Three: Echo Ridge

72 June 20

This time the rattlesnake was real, unlike the imaginary serpent Dalton Crowe had used as an excuse to shoot a hole in his rental car’s Michelin a week or so ago.

Colter Shaw was hiking up a narrow trail of rock and dirt and gravel in a remote corner of his family’s property in eastern California. The snake, a big one, was smack in his route, in its coiled state, lazy, probably full of a tasty rodent lunch. Still it was ready for a defensive strike, which would be fast and accurate. They are, after all, pure muscle.

Shaw had spotted it and paused at the same time as the urgent rattle from the tail began. Amazing how creatures come to be, he was thinking. It would have taken hundreds of thousands of years to develop this curious feature, which said, in effect, Stop or I’ll shoot.

Shaw was not alone on his trek. He was accompanied by a solidly built black-and-brown Rottweiler. Another canine might have instinctively charged — not having learned from YouTube or 1960 TV Western reruns what the rattle meant. Chase tensed but Shaw’s command, “Wait,” froze him in position.

There aren’t many defenses against a rattlesnake, other than gaiters — leg guards. Pepper spray is useless. Their eyes are protected with an impervious shield, and the capsicum that blinds us is like water to them. And, as many a person who’s ever tried to Mace a snake can attest, if you’re close enough to hit them, they’re probably close enough to hit you.

As for Chase, the dog, a canine’s physiology is less susceptible to snake toxins than a human’s. But as an added precaution for this outing, Shaw had administered snakebite vaccine. He recalled, from years ago, his father’s question to the youngest of the Shaw children: “So, Button, the odds of a vaccinated dog surviving a rattler strike are what?”

Nine-year-old Dorion had squinted, considering. “Depending on size — of the dog and the snake — and where it strikes, maybe around eighty percent.”

“Yep, good. And the odds of a vaccinated dog surviving a dead rattler?”

“Pretty much a hundred.”

“You’ve got it.”

“But I don’t want to shoot a snake, Daddy.”

“Who does? But sometimes it’s a question of you or them, Button. And the answer is always: you.”

Shaw was wearing a hip holster in which sat his Colt .357 Magnum revolver (a model ironically named after another snake, a Python). But he didn’t want to shoot a snake either. His thinking was that he and Chase were in its backyard, not their own — and, truth be told, the creature wasn’t behaving badly at all; it was simply being a snake.

So he chose another option. Detour.

Shaw found a fairly straight branch, about four feet long, and trimmed it with his Ka-Bar knife.

Never go into snake brush without a trekking stick. You can push plants aside ahead of you, and if there’s a strike, the snake will likely go for the stick.

“Heel,” Shaw commanded and together he and Chase turned left and struck out through the dense woods. The rottie hewed close to Shaw’s left thigh as they circumvented the rattler and continued on their mission, the human probing thickets before they trod through them.

That mission was the second of the two he’d been thinking of for the past several weeks, the one he’d put aside to pursue Erick and Adam... and, as it turned out, that little trip to the Osiris Foundation.

He was looking for what his father had hidden here in this mountainous part of the family property years ago.

In some University of California archives, Colter had found a clue that told him that the mysterious message was here, in an area roughly the size of a suburban neighborhood. A daunting search to many, but even if Shaw did not know the exact location, he knew how to find it.

The path now led them to the crest of Echo Ridge — where, years ago, the woman who’d been hunting his father, Braxton, had sent one of her hired guns to follow Ashton and torture him to give up his secret. Ashton had tricked the man and come up behind him. In the ensuing struggle, though, Ashton had slipped and fallen to his death. Teenage Colter had discovered the body — that was the motivation for his mad, and pointless, high-speed rappel down the face of Echo Ridge to the creek bed where his father’s body lay.

Shaw reflected that he’d thought of Adam as the man on the cliff. Now, he realized that he was, as well — and so was Ashton.

Shaw had learned recently that Braxton had dealt harsh justice to her thug; the man was no longer among the living. The woman, apparently, had little tolerance for incompetence.

The hired muscle, Ebbitt Droon, had taken over his job.

Ironically, Braxton and Droon never guessed that Ashton had hidden the secret here. If they had, they would have returned to search and they never did. There was no other access to Echo Ridge except past the cabin and its security system, which Mary Dove had installed just after her husband’s death. Braxton would assume the secret was hidden in San Francisco, where Ashton’s efforts had been focused. To them, Echo Ridge was a conveniently deserted place in which to waylay Shaw’s father and force him to tell what he knew.

The dog now tensed and looked to the left, through a tall line of sycamore, black walnut and gray pine. Brush too: bladderpod, creosote, lupine and snowberry.

A sound? Not a rattle — a crackling of dry leaves. Maybe deer? Bear? Detour was not often an option with the latter, and Shaw’s hand dropped to the Colt. But whatever it was meandered away, as ninety-nine percent of forest inhabitants will do when they hear, see or smell you. The two continued on. He kept his eye on the trail and checked his phone for GPS directions.

Shaw felt the urgent anticipation that comes with closing in on your prey. What had his father found, and why were some people willing to kill — and others die — for it?

At the direction of the electronic navigator, he and Chase now turned away from the cliff and headed into the woods. They climbed onto a limestone shelf. Shaw checked his phone once more. They were on the eastern edge of the hunting ground. His father’s coordinates defined an entire square mile, one filled with dense forest, thickets, brush and brambles, rock formations, streams and ponds.

He surveyed the expanse now.

“Let’s get to it.”

This was not an official dog command but Chase caught the gist, and they started down to the forest floor.

73

Rottweilers fall into the American Kennel Club’s “Working” group, a category of large dogs bred to guard, to pull small wagons and sleds and to perform search and rescue. The latter meant they were skilled trackers.

Shaw dug into his backpack and withdrew a plastic bag. Inside was a piece of what appeared to be wood, but was actually recycled plastic.

One of the survival skills taught by Ashton Shaw to his children was the art of hiding objects that could be found only by your allies. He never would use anything electronic, of course, but stuck with the basics. A popular technique among survivalists is to wrap the object you’ll hide in something that has a distinctive odor detectable only by tracking dogs. If you need it to be hidden for only a few days, the dog will track the hider’s scent. Ashton, however, chose something that off-gassed scent molecules for far longer than that: plastic, specifically recycled plastic, which has a strong and distinctive scent.

There were field scentometers — including the wonderfully named Nose Ranger — that might have detected the smell. But nothing located aromas better than a dog, and when circumstance provided one, he leapt at the opportunity.

Whatever was hidden here, Shaw knew, it would be in or beside something that was still, after all these years, radiating its unique smell. Shaw held it down to Chase’s nose, and he sniffed enthusiastically. Shaw hooked a long lead to the rottie’s collar and gave a true command: “Find.”

The dog didn’t race forward but moved fast in a zigzag from rock to rock, tree to bush. Shaw kept up, hurrying behind, his hand near the grip of the Colt. Detours weren’t possible now, and if it came to a confrontation, a rattler would lose.

The rottie’s nose was up, as he was air tracking. The buried treasure would be stashed in a cave somewhere, Shaw assumed, protected from the elements.

As the minutes turned to hours, Shaw began thinking that maybe this was folly. Was he here on the basis of false information? It was possible that Ashton, in one of his foggier moments, had thought he’d left the package yet in fact he had not.

However, this proved not to be the case.

Chase braked to a stop. He did what all search dogs do upon finding the target. They don’t point, they don’t bark. They sit down.

He was in front of a small cavern. A rock slide had covered most of the opening but there was a six-inch slit toward the top. Shaw gave the rottie a piece of venison jerky and crouched down, firing a beam from his tactical halogen light into the cave. No snakes. Just dust and rocks and — about eight feet past the rubble — what seemed to be a white box, about 9-by-12 inches and an inch thick, made, of course, from recycled materials. The seams were glued with thick adhesive, probably of the industrial-strength waterproof variety.

He started to pull away rocks but there was another mini-slide; he’d need a shovel and pickaxe and some timber to shore the cave entrance properly. He wasn’t going to end his quest for his father’s secret by being buried alive with it for all eternity. He’d return with the proper tools and lumber for shoring. He noted the exact location via landmarks and he and Chase began the hour-plus trek back to the cabin. They took their time on the descent — it was steep and gravelly in parts. Also, you never knew when you might come across a visitor in the middle of the path, coiled and cautious and just not in the mood to slither out of your way.

74

“Your boy did a good job,” Shaw said to the couple sitting on the front porch of his family’s cabin, which nestled in the expansive valley.

He rubbed Chase’s head.

“’Course he did. I trained him.” Teddy gave the dog an ear scratch too.

Velma laughed, nodded toward her husband. “Trained him to lie at your feet while you dish up a big helping of Netflix.” Her voice was low and as smooth as her husband’s was rough.

Teddy scoffed. “It’ll come in useful someday: That dog’ll never twitch a muscle when a superhero lands in front of him with a crash and does that down-on-one-knee thing. Why do they do that?”

Shaw had no clue what the man was talking about.

Velma and Teddy Bruin were visiting from Florida, where they were Shaw’s neighbors. Both of their properties — each several acres in size — fronted a large and picturesque body of water in the north central part of the state. It was reportedly gator free.

Never believe it when somebody selling you lakefront property tells you there are no gators.

In fact Shaw had never seen any of the reptiles but he was inclined to accept that rule.

Teddy, early sixties, was round and rosy and — as his names, both family and nick, implied — had a bear-like quality, enhanced by a lengthy beard of the sort favored by Civil War generals. The man wore a brown hat, a slouch — the Australian military one. The right brim was pinned up to the crown, so a slung rifle wouldn’t bump it. Not all that helpful if you weren’t on the parade grounds, as the uneven tan on Teddy’s face proved.

Slim Velma, about the same age, wore her gray-blond hair up in a do that dated to the 1960s, sprayed into the shape of a beehive, which Shaw believed was the style’s actual name. Like her husband, she was in trekking khakis.

While they were indeed Shaw’s neighbors, the couple was much more than that. They ran the business side of Shaw’s operation, scanning the media for reward offers and supervising a bot that did the same online. They also took care of the finances and accounting, tasks that utterly bored Colter Shaw and at which he therefore was inept.

He had yet to tell Velma that he’d given away the Ecumenical Council’s entire $50,000. Shaw was forever discounting rewards, if the offerors were in tough straits, or giving them extended payment plans. Velma didn’t approve of his generosity and was quite vocal about championing his financial well-being.

The couple and Chase were making a cross-country trip in their camper (Shaw had bought his own Winnebago largely because of the test-drive he’d taken in theirs). A visit to California, of course, meant a side trip to the Compound to visit Shaw and his mother.

Shaw examined something protruding from Teddy’s pocket.

“Is that an air horn?” Shaw asked.

“For bears,” was the raspy reply.

The black bear population in California hovered around forty thousand, which was a lot of bears. There’d been attacks over the years, though to Shaw’s knowledge the only black-bear-related fatality in the entire state in recent history involved a bear’s killing a mountain lion that was attacking a hiker, saving the human. The unharmed bear wandered off, leaving the man with a sense of breathless relief and more than a little regret that he’d neglected to get a video.

The creatures were generally docile and timid. And, yes, they did not like loud noises. If Shaw was concerned about bears, though, especially during cub season, he carried pepper spray.

Velma chided her husband: “Air horn versus a bear. Isn’t that like bringing a knife...” She paused.

Shaw knew the expression: bringing a knife to a gunfight.

However, she finished with: “...to a fight where the other guy has a bigger knife?”

Teddy and Shaw laughed.

Velma said, “We didn’t see any. Bears. I was hoping.” She frowned as a thought arose. “Hey, Colt. I got the check for the thousand sixty dollars — the reward Erick Young’s family offered. But I haven’t heard a stitch about the big one. The fifty K. Should I call somebody about it?”

Busted...

“Well. About that, Velma.”

There was nothing to do but tell her the truth.

The woman sighed. “Let me get this straight. You gave away a fifty-thousand-dollar reward, and then, for no money whatsoever, you spent the last few days nearly getting killed by Charles Manson and family.”

He sought grounds for dispute but found none. “Pretty accurate.”

“Lord, Colter, you’re not made of money.”

“You got a Barkley stuffed dog out of the situation.” Shaw nodded at the toy he’d bought for her on the drive here.

“Be still my heart.” She grunted, which given her melodious voice was a pleasant tone nonetheless. “Set a spell, Colt.”

“The boondocks’re growing on you, bride.” Teddy chuckled. “‘Set a spell’? You’ve never used that expression in your entire life.”

She opened her arms. “Look around you. You gotta talk Western.”

Shaw said, “Got some things to take care of right now. I’ll see you at dinner.”

Shaw walked into the kitchen where his mother was chopping vegetables.

Mary Dove resembled a lean frontierswoman, her gray hair in a braid. Her present appearance wasn’t very different from that of years ago, when she was a star medical professor, grant director and psychiatrist/general practitioner in the Bay Area. Her quiet yet unyielding demeanor also was largely unchanged. After Ashton’s death, most in the family assumed she’d resume her life in San Francisco. Colter had known she wouldn’t, though. Here she’d remain, practicing general medicine and physical therapy, hosting retreats on topics like women’s health and psychopathology, and delivering the occasional baby.

“Well?” She gestured vaguely in the direction of Echo Ridge, miles away and not visible from the cabin.

“Found it.” He told her where the package was, that he’d get it in the morning.

Mary Dove was incapable of registering surprise but her son thought that maybe, just maybe, her eyes widened a millimeter or two.

“We’ll talk when you do. Decisions’ll have to be made.” Mary Dove’s voice was firm. After all, what Shaw had found at Echo Ridge was this secret that had led to her husband’s and others’ deaths. She was not a vindictive woman by any means — revenge, as Victoria had suggested, is a waste of time at best and leads to misfortune at worst. But self-preservation and survival of the family? That was paramount. Shaw had seen his mother calmly lift a .30–30 to her shoulder and squeeze off a round to drop a rabid wolf. To learn Ash’s secret meant to understand a lethal threat. And once you comprehended a risk, you could minimize it.

Or, better, eliminate it.

Mary Dove now poured two cups of coffee, added some milk to each. Shaw took them from her and walked into the living room of the cabin and looked out the window. He said, “Always liked this view.”

“Beautiful,” said Victoria Lesston, who was sitting on the couch. He handed over a steaming mug and sat down beside her.

75

When she’d fallen, she’d fallen into water, not upon rock.

In anger or dismay, Samuel hadn’t planned his assault; he’d simply picked the target he could succeed with. He knew he’d never beat Colter Shaw. So he’d flung Victoria over the cliff, assuming that a rocky shore lay below. Or perhaps not assuming anything at all.

In fact her landing bed was the deep lake that stretched to the foothills below the soaring peaks in the distance.

Shaw had run to the cliff’s edge. And peered down to the place where Victoria floated faceup, bobbing, bobbing.

Samuel too floated but his back was skyward.

Shaw had called Special Agent Slay’s number, gave his location and said, “Now. EMTs.” Then he assessed. Eighty feet. Not an impossible dive but one whose trajectory would have to be planned perfectly, and practiced.

No time for that. He pulled off his shirt, shoes and socks. Then he’d climbed down to a narrow ledge about twenty-five feet below the crest.

Shaw gazed down. The shade of the water suggested it was deep.

No time for percentages. Victoria was going under.

He leapt, windmilling his arms to stay vertical, which never worked as well as you’d hope, he’d learned. Jumping from this height he hit the water at twenty-five miles per hour. He reflected in the three-second descent that one can still float with two broken ankles.

Then the jarring impact, compressing bones and muscles and organs. Shaw managed to fill his lungs an instant before hitting the surface. The stinging cold, though, had the effect of pushing out all of that air.

His soles stung like hell but the complex architecture of the ankles remained intact; water had not shattered bone, and the lake bottom was far beneath.

He kicked hard to Victoria and, in a lifeguard’s grip, got her to the shore.

Shaw had looked back. Samuel might have been alive when he hit. Probably wasn’t now. In any event, survival involves triage, the decision-making process about assessing who is likely to live and who is not. Shaw had removed Inner Circle Journeyman Samuel from his thoughts.

Soon, fire and rescue had deposited them both on the top of the cliff. The medics examined Victoria, ran their tests and determined that nothing was broken; her spine and legs were fine. She had, however, walloped her shoulder. Maybe dislocation, rotator cuff issue. They affixed her arm to her body with flesh-colored bandages to keep it from gritty movement and she was offered painkillers, which she declined.

She also vetoed a trip to the local hospital.

“Been hurt worse. This’s nothing.”

With her good arm hooked through his, Victoria and Shaw, in fresh clothing walked back to the staging area in front of the YESTERDAY, TODAY, TOMORROW gate. The place still bubbled with chaos. FBI and state police crime scene evidence technicians were doing their meticulous job, as busy and efficient as accountants on April 14. Other investigators were under tents, which had appeared miraculously, vacuuming up details from the Companions and staff.

Shaw had noted that many of the law enforcers used tablets just like those the Foundation staff carried around.

Victoria released him and snagged her backpack with her good arm.

Shaw asked, “You drove, didn’t you?”

“My pickup. There. The black one. It’s got a manual, so I’m not driving anywhere soon. I’ll bus it to wherever they drop us off. Call my parents or brother or a friend.”

“Where’s home?”

“My parents’re in Glendale.”

Not really an answer to the question. He assumed a woman of her age who is a security consultant/former soldier doesn’t live with Mom and Dad. However, no need for her to be completely forthcoming. Shaw, after all, was not unspooling his own pertinent data to her particularly quickly.

Victoria had continued, “It’ll be an adventure. I haven’t stayed in a hotel across from a bus station since that post-college junket to Europe. I’ll bet there’s even a Jack-in-the-Box on the corner.”

Shaw fished his truck keys from his pocket. “Let me throw an idea out there.”

She glanced his way, her eyes tinted with cautious reception.

He pitched his thought, and, after some mental juggling, she said, “Sure.”

An hour later they were on their way to Tacoma, where he would return the Silverado and pick up the Winnebago.

On the way, Shaw negotiated the switchbacks and Victoria handled the phone, trying to get details of the pursuit of David Ellis and Hugh, whose last name turned out to be Garner.

Special Agent Slay and the state police, though, were still not having any luck in tracing them.

Once in the Winnebago, they hit the road, south. They made good time. The first rest break was well past Oregon’s southern border, in the small town of Barkley Heights, California. The burg’s WELCOME TO sign sported a cartoon dog, its open mouth raised skyward, tongue dangling.

“A barking dog? Not the friendliest of logos,” Shaw said.

“Why not a seal? Seals bark,” Victoria pointed out.

“Don’t imagine there’s a seal within four hundred miles.”

“Logic and town planning,” she said, “don’t always go hand in glove.”

They looked around them for a restaurant or bar.

“Not much of a town,” Shaw observed.

“But I’ll bet you can buy plenty of Barkley the dog toy souvenirs and T-shirts.”

They parked and walked into the only diner on the main drag.

Victoria won the bet.

76

Now, in the Compound, they sat on the old couch, which was covered with a Native American blanket. Shaw sipped from the coffee mug and asked, “You okay?”

“The worst movie line ever written,” Victoria replied.

“Hm?”

“Movies. Big gunfight. Car crash. Tornado. Sharks. Aliens. There’s a lull in the action. Hero A — that’s you — says to Hero B, me, ‘You okay?’ Cliché. The scriptwriter’s asleep at the switch.”

“That may be. But it’s a valid question. You fell off a cliff.”

“Was thrown.”

“And the answer is?”

Victoria said, “Better every day. She’s good, your mother. I’ve had PT, time to time, and I know a pro when I’m worked on.”

They were facing east, and the lowering sun behind them was igniting mountaintops in a most impressive way. Even in this gentle month, defiant snow embraced the staunch peaks.

Shaw had originally thought, believing Victoria to be beset by the loss of spouse and child, that he might arrange for her to see Mary Dove for psychological help. That plan had been negated by the facts: she was homicidal, not suicidal. But, after Samuel’s attack, it had then occurred to Shaw that Victoria might benefit from some time in the Compound where his mother’s physical therapy skills might be of some help.

“What’s her plan?” Victoria asked. She was referring to Anne DeStefano, the deprogrammer. Shaw had spoken to the woman at length about the Osiris Foundation.

DeStefano had said, “A lot of cults talk about immortality. Not a lot of them encourage you to see if their theory holds up. And people seemed to buy it?”

“Enough did.” Shaw had given her the relevant details.

“I’m going to get on top of it now. Since most of the members were in for the short-term — just three weeks’ indoctrination — it shouldn’t be hard to reverse most of the damage. The ones who came back for the follow-up sessions will take a bit more work.”

Shaw told Victoria that DeStefano would be in touch with the authorities interviewing the Companions and give them her name and the names of psychologists and deprogrammers in the areas where they lived.

Shaw had also heard from Walter and Sally, who had returned home safely to Chicago. Abby was staying with them for the time being but would soon be released to child protective services in her hometown. Frederick and Shaw had spoken several times. He was working with the police to build the case against Eli and Hugh.

Movement from their left. Chase plodded close, moving with purpose. Like an airplane easing into the airport gate, he turned and slowed to a stop between them. Then flopped down, his chin on Victoria’s sneakered foot.

She looked into the sky. “Hey, there. Is that a... another golden eagle?”

Shaw squinted. “Believe so.”

Their mascot. A thought Shaw kept to himself.

The dark brown form was winging muscularly back toward the forest and cliffs. “That’s a male. It’s mating season now and the mother will be with the eggs for about a month. They don’t make nests. They build platforms.”

“So Dad’s been grocery shopping.” She then asked, “What’s the latest on the Guiding Beacon and his sidekick?”

Shaw shook his head. “Not good. According to that agent, Slay, they were spotted getting into Canada, but then disappeared.”

The authorities had contacted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who were sympathetic, but the area of southern British Columbia was huge and the Canadians simply didn’t have the manpower for the kind of search necessary to track down Eli and Hugh.

His phone hummed with a number that was only slightly familiar, like that of a cousin you’ve met only once, at a wedding a few months ago.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Shaw, Bob Tanner.”

Erick Young’s attorney in Tacoma, Washington.

“Just wanted to let you know that the charges’ve been dropped. The police tracked down a couple of kids in a neo-Nazi cell east of Tacoma. Forensics on the graffiti on the church matched cans of paint in their possession. They pled. And when the detectives interviewed the lay preacher? It was like you said: the janitor started shooting at Erick and Adam, and Adam only returned fire. After the boys fled, he gave the gun to the preacher and told him to hide it. He didn’t have a license.”

Shaw thanked the attorney and disconnected. Victoria knew something about the reward for Erick and Adam and he explained how the job had been resolved.

Shaw and Victoria sat in silence for a moment.

“Just for the record, I’m no longer murderous.”

“So my mother can get the sharp knives out?”

She clicked her tongue. “Sometimes normal gets bushwhacked.”

How well Colter Shaw knew this — the man who traveled the country, picking through the bones of mysteries that some people hadn’t been able to solve, and others simply didn’t care about and still more decidedly did not want to be solved.

Shaw received a text. He read it twice and rose. “Have an errand to attend to.”

Victoria said, “See you at dinner?”

“Probably not.”

77

Shaw preferred his Winnebago and motorcycle for transportation. However, he picked the vehicle to suit the need.

Presently he was fourteen thousand feet in the air, aboard the Learjet, an older model, a bit battered but dependable. The trip was expensive, as all private aviation flights are. Yet he had no option. Time was critical, and commercial wouldn’t get him to the town he sought quickly enough.

As they flew, he thought of the box hidden at Echo Ridge. What would it contain?

Whatever that might be, it was worth killing for. Torturing too. He pictured Ebbitt Droon’s face, determined to get the treasure, as he pointed a gun at Shaw’s knee.

A voice from the cockpit. “We’re landing, Mr. Shaw.”

The plane swooped down toward the runway, the craft skewing sideways at an acute angle — it was called crabbing and would be alarming if Shaw had not experienced small aircraft landings several dozen times. The Lear straightened at the last minute, flared and touched down smoothly. They taxied to the fixed base flight operation and cut the engines.

Shaw rose and stretched — to the extent he could in the low-ceilinged interior — and walked to the door.

“This won’t be long.”

“What should I do about the flight plan?”

“One option is I’ll be going back home. The other?” He shrugged. “I’ll let you know as soon as I can.”

“Sure, Mr. Shaw. Good luck.”


The spread was pretty much as Shaw expected: a rambling one story house with two garages and a workshop attached. A shed behind the home that could’ve inspired the set designer for Texas Chainsaw Massacre. As he drove the rental up the dirt drive, he passed a messy shooting range, in which were mounted dozens of black iron targets. They’d ring like gongs when hit. The ground was littered with fun targets: exploded milk jugs and glass soda bottles blown to dusty smithereens.

The Montana hills were in the background, and ridges of trim forests surrounded the place. The grounds here, though, were mostly scruffy and overgrown. Dead stumps and fallen branches protruded from thick, mustard-colored swamp. The smell was what you’d expect.

On the other hand, there were some pleasing aesthetic elements: an elaborate koi pond was filled with a dozen sleek elegant inhabitants, in sharp black and white and stark orange. There was, of all things, an easel set up beside a rusting V-block engine; the canvas was a well done oil of a mountain peak and circling bird. It was not an eagle.

He was thirty feet from the porch when the screen door opened. Before he saw anything other than a beefy hand and tree-trunk arm, a voice called, “Well, if it ain’t my good old buddy.”

Grinning, Dalton Crowe stepped out and trooped over the planks, which sagged under his weight. He seemed to be wearing the same outfit as when he’d shot out the tire of Shaw’s rental Kia last week: camo overalls and lumberjack shirt. A .45 autoloader was in a holster, riding high on his broad hip.

“So nice of you to come for a visit, Shaw.” Crowe looked him up and down. His smile was less welcoming than gloating. Shaw’s trip here had been both expensive and inconvenient, and Crowe knew it.

“Here.” Shaw pulled out his wallet, extracted a check and handed it to the big man.

Crowe pulled out his cell phone and took a picture of the draft. Odd to see a biker/mountain man taking advantage of a camera-phone deposit. But the truth was, Crowe’s embrace of high technology was why Shaw was here.

“’K.” He handed Shaw a piece of paper. “That’s the name of the app you download. And the user name and passcode.”

The name was: TroubleMan666.

Shaw pocketed the slip and walked away.

The man grumbled, “I’m doing this as a favor, Shaw. You still owe me for the reward, the whole fifty K. I woulda got them boys, you hadn’t fucking cheated. I’m going to remember that.”

Without pausing, or turning, Shaw nodded at the easel. “Like the painting, Crowe.”


An hour later, he was in yet another rental, many miles away. The Land Cruiser SUV was rocking over an unlit dirt road. He was taking his time.

He checked the GPS. Drove another mile and then noted a haze of illumination ahead of him. It was a small town in the hills. The name of the place was Moody. There was a lake nearby, and the burg was dedicated, it seemed, to the art and business of fishing. You could buy bait everywhere except for the ice cream parlor, a used bookshop and an off-brand cell phone store, according to window signs.

At the one traffic light in town he turned right and proceeded to Lake View Motor Inn. When he was nearly there, he pulled onto a service road. He killed the engine.

The motel was in a good location for what he had in mind. Behind the place was a dirt road that bypassed the town and led south, good for an escape. He’d checked it out on Google Earth and some better topographic maps and he knew that the SUV could handle the terrain and keep ahead of pursuit.

Shaw slipped from the car and closed the door, leaving the vehicle unlocked. He picked up the empty plastic grocery bag — a thick one — and slipped it into his jacket pocket. No sport coat now. He was dressed in black jeans and matching tactical assault jacket. Gloves too, made of thin leather.

Through the bushes he made his way to the dimly lit motel. He smelled lake and trash, scents that might or might not have been related. He came to a dilapidated fence and, when he pushed open the gate, it fell to the ground.

The motel was composed of individual cabins for guests and Shaw now oriented himself. Keeping to the shadows, he slipped close to Number 7. The clapboard structure was one of the larger units and it featured a private path down to a dock jutting into the dark lake. He detoured briefly and looked over the pier. A covered rowboat was the only vessel along this stretch of weedy, placid shore.

He returned to the cabin and eased into the space between the outer wall and a row of shrubbery, placing his feet carefully. At the window, which exuded soft, yellow light, he paused and looked inside. The unit was a suite, and Shaw could see into both lit bedrooms.

Unoccupied.

On the floor was luggage, backpacks, and cardboard cartons. The TV was on but silent. Local news.

Let’s get to it, he told himself.

From his pocket he extracted a tool with a flat blade. A window lock opener. Similar to the dinner knife he’d used to break into the various buildings at the Osiris Foundation, though this was made for that purpose and was therefore much more efficient. Thin and forged of titanium. In a few seconds, the lock was breached and he slid the window up. Just as at Abby’s dorm, Shaw went through the awkward maneuver of boosting himself up to the sill, sticking his head in and tumbling to the floor inside. He rose and looked around him.

He supposed the occupants were out to dinner and would return soon.

Shaw unfurled the grocery bag and walked around the room, filling the sack.

Five minutes later, he paused and listened. Then walked to the front door, undid the chain and deadbolt and opened it fast, stepping outside.

He nearly collided with the room’s two occupants, who, just like him, had parked their car some distance from the cabin and walked here.

David Ellis — Master Eli — gasped and dropped the carry-out bag of restaurant leftovers he held.

The man with him, Hugh Garner, didn’t waste a moment. Instinctively he went into a combat stance and launched a knuckly fist directly toward Shaw’s solar plexus.

78

Shaw didn’t move, intentionally not lowering his center of gravity into a defensive posture.

The result was that Hugh’s solid fist slammed directly into the bulletproof plate that was part of Shaw’s tactical jacket. At the thonk, the man blinked in surprise and winced in pain.

Hugh’s hand drew back, invisibly fast, for a second blow — aimed at the head — and now Shaw prepared to fight. He flung the filled grocery bag into the weeds outside the door, far from the reach of the two men. He braced and when Hugh’s knotty fist streaked toward him again Shaw danced aside and the hand glanced off his shoulder.

The blow didn’t hurt much and merely knocked him into the doorjamb.

Behind Hugh, Eli had drawn a pistol. “I’ve got him... get back.”

This was the opposite of what Shaw had anticipated; he’d thought Hugh would be armed and was planning on getting the gun away from him. Eli aimed, and Shaw did the only thing he could do: he dropped low and launched himself into Hugh, his shoulder connecting with the man’s belly and driving him back. He drew on his wrestling training and the grappling skills Ashton had taught the children when they were young. He gripped the man’s leg and tilted and they went down together.

“You fucker.” Hugh grunted.

“Get out of the way!” Eli was calling. Shaw held tight, knowing Eli wouldn’t fire as long as the two men were intertwined.

Hugh pounded hard on Shaw’s back and shoulder and head, chopping; the blows were painful, though not debilitating. Shaw managed to land a strike of his own — a lucky one — on Hugh’s ear and the man cried out in pain.

Shaw hoped the eardrum had ruptured but it probably hadn’t.

They rolled into the dirt, as Eli walked close, holding the weapon unsteadily. “Move, get away!”

“No, no shots!” Hugh whispered. “The noise.”

Shaw took advantage of Eli’s uncertainty. He broke away, lowered his stance and held his hands out, circling. Shaw assumed some generic kung-fu position — something he’d seen in a movie. It was meaningless. Hugh recognized it as such and smiled.

Eli said, “Hugh, let me—”

“No. I want to take him,” the big man muttered.

And that was undoubtedly true; Shaw had destroyed Hugh’s very lucrative and enjoyable life. But this fight would not be an opportunity for the former head of the Assistance Unit to take anything.

Shaw feinted to the right, then veered the opposite way and sprinted fast, tackling Eli. He went down hard. The man’s eyes turned from expressions of fury to fear. Shaw realized that his thoughts earlier were right. The otherworldly color of his pupils came from contact lenses. The shade now was everyday blue.

“Oh, Jesus Christ! Lose the gun. Toss it.” Hugh’s voice was thick with disgust. Maybe he was upset that Shaw wasn’t playing fair and participating in a mano-a-mano battle to the death.

Eli tried to pitch the Glock but Shaw ripped it from his hand, and rolled away. He racked the slide, making sure a round was chambered and he aimed between the two men.

Hugh held up his hands, palms out. “Look. We can get you a lot of money. I mean, a lot.” He nodded toward the grocery bag. “Just leave the documents, the evidence, whatever you stole. We can give you cash right now. Fifty thousand. A hundred.”

Involuntarily, into Shaw’s mind came some images: Samuel’s face of sorrow as he threw himself off the cliff.

Master Eli truly saved my bacon when it came to Mom and Dad...

Adelle’s expression as she sat, slumped on the bench.

I lost my baby two years ago...

And he heard Victoria’s voice as she told him of Gretta’s suicide.

The muzzle of the Glock strayed toward Eli, who cringed and held up a palm. “No, please... no.”

Shaw reflected on another of his father’s rules.

Never point a firearm at anyone unless you intend to pull the trigger.

Colter Shaw pulled the trigger.

79

As he bounded over the dirt road in his rental SUV, Colter Shaw learned a fact.

The men had another gun.

As they pursued him in an SUV of their own, Eli behind the wheel of the dark gray vehicle, Hugh would fire in Shaw’s direction.

This was because of the gunshot back at the motel. As tempted as Shaw was to kill Eli on the spot, he hadn’t in fact aimed for the cult leader. Instead, he’d shot Hugh in the calf, flung the gun into the lake and, snagging the grocery bag, sprinted back to his vehicle. Eli had apparently ducked into the motel cabin and got the second gun, and together they’d sped after Shaw.

Another crack of gunshot.

Handguns are relatively inaccurate under the best of conditions and the combination of the unpaved surface and Shaw’s evasive driving meant that none of the slugs fired his way hit the Land Cruiser.

As he barreled down the dark road, Shaw clocked the miles from the cabin: two, three, four... The vehicles were hitting sixty and seventy miles per hour, and Hugh and Eli’s — piloted by the desperate cult leader — was slowly gaining.

A glance at the GPS map. Ahead, a mile or so, was a sharp bend in the road. He wondered at what speed he should take it.

He ducked as, finally, a bullet hit the rear of his rental. No injury, no damage — other than a hole, of course. He began to swerve even more severely, though.

Which is when he came to the jog.

It was more pronounced than the Google map had suggested, and with a solid crack of something within the vehicle breaking, his SUV crashed into and through a low berm of dirt and brush and sandy mulch. It plowed into a field on the far side, the front wheels trapped in a bed of sand and loose earth. The airbag exploded. It was an impressive experience.

Shaw heard Eli’s vehicle squeal to a stop and, grabbing the grocery bag, he leapt out, taking cover under a rise topped with a stand of forsythia and holly.

“Carter... whatever your name is, listen to us.” Eli was standing at the roadside, while Hugh leaned against the hood, sweaty, wincing.

“Drop the bag. We’ll let you go. Just throw it here. That’s all you need to do. It’ll all be good.”

Shaw hefted the bag by the handle and swung it into the clearing. It flashed as it flew through the headlights of the SUV at the top of the hill.

With the gun now in his hand, Eli made his way over the berm and down into the field, looking about carefully. Peering, of course, for his target. His intent was to murder Shaw the minute he spotted him.

Shaw dug his phone out and sent a text.

No more than five seconds later, the entire field lit up like a football stadium on game night.

A voice over the loudspeaker: “David Ellis, Hugh Garner! This is the FBI. Drop any weapons, lie down on the ground! Do it now, or you will be fired upon.”

The speaker was Special Agent Robert Slay.

“Drop your weapons. Down! Now, now! Or we will fire.”

Eli hesitated only a moment and dropped the gun. However, he remained standing. “You don’t have jurisdiction here! This is illegal. You can’t...” His voice faded, as his eyes followed Hugh’s. The security man was looking back along the road and did as ordered.

“No,” Hugh whispered in disgust.

Eli muttered, “Oh, Jesus Christ...” Shaw couldn’t help note the irony: those words came from the man who made his living selling resurrection.

A hundred feet behind them was a small stone marker, delineating the Canada/U.S. border. Eli and Hugh had been concentrating so hard on catching Shaw that they’d failed to stop before entering the United States.

Agents ran forward and cuffed them, easing Hugh to the ground carefully because of his gunshot.

An ambulance sped up and the technicians tended to the wounded leg. Both men were read their rights.

Shaw climbed to the road and, pulling off the gloves and pocketing them, joined Slay. Another law enforcer was present too: Detective Laurent Etoile from the San Francisco Police Department, the man with the resonant baritone. Shaw was surprised he hadn’t given the loudspeaker commands; maybe it was a federal vs. state jurisdiction thing.

Eli raged, “This is entrapment!”

Slay, searching the men’s SUV, looked up. “What?” he asked, distracted.

“This is entrapment.”

“No, it’s not,” the agent said, blasé, and continued with his search.

Eli and Hugh had entered Canada illegally so they had no right to any protections in that country. Anyway, they’d recrossed the border of their own volition and were once again subject to U.S. criminal jurisdiction.

That Shaw had shot an unarmed man in the leg added a wrinkle but he’d had no choice. He needed to get both Eli and Hugh back to the States and if he’d merely fled with the bag it might have been only Hugh who pursued him. The gunshot in the AU’s leg guaranteed that Eli himself would have to man the pursuit vehicle.

Eli muttered, “Well, you can’t use that as evidence. It’s stolen. Illegal!”

Shaw looked him over, thinking of a rule of his own, one hardly up to the level of Ashton, who was, after all, the King of Never. Shaw’s was:

Never be dramatic.

But sometimes you needed to indulge yourself. Shaw made a grand show of upending the bag and pouring the contents on the ground. In the light of the headlamps, Eli stared at the newspapers, menus and promotional flyers from the motel room: The Canadian Pacific Railway Museum. Visit the Hogworth Maple Syrup Company! The Untold Story of Moody, British Columbia.

Not a single piece of paper that the men had carted away from the Osiris Foundation camp with them — presumably what remained of the incriminating evidence; the rest would have been dumped. It would in fact have been illegal for Shaw to steal the documents.

“We don’t need anything more for the prosecution,” Detective Etoile said.

From Slay: “All we needed was your asses back in the U. S. of A.”

“Oh, fuck,” Hugh snarled.

The case might have gone a bit easier if they had some of the evidence, but in fact the authorities had plenty to put Hugh and Eli away for a long, long time. Witnesses like Anja, betrayed Inner Circle personnel, Assistance Unit men willing to spill. Steve’s notebook was a bombshell.

“How did you find us?” Eli asked Slay.

The agent nodded toward Shaw. “Him.”

Shaw shrugged, saying nothing, though thinking it really was a team effort. Shaw’s partner had, improbably, been Dalton Crowe.

The search for Eli had started before the cult leader and Hugh had left the Osiris Foundation camp. While the men waited for their luggage in Sheriff Calhoun’s SUV, Shaw had dug into his backpack for a notebook to write his name and number on a sheet for the sheriff. But that was just a cover. What he’d actually done was find the GPS tracker that Crowe had hidden on Shaw’s Kia, during the pursuit of Erick and Adam. He’d turned it on and stuck the unit in the bottom of Eli’s go-bag, sitting in the back of the SUV.

He’d told Slay about it, and the agent had called Crowe to find the log-in details of the unit. But the reward seeker was still pissed off about losing the Erick/Adam rewards and hung up on him. The agent tried to get a warrant to present to the tracking company but no magistrate was willing to issue one, since Crowe had no connection to Eli.

So Shaw had texted Crowe himself and, after some negotiation, he said he’d rent out the tracker codes for ten K — his text agreeing to the final terms was the one Shaw had received while sitting beside Victoria in the Compound earlier.

See you at dinner?

Probably not...

The big man would only do the deal, however, if Shaw showed up with the check in person. (To make sure he got the money, of course, though Shaw was sure there was that element of gloat in the demand too, about which Shaw could not have cared less.)

The tracking app had located the men across the border in Moody, British Columbia, where they were undoubtedly staging for a more sophisticated getaway to a location both farther away and far more exotic.

Shaw and Slay were concerned that going through the proper channels with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police would have taken too long, giving the two fugitives a chance to vanish. So they’d hacked together this plan, to lure the men back across the border, as they chased Shaw.

Shaw himself had entered Canada legally at a crossing a few miles away and a man in a U.S. Customs and Border Protection uniform now approached. “Colter Shaw?”

“That’s right.”

“I’ll stamp your passport. Unless you’d want to spend the night back up at the inn in Moody. I hear it’s pretty nice.”

“No, I’ll find someplace here.” Handing over the blue booklet to the CBP officer.

The odds were probably ninety percent that no one had seen him shoot Hugh, though if the ten percent came to pass, the consequences would be inconvenient, if not dire. Better to stay stateside.

Which was a shame.

Shaw had never toured a maple syrup factory before.

80 June 21

After his improvised mining operation in Echo Ridge, Colter Shaw returned with his father’s package to the cabin.

Accompanied by Chase only, he walked into the room that had been his father’s office, so many years ago.

He glanced at the dozens of framed photos. A particularly good one — crisply focused and in vibrant colors — was of the three siblings, arms about one another. Dorion, Colter and Russell were all smiling.

Shaw cleared a place at the desk and set down the box. He hesitated for a moment. What on earth would he find? People had died for what he was about to see. Was it really as important as the facts surrounding it suggested? Or was it nonsense, the product of his father’s dissipating mind? A collection of long-expired grocery store coupons? Or could it even be empty?

The glue at the seams was thick and hard, unbreakable. He used his locking blade knife to cut open the top. He extracted a waterproof pouch, which he also cut open, more carefully than the exterior container.

A large envelope was inside. He tore the top open and removed a half dozen sheets of paper filled with Ashton’s handwritten notes, printouts of articles, and a map of the San Francisco Bay Area, as well as two keys on a ring; they appeared to be for a structure, a house or office. On top was a letter, also written by his father. Shaw smoothed the crackly sheet and leaned forward.

Hello:


My name is Ashton Shaw, former professor, amateur historian and student of political science. Over the course of my years in academia and doing my own research and writing, I grew to distrust most large corporations, institutions and individuals, as well as many politicians and lobbyists — those who thrive in the netherworld between legality and illegality, democracy and dictatorship. I’ve published numerous articles and organized and attended protests exposing those wrongs.

Of course I received threats from some of the organizations I challenged. For safety’s sake I moved my family from the Bay Area to a place where I could better protect them, while continuing my campaign underground. I know this was hard for them. But I saw no other choice.

Working with a few colleagues, I like to think we made some headway in smoothing some of society’s rough edges: exposing graft and corruption in the government or corporate world.

And then, a few years ago, I came across BlackBridge Corporate Solutions.

While I was doing research into the dangers posed by big drug companies, I learned that the incidence of addiction in certain lower-middle-class neighborhoods that had little history of drug problems increased suddenly and dramatically, almost overnight. As a result, crime would soar, property values would plummet. The neighborhoods became unlivable.

I learned, to my shock, that this trend was not the natural outgrowth typically facing challenged neighborhoods. The entire drug infestation was engineered by BlackBridge. It’s a highly secretive corporate espionage firm, based in Los Angeles. Originally small but now international, it’s made up of former corporate executives, intelligence community members, military, mercenary soldiers and even criminals. Its clients are some of the most powerful companies around the world.

Several of those clients hired BlackBridge to engineer a massive decrease in property value of certain target neighborhoods, so their clients could move in and buy up the property at fire-sale prices. BlackBridge did this by creating an artificial drug problem. BlackBridge operatives would flood the neighborhoods with drugs, supplying them virtually for free to gangs. Sometimes they would simply scatter opioids, fentanyl and meth on the streets for anyone — including children — to take. The plan resulted in hundreds of deaths from drugs and crime, and thousands of residents dislocated, many of them becoming homeless.

This real estate scheme, by the way, is simply one of dozens of such dirty-trick projects BlackBridge performs for clients around the world.

I suppose such firms are not uncommon, and you may wonder why BlackBridge became my colleagues’ and my — if I may — White Whale.

The answer is simple. A brilliant graduate student in my and several of my colleagues’ classes graduated and went on to law school and then was elected a city councilman in San Francisco. We were in touch frequently. Todd became a friend. He was the one who told me about the curious influx of drugs in the district he represented.

He had just begun looking into the matter when he and his wife were murdered. The crime appeared to be a robbery but little was taken and the police found forensic evidence linking the killer to the new drugs found on the street.

My belief is that BlackBridge killed Todd to shut him up. At the very least, they are responsible because of the drugs they seeded into his district.

Nearly all BlackBridge employees refused to talk to us — terrified of the consequences — but I found several who were disgusted with the operations and agreed to meet with me. They wouldn’t give me any evidence themselves but they did refer to a former employee, Amos Gahl, who had stolen some documents from the company, something the company was desperate to recover; they believed it was evidence that could bring down BlackBridge and, in doing so, their corrupt clients as well.

Gahl hid these documents somewhere in the San Francisco area, they told me... but before he could contact the authorities about them, he was killed in a car crash that did not appear to be accidental.

It became my obsession to find what Gahl had hidden.

Then BlackBridge discovered us.

One by one, under overt or subtle threats, my colleagues backed out of our crusade. Two others died from apparently natural causes that seemed far too coincidental.

The BlackBridge operative in charge of finding us and stopping our search for the evidence — or stealing it from us if we did — is a woman named Irena Braxton. She may look like somebody’s grandmother but she’s utterly ruthless and does not hesitate to order physical assaults as part of her planning. We had thought she was dead, at the hand of a former assistant of hers no less, but — unfortunately — that report proved to be false. Her search for us continues.

Now, we get around to you.

You’ve clearly followed the breadcrumbs I’ve left leading you to Echo Ridge, and now know the whole story.

I can hardly in good conscience ask you to take on this perilous job. No reasonable person would. But if you are so inclined, I will say that in picking up where my search has ended, you’ll be fighting to secure justice for those who have perished or had their lives upended by BlackBridge and its clients, and you’ll be guaranteeing that thousands in the future will not suffer similar fates.

The map included here indicates the locations in the city that might contain — or lead to — the evidence Gahl hid. After leaving this letter and accompanying documents, I will be returning to San Francisco and I hope I will have found more leads. They can be found at 618 Alvarez Street in San Francisco.

Finally, let me say this:

Never assume you’re safe.

A.S.

81

An exception to the usual west-to-east rule of the transit of weather in the United States occurs when the bristling Santa Ana winds flow from Southern California and embroil parts north, including the valley in which the Compound sits.

Through the open window of his father’s office, Colter Shaw felt the hot breeze now, a leisurely whirlpool throughout the valley where the cabin sat. Today’s was a rare wind, the month being June; the crisp Santa Anas are generally an October-to-April phenomenon. But lately they had been appearing earlier, and leaving later. Hotter and stronger too, as anyone who had lost a house to the frequent fires in the state could tragically confirm.

Outside, Mary Dove was walking through a large field, one Colter Shaw knew well. It was where his father’s memorial service had been. A sign that the man’s mind had not collapsed completely even near the end was his wry funeral instructions:

It’s my wish that Ash’s ashes be scattered over Crescent Lake.

This ten-acre patch was where the family had raised vegetables, and his mother still did. It was where they had hunted, taking wild turkey and pheasant and more than a few deer, an animal in which evolutionary genetic warnings — this isn’t the safest place in the world for you — didn’t seem to filter down to subsequent generations.

His mother in fact was on the trail of this evening’s dinner at the moment.

Mary Dove was the best hunter in the Shaw family. He could picture her aiming the well-tended Winchester at her prey, sighting through a scuffed Nikon scope, both eyes open. The rifle would be on a steady perch of branch or rock or fencepost.

Never fire a long gun freehand, except in emergencies.

Mary Dove wouldn’t squeeze the trigger until she was absolutely certain she had a clean and lethal shot. In all the years of hunting with her, Shaw had never seen her miss, nor use more than one bullet to take game.

Shaw wondered what would be on tonight’s menu. At another time, he might have deduced this from the type of firearm she carried — shotgun for pheasant or duck, rifle for boar or venison. But today she wasn’t armed. All she wielded now was a pen to sign the truck driver’s delivery receipt for the box of groceries. The vehicle sat beside the mailbox at the end of the drive.

Mary Dove tipped the man — it was a twenty-five-mile drive from White Sulfur Springs. She picked up the sizeable box effortlessly, as if it held feathers and air, and returned to the cabin.

Shaw’s phone hummed. The caller was Sue Bascomb, the woman who was thinking of writing a book about her experience at the Osiris Foundation.

I don’t want this to happen to anyone else...

“Mr. Shaw.” Her voice was animated. “Eli got arrested, he and that horrible man, Hugh. Did you know?”

“Heard something about it, I think.”

“I’m working on that book now. I’ve got the names of two dozen former Companions willing to talk to me. If you’re still up for it, I’d really like to interview you.”

Shaw said he was, with the caveat he’d mentioned: his name wouldn’t appear.

This was fine with her. She explained that as a journalist she frequently used unnamed sources. It was completely ethical as long as there was corroboration when it came to controversial statements.

They picked a place to meet: her home, she said, was in Seattle, and they agreed on Tacoma, where Shaw had some follow-up business.

Shaw rose and joined his mother, as she unpacked steaks and chicken and an elaborate pie.

Mary Dove lifted an eyebrow.

He showed her the contents of Ashton’s hidden treasure. She read the letter carefully, then skimmed the rest. She poked her glasses higher and reviewed the map of San Francisco. Shook her head and looked at her son.

“BlackBridge. Never heard of it.” She sighed. “But I remember when Todd and Cathy Foster died. It was terrible. Ash was very close to him. That explains a lot.” She tapped the letter. “This is real, what he’s worried about. This isn’t from his illness.”

Shaw agreed. His father’s paranoia and breaks with reality had resulted in plenty of bizarre scribblings. These notes, however, were articulate and based on actual events; his concern was genuine.

Besides, there was that run-in Shaw himself had had with the BlackBridge hitman, Ebbitt Droon, a few weeks ago, which assured him these documents were legitimate.

Shaw’s glance was to the outside, watching the hot breeze tilt needlegrass and graceful pink Muhlenbergia. The wind raised timid eddies of dust on the edge of the green. He was thinking of Droon’s shark eyes, the expert way he’d held his weapon. The ruthlessness of his mission.

I like hurting people. And I hurt in ways that change them. Forever.

“Did Ashton ever mention the house on Alvarez?”

“No.”

Upon learning that their spouse had a secret hideaway, some women would immediately think: love nest. He’s cheating. But not Mary Dove; no one was more faithful to his wife than Ashton Shaw.

Lifting his phone, Shaw showed his mother a text he’d just received from his private eye.

618 Alvarez is a single-family dwelling, three stories, 1200 square feet, owned by a corporation established under California law years ago. DCR Holdings. Tax and upkeep paid for by investments. Sufficient assets and income to keep the property going in perpetuity. Conducted brief interviews with neighboring businesses. They report that they have seen a man in his thirties entering the house from time to time recently. Possible a home sitting service. No further information.

She smiled. “DCR Holdings.”

Dorion, Colter, Russell.

So. His father had a safe house, where he had met with his colleagues as they planned the demise of BlackBridge. And the house was still operative.

He told his mother, “These people — Braxton and Droon — probably know about you and Dorie. I’ll call Tom Pepper. He’ll pull strings and get a couple of watchers — here and outside Dorie’s.”

“I won’t object to that. But...” Mary Dove lifted the tail of her blouse and revealed the grip of a Glock, the .45, sitting in a hip holster. “We’re good for now.” She let the cloth drop and turned to a cutting board, saying, as if she didn’t have a care in the world, “Dinner in a few hours. Alert the crew.”

82

Colter Shaw and Victoria Lesston sat on the porch in the Compound. The hour was nearly midnight and a stately crescent of moon sat high in the inky sky.

The Santa Anas were relaxed at the moment and the residual breeze was merely warm and comforting. The soundtrack was the rustle of stalky plants, owls and distant coyotes, the occasional wolf.

He had a beer, she a glass of wine. Chase sat at their feet. His ears would prick up occasionally, maybe hearing or smelling a potential intruder. But nothing drove him to his feet or rose hackles. Shaw could settle him with a soft, “Okay, boy.” There was a collar around his neck connected to a leash looped around Shaw’s chair leg. Night was predator time, and Shaw wanted to make sure the rottie didn’t go off to defend the kingdom in the face of insurmountable odds.

The cabin was dim and quiet; everyone else had gone to bed.

The two of them talked and talked, sharing stories.

Shaw spoke of the Never rules of his father’s making, and the survival skills he’d taught the children, which paralleled much of Victoria’s training in the military.

“What branch?” he asked.

“Delta Force.”

The special ops branch of the Army.

Victoria explained that 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta, known more commonly as “the Unit,” had been recruiting women soldiers for the field, not desk assignments, for thirty years.

They compared notes on incidents that had occurred on his reward jobs and her security work. Immersion in ice water. Making a weapon — and a particularly insidious one — out of a rosebush. Various sustaining, if disgusting, improvised meals in the field.

He told her about the time he and his fourteen-year-old sister had rappelled down a three-hundred-foot cliff to avoid a pack of wolves at the summit.

“They only hunt at night,” was her reply.

“That’s a fact.”

“Well,” was her response. “That means you did a descent in the dark. You have moonlight?”

He said no and asked if she’d had any unusual descents.

“A few.” Spoken in a deflecting way.

“Okay. How far was the longest?”

“I don’t know, about four hundred.”

“Not bad.”

A moment of debate apparently. “Okay, actually, it was yards.”

A quarter mile straight down.

Shaw said, “You get the trophy.”

They sat in silence for a moment, until Victoria stretched and winced, as the shoulder took some unexpected stress.

“Think I’m feeling tired,” she said.

He was too.

Shaw walked her to the bedroom that had been Dorie’s. The decorations were mostly prints of Native Americans, wild animals, dogs and, for some reason, old-time locomotives, which his sister had been obsessed with as a girl.

When they stopped, Victoria turned to face Shaw. Her maneuver was of a certain caliber, sure and unmistakable. She lifted her hair away from her face. Colter Shaw put his hand on her good shoulder, leaned slightly down, and kissed her firmly. She pressed fully into him. Chase was gazing at them with that look of blended understanding and confusion that only dogs can muster. After a too-brief quarter minute, Victoria eased away.

“’Night,” she whispered and walked into her room.

83 June 22

The weather in Gig Harbor had changed considerably from the last time he’d been here.

The sun was brilliant, not a wisp of fog or cloud to be seen. The green swath of pine was radiant, the water blue as sapphire.

Shaw steered the Winnebago through the entrance gate. The two pillars holding the cast-iron panels were crowned with angels made of concrete. The poor creatures were grimy and their wings weather-smoothed.

He braked to a stop and scanned the grounds. The battered, green pickup truck he sought was not far away. He steered toward it and parked behind. Taking an 8-by-10 envelope from the seat beside him, he climbed out of the camper and walked up to the man who stood over a new grave.

“Mr. Harper.”

The broad-shouldered man appeared startled, apparently not having heard the camper arrive and park. He frowned, thought a moment. “Shaw.”

Adam’s was a simple tombstone. Name and the dates of birth and death. No angels, no bas-reliefs like in the Study Room in the Foundation’s camp.

The name on the neighboring tombstone was Kelly Mae Harper.

Shaw said, “There’s something I want to tell you.”

A shrug of the man’s big shoulders.

“When Adam was away for those three weeks, after your wife died?”

Stan Harper’s response was a tip of his head.

“You said when he came back his moods were better.”

“Was like when he was a kid, when he was happy. His troubles didn’t hit until he was a teenager. What’s any of this matter, Shaw?” A glance toward the grave at his feet. A ragged: “He’s gone.”

“Those three weeks he was away? He was in a cult.”

“Cult?”

“It’s been in the news. Osiris Foundation.”

Looking blankly at the ground, Stan muttered, “And?”

“What the cult taught was that after we die we come back.”

“Like... reincarnation?”

Shaw said, “Something like that.”

“And Adam believed it?”

“Yes, he did. It gave him comfort. Before he died he was convinced he’d be with his family again. In another life. His mother, you.”

Harper grunted a laugh. Shaw couldn’t tell what his reaction to this odd news might really be.

“That’s all bullshit. All of it. The church too. Heaven, hell. Way I feel anyway. After Kelly.”

“It meant something to Adam.”

Stan was silent.

“Here.” Shaw handed him the envelope. Harper looked inside and extracted Adam’s Osiris Foundation notebook, the one Frederick had given him.

Harper glanced at the cover. The Process.

“It was Adam’s. Like a diary. He wrote down his thoughts and memories. What he liked about his life, what he didn’t.”

The bad feelings — anger, fear, sorrow — and the good ones — joy, love, comfort. We call them — how clever is this? The Minuses and the Pluses...

Shaw had skimmed it. The passages weren’t very grammatical, they rambled and ranted. There were irrelevant doodles. But some of the Pluses included memories of times spent with his father.

“I don’t want it. Why would I want it?” He stuffed the notebook in the envelope and handed it back, then glanced down to the grave. “Don’t know why I came. Thought I’d feel something. Thought I’d think something.”

“Goodbye, Mr. Harper.”

The man didn’t reply.

Shaw started back to the Winnebago. He was halfway there when he heard. “Hold on.”

Harper was walking up to him. “Maybe I’ll hold on to that. Just... Well, maybe I will.”

Shaw handed the envelope to him.

Harper took it and returned to his pickup, fishing keys from his pocket.

84

The Winnebago was parked in a Walmart lot near Tacoma.

Wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, Shaw was at the dinette, on which sat a thick file folder he’d labeled Ashton Shaw Material. The map of the San Francisco Bay Area that sat on the top was wrinkled and stained. Shaw was looking over the eighteen X’s, most of them in the north — Marin County and on up into wine country. Napa, Sonoma.

The map included here indicates the locations in the city that might contain — or lead to — the evidence Gahl hid.

He was sipping a fine Honduran coffee, which was laced with just the right amount of milk. That was always a question: too little was fixable, too much not.

There was a rapping on the door.

“Mr. Shaw? It’s Sue Bascomb.”

Shaw slipped the map into the file and opened the door. The camper sagged slightly as she climbed in. The stocky woman was wearing a dark green, long-sleeved dress and black cardigan sweater.

He offered her coffee, which she declined, and they sat at the small table. She asked questions she’d prepared. He answered into a recording app on her phone, and she took notes as well. Shaw declined to give any personal information and, of course, said nothing about Victoria.

He did report in detail on the beating of the reporter Klein and the horrific murder of John. He said nothing specific about Abby, though he described sexual assaults in general. These details seemed to interest her the most.

After a half hour, she said, “That’s very good, Mr. Shaw.”

“‘Colter’ is fine.”

“Helpful. Quite helpful.” She then flipped through her notes and seemed about to ask another question, a follow-up perhaps, when they heard a shout from the parking lot.

They both rose to their feet quickly. “There’s a fire, a car,” she said, peering through the shade. Shaw grabbed one of the extinguishers he kept near the driver’s seat and pushed outside.

An SUV nearby was engulfed in flames, smoke spiraling skyward like a black tornado. It took him back immediately to John’s horrific death, which he’d just been recounting.

People were running from the store and their own cars to see what was happening.

“There’s somebody inside! Look!”

“Call nine-one-one.”

“Stand back! It could blow up!”

Shaw hurried to the vehicle and let fly a stream of extinguisher foam. It didn’t do much, though it did suppress a portion of the flames long enough to make it clear that the SUV was unoccupied. What someone had taken for a human was just a stack of packages.

There were several loud pops.

“Those’re bullets!” a man cried, and people fled.

Shaw didn’t bother to tell them that, no, that’s not what burning bullets sound like. What they’d heard was probably food jars exploding.

In the distance he heard sirens.

He set the spent canister in the grassy divider and returned to the camper. Stepping inside, he climbed to the floor and stopped. The woman had left.

She wasn’t the only thing that was gone.

The file labeled Ashton Shaw Material was missing too.

85

Outside the camper, there was no sign of the car she’d arrived in.

He might have caught a glimpse but her associate had ignited a vehicle that was upwind of the Winnebago, so that the choking smoke obscured the view of the getaway.

Smart.

Shaw returned inside and did a fast inventory. The bedroom was still locked and she wouldn’t have had time to pick the elaborate locks. Still, he needed to check.

Yes, everything was accounted for. His own go-bag (called by survivalists GTHO, as in “Get the Hell Out,” or in an R-rated version, GTFO). Then weapons: for handguns the .357 Colt Python and a .40 Glock. His favorite long gun too, a Lee Enfield No. 4 Mk2. The British bolt-action rifle was sixty years old and battered and scuffed but reliable as an iron-block V-8 and devilishly accurate. There was plenty of ammunition too, cleaning gear and his best Nikon telescopic sight.

Would he need the firepower? No idea.

Yet he recalled his father’s letter.

Never assume you’re safe...

His phone hummed with a text. It was from Victoria.

A rare smile crossed his lips as he read.

He thought for a moment and then sent a reply.

Then, time for work.

He texted Mack McKenzie, who was ready and waiting in Washington, D.C.

Sending picture via email.

Her reply:

K.

Shaw then went to the kitchen counter and lifted the Sony digital camera from where he’d hidden it behind a stack of coffee bags and cups. He removed the SD card and, on his computer, found a good, full-face image of the woman who had been sitting eight feet from the camera ten minutes ago.

This he sent in an encrypted email to Mack.

A moment later his phone dinged.

Searching now.

Mack’s internet expert would use facial recognition to find matches everywhere it could online and begin assembling a dossier on Shaw’s visitor.

Who was not Sue Bascomb, an Apprentice at the Osiris Foundation camp — that name was just a cover. Shaw was sure that the woman was Irena Braxton, the BlackBridge operative who had devoted years to finding the damning evidence that Ashton and his colleagues were looking for — and eliminating them in the process.

He had not originally suspected her. When she’d come up to him at the camp, proposing a book about Eli and the dangers of the Foundation, he’d believed she was legitimate.

But during her phone call to him later she’d alluded to the fact she was a journalist. That certainly would have been a good cover to get close to Shaw. Except for one detail she didn’t know: Eli would never let a reporter into the camp as a Companion. She was lying.

He recalled too what his father had written about Braxton:

She may look like somebody’s grandmother but she’s utterly ruthless...

Shaw tried to figure out how they’d orchestrated the theft.

He supposed Braxton and Droon — who was probably the SUV arsonist — could have followed Shaw to the camp or intercepted his phone calls and texts and learned what he had planned. He changed phones frequently and used burners but as his FBI friend, Tom Pepper, said, “If they wanta listen to you they’re gonna listen.”

From the hills above the camp, the two could have observed what the Foundation was about. After Shaw’s speech exposing Eli, which they would have heard, Braxton saw an opportunity to get close to him. When the authorities arrived, she could have just strolled into the chaotic camp, put a discarded amulet around her neck and walked up to Shaw with the story about writing of her experience.

Her goal, of course, was to find out whatever information he had about Ashton’s search for Amos Gahl’s evidence.

Shaw had to plan countermeasures carefully. At the meeting with her this afternoon, they might try to strong-arm and torture him. He was prepared for that; he now wore body armor under the sweats, and his .380 Glock was in his back waistband. Also, he had an open phone line with Mack, throughout the conversation with “Bascomb.” The PI would call the local police if it turned violent.

But why not avoid a fight? Shaw made it easy for them: He left out, in plain sight, the A.S. file

Which was, of course, fake.

Shaw had photographed the real file and uploaded the material, encrypted, to both his and Mack’s secure servers, then hidden it in a secret compartment in the floorboards of the Winnebago.

On the map in the fake file, Shaw had marked areas of the San Francisco region that were in the opposite direction of those of the actual map, which were places where Amos Gahl had hidden the evidence that could bring down BlackBridge and its clients.

The rest of the material in the mock file was meaningless — and misleading — downloads from years ago, at the time when Ashton and his colleagues were actively looking for the incriminating evidence.

The file Braxton had stolen would lead them in dizzying circles.

Shaw fired up the camper’s engine, dropped the transmission into gear and pulled out of the parking lot, now filled with rescue vehicles, smoke and excited shoppers taking selfies with the smoldering SUV.

He steered south. In seven or eight hours he’d be at his destination: San Francisco, his specific journey’s end. Ashton’s safe house on Alvarez Street.

As he piloted the comfortable — and comforting — vehicle along the smooth highways, Colter Shaw was thinking this: it was a possibility, of course, that Ashton had hidden the package for the benefit of his colleagues, who’d decided to forgo the safety of anonymity and take on BlackBridge once again.

But if so, why hide the material on Echo Ridge? He could easily have picked a place in the Bay Area.

No, the more he thought about it, the more convinced he was that the letter was directed not to any colleagues, but to one of his children. They alone would know how his mind worked — the scent tracking, for instance — and could find the document, when no one else could.

They alone had the wherewithal to confront the risks posed by BlackBridge. Ashton had, of course, trained them so rigorously throughout their young lives in the fine art of survival.

But which of the siblings did Ashton intend the letter to be read by?

He had an inkling that it was he, Colter the Restless One, who’d been in his father’s thoughts when he set down his plea for help in the letter, jotting in such fine penmanship, better even than Shaw’s.

The odds that this was Ashton’s intent? Impossible to say. Maybe ninety percent, maybe ten.

In the end, it didn’t matter. Colter Shaw had made his decision. The father’s quest was now the son’s.

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