at ten feet, he was sure to blow my chest apart.

"Stop, Petey!" With my beard, I couldn't be sure he recognized me. "It's me! It's Brad!"

Even before I shouted, his eyes had narrowed. He looked startled. Straining to see past my beard, he realized who I was.

The wind buffeted us so hard, I could barely hear him murmur, "Brad."

"Listen to me! Did they tell you who Lester was?" I shouted, doing the only thing I could think of to distract him from shooting. "Do you know why they took you?"

"Lester," he murmured.

"Did they tell you Lester was Orval and Eunice's only child?"

Smoke poured from the basement window.

Moving away from it, I had to keep distracting him. "Did they tell you he died, that they went crazy with grief?"

The house would soon explode.

"They'd already lost three children to stillbirths!" I kept my voice raised, inching toward the trees. "The rest of the Dants were dead! Eunice couldn't conceive any longer. Lester was their only chance of continuing the family line."

Petey sighted along the shotgun's barrel. "Lester."

As smoke billowed, I moved closer to the trees. "They were desperate to replace him. But they couldn't do it in Brockton. That was too close to home. They might have been recognized."

Petey kept pace with me, the shotgun aimed at my chest.

"So they set out on the interstate, driving from one town to another. They waited for God to direct them, to put a boy of the same age before them. They tried one town after another. They crossed from Indiana into Ohio. They passed Columbus. They came to Woodford." I spoke faster, more intensely. "We'll never know what made them leave the interstate and pick our town. Something must have seemed a sign from God. As they drove this way and that, they turned a corner, and there you were, all by yourself, pedaling down a street that seemed deserted."

" 'Can you tell us how to get to the interstate?'" Petey said it with such bitterness. " 'Do you believe in God? Do you believe in the end of the world?'"

The smoke worsened. I tasted it as I neared the trees.

He moved with me, his finger looking tighter on the shotgun.

"They took you, and they put you in that underground room, and they told you your name was Lester, and they punished you if you didn't act like their son."

"Lester."

I thought I saw flames beyond the smoke at the basement window.

" This my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.' Luke, fifteen, twenty-four," Petey said.

"When you told me you'd been molested, I thought you meant sexually."

I took another step.

So did Petey.

The wind gusted harder.

"But you didn't mean sexually. You meant molested in your mind. In your soul. They wanted you to be Lester so much that they beat you and starved you; they treated you like an animal, until you didn't know who you were. It was so awful that in the end you were ready to be anybody they wanted you to be as long as they didn't hurt you, as long as they took away your bodily wastes and gave you something to eat."

"They taught me the good book," Petey said. " The truth shall make you free.' John, eight, thirty-two."

"The truth is, you can be free. I'll get help for you, Petey! It's not too late! Once the police understand why you did what you did, they'll want you to get help, too. I promise you, life can be better. Don't let Orval and Eunice destroy you again. Stop being what they made you into, Petey."

"Don't call me Petey!"

My voice broke. "I can't tell you how sorry I am. I know that your life changed because of me, that everything would have been different if I hadn't sent you home from that baseball game! But, damn it, we were just kids. How was I to know that the Dants were going to grab you? Nobody could have known about them. You were just my little brother tagging along. I didn't mean for it to happen, Petey." Tears streamed down my face. "There wasn't a night since you disappeared that I didn't beg God to bring you back safe, that I didn't plead for a second chance. Let me make it up to you, Petey. Please, let me try to give you the life that Orval and Eunice took from you."

"Stop calling me Petey!"

"You're right. When you came to my house, you asked me to call you Peter, but I didn't. We're not kids anymore. You're Peter."

"No! Don't call me that, either!"

Staring at the shotgun's trigger, I made a placating gesture. "Okay. Whatever you want, Lester."

"I'm not Lester!"

"Then I don't understand. Who are you?"

"Brad."

The dark intensity in his eyes made clear how serious he was. I'd ruined his life. Now he'd stolen mine. Taking my wife and son, he'd convinced himself that he was also taking my identity. In his mind, he was me. As the depths of his insanity became obvious, my legs felt unsteady. "I'm so sorry. God help you," I murmured.

"No." His tone left no doubt that he was going to pull the trigger. "God help you."

19

The blast hurtled me into the bushes. Not from the shotgun. The blast from the house. As the building exploded, the shock wave lifted me off my feet and threw me into the undergrowth. Wreckage flew, chopping tree branches, shredding leaves.

Dimly, I became aware enough to smell smoke and hear the crackle of flames. In pain, I slowly sat up. I felt dizzy, sick to my stomach. The ringing in my ears was unbearable.

I'd been thrown into a hollow. That was the only reason I'd survived the shrapnel from the blast. Chunks of smoking, burning wreckage lay around me. Bushes were on fire. The wind thrust the flames from tree to tree.

Coughing from the smoke, I staggered to my feet. I stared around, searching for Petey. I faced the burning crater of the house. He wasn't on the ground where we'd last stood. He must have been thrown into the undergrowth the same as I had been.

Flames crowded me. Kate and Jason. I had to find them. As I stumbled deeper into the forest, I prayed that they'd kept running, that they were far enough away that the fire wouldn't reach them.

And that Petey wouldn't. He'd do everything in his power to get them back.

Unless he was dead. Unless the blast had killed him.

Then where was his body? After the explosion, there was so little cover that I should have been able to see his corpse. Where was he?

The wind hurled smoke at me, making me cough harder as I lurched through the forest. While I'd been unconscious, the fire had spread rapidly, leaping from tree to tree. Bushes burst into flames. I zigzagged, trying to avoid flames on my right, only to discover that a new section of the forest was suddenly afire on my left.

I wanted to shout, "Kate! Jason!" But they'd been so afraid of me in the house that I doubted they'd answer me. If anything, I'd throw them into a greater panic. On the off chance that they did answer my shouts, Petey would hear them, would go to them.

Plus, if I shouted to Kate and Jason, Petey would hear me, would know where I was.

The fire roared around me. The smoke whirled past, driven by the wind. Fighting for breath, I stumbled into a clearing. Again, the fire leapt into the trees ahead of me.

How far had Kate and Jason managed to go? I remembered the stream that I'd followed into the forest. If I could reach it, if Kate and Jason could reach it, we had a chance.

Reach it? How? I'd been so distracted by my need to avoid the fire that I'd lost my bearings. The same with Kate and Jason. They might be fleeing in a circle.

I fumbled for the compass in my shirt pocket. Squinting in the smoke, I aligned myself in a northwest direction, the opposite of the southeast line that I'd used to approach the house. I put the compass back in my shirt, dodged a flaming branch falling toward me, and ran toward untouched trees northwest of me.

The noise from the fire was filled with pops and cracks as wood ignited. Dry stumps exploded from the heat. A huge chunk of bark and wood blew away from a tree on my right, and I dove to the ground, realizing that one of the blasts was from Petey's shotgun.

I drew my pistol, dismayed by how violently my hand shook. In Denver, my instructor had warned that no matter how good a shooter was at target practice, nothing prepared one for controlling a gun in a kill-or-be-killed situation. When fear took charge, skill collapsed.

The fire swept closer. I couldn't stay where I was. But as soon as I moved, Petey would shoot again. I thought of everything that Kate and Jason had suffered, of everything that I'd been through to find them. I thought of Petey leaving me to die in the mountains. Fury compacted my muscles. My hand stopped shaking.

I raced toward another tree. A shotgun blast tore a chunk from it. Immediately I did what Petey would have least expected, charging back toward the flames, toward the tree where I'd hidden. I had a sense of where he'd shot from, a clump of bushes that I now put three bullets into. Smoke enveloped me. I held my breath and used the smoke for cover, rushing toward those bushes, angrily putting three more bullets into them. But when I crashed through, what I found wasn't a body, only an empty shotgun shell.

I crouched, breathing hoarsely, scanning the undergrowth for movement. But everything was in motion as the heat from the flames added to the force of the wind. The empty shotgun shell. How many times had Petey shot at me? Two that I knew of. How many shells did a shotgun hold? In the gun store where I'd taken lessons, I recalled hearing that most held four in the magazine and one in the chamber. Petey's shirt pockets hadn't bulged from spare shotgun shells. As far as I knew, he had only three shots left.

My back felt so scorched that I had to rush toward farther cover. Staying low, I reached more bushes, took advantage of the smoke around me, and raced toward another tree stump. Blam! The top of the stump disintegrated. The shocking pain in my left shoulder felt as if hornets had stung me at enormous speed. I lurched back, shooting as I fell. I hit the ground, hoping that what had struck me were chunks of wood from the stump. But the blood on my shoulder warned me that I'd been struck by metal pellets. The only reason that my arm hadn't been separated from my shoulder was that Petey had shot from a distance. In the confusion of the smoke and the flames, his aim had been thrown off. Only part of the spray had hit me.

The wound throbbed. I had trouble moving that arm. But I had no trouble moving the rest of me. I was so primed with fear and adrenaline that I rolled toward a fallen tree, knowing that I didn't dare stay where I'd fallen. The fire again scorched my back. Its wind-driven smoke enveloped me. But it had to be enveloping Petey also. He wouldn't be able to see me.

I pulled the compass from my shirt and checked it again. Straining not to cough and let Petey know where I was, I aligned the compass on a northwest route and shifted forward through the fast-moving haze. I couldn't see more than five feet ahead of me. Prepared to shoot the instant I saw a threatening shadow, I worked farther through the forest, checking the compass frequently.

Blood dripped from my left shoulder. I felt light-headed. The fire was about to get ahead of me. Heat shoved me, urging me to move faster.

I was so busy watching the blowing smoke for a sign of Petey that I didn't pay attention to the ground. The slope to the stream was about six feet deep. I'd have fallen into it if a deer hadn't charged from the flames on my right. It startled me, crashing past me and down, splashing through water, then bounding up the opposite side.

I squirmed down to the water, feeling cool air. The stream was shallow. I crossed it, oblivious to my hiking boots and socks getting wet, concentrating on where Petey might be. On my right, farther along the stream, a shadow moved amid the smoke. I started to shoot but stifled the impulse, realizing that the shadow might belong to Kate as easily as to Petey.

I kept aiming. The smoke made my eyes water as I strained to see along the barrel. I stared at the smoke, waiting for the shadow to become more distinct.

The shadow disappeared. Whoever it was had climbed from the stream and continued through the forest. Keeping pace with it, I struggled up the slope and passed through smoky undergrowth, watching for the shadow to come into view again.

I kept thinking, If it was Kate, wouldn't I have seen a smaller shadow with her: Jason?

Not if he was on the other side of her.

I had to be certain before I pulled the trigger. Creeping farther through the trees, I blinked tears from my smoke-irritated eyes and stared toward the indistinct forest on my right. Something moved. For an instant, I caught a glimpse of Petey's beard. He raised his shotgun. I pulled the trigger.

Abruptly I was almost blinded as a gust of wind tossed flames overhead. Trees and bushes erupted into fire ahead of me. Feeling the explosion of heat singe my hair, I stumbled backward and this time did lose my balance. When I fell down the bank of the stream, I landed on my wounded shoulder. I strained not to cry out, rolling down to the water, coming to a painful stop.

It took all my effort to stand. I'd dropped my compass. I couldn't find it. Not that I could get any help from it now. With the fire ahead and behind me, with Petey possibly on my right, the only safe direction was to the left along the stream. I had no idea if I'd hit him. But if I hadn't, he'd need to take shelter in the stream, which meant that he'd stalk along it in my direction. All I had to do was find a curve in the stream, hide, and ambush him.

I couldn't remember how many times I'd shot. My pistol might have been almost empty. Trying to keep my hands steady, I pressed a button on the side, dropped the magazine, grabbed the fifteen-round spare from the pouch on my belt, and slammed it into the grip, ready to shoot again.

My vision grayed. As the smoke thickened, I fought for air, realizing that the fire was sucking away oxygen. The flames squeezed closer. Afraid that I'd pass out, I worked along the stream, trying to stay on the bank, to avoid making noise in the water. But loss of blood added to my dizziness. I couldn't control where my hiking boots landed, sometimes splashing in the water, sometimes slipping through mud.

Hot air seared my nostrils. I rounded a curve, its slope protecting me from the flames above me on my right. I lurched around another curve, and cool air struck my face. I'd reached a section of the stream that wasn't yet bounded by fire. The coolness was the most luxuriant thing I'd ever felt. I sucked it into my lungs, hoping to clear my thoughts, to get rid of the spots that wavered in my vision.

As the fresh air took the gray from in front of my eyes, I staggered to a halt at the sight of footprints in the mud. Two sets of them. An adult's. A child's. They were following the stream, as I was.

Kate. Jason.

I whirled toward urgent footsteps splashing through the stream behind me. But as I aimed, it wasn't Petey but a panicked dog that scrambled into view. It raced out of sight along the stream. The air became hot again. The flames drew closer.

I ran in the direction of the footprints. A tree had fallen across the bank. I ducked under it, straightened on the other side, and groaned as something heavy walloped across my forehead. The blow sent me reeling back against the tree. Dazed, I sank to my knees in the water. Blood trickled down my face. I tried to clear my blurred vision.

Her eyes frantic from the drugs, Kate stood over me, a clublike branch raised to hit me again. Jason cowered behind her.

"No, Kate." I was appalled by how distant my weakened voice sounded. "Don't. It's me."

"You bastard!"

I managed to raise my right arm before she struck me again. The club whacked below my elbow, deflecting the blow, but the pain that shot through my arm made me fear that she'd broken it.

My pistol thudded onto the bank.

"No, Kate, it's really me! Brad!"

"Brad!" Kate shrieked and struck again with the club.

I dove to the right, barely avoiding the blow. It smashed into the stream. She swung again. I rolled as she kept swinging.

She gaped at something behind me.

I followed her gaze.

Petey's face showed above the tree that spanned the stream. His forehead was covered with soot. His hair and beard were singed. His shirt was blackened by smoke. Blood flowed from his left shoulder, where I'd evidently hit him the last time I'd pulled the trigger.

His shotgun rested on the horizontal tree, its barrel facing us.

Jason backed away.

"If you know what's good for you, son, don't take another step," Petey told Jason.

I was on my back in the stream. My right arm was useless, probably broken from when Kate had struck it. My buckshot-punctured left arm was in similar agony, but at least it was mobile. Sweating from the effort, I groped for the knife on my belt.

Jason kept backing away.

"Listen to your father," Petey said. "Stay put."

Jason opened his mouth in a silent wail.

Then Petey wailed as I rolled under the tree and plunged the hunting knife into his thigh. The blade scraped bone. When he lurched back, his shotgun went off. The pellets whistled past my head. No! Afraid that the blast had hit Kate and Jason, I stabbed Petey's thigh again. As his blood spurted over me, I redirected my aim toward his side.

But he rammed down with the butt of his shotgun, hitting my wounded shoulder. I almost passed out, able to do only one thing, to throw my weight against his legs and bring him down with me into the stream. I crawled onto him, stabbing toward his face, but he pushed me to the side and grabbed my throat, choking me so hard that I feared my larynx would break.

Smoke reached us. The fire crackled nearer. I plunged the knife into his wounded shoulder. In agony, he fell back, landing where he'd dropped his shotgun. He grabbed it, pumped out an empty cartridge, and pulled the trigger.

I lurched back from the blast that would blow my chest apart, but the shotgun made only a clicking sound. It was empty. Roaring, Petey swung it like a club, but loss of blood weakened him. The blow glanced off my leg. My left arm was in greater agony, much less mobile, as I thrust with the knife and missed.

A shot kicked up dirt.

We spun toward it.

Kate had crawled beneath the trees. Wavering to her feet, she held the pistol that I'd dropped. Doing her best to keep it steady, she looked as if, throughout her ordeal, a small part of her mind had remained lucid enough to fantasize about getting even. Normally, at close range, there wasn't any trick to using the gun. Even though she knew nothing about pistols, all she had to do was look down the barrel and pull the trigger.

But she was drugged, and she'd already missed once, and now she mustered her concentration, her eyes dark above her hollow cheeks. The twin vision of her nightmare-two Peteys, two Brads-must have threatened the little sanity she had left.

"Help me," Petey said. "I came here to save you. Shoot him."

She hesitated, then turned the gun toward me.

"Please, Kate, don't," I said.

I watched her finger tighten on the trigger.

"Shoot him," Petey said.

"I love you, Kate."

"I'm your husband. Do what I tell you," Petey said.

She turned toward Petey and shot him in the face.

She took a step closer, pulled the trigger, and this time missed. So she stumbled closer, until she was on top of him. At point-blank range, she shot him in the chest. The next bullet burst his throat. She didn't aim at those parts. They just happened to be where the barrel wavered. She shot and kept shooting, too close not to hit him somewhere, his shoulder, his knees, his groin, riddling his body, until all fifteen bullets in the magazine had been expended and the slide on top of the pistol stayed back.

Tears rolled down her face.

I managed to stand.

But as I approached her, wanting to hold her, she staggered back in fright. She raised the pistol again and pulled the trigger repeatedly. Nothing happened. The gun was empty. But if there'd been any rounds left, she'd have killed me.

I tried to make a reassuring gesture. "It's okay. You're safe now. I'm not going to hurt you."

But the dark frenzy in her eyes told me that she didn't believe me.

"I won't touch you," I said. "But please let me help you. Please." I felt heat behind me. I heard a crackling roar and looked over my shoulder at the fire. "We have to get out of here."

I took another step forward. In response, she backed away toward the tree across the stream.

"Jason?" I asked. "Where's Jason? My God, was he shot?"

As I stared frantically under the tree toward where I'd last seen Jason, Kate scrambled under it, trying to get away from me. I lurched after her, rising on the other side. Fearful that I'd see Jason's body blown apart from Petey's last shotgun blast, I breathed out in relief when I found him standing next to the stream.

He threw a rock.

It struck my chest, but I was far beyond pain. All I wanted was to get him out of there.

"It's okay, Jason. You've got nothing to be afraid of now."

I took a step toward him. Covered with blood, singed by the fire, I must have looked indistinguishable from Petey.

He scrambled up the bank and into the forest.

Off balance from my injuries, I struggled after him. Heat and smoke almost succeeded in pushing me back as I stumbled through the underbrush.

I saw bright flickers within the smoke. The heat intensified. A tree exploded into flames. A wall of fire reached bushes.

"Jason!" Smoke clogged my throat. I bent over, coughing, forced myself to straighten, and veered past more trees.

The wind cleared the smoke for an instant. Ahead, Jason was blocked by the approaching fire. He turned, desperate to run from it, then stopped when he saw me. I must have been more threatening than another wall of fire. He dodged to my left and raced toward an opening in the blaze. As I leapt, the wind hurled flames toward him. I knocked him down an instant before a fiery gust flashed above our sprawled bodies. With the remaining strength in my wounded arm, I dragged him back from the flames. He kicked and hit me. Then Kate was hitting me. "Let him go!" she screamed.

The three of us tumbled down the bank and landed in the water. They kept hitting and kicking, but I didn't resist. Their punches weakened. Finally, they collapsed, staring at me, their gaunt chests rising and falling.

"I love you," I said.

They stared.

Something slowly changed focus in their eyes, as if they dimly remembered a time when those words had been familiar.

"Stay here. There's something I have to do," I managed to say.

As the fire approached the top of the bank, I splashed water over me. Then I ducked under the tree that spanned the stream. I came to where Petey lay. His body was almost totally covered with blood from the number of times he'd been shot.

But that wasn't good enough. He'd come back once. I needed to be absolutely certain that he was dead, that he could never come back again, not even in my nightmares.

I grabbed his feet, but my injured arms had stiffened too much, causing too much pain for me to drag him up the bank. I tried as hard as I could but was about to give up, when Kate's hands came into view. I looked at her, startled, but she didn't say a word, just helped me tug Petey up the slope.

We threw him toward the fire. His corpse burst into flames. Only then did we stumble back down to the stream. At the bottom, Kate fell, but she wouldn't let me touch her to help her get up. Keeping a wary distance from me, she and Jason ran.