BoneMan's Daughters (23 page)

“Fine. But I want what I say to be picked up and broadcast on every news channel and station in this city. I want you to supply
the feed to them all, you got that? Just leak it out.”

“Leak what out?”

“What I have to say.”

“What you have to say to who?”

“To BoneMan.”

“Are… aren’t you BoneMan?” Brent asked.

“Well, that depends. Maybe there are two of us. I’m not the one that has my daughter, now am I? I need to get him a message
and for that, I need your help. If I fail, he’s going to kill my daughter.”

They stared at him, clueless.

“Just tell me you’ll help me. I need your help.”

Sweat snaked down Ryan’s cheeks. This was taking too long.

Then again, no one but these three knew he was in this building. They were looking for him on the roads, not in radio stations.

Ryan lowered the gun, momentarily swamped by deep sadness. He couldn’t do this. How could he stand here and pretend to be
strong in the face of such impossible odds while his daughter lay in a bag somewhere, crying in fear.

The image turned his vision black for a moment and he yelled at the three young station workers. He didn’t yell anything specifically,
just a roar of outrage directed at the BoneMan and whatever demonic entity had possessed him to visit such pain upon him.
Was this the price for having ignored his daughter for sixteen years? What this the price for all fathers who had forgotten
how precious their daughters were?

If so, this price was too great for any grievance.

And what kind of creature from hell would take it upon himself to extract such a cruel price?

Ryan realized he was breathing hard, but he didn’t have the strength to bring himself back into full control.

He glared at the three workers, who looked as though they realized their worst fears were going to happen after all. For a
moment the BoneMan had seemed quite lucid, but then he’d lost it and began snapping their bones right there in the studio.

He walked around the equipment, sat hard in the chair before the microphone, and set his gun on the desk. He dropped his head
into his hands and began to cry.

He knew that he was taking a terrible risk by not training the gun on them, but he just couldn’t stop the sorrow that rolled
over him. He felt so hopeless, so dark, so powerless to affect the inevitable outcome he knew awaited his daughter.

BoneMan would break her bones.

Ryan lifted his head and picked up the gun. The three workers were still staring at him.

“Sorry.” He sniffed and stood. “Sorry, I just don’t know what I’m going to do. They think I’m the BoneMan, but I’m not. He
has my daughter and he wants me to find her. No one believes that, but that doesn’t get me off the hook. Have… have you
seen pictures of my daughter?”

Brent nodded. “Bethany?”

“Bethany.” Saying her name brought a quiver to his lips. “Tell me how to turn this equipment on, Brent.”

He lifted his hands.

“Just tell me from there.”

“It’s a playlist now. Just hit the third red switch on the top, the one that says Live Audio.”

He saw it. “That’s it?”

“You activate the microphone by pressing the A button next to it.”

Ryan nodded. “And that’s it?”

“Do that and you’re live, yes.”

Ryan sat down, gun propped up in his right hand. He eyed the three, flipped the red switch, and pressed the A button.

One last look at Brent, who nodded.

And then Ryan spoke over the airwaves for BoneMan to hear.

“BoneMan, this is Ryan Evans. You have my daughter and I accept your challenge. I will follow you as you’ve requested and
I will save my daughter. You hear me? I’m doing what you wanted me to do. I’m doing it for the whole world to hear, and so
now I have the power. You’re in check, my friend. It’s your move. The only question now is whether you can find me before
they do.”

He paused, considering the words he’d spoken.

“You’ve taken the daughters before. I know your work. I sat with the children for three days and I heard their bones break.
Now take the father. You know that’s what you need, to destroy the father.”

The foam cover on the mic touched his lip. He lowered his voice and delivered his final set of instructions.

“I’ll be waiting where they make their home, BoneMan. Find me before they shoot me out of the sky.”

He reached up and flipped the switch.

To Brent: “You’re sure that went out.”

“It went out.”

Ryan stood. “How many people would you say heard that?”

“On a Wednesday night? A couple hundred thousand.”

“Then the police are probably already on their way here. You make sure this gets picked up, or I’m going to pay you another
visit, you hear?”

“I hear.”

Ryan gave them one parting glance as he walked for the door. Then he pulled the door open, stepped into the hall, and sprinted
for the front door.

He checked the outer door before exiting the building—no police. Not yet, but that would change in a matter of minutes. The
black Taurus sat undisturbed under the tree where he’d left it.

He crossed the parking lot, slid behind the wheel, and piloted the car out of the lot and onto Westlake Drive.

Two police cruisers screamed up Capitol of Texas Highway as he headed south. He’d missed them by less than a minute, but in
the dark, driving a black sedan, a minute was all he needed.

It took Ryan half an hour to clear the southwestern outskirts of Austin, headed west on Highway 290. He had a long drive ahead
of him, a long time to think things through. But there was nothing more to be thought of.

He’d made his play and he’d made it right or he’d made it wrong.

If he’d made it right, he would wait at the Crow’s Nest as indicated by his broadcast and BoneMan would find him, hopefully
before the authorities tracked down the stolen Taurus.

If he’d misjudged BoneMan, however, he would wait at the Crow’s Nest in vain without having the luxury of leaving, just in
case BoneMan did finally show.

He’d made his play; now it was BoneMan’s turn.

BETHANY WAS AWAKENED by the squeal of a metal door opening slowly. It was either that or a cry from her own throat, like the
last time. She’d woken crying but so disoriented that she didn’t realize the squeals filling the room were hers until a fly
had lighted on her lower lip. The moment she clamped her mouth shut, the sounds ended.

But this time she wasn’t crying. This time she’d heard a door open; she could swear it. BoneMan, assuming that was really
who had taken her, had finally come to pay her another visit.

She blinked in the dim light and peered ahead at the door.

Open. It was open, wasn’t it? Her heart pounded through thin ribs.

“Hello?”

She’d managed to dislodge the blindfold a long time ago, maybe more than a day ago. But it hadn’t given her any peace of mind.
She knew nothing more than she’d known three days earlier, when she’d first woken in this concrete basement.

The squeal came again, distant but very distinct. Bethany sat up and strained for a better view out through the open door.
The hall outside probably led to other rooms, a whole system of rooms for all she knew, and at least one of those rooms had
a rusted metal door that was now being opened.

Or… or the hall ended in a concrete staircase that rose to the outer world and someone had just opened the door that
welcomed freedom.

“Hello?”

“Shhhhhhh…”

An involuntary shiver ran through her bones. Someone had just hushed her!

“Who’s there?” she whispered.

“Shhhhh…”

It was the first human sound Bethany had heard in over a day and it filled her with enough hope to send her pulse flying.

“Talk to me,” she said. “Who are you?”

“Shh, shh, shh, shhhhhh.”

She wasn’t sure if she should be terrified or encouraged. But now fully to her senses, she realized that the voice couldn’t
belong to another prisoner or someone who’d come to rescue her. They would have said something to that effect by now.

Instead all she was getting was this hushing.
Shhhhh…

She took a deep breath and calmed herself. Her emotions had ridden a track that dipped and turned and thrust her to the highest
peak before sending her plummeting into a deep valley. And all of that in total isolation without a single other human being
there to help her take the journey.

She’d cried, she’d wept.

She’d screamed, she’d yelled at the wall until she was hoarse.

She’d begged. She’d argued. She’d cussed and sworn and called the darkness every name her mind could conjure up.

She’d slept and she’d cried again, but above all she’d slowly come to the realization that she was already dead. If the authorities
hadn’t found her yet, they probably wouldn’t find her, ever, at least not until BoneMan wanted her found.

Bethany pressed her teeth together and steadied a tremor that swept through her jaw. If no one was coming to save her, then
her life hung in the balance of her ability to affect whoever had taken her.

But to affect him, she had to be able to talk to this stranger who’d taken her from her bed. The image of his white face staring
with brilliant blue eyes haunted her, but now she wanted to see him, to engage him. Anything but this solitude and not knowing.

“You’re BoneMan, aren’t you? You’re going to break my bones because you hate me. Or you hate my mother and father. Or you’re
just a mental case and you’re doing this without even knowing why you’re doing it. Either way, I think I get it because I
hate my mother and father too…”

A shadow crossed the hall just beyond the door.

“I was hoping we could talk. Before you broke my bones.”

A hand reached from the shadows, gripped the door handle, and slowly pulled it closed.

“Fine, be that way,” Bethany said.

The door closed.

Feet walked away. After a moment a distant door clanked shut and she was back in her solitude.

Only then did she realize that something had changed. Her hands were by her sides, freed. Her captor had come in while she
was sleeping and freed her?

She scrambled to her feet but fell under her own weight before she could get both legs under herself. Her head throbbed and
her back flared with pain, but she felt buoyant, full of hope, as light as a feather.

She pushed herself up and stood in the middle of the room, steadying herself as best she could. The commode sat in the corner
and she managed to make use of it without soiling herself. Relieving her bladder had never been quite so satisfying.

She tested the door and found it locked, as expected. Apart from the commode and the door handle, the only object in the room
was the metal bed. A simple spring frame with a thin mattress.

Light filtered in from the cracks in the corner. If she got her mouth up there and screamed, someone walking past might hear.
But somehow she doubted the man who’d done all of this would be so careless.

She walked around the room slowly once, then sat on the bed. The springs creaked softly, then silence returned to the room.

So… her bones didn’t ache for the moment. What did it matter, they would soon feel all the pain they could stand.

She lay down and put both feet on the bed. The concrete ceiling was etched in old, dead vines. A lizard scampered across,
eyeing her with a cocked head.

There would be no escape. He’d set her free in preparation for the next step. Her only hope was to understand him and to help
him achieve what he wanted. He was looking for something. Gratification of some kind, justice—he had a mission, a task he
felt he needed to accomplish.

Bethany was now the means to something very important to him. She had to discover what that was and help him achieve it while
remaining alive.

She lifted her arm and stared at the thin red line on the back of her wrist where she’d cut herself that night. Seeing it
now, she felt like vomiting. In a small way, as small as this cut, she did understand him.

BoneMan was only a more advanced version of her.

Bethany lowered her arm and shook.

THE SITUATION ROOM at the FBI’s Austin bureau had grown vacant in Ricki’s way of thinking. Agents still milled about wall
maps and spoke urgently into phones, treating each and every lead with as much attention as they’d been trained to do. Files
were strewn about the tables and desks, sleeves were rolled up, half-eaten boxes of takeout Chinese sat here and there—all
the signs of the last forty-eight hours, which had worn them all to a frazzle.

But it was all for nothing. Vacant. There hadn’t been one solid lead on BoneMan’s whereabouts since he’d made his plea on
the airwaves two days earlier and then walked out of their lives.

Ricki had spent an hour with Brent Styles, Vicki Sandburg, and Paul John, the three staff members at the country station Ryan
had chosen to deliver his message to the world. Clearly, in Ryan’s mind, he wasn’t BoneMan.

In fact, listening to them explain the fifteen-minute ordeal, one would think that Ryan was a sympathetic character in all
of this. Ricki had brushed the thoughts aside and focused on the one overriding objective they all had, regardless of Ryan’s
guilt or innocence in the abduction of his daughter.

Either way, he was a fugitive who had to be located and brought to justice.

The door opened and Mark walked in with Father Hortense, the psychiatrist who’d been treating Ryan on the navy’s orders. Ricki
sighed and cut across the room to Mark’s office. She followed them in and eased the door shut behind.

“Thank you for coming, Doctor. Or should I call you Father?”

“Either is fine.” He sat in one of the side chairs and crossed his legs.

“I know we went over all this on the phone, but seeing as how we’re not exactly banging down the door of progress, I wanted
to get your thoughts on the tape.”

“Like I said, no problem. The navy has instructed me to cooperate fully, given the PR disaster this could end up being for
them. I’ll do what I can.”