Forests of the Night (17 page)

They parked the rental car—another Toyota—at the entrance to Camp Tsali. Parker's key wouldn't work the rusted padlocks, so they climbed over the gates and tramped up the steep path. It was half past nine, but dim yellow light filtered through the trees from a security lamp burning out on the two-lane road.

“You're not going to tell me where we're going?”

“Why? So you can call Sheffield, tell him where to meet us?”

“Maybe you should pat me down, check for a wire.”

“Are you wired?”

“Jesus. You really don't trust me, do you?”

“I trust you to act in accordance with your beliefs.”

They trudged in silence. A layer of pine needles coated the trail. Cool rain drizzled from the black heavens.

After another hundred yards the roadway light faded to gloom, and Parker halted and held up his flashlight, pointed it into his face, and switched it on to check the strength. Looked pretty weak to Charlotte.

The odor of pine and hemlock was heavy, and there were birds fluttering in the high branches and a stream running somewhere nearby.

Parker set off and Charlotte put herself in motion, found a steady pace,
heart thumping, a layer of sweat building beneath her three layers, despite the chill. Maybe mid-forties.

Parker settled in beside her and laid a hand on her shoulder.

“I love you,” he said. “It's been a while since I said it. But I do. I love you, Charlotte. Pisser that you are sometimes, I still love you.”

“I love you, too. Pisser that you are.”

“This shit we're dealing with,” he said, “Gracey running off, Mother's murder, Jacob Panther showing up, a son I didn't know about. This whole war thing, whatever the hell's going on with that. It's a goddamn avalanche of major catharses. Only natural we'd be at each other.”

“Only natural,” she said.

They plodded on for a half-mile, then Parker said, “I do love you.”

But it sounded like he was speaking more to himself than her, so she didn't reply. She reached into the backpack slung over one shoulder, touching the hard plastic gadget Sheffield had given her. The nubby button on one end.

Decision time.

She dug around in the pack and found the Beretta. She'd filled out the forms at airport check-in, showed her badge, but still was relieved to find the pistol made it through in their checked luggage without being stolen or confiscated.

“You worried?” he said.

“About what?”

“Gracey might not be here. We might have this all wrong.”

“Are you determined to jinx this?”

“I'm just saying I might be mistaken about what Jacob meant.”

“All right then, let's turn around, go back, call the FBI, like we should've done to begin with.”

“They're bunglers, Charlotte. The other night, going to the wrong address, that whole scene, you want to repeat that?”

“The other night was sloppy, yeah, but this is different. We have no idea what we're walking into. Stumbling around in the dark, we could be putting Gracey in more danger. Not to mention ourselves.”

“If that's what your conscience says, then go back to the car and wait. I won't be upset. But I have to do this, Charlotte. And I have to do it this way.”

“This guy's a killer, Parker. I'll back you up on this, but if it starts going bad, it doesn't matter if he's your son, I'm not hesitating.”

She shifted the holster so she could draw the Beretta smoothly, then hitched her backpack over her shoulder and settled into the dark climb.

 

He got their flight number with one phone call, pretending to be an FBI special agent working the Panther case, fooling Parker Monroe's big-city secretary with ease. Their plane arrived in Asheville on time, and he followed them from the rental-car parking lot out to the interstate.

For the last hour he'd been looking for the right moment. Running their car off the road was too uncertain. They might survive the crash. He might be seen, might even crash himself. Dying didn't worry him, but he had more to accomplish than just killing these two.

So he followed at a distance, thinking they might stop for something to eat, or a bathroom break, and he could take them against a well-lit background. But they didn't stop. Instead they led him through the town of Cherokee and then out the narrow country lanes toward the old summer camp. Where everything had happened. The fire, the deaths, the cowardice.

When the Monroes pulled over at the front gate of the summer camp, he passed by and parked down the road on a narrow cattle path.

He got the Heckler & Koch rifle from its case and hiked back down the highway and climbed the gate, then headed up the path after them.

He couldn't have designed a better killing ground. So remote. But even better was the possibility that the two of them should die at Camp Tsali—a delicious synchronicity.

Moving off the trail, he angled into the woods, treading lightly and moving with ease through the dark. He could hear them talking up ahead, taking no precautions as they moved across the ghostly landscape.

 

The path up to the camp was steeper than Charlotte remembered, and by the time they got to the main grounds she was winded and her butt muscles burned. She was trying not to think about Gracey—where she was, her
condition—trying to keep her face out of her mind. But it kept surfacing. Little snippets of their heated exchange the night Jacob appeared in their house. Replaying Gracey's remark. Rules, rules, rules.

“You sure you can find this place in the dark?” she said.

“I used to get there in the dark all the time. Get back, too.”

“Thirty years ago, you mean.”

“I grew up here, Charlotte. I spent my first fifteen years in these hills. It's hardwired in my head. The layout of the camp, the trails, the smells. Like I never left.”

Stumbling along, she could just make out the vague shapes of buildings, low cabins, a long, open pavilion. More rain was coming, as light as mist but without pause. She felt her hair clumping, cold dribbles down her neck.

“You hear that?”

Parker halted. Charlotte came up beside him, trying to keep her breath quiet. Not easy after that climb.

“Shhh.” Parker raised his hand. Then motioned behind them, at the road they'd just traveled.

They stood for several moments listening. But she could hear only the light breeze and the rain pattering from the branches and the rustle of last year's leaves across the ground.

“You're spooked, Parker.”

“It was something,” he said. “I'm not spooked. A raccoon maybe.”

“You know where we are? Can you see?”

“I know exactly where we are. The dining hall's over there. The lodge.” He waved into the dark. “The ceremonial ring that way.”

“We could break a leg out here.”

“Listen to you. Are you with me or not?”

“Goddamn it,” she said. “I'm not saying stop. But maybe you could use the flashlight once in a while. You know where you are, but I'm at the bottom of a goddamn well.”

He lifted his head and listened again.

“Aw, shit, Parker. Let's just get there, okay? Let's just move.”

She followed his back through the murkiness, stumbling now and then, grateful she'd worn the heavier clothes. The temperature was plunging and
even the heat she'd generated from the climb didn't balance out against the chill.

The trail got steeper and narrower, then grew as rocky as an old creek bed. Branches whipped her face, and something stung her cheek an inch from her right eye—a nettle, a thorn. She wiped away the ooze of blood and licked the remains off her fingertip.

Now and then Parker stopped and listened to the dark woods. The rain had stopped but still dripped from leaf to leaf.

“If I lived up here,” Charlotte said, “all this uphill, downhill, my butt would be tight as a fourteen-year-old's.”

“Your butt is perfect,” Parker said. Sounding like he meant it.

The trail leveled, then grew steep again, a half-dozen switchbacks, then a long stretch across a ridgeline.

As they climbed, the air grew cooler and damper. Even though the rain had stopped, the night was still moist with its remains and the trail slick. If there was a moon somewhere, it wasn't doing them any good.

Every few seconds Parker flicked the flashlight on and off, focused on their feet. She caught glimpses of rocks and branches, dizzy swirls of gnats, skittering shadows. Though she'd been born a country girl and spent her first seventeen years in hilly terrain, hanging out for lonely adolescent hours in a nearby forest, she felt no sense of homecoming. This place was as foreign to her as if she had been transported to a remote corner of the galaxy.

“It's not far,” he whispered.

“It's already far.”

A rock ledge loomed up, and the trail narrowed to only a foot across and rimmed the ledge. They had to duck under an outcropping four feet high. Charlotte didn't want to know what was to her right, off in the darkness, but her senses told her it was a sheer drop and the distance to the bottom was exactly equal to the last hour's upward trek. A swirl of vertigo made her stumble briefly, but she caught herself and plodded on. Gracey, Gracey.

They bulled through a sticky-leaved bush and picked their way down a shallow dip in the trail.

“Watch your head.”

Parker took her by the shoulders and steered her through a narrow cleft in the rock, a fissure that required them to turn sideways. She smelled the
damp and Parker's sweaty scent, something that even after nearly two decades still gave her a prickle below her navel, his pheromones, that distinct aromatic signature. Whatever else was wrong between them, that wasn't an issue.

She bumped into his back and he whispered, “This is it. Sequoyah Caverns.”

Behind them, Charlotte heard pebbles trickling down the cliff face, or maybe above them, higher on the peak.

He took her hand and guided her into the clammy reek of the cave. She heard the hushed music of running water and the squeak of a startled creature, tiny claws scurrying over rock. He let go of her hand and moved away.

“Jacob?” he called out quietly. “Gracey?”

He was scuffing to her right. She drew her handgun and panned it across the darkness. Though a lot of good it would do her. She was dead blind.

As she was swung the Beretta to her left, she saw a red flicker on the distant wall. She squinted till her eyes found the focus. A dot. A single red dot.

“Down, Parker. Down!”

She heard him stumble from ten feet away.

“What?”

Then a man's voice. The booming command of someone armed and fully in control. A gang of men tromped through the cavern entrance, and lights exploded around her. She was tackled and thrown flat against the damp clay floor, her captor's full weight on top of her and his hands scrabbling to disarm her and pull her wrists behind her back.

She shut her eyes against the dazzle, enough candlepower to turn midnight instantly to noon. She didn't struggle against the man's iron grip, though he fumbled with his plastic handcuffs as if he was more nervous than she.

“On the ground! Everybody flat on the ground!”

Pinned to the damp earth, she managed to tilt her head enough to see the far wall dancing with red dots, the laser sights of high-powered weapons.

Troops filled the room with their heavy breathing and the reek of cheap cologne and failed deodorant.

The space was smaller than she'd pictured. Twenty by twenty. The men
filled it to capacity, stamping like Thoroughbreds burning off nervous energy in a tiny corral.

Gold FBI lettering on their jackets, a half-dozen men all cut from the same Superboy chunk of granite. The one atop her shoved her head back down, then she heard Sheffield's voice.

“Let her up. Cut her loose.”

“Him, too?”

“Him, too.”

She blinked against the brilliance, ducking her head, shielding her eyes. Someone hauled her to her feet, snipped the plastic band from her wrists. She and Parker were nudged together, ringed by a special-ops team in blackface, and nonreflective clothes, night goggles, featherweight automatics.

Charlotte stooped to retrieve her backpack, and a barrel banged her arm.

“It's okay,” Sheffield said. “They're clear.”

She picked up her backpack, dug out the black gadget, and looked at it. No green light. Nothing. She hadn't accidentally tripped the switch.

Frank shook his head in annoyance. Another man drew up to his side. His superior or counterpart. They were dressed in civvies. Same blue jackets, none of the killing tools that hung from the other men.

“Special agent in charge of the Carolina Bomb Task Force.” Sheffield gestured at the man. “Joe Roth. Joe, say hello to Mr. and Mrs. Parker Monroe of Miami, Florida.”

Roth looked at them, then back at Sheffield. Growled under his breath.

“Where is he, Monroe?”

“Who are you looking for?”

“Don't be cute. Where's Panther?”

“What makes you think he'd be here?”

“Whose name were you calling out just now?”

Parker shrugged. No idea what he was talking about.

“Don't fuck around, Monroe. You came all this way for a face-to-face. We both know that.”

“Told you,” said Roth. “Guy's smarter than that. Didn't I tell you that? This Panther's one slippery bastard.”

“You told me.”

“What is this thing, Frank?” Charlotte held out the black gizmo.

“Okay, so I tinkered with the truth. But only a little.”

She saw one of the men at the edge of the pack holding a small GPS by his side, a pulsing dot in the center of the screen.

“You son of a bitch.”

“Transmits a steady signal,” he said. “What could I do, let you go running off? You could've hurt yourself. Think of the lawsuit.”