Nick sighed. His agent never really trusted him, despite the fact that he’d delivered a bestseller that had surprised everyone. “I’ll find the link. All it will take is a little investigative reporting.”
“I don’t know,” Roger said. “Sounds like mission creep to me. The story about those kids in the house, as told by the sole survivor—I thought that was what this book was about.”
“But Mars is the reason I survived.”
“You don’t know that.”
“But I can find out, can’t I?”
“That’s what I mean. Mission creep. This thing is becoming amorphous. And that means it’s going to take longer to write. We talked about this. The sooner we can get this book out the better.”
“Don’t worry so much. I’ve written on deadline all my life.” He looked out the window at the beautiful day and felt energized. “I’m going out to the house later—I really want to see it again. Now that it’s empty, it might be a good way to start the book. But first, I’m going back to see if I can talk to someone in the sheriff’s office.”
Roger said, “Think about what I said, okay? Don’t lose focus.”
“Oh, I won’t, Roger. Don’t you worry about that.”
As Nick crossed the street to his car, he noticed a man on the sidewalk, his face tipped up to the sun in appreciation of the day. Nick shared his appreciation of the pure blue sky, benign sunshine, and cool shadows. It was as if his life had been handed back to him. He’d been in three narrow scrapes in his life, and he’d come out of them in one piece every single time. The child-killer who tried to get him in his car when he was nine. Nick got away, but another kid wasn’t so lucky—his body was found the following spring in a wilderness area. Then his near-miraculous survival of the Aspen massacre.
And now Donny Lee and Ray were safely locked up. They couldn’t come after him now.
The biggest dividend from the Aspen massacre had been completely unexpected: Nick was now magically free from fear. The idea that death was out there waiting for him, waiting for one slipup, one lapse in judgment or awareness—that was gone. Just like that.
The reaper had three cracks at him and couldn’t get it done. He was pretty sure there wouldn’t be another, not for a long time. The ultimate irony? If he died in his sleep at a hundred and three.
Nick got the runaround at the sheriff’s office. After an hour of waiting, he went back to the officer behind the Plexiglas window and told her he was the sole survivor of the Aspen massacre and needed to talk to Detective Sloan. But the woman must have been in the job for a long time, because she just blinked at him and looked bored. “You’ll have to wait your turn, sir. There’s a lot going on today and everyone is out.”
So he gave up and drove to the Aspen house.
He didn’t expect to see a realtor’s sign outside. And he
The house looked like something out of a magazine—the stacked stone entrance and solid pine construction, the mowed lawn, the flowers nodding in their beds. Under the peaked roof, the massive expanse of glass was dark, reflecting only a couple of clouds in the deep blue sky.
He knew nobody lived here—at least not yet. And the house
What he’d really like to do was get in and look around. Photograph it for his book. See if there were any traces of the mass murder. Of course there wouldn’t be—not if the place was already sold. The heavy-duty cleaners would have come in and hosed the place down and replaced what needed replacing. They’d make it sterile and generic again. As if they could wipe out the house’s psychic history.
He wondered who had bought it so quickly. There were always the nuts out there who wanted to live in a murder house, people who got off on it. Like those women who wrote to Charlie Manson or the Night Stalker.
The smell of cut grass took the edge off his nerves, reminding him of baseball games when he was a kid. Through the trees he could see Castle Creek, gold in the shallows, dark under the trees and undergrowth. A couple of hundred yards downstream, a fly fisherman cast his line backwards and forwards like a coach whip before settling it on the water in a bright line.
Hands in his pockets, looking more casual than he felt, Nick walked down the driveway to the empty garage.
He saw right away how the guy had stashed him there. The garage was a sub-story, cut into the hill. A flagstone walkway ran down the hill alongside. It would have been easy for Mars to roll him down the walkway and push him over the lip of the retaining wall into the garage. There was a three-foot drop to the plastic garbage and recycle containers, which would have broken his fall. From there it would be a simple thing to shove him under Brienne’s black Escalade.
What he didn’t understand, though, was why.
He stood in the coolness, staring down at the immaculate concrete. Not one oil spot marred the garage floor.
Why was
Nothing came to him.
Finally, Nick walked back up the walkway to the deck above. The deck cantilevered out over the rushing water. He remembered drinking beer that night—quite a lot of it—and the incredible feeling of well-being it generated. A warm, rosy feeling.
“Hey there.”
He looked around. A man climbed the steps from the creek below, the fisherman he’d seen earlier. Tan vest and waders, aviator sunglasses, fly rod, and an old-fashioned wicker creel with a trout tail sticking out. He couldn’t say for sure, but everything looked top-of-the-line—even the trout.
Abruptly, Nick felt foolish. The guy must live here. He’d been wrong that the house was still empty. He put on his best smile. Inclusive, winning, the way he greeted people on tour. Stepped forward and held out a hand, even though the man had his hands full.
As he framed his welcoming sentence, the man said, “You’re Nick Holloway.”
He found himself grinning foolishly. Had the guy read his book?
“You’re the survivor. I saw you on the news.” The man set his creel down. “I can’t believe it. The sole survivor.”
“Guilty,” Nick said. “This your place now?”
“Name’s Cyril,” the man said. “Just closed on it a week ago yesterday, as a matter of fact. Thought I’d kick things off with a fish supper. So how did you get so lucky?”
“I have no idea.”
“You must have friends in high places, that’s for sure.”
“Wish I knew who they were. I’d hit them up for a loan.”
“No idea? That seems strange.”
Nick shrugged. Nick had made the decision to keep whatever he learned about Mars to himself. It was his story, his exclusive, and you never knew who might try to capitalize on his hard work. He’d been the one shoved under the Escalade, and he was going to be the one to write the story.
“Nice day, isn’t it?” The man pushed his baseball cap back. The cap was tan, too, like the rest of his clothing. The words
“Chernobyl Ant? What’s that?”
“A fishing fly—a terrestrial.” The man told Nick that he tied his own flies, went on to explain what a terrestrial was, and then gave him a list of the places he’d caught fish with the fly. Went into too much detail for Nick’s taste. Then he nodded toward the garage. “That’s where they found you, right? Hey, if you’ve got time, I’d like to hear your story. I’ve got Rolling Rock in the house, and I can cook up this trout. Care to join me?”
Nick realized he was famished. It was the mountain air. Guy seemed a little anal-retentive, but what the hell. There were worse ways to spend an afternoon. This was his opportunity to get into the house again. If the fisherman wanted to hear the story about his brush with death, if he wanted a vicarious thrill—fine with him. “A beer would be nice,” he said.
They stayed out on the deck. The water rushed underneath. The sunshine at this high altitude felt good but was probably deadly. Nick wished he had sunscreen, but he put it out of his mind.
The conversation turned—as it always did—to Brienne Cross. Nick was bored with Brienne Cross, but he understood the interest. She was a big star.
