The Goodbye Man

1 June 11, 2 p.m

Seconds to decide.

Swerve left? Swerve right?

A steep drop into brush? Or a narrow shoulder that ends in a cliff wall?

Left.

Instinct.

Colter Shaw spun the wheel of the rental Kia sedan hard, braking intermittently — he couldn’t afford a skid. The vehicle, which had been doing forty along this stretch in high mountains, plunged into foliage, narrowly missing a collision with the boulder that had tumbled down a steep hillside and rolled into the middle of the road before him. Shaw thought the sound of a two-hundred-pound piece of rock rolling through brush and over gravel would be more dramatic; the transit was virtually silent.

Left was the correct choice.

Had he gone right, the car would have slammed into a granite outcropping hidden by tall, beige grass.

Shaw, who spent much time assessing the percentage likelihood of harm when making professional decisions, nonetheless knew that sometimes you simply had to roll the dice, and see what happened.

No air bags, no injury. He was, however, trapped inside the Kia. To his left was a sea of mahonia, otherwise known as Oregon grape, benign names both, belying the plant’s needle-sharp spikes that can penetrate cloth on their effortless way into skin. Not an option for an exit. The passenger side was better, blocked only by insubstantial cinquefoil, in cheerful June bloom, yellow, and a tangle of forsythia.

Shaw shoved the right-side door open again and again, pushing back the viney plants. As he did this, he noted that the attacker’s timing had been good. Had the weapon fallen sooner, Shaw could easily have braked. Any later, he’d have been past it and still on his way.

And a weapon it must have been.

Washington State certainly was home to earthquakes and seismic activity of all sorts but there’d been no recent shivering in the vicinity. And rocks that are this big usually stay put unless they’re leveraged off intentionally — in front of, or onto, cars driven by men in pursuit of an armed fleeing felon.

After doffing his brown plaid sport coat, Shaw began to leverage himself through the gap between door and frame. He was in trim fit, as one who climbs mountainsides for recreation will be. Still, the opening was only fourteen or so inches, and he was caught. He would shove the door open, retreat, then shove once more. The gap slowly grew wider.

He heard a rustling in the brush across the road. The man who’d tipped the rock into Shaw’s path was now scrabbling down the hillside and pressing through the dense growth toward Shaw, who struggled further to free himself. He saw a glint in the man’s hand. A pistol.

The son of a survivalist and in a manner of speaking a survivalist himself, Shaw knew myriad ways of cheating death. On the other hand, he was a rock climber, a dirt bike fanatic, a man with a profession that set him against killers and escaped prisoners who’d stop at nothing to stay free. The smoke of death wafted everywhere around him, constantly. But it wasn’t that finality that troubled him. In death, you had no reckoning. Far worse would be a catastrophic injury to the spine, to the eyes, the ears. Crippling his body, darkening the world or muting it forever.

In his youth, Shaw was called “the restless one” among his siblings. Now, having grown into a self-professed Restless Man, he knew that such incapacity would be pure hell.

He continued to squeeze.

Almost out.

Come on, come on...

Yes!

No.

Just as he was about to break free, his wallet, in the left rear pocket of his black jeans, caught.

The attacker stopped, leaning through the brush, and lifted the pistol. Shaw heard it cock. A revolver.

And a big one. When it fired, the muzzle blast blew green leaves from branches.

The bullet went wide, kicking up dust near Shaw.

Another click.

The man fired again.

This bullet hit its mark.

2 June 11, 8 a.m., six hours earlier

Shaw was piloting his thirty-foot Winnebago camper through the winding streets of Gig Harbor, Washington State.

With about seven thousand inhabitants, the place was both charming and scuffed around the edges. It was, to be sure, a harbor, well protected, connected to Puget Sound via a narrow channel through which pleasure and fishing craft now glided. The Winnebago motored past working and long-abandoned factories devoted to manufacturing vessels and the countless parts and accessories with which ships were outfitted. To Colter Shaw, never a sailor, it seemed like you could spend every minute of every day maintaining, repairing, polishing and organizing a boat without ever going out to sea.

A sign announced the Blessing of the Fleet in the middle of the harbor, the dates indicating that it had taken place earlier in the month.

Perhaps the industry was now less robust than in the past, and the organizers of the event wanted to beef up its image by letting lawyers and doctors and salesmen edge their cabin cruisers up to the circle of the commercial craft — if that geometry was in fact the configuration for fleet blessing.

Shaw, a professional reward seeker, was here on a job — the word he used to describe what he did. Cases were what law enforcement investigated and what prosecutors prosecuted. Although after years of pursuing any number of criminals Shaw might have made a fine detective, he wanted none of the regimen and regulation that went with full-time employment. He was free to take on, or reject, any job he wished to. He could choose to abandon the quest at any time.

Freedom meant a lot to Colter Shaw.

He was presently considering the hate crime that had brought him here. In the first page of the notebook he was devoting to the investigation, he’d written down the details that had been provided by one of his business managers:

This last bit of intelligence wasn’t good.

Crowe was an unpleasant man in his forties. Former military, he opened a security business on the East Coast, though it wasn’t successful and he shut it down. His career now was freelance security consultant, mercenary and, from time to time, reward seeker. Shaw’s and Crowe’s paths had crossed several times, on occasion violently. They approached the profession differently. Crowe rarely went after missing persons; he sought only wanted criminals and escapees. If you shot a fugitive while you were using a legal weapon in self-defense, you still got the reward and could usually avoid jail. This was Crowe’s approach, the antithesis of Shaw’s.

Shaw had not been sure he wanted to take this job. The other day, as he’d sat in a lawn chair in Silicon Valley, he had been planning on pursuing another matter. That second mission was personal, and it involved his father and a secret from the past — a secret that had nearly gotten Shaw shot in the elbows and kneecaps by a hitman with the unlikely name of Ebbitt Droon.

Risk of bodily harm — reasonable risk — didn’t deter Shaw, though, and he truly wanted to pursue his search for his father’s hidden treasure.

He’d decided, however, that the capture of two apparent neo-Nazis, armed and willing to kill, took priority.

GPS now directed him through the hilly, winding streets of Gig Harbor until he came to the address he sought, a pleasant single-story home, painted cheerful yellow, a stark contrast to the gray overcast. He glanced in the mirror and brushed smooth his short blond hair, which lay close to his head. It was mussed from a twenty-minute nap, his only rest on the ten-hour drive here from the San Francisco area.

Slinging his computer bag over his shoulder, he climbed from the van and walked to the front door, rang the bell.

Larry and Emma Young admitted him, and he followed the couple into the living room. He assessed their ages to be mid-forties. Erick’s father sported sparse gray-brown hair and wore beige slacks and a short-sleeved T-shirt, immaculately white. He was clean-shaven. Emma wore a concealing, A-line dress in pink. She had put on fresh makeup for the visitor, Shaw sensed. Missing children disrupt much, and showers and personal details are often neglected. Not so here.

Two pole lamps cast disks of homey light around the room, whose walls were papered with yellow and russet flowers, and whose floors were covered in dark green carpet, over which sat some Lowe’s or Home Depot oriental rugs. A nice home. Modest.

A brown uniform jacket sat on a coat rack near the door. It was thick and stained and had LARRY stitched on the breast. Shaw guessed the man was a mechanic.

They were doing their assessment of Shaw as well: the sport coat, the black jeans, the gray button-down shirt. Black slip-ons. This, or a variation, was his own uniform.

“Sit down, sir,” Larry said.

Shaw took a comfortable overstuffed armchair of bold red leather and the couple sat across from him. “Have you heard anything about Erick since we talked?”

“No, sir,” Emma Young told him.

“What’s the latest from the police?”

Larry said, “He and that other man, Adam. They’re still around the area. The detective, he thinks they’re scraping together money, borrowing it, maybe stealing it—”

“He wouldn’t,” said Emma.

“What the police said,” Larry explained. “I’m just telling him what they said.”

The mother swallowed. “He’s... never. I mean, I...” She began to cry — again. Her eyes had been dry but red and swollen when Shaw arrived.

He removed a notebook from his computer bag, as well as a Delta Titanio Galassia fountain pen, black with three orange rings toward the nib. Writing with the instrument was neither pretense nor luxury. Colter Shaw took voluminous notes during the course of his reward jobs; the pen meant less wear and tear on his writing hand. It also was simply a small pleasure to use.

He now wrote the date and the names of the couple. He looked up and asked for details about their son’s life: In college and working part-time. On summer break now. Lived at home.

“Does Erick have a history of being involved in neo-Nazi or any extremist groups?”

“My God, no,” Larry muttered as if exhausted by the familiar question.

“This is all just crazy,” said Emma. “He’s a good boy. Oh, he’s had a little trouble like everybody. Some drugs — I mean, after, well, after what happened, it’s understandable. Just tried ’em is all. The school called. No police. They were good about that.”

Larry grimaced. “Pierce County? The meth and drug capital of the state. You should read the stories in the paper. Forty percent of all the meth in Washington is produced here.”

Shaw nodded. “Was that what Erick did?”

“No, some of that Oxy stuff. Just for a while. He took anti-depressants too. Still does.”

“You said, ‘after what happened.’ After what?”

They looked at each other. “We lost our younger boy sixteen months ago.”

“Drugs?”

Emma’s hand, resting on her thigh, closed into a fist, bundling the cloth below her fingers. “No. Was on his bike, run into by somebody who was drunk. My, it was hard. So hard. But it hit Erick in particular. It changed him. They were real close.”

Brothers, Shaw thought, understanding quite well the complex feelings the relationship generated.

Larry said, “But he wouldn’t do anything hurtful. Never anything bad. He never has. ’Cepting for the church.”

His wife snapped, “Which he didn’t do. You know he didn’t.”

Shaw said, “The witnesses said it was Adam did the shooting. I haven’t heard where the gun came from. Does Erick own one? Have access to one?”

“No.”

“So it would be his friend’s.”

Larry: “Friend? Adam wasn’t a friend. We never heard of him.”

Emma’s ruddy fingers twined the dress hem. A habit. “He’s the one did the cross thing too, burning it. And the graffiti. Everything! Adam kidnapped Erick. I’m sure that’s what happened. He had a gun and made Erick come with him. Hijack his car, rob him.”

“They took Adam’s truck, though, not Erick’s.”

“I was thinking about that,” the mother blurted. “Erick did the brave thing and threw his keys away.”

“He had his own bank account?”

The boy’s father said, “Yes.”

So they wouldn’t know about withdrawals. The police could get that information, what branches he’d been to. Probably already had.

“You know how much money he has? Enough to get very far?”

“Couple thousand, maybe.”

Shaw had been examining the room, observing mostly the pictures of the Youngs’ two boys. Erick was handsome with bushy brown hair and an easy smile. Shaw had also seen pictures of Adam Harper, posted as part of the reward announcement. There were no mug shots, though in both of the photos in the press he was looking into the camera with caution. The young man, whose crew cut was blond with blue highlights, was gaunt.

“I’m going to pursue this, try to find your son.”

Larry said, “Oh, sure. Please. You’re nothing like that big guy.”

“Didn’t like him one bit,” Emma muttered.

“Dalton Crowe?”

“That was his name. I told him to leave. I wasn’t going to pay him any reward. He laughed and said I could stuff it. He was going after the bigger one anyway, you know — the fifty thousand the county offered.”

“When was he here?”

“Couple days ago.”

In his notebook Shaw wrote, D.C. present at offerors’ house. June 9.

“Now, let me tell you how I approach this. It won’t cost you anything unless I find Erick. No expenses. If I locate him, you’ll owe me that $900.”

Larry said proudly, “It’s $1,060 now. One of my cousins came through. Wish it was more but...”

“I know you’ll want me to bring him home to you. But that’s not my job. He’s a fugitive and I’d be breaking the law if I did that.”

“Aiding and abetting,” Emma said. “I watch all the crime shows.”

Colter Shaw tended not to smile but when meeting offerors, he occasionally did, to put them at ease. “I don’t apprehend. I deal in information, not citizen’s arrests. But if I can find him, I won’t let the police know where he is until there’s no chance he or anybody else’ll be hurt. You’ll need a lawyer. Do you know one?”

The regarded each other once more. “Fellow did our closing,” Larry said.

“No. A criminal lawyer. I’ll get you some names.”

“We don’t have... I mean, we could work out a home equity thing, I guess.”

“You’ll have to. He needs good representation.”

Shaw reviewed his notes so far. His handwriting was small and had once been described as balletic, it was so beautifully drawn. The notebook wasn’t ruled. Shaw didn’t need guidance. Each line was perfectly horizontal.

For another twenty minutes Shaw asked questions and the couple responded. Over the course of the interview, he noted that their adamant view that their son was innocent seemed objective; they simply could not accept that the son they knew had committed this crime. The idea bewildered them. The sole perp had to be Adam Harper.

When he felt he had enough information for the moment, he put away the pen and notebook, rose and walked to the door. The parents agreed to send any new information they heard from the police or friends or relatives Erick had contacted for money or other help.

“Thank you,” Emma said at the doorway, debating hugging him, it seemed. She did not.

It was the husband who was choking up. He fumbled whatever he was going to say and just gripped Shaw’s hand. Larry turned back to the house before the first tear appeared.

As he walked to the Winnebago, Shaw was reflecting on the one subject he had not mentioned to Emma and Larry: his policy not to accept a reward from family members if the search revealed that their missing loved one was dead. No reason to even bring up the possibility, even though it seemed more or less likely to Shaw that their second child had been murdered as soon as Adam found he had no more use for the boy.

3

“Why should I talk to you?” the man scoffed.

Dressed in a faded jacket of cracked brown leather, jeans and boots, Adam Harper’s father, Stan, continued to stack cartons of motor oil on a dock. He was a ship’s chandler, an outfitter, and apparently getting an order ready to load onto a delivery boat when it arrived back in the berth.

The air was richly scented, pine and sea waste and petroleum.

“I’m helping Erick Young’s family find their son. The last the police knew, he and Adam were together.”

“You’re after that reward, I’ll bet.”

“I am, yes. Now, is there anything you can tell me about Adam that could help? Where he might go? Friends, relatives he’d be staying with?”

“Put that away.” Nodding at the notebook and pen in Shaw’s hand.

Shaw slipped them into a pocket.

“Don’t have any idea.” Harper was solid as a tree, with sandy-gray hair and a rosy complexion, nose slightly ruddier than cheek.

Erick’s family had offered money for someone to find their fugitive son; Stan Harper had not. As far as Shaw knew, he might hope his son successfully escaped from the law. There was no reason for him to say a word. Still, he wasn’t stonewalling. Not exactly. Three stacked cartons later, Harper turned. “He was always a problem. Moods this, moods that. Said it was like bees buzzing around him all the time. Made it hard on us too, you can believe. He didn’t get that. It was all about him. Trouble at school, counsellors calling all the time. Had some fights, him and me.” A glance toward Shaw. “But that’s fathers and sons. Happens to everybody. Easier for us when he quit school and started working trades. Day labor, mostly. If he was on staff, he’d get fired in a split.”

Shaw would tread lightly with his next question. Bigotry, he’d found, was often handed down from parents to children like hair color and heart trouble. He had no problem calling out a racist, but at the moment his mission was to gather information. “The incident at the church? The cross, the graffiti. Did he ever talk about doing anything like that?”

“Never heard him. But I gotta say, me and him, we didn’t talk about much of anything. After Kelly passed — after my wife passed — he went even further away. Hit him hard. I was like, it’s coming, her passing, and I tried to get ready. Adam, he just didn’t think she’d ever... Denied it, you know?”

“Any friends in supremacist groups? Was he a member of any community like that?”

“What’re you, like a bounty hunter?”

“I make my living finding people.”

Whether this answer satisfied or raised questions, Shaw couldn’t tell. Harper hefted two big cartons at once with little effort. They must’ve totaled fifty pounds.

Shaw repeated the question about neo-Nazis.

“Not that I ever heard but he was... you know, was impressionable. He met some musicians once, and for a year that was all he was going to do. Be a heavy metal star. That was the whole world to him. Then he gave it up. Was going to build skateboards and sell them. That went no place. Fell in with a bad crew in high school, shoplifting and drugs. He did whatever they wanted.

“You know, when I heard from the cops about the church, I wasn’t surprised. Not like oh shit surprised. I figured he’d snapped. I could feel it coming. Since his mother died.”

Stan walked to the edge of the dock and spit, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

“That Erick kid, you oughta check him out.”

Shaw replied, “He doesn’t seem to have any connection with supremacists. No history of hate crimes.”

Harper’s eyes narrowed. “You know, Adam took off for a while. He was away for three weeks, a month, I don’t know. After we lost Kelly. He just disappeared and when he came back he was different. He was better, his moods. I asked him where he’d gone. He said he couldn’t talk about it. Maybe he hooked up with some of those assholes then.”

“Where?”

“No idea.”

“Can you give me the names of friends I can talk to?”

A shrug. “Couldn’t tell you. He wasn’t a boy, you know. He had his own life. We didn’t chat on the phone, like he did with his mama.” Harper received a text and then replied. Looked over the still water of the harbor. Then back to the cartons.

“Was he straight?” Shaw asked.

“You mean... like, not being gay?”

Shaw nodded.

“Why you wanta ask something like that?”

“I need all the facts I can get.”

“Only ever saw him with women. None of ’em for very long.” A sigh. “We tried everything with him. Therapy. Yeah, that was a joke. Medication. Always the most expensive ones, naturally. And that was on top of Kelly’s bills too. Doctors and hospitals.” He nodded toward the shack that was the corporate headquarters for Harper Ship Services, Inc. “I look like I can afford Cadillac health insurance?”

“Nothing worked for Adam?”

“Not much. Just being away wherever he went, that three or four weeks.” The crowning carton was placed on the stack. “Maybe he got a kick out of learning to burn crosses and spray paint churches. Who the fuck knows? I got paperwork to do.”

Shaw gave him a card with his number on it. “If you hear from him.”

The man slipped it into his back pocket and gave a cynical smile, which meant: Helping you get your blood money.

“Mr. Harper, I want to get both of them back safe.”

Harper turned but paused halfway to the shed.

“It was so damn frustrating. Sometimes you just wanted to shake him and say, ‘Get over yourself. Everybody’s got the blues. Just live with it.’”

Back in the Winnebago, Shaw brewed a cup of strong Honduran coffee, poured in some milk and sat down at the table.

He spent the next half hour or so calling some of the Youngs’ relatives. They were sympathetic but had no helpful information. Then on to Erick’s friends. Those willing to talk could offer no insights into where he might have gone and generally expressed dismay that he’d been implicated in a hate crime. One classmate, however, said that since his brother died “he’s just like... he’s not really himself, you know what I mean?”

Shaw spoke to Tom Pepper, a former FBI special agent and a friend with whom he rock-climbed occasionally. Pepper may have been retired but he was just as connected in law enforcement now as he had always been and was current on a robust security clearance. He also enjoyed staying in the investigation game and Shaw sometimes called Pepper for an assist. He now asked for the name of somebody involved in the investigation, either in the Pierce County Public Safety Office or the local FBI field office.

A reward seeker’s relationship with the police is complicated. Law enforcers have no problems with tip lines, like Crimewatch, whose purpose is to gather information from those who have personal knowledge of an incident. Cops are, however, reluctant to give much assistance to an active investigator like Shaw. Reward seekers, as opposed to tipsters, have been known to muddy up cases, occasionally even resulting in a suspect’s escape when police were close to an arrest. Seekers also sometimes end up injured or dead, which complicate a cop’s life to no end.

Still, Pepper’s name carried some weight and so did his assurance that Shaw wouldn’t get underfoot and could even possibly prove helpful. The Pierce County detective running the case, Chad Johnson, spent ten minutes filling Shaw in on the details, which Shaw recorded in his notebook. Johnson provided particulars on Adam Harper, supplementing what the young man’s father had said.

When they disconnected, Shaw made another cup of coffee and flipped through the notebook.

Shaw scanned these notes, sat back, closed his eyes, digesting what he’d read, drawing conclusions about the incident and the people involved.

His phone hummed. It was Chad Johnson.

“Detective?”

“We’ve got them, Mr. Shaw.”

Fastest reward job on record. No money. But the good news was that he could now return to his other mission: tracking down his father’s secret.

Echo Ridge...

“Anybody hurt? Did they resist?”

A pause. “Oh, we haven’t apprehended them yet. I mean, we’ve located them. They’re in Adam’s pickup. There was a sighting of it headed north on I-5. Then they turned off on surface roads and were still heading north. Making for Canada, of course. We’ve got a taskforce on the apprehension detail. Ten person.”

The last word stumbled out. Johnson had recently been trained not to use the male gender if possible, Shaw guessed.

“Should get them in the next hour.”

“Good.”

“Sorry about the reward, sir.”

He didn’t sound too sorry, Shaw thought. Maybe the Ecumenical Council and the high-tech wunderkind Ed Jasper were contributing the bulk but the rest of the cash would have to come out of his budget.

Shaw thanked him. He sipped a bit more coffee, then sent a text to Mack McKenzie, his D.C.-based private eye, requesting three items of information. Shortly after, she responded, answering all of them with the level of detail that she was known for.

Shaw read the reply closely and, after scanning a map, fired up the Winnebago’s engine. He pulled out of Harper’s parking lot, surveyed the vehicles nearby — those parked, as well as those in motion — then drove onto the uneven road. He steered east out of Gig Harbor, his GPS directing him to a trailer camp, where he’d park the Winnebago and Uber to a car rental agency to pick up a sedan or SUV. He edged the camper as far over the speed limit as he dared without getting pulled over.

He couldn’t afford any delays. Time was vital.

An hour later Shaw was steering his rental Kia along a mountainous route fifty miles east of Tacoma in the beautiful country approaching Mount Rainier National Park. Winding roads, panoramic views, verdant forest, formations of rock shiny and pitted as wet bone.

He eased out of a climbing switchback and onto a straightaway, a hillside face on his right, and began to accelerate.

Then a moving shadow caught his attention.

The boulder was cartwheeling toward the road directly in front of him.

Seconds to decide.

Swerve left? Swerve right?

4 June 11, 2 p.m., present time

This bullet hit its mark...

A golden eagle, troubled by the sharp crack of the pistol rolling through the valley, lifted off and descended away from the human disturbance in stately urgency.

Colter Shaw glanced down, noting the sizable gunshot hole in the Kia’s right front tire. The car knelt.

Now free from the vehicle, Shaw pushed through the forsythia and watched the shooter walk across the road, dusting away pollen and burrs from his sleeves and jeans.

Fully bearded, Dalton Crowe was two inches taller than Shaw’s six feet even. Broad shoulders, ample chest, both encased in a black and red plaid lumberjack shirt. Camo overalls. His belt was well tooled, and well worn, shiny and unevenly dark. The holster for the long-barreled revolver was cowboy style, brown and glossy and chrome studded.

Each of the men had bestowed scars upon the other, about the same number, the same length, the same depth. The bruises had long fleshed away. The confrontations were not intended to be lethal but simply to derail the other’s success in finding the suspects in reward jobs. In one instance, Crowe wanted to stop Shaw so he could get one hundred percent of the money for an escaped prisoner; Shaw wanted to stop Crowe from gunning down the trapped, unarmed man.

Crowe ambled across the road and looked at the tire. “Hmm.”

“You fired in my direction,” Shaw said. His tone was scolding only; he hadn’t felt himself in much danger. He’d known to a certainty that the rock-tipper and shooter was Crowe and not the suspects, Adam Harper or Erick Young.

For a big man who would look right at home in Hells Angels’ attire, Crowe had an eerily high voice. “Nup, Shaw. None of that. I was saving you from a snake.” He was from Birmingham, Alabama, and came equipped with the accent. “Timber rattler and a damn big one.”

Shaw glanced down. “Don’t see him.”

“Aw, I just fired to scare him off. Which I did, as you can see. I like all of God’s creatures, rattlers included. Sorry about your tire.”

Shaw looked at the boulder, completely blocking the highway.

Crowe didn’t bother to spin a tale about that.

“These boys’re mine, Shaw. Adam and Erick. I’m going to find ’em and I’m going to bring ’em in. I got to Gig Harbor ’fore you did. So, dig yourself out and head on home.”

“How’d you find me?” Shaw asked.

“I’m the best, that’s how.” Crowe slipped his gun away. Shaw wondered if he ever twirled it on his finger like gunslingers do in the movies. Shaw had once seen somebody shoot himself in the armpit doing that. Human stupidity has no bounds.

“You heard my piece. That’s all there is to it. I’ve got a yellow Volkswagen to catch up with.”

Shaw’s brows compressed. “How’d you know they were...” His voice faded, as if he’d slipped up, confirming a fact that Crowe hadn’t known for certain.

“Haw. Now get that tire of yours fixed, call Triple A or man the jack yourself.” Crowe looked around, at the boulder, then back to Shaw. “On these roads, in that breadbox of a car... you could come to real grief. Not from me, of course, saving your ass from rattlers. But somebody aiming at you. I’d hate to see that happen.”

The threat delivered, Crowe turned and plodded up the road, then disappeared into the bushes. A moment later his silver SUV drove onto the road, on the other side of the boulder, and turned away from Shaw and the rock. A hand appeared from the driver’s window of the Bronco. The gesture seemed to be a wave but it might have been ruder.

He called 911, reporting the fallen boulder to the state police. The obstacle was in the middle of a straightaway and could be seen fifty yards away from either direction. Still, Colter Shaw was hardwired to save people from disaster, even if it was their own failings that put them in peril. Someone cruising along while texting might deserve the air bag slap; his or her children did not, however.

Shaw spent a few minutes checking the tires and backing out of the razorish weeds. It took some rocking and some tire spinning but eventually the car rolled onto the road again.

Once on the asphalt, he changed the tire and searched the wheel wells. He found the GPS tracker Crowe had hidden. He clicked the off button and stowed the device in his backpack.

Then he turned around and sped back the way he’d come, the exact opposite of the direction that Dalton Crowe was headed. Shaw checked his map and estimated that he should intercept Erick Young and Adam Harper in less than a half hour.

5

It had taken some effort, and time, but the problem of Dalton Crowe had to be eliminated.

The man’s assessment of his own skill — “I’m the best” — was just plain wrong. Crowe was a functional, not talented, tracker, and he was just plain lousy at surveillance. Shaw knew Crowe had been dogging him from the moment he’d arrived in Gig Harbor. He’d noted the silver SUV as soon as he’d arrived at the Youngs’, parked at the curb several doors away, in front of a house with a FORECLOSURE SALE sign in the lawn. Not necessarily suspicious. He merely tucked the observation away.

When he’d left, he’d pulled past the SUV and seen the driver bending toward the glove compartment, as if avoiding being seen. Then the Bronco had pulled away from the curb and followed the Winnebago all the way to Adam’s father’s chandler business on the waterfront.

It was obviously Dalton Crowe, who would have been staking out the Young residence since he’d arrived in the harbor town on the chance that the boy, known to be still in the area, would return.

At that point, Shaw’s mission had doubled: get rid of Crowe, then find Adam and Erick.

Shaw had come up with a plan to do both.

The Public Safety Office believed the young men were headed north from Tacoma, presumably en route to Canada, given the currency exchange intelligence.

Shaw was eighty percent certain, however, that Adam and Erick were not in the red pickup.

Anticipating the suspects’ most logical plan, Shaw had sent the email to Mack. The questions he’d posed were:

The reply had been: the neighborhood of Manitou, a Western Express bus terminal on Evans Street, and any number of places, though there was a concentration of junkyard/chop shops on the south side of Seattle.

Shaw believed that they’d donned costumes and exchanged U.S. dollars for Canadian to trick investigators into thinking their destination was north. That alone wasn’t enough, though. They had to keep the law’s focus on Adam’s truck. Since Erick worked with troubled youths, he was likely familiar with the underworld of Pierce County. He would have known where to leave the pickup — with the keys “hidden” under the front seat or in a wheel well — where it would quickly be perped by some bangers and driven to south Seattle for butchering into parts.

Meanwhile, Adam and Erick had walked a few blocks to the bus station on Evans Street, bought tickets and left town.

After leaving Harper’s seaside company, Shaw had driven the Winnebago to a campground east of Tacoma, and parked it there. He’d Ubered to a nearby car rental agency and gotten the Kia, which he’d then driven into the Manitou neighborhood, with Crowe clumsily tailing all the way.

Shaw had parked in front of the Hermanos Alverez bodega. He had gone inside the store, and for a twenty-dollar bribe and several bags of groceries he didn’t need, bought the right to slip out the back door.

From there, to the bus station, at which the ante increased significantly, and it cost him five hundred dollars to learn the destination of the tickets the two boys had bought — a little town called Hope’s Corner, eighty miles southeast of Tacoma, near Mount Rainier National Park.

This fact was good news. They were both alive.

He’d returned to the car, out the bodega’s front door, dumped the groceries in the trunk. When he pulled into traffic, Crowe’s SUV was not far behind. It had been while the car was parked in front of the store that Crowe had clamped on the tracker.

Then the fun began.

Shaw had driven a circuitous route in the general direction of Hope’s Corner, though he had stopped every fifteen miles or so, buying water or coffee or snacks or yet another unnecessary road map. And always asking the clerks and customers the same question.

“Say, you noticed a yellow Volkswagen bug coming through here? It’s my two buddies. We were going fishing at Wuikinuxv Falls but there’s been a change of plans and I can’t reach ’em. Those boys’re just not picking up their phones.”

The point of this exercise was to misdirect Crowe as to the suspects’ means of transport and their destination. Now, having used the boulder to clear the field for himself, the man was speeding in pursuit of a gaudy, nonexistent car, to a town whose name was hard to pronounce and harder yet to spell... and that lay in the exact opposite direction of Hope’s Corner, where the suspects really were.

Colter Shaw now rolled past the Hope’s Corner WELCOME TO sign and surveyed the burg. The downtown embraced a diner, a mechanic’s garage, a general store and two gas stations, one of which was also a bus way station; it would be there that the suspects disembarked.

The tiny place also featured an overlook from which you got a grand view of Mount Rainier, the tallest peak in the state. It was designated a Decade Volcano, one of the most hazardous in the world. Shaw knew this because he and Tom Pepper had once considered climbing. But while the threat of eruption wasn’t a deterrent, the surfaces were. They were largely ice and snow, and that made for a specialized technique that didn’t interest them much.

Shaw steered the Kia into the pump area of the larger gas station, refueled and examined the damage to the car from his boulder-avoiding plunge. Cosmetic only. Expensive, of course. But Shaw wasn’t concerned; he always bought the loss/damage insurance. When finished at the pump, he drove the car into a shaded spot at the side of the general store. Climbing out, he went to the trunk, opened it and, after looking round and seeing no humans or security cameras, removed his concealed carry weapon — a single-stack Glock 42, the .380 caliber, in a Blackhawk holster. He chambered a round and fitted the holster inside his right waistband, making sure the securing hook snugly held his belt; the fastest draw in the world is pretty useless if the holster comes along for the ride.

Now, to determine where exactly were the suspects.

Shaw considered the timing. The bus was scheduled to arrive thirty minutes ago. Had they hiked out from Hope’s Corner? Had they met some friends near here?

Neither Adam nor Erick appeared to be neo-Nazi but what if they were operating undercover? After all, the defamatory and racist graffiti had persisted in Pierce County for more than a year, and no one had been caught. Now that they’d been identified and were in the open maybe they’d come here. Washington State had an unfortunate history of hate groups and white supremacist organizations, Shaw knew from several reward-seeking jobs on the West Coast. There were nearly two dozen active extremist groups in the state, including two KKK chapters.

From the overlook, Shaw gazed at the massive expanse that could easily hide a militia compound.

Or had the boys simply panicked after the shooting and fled as far as their money would take them, or to the home of a friend who’d shelter them — a friend that no one back home knew about?

So, Shaw told himself, assess.

The odds that they had arrived, disembarked and hiked out into the wilderness? Fifteen percent. This territory would require some serious gear and a level of fitness and knowledge of the outdoors that the young men didn’t seem to have.

The likelihood that they were planning to meet somebody to drive them elsewhere? Forty percent.

Hitching down one of the crossroads that went east and west out of Hope’s Corner? Possible, though a challenge; there was little traffic on either road. He gave it twenty percent.

Sheltering with a friend? Fifteen percent.

There was another option as well. Were they still here, in Hope’s Corner?

Shaw had donned his brown sport jacket. To make sure his concealed stayed concealed, though, he took the added step of untucking his shirt. His pistol permit was valid in the state but he didn’t need the attention that would ensue if someone spotted the grip of his weapon.

He began a stroll through the town, eyes scanning for the two.

They weren’t in either gas station.

The general store was next. He stepped onto the low, saggy wooden porch and pushed inside, hand low, near the gun. No Erick, no Adam.

He entered the restroom, which he had to use anyway; they weren’t there.

The establishment was a combination store and restaurant, where a half-dozen diners sat at a chipped linoleum counter. He snagged a can of Fix-a-Flat, being spare-less now, and perched on a stool to order a turkey sandwich and a large coffee to go. When the order was up he took the bag and the can to the register. He handed the check to the middle-aged man in a beige polyester shirt embroidered with a pattern of chains.

Shaw set down a hundred dollar bill.

The man grimaced. “Sorry, mister, I can’t change that.”

“I don’t want change.”

Eyes cautious now.

“The son of a friend of mine’s run off. I’m helping find him. He was with another guy. Think he might’ve come in on that bus from Tacoma.”

One of the reasons Shaw shaved before a job, polished his shoes and dressed in a sport coat and pressed shirt was to give the impression of legitimacy. The sort who really would help a friend find a boy. He shot the man another stage smile.

“Here’s his picture.” He displayed a photo of Erick. The boy was in his football uniform.

Shaw wondered if the clerk watched the news from Tacoma and had heard of the shooting at the church. Apparently not. He asked only, “What’s he play?”

“He’s a receiver,” Shaw vamped. “Can catch a pass one handed.”

“No.”

“He can.”

“Why’d he run off?”

Shaw shrugged. “Being a kid.”

The bill vanished into the man’s pocket. “Yeah, they were here, thirty minutes ago. Bought some food and water. Bought a disposable phone too. And a prepaid card for the minutes.”

“You overhear where they were going?”

“No.”

“Where could they get from here on foot?”

A who-knows shrug. “There’re a dozen cabins in the foothills.” Another shrug meant: good luck finding them.

“Any towns in walking distance?”

“Depends on who’s walking. It’s a trek but there’s one they could make in a day. Snoqualmie Gap. Used to be called Clark’s Gap. After Lewis and Clark. But got itself changed to Snoqualmie. That’s a word, Indian word. Means ‘fierce tribe.’ Some folks were pissed off they changed it. You can go too far, this PC crap.” He’d looked Shaw over, perhaps registering “Caucasian” and guessing it was okay to offer the comment — not knowing Shaw did in fact have some Native American in him. “Funny thing is, don’t make no difference either way.”

Shaw didn’t understand. He shook his head.

“Lewis and Clark never got here, and the Snoqualmie River’s nowhere near either. So might as well call it New York, Los Angeles or Podunk. Maybe those boys were headed there.” He frowned briefly. “You know, there’s this place in the mountains outside of it — Snoqualmie Gap. Some people ask for directions.”

“Place?”

“This retreat.”

“Separatist thing? Neo-Nazis?”

“Don’t think so. More, some New Age bullshit. Hippies. You’re too young.”

Shaw had been born in the Bay Area long after flower children and the Summer of Love, 1967. But he knew about hippies.

He looked at a map on the wall. He saw Snoqualmie Gap, a small town, about ten miles from Hope’s Corner. Quite a hike in the mountainous terrain.

“Where’s the retreat?”

The clerk squinted. “About there, I guess.” Tapping a valley in the mountains beside a large lake. Shaw estimated it was six or seven miles from Snoqualmie Gap, accessed via a state route and then the narrow and eerily named Harbinger Road.

Walking, it would take them three to four hours to get to Snoqualmie, and another three to get to the retreat, if that’s where they were headed.

“I didn’t see much traffic on the way here. Going that way, to Snoqualmie, could they hitch a ride?”

“Somebody could. They couldn’t.”

“Why’s that?”

“That guy with your friend’s son? I wouldn’t pick him up on a dare. Something about his eyes.”

Shaw thanked the man and started for the door.

“Hey, mister?”

He turned.

The clerk was frowning. “You forgot to pay your bill.” He looked at the check and said, “That’s eleven twenty-eight you owe me.”

6

In ten minutes Colter Shaw’s job was over.

He found Adam Harper and Erick Young on Old Mill Road, about two miles from Hope’s Corner and still a ways to go to Snoqualmie Gap.

Shaw stopped on a narrow shoulder and looked down, to his left. Here the road was made up of switchbacks because of the dizzyingly steep grade. It descended to a valley in which a river glistened, blue and silver. On the other side, the road rose into the hills once more.

The young men were fifty feet below Shaw. They were trudging along like college kids on a weekend hike. Each had a backpack. Adam was holding a large refillable water bottle. Erick pointed to the steep uphill climb they’d have once they crossed the bridge. Adam said something and Erick nodded.

Strolling, not a care in the world.

Shaw carefully examined them; he couldn’t see the profile of a pistol, or a protruding grip, in the pockets of either.

Erick dug into his backpack pocket and pulled out a plastic bag. Jerky, Shaw believed. He ate a piece and offered some to Adam, who declined with a shake of his head. The suspects came to the end of the straight portion of the switchback and followed the road, curving to the left. Shaw watched them emerge. They got halfway along this stretch of road and stopped where it swelled with a broad shoulder on a cliff. It was a substantial drop; boulders had been placed here to serve as guardrails. The two sat down on one of these, the size of a park bench. Erick ate more jerky. Adam made a phone call.

Shaw examined his Rand McNally map and discovered that they were in Hammond County. He placed a call to the sheriff’s office. He was connected to the sheriff himself, a man named Welles, and explained about the crime in Pierce County and told him that he’d just found the two suspects. The sheriff hesitated a moment, taking in the information, then asked for Shaw’s location.

“I’ll be at the intersection of State Route Sixty-four and Old Mill Road.”

“Okay, sir. Let me check this out and we’ll be there soon.”

Shaw turned the Kia around and drove back up Old Mill to the intersection, about a half-mile away. He preferred to meet the law enforcers in a place separate from Erick and Adam’s actual location. He didn’t know the procedures — or style — of the deputies here and didn’t want them blustering up, sirens wailing, acting all tough cop. That might spook the pair into shooting... or taking to the brush. If that happened it would be a true chore to track them, especially if they split up. And, equally worrying, this was dangerous territory: steep cliffs, hazardous slopes, torrential rapids. The river below was beautiful. Shaw knew it would be cold as January metal and guessed the speed of the current was twenty miles per hour.

Shaw parked where Old Mill and the state route met and soon three official vehicles and one private — a mud-stained SUV — arrived. Shaw and the men climbed out. Five of them. They varied from youthful twenties to middle age. Welles, the sheriff, was around fifty, rotund. Blond hair and — curiously, given the shade of the strands on his head — his eyes were brown as aged leather.

All wore gray uniforms, except the tallest, a lean and bony bearded man in green-and-black camo, his dark tan baseball cap sitting backward on his head. He radiated military and, at early forties, he might’ve recently retired. You serve twenty and you’re out. A faded name tag sewn onto his jacket was crooked, cut from one uniform and stitched onto his hunting garb. DODD, J. The SUV was his. He appeared to be civilian, though Shaw noted a blue light affixed to the Pathfinder’s dashboard. While the others gazed at Shaw and his sport coat and city shoes with curiosity, Dodd’s gaze was expressionless.

Welles approached. A paw of a hand embraced Shaw’s. “You BEA?”

“No.” Shaw had never considered being a bond enforcement agent, whose days were usually spent tracking down bail-jumping druggies — men, usually, who were stupid enough to hide out at their parents’ or girlfriend’s bungalow.

He explained about the reward.

This raised an eyebrow or two.

He expected the next question to be “How much?” But that query wasn’t forthcoming. Instead, one of the deputies asked, “You don’t bring ’em in yourself? Why call us?” A solid, jowly man, Welles had a fitting voice, like distant thunder.

“I don’t apprehend. I only find the whereabouts. The rest is up to the person or agency offering the reward, or local law enforcement.”

The sheriff said, “My, that sounds formal.”

“Say, Sheriff, we get any?” one of the younger deputies asked.

“Any what?”

“Of that reward?”

“Tell me, Bo: you didn’t go and find anybody, did you?”

“Just asking.”

“Now, now.” To Shaw, Welles asked, “You armed, sir?”

“I am. I’ll show you my ticket.” He slowly extracted his wallet and displayed a Utah concealed carry permit, which was recognized in Washington State.

“Do me a favor and keep your piece tucked away, will you?”

“Sure. My job’s pretty much done here.”

Another deputy: “You tracked ’em all the way here from Gig Harbor?”

“I did.”

Welles said, “I checked with the Pierce County public safety chief. He confirmed they’re fugitives and there’s a reward. He didn’t know about you.”

“I was in touch with a detective there, not the sheriff. Chad Johnson.”

“He told me these boys shot up a man of God, burned a church.”

“Partly true. There was a burning cross, and they defaced the place. Some graffiti. No fire damage to the building itself. A janitor and a lay preacher were wounded.”

“They skinheads or Nazis or what?”

“They don’t seem to be. The main suspect’s Adam Harper, late twenties. I can’t piece together Erick’s role. He’s only twenty.”

“Whatever,” Sheriff Welles muttered, waving aside one or two of the persistent mosquitos, “the warrants’re for both of them.”

“That’s correct.”

“Any trouble from ’em on the way here?”

“None that I saw or heard about.”

“Why are they headed this way?”

“No idea. Maybe meeting some friends. And I heard there’s a retreat near Snoqualmie Gap. Maybe they were headed there.”

Welles considered this. “Yeah, there is that place. I don’t know much about it. Different county, not our watch. Anybody?”

None of his officers was familiar.

Welles said, “If it’s a church thing, they might be planning to shoot it up too.”

A deputy said, “Or Thompsonville. A couple of churches there. Long walk, but they could hitch.”

Welles looked pensive. “Thompsonville. Yeah. That’d be a target for sure.” He clicked his tongue. “Men who disrespect Christ? That’s baked into the bone. They have mischief in mind, I guarantee it. All right, we’ll take over from here, Mr. Shaw. You said they’re armed.”

“Have to assume so. It’s a .38 Police Special.”

“Mule kicker,” somebody said.

“Where can we find them?” Welles asked.

“Last I saw they were taking a break. They were headed down into a valley about two klicks from here.”

“A valley?”

Shaw noted that the sheriff’s eyes met Dodd’s, whose head dipped a fraction of an inch.

Shaw said, “You have a map, I can point it out.”

Welles muttered to a deputy nearby, the youngest, “Glove compartment, kid.”

With a brisk nod the officer scurried to the sheriff’s squad car and disappeared inside. He returned with a map, handing it to Welles, who unfurled the sheet on the nearest car hood, underneath which the engine ticked as it cooled.

A lover and collector of maps, Shaw studied this one carefully. The crisp, unstained paper explained that the sheriff and probably the rest of the deputies didn’t get out here much. This rugged terrain was within the county they oversaw but much of the land was state park. Shaw supposed that the rangers were the main law enforcers. There was also a national forest around here, with boundaries that ran in and out of the county’s turf.

Looking down at the map, he tapped a site. “They were there, having some water and food. I don’t know how long they were going to rest, though even if they started hiking again right away after I left, they couldn’t be more than a half mile north.” Another tap. “That’d put them about here, at the farthest.”

Welles turned toward his men. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. They’re moving north. I want somebody to circle around to Abbott Ford, fast, get ahead of them and come back south. TJ and B., you do that.”

“Sure, Sheriff.”

“Me and Jimmy’ll go north.”

One deputy said enthusiastically, “So we catch ’em in a pincer movement.”

Which wasn’t exactly what the sheriff was describing.

“Exactly.”

The sheriff turned to gaunt, unexpressive Dodd. “And you get yourself up Scatterback. On the ridge. Get a good position. To cover us.”

“K.” The lean, laconic Dodd asked Shaw, “They have long guns?”

“No.”

Dodd gave a nod.

Welles folded the map. “’Preciate your help, Mr. Shaw. You’ve earned every penny of that reward.” A faint laugh. “Though easy for me to say; I’m not the one writing the check.” The smile faded. He looked over the deputies. “Gentlemen, I am serious now. We’ve gotta stop ’em. The chief in Tacoma told me victims at the church there were black, true, but they were still children of God. Now, let’s get to it.”

Shaw returned to the Kia. He heard a whisper of “Reward.” And some chuckles. As he sat in the driver’s seat he watched the sheriff and the uniformed deputies walk to their cars, which soon sped off, leaving a haze of mustard-colored dust behind them.

Dodd remained. The man loped to his personal SUV, lifted the tailgate and uncased a big-bore Winchester rifle, fitted with a Maven telescopic sight — an expensive one, probably equal to one of the deputy’s paychecks. He opened a metal ammunition box and lifted out a package of bullets. Big ones, 308. Sniper rounds.

The wiry, unsmiling man began loading the magazine. His eyes, which had been dead until now, brightened considerably as he clicked each lengthy, lethal slug home.

7

As Shaw sped back down Old Mill Road to the place he’d left Erick and Adam he thought:

Never underestimate the power, for good and bad, of religion.

This was not one of his father’s rules; Shaw had come up with it himself over a decade of reward-seeking. (He had significantly supplemented the Never rulebook since Ashton Shaw’s death, some years ago.)

He understood what God’s protector, Sheriff J. Welles, had in mind. The sheriff’s and one other car would block the road south, while the third would do the same from the north, boxing Adam and Erick in. Dodd, on high ground, would understand that his instruction to “cover us” really meant “shoot to kill.”

Maybe Adam would lift his hand in surprise at the officers’ presence.

And Dodd would drop him with one of the big rounds.

“I observed a threat to the officers on the ground and I acted accordingly.”

And Erick?

He’d instinctively turn to the wounded Adam.

Another shot.

“I observed the second suspect reaching for the weapon of the deceased individual and I was concerned that he would use lethal force against the officers who were present.”

And there would be no body cams or witnesses to give a different story.

Having seen the look that passed between Dodd and Welles and guessing what they had in mind, Shaw had tapped a spot on the map miles from the shoulder on Old Mill Road where the two young men actually were.

What exactly he would do when he found Erick and Adam, he couldn’t yet say. But he knew he had to keep them out of the reach of Welles and his Christian soldiers.

He now piloted the Kia back to the hill where he’d parked when he spotted the two for the first time. Shaw backed off the road into thick, stalky growths of pine and sedge and tangled brush. The vehicle was hardly an SUV but it did have four-wheel drive and if he kept it on packed earth he was confident it wouldn’t get stuck.

Leaving his jacket in the car, he climbed out and rearranged brush to obscure the vehicle yet more, then he walked to the road’s edge, looking down the steep, grassy slope to the shoulder where the boys sat, about sixty feet below. Now, he tucked his shirt in, exposing the Glock on his hip, facilitating a fast draw.

He studied Erick and Adam. They still were sitting on the roadside boulder, facing the road and the hill beside it, not the spectacular view behind them: the rocky valley and gushing river at the bottom of the ten-story cliff. When Adam turned, Shaw could see that, yes, he did have the pistol; sitting had pushed the grip slightly out of the pocket of the close-fitting jeans. This was good for Shaw. Adam’s Smith & Wesson featured a hammer, which was notorious for catching when one drew it quickly.

The suspects were speaking to each other. Then conversation paused at the sound of a default ringtone. Adam pulled out the mobile to take the call. He looked around, orienting himself and noting a road that branched off Old Mill. Shaw’s impression was that the boys were expecting someone driving from that direction. The Rand McNally was in the car but he called up the GPS map on his phone. The road was Highland Bypass: narrow but a good shortcut to Snoqualmie Gap.

This added a complication. Who was coming to meet the suspects? How many were there? If Shaw’s undercover theory was right, might they be armed extremists?

How long until they arrived?

And when would Welles and his deputies assume the young men had slipped out of their trap — or figure that Shaw had lied for one reason or another? A half hour tops, he guessed.

No time to waste. He’d have to get to the young men, disarm Adam, and zip-tie their hands. Then, into the Kia and get the hell out of Hammond County.

I deal in information, not citizen’s arrests...

Not this time.

Picking his footsteps carefully, Shaw worked his way down the hill to the road on whose wide shoulder the two sat. From behind a tree, he assessed the scene. To approach them straight on, either from across the road or from the asphalt itself, he’d have to cover an unprotected field of fire. He’d be some distance away when he’d call for them to surrender, which might encourage Adam to draw and shoot. He was probably a better shot than Adam but that wasn’t certain, and in any event the last thing Shaw wanted was a firefight.

Odds of success with that option: thirty percent. Not good enough.

Stay under cover and just call for them to surrender?

No, they’d shoot or run, probably both. The cops would hear the gunfire and move in, guns ready. Dodd would move to high ground and target them with his heavy weapon.

That tactic had only ten percent success rate.

Take them by surprise, from behind?

Yes, the best option.

Of course, that approach carried a complication of its own: “behind” was essentially a cliff face a hundred feet above the rocky valley floor.

When the boys were looking away, Shaw, crouching, hurried across the road and peered over the edge. The face was not a smooth sheet of vertical rock. It cantilevered downward at a forty-five- or fifty-degree angle to the rocky floor below. There were ledges and shelves and outcroppings along the way.

Shaw recalled a book he’d read as a boy about warring Native American tribes. Flinging enemies from cliffs was a popular way for tribal people in mountainous regions to dispatch their victims. Let gravity do the work. Saves arrows and effort. The human body can withstand an impact of about thirty-five to forty miles an hour if the surface you land on has some give. You achieve that speed in about ten to twelve yards of free fall. Farther than that, combined with a rock landing, you’ve pretty much had it.

Never tense up in a fall.

Ashton would remind the children of this rule before he had them jump from eight-foot-high ledges onto the ground. You would have far less damage from impact if you went rag-doll limp. Shaw had been on a reward assignment one time when a kidnapper tried to escape from him by leaping from one roof to another. He missed and fell thirty feet to the grass. The man was uninjured, except for a broken pinkie. The EMS tech confirmed that a likely reason for this was his completely relaxed state — thanks to half a bottle of vodka.

If Shaw lost footing, he would tumble the hundred-foot length of the cliff face. Possibly fatal but more likely, he foresaw, broken bones. The fact was he would prefer death to a cracked back or neck — and being forced to live out his life the opposite of itinerate: chairbound.

He would go over the side, execute a free solo descent for about ten feet, then climb sideways and ascend behind them. He’d move in fast, disarm Adam and have them zip-tie each other’s wrists.

If he wasn’t heard, wasn’t spotted.

And if he didn’t fall.

He had no chalk or climbing shoes. He knew how to climb barefoot but he needed to keep the Eccos on. If it came to a pursuit on the gravel-strewn road, he wanted the protection.

He estimated this approach to offer a seventy-five percent success rate. Importantly, of course, the twenty-five percent failure possibility incorporated more than simply not collaring the boys; it embraced a debilitating if not lethal tumble to the valley floor.

But no other choices.

So get to it.

Now.

8

Shaw looked down, studying the face he would have to negotiate to come up behind Adam and Erick.

It was what climbers loved: craggy and cracked. He now did what all good climbers do first: planned his route. He lay on his belly and backed toward the edge, his feet finding outcroppings he’d noted before and memorized. Descending from the top of a cliff was always more difficult than ascending; you can’t brush or blow off the dirt covering hand- and footholds. Without chalk on your hands, even a faint dusting of soil can be deadly. Shaw usually rappelled to the ground, rather than climbing.

He started down. Farther, farther, his feet searching for places to support his weight. His hands gripping rocks and branches to hold him in case his shoes slipped. Finally he was far enough over he could look down, which was a huge relief. Now, thanks to rocky protuberances, two- to three-inch cracks and a conveniently placed — and sturdy — branch, he descended the eight feet to the ledge.

Then he moved sideways slowly to the spot just below where he estimated the suspects to be. The ledge angled downward and the boulder on which they sat was at this point about twenty feet above him. He looked up and plotted his climb. He reached up and brushed soil from a handhold, then gripped and pulled himself up. He kept his hip against the rock, which brings the shoulder close too, which in turn meant that his body stayed vertical — the best way to climb. He was edging with his feet, and using cracks into which he’d insert his hands and spread his fingers and palms. Then he’d bend a knee, find a foothold and straighten his leg to move up a foot or so at a time.

Not too fast. Fast is noise. Fast is mistakes. Fast is the black muzzle of a gun awaiting you at the crest.

He came to a smooth portion of the face that was about five feet square. On a normal climb, he would “smear” — use the soles of his shoes for traction by keeping the heel down and pushing the rubber hard against the face. You need good handholds for this, and while there were adequate ones here, he didn’t trust the street shoes for the maneuver. He executed a side pull to go around the smooth portion, then up a rough slab with plenty of handholds, then he did another side pull, in the other direction, to put him back on vertical course.

Now he was three feet below the crest. He rested for a moment and controlled his breathing, preparing himself for the contortion that was coming next: a mantle — the maneuver climbers use to top out at the summit. He gripped a crack with his left hand, brought his left foot then right up to a nub nearly even with his elbow. His right hand aiming for an outcropping near the top, he extended both legs from the crouching pose and rose to the edge, grabbing the rock he’d sought.

Shaw slowly lifted his head. He half-expected to find Adam aiming at him.

No, the suspects were ten feet away, still facing in the other direction.

Adam: “I don’t know. Probably twenty minutes. They weren’t sure.”

“My parents’re going to be worried.”

“I keep telling you: this’ll be worth it.”

“I just wish I could get them a message.”

“Not after that shit at the church.”

Shaw’s left hand found a secure oak sapling and he pulled himself to the surface, breathing hard... while trying to do so silently. This was not easy.

He crouched, tapped the Glock with his hand to remind himself exactly where it was holstered. He then moved toward them, glancing back and forth from Adam’s hands to the ground in front of himself, aiming for the most quiet places to step.

Nine feet, eight, seven. Shaw paused as the boys looked up the road.

Were the neo-Nazis approaching?

Or Welles and his band?

Don’t worry about it now.

Just like he’d planned the ascent, he planned the takedown.

And executed it.

Keeping his Glock in the holster, he came up behind Adam and in a fast, firm gesture gripped the stubby revolver, pushing downward first so that the hammer wouldn’t catch and pulling it free.

“The fuck!” Adam rose and turned. Before he could even draw back to slug the intruder, Shaw’s fist slammed into his gut. The young man grunted and dropped to his knees, cradling his belly.

Shaw pocketed the Smittie and drew his Glock, aiming toward, though not at, Erick.

“No, man, please... No!” His eyes were wide. “Who—”

“The fuck,” Adam repeated. “I’m going to puke.”

“Then do it and get it over with. We don’t have any time. You’re both in danger.”

“You hit me.”

Erick whispering, “Who are you? What’s—”

From his back pocket, Shaw handed Erick two of the zip ties he always carried with him. “On his wrists, hands in front. Then do your own. Now.”

Wide eyed, Erick took the off-white nylon strips. He glanced at them, figuring how they worked.

Adam grunted, “You’re a cop, you gotta identify yourself. Otherwise an arrest isn’t legal.”

“That’s not true, and I’m not a cop.” He said to Erick, “I’m here because of your parents.”

“Mom, Dad?”

He pointed at the zip ties. “Now. I’m not going to tell you again. There’re men nearby who want you dead. I can save you. Do it.”

Erick eyed Adam, who rose slowly. He said nothing but looked both sick and disgusted.

“You have to—”

“The wrists. Now!”

Erick zip-tied Adam and then held his own hands out to Shaw.

“No, do it yourself.”

He did, and Shaw gave a tightening tug. Their hands secured in front of their bodies wasn’t as secure but it was a safer way for them to climb to the Kia, which was fifty feet above them on the steep hill.

Adam said in a harsh, desperate voice, “Please, man. Let us go. You have to! This is all fucked up. You don’t understand.”

“We’ll talk later. Now, move!” Shaw gestured them along the road. “We have to get up that hill.”

The three of them broke into a jog, Shaw ready to grab or trip either of them if they tried an escape.

Erick whispered, “My parents?”

“They offered a reward to find you.”

This seemed to bewilder him.

“I couldn’t call them. The police would be tapping their phones.” A nod toward Adam, who was apparently the source of this warning.

“I’m parked on top of that hill.” Shaw gestured. “We have to get up there now.”

“Who wants to hurt us?” Erick asked.

“Local deputies. I thought they’d arrest you and hold you until detectives got here from Tacoma. But I’m pretty sure they want to kill you instead.”

“Why?”

“Later. On the drive.” They were almost to the spot where they could start the climb to Shaw’s car.

He said, “I saw you on your phone. You were calling somebody to meet you here. Who?”

“Nobody.”

The young man was lying — a conclusion that was obvious both from his tone and from his glance at Highland Bypass, the road from which presumably the “nobody” would soon emerge to meet the boys.

Shaw glanced at Erick, who said only, “I... Nobody.”

Didn’t matter, Shaw supposed, as long as they were out of the area in the next few minutes.

At the shallowest portion of the hill, where Shaw had walked down from his car, he had them stop. He pointed. “Up there. Climb slowly. The grass can be slick.”

Erick looked up and began to climb, his palms ahead of him gripping large clumps of grass and plant stalks to pull himself forward. He slipped and Shaw climbed up a few yards to help him to his feet.

Shaw glanced at Adam. “You. Now.”

The young man was looking around him. Shaw wondered if he was going to sprint down the road, and he tensed and readied himself to pursue.

“Hey, dude!” Adam called out. Erick looked down at him. “Remember what I told you. Your brother and everything? It’ll be all right. I promise.” A gentle smile crossed his face. He was muttering some words. One was “Goodbye” — and then something else that Shaw couldn’t hear.

He started sprinting away — but not up the road. He sped directly toward the cliff’s edge.

“Adam! No!”

Erick cried, “Hey, man, what’re you doing?”

Shaw ran after him.

Adam didn’t hesitate. He reached the cliff at full speed and launched himself into the air.

Breathing hard from the run and the shock, Shaw stopped just shy of the edge and watched the young man spiral to his death.

9

Sheriff Welles’s car eased to a stop on the shoulder of Old Mill, near the boulder the suspects had been sitting on.

A hundred feet below, Adam’s body was lying facedown, utterly broken, one leg twisted at a horrible angle. Blood pooled and glistened brightly in the sun, mocking the nearby river.

The sheriff climbed out of his sedan. The passenger door opened as well, as another man got out. It was Dodd, the sniper. His face was just as emotionless as before. Or was it? Did he register just a hint of disappointment that he hadn’t had a chance to shoot any heretics?

Both men hitched their belts simultaneously, as if it were procedure to do so upon exiting an official vehicle in Hammond County. They walked toward Shaw, the sheriff’s shoes scraping on the asphalt. Dodd wore rubber-soled hunting boots; his transit was silent.

When they stopped they too turned their gazes to the valley floor far below. The other deputies were there, near the bridge over the speedy river. Shaw would have thought they might cover Adam’s corpse. But no. Then he realized: Why bother? No passersby to shock. A blanket would also interfere with the selfies. He felt a wave of disgust, watching them click photos.

What the hell had happened? Killing himself? Adam must’ve understood that he’d get a fair trial back in Pierce County. Also, he might have hoped for a chance to escape from Shaw, given that he was only in wrist restraints and Shaw’s transport wasn’t a paddy wagon but a Kia sedan.

Why just give up and leap so casually to the flinty ground below?

Shaw was furious with himself. He knew that Adam was unstable. He should have kept the man closer to him, though he’d hardly expected his lightning-fast sprint to the cliff’s edge.

Welles said, “So. Guess they weren’t where you sent us.”

When would the man ask why Shaw had zip-tied the prisoners and had taken custody when he’d told them specifically he wasn’t here to apprehend? He wondered if he himself would see the inside of the Hammond County lockup.

Dodd asked, “Where’s the other one?”

“After Adam jumped I went back for Erick but he was gone.” Shaw pointed to a trail that led into the woods. “Went down there.”

“You zip-tie him too?” Welles asked.

“Yes.”

The sheriff was looking over the shoulder and the cliff. “He jumped, did he?”

“That’s right.”

“Not an accident, you sure?”

“No. We weren’t near the edge. He had to run for it. I have no idea why.”

“Where’s the weapon?”

“It wasn’t on him when I found them,” Shaw lied.

All three men gazed downward for a moment more, then Welles looked in the direction Shaw had pointed, the trail down which he’d said Erick had escaped. The sheriff asked, “You’re certain he went that way.”

Meaning: You lying to us again?

“Positive.”

The sheriff seemed to believe him. “Okay.” He pulled a walkie-talkie off his belt. “Jimmy?”

Clatter. “Sheriff.”

“You and somebody, head over to Morgan Road. The second boy’s probably gonna show up there, a half hour or so. He’s on the logging trail. He’s in zips.”

“His feet?”

“Of course not his feet. What’s he doing, hopping like the Easter Bunny?”

“Sure, Sheriff. Roger that.”

Welles slipped the unit back onto his service belt. “We’ll track him down. No hurry. Even if he gets scared and hides, don’t suppose a punk like that, from Gig Harbor, knows the lay of the land here. He’ll get hungry and break for the road, sooner or later. We’ll get him.”

Welles added in a low voice, “You sure pulled one over on us, Mr. Shaw.”

Here it comes.

Welles gave a wry smile. “But don’t you worry, sir. We’ll back you up.”

Dodd nodded and offered a semblance of smile. Shaw could tell it was an alien expression for him.

Welles stuck his hand out.

Mystified, Shaw gripped the lawman’s palm.

“I’m proud of you, sir,” Dodd said.

“I’m sorry?”

“Oh, I know, you have to play it that way.” Welles gave a knowing grin. “I was thinking, at first, gotta say, I thought you were trying to send us in the wrong direction so you could snag those boys and get ’em to a do-gooding liberal lawyer.”

“Fuck them,” Dodd muttered.

Welles’s voice was now dropping in decibels even further, as if spies, or reporters, lurked. “I mean, you’re a sharp one. Calling us in the first place and reporting them boys here, and then sending us off.” He snapped his finger. “You made it all seem on the up-and-up.”

Dodd: “Was smart.”

Welles frowned. “Course, I woulda liked to do the honors myself. But we all got the result we wanted, didn’t we?” A nod toward the cliff’s edge.

Shaw now realized his meaning. The sheriff and his deputies believed that Shaw had planned this out — killing the boy intentionally and making it look like a suicide: wreaking private vengeance upon the preacher shooter.

As disgusted as it made him feel, Shaw gave a smug smile. “Oh, I could hardly say that now, could I?”

“Lips sealed.”

Dodd the sniper said, “Sir, I must say, I do regret not being able to end that sinner’s life. But, if I was the one to handle the task, he never would’ve felt an instant of pain.”

A bullet travels at close to three thousand feet per second.

“But, thanks to you, that sad excuse for a human being had a most unpleasant time between you shoving and him hitting.”

Shaw gave an amused frown. “Oh, you’re thinking I shoved him. I’d never do that. He jumped.”

Welles said, “And that’s what our report’ll show. You’ll still get that reward of yours?”

“I will.”

“God bless and well earned. A shame they both couldn’ta jumped. Like a pact, you know? You see that some.”

Shaw said, “Keep in mind, it was Adam did the shooting. Not Erick.”

“I’ll do that.” Welles shook his head, smiling. “Sharp one you, I was saying. You let that boy run off first ’fore you took care of Adam. Right? No witnesses. Naw, that boy’s hide is safe. But I assure you he will have a most uncomfortable time in our hospitality suite. I promise you that. I mistook you, sir. At first. Dressed up like you were. We get people from not around here who don’t see eye to eye with us. Look down on us some.”

“A shame, that,” Shaw said, fully in his role.

“Thinking you were one of those city sorts, even with that piece of yours.” He nodded toward Shaw’s waistband, where his Glock resided. “But you’re one of us.”

How we hear what we want to hear and see what we want to see.

“Where do you pray?” the sheriff asked.

“First Baptist.” Shaw said, “The wife and I’ve been going there for years.”

He picked that denomination because even if Welles was inclined to check, there’d be thousands of them throughout the country.

And all good churchgoing men need the wife.

Welles nodded to Dodd, then lifted a hand when the deputy didn’t seem to understand. “Oh, right.” He dug into his pocket and handed Shaw a napkin. Inside was the bloody zip tie that had been cut off Adam’s wrists.

Welles said, “Thought it might go better that wasn’t found. A zip-tied man could jump off a cliff but...” His sun-brown face creased more than it already was. “Just better not to raise any questions. The inquest’ll be handled here. Which is good. The coroner’s one of us. Poker buddy too. It’ll go good. Don’t you worry about nothing.”

“Appreciate that.”

Ironic that the sheriff’s and medical examiner’s “cover-up” report would present what actually happened.

He jumped, did he...?

“Okay, we’ll get on finding that other boy. He’ll probably surrender. There are mighty bugs this time of year. And, course, snakes. Now, that is a most unpleasant way to go. Just ask J. P. Gibbons, my predecessor. Spent a bad last month. ’Cept, I guess you can’t ask him anything now.”

“Was he a man of God?” Shaw asked.

“Not enough, it seems. You take care now, Mr. Shaw.”

10

Shaw watched the sheriff’s squad car amble down the road, rocking on the tortured asphalt.

He walked to the edge of the cliff once more and looked down. The sight remained difficult; Adam’s body still lay, uncovered, where it had landed. The deputies lounged about, waiting for the coroner. Two played cards on the hood of a squad car.

Shaw climbed the steep hill and returned to the Kia. He’d just arrived when he heard the sound of an approaching vehicle from the Highland Bypass — the road on which Adam seemed to have been expecting visitors. He’d forgotten about them.

Armed neo-Nazis?

He’d have to call Welles. However unpleasant the man and his crew might be, Shaw wasn’t going to let them be ambushed. From the shoulder here, gunmen would have a turkey shoot.

He checked the Smith & Wesson. In the five-round cylinder were four spent shells. One live slug remained. He slipped the gun back into his pocket. In the Glock, there was one in the chamber and six in the single-stack magazine. Returning to the brush for cover, he pulled out his phone and prepared to call Welles.

A black van pulled into view and braked to a stop on the shoulder, near where Adam and Erick had been sitting. On the side was the mathematical infinity symbol, a logo of some sort. The door opened and two men and two women got out.

Not Nazis.

More like... Amish.

They were wearing identical uniforms — dark slacks or skirts and powder blue shirts and black slip-on shoes. Only one variation in costume: two of the men wore unmarked baseball caps, and one of this pair had orange sunglasses. Most of them seemed to wear necklaces. He expected crucifixes but, no, it was something else, which he couldn’t see from this distance. Shaw supposed they were from the retreat near Snoqualmie Gap, the one that Adam and Erick were apparently headed for.

The driver stepped from the van too. He wasn’t tall but was quite broad and built like a wrestler — though not the lean, zero-body-fat athletes Shaw had competed against in college. He was clearly in charge and looked around impatiently, then barked orders. The others fanned out.

A soft cry. One of the women was staring down the cliff. She’d seen Adam’s body on the road below. She was compactly built, a brunette with dark curly hair. Her hips were broad, though she was otherwise slim. An alluring face. Not a model’s; more like that of a thoughtful, art-house actress. Her eyes were light, though he couldn’t tell the exact shade. Her complexion ruddy.

The driver, a man and the other woman joined her and gazed down at the corpse. Unlike the brunette, they glanced down without any reaction. Utterly nonchalant. The driver actually grimaced, irritated, as if the trip here had been a waste of time. He shooed the others back to the van. The brunette remained where she was, though, wiping tears. The driver strode up to her, taking her roughly by the arm. He was angry and he whispered something, his face dark. She bowed her head submissively, nodded. A reprimand. Why? For displaying emotion at the death of someone? Possibly a friend? She and Adam might have had a connection in the past.

The driver continued to whisper. More nodding. He glanced to the van and when he noted that the others weren’t looking his way, he moved his hand from her arm to her neck, the backs of his fingers. Then around to her throat, where, it seemed, he touched the chain or necklace. The hand then started down her chest. She turned abruptly and walked to the van. He frowned and called after her. Shaw caught the words “...or demerits.”

She paused, looking crestfallen, then continued into the vehicle.

Looking around once more the blunt man called out softly, so as not to draw the cops’ attention. Shaw caught what might have been two names: maybe “Jeremy.” Definitely “Frederick.”

Not far away there came a rustle and a snap of footfalls, as the man in the orange sunglasses trooped down the hill. Apparently he’d stepped away to look for Adam and Erick before learning of Adam’s death. Had he seen Shaw? Maybe. At the van he stopped and looked back. Shaw crouched. The man climbed inside. The engine started and the driver made a careful three-point turn and the curious assembly vanished back the way they had come.

Shaw climbed into the Kia and fired it up. He drove slowly back up Old Mill in the direction he’d come. He passed through Hope’s Corner and then five miles farther until he was out of Hammond County.

There he pulled over onto the shoulder and climbed out. He walked to the rear of the car and used the remote to pop the trunk. He looked down at Erick Young, who was blinking against the bright blue sky.

Shaw said, “Let’s get you out of there.”

11

He was driving fast, though only a few miles over the limit. He didn’t need to be stopped by any associates of Sheriff Welles, even if he had the apparent blessing, one might say, of the man. He was glancing in the rearview mirror; nobody was pursuing so far.

His mind returned to the brunette who, unlike her companions, had reacted with such shock and dismay to Adam’s death.

Who was she and what about the group she was with? Was it the retreat he’d heard about?

Hippies...

Erick, in the passenger seat of the Kia, whispered, “Why would he kill himself?” The young man was staring out the window. His hands were now zip-tied behind him. Shaw was still armed and didn’t want to risk a wave of desperation within the boy driving him to lunge for the weapon. Or to leap from a car in motion.

Saving Erick Young from the deputies had been a gamble, though he could hardly leave him to be found and arrested by Welles.

“Come with me,” Shaw had called to Erick, after Adam had jumped. “Fast.” He’d helped the shocked young man up the hill to his car and opened the trunk. “Get in and stay quiet. You stay with me and I’ll get you back to Gig Harbor. Your parents. Find you a lawyer.”

“Okay,” the young man had replied, his voice a whisper.

With yet another county between them, Shaw began to relax. He checked the navigation system on the car. It would be an hour and a half back to Pierce County. Shaw had plenty of gas in the car and water for them, and they didn’t need food. As for a restroom, it would be brush by the roadside. There was no unsuspicious explanation to a gas station clerk as to why your traveling companion was zip-tied when you carried no badge.

“They were going to hurt us, you said? The police?”

“That’s right. They weren’t interested in just arresting you.”

“Who are you?”

Shaw reminded him about the reward offered by his family, and the one offered by the county.

“Mom and Dad wanted you to catch me?”

“They wanted you brought in safe. Running with an armed fugitive was a stupid idea.”

“It’s just... I had to go with him.”

“Why?”

“I just did.” Looking at the pines zipping past. “He jumped,” Erick repeated. “Why would he do that?”

“Maybe he couldn’t take going to prison.”

“But we didn’t do it.”

The most popular defense in the world. Shaw asked, “Which part?”

“All of it. I mean, yeah, Adam shot those guys. But it was self-defense.”

This caught Shaw’s attention. “Tell me about it.”

“Okay, there’s this cemetery where I go to. To visit... Well, my brother died last year.”

“Mark. I heard. I’m sorry.”

“I kind of go talk to him, you know.” The boy seemed embarrassed. “Sounds stupid but I do.”

An image of Shaw’s own brother, Russell, floated into his thoughts. “No, not stupid at all.”

“I was standing by his grave and I was crying, I guess.” He glanced at Shaw and saw a sympathetic face. “Adam was there too. He walked over to me. He was... I knew he was kind of weird. But he seemed like he was worried about me. He asked if I was all right. I told him about Mark. And he didn’t say anything at first, then he pointed to a grave. It was his mother. He said when she died he got all fucked up.

“He said there was this group. They had a place in the mountains. It had helped him a lot. He said maybe him and me, we could go there together. You spend, I don’t know, three weeks or a month or something. Like therapy, I guess.”

Shaw remembered Adam Harper’s father telling about the young man’s improvement after spending some time away from Tacoma. This would have been what he was referring to.

“I thought, can’t hurt to try. Nothing else was working. He said it was expensive but I said I could get some money. School was out and I could take time off work, so I said, ‘Sure.’ Then, all that shit went down at the church.” He was breathing hard. “Oh, man...”

“Go on, Erick.”

“We were walking back to our cars and talking about when we could leave and go to this place when we saw the fire. We went to see what it was.”

“The cross in front of the church?”

“Uh-huh. Like the KKK, you know? These two men came out and one of them — the janitor, William, I heard — he had a gun, and he starts shooting at us.”

Shaw frowned. “He fired first?”

“Yeah. I’m on the ground and Adam’s screaming, like, ‘Stop, we didn’t do it!’ But he just keeps at it. Adam pulls out his gun, the one you got, and he shoots back and we run. I saw the news later and it didn’t say anything about them shooting first.”

If it had happened as Erick said, then the janitor had committed a felony; you can’t shoot a nonthreatening trespasser. If you weren’t preventing use of deadly force, it’s a crime to even display the gun, let alone pull the trigger. After the janitor was hit, he probably gave his gun to the lay preacher and told him to hide it. An unregistered weapon, Shaw supposed.

Shaw asked, “What was this group he was talking about?”

“It’s something Foundation. Up in the mountains somewhere, where we were headed. Some of them were coming to pick us up. I kind of lied when you asked. But Adam said there was nobody, so I didn’t know what to say.”

“You were saying its like therapy?”

“I guess. It’s expensive and you have to pay up front. That’s why we didn’t book outta town right away. I needed to get some cash together. At first I was thinking scam, you know. But Adam was all: no, it’ll really work. It helped him get over his mother’s death and there were some problems with his father too. Adam really wanted me to feel better. It was important to him.” His voice grew muffled. He was crying. Shaw pulled over, put his gun and holster in the lockbox in the trunk and helped Erick out. He rezipped his wrists in front of him and offered the boy a wad of napkins from the food he’d bought earlier.

They resumed the drive.

Miles rolled past before Erick said, “I don’t know whether it was crazy or not. I wanted to try it. I just miss him a lot, my brother. Every day. You ever feel that way, Mr. Shaw?”

He didn’t answer. He slowed for a speed trap, easing through Evansville right on the nose at thirty miles per hour.

Soon the Kia was back up to sixty-five.

Picturing the brunette, her reaction. And the others’ glazed, sheeplike gazes as they looked at the corpse far below. Shaw asked, “The people Adam called to get you? Did he mention who they were?”

“I don’t remember if he did. I didn’t pay much attention when he was on the phone.” Erick’s lips tightened. “I’m going to go to jail, aren’t I?” He wiped his eyes again.

Colter Shaw had once thought of practicing law. When the family, for their own safety, abandoned the San Francisco Bay Area for eastern California, his father had carted along hundreds of books, many of them legal volumes. As a boy, Colter devoured them. He liked casebooks in particular, the compilations of trial decisions, many of which read like short stories.

From his knowledge of criminal law, Shaw knew Erick was in trouble, certainly, even if his story was true. At a minimum: flight, obstruction of justice, aiding and abetting, but he’d have a good chance of acquittal or a suspended sentence. His prints would not be on the Smith & Wesson. The police might find the janitor’s gun and could locate the bullets in the ground near where Adam and Erick had been. Under interrogation, the janitor — if he lived — or the lay preacher might recant their account and tell the truth. There might be witnesses supporting Erick’s story.

Shaw said, “You’ll have your day in court.”

“Lawyers’re expensive, aren’t they?”

“Good ones are.”

This discouraged him. He asked, “How far to home?”

“An hour, little under.”

“I’m going to sleep, I think.”

“Are the restraints too tight?”

“No.”

“I have to leave them on.”

“Sure.” The young man closed his eyes.

12

Shaw pulled his phone out of his pocket and, hesitating only a moment, placed a call.

“Hello.”

“Is this Stan Harper?”

“Yeah. Help you?”

“It’s Colter Shaw. I talked to you earlier about your son.”

“I remember.”

Shaw had had these conversations several times in his career. There was no way to buffer them. “Mr. Harper... I’m sorry to have to tell you that Adam died an hour ago.”

No response.

“He took his own life.”

“What?” A gasp.

“I was going to bring him and Erick in to surrender to the police.”

“But you said...” The voice faded.

“I know I did. I’m sorry.”

I want to get Adam back safe...

“Did he shoot himself?” Perhaps the thought of a son using his father’s own weapon to end his life was unbearable.

“No, he jumped off a cliff.”

“Jumped?” The voice said he didn’t understand.

“The police will be in touch so you can make arrangements.” When the man said nothing more, Shaw continued, “Mr. Harper, I’ve been speaking to Erick Young. It’s possible they were both innocent.”

“They didn’t burn the cross, didn’t shoot anybody?”

“Adam fired, yes, but it might have been self-defense.”

“So he would have gotten off?”

“Seems likely, or been convicted on minor charges.”

“Then why did my son kill himself?”

“I don’t know the answer to that.”

Silence rolled up. Through the phone Shaw could hear a ship’s horn, the caw of an angry seagull.

“Mr. Harper?”

Five more seconds of silence, then the man disconnected.

You ever feel that way, Mr. Shaw...

As he drove, Shaw silently responded to Erick Young: More often than that, actually.

Colter Shaw and Erick Young shared this in common: mourning for their brothers. Dead, in Erick’s case. As for Shaw’s, Russell was long gone, though dead or alive, Shaw had no clue.

Ashton and Mary Dove’s three children assumed very different personalities. Their daughter, Dorion, the youngest, was the clever one. Colter was the restless one. Russell, the oldest, was the reclusive one.

Ashton Shaw died years ago — ironically, just like Adam Harper, tumbling from a cliff in a foreboding place known as Echo Ridge. That death, however, had decidedly not been a suicide. Not long after their father’s funeral, Russell had disappeared. Colter Shaw made a living by finding people, and he was good at this profession. Yet Russell had managed to elude him since that day. Neither Mary Dove nor Dorion had had any contact with son or brother in all those years either.

A father’s loss is tragic, especially under suspicious circumstances. At the end of his life, though, Ashton was growing increasingly demented and paranoid. Shaw — a teenager during those times — recalled moments when the man grew dark and dangerous. His death may have been premature but it seemed a natural conclusion to the complicated life he’d embraced in his later years.

Russell’s disappearance had been much harder on Shaw. The absence was bad enough but aggravating that sorrow were certain questions. First, was he alive or dead? Mourning is a different process in each instance.

And then there was the so-very-difficult question of what drove Russell away from the family.

Shaw had resigned himself to the fact that his brother was gone forever and did what he could to cope with that pain. He’d noted how hopeful Erick had sounded when he talked about this group, the Foundation, and how their brand of therapy might dull the loss. Treatment like that, however, was not a remedy that had any appeal whatsoever to Colter Shaw.

Odd how a rewards job in the wilderness of Washington State triggered memories and emotions with roots from a very different life, in a very different era.

Ah, Russell... Where are you? What are you doing at this moment?

If you’re doing anything at all.

Now, as Erick dozed beside him in the sedan, Shaw piloted the smooth-driving vehicle west.

Forty-five minutes to Tacoma.

His brother and father occupied his thoughts for a good portion of the drive.

Other images intruded occasionally. The group of curious men and women in their blue and black garb.

The brunette in particular, her run-in with the thickset bully.

And, of course, Adam Harper.

Whose death rested squarely at Colter Shaw’s feet.

13

He thought it best to take Erick Young directly to the Pierce County Public Safety Office to surrender.

He’d considered reuniting him with his family and then calling the authorities but the case was already fraught with changing narratives and actors. He did, however, call the boy’s parents ahead of time and tell them that Erick was all right, and that they should meet him at the PSO.

Shaw’s private eye, Mack, had tracked down a seasoned criminal attorney and sent Shaw the man’s number. The two had a brief conversation about the nature of the crime and what Erick had told Shaw on the drive — his version of the incident at the church, which Shaw believed.

“Well, this’s one for the books,” the lawyer, Bob Tanner, had said in a courtroom-ready baritone.

Shaw had left it to the attorney to coordinate with the parents and the detective about the surrender to the authorities. Now, in the rental, parked a few blocks away from the Safety Office, Shaw felt his phone hum.

“Mr. Shaw?” said Tanner.

“Yes.”

“I’m here in the back of the station, with Erick’s parents. The detective you talked to, Johnson, he’ll be handling the processing. I know him. He’s a good man. No games, no showboating, no perp walks. The press is still in the dark.”

“We’ll be there in five,” Shaw told him and disconnected. “Erick, you ready?”

The boy was looking at an old-fashioned diner. Acme Chili and Sandwich Company. “Mark and I went there, I guess, a couple of times. We had brown cows. You know what that is?”

“No.”

“A root beer with ice cream. Like we were kids again. And fries. Yeah, I’m ready.”

Shortly, they were pulling up behind the old redbrick building — an early twentieth-century police house if ever there was one. Erick’s parents stood beside two older men, both large and unsmiling and in dark suits. The lawyer’s garb was more distinguished, though the other’s was accessorized by a shiny gold badge on his belt.

Shaw climbed out and helped Erick from the car, the detective lifting his eyebrow at the restraints. Shaw cut the zips off and soon the boy was in proper cuffs, hands behind his back. Then the detective looked toward Erick’s mother and nodded, a prearranged signal for a permissible hug. She threw her arms around him. His father stepped forward and embraced the two of them.

“Sorry, Mom. I’m... sorry.” The boy’s eyes swelled with tears.

Crying as well, Emma Young stroked his cheek.

Detective Chad Johnson was a calm man in his forties. He said to the parents, “We’ll get to processing. He’ll be arraigned and there’ll be a bail hearing. He’ll be able to call you at some point soon.”

Shaw went to the rear of his car and opened the trunk, where he’d put the paper bag holding the Smith & Wesson he’d taken from Adam. “Detective?”

“Yessir?”

“It’s the weapon.”

Johnson took the bag.

“You’ll want my prints for comparison.”

“We have them, Mr. Shaw.”

When you get a concealed carry permit, your prints are scanned and sent to a national registry. Interesting that the detective had gone to the trouble already.

Shaw added, “It hasn’t been discharged since I’ve been in possession.”

“That’s helpful to know. We’ll want a statement from you about Adam Harper too.”

“Anytime.”

Johnson and Erick started away, along with the attorney. Erick stopped, turned back. “Mr. Shaw. Thank you. You, like, saved my life.” Then, without waiting for a response, he was led by the detective through the station’s back door.

Shaw returned to the parents. He said, “I don’t know how it’s going to fall out. His story’s different from what we thought at first.”

“Mr. Tanner told us. I checked him out. He’s a good lawyer. Really good.”

Mack’s connections were always really good.

“Somebody else burned that cross.” Emma’s face was staunch. “I knew it. And that poor boy, Adam. He was innocent too. Self-defense. But he still killed himself. What on earth was that about?”

What indeed?

Picturing him diving from the ledge, the leap, the arc, the fall.

Picturing too the smile on his face just before.

A voice from the street in front of the PSO. “Where is he? Ah, I’ll bet that’s him there!”

The man turned out to be short, round and dressed in a dark, pinstripe suit. His age was around fifty. With him was a woman in a pink and yellow floral dress and a black cotton coat that covered only three-fourths of the frock. She was around the same age as her companion.

“Mr. Shaw. You’re Mr. Shaw?” He walked past Erick’s parents.

“I am.”

The man and the woman were both smiling. Their eyes were intense.

“I’m Lucas Slarr, executive director of the Western Washington Ecumenical Council.” He thrust a hand out and they gripped palms. “This is Kitty McGregor, WWEC president.” She too shook, just as firmly as Slarr, though more enthusiastically. They nodded to the Youngs, clearly not caring who they were. Shaw was the hero in this feature film.

“Kitty, do the honors.”

She withdrew an envelope from her sizable beige purse. “Mr. Shaw, we’ve received confirmation from Hammond County that you successfully apprehended Adam Harper.”

“I found him, yes.”

Slarr added, “And the Public Safety press office here said that Erick Young’s been brought in.”

McGregor said, “The terms of the reward offer had nothing to do with the fact that one of the suspects in that terrible crime died. That wasn’t your fault.”

No, he thought, it was entirely my fault.

“On behalf of all the churches in the western Washington area, I’m pleased to present you with this.”

Shaw took and opened the envelope. Inside was a certificate on parchment paper, 5 by 7 inches, depicting a radiating cross and an image of Jesus in the center, looking earnest and kind and more than a little Aryan.

In addition to the parchment sheet of paper, there was a check in the amount of $50,000.

In the law of contract, a binding agreement can be made by an offer and an acceptance — with words only. Fred promises to loan Sam money, and Sam promises to repay. Bang, that’s a contract, enforceable by both sides.

But a reward is a special kind of contract; it’s unilateral, meaning that it does not become binding until the reward seeker completes the job. Shaw had had no obligation to pursue the young men but once he’d succeeded, a contract magically came into existence, and he was owed the money.

That the facts at trial would probably show that the Ecumenical Council had posted a reward for tracking down the wrong individuals did not negate Shaw’s right to the money. They’d wanted Adam and Erick, and that’s whom they got. Shaw had collected perhaps three hundred or so rewards over the years. He didn’t think he’d ever earned one for a crime the suspect had not committed. Under other circumstances he might have returned it, or a portion, but not today.

Slarr: “Do you think in the last minutes of his life, Adam repented his sins?”

Shaw suspected not, largely because it appeared he hadn’t sinned at all. “One can only hope.”

“Amen,” Kitty McGregor said. They shook Shaw’s hand again and walked up the alley.

As he turned back to the Youngs, he heard a booming voice. “You son of a bitch!”

Colter Shaw had only a few seconds’ warning before the palm slammed into his back, knocking him forward. Not quite to the ground but almost.

He turned to face a furious Dalton Crowe.

14

“Oh my,” Larry Young said.

He seemed to be considering confronting the man but Dalton Crowe outweighed Erick’s father by fifty pounds. He was intimidation personified. The big, swarthy man shot him a warrior’s glare and Larry stayed put.

Shaw regarded Crowe calmly. He knew that the man wasn’t going to do more than try to rough him up a bit — especially given that they were within shouting distance of the Public Safety Office.

The Youngs now relaxed somewhat, noting that Shaw didn’t seem troubled by the slap or bluster or glowering face.

“Dalton,” Shaw said pleasantly.

“You led me on a wild goose chase.”

A phrase coined in Romeo and Juliet, by the witty and doomed Mercutio. Wild goose chase... While there was no TV in the Shaw household on the Compound, the children read and read and read. And often acted out plays, Shaw’s specialty being Henry V.

Crowe continued, “There was no yellow fucking Volkswagen Beetle. That wasn’t sporting. You owe me that money.” A nod toward the check in Shaw’s hand. “That’s mine.”

He reached for it. Shaw leaned forward and looked with utmost — and unnerving — calm right into Crowe’s eyes. The man eased back.

Shaw could very well have waited until later: the privacy of a hotel or in his Winnebago or in the Youngs’ own living room. But because Adam Harper had died under his watch, and because Erick Young was sitting scared as a mouse in a holding cell and because Shaw’s shoulder still hurt from Dalton Crowe’s love tap, he decided that now was the perfect moment. He pulled his fountain pen from his jacket pocket. He looked to the Youngs. He asked, “Your bank account, it’s joint?”

“Our...?”

“Your checking account, both your names on it?”

“Oh.” Emma looked perplexed. “Well, yes. But—”

Crowe grumbled, “What’s this?”

Shaw endorsed the check over to the Youngs and handed it to Larry. This is why he had no intention of returning the reward.

“The fuck?” Crowe snapped.

Shaw said to the couple, “Tanner won’t come cheap.”

Emma said, “I know. But we’ll get a bank loan. We can’t accept this.”

Crowe: “They can’t accept it.”

“It’s done,” Shaw said.

Crowe bristled, then seemed to sense this was a battle he could not win. He pointed a finger at Shaw. “I will get you for this, my friend.” He stalked off down the alley.

Larry waved the check. “If there’s any left over—”

“Get Erick some help. Better therapy than he’s had.”

“We will,” Emma whispered.

Shaw wanted to be gone. He said goodbye to the Youngs and walked back to the rental car. In his mind he heard the exchange between Stan Harper and himself.

Then why did my son kill himself?

I don’t know the answer to that.

He now supplemented his response: Not yet.

15

Through the windshield Shaw stared ahead at the redbrick walls of the Public Safety Office. He powered up his router and computer and went online, then composed an email to Mack.

He started the car and pulled out of the alley.

A half hour later he was back at the Tacoma RV park, after dropping the poor Kia at the rental company, offering a mea culpa that was heartfelt but not of much significance, given the damage waiver. The new paint job would be on Hertz. The clerk was unfazed.

Stepping inside the homey Winnebago, he was thinking of what lay ahead. As he’d sat in that comfortable lawn chair in Silicon Valley not long ago, he’d been considering which of the two missions to strike out on: going after the reward for Erick and Adam, or driving back to the Compound in the Sierra Nevadas and pursuing the mystery involving his late father.

A professor and amateur scientist — both the political and the natural variety — Ashton Shaw had made a discovery, one so significant and controversial that his life and those of his colleagues were put in danger. He warned his associates about the risks, and promptly moved his wife and three children to a large spread in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. There he learned survival skills and trained the children in the same edgy arts.

Ashton appeared to the world to have given up exploring his discovery, while all the time secretly continuing to pursue it. He would travel to places unknown, presumably looking into more details surrounding his finding — whatever it might be.

Shaw might have put his father’s concerns and secretive efforts down to the man’s growing breaks with reality had not several incidents occurred. First, there was Ashton’s untimely death and the deaths of several colleagues. Second, just last week, Shaw’s own close call with the people he believed were responsible for the deaths. They were a ruthless woman named Braxton and her hired killer, Droon, whom Shaw had been thinking of earlier. Shaw had evaded the pair and learned that his father’s discovery was hidden somewhere on the family land, near where Ashton had died, Echo Ridge.

Shaw needed to find the secret. What on earth could it be? Something that exposed corruption in the government? Evidence of other crimes? An invention, maybe a drug that could topple a big pharma company? A military mystery?

He didn’t try to guess.

Never speculate without substantial facts.

A good rule, one of his father’s. Shaw followed it closely much of the time.

Yes, the secret was a burning question and, now that the reward job here was done, his plans to return to the quest would have put him on the road at first light.

Would have...

The quest would have to wait. Plans had changed.

Because of an image seared into Colter Shaw’s mind; Adam Harper’s eerily calm leap into eternity.

His phone dinged with an incoming email. He read the thread, which began with his query to Mack.

Shaw scrolled down to the link and clicked on it. He was directed to the site’s home page.

Mack’s email continued:

He read the promo piece again and recalled the uniformed crew in the van parked on the ridge where Adam had died. Smelled like a cult.

An impression borne out by another link Mack had included: to an article from The San Francisco Daily Times. The story was about cults preying on the vulnerable for money or sex, or simply because the leader was hungry for the power that comes from adulation and obedience.

The piece was long, and the author dissected a number of cults. There was a mention of the Osiris Foundation, though a very brief one.

Shaw decided to call the article’s author, Gary Yang, and see if he could tell him more about the Foundation. But when he scrolled to the next page of Mack’s email he read:

The death had occurred one week after the article had appeared.

Never accept coincidence at face value.

Shaw put a connection between the reporter’s death and the article at forty percent, high enough that he felt it was worth looking into.

He went online and called up news stories about the crime. Yang’s killer was Harvey Edwards. He’d shot Yang after demanding his wallet. Then he fled. He was subsequently shot to death by police. A day laborer at the time of the robbery, Edwards had a troubled past, including criminal convictions for assault, burglary and drug possession.

On the surface, the murder seemed to be a typical mugging gone bad. Shaw wasn’t convinced. Why shoot someone who’d cooperated and handed over his cash? He did some more searching. He found next to nothing about Edwards, only several social media photos from years ago. The killer wasn’t what Shaw had expected. Not a sullen or shifty visage, not a glare of suspicion and anger. He was good-looking, athletic, cheerful of expression. The images were of him on a beach somewhere, squinting into the sun, smiling. An attractive blonde sat beside him.

Shaw was about to log off when he froze.

In the photo Harvey Edwards was wearing a necklace. It was a thin black cord, and from it dangled a piece of jewelry: a purple infinity symbol.

The logo of the Osiris Foundation.

16

“Tom.”

Shaw was sitting at the banquette of the Winnebago, speaking to his friend, the former FBI agent Tom Pepper.

The man asked, “We still climbing Two Wolves Face? Weather permitting.”

“Weather? Don’t you worry,” Shaw replied. “I’ll hold the umbrella for you”

“Haw.”

The three-hundred-foot cliff, in the Sierra Nevada chain, had been on their free-climb to-do list for some time, and they’d planned it for August.

Shaw said, “Need the name of another detective.”

“Tacoma?”

“No. This one’s in San Francisco.”

“Hmm. Lot of homicides out there. Lot of detectives. You know, Colt, you’d think, being so pretty, the Bay, the bridges, Ghirardelli Square, all those old hippies singing Jerry Garcia, nobody’d want to tap anybody.”

Shaw explained about the journalist.

Pepper grunted. “Now, that pisses me off. Free press has to stay free. And alive.”

“I need the lead detective.”

“Give me five.”

Shaw brewed a cup of coffee. He made the beverage as he always did: the old-fashioned way, boiled water poured through a filter. Capsules were not his favored technique; convenience always comes at a price. He added some milk. One sip, two. Pepper called back with a name and number. Shaw wrote it down, thanked his friend. A third sip, then he punched the number into his phone.

“Detective Etoile.” A rich, vibrating baritone. Shaw imagined that that voice could shake confessions out of suspects within a dozen words.

“This is Colter Shaw.”

“Oh, Mr. Shaw. Yes, your associate, Tom Pepper, just called.”

Associate. Somewhat true. Shaw let it stand.

“This’s about the Gary Yang murder?”

“That’s right.”

“Mr. Pepper said you’re a private investigator.”

This too was close enough. Shaw said nothing about his reward-seeking work.

“Detective, can I ask how the murder happened?”

“It was pretty straightforward. Plenty of witnesses. The victim was approached outside his townhome, robbed and shot. The suspect fled. Responding officers cornered him in a convenience store. He didn’t surrender. There was a firefight. He was killed. No one else was injured.”

“Edwards had no history of violent crime?”

“No history of arrests or convictions for violent crime,” Etoile corrected.

“I’ve found out that Yang had written an article about cults. One of the groups he mentioned was the Osiris Foundation in Washington State. I think Harvey Edwards was involved with it.”

Etoile was silent for a moment. “The implications being that (a) the robbery was a cover-up for a hit and (b) others might have been involved.”

“Did you find anything in the investigation about the Foundation? Literature? Anything with an infinity sign on it?”

“Like the number eight on its side?”

“That’s right. It’s their logo.”

“Nothing I recall. But we didn’t toss... we didn’t search Edwards’s place much. No need. You heard the facts. Homicides don’t get any more open-and-shut than that. You’re probably interested to know if we looked at the new stories that Yang was working on, for possible motives.”

Shaw said, “And the fact you raised the point tells me no, you didn’t.”

“Correct. Like I said, open-and-shut. What is this group, Osiris Foundation? Like the Manson Family?”

“Doesn’t seem to be. Talks about self-help. That kind of thing.”

“And what exactly is your interest, Mr. Shaw?”

“One of the followers of this outfit killed himself. Adam Harper. Tacoma Public Safety has the details. And I saw another follower, a woman, I didn’t like the way she was being treated.”

“What’s her name?”

“I don’t know.”

Silence in response to this too.

“I just want to make sure nobody else connected with this outfit gets hurt.”

“You clearly have some law enforcement experience, sounds like, so you know once a case’s closed, brass treat it like used chewing gum.”

“I’m sure.”

“I’ll ask some questions. Give me your contact information.”

Shaw did so and thanked him.

They disconnected the call.

More coffee. He looked up a third website that Mack had sent. There was a “Contact Me” email address at the bottom of the page. Shaw composed a brief note and sent it off. He wondered if he’d hear back.

Three minutes later, he did.

17

“Osiris Foundation? Not one I’m familiar with.” The person looking back at Shaw, via Skype, was a handsome businesswoman sort, with trim hair, a dress blouse and gold chain around her neck. Middle age. “And, frankly, I’m familiar with most of them.”

Anne DeStefano was among the top cult experts in the country. A doctor in psychology, she advised law enforcement about such organizations, testified as an expert in trials, and deprogrammed — “de-brainwashed,” as she put it — followers who’d escaped from cults and other oppressive organizations and individuals.

“What does this Foundation do?” DeStefano was in her Los Angeles office. Shaw could see a half-dozen certificates from various institutions and schools on the wall behind her.

“You have another computer?” Shaw asked.

“Yes, a desktop.” She glanced to her left. “You sending me an email?”

“No. There’s a website.”

“I’ll just Google it.”

“They scrub their name from search engines and social networking sites.”

DeStefano lifted an eyebrow. “That’s a technique you see with some of the more troublesome cults. What’s the URL?”

Shaw recited it and DeStefano turned away, typing on the other keyboard.

Eyes to the left, she read the Foundation’s homepage. “Hmm. Hard to say from this. Most true cults want you and your loyalty for life. A three-week session? More like a dude ranch or yoga camp. Have some fun in the country, listen to lectures, sit around a campfire and sing ‘Kumbaya.’ At worst, you’ve wasted some time and money. But then there’s ‘Osiris’ — the Egyptian theme. That’s a bit occult. And Master Eli. A lot of the more culty leaders give themselves titles like that. You know anything about him?”

“Not much. His data’s scrubbed too. Was a businessman a few years ago, then gave it up to run the Foundation. I saw some of his followers. They were all wearing matching clothes.”

“Then it’s not your typical self-help outfit. But that doesn’t mean it’s a cult.”

“What exactly is a cult?” Shaw asked.

DeStefano chuckled. “Somebody once said a cult is a religious or a social movement that you don’t happen to like.”

Shaw smiled.

“Well, what’s a cult and what isn’t?” she mused. “For me, it’s like that Supreme Court justice who said he wasn’t going to try to define porn but he knew it when he saw it. People with common interests and goals get together every day. You could say a sports team with a mesmerizing coach is a cult. You could say the Catholic Church is a cult. The Shriners, the Lions Club, the Masons. Me? I define a cult as a group that presents a potential physical or mental danger to the members or those outside.

“I borrow my test from a book by Margaret Singer and Janja Lalich, Cults in Our Midst. For them, a cult, one, controls the environment of the followers; two, has a system of rewards and punishments; three, creates a sense of powerlessness among the followers; four, uses fear for control; five, promotes dependency on the leader or cult; and, six, has a mission to reform followers’ behaviors.

“There’s another element too: nearly every cult is headed by a single controlling leader. He — it’s usually a man — has a consuming ego, attacks his enemies, lashes out in anger, has an absolute belief that he’s correct, won’t listen to advice or criticism, is paranoid and craves worship and adulation.”

DeStefano’s eyes cut left to the second computer. “This Osiris Foundation?” She shrugged. “Can’t really say without more information. It seems to fall into the category of a personal improvement and transformational cult — the least harmful. Usually the followers are people who’re sick of their jobs or can’t find satisfactory romance. The leaders’ll use hypnosis, meditation, dream study and encounter sessions to change your outlook on life. The lack of a social media presence is troubling, though. Are they hiding anything?”

“You mentioned categories of cults. What would those be?”

DeStefano stretched back. “The majority are religious, drawing on traditional sects, hybrids or made up out of whole cloth. Then the political ones — we can thank 8chan and the internet for most of those. There are business-oriented cults that suck in members for get-rich-quick schemes. Then the really bad ones: racist, like the KKK or Aryan Nations. Militant separatists. White supremacists. Psychopathological cults — Charles Manson, for instance. Black magic. Satan worship, animal and human sacrifice. There are more of these than you’d think.”

The deprogrammer leaned forward and eyed Shaw. “Can I ask why you’re interested?”

He told DeStefano about the murder of the journalist Gary Yang and the likelihood that the killer had been a member of the Foundation.

This drew a frown. “Yang wrote an exposé on it?”

“Not really. It was just one reference to the Foundation. But the piece suggested that the group might be a cult. Yang was killed a week after the article ran — by someone who probably had been a member.”

“So the killer either wanted to get revenge for what Yang wrote, or he was afraid that Yang might be planning to write more, maybe revealing some secrets.”

“I was thinking that.”

DeStefano thought for a moment. “There’s a phenomenon in all organizations called the isolated negative. Let’s take a benevolent group whose purpose is to help people, Transcendental Meditation, for instance. Something like that. The leader or teacher’s not on any power trips, truly wants to better people’s lives. There’s no abuse, the fees are reasonable, its programs are uplifting and positive and effective. No control. You meet every Tuesday night and go out for cocoa after.

“But the group exists to help people who, to a greater or lesser degree, are troubled — otherwise, they wouldn’t be there in the first place. Right? That means the membership contains a higher percentage of individuals more likely to act out, sometimes violently. That goes against the entire purpose of the cult but they don’t care. Those individuals are ‘isolated negatives.’ I’ve seen them in completely harmless organizations. They’re fine... until they snap and assault and sometimes kill fellow followers or outsiders.”

“There was another death involving a member. He killed himself.”

Her brow furrowed at this news. “Do you know why?”

“History of depression. Lost his mother recently. He was about to be arrested, though I think the charges would have been dropped. He should’ve known that. Still, he took his own life.”

“Some cults — especially the transformational ones like this Osiris outfit seems to be — can be tough on the unstable. Encounter sessions can amount to institutionalized bullying.”

That word resonated. He explained about the treatment of the brunette by the driver of the van.

The woman was silent for a moment. “Mr. Shaw, I get your concern. But, my two cents: there’s something that happens when people fall under someone’s spell. Jim Jones convinced over nine hundred followers in his Peoples Temple to murder hundreds of children and then kill themselves with poisoned fruit punch — not Kool-Aid by the way, another brand. Up until 9/11, it was the largest civilian loss of American life in a single non-natural event.

“Charles Manson told four of his followers to slaughter complete strangers in the most gruesome way they could and they didn’t blink twice before doing just what he asked. David Koresh, founder of the Branch Davidians, convinced his followers to battle it out with the FBI. Seventy-five people died. Warren Jeffs was the head of a fundamentalist Mormon cult. They believed in polygamy and marrying children as young as twelve. He had eighty-seven wives. He’s now in jail for life.

“Cults brainwash. There’s another name for brainwashing: menticide. Murder of the mind and the personality.” A wave at the offstage computer to her left. “This Process that the Osiris Foundation talks about might’ve turned its members violent or even homicidal. Even if it’s beneficial on its face, it could still be home to dangerous isolated negatives.

“I haven’t even touched on the hundreds of anti-cult organizations out there. They attack cults, the cults attack back. And cults fight one another, competing cults. It’s a running battle, often physically dangerous.

“So, Mr. Shaw, the situation is filled with risk.” DeStefano lifted her hands. “My advice is this: if you don’t have a personal stake, just stay away. I mean it. Far away.”