Page 24 of The Chain

“Nothing. No one. Yes, maybe I’ll ask Pete. I’ll think about that.”

“All right, sweetie. I really have to go, OK?”

“OK, Marty,” she says sadly.

“’Bye,” he says and hangs up. Without his calming baritone, the car is chilly and silent once more.

16

Thursday, 2:44 p.m.

Unless you are a bow hunter, a paraplegic, an ancient-firearms enthusiast, or under the age of eighteen, deer-hunting season in Massachusetts doesn’t begin until November 27.

Pete, however, has never really bought into the logic of the Massachusetts hunting-season dates or, indeed, most laws, rules, and ordinances.

He knows that if the rangers or a sheriff catches him, he could get fined or worse. But the rangers won’t catch him. Pete knows these woods west of Worcester the way other people know the bars outside Fenway or the rotation of the girls at Hurricane Betty’s. He’s been hunting these forests since he was a boy. Admittedly, his senses are dulled somewhat because of his current issues, but even so, no clumsy sheriff’s deputy or high-visibility-vest-wearing ranger is going to surprise him.

He often thinks about moving to Alaska, where there would be even fewer rangers and deputies, but Kylie will keep him in the state at least until she’s off to college. Kylie is his only niece and he’s nuts about her. They text nearly every day and he always takes her to those movies her mom can’t sit through.

Pete follows the big buck deeper into the birch forest. It has no idea it is being stalked. He’s upwind of it and he moves through the trees in utter silence. Pete is very good at this. In the Marines he had been an engineering officer, but after a couple of years of building bridges under mortar fire, he had taken a sabbatical to attend the basic recon course at Camp Pendleton. He finished near the top of his class. The brass had wanted him to transfer to a recon battalion but he’d done it only to test himself.

He sights the old buck in his rifle and aims under the heart, but just as he is about to squeeze the trigger, his phone vibrates in his pocket.Should have turned it off,he thinks.Didn’t imagine there would be a signal out here.

He looks at it. Two new messages, one from Rachel and one from Marty. Both asking the same question:Where are you?

He tries to respond to Rachel, but the message won’t go through. He ignores Marty’s text. He doesn’t hate Marty but they have little in common. There’s six years between them, and by the time Marty was up walking and talking and starting to get interesting, Pete had been itching to get out of the house. And get out he had. At the age of twelve, he had “borrowed” a neighbor’s Chevy Impala and driven it all the way to East Franklin, Vermont. He’d been heading for Montreal, of all places, but he was stopped at the Canadian border and arrested.

And nothing had happened. Nothing at all. The judge gave him the old blah-blah-blah and a finger-wagging. He’d stolen more cars after that but was more careful. No attempts to cross the border, no racing. He hooked up with a bad crowd in high school, but nobody cared as long as he maintained a high-B average, which he did. School bored him but he somehow managed to get accepted to Boston University to study civil engineering. At BU he just about maintained a C average. He spent most of his time playing with the new computer-aided design software, creating outrageous suspension bridges that could never be built and old-fashioned cantilever bridges that no one wanted. He graduated in May of 2000 with no plans for or ideas about his future.

He moved to New York and attempted to make a living as a cybersecurity expert on the burgeoning World Wide Web. Everybody said that the internet was the new gold rush, but Pete must have been panning in the wrong virtual rivers. He barely made enough to keep up with the interest on his student loans.

But then a year later: September 11.

He went to Times Square the next morning. No one who was in New York then will ever forget that day after. It was a new world. At the recruiting booth, there was a line that stretched to Thirty-Fourth Street. Pete’s grandfather had been in the navy. With Pete’s engineering degree and background, the recruiters recommended the navy or the Marine Corps. Pete chose the Marines. And that was all she wrote for the next thirteen years. Officer CandidateSchool, the combat engineers, seven overseas tours, five to operational theaters. After the Marines, he’d traveled some and finally moved back to Worcester.

Now that chapter of his life is closed. Now he’s just another unemployed forty-year-old who needs to take some free venison to make it through the winter.

The stag lowers its big head to take a drink at a stream. There’s a scar that runs along its left flank. They’ve both been in the wars.

Pete has a clear shot, but something tells him that the stag is going to have to wait. He has that feeling you get in the back of the neck: Something is up. Something is wrong.

He looks at the texts again:Where are you?

Is Rach in some kind of trouble? He puts the rifle over his shoulder and looks for some slightly higher ground to see if he can get a signal, but now his phone says that it’s got 1 percent charge.

He climbs the little hill above the waterfall and tries texting from there but in the two minutes that that takes, of course his phone dies. The big stag turns to look at him. They stare at each other for three seconds.

Spooked, it slips between the trees. Pete watches it vanish with regret. Food stamps go only so far. He secures the rifle and heads back to his truck.

And now his skin is starting to crawl. Is it that time already? He looks at the sky. It can’t be three o’clock. But evidently it is. He hikes through the autumnal wood and finds his pickup truck undisturbed in the firebreak. Unfortunately, he hasn’t brought his phone charger, so he will have to wait until he gets back to his apartment in Worcester to see what Rachel wants.

17

Thursday, 3:27 p.m.

Kylie sits in the sleeping bag. She holds the toothpaste tube in one hand, her wrists aching from the effort of trying to pick the handcuff lock. She remembers a YouTube video Stuart wanted to show her about three ways to get out of handcuffs. Stuart loves that kind of thing—Houdini, magic, escapes. She hadn’t watched it; she’d been on her own phone scrolling for the video about a new secret chamber someone had found in the Great Pyramid.

Next time she would pay attention.

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