“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” Betts said.
“You see those notches in the trees? Just follow them and stop asking questions.”
At twenty-five hundred feet, now breathing heavily, they broke from the undergrowth. Red spruce, with needles so foul even deer won’t touch them, encircled the two men. Ahead stood a grove of paper birch, its outer layers peeling away like dead skin.
Sirens wailed in the distance. “They’re headed our way,” Betts said.
“Get your ass moving. It’ll be dark soon.”
Twenty minutes later, they reached the summit of Johnston Mountain, a bare expanse of eroded granite boulders.
“Look at that view,” Sutcliffe said. The streetlights of Warrensburg, like miniature paper lanterns, glowed in the distance. To the east and south, Lake George cut through the landscape like a thick scar. A helicopter, its powerful searchlight sweeping through the evening sky, moved back and forth over the mountain.
“I don’t see anything but shitty little trees, tiny scrub bushes, and slimy green rocks.”
“You’re an ignorant jerk. This is a special place.”
“Maybe to you. For me, it’s just useless and ugly.”
Sutcliffe glanced at his watch. “It’s 6:15.” We’ve only got another hour of daylight. Get going.” Turning south, he prodded Betts down a little-used trail that would take them off the summit. Twenty minutes later, Sutcliffe said, “We’re nearly there.”
“Where?”
“You have no idea, do you?”
“Not a clue.”
“We’re a quarter mile from where Marshall’s lodge is going up.”
“Why drag me all the way up here?”
“Stop right there and turn around.”
Using the metal spike of the peavey like an axe, Sutcliffe lopped off the lower branches of a small pine.
“What are you going to do with me?” Betts said.
Sutcliffe pushed Betts against the tree and kicked his feet out from underneath him. When Betts was on the ground, Sutcliffe wrapped duct tape around his ankles and tied him to the trunk. Then he picked up his rucksack and turned toward the trail.
“Where are you going?” Betts said.
“I’ve got another job to do before this is all over.”
“You can’t leave me like this.”
“Stop your damn whining. I’ll make sure someone finds you before the bears do.”
Betts struggled against the ropes. “You’re not going to escape this time. The cops will be crawling over this place any minute.”
“Maybe so, but I’ll be done by then.”
Ten minutes later, Sutcliffe rounded a bend in the trail and spotted a little boy walking toward him.
He looked to be four years old. His hair was sun-bleached blond. He wore gray-striped bib overalls, a long-sleeved cotton shirt, and tiny ankle-high work boots. A pinecone was nestled in his left hand. He stopped when he saw Sutcliffe.
Sutcliffe laid his peavey and shotgun just off the trail and bent down on one knee. “Hi there.”
The child stared at the ground and said nothing.
“My name’s David. What’s yours?”
“Adam.”
“Why are you out here by yourself, Adam?”
“We’re out looking for mushrooms and stuff.”
Sutcliffe reached out and shook the boy’s hand. “Where are they? Your mom and dad?”
“Right back there. They let me walk ahead because I’m grown up now.”
Sutcliffe turned to his left and saw the parents coming down the trail. The man, limping slightly, was tall and fair, thin as an alder, with a reddish blond beard. He walked up to his son. “Who’s your friend, Adam?”
The woman smiled at Sutcliffe but put an arm around her child’s shoulder. Although no more than five feet tall and barely a hundred pounds, she looked brick-strong and weathered, as though she’d done hard labor all her life. Dreadlocked, she wore wire-rimmed glasses, a dark red spaghetti strap halter top, wraparound skirt, and a pair of worn trail boots. Her face was sunburned, her eyes agate green.
“I hope you don’t mind me talking to your boy.”
“I would never stop him from meeting strangers,” she said.
The man said, “I’m Jeff. She’s Lisa.”
“You staying nearby?” Sutcliffe said.
“In an abandoned cabin not far from here,” Lisa said. “We can’t afford Lake George. Land is cheap on the mountain and no one’s bothered us so far.”
“My people lived around on this mountain for three generations,” Sutcliffe said.
The child looked up at his mother. “Can he have supper with us?”
“Ask your papa.”
“Can he?”
“Sure, if he wants.” The father was taller than Sutcliffe and more than a decade younger, with long, ropey arms and hands coarsened from working in the woods. He smiled at Sutcliffe. “Let me show you the way.”
Sutcliffe picked up his shotgun and the peavey. The four of them walked down the trail for another ten minutes and turned off the path. Across a meadow, at the base of a cliff, a cabin was tucked in among second-growth spruce and silver birch. Sutcliffe’s former home, almost invisible from the road, looked as if it had been there for a hundred years.
The place could not have been more than twelve hundred square feet. It had a steeply pitched, dark-green metal roof. Three chipped concrete steps led up to a covered porch supported by four log posts. An ancient cane rocker and a rough wood bench stood near the front door. The shingled siding, gone gray years ago, was cracked and weathered. Narrow double-hung windows stood at both ends of the house. A low-slung dormer and a stone chimney dominated the tiny second story of the cabin.
While Lisa worked over the wood-burning stove and the child built a series of slender towers made of wooden blocks, her husband told Sutcliffe their story. “We’ve lived in this cabin for nearly two months. I work in a lumberyard, she’s doing carpentry. We plan on getting animals soon, a goat and one or two sheep. She’ll make soap and cheese to sell at the farmers market. I’ll trade for logs once we own a team of horses.”
Lisa brought plates of vegetables and rice to the table. “You know the mountain well?”
Sutcliffe took off his boots and set them by the door. “My parents worked six acres for nearly a quarter-century and never managed
