I checked my watch and decided I had time to bandage up my Scout before my clandestine meeting. I paid a visit to a hardware store and filled a shopping cart with everything I would need to keep out the weather.
After I had taped up the window, I drove to the small wooded park that surrounded the fort and parked the Scout out of sight. Inside the vehicle, under the still-functioning dome light, I checked my Beretta, then dropped three fifteen-round magazines into the pockets of my Fjallraven jacket where I could grab them in a gunfight.
I tested the razor edge of my knife against the hair along the back of my hand. It was a Gerber 06 automatic that my friend Billy Cronk, Logan’s dad, had carried with him in Iraq and Afghanistan. Occasionally when I was sharpening it, I would experience a disquieting sensation that made me think Billy had killed a man in combat with this blade.
The last weapon I took was the baton Maglite I had used as a patrol warden. The thing was as long as my forearm and required six D-cell batteries, but it could light up the eyes of a raccoon across a football field. As a last resort, the metal tube could serve as a makeshift club capable of shattering a nose.
At this latitude, there should have been two more hours of daylight, but the low ceiling of clouds meant that darkness would arrive before civil twilight. Shadows would be seeping from every tree at the time of the meeting.
While I waited, I sent an email to Ora telling her I had seen her husband, that he was alive and well, but he had slipped away again. I told her I hoped to find him again soon. I also asked that she alert me when her daughter arrived from Florida.
The thought of my ex-girlfriend returning to Maine disquieted me. Even from two thousand miles away, Stacey had cast a shadow over my relationship with Dani. She still made guest appearances in my dreams, often in risqué scenarios. Despite my best efforts, I found myself drawing comparisons. Dani came out on the better end of most of the pros and cons. But not all of them.
Dani’s recent declaration that she would never have children had rattled me. I had always assumed I would be a father. I desperately wanted a son or daughter in fact. But I loved Dani. I wasn’t sure what I would do if I believed she was resolute in her desire to remain childless.
As I had feared, my body had begun to stiffen and ache from the crash. My shoulder hurt especially. I tried to clear my head and rest, but my worries wouldn’t leave me alone.
Eventually, I drew my hood over my head and left the shelter of my vehicle. Being outdoors was the only reliable way I knew to quiet my troubled mind.
The fort loomed in the failing light: a square, top-heavy structure, with a second floor that was greater in area than the first. The roof was shaped like a pyramid. The blockhouse might have looked like something out of The Last of the Mohicans if not for the lawn-mounted spotlights, shining up against the graffiti-carved, rough-hewn walls.
Beyond the fort, the land tumbled down to a lower parking lot with picnic tables and steel grills. Under the sheltering leaves of ancient maples, I wandered down the hill to the water’s edge. There, I stood upon the banks of the Fish River as it rushed to join the St. John.
Both rivers must have recently flooded, because there was mud smeared ten feet up the tree trunks, and everything on the ground—the dead leaves, the severed branches, even the discarded bottles and cans—was gunky with grime.
I took up a position behind a sugar maple as old as the fort itself and waited.
At fifteen minutes to seven, I spotted headlights coming down the one-way drive. The car did not turn in to the parking lot. Instead it continued on to the adjacent lumberyard. I had no view of the higher ground. I could only listen. I heard a car door being closed with care. No voices.
The park had become a patchwork of light and shadows. Illumination from the fort and the lumberyard lit up swatches between the trees, but there were just as many dark places. I watched for a flashlight beam to spark to life, but the driver seemed comfortable moving in darkness.
Finally, a silhouette rose atop the hill: a person in a hooded poncho.
He or she stood there a minute, and I suspected they were debating whether to wait for me in the light or find their own nest of shadows in which to hide themselves. They chose the shadows.
I watched the person in the poncho begin to pick their way down the hill. The leaves were slick and muddy, but my mystery visitor seemed as sure-footed as a goat.
They were halfway down when I made my move.
“Hold it!”
Startled, they lost their balance. They waved their arms like a flightless bird, then plopped to the ground. They slid on their backside down the rest of the hill.
I was on them fast. One hand rested on the grip of my Beretta. The other brought up the Maglite to shine straight into their eyes.
A brown face squinted up at me from inside the hood of a green poncho.
“Vaneese?”
She covered her eyes with the back of her arm. “Mike? Is that you?”
“What are you doing here?”
“I left you a note. Can you turn off the light, please?”
After I clicked the switch, the darkness flowed back in like water welling from the river. I moved my right hand away from my gun and extended it in her direction.
“Hold out your arm.”
She did, and I grabbed her thin wrist. She weighed next to nothing. When she had
