The Match

Chapter Six

Hester, Wilde knew, was right about Matthew. He should not have stayed away.

Things had changed. That had been his rationale. Matthew was grown and was at college. More to the point, Laila had a boyfriend now, the first guy she’d kept around since David’s death eleven years ago. Wilde had no rights here. He had no standing. He wanted no part of it. In the past, his presence had been, he hoped, a comfort to her. There had been a role for him. Now that role was gone. He could only cause disruptions.

So he stayed away.

Of course, Wilde still kept a clandestine watch on Laila and Matthew from the woods — that was how he knew Matthew was back — but his vigils were becoming less and less frequent. There is a fine balance between being appropriately protective and creepily stalking.

Still, Laila was one thing. Matthew was another. So maybe he was just making excuses. Maybe he had simply been selfish. In the past year, he had taken too many risks in terms of personal entanglements. Now he wanted to take none.

Hester had also surprised him by bringing up the car crash. Why? And why now?

Wilde stopped by a specific tree and dug up one of his hidden stainless-steel lockboxes. He had six such all-weather storage containers throughout the forest, all with fake IDs, cash, passports, weaponry, and disposable smartphones.

Wilde tucked the box under his arm and hurried back to his microhome — a state-of-the-art, off-the-grid abode called an Ecocapsule. The cutting-edge habitat was tiny, under seventy square feet of habitable space, yet it had everything Wilde needed — a folding bed, a table, cabinets, kitchenette, a shower, an incinerator toilet that turned your waste into ash. The Ecocapsule incorporated both solar and wind power. The pill-shaped exterior not only minimized heat loss but facilitated collecting rainwater into water tanks where it could be filtered for immediate use. With the pod being both mobile and camouflage-skinned — not to mention the advanced security features he had set up — Wilde had made himself very difficult to locate.

He opened the box and took out a military-grade disposable phone. The safety features made it virtually impossible to track, but the key word here was “virtually.” No matter what you’re told, there is always a backdoor when it comes to technology, always a way to track and uncover, always, at the end of the line, a human who can see what you are doing if you’re not careful. Wilde tried to mitigate that via various VPNs and internet masking technologies.

Once the protective protocols were in place, Wilde powered up the device and checked his texts and emails. For a second, Wilde wondered whether his father, better known as Daniel Carter, had reached out, but that would be impossible. Wilde hadn’t given him any contact information. When his alarms had first sounded — when Hester had crossed into the woods from his overgrown path — he’d let the thought that it was indeed Daniel Carter enter his mind, that after Wilde had taken off without a warning or goodbye, his father had taken it upon himself to do some research and had either figured out where Wilde could be or had gone to Hester to help find him or...

Didn’t matter.

Wilde checked his messages for the first time in months. He spotted a few from Matthew, always brief, basically asking him where he was. There were two from Rola, his foster sister, the first asking where he was, the second reading:

He should call her too.

Nothing from Ava. Nothing from Naomi. Nothing from Laila.

Then he saw a message that surprised him.

It was from PB, sent via the DNAYourStory messaging service. The email was dated September 10, eight months ago. Wilde hit the message link. It brought him to the full thread of messages between him and PB in ascending timeline order.

The first communication had come from PB to Wilde a year ago, before he left for Costa Rica:

Wilde hadn’t replied until months later, not until he sat in Liberia Airport and waited to fly to Las Vegas to confront his father:

But after Wilde’s visit to Las Vegas, he’d chosen not to pursue the matter anymore or check his emails. What was the point? He realized now that it sounded as though he was wallowing in his own pity party, but that wasn’t it. He craved isolation. It was just how he was built. The shrinks had a field day with how his upbringing made him this way, how important the first five years of life are, and to make no attachments during that era, no physical or emotional contact, to be alone with no other human beings, all of that made him become irreparably damaged.

Could be, Wilde thought.

He didn’t know, and he wasn’t sure he cared. He’d never really hunted for his true identity because he could never see the point. It wouldn’t change those first five years, and while he understood that he was “not normal,” he wasn’t unhappy this way either. Or maybe he was and was fooling himself. Living in the woods didn’t make you any less prone to the same self-delusions the rest of mankind conjures up.

Too much self-reflection today. That had to do with Matthew, of course. And Laila.

Especially Laila.

The bright red lettering said CLICK HERE FOR NEW MESSAGE! Wilde did so and the message popped up:

Wilde looked up past the branches to the sky. The message had been sent almost four months ago. Whatever crisis PB had been dealing with had probably passed. Even if it hadn’t, Wilde saw no way that he could help. It sounded like PB mostly needed a shoulder to cry upon. That was not Wilde’s forte.

Hester would be with Matthew by now. It would be wrong to keep them waiting.

Then again, what was there to lose by making a phone call?

Wilde dreaded it, of course. Having to explain himself. Tell PB that he was the anonymous WW. Apologize for not replying sooner. And then what? Where would the conversation go?

Wilde started heading back down the other side of the mountain, toward David’s house. He still thought of it that way, even though David had been dead for eleven years. When he’d walked two hundred yards, Wilde stopped, took out his phone, and dialed PB’s phone number. He put the phone to his ear and felt a thud-thud in his chest as he listened to the ring. Somehow, he knew that this decision — the decision to reach out to the seemingly tormented PB — would change everything. He didn’t believe in the supernatural or any of that, but when you live with the animals, you start to trust a certain buzzing in your body. The danger instinct is real. You have it too. If your bloodline has survived this long, it’s because, unbeknownst to you, that primitive instinct has been a part of your DNA makeup.

And speaking of DNA...

PB’s phone rang six times before a robotic voice pronounced that the owner of this mobile phone had not set up their mailbox. Interesting.

Wilde hung up. Now what?

He considered sending an anonymous text, but he was not sure what exactly he would say. Did he want to reveal that the message was from WW?

Or should he just let this be?

Not really an option. Not this time. Leaving out the possibility that following up could lead to his mother, PB had written to Wilde for help. PB had been desperate and had no one to turn to, and Wilde had ignored his cry for four months.

He sent a short text:

He jammed the phone into his front pocket and started down the mountain.