BoneMan's Daughters (31 page)

“You have to let me go.”

Hearing it himself he knew this was wasted breath. He’d failed to comply with BoneMan’s demands and now Bethany would pay
the price. His chest began to tighten, restricting his breathing, but he was able to close his eyes and ease the beginnings
of panic.

“He’s expecting me.” Ryan opened his eyes and looked at Ricki. “I can still save her.”

“Where?”

“I…” He couldn’t tell them, because any hint of police involvement would only end any hope he had of saving Bethany.
They would go to the Crow’s Nest, and BoneMan would know he’d talked, and then they would find his daughter’s broken body.

“I can’t tell you. He’ll kill her, you know that. You can put a trace on me or find some other way to track me. But you have
to let me go and meet him—he was very clear about that.”

“If you think we’re stupid enough to actually release you…” Welsh appeared too flabbergasted to finish his thought.

The door opened, but Ryan kept his eye locked on the DA. “You steal my wife. You steal my daughter. And now you’re just going
to stand by while that freak murders her?”

“I’m trying to save your daughter,” Welsh said. “From you.”

“Where have you put her?” It took Ryan a fraction of a second to make the switch from the DA to Celine’s voice.

He turned his head. She stood in the doorway, dressed in a lime green skirt, a white silk blouse with a wide black belt, and
black heels. Her stare was dark and flashed like a steel blade, giving her the appearance of hawk intent on its prey.

But she was his wife and Ryan hadn’t fully accepted, much less understood, their divorce. Seeing her standing with her arms
crossed, glaring at him, he felt momentarily overwhelmed by both his own sense of belonging and outright rejection.

This was the woman he’d wed over eighteen years ago. They’d moved into a half-dozen homes and raised a child together. He’d
devoted himself to providing for his wife and child, and she’d devoted herself to mothering, and although they’d both failed
a thousand times, they still belonged on the same journey they’d sworn to take together eighteen years ago.

But this was also Celine, the woman who had betrayed him not just once or twice or even a hundred times, but as a matter of
practice. This was Celine, the woman who had allowed the predator to his right into their family, like a wolf.

This was Celine who hated him and very likely everyone who didn’t love her the way she wanted to be loved, including Bethany,
though she would never admit it.

She lowered her crossed arms and walked up to the table. “Where did you put my daughter, you pig?”

Her voice was cold and low and it cut through his chest so that he found he couldn’t respond.

“Tell me!” she screamed. “Tell me where you have her!”

“I don’t have her!” How could his wife accuse him of such a thing?

They said that absence makes the heart grow fonder. In Ryan’s case, two years of absence culminating in a brutal encounter
in the desert and the discovery too late that another man had stolen all that was precious to him had gilded his memories
of Celine. She was at once a witch and a goddess.

But backed into his corner Ryan forgave her all her wickedness and embraced what hope the mother of his daughter could offer.

The realization that his own wife believed that he had the capacity to turn against their own daughter shut his mind completely
off for a moment.

He couldn’t think. So he just yelled what he’d already said.

“I didn’t take our daughter!”

“Stop it!” she cried, on the verge of tears now. She waved the bandaged hand that BoneMan had broken. “Stop all of this lying!
Don’t you have any feelings at all? How can you be so cold?”

“I… I’m trying to save her.”

“Trying to
save
her? You left her fifteen years ago! You think anyone actually believes this? That you would come in to save your daughter
after being gone her entire life? That suddenly you would become the perfect father and move mountains to save her? You
abandoned
her!”

He couldn’t stand to hear the accusations because he knew that some of them were true. He’d left Bethany…

If only he could relive the last fifteen years he would stay close and watch over her like an eagle. He’d sleep outside her
door at night, he would set the table and feed her a feast before she left for school.

He would meet her for lunch whenever she wanted and talk to her teachers and invite her friends over every afternoon just
so that he could be near her.

He would go without clothes to afford the best fashions that would tell everyone who passed her on the street,
There goes the daughter of Ryan Evans who loves her more than he loves his own life.

He would attend all of the football games and cheer along with her at the top of his lungs, and he’d go get her a hot dog
at halftime so she could stay at the side of the field with the other cheerleaders.

If only he could live his life again…

But he couldn’t. He could only live his life now, and right now his daughter wasn’t sleeping in bed or waking for breakfast
in the morning or walking through the halls of her school while the boys watched.

Right now Bethany was in the hands of a monster and he would die before he allowed that monster to touch one hair on her head.

But even that was only an idea, because in reality, far more than one hair on her head
had
been touched.

Ryan’s mind switched between the accusations being leveled at him by the eyes in this room and a nearly uncontrollable urge
to break his chains, plow over whoever stood in his way, and run to where he knew he could find his daughter.

It occurred to him that they were all waiting for his response. Ricki Valentine paced silently, watching him with gentle eyes.
Welsh fixed him with a defiant stare. The FBI boss, Kracker, stood brooding.

Celine’s mouth was parted in utter contempt. She looked like she’d been forced to swallow a spoonful of mud.

Ryan took a deep breath and clasped his hands under the table. He had to straighten them out. He had to get them on his side.
For Bethany’s sake.

He looked at Celine and swallowed so that he could speak. “You’re right. I haven’t always understood what it means to be a
father. But that changed in the desert.” His voice felt as though it would fail him with each word.

“I saw that I’d abandoned you and Bethany and I vowed to change it all. When they tie you to a chair and force you to watch
as they break the bones of innocent children because that’s what we’re doing to their children. They chose to use BoneMan
because he was a high-profile case and they feel like his victims. And so do I. So do we all.”

He felt dizzy but forced himself to continue speaking. “But I can’t do what they did. That’s not me any longer. I could hurt
myself to save her, I could hurt BoneMan, but that’s it. I’m finally the father I was meant to be, can’t you see that?”

“By breaking my finger?” She stabbed that white-wrapped finger at Welsh. “By kidnapping the man I love at gunpoint, stripping
him down, and taking a sledgehammer to his arm? Of course. It makes perfect sense now. How could I have been so blind? Just
being a good father.”

It was too much for Ryan. He bolted to his feet, knocking the table hard as he did so. “I owe her my life!” he cried.

“
Your
life, Ryan, not Burt’s life,” she snapped back. “You’re not God.”

He hesitated. “I know that now. So let me go, let me get her. I’m not BoneMan.”

They stared at him.

He continued, speaking in a rush while he had their full attention. “Think about it. I learn that Bethany has been taken twenty-four
hours after it’s happened and you haven’t bothered to tell me. Instead, the killer’s left me a message demanding that I find
him. I admit, I lost control. Then I find out I’m a suspect. But he’s waiting for me.” Ryan jabbed at the wall. “He’s thrown
down the gauntlet and I have no choice but to accept his challenge because I can’t come to those sworn to protect and serve—no,
because you all think I’m
him
, of all things! So I go after him myself.”

He looked at Ricki. “How many times do I have to explain this before it starts to make sense to someone in this room?”

“I think the problem is that your explanation is only one of several that could make sense,” she said. “And twelve hours ago
we found you in a bunker with a hammer in your hands.”

“But I’m here, look in my eyes, tell me I’m not telling you the truth. I took the DA only because I was under direct orders
to take him, return him to the quarry, and break his bones by daybreak. And I have until morning to let him find me or this
is all over. For Bethany’s sake, you have to let me go. Then take me, prosecute me, do whatever you like. But give me this
one chance.” He was talking to Celine now even though she had no authority.

“I’m begging you.”

Celine took another step forward, lifted her hand, and slapped his face hard with her good hand.

“You’re a sick man twisted by jealousy,” she said. “Who do you think you are to violate the man I love? I’m going to do everything
in my power to make sure you fry in the electric chair. You hear me? You’re dead to me.”

She stomped for the door, leaving in her perfumed wake the stunning statement that in her mind, this was all more about her
and her new lover than it was about her own daughter.

“Then so is your daughter,” Ryan said. “I’m her only hope. You walk away from me and you’re walking away from Bethany.”

But he knew that her mind was so fogged that she couldn’t possibly consider turning back. She exited without another word
and was gone.

Ryan sank to his seat, crushed by the weight of the inevitable outcome facing them all. Bethany, his only daughter, whom he
loved more than life itself, was going to die a terrible death.

“Get something out of this man or I will,” Welsh said, following Celine. “He’s scheduled for arraignment first thing in the
morning. I trust you can keep him under lock and key until then.”

He delivered the scathing indictment and closed the door.

Ryan put his arms up on the table and saw that they were shaking as they did when his emotions overtook his capacity for control.
The handcuffs were vibrating. Something about the clasp around his wrist struck a chord deep in his mind.

Perhaps because it symbolized his limitations. A father could only do so much. Or maybe it reminded him of the shackles of
humanity, bound by inevitable tragedy that ultimately ended in death.

He was not God. He could not rend the heavens and sweep aside his enemies to save the lost child who cried out for help. He
was a suspect in an interrogation room, shackled by…

His mind suddenly filled with one of BoneMan’s drawings on the storage room walls. A broken hand.

“Tell me, Ryan,” Ricki Valentine said, pulling out a chair opposite him. “Where do the crows fly?”

He looked up. “Sorry?”

“Where did you meet him?”

“You should know, you found me.”

“You spent three days in the quarry?”

“Yes.” It was a lie, but he couldn’t reveal the location of the Crow’s Nest yet. Not until or unless he was absolutely sure
that there was no other alternative. “What else was I supposed to do? I had to wait for him.”

“So your message on the radio told him where you’d be? But he drew you to the quarry? Forgive me being dense, but none of
it adds up. Care to help me out?”

“We can get to all of that when we have time. It’s already eight o’clock, right? I’m telling you, we’re running out of time.”

“Captain, if you really think we’re going to even consider letting you go you’re sadly mistaken,” Kracker said, lowering his
tall frame into one of the flimsy chairs at the head of the table. He crossed his legs and put both hands on his knee. “If
you want to lead us to this so-called meeting point that’s one thing. But the fact of matter is, you’ve committed a felony
and the whole world knows it. There’s no disputing what we found. You kidnapped a man and physically violated him. That’s
good for twenty years in prison. I don’t think you’re appreciating the limitations of your situation.”

Ryan looked into Ricki’s kind eyes. As much as he wanted to believe that she would trust him, he knew her hands were tied.
She wasn’t in a position to help him.

“Ma’am, please, I’m begging you. He’s going to kill my daughter unless I show up before sunrise.”

“Well, that’s a problem, Ryan. I hear you saying that, but I don’t hear you telling us where she is. You can appreciate the
inconsistency.”

“I don’t
know
where she is! And if I tell you where he wants me to meet him, he’ll know. Can you guarantee me he won’t?”

She frowned. “The way I see it, you don’t have any good alternatives. Either you tell us and we check it out, and yes, maybe
we do tip him off…”

“Assuming we find another BoneMan,” Kracker added.

Ricki glanced at him. “On the other hand, if you don’t tell us and neither you nor we show, he kills her anyway. What am I
missing?”

Ryan didn’t answer. She was right, but he didn’t have to make the call until midnight, which would still give them time to
get to Crow’s Nest before dawn. Later, if they used a helicopter.

“Not telling us about this meeting point only endangers your daughter’s life,” Ricki said. “And knowing how you feel about
her, I confess I’m confused by your silence. We should be talking about how to get to her, not shutting down.”

Unless your knowing endangers her more than your ignorance
, he thought.

“I’m sorry, I can’t take that risk,” he said.

“Because you haven’t told us the full truth, have you, Mr. Evans?” Kracker said. “Because maybe, just maybe, you are guilty
of taking your own daughter.”

“No.”

Ricki leaned over the table. “Okay, suppose we were to put an electronic tag on you and let you go. We could follow in a helicopter
at a safe distance, say a few miles, and have support on the ground. You would agree to meet BoneMan?”