He backed off. I turned around. The gun was pointed at my chest. The muzzle looked enormous to me, widening like a giant mouth readying to swallow me whole. It was hard to wrest my gaze from that cold, dark tunnel.
'You come here to kill me?' Hoyt asked.
'What? No.' I forced myself to look up, Hoyt was unshaven. His eyes were red-tinged, his body was swaying. Drinking. Drinking a lot.
'Where's Mrs. Parker?' I asked.
'She's safe.' An odd reply. 'I sent her away.'
'Why?'
'I think you know.'
Maybe I did. Or was starting to.
'Why would I want to hurt you, Hoyt?'
He kept the gun pointed at my chest. 'Do you always carry a concealed weapon, Beck? I could have you thrown in jail for that.'
'You've done worse to me,' I replied.
His face fell. A low groan escaped his lips.
'Whose body did we cremate, Hoyt?'
'You don't know shit.'
'I know that Elizabeth is still alive,' I said.
His shoulders slumped, but the weapon stayed right in place. I saw his gun hand tense, and for a moment, I was sure he was going to shoot. I debated jumping away, but it wasn't as though he couldn't nail me with the second round.
'Sit down,' he said softly.
'Shauna saw the autopsy report. We know it wasn't Elizabeth in that morgue.'
'Sit down,' he repeated, raising the gun a bit, and I believe that he might have shot me if I didn't obey. He led me back to the living room. I sat on the hideous couch that had witnessed so many memorable moments, but I had the feeling that they would be pretty much Bic flicks next to the bonfire about to engulf this room.
Hoyt sat across from me. The weapon was still up and centered at my middle. He never let his hand rest. Part of his training, I supposed. Exhaustion bled from him. He looked like a balloon with a slow leak, deflating almost imperceptibly.
'What happened?' I asked.
He didn't answer my question. 'What makes you think she's alive?'
I stopped. Could I have been wrong here? Was there any way he didn't know? No, I decided quickly. He had seen the body at the morgue. He had been the one who identified her. He had to be involved. But then I remembered the email.
Had it been a mistake to come here?
Again no. That message had been sent before all this – in practically another era. I had to make a decision here. I had to push, take some action.
'Have you seen her?' he asked me.
'No.'
'Where is she?'
'I don't know,' I said.
Hoyt suddenly cocked his head. He signaled me to silence with a finger to his lips. He stood and crept toward the window. The shades were all drawn. He peeked through the side.
I stood.
'Sit down.'
'Shoot me, Hoyt.'
He looked at me.
'She's in trouble,' I said.
'And you think you can help her?' He made a sneering noise. 'I saved both your lives that night. What did you do?'
I felt something in my chest contract. 'I got knocked unconscious,' I said.
'Right.'
'You…' I was having trouble articulating. 'You saved us?'
'Sit down.'
'If you know where she is-'
'We wouldn't be having this conversation,' he finished.
I took another step toward him. Then another. He aimed the gun at me. I did not stop. I walked until the muzzle pressed against my sternum. 'You're going to tell me,' I said. 'Or you're going to kill me.'
'You're willing to take that gamble?'
I looked him straight in the eye and really held the stare for perhaps the first time in our long relationship. Something passed between us, though I'm not sure what. Resignation on his part maybe, I don't know. But I stayed put. 'Do you have any idea how much I miss your daughter?'
'Sit down, David.'
'Not until-'
'I'll tell you,' he said softly. 'Sit down.'
I kept my eyes on his as I backed up to the couch. I lowered myself onto the cushion. He put the gun down on the side table. 'You want a drink?'
'No.'
'You better have one.'
'Not now.'
He shrugged and walked over to one of those chintzy pulldown bars. It was old and loose. The glasses were in disarray, tinkling against one another, and I was more certain than ever that this had not been his first foray into the liquor cabinet today. He took his time pouring the drink. I wanted to hurry him, but I had done enough pushing for the time being. He needed this, I figured. He was gathering his thoughts, sorting through them, checking the angles. I expected as much.
He cupped the glass in both hands and sank into the chair. 'I never much liked you,' he said. 'It was nothing personal. You come from a good family. Your father was a fine man, and your mother, well, she tried, didn't she.' One hand held the drink while the other ran through his hair. 'But I thought your relationship with my daughter was' – he looked up, searching the ceiling for the words – 'a hindrance to her growth. Now… well, now I realize how incredibly lucky you both were.'
The room chilled a few degrees. I tried not to move, to quiet my breath, anything so as not to disturb him.
'I'll start with the night at the lake,' he said. 'When they grabbed her.'
'Who grabbed her?'
He stared down into his glass. 'Don't interrupt,' he said. 'Just listen.'
I nodded, but he didn't see. He was still staring down at his drink, literally looking for answers in the bottom of a glass.
'You know who grabbed her,' he said, 'or you should by now. The two men they found buried up there.' His gaze suddenly swept the room. He snatched up his weapon and stood, checking the window again. I wanted to ask what he expected to see out there, but I didn't want to throw off his rhythm.
'My brother and I got to the lake late. Almost too late. We set up to stop them midway down the dirt road. You know where those two boulders are?'
He glanced toward the window, then back at me. I knew the two boulders. They sat about half a mile down the dirt road from Lake Charmaine. Both huge, both round, both almost the exact same size, both perfectly placed on either side of the road. There were all kinds of legends about how they got there.
'We hid behind them, Ken and me. When they came close, I shot out a tire. They stopped to check it. When they got out of the car, I shot them both in the head.'
With one more look out the window, Hoyt moved back to his chair. He put down the weapon and stared at his drink some more. I held my tongue and waited.
'Griffin Scope hired those two men,' he said. 'They were supposed to interrogate Elizabeth and then kill her. Ken and I got wind of the plan and headed up to the lake to stop them.' He put up his hand as if to silence a question, though I hadn't dared open my mouth. 'The hows and whys aren't important. Griffin Scope wanted Elizabeth dead. That's all you need to know. And he wouldn't stop because a couple of his boys got killed. Plenty more where they came from. He's like one of those mythical beasts where you cut off the head and it grows two more.' He looked at me. 'You can't fight that kind of power, Beck.'
He took a deep sip. I kept still.
'I want you to go back to that night and put yourself in our position,' he continued, moving closer, trying to engage me. 'Two men are lying dead on that dirt road. One of the most powerful men in the world sent them to kill you. He has no qualms about taking out the innocent to get to you. What can you do? Suppose we decided to go to the police. What would we tell them? A man like Scope doesn't leave any evidence behind – and even if he did, he has more cops and judges in his pocket than I have hairs on my head. We'd be dead. So I ask you, Beck. You're there. You have two men dead on the ground. You know it won't end there. What do you do?'
I took the question as rhetorical.
'So I presented these facts to Elizabeth, just like I'm presenting them to you now. I told her that Scope would wipe us out to get to her. If she ran away – if she went into hiding, for example – he'd just torture us until we gave her up. Or he'd go after my wife. Or your sister. He'd do whatever it took to make sure Elizabeth was found and killed.'
He leaned closer to me. 'Do you see now? Do you see the only answer?'
I nodded because it was all suddenly transparent. 'You had to make them think she was dead.'
He smiled, and new goose bumps surfaced all over me. 'I had some money saved up. My brother Ken had more. We also had the contacts. Elizabeth went underground. We got her out of the country. She cut her hair, learned to wear disguises, but that was probably overkill. No one was really looking for her. For the past eight years she's been bouncing around third world countries, working for the Red Cross or UNICEF or whatever organization she could hook up with.'
I waited. There was so much he hadn't yet told me, but I sat still. I let the implications seep in and shake me at the core. Elizabeth. She was alive. She had been alive for the past eight years. She had been breathing and living and working… It was too much to compute, one of those incomprehensible math problems that make the
