You know, we were almost able to save you,” Horace said, killing the ominous silence that had descended over everyone.
Ethan raised an eyebrow. “How’s that?”
“We followed you to San Antonio, then to the house where you met Nash, Nikki Sixx.”
“You knew he was Nikki Sixx?”
“Not until after the fire. Then we were scrambling.” Horace sat forward. “How is it you survived?”
“Beginner’s luck,” Ethan said flatly, not wanting to give up Suz’s methodology.
Horace sat back. “I understand. You don’t want to tell us. But realize that was us coming to save you.”
“The men in the van? That was Six-Fingered Mafia?”
Horace chuckled. “Love that term. Yeah, that was us. We’d been trying to bring you in… remove you from the board, so to speak, so that the Council of David couldn’t get you.”
“We had no way of knowing that.”
“No, I suppose you didn’t.”
“But I do have a hard time believing that your organization hasn’t been trying to kill me.”
“Why would we want you dead?” Edna asked.
“To keep me from telling the truth about giants?”
Now it was Edna’s turn to chuckle. “I blame the box. You know who sent those out, right?”
Ethan stared blankly at them.
“The Council of David sent them out,” she said. “That’s why they say don’t trust the Six-Fingered Man. It’s because we’re trying to save those they manage to put on the path.”
Ethan didn’t know whether to believe her. Coming from the grandmotherly woman it seemed so authentic. Then again, she could merely be lying. Whatever it was, her response was so opposite everything they’d previously believed.
“But it also says not to conduct an internet search for the Council of David. Why would they out themselves that way? If they’d never mentioned it, I wouldn’t have known.”
“Fair point,” Horace said. “Our mafia, as you call them, has operatives who monitor global internet searches. The Council of David comes up when the bone chaser invariably searches for them, and they become aware of their location and know that another chaser is on the board.”
“Why do they say don’t search for it, then?” he asked.
“They trust in human nature,” Edna said. “They know that people’s intrigue will outweigh a command found on a slip of paper.”
“So then when I typed Council of David into Google back at the university library, it was you who sent people.”
“We didn’t have time to organize to get you. We weren’t prepared to track the box because your father was still alive when he passed it to you. Then when you did that search, the best we could do was put out an all-points bulletin to the local authorities. The idea was when you were captured, we’d come in and take you off their hands, erasing any history of an arrest or the APB.”
“So you were trying to save me from the very beginning.”
They both nodded.
“Do you know how they killed my father?” he asked.
Both Horace and Edna shook their heads.
“They have so many ways. My guess is he was injected with some time-delayed drug when he was out and didn’t even know it.”
Ethan had been thinking along those same lines. He hadn’t been running from something. He’d ended up running to something… in this case, the Council of David. The woman with the shotgun and the man with the pistol were both Council of David and they’d both tried to kill him… which didn’t make sense if they wanted him to hunt bones for them. He said as much.
“They shot at you but didn’t hit you,” Horace noted. “Do you really think they couldn’t sneak up on you and shoot you if they wanted to? That was to get your blood pumping. To let you know everything was real. I figure by now you’ve gotten rid of the microSD card they sent you. Each one has an RFID transmitter. They knew where you were the entire time. It’s how they track bone chasers to bones.”
“You seem to have an answer for everything,” Ethan said.
Horace shrugged.
“We’ve been doing this awhile,” Edna offered.
“What would have happened if I stopped running and let the Six-Fingered Man have me?”
“You’d have been relocated with new names and lives. Just like Jonas and Sarah from your list,” Horace said.
“They weren’t killed?”
“We were able to save them,” Edna said.
“So you followed this box?” he asked.
They nodded.
“How do you find the first person to get the box? I assume there are dozens of these boxes out there with dozens of bone chasers.”
“We rarely get to the first one, but on the occasion we do, it’s usually because we have advance notice.”
Ethan stared at them for a moment, then asked, “You have someone on the inside, don’t you?”
Edna ignored his question. “The Council of David chooses its bone chasers by auditing their social-networking accounts. We don’t have their algorithm, but they look for those who are extraordinarily inquisitive and who have better-than-average networking and searching skills.”
Ethan grinned. “You do have someone on the inside.” He thought about it for a moment, then frowned. “And now I’ve invited the Council of David here. What’s to keep them from killing me?”
Horace shrugged. “Nothing, really. But my guess is that they’ll appreciate you giving us to them. They might ask you to join them.”
“I’d never do that.”
“You might not have a choice,” Edna said.
“What about Sweden? The box said never to travel to Sweden.”
“The Council of David has offices there, and they know we know it. We’ve been using biometrics to track and record anyone arriving by commercial means.” Horace glanced at Edna, then continued. “We have our reasons. They’re probably worried about this and don’t want a bone chaser prematurely identified.”
Ethan’s eyes narrowed. Why would they be concerned with that unless… “They have someone on the inside, too.”
Horace didn’t answer.
They sat that way for a time. Neither Horace nor Edna seemed concerned about their fate. It was like they’d accepted what was about to come. Ethan didn’t think he’d have the same stoicism, but he never would have volunteered to begin with had he been in their shoes. Their decision certainly demonstrated a superior moral fortitude.
“Do you have any children?” Ethan asked. But the moment he did, he regretted it. The more he knew about them the worse he felt.
“A son and a daughter. Sam is a dentist in Milwaukee and Jennifer is a stay-at-home mom in Minot.”
“Do they know what you do?”
“Oh, no. To them we’re just a couple of boring old fogies who spend all their time in an RV.”
“So you have grandchildren, then.”
Edna smiled and practically glowed with pride. “Six. Four with Jennifer and two with Sam.”
“I’m sorry you won’t get to see them again.”
Edna nodded. “We are, too. We do love our family. But we love humanity, too.” She winked at Ethan. “Trust me. We know how to handle this.”
Ethan’s phone pinged.
We’re outside. Is it safe to come in?
Ethan typed, Safe.
The sound of car doors closing was immediately followed by a knock at the door.
Ethan typed a single word into his phone: Sorry. Then he set it to audio record before stuffing it down in the seat.
The knocking came again.
Ethan opened the door and saw two men. Each was dressed in black workman’s pants and boots with black T-shirts and black glasses. The one on the left had red hair, the other had brown hair.
He stepped back to let them in.
The one with red hair went to the Johanssons.
The other one addressed Ethan in accented English. “Gun. Hand it over.”
“Where is she?” he asked, refusing to hand anything over until he was reunited with her.
“Where is who?”
“Shanny. Shannon Witherspoon. I’m trading them for her.”
The Council of David men exchanged glances.
The one with the red hair spoke. “She’s at our destination. We’ll give you safe passage there where you can meet her.”
“I need to see her now,” he said, looking from one man to the other. “What do you call it? I need proof of life.”
The one with red hair shook his head. “Can’t do it. She’s not here. Now, hand over the gun or we leave you.”
Ethan reluctantly did as he was told. Although he regretted losing the comfortable weight of it, he knew he had to cooperate if he was ever going to see Shanny again.
Within minutes they were all in a darkly tinted sedan. Forty minutes later they boarded a private jet. They didn’t speak to him. A stewardess took care of his food needs. It wasn’t a barbecue pizza, but they did serve steak with a cream sauce and a fresh salad. He had his pick of liquor but had only a couple glasses of wine, which succeeded in putting him to sleep.
He dreamed of a giant in pain. Thunderous screams of agony rent the darkness. The giant struggled to breathe, as if a wet cloth had been put across his face. He tried to remove it but couldn’t move his arms.
Ethan awoke shivering, a shout on the tip of his tongue. He swallowed water, then looked out the window. They were over an ocean.
The jet landed at a private hangar in a very cold place. They gave him a black peacoat and then boarded a smaller aircraft. Ethan noticed that Horace looked a little worse for wear, as if he’d been beaten. Ethan avoided eye contact with Horace and Edna, his guilt exponentially multiplying. He tried to ask on several occasions where they were going or where they were, but all attempts at inquiry were met with stony silence.
The new plane was a small Learjet. The Johanssons were put in back, and he was placed up front by the man with red hair. Ethan asked again where they were and was surprised at the man’s response.
“Lapland.”
Never great at geography, Ethan knew only that Lapland was a sparsely populated area in the northernmost part of Finland. He supposed it was as good as any place to have the secret global headquarters of an international organization. They certainly wouldn’t have any unwanted visitors, and if they did, they’d see them coming from miles away.
The plane landed at a private runway in the middle of a snowy field that stretched around them for miles. There was a forest rising in the distance. Honest-to-God reindeer pawed at the snow, foraging for food beneath it. Once the plane stopped, Ethan and the Johanssons were trundled into a waiting bus and taken several miles down the road. The bus pulled to a stop alongside an empty, snow-covered field, and both Red Hair and Brown Hair ordered everyone to get off.
As Ethan stepped into the chill Lapland air, it became even more apparent that they were in the middle of nowhere. For a moment, he was afraid that the two men would kill them there and leave their bodies, but it had taken a lot of effort to get them there just to kill them. There must be something else.
And then it happened.
Two double doors opened in the ground, each camouflaged to look like snow. Two men in white snowsuits and snow glasses held the doors open for them. Red Hair and Brown Hair pushed the Johanssons in front of them and descended, leaving Ethan to stand outside alone.
It only took a few seconds for him to realize he really should be following them. Shivering with each step, he descended into the Laplandian tundra.