I HADN’T SET many traps for offenders during my career in Sex Crimes. Rapists are cowards and tend to want to fight their way out of trouble in the courtroom rather than in the street the way drug dealers and thrill killers do. But when I was in basic training, and in my time as a beat cop, there had been plenty of capture-and-chase scenarios.
The first step was to establish the most likely route of entry. The only way to get to the bottom of the valley by vehicle was along the badly disused road running west to east, which had long grown over with towering wild grass and had become misshapen by mudslides over the years. Woods’s team would probably assume Regan would walk or drive in along this road, if he didn’t spot the trap set for him, as I had. There would be a vehicle hidden in the bush off the side of this road that would drive forward and block his exit once he arrived. That meant that there would likely be two men at the road, and eight or so positioned in a semicircle around the back of the property in the east. The men waiting in the east for Regan’s capture would be within earshot of one another, as would be the men manning the block truck.
That left one man alone. The scout. In training, we’d always put the smallest or least experienced man in the scout position, because all he was required to do was wait outside the danger zone, watching, alerting the team to the target’s arrival. The scout would be high up in the valley, close enough to the road that he could see exactly who was coming in, so that he didn’t command the whole team to attack an innocent bystander. I turned and headed silently through the forest toward the road.
The moon rose. Through the trees as I walked around the curve of the valley, I could see on the valley floor a space cleared of trees where tall grass grew around the charred remains of a house. Pops had been right. The house had been lost. It had been small, a cottage maybe, the foundations thick blocks of sandstone. Whatever this place was, it had not been Regan’s childhood home, or the home of any relative of his. He’d never been fostered by a family who lived here, and yet this was the place where something so terrible had happened to Regan, his parents had instantly lost custody of him. They’d never regained it, and it had been all but erased from history.
Regan wanted me to know what had happened here.
He’d wanted me to discover this place, to arrive stripped of the layers of myself, so that when I stood in the charred remains of the house, I was the real me.
The bad Harry. Murderous, vengeful. Just like him.
But when would Regan meet me here? And what did he plan to do when we finally looked each other in the eyes? For all I knew, Regan had already come, been intimidated by the police presence, and left. He’d said that he was running out of time. How much time did I have left?
In the darkness ahead of me, I heard a sound. The soft, unmistakable crackle of a radio.