hands, empty. “That’s everything. I swear. Now you.”
“I spoke with Benedetti this morning,” Jo said. “He told me a story every bit as interesting as the one you’ve just told. Only in his version, he’s Shiloh’s father and you’re the man who killed Marais Grand.”
“What?”
Jo recapped Benedetti’s version of Shiloh’s origin and Marais Grand’s demise. Nathan Jackson listened with his jaws working back and forth like a silent engine powered by rage.
“The lying bastard. His daughter?”
“His story sounds no less plausible to me than yours.”
Jackson thrust the photograph of Shiloh at her. “Just look at her. She looks like me.”
“Vincent Benedetti is convinced she looks like him. We believe what we want to believe.”
“If Benedetti’s here, Nathan, we need to talk to him,” Harris said. “Maybe we’ll have a better idea of what’s going on out there.”
“What do you mean, what’s going on out there?” Jo looked from one to the other. “Don’t you know?”
The two brothers exchanged a glance. Harris said, “There’s a problem.”
“What problem?” Jo demanded.
“I think we should go downstairs.” Harris moved toward the door. “Metcalf can explain this. And Nathan, it’s time we brought the sheriff in, don’t you think?”
Jackson’s eyes fed on the photograph of Shiloh. He looked like a man worried it would be his last meal.
Downstairs, Schanno and Metcalf were at the map. Schanno saw Nathan Jackson, but probably didn’t recognize him. He looked unhappy and he looked at Jo.
“Got a problem, Jo,” he said.
“So I understand.”
“You told him?” Harris asked Metcalf.
“The essentials,” Metcalf replied.
“Will someone please tell me?” Jo said.
Metcalf beckoned Jo to the wall map.
“The last communication we had with Dwight Sloane was yesterday. Five-oh-eight P.M. Here.” He put his finger on a lake called Embarrass. “He should have checked in four hours later. He didn’t. At first light this morning, I went out in a helicopter to their last known coordinates. They weren’t there. I circled the area, but unfortunately with this weather, I couldn’t see much.”
“So the situation is, you’ve been out of touch with them since almost the beginning,” Schanno said unhappily.
“Essentially, that’s correct,” Metcalf admitted. “Probably it’s an equipment failure. The fact that we found no trace of them at the last coordinates indicates that they’re still moving.”
“But you have no idea where,” Schanno said.
“No,” Metcalf admitted.
Schanno rubbed his jaw and slowly shook his head. “Embarrass Lake. Not good.”
“Why?” Harris asked.
“The lake’s roughly circular,” Schanno explained. “There are easily half a dozen trails that lead off from various points around the shoreline.”
Harris said, “Then we do an aerial search along each trail until we spot them.”
“In that?” Schanno indicated the weather visible through the glass doors. “You couldn’t find the Eiffel Tower in that.”
“Suggestions?” Harris continued, unfazed.
“We get the Tamarack Search and Rescue Team to put men on every trail,” Schanno said.
“How soon?” Nathan Jackson asked.
Schanno looked at him and must have decided that whoever he was, he was in it as thick as the rest. “They could be on the ground at Embarrass Lake in a couple of hours. We should get them started right away. With this cloud cover, dark’ll come early. They won’t have much daylight left.”
“It’s better than sitting around waiting,” Metcalf put in.
“Have it done.” Jackson turned to Jo. “I want to talk to Benedetti.”
“I can arrange that,” she replied.
31
The water looked like gray earth and the paddle in her hand felt like a spade. With every stroke, Shiloh saw herself digging her own grave.
The man in the stern of the canoe hadn’t spoken except to press her for directions. She’d lied to him, tried to misdirect him to buy time. “That way,” she’d pointed, leading them through a narrows between two islands. “Now that way.”
His sense of direction was flawless even though the mist and the drizzle sometimes blotted out everything except the flat water fifty yards around them. “That will take us in a circle,” he said quietly at her back. “Don’t try that again. Which way is it?”
“There,” and she’d lifted her hand grudgingly in the direction of her death.
She’d struggled with despair all her life. She knew that people envied her, looked at the trappings and thought she had it all. They were wrong. Her life was a big beautiful box with lots of ribbons and bows on the outside but completely empty within. The only love she’d ever known was from her mother and that had been wrenched from her a long time ago. Her father had given her everything she wanted except love. She’d been raised by nannies, nuns, tutors, and housekeepers. She’d never had any real friends, anyone she trusted deeply. All she’d ever had was the music.
What would be the loss? Who would even care if she never came out of the woods? She laid her paddle across the gunwales, laid her head down, and wept. The canoe didn’t slow in the least.
“You disappoint me,” he said. “We all die sometime. Wendell Two Knives understood that. He went as nobly as any man I’ve ever known. You would honor him by dying well.”
“There’s no honor in dying if there’s no reason to die,” she wept.
“Dying’s never had a reason. As far as I can tell, the same is true for living.”
It wasn’t true about dying, she thought. Wendell had died for a reason. He’d died for her. And dying herself seemed like no way to honor him.
She whispered his name. Wendell. It didn’t exactly fill her with courage, but it did pull her out of her self- pity.
She considered the knife in the pocket of her jeans. It wasn’t much, but small as it was, she found herself wrapping her hope around it. She had the map in her vest, and a compass, and matches there, too, in a waterproof container. All she needed was a chance.
She wiped her tears and took up her paddle.
“Do you have a name?” she asked.
“Call me Charon.”
“Charon? Charon. Where have I heard that name before?”
Her back was to him. She listened to his voice carefully. His words were like stones, hard in the way he said them. But not without feeling. Rather, they were like a wall behind which the feeling was hidden.
“You said Wendell died a noble death. How?”
“In the end, I cut his throat. A small, painless cut. It doesn’t take much when you know what you’re doing.”
“Is that how you’ll kill me?”
“That depends on you.”
“I have money,” she tried.
“I have money, too.”
“Look, if you don’t do this, I could make it worth your while. In other ways.”
