An Order of Service for Noonday

Officiant: O God, make speed to save us.
People: O Lord, make haste to help us.

 

 

 

12:00 P.M.

Shaun Reid stood in his office, considering the rest of his life. He had driven all the way home from his AllBanc meeting only to idle in the driveway, staring at his garage door, wondering what was the matter with him. Why the hell couldn’t he take the money and run? Terry McKellan was right: He’d have enough bucks to retire and live in style with his gorgeous young wife. Hell, he was still young himself, by today’s standards. Fifty was just breaking middle age. He had thirty, thirty-five years ahead of him if he watched his cholesterol and kept active.

That prospect was like looking into a puzzle box picture, where an endless series of boxes opened before him, and each box was a gray and empty room. He reversed out of his driveway and drove to the mill, down streets he had driven for thirty years. More, if you counted the times he had been sitting in the seat next to his dad.

He had loved coming to work with the old man. When he was too small to go onto the floor, his dad had given him the run of the administrative offices. He would ride round and round in the secretary’s chair that spun and rolled, and she would let him crank the mimeograph machine and swipe candy from the bowl on her desk. When he got older, he loved the way his dad would talk to him as if he were another adult, laying out facts and figures, asking for his opinion. At home, he wasn’t supposed to pester his dad, who would stretch out in his chair, tired from a hard day’s work, reading a magazine and drinking the Tom Collins Mom always served him. But at the mill it was a different story. Dad was alert, energetic, attentive. They were a team.

He had never wanted to kick loose, to move away or strike out on his own. In college, when his classmates were studying Marxist literature and marching against the war, he had lied about being a business major, because that was almost as uncool as being in the ROTC. But he never questioned that he was going back to Millers Kill, where an office next to his father’s waited for him.

He stood there now. It was small, tucked between the reception area and what used to be the payroll accountant’s office, until they outsourced payroll to a big firm that cut the checks and handled the taxes and Social Security for them. He had hoped Jeremy would one day work there, within earshot of his father, but—he shook that thought off. Entered the office that had been his father’s and his grandfather’s.

Most of the old pictures, from the first days of the company, were in the reception area now, impressing anyone who got off on the quaint idea that a business might run for over a century without changing hands. The pictures and plaques in his office were personal, and looking at them, he realized how much his life had been shaped by the presence of the mill and his role in its continuity.

There were his mom and dad, and him in bibbed shorts and curly hair, squinting into the sunlight at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the “new” dam and causeway, now forty-seven years old and aging fast. There were his high school and college graduation pictures. No honors. He had never pushed himself. Never had to. The picture of Jeremy in cap and gown, though, showed loops of gold braid and an Honor Society tassel. Even then, his son had been planning ahead for his getaway.

By his son’s graduation picture was a framed newspaper clipping with a picture of Shaun and Russ Van Alstyne at the 1968 trout tourney, showing off their winning fish, their arms around each other’s shoulders. Russ had left the year after that and not returned for a quarter century. Shaun had seen him a few times since he had become chief of police, at Rotary dinners and town meetings. They had nothing in common anymore. It wasn’t Russ personally. Shaun didn’t have much in common with many of the people he had called friends back in high school. They had aged into grocery clerks and dairy farmers, or they had left town and not come back. There weren’t many success stories in Millers Kill, not for the class of ’69.

He flopped onto the sofa Courtney had picked out for him. Soft leather as comfortable as an old glove. He had kicked and screamed, but once the old couch—picked out by his mother, circa 1964—had been carted away and the new one installed, he wondered why he had put up with the hard seat and scratchy upholstery for so long. Maybe selling the company would be the same. After it was swallowed up by the GWP empire, he’d wonder why he had ever fussed.

Sure. Just like the victims of the Borg never fussed on Star Trek. Prepare to be assimilated.

A knock on the door. He rolled off the couch as the door opened and Jeremy stuck his head in. “Hey. Am I interrupting?”

“What are you doing here?” Shaun’s tone was harsher than he intended.

Jeremy entered the office. “I’m looking for you. You weren’t home, and the Trophy Wife is at church, so where else could you be but at the Holy of Holies, the office.”

Shaun was willing to let the crack about Courtney pass. Once. “If you ever want to rise above the level of gofer, you might try a little work ethic, too. It was putting in lots of hours in this office that paid for your college and B-school.”

“And my year in London and my car. Don’t forget those, Dad.” Jeremy smiled insincerely.

Shaun jammed his hands into his pants pockets to avoid clenching his fists. It was always like this with them. Gretchen, Jeremy’s mother, liked to say they were too much alike. Shaun didn’t see it. At twenty-five, he had been a husband and father, putting in fifty or sixty hours a week at Reid-Gruyn. Jeremy was a glorified concierge who spent every minute out of the office partying. The only thing they had in common was their looks: both tall and rawboned, Shaun’s faded sandy hair the remains of Jeremy’s aggressive auburn.

“I repeat, what are you doing here?”

“I wanted to see if you needed me to smooth your path tonight. I can wrangle you seats at the GWP table, if you want.”

“No, thanks.”

Jeremy rolled his eyes. “Dad, it’s in your best interest to talk with these guys. If they make a bid for the company, your future is going to depend on them. I keep telling you, you can’t make it today just by keeping your nose to the grindstone. You have to be out there, networking. Schmoozing. Personal relationships are important.”

“I know that! Why do you think I’ve been going to those damn Rotary and Chamber of Commerce meetings all these years.”

“Oooo, the Rotary Club.” Jeremy dropped his voice from a falsetto to his normal range. “Dad, if they like your stuff, you have a chance to be a mover and shaker within the GWP structure. You know the Trophy Wife would love that.”

Shaun glared at his son. “Don’t call your stepmother that.”

“She’s five years older than I am, Dad. I’m not going to call her Mom.” Jeremy threw himself onto the couch in exactly the same position Shaun had flung himself into earlier.

“We’ve had this talk before. Call her Courtney.”

“Is she going to wear that slinky black dress tonight? The one that shows off her . . .” Jeremy made the universal male gesture for breasts.

“Goddammit! Show my wife some respect.”

“Sorry, sorry. I got carried away. Really, I came to offer help. Let me get you up at the head table. Courtney, too.”

Shaun sat heavily in his chair. “Listen to you. Making table arrangements. I can’t believe you got an MBA for this.”

“I’m getting the ground-floor view of a growing business. This year, I’m in charge of visitor satisfaction. Two years from now, I’ll be the assistant manager. Two years from that, I plan on being the manager, and from there, who knows? BWI/Opperman has resorts all over the country.”

“The hospitality industry.” Shaun spat the words out. It always sounded like a fancy term for prostitution to him.

Jeremy ignored his sour tone. “The future of the Adirondacks, and of the country, isn’t in manufacturing, Dad. It’s in experiences. Tourism, hospitality, entertainment, games—that’s where the money is.” He waved a languid hand at the office around them. “Unionized labor, taxes, high transportation costs—Reid-Gruyn’s cost per ream of paper produced is almost twice that of GWP’s.”

“How the hell do you know that?”

Jeremy lifted his head. “I pay attention, Dad. I’m a shareholder, remember? I stand to make a lot of money if GWP tenders a good offer.”

Shaun felt as if a live wire had just made contact with his spine. “You can’t be serious. You wouldn’t vote for selling the company.”

“GWP could be the best thing to happen to Reid-Gruyn. They can afford to update the specialty milling presses, they can funnel cheap pulp our way . . . hell, they can even bring in workers if the union threatens to get out of hand.”

Shaun circled his desk. “This mill has been in our family since 1872! I can’t—that you would even think of throwing it away to those . . . those . . . Malaysians!”

Jeremy sat up. “Dad?”

Shaun could only gape at him, his mouth working, trying to find words for the perfidy.

Jeremy stood up and gripped Shaun’s arm. “Dad. Serious. I don’t really want to see the old place get sold. But once that Haudenosaunee timber is taken off the market, our production costs are going to rise. With everything that’s going on in the Middle East, fuel prices aren’t going anywhere but up. Even if you can float the costs for a year or two, eventually they’ll slice so far into the profit margin, Reid-Gruyn will start bleeding red ink.”

“You talk just like my banker.” His voice sounded sulky, even to his own ears.

Jeremy shook him slightly, and Shaun had the inverted sense that he was the child and Jeremy the adult. “This day has been coming ever since you and Grandpa sold off the last of the Reid-Gruyn timberlands in the eighties. You left yourself at the mercy of the landholders, and sooner or later, all land goes for its best and highest use.”

Was this what B-school had done to his son? Bled off all his sentiment and turned him into a living economics textbook? It made him glad he had never gotten an MBA. The import of what Jeremy said sank in slowly.

“Maybe that’s it,” Shaun said, twitching his shoulder enough to break his son’s hold. “Maybe we ought to buy back our own timberland.”

Jeremy’s laugh was abrupt. “You’ve got to be kidding. The tax burden alone would sink your profits. I wasn’t criticizing what you and Grandpa did. It was the right move. Staying in your core business.”

Shaun returned to his desk and began sweeping the papers and spreadsheets and P and L statements into a folder. “I’m not kidding. Haven’t you ever heard of vertical integration? Owning the raw material, the manufacturing plant, and the means to transport it to the market. It could work.”

Jeremy shook his head. “You’ve lost it. The board would never vote to acquire forest land. And anyway, there isn’t timberland anywhere near Washington County that’s for sale.”

Shaun grinned at his son. “Oh, yes, there is. Haudenosaunee.”

 

12:10 P.M.

Ditch the car. Ditch the car. But where? Randy’s mind ran round and round like a gerbil on a wheel. The sound of the tires on pavement thrumming the question What to do? What to do? What to do?

At one point, he realized it was the car, and not him, shaking. He checked the speedometer. He was doing seventy, twenty miles over the limit. His heart flipped over and he slammed on the brakes, a cold sweat shocking the back of his neck and his underarms. Jesus. A cop could have been hiding in a speed trap and he would have blown right by. Wouldn’t have even noticed until he was pulled over. After that, he kept his eyes on the gauges.

That didn’t solve his problem, though. He needed to dump the car. Someplace where it wouldn’t get found for a while. Someplace that wouldn’t lead the cops to him when they found it. Someplace where he could walk to Mike’s.

The sign for Lick Springs Road gave him the idea. It ran from the mountains down through rolling pastures and teed at Route 57. Route 57 rambled alongside the river that gave Millers Kill its name, through the town and east toward Glens Falls.

And the Reid-Gruyn mill was right off it.

He didn’t stop to ponder the idea. He spun the wheel and heeled the little car onto Lick Springs Road. He wouldn’t leave the car at the plant; that would be stupid. But he could pull in behind the old part of the mill, where nobody ever went, and where no one would see him. He could hike to Mike’s from there.

The only traffic on Lick Springs Road was a minivan with Vermont plates and a tractor hauling a boxy load of hay at the far edge of the breakdown lane. Good. The fewer people who saw him driving this car, the better. Traffic along Route 57 was similarly quiet. His racing heart slowed down. He stopped sweating. No one should be entering or leaving the mill’s parking lot at this time of day. He was in the clear. He slowed as the gate came into sight.

And slowed even further when he saw two cars approaching it from the parking lot. He grunted. How could anyone have such shit luck? He braked hard, yanking the little Prius to the side of the road. There were several maps in the driver’s-door pocket, and he yanked one out, snapping it open in front of his face. I’m a tourist, he thought, just an out-of-towner checking out my map before I get back on the road. I’m a tourist, don’t notice me . . .

He peeked out behind one edge of the map. A little BMW coupe was easing through the gate. He recognized the driver. Jeremy Reid, the boss’s son. Jeremy had been in his class at Millers Kill High School. Look at the redheaded sonofabitch, driving a car that cost as much as Randy and Lisa made in a year combined. Jeremy accelerated up the road without so much as glancing in Randy’s direction. That was good, that was what he wanted, but it pissed him off anyway.

Randy recognized the next car before he could make out the driver. Mr. Reid’s Mercedes. Oh, he remembered that car. The Joes that made Reid’s money for him would be stumbling across the employee parking lot, clutching their lunches in paper bags, and Mr. Reid would be getting out of that big German car, his cashmere coat sliding off of the leather seat. There may have been some serious belt-tightening at the mill, like Lewis Johnson said, but it sure as hell wasn’t pinching Reid.

As the Mercedes swept past him, Shaun Reid barely visible through the tinted windows, Randy spotted an Adirondack Conservancy Corporation bumper sticker and a Sierra Club decal on the rear.

Guys like Reid didn’t have to worry about losing their jobs, losing their houses. He could just picture the man, writing out checks to the ACC at some fancy fund-raiser. So what if guys like Randy were left with nothing to do but flip burgers. Reid was still going to get his. Reid, and Ed Castle, and the town, they would all get theirs. And what was Randy gonna get? Screwed.

Goddam Adirondack Conservancy Corporation. Goddam better-than-thou tree huggers. Her, too, Becky Castle, laughing at him for wanting to do something with his life instead of rolling over and giving it up to the man.

Becky Castle. Shaun Reid. The Adirondack Conservancy Corporation. It was like one of those cartoons, a big light-bulb going off in his head. He had been thinking small, thinking of stashing her car out of sight somewhere. But that was just getting some space between him and her. What he really needed to do was throw the blame on someone else, so the cops would be so busy looking at this guy they’d never go any farther.

His hands shook as he flicked on the turn signal and steered the Prius back onto the road. He drove through the gates and guided the car, not toward the old mill, as he had thought to do before, but to the administrative offices parking. There was a fancy sign fronting one spot: RESERVED FOR MR. REID. Randy pulled the Prius into the next space.

He turned the engine off and sat huddled in thought. Okay, let’s say he wanted the cops to think Mr. Reid was banging Becky Castle. She was—she had been—a pretty hot babe, in an outdoorsy way. Mr. Reid had already dumped one old wife for a younger model. Who’s to say he wasn’t looking to do it again?

He closed his eyes and pictured getting into the offices. The admin building door was sure to be shut up tight, but the plant door was never locked. From the break room, past the entrance to the mill floor, there was a dark little hall that ran all the way alongside the floor until it reached the ladies’ john. There had been three women working the floor when he was there, and that’s where they went to do their business. The trick was, the bathroom opened from both ends. It had originally been built for the reception area, and when Reid-Gruyn started hiring women at the mill, they just punched a door into the wall to give the ladies their own place to go.

Even if the door was locked on the reception side, it didn’t have anything better than one of those little punch-in buttons. He could pop that in five seconds with a credit card, plant a few things from Becky Castle’s overnight bag in the reception area, and be out again within a minute.

He grinned. And if Mr. Reid’s office had one of those feeble locks . . . he could really go to town.

 

12:15 P.M.

His mother’s cousin Nane’s car in the driveway should have tipped Russ off to the chemical stench he discovered when he opened the kitchen door.

“Good Lord.” He waved his hand, trying to clear some breathing room. “What is that?”

“Happy Birthday, sweetie.” His mother sat in one of her kitchen chairs, pulled next to the sink. She was swathed in what looked like a pink plastic tablecloth. Her cousin was rolling a section of her silver hair onto a tiny pink roller.

He bent down to kiss her cheek, his eyes watering. “Hi.” He retreated as far as he could, to the edge of the washer and dryer. “Hi, Nane.”

“Hello, Russell. Aren’t you looking well? We were just talking about you, weren’t we, Margy? About the day you were born.” Nane was older than his seventy-four-year-old mom, but, unlike Russ and his maybe-relation Harlene, the two cousins bore a strong resemblance to each other. Both ladies were short and cylindrical, with plump cheeks that narrowed into pointy chins. They looked like the sort of sweet little old ladies who spent their days tatting doilies. It was a clever disguise.

“I swear,” his mother said, picking up from their earlier conversation, “I didn’t think I was going to be able to push him out.”

“You were almost ten pounds,” Nane said to him, clipping the roller into place on his mother’s head and reaching for a plastic bottle. She squirted something that smelled like chemical solvent on the new curl.

“I had an episiotomy scar you could see from the moon. They cut me from stem to stern.” She chuckled. “The first time Walter saw it he said—”

“Mom! Mom!” Russ clamped his hands over his ears. “Too much information!”

She pursed her mouth. “Really, Russell. You’re a little old to be thinking we found you in the cabbage patch, aren’t you?”

“Can you just wait till I leave before you stroll down that particular memory lane?”

“Well, what did you come for? Are you hungry? I’ve got some sandwich fixings in the icebox. Help yourself, sweetie.”

Lunch had definitely been on his mind on the drive up here, but he didn’t think he could manage eating with poisonous fumes wafting through the air. “What is that smell?” he repeated.

“I’m giving your mother a permanent wave,” Nane said. “She’s going to look like she just stepped out of a New York salon for the party tonight.”

Russ, who had been reading a new bumper sticker—THERE’S A VILLAGE IN TEXAS MISSING AN IDIOT—on his mother’s already plastered-over refrigerator, straightened. “You’re going to the dinner dance tonight? The one at the Algonquin Waters?”

“All the active members of the local ACC chapter have been invited. I told you that, Russell.”

“No, you didn’t.”

“Well, I left a message with Linda.”

He shut up. His mother and his wife had a relationship best described as an armed truce. He wouldn’t put it past Linda to “forget” to tell him about his mother coming, just to make sure they weren’t all roped into sharing a table together. His mother must have had a similar thought, because she said, “I’m sitting with other folks from the ACC.”

“And she’s going to look just wonderful, aren’t you, Margy?” Nane smiled proudly at Russ. “We went into Saratoga and she bought a new dress.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Gee, Mom.”

Her cheeks pinked up. “Just ’cause I’m an old lady doesn’t mean I don’t like to look nice now and again.”

“I better get my reservation in for a dance right now. You’ll probably be so swamped with men I won’t be able to get near you otherwise.”

“Oh, go on. You didn’t drive up here to pitch woo at me. What’s up?”

He decided that he’d be able to stomach a sandwich in his truck. He opened the fridge and dug inside. “Do you know Millie van der Hoeven?”

“Of course. I’ve met her several times since she came back east. She’s been one of the driving forces behind this Haudenosaunee land deal, more power to her.”

He pulled out ham slices, cheese, and a jar of mayonnaise. “When was the last time you saw her?”

“The week before last. The ACC is interested in reclaiming the gardens and the cultivated areas of Haudenosaunee. Replacing the imported plants with native species. They asked for a group of volunteers, and I signed up.”

“You do love to garden, don’t you, Margy?” Nane snapped another roller into her cousin’s hair. Russ’s mother’s head was beginning to resemble a pink-and-white Wiffle Ball.

He opened the bread tin on the counter and pulled out a loaf of pumpernickel.

“We took a little tour of the grounds, made lists of what we saw, and did some brainstorming about plants and a schedule,” his mother said.

“Do you know anything about Millie’s personal life?”

“Like what, sweetie?”

“Like why did she come east, anyway?”

“Well, after her father died last year, she wanted to see Haudenosaunee in public hands. She said she thought that would be the best memorial for him, to have the land he had loved preserved forever wild.”

“Was that an issue? Developing the land?”

His mother pursed her mouth again, this time in thought. “I got the impression that money was the thing that mattered to the older sister. She may have been pushing to use some of the land to turn a profit.”

Russ plucked a bread knife from the drain board and unscrewed the mayonnaise. He looked at the unfamiliar label more closely. It was made from soy.

“Go ahead, sweetie, try it. It’s good for you.”

“Your mother and I are on the Atkins diet. Lots and lots of good protein. You should think about it, too, shouldn’t he, Margy? You’re not getting any younger, Russell. Once you reach that half-century mark, your metabolism slows right down.”

He slathered the soy spread on the pumpernickel. Suspicious, he checked the wrapper. Yep. Low-carb bread. “What about her boyfriend?” he went on.

“What boyfriend?”

“Millie’s. Her brother told me she was seeing some guy from around here. Michael McWhorter.”

Nane squirted another glob of unbelievably foul-smelling liquid onto his mother’s hair. “We know a few Michael McWhorters, don’t we, Margy?”

“Mmm-hmm. But I don’t know as Millie van der Hoeven was seeing any of them. She certainly never mentioned anyone where I could hear her.”

“You haven’t heard any talk around town? Maybe about one of the McWhorters dating a new girl?”

His mother started to shake her head and was caught short by Nane’s iron grip on a strip of hair. “Ow,” she said. “No, I haven’t heard tell of anything like that. Have you, Nane?”

“Not me. But I’m not one to listen to gossip, am I, Margy?”

“I have to say, I’d be very surprised if Millie van der Hoeven was to keep company with any of the local boys. She struck me as too much of a high flyer.”

Russ finished laying out the ham and cheese on his sandwich. Both had proudly proclaimed themselves “low fat” on their wrappers. “What do you mean?”

“She’s a nice girl, don’t get me wrong. And very, very dedicated to preserving the environment. But she doesn’t understand why the rest of us can’t simply hop on a plane and fly to wherever urgent action is needed. She wears all-natural cotton clothing and never eats anything that’s not free-range and organic. I’d like to do the same, I’m sure, but I’m on a fixed income.” She rustled beneath her pink plastic shroud. “I just can’t see her taking up with a boy who has to work for a living. At least, not the sort of work boys do around these parts.”

“Hmm.” He slapped the sandwich together and turned to her cupboards. “Any chips?”

“No chips. Nuts.”

He made a face. “What about her relationship with her brother?”

“They seem very close. She’s sounded a bit exasperated with him at times—”

“And who wouldn’t,” Nane broke in, “having a brother who lives like a hermit all alone up there, never going anywhere or seeing anyone?”

“Well, yes. But she always speaks of him with great affection.”

“Any sign of trouble between them? Him disapproving of her environmental work or anything?”

“Far from it. I believe she was fixing to have him move in with her after the estate sold.”

He picked up the sandwich. “Okay, ladies. Thanks for the lunch. Mom, I’ll see you tonight.”

“Bye-bye, sweetie. Drive careful.”

“I always do. Nane, be good.”

The elderly lady giggled. “I always am,” she said. “Except when I’m not, right, Margy?”

He blew a kiss to both women before escaping to the sweet, fresh air outside. He climbed into his truck, thinking. The boyfriend story was looking increasingly like just that, a story. The question was, had Eugene been lying to him when he brought it up? Or had his sister been lying to Eugene, to cover up absences she didn’t want to have to explain?

He took a big bite of his sandwich and almost spit it out. He stared accusingly at the low-fat, low-carb, soy-enriched crap. Maybe he could stop by the KreemyKakes Diner before he hit the station.

 

12:15 P.M.

Clare was tromping her assigned pattern with more doggedness than enthusiasm, checking her map, crossing off the ground she unsuccessfully covered. Every step seemed to indict her for not calling Russ about Eugene van der Hoeven’s gun-waving, and every passing minute left her less and less hopeful that they would find Millie van der Hoeven on her family’s land.

When her radio crackled, she had thought it must be the usual half-hour check-in. Instead, Huggins’s voice said, “Fergusson? We’ve got a couple of replacements in from the Albany team. Hand in your map and GPS and go home.”

Always the tactful spokesman, John Huggins. She keyed her radio. “I’m not that tired,” she lied. Her overdeveloped sense of duty forced her to add, “I can keep on going,” even though she had instantly started thinking about how fast she could get to St. Alban’s to help out with the preparations.

“Don’t worry about it,” Huggins said. “These guys have years of experience on you. Of course, they weren’t in the army, but they’ll do.” She thought she could hear laughter in the background before he keyed off. She gritted her teeth. She suspected that along with experience, the relief searchers had the equipment that seemed most important to Huggins: a penis.

She waited until she was sure her voice was civil before answering. “Give me your coordinates, and I’ll drop my stuff off with you.”

Huggins gave her his location, and within twenty minutes she was handing over her topo map and GPS to a pleasant young man with a serious case of labelmania on his outdoor gear. “Thanks,” Huggins said. “I’ll give you a call next time we need you.”

“Give me a call next time you schedule a training,” she said, her tone even but emphatic. “I won’t be much use unless I get better as I go along.”

Huggins grunted.

“No dogs yet?” she asked.

“They’re still up chasing the old lady near Plattsburgh. That search has priority. Can’t disagree with them. Young girl in warm clothing and boots has a hell of a lot better chance out here than a confused old lady in pajamas.”

Clare shivered, then said her good-byes and struck off for Haudenosaunee. She wondered if she was ever going to get used to living in a place where wandering past your backyard could get you killed. Funny. She had studied at Virginia Episcopal Seminary, living in the dense suburban corridor of Arlington County, working at times in Washington, D.C., a city known for, among other things, its crime rate. Yet she had never felt menaced by her surroundings, maybe because ultimately she figured she could always deal with other human beings, reason with them—or, as had happened when she was mugged once, simply surrender her bag. But there was no reasoning with the Adirondack Mountains, nothing you could hand over to ransom your life from six million acres of trackless forest, wild rivers, and hidden lakes. Not to mention arctic air flowing south from Canada and blinding snowstorms blowing east from Lake Ontario.

The woods gave way to a blaze-marked trail, which gave way in turn to a path through the trees. When she reached the stone wall dividing Haudenosaunee’s cultivated garden from the wilderness, she was torn between knocking at the door and seeing if she could talk with van der Hoeven or beating a retreat to Millers Kill, where her church, her volunteers, and a hot shower awaited her. Her grandmother Fergusson prodded her. A lady never leaves without thanking her host. The excuse that she was one of the search team, she knew, wouldn’t cut any ice with her grandmother.

Van der Hoeven was nowhere in sight when she let herself in the front door. The den was open again, but there was no sound or movement indicating anyone was inside. As she walked toward the kitchen, she felt herself quieting her steps, as if she were walking through a museum gallery. The comparison fit. Haudenosaunee, for all its beautiful furniture and rich rugs, had a curiously empty feel to it, as if it had already been closed up for the winter, the family dispersed to their real lives.

She opened the kitchen door. The housekeeper, who was just hanging up the phone, jumped and clutched her heart.

“Sorry!” Clare held up both hands in the universal “I’m harmless” signal. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m leaving, and I wanted to pay my respects to Mr. van der Hoeven before I go.”

Lisa smiled wanly. “I guess I’m not used to other folks being around while I’m cleaning.” She stepped closer, her expression thoughtful. “Are you headed into town? Can I ask you a favor?”

“Sure. What?”

“My car’s in the shop, and my husband was supposed to come get me, but he hasn’t shown, and nobody answers the phone when I call. Could you gimme a lift into town? I’d ask Mr. van der Hoeven, but he has a thing about going off Haudenosaunee.” She glanced toward the small nook at the back of the kitchen, where, Clare saw, the cellar door stood open. Lisa looked back to Clare. “I can stay with a friend in town until I can get ahold of Randy.”

“You don’t live in Millers Kill?”

Lisa shook her head.

“Not that I don’t want to drive you, but wouldn’t you be better off staying put?”

“Um . . . it’s a little awkward, hanging around once the job’s done.”

Clare thought of the curiously empty feel to the house. She couldn’t blame the woman. She probably wouldn’t want to spend all afternoon waiting for a ride here. “I’ll give you a lift home. Tell me where you live, and I’ll drop you on my way.”

The housekeeper flashed her a relieved smile before bounding over to the open cellar door. “Mr. van der Hoeven? I got a ride! The, um . . .” She looked at Clare.

“Clare Fergusson.”

“Clare Fergusson’s gonna take me. One of the searchers.”

Clare could hear the groaning of old wooden steps. The housekeeper backed away from the door. It reminded Clare of a scene from one of those old Hammer horror flicks, but instead of pressing her fist against her mouth and screaming, Lisa stepped forward again and asked, “Can I help with that?”

Eugene van der Hoeven—or his hands and legs, all that could be seen behind another two wine crates—appeared at the top of the stairs. “No, thank you,” he wheezed, staggering toward the back door. Clare leapt out of his path. He set the crates down as gently as he could, the bottles inside clinking lightly before settling into place.

He leaned back, cracking his spine, and spotted Clare. “Reverend Fergusson. Are you sure it won’t be an imposition for you to accommodate Lisa? I’m prepared to deliver her home myself.” His face twitched faintly to the right as he spoke.

“There’s no need,” Clare said. “John Huggins has relieved me of duty, so I’m leaving anyway. And you should stay here and wait for word of your sister, not be driving all over town.”

The undamaged corner of his mouth lifted, as if thanking her for that ego-saving excuse.

“I wanted to say good-bye before I left,” Clare went on. She held her hand out. Eugene took it in his. “There are a lot of fine people looking and praying for Millie’s return. I’m sure she’ll be home soon.” She squeezed his hand, then released him. “I’m hoping I get the chance to meet her at the dinner dance tonight.”

Eugene’s eyes warmed with interest. “You’re going to the dance tonight? With the conservancy and the GWP people?”

“Yep.” It suddenly struck her that that might not be a recommendation to a man who held a gun on the ACC’s project director an hour and a half ago. But van der Hoeven surprised her by smiling.

“Could I then ask you to do a favor for me?”

“What sort of favor?”

He indicated the two wine crate towers, each one tastefully stenciled with the van der Hoeven Vineyards mark. “These are promised for the dance tonight. I thought I had hired Randy Schoof to deliver them, but he, for reasons unknown, has failed to arrive.”

No wonder Lisa felt awkward about hanging around van der Hoeven’s house. Clare glanced toward the housekeeper. Her expressionless features contrasted painfully with the pink flush of her cheeks.

“I could take them myself . . . but as you say, I ought to stay here until I learn something about where Millie is.”

Now van der Hoeven was pinking up. It was the Saturday afternoon embarrassment club. Clare sighed. “I’ll take what I can, but I have a tiny car. I’m afraid I can’t fit in more than four crates.”

Both van der Hoeven and his housekeeper beamed at her. “That would be fine,” Eugene said. He turned to Lisa. “If you do see your husband, you can tell him to come here and pick up the rest. Otherwise,” he waved one hand in a careless arc, “I’m sure the fates will provide a substitute.”

It had better be the fates, Clare thought, leading Lisa and Eugene across the gravel drive, because it wasn’t going to be the Episcopal church. She and Lisa were each lugging one crate, with Eugene staggering beneath the weight of another two. Reaching the Shelby Cobra, she set her crate down and opened the trunk.

“We’re not going to be able to fit four crates into that,” Lisa said.

“I know. Two have to go in back.” She reached for Eugene’s top crate.

Lisa opened the passenger door. “This backseat? Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure. Oof.” She braced the crate against her chest before lowering it into the trunk. Eugene wedged the other one he carried in and turned to the front of the car. Flipping the seats forward and sliding them as far toward the dash as they could go, he and Clare were able to shove the wine into the back, although, like Lisa, he made skeptical noises as he wrestled the crates into place. When they finished, Eugene and his housekeeper stood back and stared at the tiny sports car.

“I wouldn’t have believed it,” Lisa said.

“Nor I.” Eugene gave Clare one of the three-quarters looks she had noticed earlier, his eyes on hers, his face sidling away. “Thank you, Reverend.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “I’d like to let you in on a secret. At nine o’clock, when the deed is scheduled to be signed, I’m setting off fireworks from here.” He dragged his toe across the gravel. “It’s, ah, not exactly legal in New York State, so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t mention it to anyone. But I’ve been assured that if you come out to the terrace next to the ballroom at the resort, you’ll be able to see the display.” He dragged his toe the other way, sifting the gravel. “Bring your friends.”

Clare wondered for a moment at his parents, who evidently had never brought their son in for the sort of postin-jury counseling that would have strengthened him and made him able to face the world from behind his skin. She wondered who that boy might have grown up to be, instead of a painfully shy recluse. She thought of him, all alone in the dark, sending up brilliant fountains of fire into the sky. Cries for help that would never be answered.

“I will,” she said. “I’ll look for your light.”

 

12:25 P.M.

”You sure you heard it this way?” Billy Ellis looked doubtfully at his hunting companion.

“As sure as I can be. Gimme a break, Bill. Sound travels funny in the mountains, you know that. But trying to find it’s the least we can do.”

Billy sighed as loudly as he could, signaling he’d play the part of responsible citizen, but he didn’t have to like it. Chuck high-stepped over a tangle of briars and held back a handful of whiplike forsythia so Billy could follow him. Normally, he liked hunting with Chuck. They both had the same attitude: namely, that deer season was an excuse to get away from the wife and kids for a few Saturdays in a row, to eat huge, heart-attack-inducing breakfasts in a greasy spoon, and to partake liberally from their flasks of coffee brandy.

This Saturday had been all set to pleasantly repeat their usual pattern, up to the moment when they heard a faint, faraway cry for help shivering through the empty branches. Billy argued it was probably some damn fool who sat in poison oak taking a dump and who now needed help wiping his ass. Chuck didn’t buy it. A born crusader, if ever there was one, he had been dragging them over brush and briar for the last half hour. At this point, a twelve-point buck could have jumped up and offered Chuck a drink and he wouldn’t have noticed.

“Chuck,” Billy said, trying again.

“Dammit, Billy. That was a call for help. What if somebody’s seriously hurt? Maybe got himself shot?”

“Then it’s like to be some idiot flatlander on his first trip into the woods who saw a doe and shot his foot off in the excitement. If you help ’em, you know, you’re only encouraging ’em to come back.”

Chuck looked back and glared at him.

“I’m coming, I’m coming,” Billy said. It was hard going. This part of the forest must have been logged or burned over sometime in the past decade; the trees were slim and close-set, still competing with each other for the space and light that only a few mature trees would eventually share. Brambles were everywhere, and Billy kept his gloves cinched tight around his cuffs for protection. They broke through a final screen of bittersweet and sumac and stumbled onto a wide dirt road.

“Where the hell are we?” Billy asked.

Chuck unbuttoned his coat pocket and pulled out his map and compass. He folded the map and held both it and the compass in front of him, squinting in the strong sunshine after the fitful shade of the woods. He turned himself right, then left, then completely around.

“What are you doing?” Billy was losing his patience. “Are we anywhere near the car? Because there’s no way I’m going through that piece of woods again.”

“I think we’re on one of these lumbering roads.” Chuck pointed out a dotted red line on the map. “If we go downhill”—he pointed right—“we’ll come to Route 117. Could be whoever yelled for help is along here someplace. I don’t think we woulda heard it so well if it was on the next access road marked.” He pointed to another dotted red line farther west.

“If whoever yelled is still here—and that’s a big if—he better be downhill. ’Cause I’m damned if I’m hiking uphill for some flatlander.” Billy took off without waiting to see if Chuck followed him. He didn’t have to. He had their car keys.

“We ought to go uphill first.” Chuck ran to catch up with him. “What if we don’t find him downslope?”

“Chuck, I hate to burst your balloon and all, but I gotta tell you this, as a friend. I’ve seen you lose keys and coats and your glasses, and once at the Washington County Fair you lost your kid.”

“I found her again!”

“She turned herself in at the office. What I’m trying to say is, and don’t take this the wrong way, you couldn’t find your ass with both hands.”

That was when they rounded the bend and saw the girl sprawled in the road. Billy was frozen in place by the surprise for several seconds while Chuck pelted forward, laid down his rifle, and knelt beside her. He turned toward Billy. “C’mere, dammit. You’re the one who took the Red Cross course.”

That broke the spell. Billy ran downslope and skidded to a stop next to them. The girl’s head was bloody; her hand, when he took it into his own, cold. He pinched his fingers over her wrist.

“Is she . . . ?” Chuck looked like he was going to puke.

Billy shook his head. “Get down to the road, see if you can raise some help. She’s alive.”

 

12:30 P.M.

Sitting felt good. Too good. The tiny, enclosed area inside her Shelby made Clare forcefully aware that she had stepped in and splattered through some unpleasantly decayed substances and that, in her haste to make it out to the search zone on time, she had forgotten to apply her deodorant before she dressed. She stank.

She unrolled her window, then glanced toward Lisa. “Do you mind?”

“Oh, no. Not at all.” Wonderful. Her passenger could smell her, too. She threw the car into gear, said a brief prayer that nothing would break or fall off on the Haudenosaunee drive, and left the great camp behind.

“Where do you live?”

“You go left on Highway 53, then cross Muddy Brook Road, and it’s down Route 127 a ways.” She looked sideways at Clare. “So, I gotta ask, what was in those papers you were reading?”

Clare, startled, took her eyes off the road. That was when she heard it. Two shotgun blasts, one right after another, the sound so close through her open window that she instinctively flinched in her seat.

“What the hell?” Lisa whipped her head around, looking for the source of the shots.

“That’s an alarm signal.” Clare glanced in the rearview mirror. “For hunters. If there’s trouble, they fire twice.” The road was empty in both directions. She stepped on her brakes. She leaned out into the cool air. “Hallo the alarm!” she yelled. “Where are you?”

A garble of voices resolved into a single “Here!” Close.

Lisa pointed down the road. “There’s a dirt road that leads onto the Haudenosaunee land down thataway.”

Clare shifted the car into neutral and let it coast down the county road’s gentle incline. “Keep yelling!” she shouted.

A sound like an underpopulated pep rally swelled up from the woods in front of her. In front and to the left. It grew louder and louder as she rolled down the two-lane highway, until she reached another barely-there dirt road.

“That’s it,” Lisa said. “The lumbering company my husband works for kept its machines there over the summer. Jeez, I hope it wasn’t some kids fooling around got hurt.”

A lone hunter stood at the entrance of the road. He waved his gun in the air and hotfooted it out of the way as Clare turned off of the surfaced road.

“Thank God you heard us,” the hunter said. “There’s a girl unconscious about a half mile up the road. My buddy Billy’s staying with her. We didn’t want to move her. There’s lots of blood, and I think she’s hurt bad.”

Clare and Lisa looked at one another. “A girl?” Clare asked. “A little girl? Or a woman?”

“What does she look like?” Lisa asked, leaning past Clare toward the open window.

The man frowned. “She’s—I dunno, a young woman. Younger ’n you.” he nodded at Clare. “She’s got long blond hair. That’s about all we could tell. I didn’t want to move her any in case she’s hurt her back.”

“Do you think . . . ?” Clare asked Lisa.

The housekeeper nodded. “It sounds like her.”

“Who?” The hunter shifted his gun into his other hand and wiped his face.

“A young woman’s been missing from the van der Hoeven estate. There’s a search team out for her now.” She glanced over at Lisa. “You did say this is Haudenosaunee land, right?” Lisa nodded.

The hunter looked back up the dirt road. “I can tell you at this point, the girl doesn’t need a search team, she needs an ambulance. Do you have a phone? A cell phone?”

Of course. She was an idiot. She reached into her minuscule backseat, tugged her knapsack into her lap, and reached inside for her phone. She turned it on and was greeted by a blank “no signal.” She hissed in frustration. Typical of the mountains. “Look,” she said to the man, “we’ll drive back to Haudenosaunee and use the phone there. That way, we can tell the young woman’s brother she’s been found. Will you stay here to meet the ambulance?”

“Course I will. Hurry,” the hunter said, unnecessarily.

“Hang on,” Clare told Lisa. She reversed the Shelby and tromped on the gas pedal, fishtailing out of the dirt access road. She zoomed back up the mountain highway. Swinging past the stone pillars marking Haudenosaunee’s entrance, she accelerated up the dirt road, her small car jouncing and shuddering. She roared into the gravel drive, skidding to a stop in a shower of small stones and clearly alarming Eugene van der Hoeven, who was crossing from the house to the pathway that led into the woods. He had on a coat, with a small day pack slung over his shoulder. Joining the searchers after the tumultuous events of the morning.

“Reverend Fergusson?” He strode across the drive.

“Some hunters have found your sister,” she said, tumbling out of the Shelby. “I need to use your phone.”

“What?” He paled, his scarred face half-twisting in concern. “Is she . . . ?”

She shook her head, her hair flying out of its knot at the back of her head. “She’s not dead, but she’s been hurt. The hunters who found her are afraid to move her. We need to get an ambulance.”

Eugene stared at her. “Where was she? How did they find her?”

“She’s on one of the access roads, not far from here.” She jerked her thumb to where Lisa was sitting white-faced in the car. “Your housekeeper says it’s where her husband’s timber company keeps its machines.”

“Good God.” Van der Hoeven turned to look at the trail-head that opened between the house and the garage. He turned back to Clare. “Is she . . . conscious?”

“The phone?”

He shook himself. “Of course. God, what am I thinking?” He bounded toward the porch, took the steps two at a time, and threw open the door. He pointed toward the den. “Will you call it in? Since you know exactly where she is?”

Clare dialed 911 and described the location and what little she had heard of the young woman’s injuries. She hung up, turned, and nearly collided with van der Hoeven.

“You didn’t—you didn’t see her yourself?” His face had regained its control, but he still sounded like a man in shock.

“I didn’t. I’m sorry.”

“So you don’t know what happened to her? Was it an accident? Was she attacked?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know.” She laid her hand on his arm. “Look, I need to take your housekeeper home. Why don’t I meet you in the hospital afterward?” She hoped his agoraphobia wasn’t going to prevent him from going to his sister’s bedside.

“The hospital,” he said.

“I could . . .” Clare searched for a way to make her offer tactful. “I could come back and drive you. Bad news has a way of scattering your concentration. It makes it hard to do ordinary tasks, like making phone calls or driving. I’d be happy to help.”

His eyes snapped into focus. “No,” he said. “Thank you. I can make it to the hospital. I was just thinking that I need to contact the search team first and let them know.” He shouldered the day pack he had slipped to the floor while she was on the phone. “Let’s go.”

Outside, she paused at the foot of the porch stairs. “I’ll meet you at the hospital as soon as I can.”

“Yes.”

Eugene trotted around the house and was out of sight before Clare made it back to her car. “He’s going to tell the search and rescue team Millie’s been found,” she said to Lisa, buckling her seat belt. “Let’s go tell that hunter help is on the way.” Clare careened down the Haudenosaunee drive with Lisa bracing herself against the door and dashboard. The Shelby bumped up and down so violently during the brief trip, it probably shortened its life span by at least a year. Even so, it still felt like too long by the time she pulled up next to the hunter guarding the dirt roadway.

“The ambulance is on its way,” Clare said through her open window. “Do you need any help?”

“No, thanks,” he said. “My friend Billy’s kind of a pain in the ass, but he’s good at first aid. We’ll keep a watch on her until the paramedics get here. There’s no need for you to stay.”

“Her name’s Millie van der Hoeven.”

“You mean, like the van der Hoevens?” He looked around him, as if more members of the Social Register might charge out of the woods. “Geez, this whole place belongs to them.” He returned his gaze to Clare, looking somewhat embarrassed at his starstruck moment. “Don’t you worry. Billy and I’d take good care of her no matter who she was.”

 

 

12:40 P.M.

The ambulance siren startled Shaun Reid. He slowed, coasting to the side of the otherwise deserted county road. The ambulance swung round the bend ahead and flew past in a whirl of lights and sound. Heading away from the mountains, toward Millers Kill and the Washington County Hospital. He pulled back onto the highway for the last mile or so to his destination. He was just about to turn into the private road leading to Haudenosaunee when a rusting Jeep Cherokee bounced into view. Shaun once more steered his car to the side of the road; the last thing he wanted was to tangle with a driver that wouldn’t care if his vehicle gave the Mercedes tetanus. After the jeep rattled down the mountain highway, Shaun pulled into Haudenosaunee’s road, only to come head to head with another truck, this one a pickup that evidently needed more than the usual number of tires.

Both drivers edged as close to the enclosing screen of trees as possible and proceeded at a crawl. Shaun powered down his window and gestured to the other driver, a youngish man whose hair, cropped like a marine’s, contrasted with his earring.

“What’s going on?” Shaun asked. “This place is supposed to be as isolated as a monastery, but today there’s more traffic than on the Northway.”

“We’re part of the search and rescue team,” the man said. “Are you a family friend?”

“Business acquaintance.” That was true. He had occasionally dealt with the late Mr. van der Hoeven over the years. “I’m here to see Eugene van der Hoeven.”

“Mr. Van der Hoeven’s sister Millie went missing last night. We’ve had a team here since dawn, looking for her.”

Shit. It would fit in with his current run of luck, wouldn’t it. Van der Hoeven probably wouldn’t even be able to see him. “That’s terrible,” he said with feeling.

“No, she’s been found, which is good, but she’s been hurt. Mr. van der Hoeven was still at home when we left, but he’ll probably be taking off for the hospital any minute now.”

Shaun, digesting the news, barely managed to thank the other driver as he rolled up his window and continued up the road. If that had been van der Hoeven’s sister in the ambulance, as seemed likely, he didn’t have much time to meet the man and make his pitch. Unfortunately, a succession of hulking SUVs and pickups retreating down the road required him to keep wedging his car between their mud-spattered sides and the trees. By the time he reached the gravel expanse of Haudenosaunee’s drive, his hands were clenched and his head pounding. His mood wasn’t improved any when, after parking, he circled his Mercedes and found several fresh scrapes on the passenger side.

Shaun stomped across the gravel and up the porch steps. He paused before ringing the bell, giving himself a moment to get into the right frame of mind. Cheerful. Upbeat. This would only take a moment. He had something to offer that was going to make Mr. van der Hoeven a very happy man. He leaned into the doorbell, then rocked back on his heels. Cheerful. Upbeat.

He glanced around while he was waiting. The so-called great camp wasn’t very impressive. Oh, it was sizable, all right, but if he had had the van der Hoeven money, he’d have put in one of those big, two-story-high windows and decorated the porch with brass lights and done some first-class landscaping. Look at the door, for chrissakes. It was right out of Little House on the Prairie.

The plain door swung open so suddenly he forgot to be Cheerful and Upbeat. “Uh,” he said.

Eugene van der Hoeven stood precisely halfway in and halfway out. He was dressed for the outdoors, in a dark sweater and pants topped by a blaze-orange hunting jacket. His face was tilted, so that one side was less visible than the other, but what Shaun could see was enough. He had heard about van der Hoeven’s boyhood accident, but Christ, he hadn’t expected it to be so . . .

“May I help you?” Van der Hoeven’s voice was chilly.

Shaun pasted on a smile and stuck out his hand. “Mr. van der Hoeven? I’m Shaun Reid, president and CEO of Reid-Gruyn Pulp and Paper.”

“Mr. Reid,” Eugene said sharply. He closed his mouth and started again, his voice softer, his irritation controlled. “Mr. Reid. I’m sorry, but you’ve caught me at a bad time.”

“I understand,” Shaun said. “I heard about your sister. I’m so sorry she’s been hurt. I certainly don’t want to keep you. However, if you could spare me just a few minutes of your time, you won’t regret it. I have a business proposal for you that will benefit us both.”

Van der Hoeven managed to peer at Shaun without turning his head and revealing his scars straight on. “Are you sure you’re the president? Of Reid-Gruyn? The same company that owns the mill?”

Shaun raised his hand. “I swear. I’m not trying to sell you vacuum cleaners or life insurance.”

Eugene stepped into the house. Shaun stood, paralyzed. What had just happened? Was he supposed to come in? He took a step forward and then scrambled backward as van der Hoeven surged out of the door, a backpack over his shoulder.

“I’m on my way out,” van der Hoeven said. “You have five minutes.” He continued past Shaun and down the steps. Shaun clattered after him.

“You and your siblings are selling off the Haudenosaunee lands. I’m guessing there was a problem with your father’s estate planning and that you all owed a lot more in taxes than you expected.”

Eugene’s step faltered. He shot a look at Shaun.

“You may have thought only a large operation like GWP could afford to make an offer on your property. Not true. I’m here to propose Reid-Gruyn Pulp and Paper as your partner.”

They came to a stop in front of the three-bay garage. “Reid-Gruyn can afford to purchase a quarter of a million acres?” Eugene said. “I’m impressed.” He bent to lift the garage door.

Shaun wondered if the lack of an electric door opener indicated the van der Hoevens were worse off than he suspected, or if it was more of that old-money-cheaper-than-thou act.

“I was thinking more of fifty thousand acres,” Shaun said, grabbing the edge of the door as it rose and helping it up. “That would still leave two hundred thousand to be preserved in their natural state,” he added, in case van der Hoeven was more of a tree hugger than he thought.

“GWP and the Adirondack Conservancy Corporation want to preserve the whole parcel.” Poised once more between the sunshine outside and the shadow within, van der Hoeven’s face twisted in an expression of disgust. “My family has managed and protected this land for a century and a half, and a fifteen-year-old organization staffed by out-of-state do-gooders and underemployed biologists believes it can do a better job.” He snorted. “I’d like to see the nonprofit that can hang together for as long as the van der Hoevens have.”

Yes. This was it, this was what Shaun had been looking for. A kindred soul, who understood that it wasn’t about the business. It wasn’t about the money. It was about stewardship. Accepting the responsibility from the previous generation, holding it for the next.

Unwarmed by the day’s sunshine, the interior of the garage was dank and cold. The first two bays held a Land Cruiser and a Volkswagen Beetle and smelled of oil and old packed earth. The third bay stored wicker lawn furniture, a garden cart, a folded canvas sun umbrella, and an ancient lawn mower. It smelled faintly of Shaun’s eighteenth summer.

Eugene fished a single key from his pocket. Shaun darted past him to the side of the Land Cruiser. “You and I are in the same situation,” he said, hurrying to make the sale before van der Hoeven got into his vehicle and drove away. “We both head family concerns. And both of us are being pushed by people who think GWP will do a better job than we can. I don’t want to take Haudenosaunee land away from your family. I want to go into partnership. Reid-Gruyn will manage the timber harvest, and the van der Hoevens will continue to protect the land as they see fit.”

Eugene sidled past him and opened the driver’s door.

“Except unlike a onetime payment that you’ll receive from GWP, our partnership will provide a steady stream of income.”

One foot in the truck, van der Hoeven paused. “How’s that?”

“The sale will be in cash and stock. The van der Hoevens will become part owners in Reid-Gruyn. Hell, between our two families, we could take the company private again.”

“I’m not a businessman, Mr. Reid. I have no interest in running a company. And our family investments are very well managed by A. G. Edwards and Sons.”

“You don’t have to be a businessman. You have the natural resource. I have the experience.” Shaun inched closer. “Do you really want to sign over all control of your land to the Adirondack Conservancy Corporation? Those people will micromanage your home so thoroughly you won’t be able to plant a tulip or burn off a caterpillar nest.”

Eugene opened his mouth, then snapped it shut. “It doesn’t matter. The land isn’t going to be sold.”

Shaun felt his jaw hanging open. He scrambled for solid footing. “What do you mean?”

“Just what I said. We won’t be signing over any control to anyone.”

Shaun was baffled. “But a representative of GWP spoke with my board members just two days ago. He was confident the deal was going through.” It had been the man’s assurance that had scuttled his remaining support on the board.

He gathered his proof. “And my son works for the Algonquin Waters. He just stopped by this morning to talk to me about the banquet tonight. My wife and I are attending.”

“You are? Excellent.” Van der Hoeven leaned into the backseat and tugged out a crate. Shaun could hear bottles clinking inside. “I’m trying to make sure this gets to the hotel in time for the ceremony tonight. If you’d deliver it, I’d be grateful.”

I’d be grateful. Shaun put on his best smile. “Be happy to help.” He accepted the crate from van der Hoeven’s hands and turned toward his Mercedes. He was surprised to hear more clinking. He swung around. Van der Hoeven had another crate of wine out of the Land Cruiser. The younger man nodded at Shaun to lead the way.

Now this is surreal. The dazzle of sunshine, after the darkness of the garage, made his eyes water. He had left his keys in the ignition, so rather than retrieving them to pop the trunk, Shaun opened the rear passenger door and slid his crate onto the backseat. Van der Hoeven nestled the second crate next to the first.

“So you’re supplying Château van der Hoeven for the party, but you say there’s not going to be a deal.”

The younger man flushed, on one side of his face only, and twitched his head to the right. “They’re getting our wine. They’re not getting our land.” He stepped backward. “I thank you. And now, I have to bid you good day.” He turned and strode toward the garage, leaving Shaun standing there like a delivery boy who’s just gotten his order form signed.

“But—” Shaun said.

“Thank you,” van der Hoeven tossed over his shoulder.

Shaun shut the rear door, crossed around the back of the car, and opened the driver’s door like a man in a dream. He keyed the ignition and looked one more time toward the cold darkness of the garage. He couldn’t see van der Hoeven. He shifted and looped around the drive, heading for the private road. What the hell had just happened? Could van der Hoeven have been telling the truth? Was that it, all his worries about losing their source of pulpwood, gone in an instant? It didn’t seem believable. And why would the van der Hoevens just pass up the millions they stood to gain on the deal? It sure as hell wasn’t because the stock market’s performance had wiped away all their money worries.

Unless . . . his foot eased off the gas as the thought formed itself. Unless the van der Hoevens and GWP had decided to cut the Adirondack Conservancy Corporation out of the deal. The price to be paid to the family was based on the value of the land, but that value must have been adjusted downward to compensate GWP for turning all the easements over to the ACC. GWP would be the landholder in name only. All the potential economic value from the property—money from natural resources, money from development—would belong to the Adirondack Conservancy Corporation. And the ACC wasn’t going to use it. They would never realize one red cent from Haudenosaunee. But what if GWP had decided to keep all the property rights? With their money and lobbying power down in Albany, they could buy approval of any number of “ecologically sensitive” developments around the lakes and mountains encompassed in Haudenosaunee’s vast acreage.

Christ. The money from timber was nothing. Hell, a year’s—five years’ profits at Reid-Gruyn were change from a lemonade stand compared to the money that could be made developing real estate at that scale.

Shaun had reached the county highway. He looked left, then right. The coast was clear. Was he going to slink back home with nothing more to show for his efforts than a few bottles of wine?

He rammed the Mercedes forward, backward, forward, in a tight three-point turn that put him nose up on the Haudenosaunee road again. He stomped on the gas. He considered the chance he might crunch into van der Hoeven’s Land Cruiser, heading down the drive, Eugene hurrying to his sister’s side. Bring it on. A collision would hang up the bastard for as long as it took a tow truck to come up from town and clear the narrow road. And if Shaun couldn’t get the whole story out of him by then, he’d follow van der Hoeven to the hospital and hang around the waiting room.

 

12:40 P.M.

Randy had walked out of the Reid-Gruyn parking lot without running into another soul. He headed down the side of the road toward Glens Falls, but when, after fifteen minutes, he came to a Stewart’s convenience store, he figured he’d give it a shot and see if Mike was already home.

Mike picked up on the third ring. “Hey, man,” Randy said. “Can I ask you a favor? Can you meet me at the gas station just down from the mill?”

“What are you doing there?”

“Long story. I’ll tell you later. Can you come get me?”

“Sure. You got good timing—I just got back from hunting. I got my buck this morning, isn’t that cool?”

Mike was at the Stewart’s in ten minutes. Everything was humming along, right like it ought to. Randy thought of all those times he had heard somebody say, He’s getting away with murder. And now he was.

Randy hadn’t realized that “just back from hunting” translated to a freaking big bloody deer corpse tied to the hood of Mike’s car. He couldn’t stop staring at the thing, its head lolling and bouncing with every pothole they hit, its big brown eyes staring sightlessly at him through the windshield.

“So my brothers were totally whipped when I bagged him,” Mike was saying, the glow from his victory in the sibling wars still shining from his face. “Two years in a row, I got my buck first. Two years! Yeah!” He raised a clenched fist in salute.

“That’s great, man.” They bumped over a frost heave in the road, and the deer nodded in agreement. You bet! “They still out there looking to get theirs?”

“Nah. By this time of day, the deer are all bedded down. They’ll be back out there tomorrow at dawn, I bet. While I’m sleeping in, dreaming of venison steak.”

Randy wondered if anyone had found Becky Castle yet. Should he drive by later to see? What if somebody saw him? He glanced out the side window at the clear sky. No cloud cover. Cold tonight. Below freezing and then some. He and Lisa would roll tight together under their quilts, keeping each other warm. And Becky Castle?

It might be better if nobody finds her. The idea scared him. The idea of going back there scared him. But it wouldn’t go away, the dark thought, like a long afternoon shadow seen out of the corner of his eye. If she wasn’t found, there would be no need for him to sweat and worry and wait to see cops at his door, looking for him.

After all, he hadn’t meant to kill her. He hadn’t even meant to hurt her, just to get the damn camera back. If she . . . disappeared . . . there wouldn’t be anything pointing to murder. Just another person who went into the mountains unprepared and never came out again. It happened every year.

A bad pothole jolted them down and up. The deer’s head thumped and nodded on the hood, its dry eyes on Randy. Life’s hard out in the mountains. It’s easy to die.

He didn’t have to make up his mind. He could just go over there. See if she’d been found. He’d just check. He turned to Mike. “I gotta go pick up Lisa from her cleaning gig. You mind if I don’t help you get the deer off when we get back to your place?”

Mike shrugged. “I can handle it.”

“Look, would you do me a favor? If it comes up, I been with you the last hour and a half.”

Mike took his eyes off the road to glance at Randy. “An hour and a half ago I was humping the deer outta the woods.”

“There wasn’t anybody with you, was there?”

“No.”

“Did you stop to register the deer at a station?”

“Nah. I figured I’d call it in.”

“Well, there you go. Nobody can say that we weren’t together.”

Mike looked suspicious. “What’s up?”

Randy hesitated. “I don’t want to tell you. But it’s nothing that’ll come back and bite you in the ass, if you’re worried.”

“You ain’t screwing around on Lisa, are you?”

Randy’s jaw dropped. “No! I’d never do that.” He shook his head and folded his arms across his chest. “It’s got nothing to do with her.”

“Okay, then.” Mike nodded, satisfied. “You were with me.”

This would be perfect. On his way to pick up Lisa, he would cruise past the logging road where he’d left Becky Castle. See what was going on. If anyone was there—he had a vague image of a scene from CSI, with a fire truck and an ambulance and cops—he’d just keep on going. If she was still there . . . no one would be surprised at the sight of a hunter coming back out of the woods empty-handed.

They pulled into Mike’s driveway and stopped. The stiffening deer sagged in its ropes, as if relieved to have reached its final destination at last.

“Hey. Can I borrow that extra orange vest you got? And your orange gloves?”

Mike looked surprised. “You going into the woods?”

“Lisa’s working way up in the mountains. I figure it can’t hurt to be careful.”

Mike opened his door and unfolded himself from the tiny seat. He stretched and thumped the buck’s rump affectionately. “You got that right. Some of the guys wandering around up there? You can’t be too careful.”

 

12:50 P.M.

To his surprise, Shaun didn’t meet Eugene van der Hoeven on his precarious ride back up the Haudenosaunee road. He roared onto the gravel drive and parked. Getting out of his car, he could see that the garage door was now shut. What the hell? There was no way the man could have left without passing Shaun.

Was there another way to the county road? Shaun studied the open space between the garage and the house. Framed by stalks and stakes from now-dead flower beds, there was enough room to drive a vehicle through, a path leading past the house and gardens into the woods. He glanced back at his Mercedes and amended that to a four-wheel-drive vehicle.

He rattled across the gravel drive and peered through the streaky, cobwebbed window at the side of the garage. The Land Cruiser was still there. He glanced at the porch. There was something about the blankness of the windows that made him think, There’s no one home. In an instant, he abandoned the garage and headed up the path. If he were a scientist, he’d examine every location, in order, to determine van der Hoeven’s whereabouts. But Shaun was a businessman and experienced, he could say without bragging, in making decisions based on a handful of facts and a gut feeling. Right now, his gut was telling him that if he wanted to buttonhole Eugene, he was going to have to find him in the woods.

Ten yards or so past Haudenosaunee’s stone-fenced backyard, the trail split. He stood, indecisive, reaching for a spark of intuition, when a faint noise to his right made clairvoyance unnecessary. He went as quickly as he could without kicking up the leaves drifted over the path. He couldn’t have said why, but silence seemed like a good idea.

The way was broad and easy. Shaun wasn’t one for botany—he left the flowers to Courtney—but even he could recognize that this branch of the trail wound through overgrown apple trees and berry bushes run wild. Cultivated land, then, or at least it had been a few decades ago. It wasn’t until he saw gray stone and charred timber through the gnarled branches that he realized where he was headed. The old Haudenosaunee. The first great camp.

He stood stock still and stared. It was like stumbling over the corpse of a dragon, its massive ribs burnt and broken, its stone skin tumbled in or scattered piecemeal on the ground. Holly and boxwood advanced across what must once have been a lawn, their hard-edged, dark green foliage an impenetrable wall. Feral rose vines clawed up the remaining walls, and through the outlines of windows and over the jagged fence of scorched timber, young hemlocks bristled out at him like adolescent giants.

It was a scene out of a fairy tale, complete with a single intact tower rising out of the forest at the far edge of the ruined house. What were buildings like that called? He had seen some on a historic-houses tour in England.

A folly. That’s what it was. This one must have been meant for viewing the scenery; he could see two wide, Roman-arched openings, each tall enough to accommodate a small cluster of sightseers, the lower one facing due west, the next a quarter turn round to the south and a floor higher. The airy effect was spoiled, though, by the blank stones and arrow slits piercing the other parts of the tower. It looked as if the architect and the owner had disagreed about whether they wanted an Italian duomo or a battlement, and each had gotten half his own way.

As he marveled at the architectural oddity, a man passed through the southern gallery and disappeared.

Shaun blinked. Had that been Eugene? He had only glimpsed the figure from the waist up, wearing blaze orange over something dark. Shaun walked a few steps toward the tower, then faltered. He wasn’t a superstitious man, but wrecked mansions and vanishing figures were out of his usual arena. Maybe . . . maybe coming out here wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe he had better go back down the path, get into his car, and drive away. He could catch van der Hoeven another time. If it was van der Hoeven he had seen.

But who else could it be?

He took another few steps. Then another.

One part of his head was already gone, down the path and in the Mercedes. Picking out a CD. Going home.

The other part of his head was whirling with opportunities, with advantages, with unanswered questions about the GWP deal, about Haudenosaunee, about this place, which everybody knew had been the site of van der Hoeven’s great tragedy.

Then he saw the blanket. Heavy wool, brightly striped, dangling off the upper branches of a birch tree growing hard by the edge of the tower. Clean of bird droppings and dried leaves. Unstreaked by rain, unfaded by sun. That blanket hadn’t been outdoors very long. And it hadn’t gotten into the tree by someone throwing it up from the ground. He glanced up at the dark rectangular openings at the top of the tower. Despite the brilliant sunshine, he felt a shiver go through him.

What the hell was Eugene van der Hoeven doing?

He ran for the tower door.

 

 

12:55 P.M.

Clare had wanted to wait until the ambulance arrived. It seemed wrong somehow, driving on while a young woman was bleeding on a dirt road a half mile away. But the hunter had pointed out she would have to move her car anyway, in order for the ambulance to get in, so she and Lisa, who clearly just wanted to get home, took off.

“I’ll swing by the hospital after I drop you,” Clare was saying. “Poor woman. God, who would do something like that?”

“That boyfriend they were talking about? Maybe someone from that group that sent her the brochures?” Lisa shuddered in her seat. “I just hope her brother’s not around when they catch the guy.”

“Mr. van der Hoeven? Why?”

Lisa’s eyes widened. “You saw him this morning, didn’t you? With the rifle? I swear, I think if you hadn’t yelled, he would have shot that girl. If he was willing to do that to someone delivering bad news, just think what he’d do to someone who hurt his sister. He really loves her.”

“He’s never been violent before, has he?”

Lisa shook her head.

“Then it was probably a onetime thing. His sister was missing, he was stressing about the land sale, and he acted irresponsibly with a firearm.” Lisa gave her a jaundiced look. “Okay, very irresponsibly. I don’t condone it, but that doesn’t mean he’s about to go out and act like Dirty Harry.”

“Who?”

And Russ thought he was getting old. “It means to be a vigilante.”

“Whatever. I’m just saying. He looked like he was ready to get medieval all over that woman. If he hadn’t had that shotgun, he would have been all over her anyway.” Lisa pointed to where a sign announced the intersection of Muddy Brook Road with Highway 53. “Turn right there.”

“From what I’ve seen of him, Eugene doesn’t seem like the type of man who’d let himself get physically close enough to anyone to assault them.” Clare signaled and turned onto the road. “He’s carrying around a load of baggage from that fire he was in.”

“No lie. You know, his mother died in that fire.”

“Good God, really?” Clare slowed down as Muddy Brook Road approached another narrow blacktop.

“Go left here. Yeah. I guess she and his father had been divorced for a while, but she was up at the camp visiting. From what I heard, she was looking for stuff to take from the old building, you know, to use in her new home? Mr. van der Hoeven—well, he was Eugene then, wasn’t he? Only, like, fourteen years old. He was helping her.”

“How did the fire start?”

“I dunno. I wouldn’t have known all that about his mother, except the lady who used to clean for them, she filled me in when I took over for her.”

“Had they had a bad divorce? Eugene’s mother and father?”

“According to her, it was all smiles and roses. Whatever fucked him up, you can’t blame it on a bad childhood.” There was a beat. Clare waited for it, and wasn’t disappointed. “Sh—” Lisa clapped both hands over her mouth before she could swear again. She looked at Clare with enormous eyes. “I forgot you’re a minister. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t sweat it. I’ve heard the word before. Even said it a time or two.”

“Really?” Lisa jerked her gaze away from Clare. “There. There’s our drive.”

Clare turned into a rutted dirt road remarkably like the one to Haudenosaunee, complete with kidney-jarring bumps and exhaust-scraping potholes. It never ceased to amaze her, the number of country residents in the Adirondacks who had driveways longer than the average suburban street.

There were several cars in the side yard, none of them looking remotely drivable. She pulled in close to the forlorn steps leading up to an unadorned front door. The house, set in the middle of a bare expanse of dying grass and dirt, seemed unspeakably lonely. No flowers, no bushes, nothing but the limitless forest stretching away in all directions. Lisa climbed out of the car.

“Are you sure you’ll be okay all by yourself?” Clare asked.

“Sure.” She smiled crookedly. “I don’t know who did it, but I can guarantee you whoever worked over Millie van der Hoeven isn’t coming after me.”

 

1:00 P.M.

Millie never would have guessed fear for her life could be washed away by sheer boredom. At first she had waited, her heart pounding with a combination of fear and rage, next to the door. Later, she hobbled around and around the circumference of the walls, peering as best she could out of the arrow slits, going over and over her plan in her mind. As time slipped past and the sunshine disappeared from the wooden floor, she found it harder and harder to focus—on her planned attack, on her anger, even on her fear of what was to come.

The adrenaline that had spurred her to action earlier burned away, leaving her cold and shaky and tired. She had used the bucket twice more, each time successfully. She tried to ease the cramping pain in her shoulders by leaning into the stones, by sitting, finally by lying on her side on her remaining blanket. She came close to drifting off, only to be snapped awake by the distant cawing of a raven.

The boredom was as painful as her shoulders and wrists—nothing to do, nothing to look at, not even her own voice to keep her company. She began to yearn for her captor to come back, not so much so she could escape but so the endless, monotonous waiting would be over.

Plus, she was hungry. And thirsty. Her stomach had started rumbling at least an hour ago, and beneath her duct-tape gag, her mouth was tissue-paper dry.

What if no one came?

What if she wasn’t being held for ransom but had been snatched by someone who wanted revenge? Although it was difficult to imagine who, or who the target of the revenge might be. Once in a while her mother offended some other Palm Beach matron with whom she played bridge, but those ladies were more likely to spike her mother by tittle-tattling on her face-lift than by kidnapping her daughter. Eugene’s poor mother, who might have held a grudge against the woman who stole her husband, was dead. And Louisa’s mother didn’t give a damn about anything except her horses.

Millie rolled from her side to her back, wincing, and rocked herself into a seated position. Her lower back twinged, and her stomach growled. Stones, bucket, blanket, floor. Nope, nothing had changed. The thinnest line of sunlight striped the floor beneath the western window. Must be past the noon hour.

What if no one came?

There was a scrape at the door. A bolt drawn back. A shock of amazement surged through her, and for a split second all she could do was stare. Then her head caught up with the rest of her senses, and she kicked against the floor furiously. She scooted across the planks, desperate to reach the wall and get on her feet. The door swung open.

It was a man. The brilliant blue sky framed in the open gallery arches behind him cast him into shadow, making him hard to see. Boots, dark pants, a dark sweater, and a blaze-orange jacket. Face hidden by an olive green balaclava. All of it straight off the floor of an army-navy surplus or hunting supply store. In his hand, a dark backpack, just large enough to hold a lethal explosive. Weapons. Surgical tools. A video camera.

He stooped over to set it on the floor. She thrust against the wooden planks once, twice, and fetched up hard against the solid stone. She raised her knees, planting her boots on the floor. With aching thighs, she heaved herself into a standing position.

Her captor stood as well. He held up his hand, one finger raised, as if to ask, Can you wait just a moment? He reached into his pants pocket, pulled out a horn-handled knife, and unfolded it.

Some remote part of her stood apart, amazed that she didn’t fall on the floor in a dead faint. Instead, Millie braced herself against the wall and let the iron hinge pin slide from between her wrists into her palm. She felt clearheaded, weirdly calm, like a shock victim before the pain sets in. She prepared to fight for her life with both hands tied beneath her back.

The man paused. Looked behind him. Then she could hear it, too, a rhythmic creaking noise. She was utterly incapable of placing the sound until the man flipped his knife shut and ducked back out the door, closing it. Of course. The stairs. The winding stairs between the galleys were wooden, and old, and a memory fell into her head, entirely complete, of climbing them, her father’s big hand holding hers, letting her peep over the railing at the mountains rolling away on every side. Her father’s step made the stairs creak just like that.

The man had gone. He had shut the door.

But not locked it.

Was it a trick? Was there a whole gang of them out there? Maybe arguing over what to do with her? She gripped the pin, her only weapon, more tightly. Swaying forward, she hobbled toward her cell’s single flat wall. Not toward the door itself. Next to the door. Where someone whose eyes were filled with the bright November sky would find it hard to see her, if only for a moment. She knew what she had to do.

 

1:05 P.M.

Shaun didn’t like the stairs. They were lit only by the residual light from the galleries, so that in the very middle of their wall-hugging curve, he climbed in darkness. The stone walls pressed suffocatingly close on either side, and decades of raw weather blowing in from the open arches had left far too many steps half rotten, the tread sagging beneath his weight.

It was hard maintaining forward momentum under circumstances like that. The higher he got, the slower he climbed, at every turn wondering who—what—awaited him at the top. His head and shoulders felt hideously vulnerable. Every instinct for self-preservation shrieked at him to turn around and go home and never look back, but an imperfect, unarticulated thought kept him climbing. He couldn’t put it into words; it was more of an equation. Secret+van der Hoeven=leverage. Or perhaps IF van der Hoeven’s actions=illegal, THEN opportunity. Whatever it was, it was enough to spur him slowly upward, despite his skin shrieking that something bad was about to happen.

“What the hell are you doing here?” The shape looming over him was much too big to be van der Hoeven, and Shaun knew a strangled instant of panic. Then the man yanked his balaclava over his head, and Shaun realized it was van der Hoeven’s angle, above him on the stairs, and his oversized sweatshirt that had made him appear larger than life.

“This is private property,” Eugene hissed. “Get out now, before I call the police and have you arrested for trespassing.”

Why was he whispering? Shaun’s glance flicked past van der Hoeven to the gallery just visible beyond his shoulder. What was he hiding? “This is a very interesting place you’ve got here,” Shaun said loudly.

Eugene’s head whipped around to look behind him. That was all Shaun needed. He charged up the stairs, slamming bodily into van der Hoeven, and kept going.

The younger man let out an outraged cry and grabbed him by the shoulders. Shaun bent forward, breaking van der Hoeven’s grasp, and stumbled up another step. “What do you have up there?” he asked. “What’s going on, Eugene?”

“Get out! Get out!” van der Hoeven’s voice was almost shrill. He lunged at Shaun, but the heavier man squared his shoulder and absorbed the blow before knocking van der Hoeven back. The younger man stumbled, caught himself, but retreated a step.

Shaun almost smiled. Lightweight. This was what not having to work did to a man. “C’mon, Eugene,” he said, lowering his voice. “I want to be your friend. Just tell me. I won’t blab it around.”

Eugene’s face was a stark divide: the unscarred half bright red, the scarred half ice white. He lunged for Shaun, who danced up three steps and avoided him. Eugene’s outstretched hands slapped against the wooden tread.

“What’s going on, Eugene?” Shaun glanced over his shoulder. He was almost at the gallery. The light from the open arches showed, instead of the wide and empty circular rooms of the first and second floors, a wall. And a door. With a keyhole. “Is there something in there? Shall I take a peek?”

“It’s my sister.”

The voice was so low Shaun wasn’t sure he had heard what he thought he heard. “Your sister?”

Eugene bent over, hands on his knees, nodding.

“Bullshit,” Shaun said. “I spoke with one of the search and rescue team. Your sister’s been found.”

Eugene shook his head. “No. That’s what I told him. To get rid of them.”

“The ambulance passed me on the road! Don’t tell me the paramedics were hauling ass to the hospital because you told them to.”

“I don’t know who they actually found! Somebody they mistook for my sister!”

“There was another woman, hurt and unable to tell anybody who she is, who just happened to be found on your property. And you’ve got your sister, who everybody thinks is this injured woman, locked up in a tower.” Shaun stared at van der Hoeven, amazed that he had sweated bullets over pitching a partnership deal to this guy. “You are one sick freak,” he said, and strode up to the gallery.

“Wait!” Eugene scrambled after him. “Goddammit, wait!”

Shaun reached for the iron door handle. Eugene knocked him out of the way. Shaun stumbled back. The door swung open, and a blond battering ram exploded from out of nowhere, head-butting van der Hoeven in the gut, sending him flying into the next level of stairs.

Shaun caught a glimpse of wild, panicked eyes and a mass of hair before the woman’s unchecked momentum sent her sprawling on the floor. Her hands and feet were bound, and she was squalling loudly, in a horrifyingly voiceless way that made him wonder if she was a deaf mute—or worse, if her tongue had been cut out.

“Christ,” he said. “Holy Christ.” He turned, ready to hammer van der Hoeven into the floor. The younger man’s blow caught him by surprise and sent him reeling. He clawed at thin air, desperate for a purchase to stop him from a fatal tumble backward down the stairs. He twisted, grabbed the edge of the archway, and stumbled forward.

Eugene pounced on the woman, seizing her ankles and dragging her back into the room. Shaun lurched toward them, knocking into van der Hoeven, but the other man was ready for him this time and rolled back with the blow, sending Shaun sprawling onto the floor inside the room. Eugene tried to grab the woman’s ankles again, but she twisted and kicked so violently that he gave up and shoved his hands beneath her torso instead, shoving her with enough force to flip her over.

Shaun staggered to his hands and knees, shaking his head to clear it. The woman—the girl, she looked young enough to be his daughter—grunted and groaned as van der Hoeven shoved her even farther away from the door, but he could see the gag preventing her voice from spilling out. She was still fully dressed, so the bastard hadn’t molested her yet—

Van der Hoeven straightened. Dug a long iron key out of his pocket. Sprang for the door. The door with the decorative lock that must, Shaun realized, be fully functional. The bastard was going to lock him in.

It had been over thirty years, but by God he still remembered how to tackle. Eugene went down, half in and half out of the doorway. The key thunked on wood somewhere beyond his head, but as soon as Shaun loosened his hold to climb off the floor, van der Hoeven kicked him in the face. Shaun howled, clutching at his nose, blood spurting from between his fingers. Eugene was all over him, punching, clawing, shrieking, “Leave her alone! I’m protecting her! Leave her alone!”

Roaring, Shaun surged to his feet, using his weight to slam van der Hoeven backward. “Give me the goddam key!” he snarled.

Van der Hoeven rolled, faster than Shaun would have thought possible, his hand closing over the key. He continued to roll, evading Shaun’s lunge, scrambling to his feet. He kicked up, like a kid playing soccer, and connected with Shaun’s breastbone. His air rushed out so fast Shaun thought a lung was collapsing, and his heart—he clutched at his chest. Jesus Christ, was he having a heart attack?

“I told you to leave!” Eugene rushed him. Shaun, still flailing and airless, feebly warded off the blow. “I told you!” He slammed into Shaun again, sending him tottering through the open door.

Shaun tried to demand van der Hoeven let the girl go, but he was wheezing so hard, what emerged was “Let . . . girl . . .” and a series of gasps.

“She’s here for her own protection,” Eugene said, and his hand closed over the edge of the door, and Shaun saw what was going to happen, saw himself imprisoned by this lunatic, this fucking rich man’s son who hid out in the woods so no one knew he had gone insane, and his rage and fear filled him up until it stretched his skin and then even the bounds of his body couldn’t hold it back and he was surging, up, forward, plowing into van der Hoeven with all the force his seventeen-year-old self had used plowing into a row of defensive linebackers and the key arched out of van der Hoeven’s hand and Shaun roared and they thudded against something hard and unyielding and van der Hoeven tilted—

—and there was a moment, before gravity caught him, his eyes wild with fear, looking at Shaun, begging him, begging him—

Shaun slammed forward. Eugene fell over the gallery rail, screaming, screaming until there was a wet thud and the scream cut short.

 

1:15 P.M.

Shaun stared at the unmoving figure that used to be Eugene van der Hoeven. There was noise around him: the rattle and rustle of the wind in the November trees, the cawing of crows, a rhythmic muffled whine behind him. But he was staring down into a well of silence, into a place where noise and movement and life were swallowed and went still.

He stared and stared, waiting for an arm to twitch, for a chest to heave upward, knowing as he did so that it wasn’t going to happen. The rhythmic noise wormed its way into his frozen brain, first as a whine, then as an annoyance, and then, as his brain unfroze and the living world closed over the well, as a fear.

He whirled. The blonde in the room had squirmed across the floor and was inching her way into a standing position against the far wall. She met his eyes, and he could see she was terrified.

“It’s okay,” he said, approaching her. She shrank against the wall in a way that made him feel like a loathsome worm. “Really. It’s okay. He can’t hurt you.” He reached for her duct-tape gag. She flinched away, her eyes flooding with tears. “I’m going to take this off. I’m sorry, but it’s going to hurt.” He pried off a tiny edge while she stood, trembling, and then yanked as hard as he could.

She made a noise he would never forget as long as he lived—half scream, half wail. “You killed my brother,” she said, her heart breaking in her voice. “You killed my brother. I saw you.”

Shaun stood there, the duct tape dangling stupidly from his fingers, while the young woman sobbed. “Your . . . brother.”

She nodded.

“You’re Millie van der Hoeven?”

She nodded.

He was utterly lost. What was going on? Were they into some sick bondage fantasy? “What the hell was he doing with you up here?” he asked.

Her lunge took him by surprise. He fell heavily backward, Millie thudding on top of him. With her hands held behind her back, she tried to hit him with her head. He shoved her away roughly and scrambled to his feet.

“He was trying to rescue me,” she said, her voice twisted by grief and rage.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Shaun’s confusion was settling into his stomach as an ache and an anger. He had rescued this girl, goddammit. She should at least show him some gratitude. Not try to club him unconscious with her skull. “You were the one who knocked him on his ass when he came through the door! Don’t tell me that’s how you get rescued.”

She pressed her cheek flat on the floor. Tears ran over her nose and dripped onto the wood. “He hid his face,” she said more quietly. “He hid his face and he had a knife and I didn’t recognize him.”

“Yeah? Well, when a masked man with a knife comes after you, it doesn’t commonly mean that he’s here to save you.” He strode to the backpack lying near the door. It was the same one van der Hoeven had been carrying earlier. “Let’s just see what he had in store for you, shall we?” He unzipped the bag and upended it.

A Thermos fell out, clanging dully on the wooden floor. Two sandwiches followed. An apple rolled out, landing on the sandwiches. He shook it again, numbly, and a roll of toilet paper bounced to the floor. A slim thermal blanket slithered out after it.

Shaun stared at the young woman sprawled on the floor. She looked at the food and supplies, then at him. “You killed my brother,” she said.

He backed out of the room and slammed the door. The key. The key. He scrabbled around the base of the stairs where he had seen the thing fall. When his hand closed over it, he sagged with relief before turning to the door and locking it. He pocketed the key, and then, without being conscious of descending, he was outside the tower.

It was the same day it had been when he went inside. The sun had hardly budged in the sky. The trees, the ruined house, the forest closing in all around—it was all the same as when he set foot in the tower.

Except that he had killed a man.

Okay. He wasn’t going to panic.

He was a smart man. He was going to figure out what to do, and in what order to do it. He tried on the idea of heading for his house and calling the police. Who would then arrive and take Millie van der Hoeven’s statement that he had killed her brother before locking her in a tower room. No.

He considered calling his lawyer first. No, calling his lawyer and getting her to give him the name of a good criminal attorney. Who would stand beside him when the police asked him how Eugene van der Hoeven had toppled from the tower. And why he had shut the man’s sister up instead of freeing her, as any innocent person would have done. Oh, yes, having an attorney there would certainly reassure the police that Eugene’s death had been an accident.

Hadn’t it?

He thought about that moment, about van der Hoeven’s expression, about the rage and frustration that had been coursing through his body, pounding in his head. He sucked in a breath. Of course it had been an accident. He had no motive to wish van der Hoeven dead. Not one.

Of course, now he knew for sure that one of the three owners of Haudenosaunee wasn’t going to be signing anything over to GWP tonight.

And the second of the three owners was trapped in a tower. No one knew she was there. Except Shaun.

What if Millie van der Hoeven didn’t show up for the ceremony tonight? The sale of the land would be, if not voided, at least delayed. Eugene’s estate would have to be settled. There would be time for Shaun to unearth alternate financing. Buy back-stock. Maybe tender his offer of partnership to Louisa van der Hoeven.

Admittedly, she wouldn’t be likely to be receptive if he had been arrested for her brother’s death in the interim. But he could cross that bridge when he came to it.

Meanwhile, his thoughts circled around to tonight’s ceremony. To Millie van der Hoeven. The person who had walked into the tower, the man who hadn’t ever caused anyone’s death, was horrified. What are you thinking of? Just keeping her?

The old nursery rhyme sang in his head. Peter, Peter, pumpkin eater. Had a wife and couldn’t keep her. Put her in a pumpkin shell. He looked up at the tower. And there he kept her very well.

He was thinking what to do with the body as he walked around the tower. He wasn’t cocky, but he was rather pleased by his composure and rationality—until he stepped around a birch tree and finally saw Eugene van der Hoeven up close. There was something wrong about the way Eugene’s limbs lay. As if he were a mannequin put together in a hurry. Or a marionette doll flung aside by a careless child. Shaun started shaking. His breath sawed in and out, too fast, until black spots swam in front of his eyes. Eugene wasn’t a person anymore; he was a broken thing. And Shaun had done it to him.

He bent over and lost his lunch.

He staggered back around the base of the tower until the corpse was out of sight. He bent over, breathing deeply, willing the light-headed, spots-in-front-of-his-eyes feeling to go away. Okay, he thought. Okay. Eugene is dead. He was not going to touch Eugene. But he had Millie. He had to see the opportunity in it. Everything was an opportunity, if you were gutsy enough to take it. He would get Millie out of the tower, take her . . . someplace. A motel. The van der Hoevens don’t show at the signing ceremony tonight. Haudenosaunee keeps producing cheap pulpwood for Reid-Gruyn.

And what do you do with her after? the old Shaun asked. But the new Shaun, the one who was going to come out a winner in this debacle, was already figuring how he could get a vengeful, uncooperative Rapunzel out of her tower.

He would need something to carry her in. He flashed back to the garage, talking with Eugene, the garden cart in the third bay. Perfect.

The walk back to the drive passed in a blur. There were the trees, the still-green grass, the dead hydrangeas, and then he was standing in front of the garage, thankful, now, for van der Hoeven’s out-of-date, manually opened doors. He hauled up the far door. There it was, the garden cart, stored against the coming winter. Rectangular, with metal-bound wooden sides, it was big enough to hold a grown woman, if she curled up.

He rolled it over the gravel, past the edge of the house, along the broad part of the trail. He could see the stone wall enclosing the back lawn and the mellow, peeled logs of the house’s rear facade. He was just swinging the cart onto the edge of the trail to the old camp when he heard it. The crunch of tires on gravel. He shoved the cart ahead hurriedly, only to stumble in its wake and nearly fall.

A door slammed. He froze in place. He heard the sound of footsteps, gritting over the gravel, thumping on the wooden porch. There was a pause, as if the unseen visitor had rung the bell and was waiting.

Shaun took a deep, silent breath.

“Hello!” a voice called. “Anyone home?”

 

1:20 P.M.

Randy had his excuse for being on Fire Road 52 all ready. The Haudenosaunee entrance was marked only by stone pillars and was easy to miss if you weren’t paying attention. He was on his way to pick up his wife. He was absentminded. He thought this was the road. Who could argue with that?

Of course, he hoped there wouldn’t be anyone to argue with at all. He slowed as he approached the entrance to the logging road. No sign of any activity. He signaled, then turned in. Was she there? Undiscovered? Should he risk going on? He accelerated gently, rolling uphill. Just a guy out to pick up his wife. That’s all. He rounded a bend.

He almost hit the red pickup parked in the middle of the road. He jammed on his brakes, the slight shuddering stop making his stomach swoop as if he were on a roller coaster. Past the truck, he could see—oh, shit—a cop car. No ambulance, no hearse, no sign of her. He didn’t see anybody. He worried his lip. Should he back out? Would that look more or less suspicious than getting out and taking a look-see? He sat in the driver’s seat, paralyzed by his options, until a man in hunter’s camos and a blaze-orange vest wrenched through the thicket of brush lining the road and walked toward him.

A hunter. He started to smile in relief, until the man looked at Mike’s license plate. Looked at the tires. As he approached Randy, the man ambled wide of the car, in a path that might have been dictated by a rut in the dirt road but that also placed him in a position where he could see what was coming at him if Randy opened the door. He took off his cap, and that was when Randy saw it was the chief of police.

Russ Van Alstyne smiled and motioned for him to crank down his window. The handle stuck at each rotation, and the resulting squeak of glass on rubber sounded like a chorus in Randy’s ears: You’re screwed, you’re screwed, you’re screwed.

“Hey, son,” the chief said. “What’re you doing out here?”

Randy blanked. What was he doing out here? He was . . . he was . . . “Looking for my wife,” he said.

Van Alstyne’s blue eyes sharpened. “When was the last time you saw her?”

Oh, shit. The chief thought he meant Becky Castle. Probably had him tagged as a wife beater. Randy shook his head. “She works up to Haudenosaunee. Cleans house for them. Our car’s in the shop, so I had to come get her.”

“Cleans house for Eugene van der Hoeven? I think I met her this morning.” Van Alstyne stepped closer and peered into the window. “I know you,” he said. “You’re Mark Durkee’s brother-in-law, right? Schoof? Randy Schoof?”

Randy nodded. If being Mark’s relation by marriage saved him, he would hug the self-righteous prick the next time he saw him.

“So you’re looking for your wife, Randy?” The chief’s voice was relaxed, friendly. His eyes, however, were as bright as ever, his glance flickering from the backseat to the passenger side to the well beside the door to Randy’s clothes. “What’s that on your pants, there?”

Randy looked at his lap. To his horror, a smear of blood stained his jeans. His mouth worked soundlessly, searching for some explanation. Why was there blood on his pants? He cut himself shaving? Jesus, that was ridiculous. He looked up at the chief, caught like a deer in the headlights. A deer. Mike’s deer. “I went hunting this morning. My friend took a buck. I helped him with it.” His relief at coming up with a good answer made his smile genuine. He gestured toward the chief’s hunting gear. “How did you do? Got yours yet?”

Van Alstyne shook his head. “I have lousy luck.” He grinned. “But I’m persistent. So, you’re out here looking for your wife?”

“At Haudenosaunee,” Randy repeated. “Isn’t this the road to the house?” He slapped at his jacket pockets, as if searching for a telltale crinkle of paper. “I have the directions written down here somewhere.”

“Have you been out here before?”

Randy froze. “Before?” Shit. If he told the chief he’d never been here before, he could easily get caught in the lie. His brother-in-law could tell them Randy used to work for Ed Castle.

“Yeah. Were you and your friend hunting out here or anything?”

Randy tried to sound relaxed. “Nope. Why?”

“A couple hunters found a young woman on the road here. She’d been hurt real bad.”

Hurt? Hurt? What did that mean? Randy stopped himself from blurting out You mean she isn’t dead? Instead, he pursed his lips in a look of concern and said, “I hope she’s all right.”

“Maybe. She’s been taken to the hospital. She was in pretty bad shape. Unconscious. Internal injuries.”

He wasn’t a murderer. He wasn’t a murderer. He wanted to kiss the cop standing by his window. “That’s terrible,” he said, trying not to beam his relief.

“It is. What makes it worse is that another young woman is missing.”

“Huh?”

“Millie van der Hoeven. I’m sure your wife will tell you all about it. The hunters who ran across this girl thought they had found Miss van der Hoeven, but now it seems she’s still out there somewhere.” The chief’s unshaven face settled into hard lines.

Randy searched for something, anything, to say that would make him sound like an innocent bystander. “Uh . . . any idea where?”

The chief shook his head. “No.” He pierced Randy with a look. “I think your wife must be around the same age as these two girls. Keep an eye on her. Don’t let her hang around outside on her own.”

“I won’t.”

“To get to Haudenosaunee, you want to get back on the county road and turn right. The road is about a mile up. It’s marked by two stone pillars.”

Randy shifted the car into reverse. “Good luck in finding the missing girl!” He cranked the window up as he backed out of sight. The chief watched him the whole way.

Randy cursed himself as he drove up the county road. He had to get Lisa, drop her off home, and talk to Mike Yablonski. He needed his friend to say that he picked Randy up after his bike got wrecked. Randy didn’t want Russ Van Alstyne even thinking about him in Becky Castle’s car. The man saw way too much for comfort. Christ, why had he insisted on taking the bike to Jimino’s? Frank Jimino would know it was his. If he had let it go to whatever the nearest garage was, he could, if he had to, abandon it. Now there was a clear trail: him to Ed Castle’s, then Becky taking responsibility for his bike.

He was so distracted by his thoughts he nearly plowed into the black Mercedes at the top of the Haudenosaunee drive.

“What the hell?” He parked his truck near the front door and got out. There was nobody in the car. He walked closer. Except for a fresh scratch on the passenger side, it was an exact duplicate of Shaun Reid’s car. He walked to the rear. Yep. There they were. Sierra Club and Adirondack Conservancy Corporation stickers. What the hell?

He circled the Mercedes before heading toward the front porch. He climbed the steps and knocked on the door. No one answered. He knocked again. Then he opened the door and took a single step inside. “Hello? Anybody home?” he shouted. The echo of his own voice convinced him of what he had already felt. The house was deserted. He closed the door and wandered out onto the gravel drive. Where was his wife? Could van der Hoeven have given her a ride home? From what Lisa told him, her employer never left Haudenosaunee if he could help it. That was why—oh, hell. He slapped one hand over his face. Lisa had told Mr. van der Hoeven that Randy would deliver some boxes of wine for him. If van der Hoeven had to take Lisa home and make the delivery himself, Randy would never hear the end of it. Never.

But if Lisa and van der Hoeven were gone, what was Shaun Reid doing here? Hiking by himself in the woods?

“Hello,” Randy shouted, crossing the drive toward the back of the house. “Anyone home?” He listened as he walked to the head of a well-marked trail into the forest. “Is anybody here?”

He heard nothing except the dry rustle of wind through dead leaves. The place gave him the creeps. The hell with it, he thought. His life had been unfolding like a bunch of horror movies today. He didn’t want to add The Blair Witch Project to the playlist.

He made a beeline for the back door. Inside the kitchen, he was relieved to find two crates of wine stacked by the cellar door. He had thought it was supposed to be more—that was the whole point, that he could bring his pickup and take a bunch—but at this stage, he wasn’t arguing. He picked up both crates at once and walked back to his truck, staggering slightly under the load.

He’d make the actual delivery later. Right now he would go to ground at Mike’s—hang out and help him cut up his deer and polish up his alibi. In the back of his head, the flip side of his not being a murderer loomed: Becky Castle, alive, could identify him. He didn’t know what to do about that. He didn’t even know how to think about it, other than by denial. He needed time. He needed a few minutes of normality in the midst of this crazy-ass day to catch his breath and get his feet under him. But he couldn’t take too much time. He thought of the deer waiting for him back at Mike’s. Just like him, that buck had been in the gunsights. And it had waited a fraction of a second too long before making its move. Now it was brisket and ground venison. He shook his head. He wasn’t going to make the same mistake.