THE NIGHT WAS dark, the night was cold, the night was hell there just ahead, beyond the car’s long-reaching high beams, around the next corner, at the Crow’s Nest. Ryan held the accelerator pedal to the floor, gripped the wheel tightly with his right hand, and prayed he was not too late.
Pain throbbed up his arm from the bone he’d broken next to his thumb. He’d wedged the shackle between the bed frame and one of the posts and positioned his hand so that all of his weight would fall on his thumb when he threw himself backwards, but even then the bone had survived two failed attempts.
When it had finally popped, he passed out from the pain.
And he’d passed out a second time trying to slide his collapsed hand through the shackle. But he had succeeded, and after a five-minute reprieve to collect his senses, he’d wound the chain around his wrist so that it appeared he was still bound by it, and he’d called the guard.
If there was one bit of grace in breaking a hand bone, it was that the swelling was limited because there was far less flesh to tear around a thumb than around many other bones, like the femur or the radius.
His left hand was still puffy, as if it belonged to someone a hundred pounds heavier than him, and it throbbed like a steam train struggling up a long hill, but the pain was bearable next to the true pain that he faced.
No amount of nerve damage could compare to the terror that had drummed itself into his mind as the Honda roared due west over vacant predawn roads.
A dozen potential scenarios whispered like serpents, most with sinister flickers of the tongue, suggesting that she was already dead. That Bethany, the child whom he’d ignored in his passion to serve his own career, was dead and broken in a hole somewhere.
And if she was alive—which he finally convinced himself she must be, if for no other reason than that BoneMan was too fixated on tormenting them both to end it so quickly—she could be badly hurt. Disfigured for life. Broken and twisted even now as he pushed the car to the breaking point.
He’d already decided that if the police found him before he reached the Crow’s Nest, he would not stop until he reached Fort Davis, where he would surrender and demand to speak to the FBI agent Ricki Valentine about leading them the last few miles to the meeting spot.
To Crow’s Nest Ranch.
Trapped for four hours in a car with only his thoughts proved to drive him only further from the calm, reasoned state that would serve him in this crisis. He found himself unable to hold back tears on numerous occasions, and because he was alone with nothing to do but drive, he allowed them to run down his cheeks. But then they began to interfere with his ability to drive at high speed, so he wiped his eyes, set his jaw, and swallowed his fear.
The faintest hint of gray edged the eastern sky as he left Fort Davis in his wake and brought the car back up to speed.
By the time he hit the dirt road that led into the ranch, the horizon was brighter, unquestionably so, but he still needed his lights to see the road ahead. BoneMan had said first light, or was it dawn? Either way, this was neither dawn nor first light. This was predawn.
Ryan slowed when he crossed under the arching Crow’s Nest Ranch sign—he’d made it this far undetected. Just a few hundred more yards. And now he began to worry in earnest that he really was too late.
He drove the car into the same camp he’d used two days earlier, turned off the engine and the lights, and stared into the darkness.
He opened the door and stepped out into the dirt, between the door and the car. Faint night sounds, crickets, breeze, a lizard or two. The car’s engine cooling.
But the night sounded vacant to him, and the memory of his previous long wait pushed him into a sudden panic. He rounded the car and stared at the camp’s perimeter.
“Hello?”
Nothing but silence answered him.
“I’m here.”
But BoneMan was as unlikely to step out and take his hand as he was to release Bethany for good behavior. What was he thinking?
“Hello? I’m here, for the love of God!” His voiced carried into the night and a lizard took flight to his right, but nothing else seemed to take note that he was even there.
Ryan loosened his fists and walked to the same tree he’d sat under the last time he’d waited. He stood there and looked around, mind ragged after being battered for over twenty-four hours without sleep.
There was nothing else he could do now. Nothing.
So he slowly sank to his seat, rested his arms on his knees, and sagged, exhausted. He took several deep breaths in an attempt to calm his frayed nerves, but nothing seemed to still the palpable throb in his hands and arms.
Nothing would except sleep, and he didn’t dare fall asleep now. The man had said first light, and first light was approaching. Then it would grow warm and he would be alone again, at the whim of a man who might very well be watching at the moment, or might decide not to come for another day or two or never.
And what would Ryan do then? Whom would he confide in? What brilliant decision would he make except to wait, and then wait some more until finally, a day later, a week later, he finally accepted the terrible truth that Bethany was gone? Or had been found.
No father could do this. No mind could withstand this much…
The blow came then, like a locomotive from the night. It struck his head from behind with enough force to jerk the light from his mind and drop him to the ground like a side of butchered beef.