Ian stood up, his knees skinned. “We tripped. We were running-” He sobbed. “I thought Sean saw the ghost!”
Owen knelt down, getting at eye level with Sean as the boy pointed at the garage. “Mattie was in there! I know he was. He made this bed…”
“We’ll check it out,” Owen said, calmer than Doyle would have been. “Did you see him?”
Ian shook his head, Owen’s presence steadying him. “He’s not here.”
The garage didn’t have an automatic door. Doyle didn’t protest when Abigail went around to the side door, still half-open from when the boys were in there. “Sean and Ian didn’t have to unlock the door,” he told her. “Lock’s busted. It’s been busted for weeks. I haven’t gotten around to fixing it.”
She nodded, going inside. He raised the main door, entering the garage a half second after she did. Katie’s sedan filled up most of the space. On various hooks and shelves were tools, supplies, snow shovels, sleds and pieces of junk that she insisted she’d use one day for various craft projects.
“Car’s locked?” Abigail asked.
“Yeah. Keys are in the house.”
At least Mattie-if the boys were right and he’d been there-hadn’t bashed in a window and made his bed in the car. Doyle walked around to the hood, where Abigail pointed to a blue tarp that had been spread out on the concrete floor, on top of it a rolled-up car blanket and a camp pad that he’d forgotten they even owned.
“Looks as if he helped himself to your pantry,” Abigail said.
Doyle saw what she meant-a box of Wheat Thins, a pop-up can of pears, a package of Oreos. Everything looked empty. What Mattie hadn’t eaten, he must have taken with him.
And it was Mattie. Doyle knew he didn’t have to say anything. The smell, the strands of long hair on the makeshift pillow, the hair tie-enough proof for both him and Abigail.
“He must have slipped into the kitchen while I was out looking for him last night,” Doyle said. “He doesn’t have a key, but he’d know where I keep mine. I never thought…”
“Don’t beat yourself up. Staying here might have saved his life.”
“At least I didn’t have any beer in the house.” But as she walked past him, Doyle grabbed her arm. “About what I said earlier. I didn’t mean half of it.”
She had the grace to smile. “Which half?”
When they got back outside, Sean and Ian bolted away from Owen, and Doyle scooped them up, one in each arm. He nodded to his friend. “Thanks.”
“Anytime.”
But Owen had his eyes on Abigail. “It was Mattie?”
She nodded without comment. She’d pulled back inside of herself, protective, focused on the job she was there to do. “I’ll go call Lou,” she said, moving off toward the house.
Doyle hadn’t seen what was happening before, but he damn well did now. Here was another friend falling for Abigail Browning. “She doesn’t trust any of us right now,” he said to Owen.
“Would you?”
“Probably not.”
“Dad,” Sean said, “what’s going on?”
Doyle knew push had come to shove. He had to tell his sons as much as he could about Mattie, about Chris. All of it. He set them back on the driveway, could feel their tension and curiosity in their slim frames. But he addressed Owen. “If you want to check the area and see if you can pick up Mattie’s tracks, that’d be a help.”
“No problem,” Owen said, and when he started for the garage, he had the look of the experienced search-and- rescue specialist he was.
Mattie clung to wet moss and a protruding root on the steep hillside next to the zigzag steps eccentric Edgar Garrison had carved into the Mt. Desert granite a century ago.
His head pounded behind his eyes and cheeks. His teeth ached, his sinuses reacting to the strong smells of evergreen, moldy pine needles and pinecones. Hiking back out there from Doyle’s garage, sticking to the woods as much as possible, avoiding the cops, had been pure torture.
He’d had little sleep. Stretched out on his tarp, scared out of his mind, he had lain in the dark garage last night, listening to his cop friend snoring through his open bedroom window. Worse than a damn freight train.
If Katie had been there, Mattie might have gone into the house and begged her to help him figure out what to do. She was levelheaded. She could stand back from the situation and think. He didn’t know what Doyle would have done. Shoot him on the spot?
And the state cops. Hell. He was a freaking marked man.
Everyone thought he’d tried to kill Abigail. They thought he
And then there was Linc’s money. The blackmail.
“Fuck the money,” Mattie whispered.
He crept along the slippery, treacherous, near-vertical hill to a crevice where he and Doyle had hid as kids, spying on the Garrisons. It was just a little inset in the granite. It reminded him of Tolkien and hobbits.
As he huddled against the rock ledge, Mattie pulled a cheap green camouflage rain poncho he’d lifted from Doyle’s garage around him. He had a jug of water and some chocolate. He hoped to have a plan well in hand before he starved to death or died of thirst.
He shivered against the cold rock. He didn’t dare light a cigarette.
“God,” he whispered, “what I wouldn’t give for a hot shower.”
He debated going up the steps and knocking on Ellis’s door.
But who knew with Ellis? He was discreet. Otherwise, no one would trust him, and in his work off-island, trust was everything. He was also a control freak who’d fuss about two Japanese beetles on his rosebushes instead of being happy there weren’t hundreds. Mattie had no idea how Ellis had reacted to his yardman’s predicament. Was he sympathetic to the police and determined to be helpful? Or was he more worried about having to handle his gardens by himself?
Didn’t matter, Mattie thought. If he tried to move now, he’d never make it. He’d fall and crack his head open. He was exhausted and so damn confused, and there were just a few inches between him and a straight drop down to one of the crazy stone landings. He half expected to hear police sirens and helicopters, or see some big, nasty police dog drooling over him.
A drink would calm his nerves. He didn’t care about “working the program” or “one day at a time”-any of it. He’d reform when his life wasn’t so complicated.
He was facing too many unknowns, and was up against too many different agendas of smart, powerful people.
And he was a slimeball. Mattie had betrayed his friends’ trust in him. He’d let alcohol and entitlement and resentment fuel his anger and screw up his judgment.
His eyes drooped and shut, and he felt his body go slack.
Would he fall off the ledge in his sleep?
Would the search dogs find him?
CHAPTER 28
An uneasy silence had settled in Abigail’s back room, which had finally been swept and wiped clean of any police presence. She’d ripped out the last of the old wallboard.
So many questions, she thought, tugging a red bandanna off her hair and shaking off the plaster dust.
