Ask the girl, he’d instructed Boone, presumably having no idea just how difficult that would be. The doctor had come through, the girl had come through, and now the locks were turning, albeit slowly.
The drive ate away at hours Boone couldn’t afford to lose, and with the night edging toward dawn, she had to will herself to keep her speed down and use the time to consider what lay ahead. Pine was going to be a problem. People would find him soon enough, and while it would take a first-rate medical examiner to determine that he hadn’t died of natural causes, it would also inevitably cause chaos in the hospital. The place wouldn’t be nearly so quiet when Boone returned.
Chaos, though, could be used as a shield. It was all a matter of timing. The dog had to be dealt with, then Tara Beckley. Step by step. Unless, of course, Tara Beckley was lying, and there was no third lock. In that case, Boone could leave her sister’s body behind and be out of the country before Tara blinked her way through the alphabet board with any message that police might believe.
They reached the outskirts of Hammel, passed signs for the college, and then the winding New England road crested and dropped abruptly, a steep hill descending toward the river.
This was the place.
She slowed and checked the mirrors. No one had been behind them for long throughout the drive, and no one was now. To the right and to the left were peaceful houses with tree-lined lawns, windows dark, a porch light or outdoor floodlight on here and there. The streetlights were designed for form rather than function, and they cast only a dim glow over the sidewalks, where dead leaves swirled in the wind. Three cars on the curb to her right, one car and one truck to the left. None of them looked like police vehicles, but there was one that didn’t fit the neighborhood — a souped-up Challenger with a vented hood and wide racing tires. It was parked at the end of the street and in the shadows. Boone gave it a careful look as she passed, but the windows were deeply tinted and she couldn’t make out anything. Some professor’s midlife-crisis car, she decided, and drove on.
At the bottom of the hill, angled parking spaces lined the left-hand side, all of them empty, and then there was an ancient railroad bridge. Beneath it, the river was a dark ribbon, swollen from recent rains. The current would be strong. If Tara Beckley had gone in the water today, she likely wouldn’t have been rescued. That would have cost Boone some serious money. Tara’s miraculous recovery to waking-vegetable status had the potential to be very, very lucrative. Instant-retirement money, vanish-to-your-own-island money, though Boone had no intention of retiring. When you loved your work, why stop? And hers wasn’t a profession you left easily. Those who remained alert to every motion in the shadows stayed alive; those who didn’t died. There was no retreat. This was the journey of any apex predator.
She pulled into one of the angled parking spaces on the river’s eastern shore, cut the engine, and said, “It’s going to be very unfortunate for your family if the dog isn’t here.”
The threat had nothing behind it, though. The dog was Boone’s problem and one that couldn’t readily be solved with or without the Beckleys. Either the girl was right or she was wrong. The dog would be here or he wouldn’t be.
“Sit tight, Shannon,” she said. She popped the door open and stepped out into the night.
For a few seconds, she just stood there, surveying the scene. The lonely lamps in the area, too dim, cast the only light on either side of the bridge. The next street lamp was all the way at the top of the hill, where the houses began. No one had built down here, probably due to flood risk. The river was high and felt close, the low whisper of moving water almost intimate in the darkness.
To her left, a jogging path curled into the trees, went up a small rise, and then vanished, probably running parallel to the river. To her right, the bridge loomed high and cold above the water, the old steel girders giving the wind something to whistle through. It was a long bridge, maybe two hundred feet, spanning a narrow river below. She saw now that there were actually two bridges — the old railroad bridge, set higher, the tracks running on banked gravel when they crossed the river, and slightly below it, a newer pedestrian bridge, connecting the jogging paths on eastern and western shores. On the other side of the river, ornate lamps threw muted light onto the path as it led through a thicket of pines and on toward the campus. She could see the brighter lights of the buildings beyond, maybe a quarter of a mile off.
It was a dark and quiet spot. It suited her.
Satisfied that she was alone, she moved away from the car. She had the knife in her left hand and the gun holstered behind her back. She left Oltamu’s phone in the car, unconcerned about that for now. Priority one was ensuring that she was alone and knew the terrain.
She walked toward the pedestrian bridge, thinking of how far a stray dog might have gone in all this time. He could be in a shelter or dead, hit by a car. What were the odds of finding him?
She went farther out onto the bridge, pivoted, and looked back down at the parking lot. Shannon Beckley’s rental Jeep was a dark silent shape in the place where her sister had once posed for Amandi Oltamu, clueless to all that was headed her way.
A dog, Boone thought with disgust. Amandi, you took it a step too far.
Somewhere to the west, behind the cold, freshening wind, a train horn sounded, soft and mournful, like something out of another time. Maybe the girl hadn’t lied. Maybe the dog would appear for the morning train as promised. Maybe—
“Hobo.”
The sound of the dog’s name came at her so softly that at first she didn’t believe it was real, as if the voice had come from within her own mind. Then it came again, clearer now.
“Hobo! Hey, buddy. C’mere. C’mon out.”
Someone at the other end of the bridge was calling to the dog. Boone stared in that direction, trying to make out a shape, but it was too far off. Branches cracked, and bushes shook, and somewhere on the western bank of the river, the voice said, “Good boy! Eat up, chief.”
A male voice, young and foolish. A Hammel student, probably. Another fan of a stray dog that the kids had adopted like a mascot.
Or a trap? Had Tara managed to communicate quicker than Boone had anticipated?
Boone considered this and dismissed it. If the girl had been able to summon police this quickly, they wouldn’t have been the kind of police who would set a trap. They’d have raced up with sirens blaring, county mounties with big guns and small brains, looking for a heroic moment.
“Good boy,” the voice said again, and again the bushes rustled, and this time Boone spotted the point of motion.
She drew her gun with her right hand and her knife with her left. Ordinarily she wouldn’t have considered this — you fired with two hands unless you had no choice. But she didn’t want to make any more noise than she had to, and then there was the special consideration of the dog.
Oltamu’s phone was back in the Jeep. She considered returning for it but pressed ahead. She wanted to get a clearer view of what she was dealing with. She crossed the pedestrian bridge silently and swiftly, walking to the place where the bushes rustled. It was just below the pines, close to the water’s edge. As Boone neared the end of the bridge, the boy made one of those annoying clucking/cooing sounds that people used around animals and babies. It sounded as if he was trying to win the dog’s allegiance and hadn’t yet succeeded. This was a bad sign. If the animal was that skittish, Boone might have to risk a gunshot. But then, trying to get his eyes lined up for the camera presented its own challenges. How much fight would the dog have left, and how fast would Boone lose the opportunity to capture the life left in his eyes? Too many unknowns. Perhaps if she recruited the help of this kid who knew the dog, she could—