AN HOUR MIGHT have passed as I crept through the bush around the rim of the valley. As I approached the jagged sandstone ledge jutting out from the hillside where the house formation stood, I drew my weapon, pausing, not wanting to confront Regan while wheezing and struggling my way up the incline. My whole body had begun to tremble lightly with terror. I walked with aching care toward the rock and swept my gun across and above it, my heart twisting as the shapes of trees and rocks and branches became the ominous figure of a broad-shouldered man. The lighthouse formation was narrow, punctured by ancient winds right through the middle, the rock hole forming a window through which I’d seen the helicopter’s light. In time, my pulse slowed, and I stood in the wind, waiting for what would happen next.
Nothing happened. Another hour. I crouched in the bush, cold sweat pouring down my sides. As my mind wandered, the shape of the sandstone house wavering in my exhausted vision, I ached with regret about the young tactical guy I had subdued and probably humiliated.
Twenty-two years old. Jesus. They were really scraping the bottom of the barrel for—
My breath caught in my chest. I rose to my feet, the realization rocketing through me. I gripped my hair as I frantically counted off the days.
Tomorrow was my birthday.
I understood.
This is about me and you, Harry. About my gift to you.
Regan wanted to strip me down, show me myself, facilitate my sick rebirth into what he’d hoped I was always going to be, my potential fulfilled. In the weeks since my brother’s death, I’d forgotten all about my birthday. It wasn’t something I celebrated even when I remembered it. My childhood had been full of forgotten birthdays. He would have known that from my files. The story about my mother showing up high on my fourteenth birthday—he’d relived that terrible incident with me over the phone.
Regan wasn’t going to turn up tonight. He was going to turn up on my birthday. But did that mean midnight, when the date rolled over? Or the following evening, under the cover of darkness? I had no way of telling the time without lighting the screen on my phone and potentially giving away my position. I stared up at the moon, followed its pale blue glow into the woods.
And then I saw it. Another flicker of light. Not in the valley in which the charred house stood, but to the east, where the land dipped away again, thick forest receding to flat moonlit fields. A wider valley, right next to the one Regan had been leading me to. In a clearing below me, someone was walking, shining a red torch to light their way through the tall grass.
I headed down the other side of the ridge.