An ice storm had hit four months after Hazel vanished and taken out hundreds of trees. A group of volunteers had cleared most of them out of the traveled sections and piled them in a more remote part of the park. Eddie had joined in the efforts, certain they’d find some new clue. Or maybe even Hazel. They didn’t find either. With the last tree moved, one of the more sympathetic volunteers had clasped Eddie on the shoulder with his gloved hand. “She’s not out here, Mr. Stevens,” he’d said.
Eddie shook the memory from his mind and trudged on. The lady was still here. He knew that for sure.
He reached the stone hutch. The metal gate stood ajar, and the floor was under water. He was grateful for a break of new rain sliding down his back, but this wouldn’t afford him any kind of rest. His feet were somewhere between numb with cold and stinging from prolonged wet. His back ached with fatigue and tension. He couldn’t sit down, and this room wasn’t tall enough to stand up straight in.
A wink of silver caught Eddie’s attention just before his flashlight burned out. He banged it against the heel of his hand, but it didn’t come back on. He stuck the flashlight in his coat pocket with one hand and fished through the dark with the other. His fingers lit on a metal band along the edge of a puddle. Eddie picked it up and stepped out of the hutch, where the moonlight coming through a thinner patch of clouds washed the woods in deep silver. The band was a watch; a very nice watch, if he had to guess. That woman had glanced at her wrist when she was on the phone. Eddie closed his eyes, recalling the memory. It looked like she’d been checking the time, and in his mind, there was a strip of silver on her wrist, although he couldn’t decide if he’d generated the detail here and now. He couldn’t trust his thoughts anymore, or he’d see coincidences and clues everywhere. He also couldn’t ignore the rhythm of the clock, ticking against his palm like a tiny heartbeat.
He tucked the watch in his other pocket and stepped out of the room. He eyed the next hill, the longest and steepest of the three. His bad leg shook beneath him, threatening to buckle, and mist began to fall. Going straight up the face of the mountain was no longer an option. If he wanted to keep going, and he did, he had no choice but to take the hiking trail. It was quadruple the distance, maybe longer. But at the top was a clearing where most of the trees had gone down last fall. He’d be able to see for a solid mile, even in the rain.
AMA Chapter 10 | 6:25 PM, December 1, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia
JONATHON TOWED HER UNDER THE cover of trees just as the falling mist became rain again. He retrieved a rope from his pack, looped it around the thin metal cord binding her wrists, and tethered her to a tree trunk, giving her about a foot and a half of slack. She felt like a dog on a chain and almost wished he’d bound her fast. The tiny margin of movement was maddening.
“You get three questions,” Jonathon said. He withdrew a small emergency lantern and clicked it on, washing the little shelter in a bluish glow. Shadows exaggerated the angles of Jonathon’s face. Ama still couldn’t remember what he looked like at the bar in Atlanta, but she had the feeling she’d seen him before somewhere else.
“Who are you?” she blurted, instantly regretting she hadn’t thought out all three questions before asking.
A ghost of a smile appeared on Jonathon’s lips, and he glanced down at the ground. “I’m striking that question from the record, Counselor. Try harder.” He was enjoying watching her squirm. She needed to shift the focus, try to change the balance somehow.
Ama swallowed, and her temple throbbed with lingering pain and another wave of fear. She needed to remember that this man, whoever he was, was a criminal, first and foremost. She dealt with criminals all the time. She could talk them off ledges, into patience, out of the truth, and away from self-incrimination. She knew she could push this man’s buttons. She just had to find them.
She forced her expression to relax. “This isn’t about me, Jonathon. This is about you. I need to remember that. So why don’t you start from the beginning?” she said, and leaned forward. “Tell me your story.”
MICHAEL Chapter 11 | August 1984 | Tarson, Georgia
MOTHER’S FINGERS ARE TEN HAWK talons in my shoulders, clamped and squeezing, and I am certain that when at last she lets me go, blood will pour from ten holes in my skin.
“Are you even trying? I have five-year-old students who try harder than you. ‘Für Elise’ is a beginner’s song. It is basic. By now it should be burned in your brain, a reflex in your fingers. Why do you stumble and hunt after the refrain? What is wrong with you?” Her voice fills the room. She curls her stature over me in a cobra’s arc, her fangs and tongue an inch from my ear, and yet still she yells.
“When will Father be home?” I mumble.
She releases my shoulders, snatches the neck of my shirt, and within a blink, I am slung off the piano bench and to the carpet. My face finds the floor first, and my wrist twinges underneath me.
“Get out of my sight. Go ahead. Run to your father.” She glowers down at me, lips pulled back, brown eyes cut to slits. Her gaze falls on my cheek, where the rough carpet has rubbed a warm, stinging place. “You better tell him you fell.”
I scramble to my feet and bolt through the front door. My feet are bare, but the ground is dry, the August sun unrelenting overhead. I do not slow down until I slide between the trees of Tarson Woods. Still, I dart from bough to bough, counting them as I pass, imagining that brick by brick I am building a wall between me and a dragon.
Cold River chatters ahead, the sound of it like tiny pieces of glass tumbling together. Father’s bridge is to the right of a towering hickory tree, half the roots exposed on the sandy bank. I cross, boards creaking underfoot, then follow the narrow trail Father takes up the hill to the factory where he works. It’s faster to walk straight from our backyard than to take the truck around to the access road and up and down the switchbacks to the valley floor on the other side of this rise. The higher I climb, the thinner the trees grow, and the ground turns from clay to stone, but my wall is built. Mother is not fast, and she will not come far into these woods. She believes the things they say about them and says she saw a witch in here once as a little girl. Between the two of them, I’d rather face a witch, so I take my chances.
I pass a hollowed-out tree I often hide in to wait for Father to come whistling through the woods. The path turns downhill, and I run, roots stabbing against the balls of my feet, strands of blackberry bramble nipping at my shins.
At last, I reach the chain-link fence. It stands twice as tall as me. Beyond it, rising from the valley floor like a gray fortress, is the factory. White trucks are parked along the wall in a tidy row. A dark gray door swings open. A man comes out, not my father, and the door hisses shut behind him. The man is staring at a box in his hand, his lips in a line. He pulls a truck door open, hops inside, and the truck roars to life. He drives away fast enough for the tires to kick up gravel. A big gate at the other end slides open, and the truck exits and disappears down the road.
I take off at a dead sprint, counting as I run. I don’t know how long the gate will stay open. My father’s voice is in my ear—Never try to slide through that gate, son—a memory from the one and only time I’ve been inside the factory. But there is a way in, and no one watching.