BoneMan's Daughters (38 page)

And he was succeeding. The pain was there, all around, pressing in on his flesh, but he could tread these brackish waters
with relative ease so long as he kept his mind focused and strong.

Even the pain of his broken hand, now badly swollen, had abated.

He’d stopped his weeping and gnashing of teeth many hours ago and applied himself exclusively to the task of preparing himself
for the moment he knew would eventually come, like the coming of the first winter storm.

He was the father and BoneMan had taken him for the exclusive purpose of tormenting either him or Bethany or, more likely,
both to drive them apart.

Evil was predictable, always painfully expected. Even so, whenever the enemy came, whether it be in the form of a suicide
bomber bent on blowing up a bus full of women and children or in BoneMan’s form, the shock and pain could be immobilizing.

Ryan knew that Bethany’s life (assuming that she was still breathing, a prospect that he clung to without regard for the alternative)
would likely depend on his ability to disregard those debilitating emotions so that he could do what was needed to save her.

He would throw himself at this singular objective. And if for any reason he failed, he would live or die with the pain of
that failure, but also he would live or die as a father. The father he’d never been. The father he was today, in the deep
black pit, where he could only hope for one chance to hold his daughter’s hand and lead her out of darkness.

Ryan kept his eyes closed and listened to the padding of his heart. To the feet. His eyes sprang wide.

What was that? Was that—

All of his reasoning, the hours of careful deliberation, the days of pining for an opportunity to come face-to-face with the
one who’d violated his offspring fell away for an instant and his heart bolted against his chest.

BoneMan. Those were the feet of him, walking toward his door.

He very nearly threw himself from the bed, intent on rushing the door. Instead he quickly gathered himself, recapturing the
practiced resolve and calculation that their lives now depended on.

Ryan lay perfectly still and swallowed his impulse to panic.

The rusted latch clicked as the lock disengaged. He heard the door hinges squeal softly. There was a moment of silence as
his visitor paused at the door, then walked in. He didn’t close the door.

And all the while Ryan refused to look. Refused to quickly acknowledge his captor. He lay still, staring at the sea of hairy
roots on the ceiling, knowing that BoneMan was watching him with curiosity, courting a sliver of uncertainty.

Ryan spoke first, for his sake, not for his captor’s. “Hello, BoneMan.”

The man waited a few seconds before responding. “My name is Alvin Finch.”

Alvin. For some reason Ryan found the name sickening.

“Hello, Alvin. Nice of you to finally come.”

“You may also call me Satan.”

The suggestion hardly surprised Ryan. That it was spoken with such sincerity, as if by a boy who was showing a neighbor his
marble collection, was disturbing; but not even this should have surprised him.

“You may stand up now,” Alvin said.

Ryan sat up, let his head clear, then lowered his feet to the concrete floor. He was still dressed in the same tan slacks
he’d been wearing for over a week now and they were badly smudged. His brown boots were dusty and his socks had dried to his
feet.

In contrast, the man who stood by the door looked as though he’d just stepped out of the shower before slipping into a freshly
pressed shirt. Even from this distance Ryan could smell the soap he’d used or the cologne he’d applied.

Alvin was a tall white male with close-cropped hair who had a face you might see looking into any shopwindow at the nearest
mall. His eyes were set deep and hidden by shadows.

Ryan stood slowly, undisturbed by the sight of the man who’d brought hell to them, though everything within him knew he should
be disturbed. Deeply distressed. Raging with fury.

What was more disturbing to him was the open door that let in a small amount of light. BoneMan blocked his path, but the hallway
beyond was screaming to Ryan, begging him to rush through the basement in search of his daughter.

“Before we finish this, I want you to acknowledge a few things to me,” Alvin said. “I’ve been wanting to break your bones
from the first time I read about you in the papers two months ago. It’s been very difficult for me to show my restraint, but
I’ve done it and I think it’s been worth it.”

The man was intelligent, not some clumsy butcher who just happened to evade the FBI for years.

“But first I will make my confession. Okay?”

That the man was asking his permission meant something, but Ryan was having a difficult time keeping his mind off the empty
hallway beyond him.

“Okay.”

“I appreciate the fact that you broke his bones. It was a noble beginning. I went to his house and I broke the rest of his
bones the next night.”

He’d killed Welsh?

“That father of lies is dead now,” Alvin said.

Ryan didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing.

“Last night I went back to your house and I broke the witch’s bones. They will find her floating in the pool, full of chlorine.”

Celine?

A fist of nausea rose into his throat. He wanted to scream out his protest, but he knew that he could do no such thing. He
refused to weaken his control now, while the hall behind the monster was empty and begging.

Celine? Dear God, Celine was dead… .

“The whole state is having a fit,” Alvin said. “They seem to be more disturbed than you are. You didn’t love that witch.”

He wouldn’t speak. He couldn’t speak.

“You were never a good husband and you were an even worse father. It’s important to me that I hear you confess your sin.”

No! No, I will not confess my sins to you! How dare you judge me?

A voice whispered through his mind, warning him that he wasn’t behaving as he knew he must. He had to be calm and reasoned
and ready to move when the moment of opportunity presented itself.

For a long time BoneMan stared at him. Finally his shoulders sagged just barely and a faint frown bent his lips. “Then she
was right, you are the father of lies. Do you deny your failure?”

“No.”

“But you refuse to acknowledge that you don’t deserve to be her father.”

“Because I do. I’m trying to be her father.”

“It’s too late,” BoneMan said.

“I wasn’t her father before. Not the way I want to be her father now. She isn’t my seed, I adopted her, but I never became
her father. But that changed in the desert.”

“So you admit you’re not even really her father.”

“Yes.”

His answer seemed to confuse the man. This was the kind of reason and control that would give them hope, he realized. And
although BoneMan knew how to hate with more passion than most men, real love would confuse him.

“I admit, I’m not her father, not really,” Ryan said. “But that’s changing now.”

“Now that you’re in my house.”

“Now that I’m pursuing her love.”

The words seemed to take Alvin Finch off guard. He was a man of exceptional control but now he blinked; he began to sweat.

“She hates you,” BoneMan said.

No. No, she couldn’t possibly hate him. Maybe on a hot afternoon when harsh words about who she was dating were exchanged,
but not now when they were both fighting for her life.

Alvin Finch was so devoid of love that he didn’t know how to recognize it. He was indeed the Satan in the mix, bent upon winning
the heart of his victim, though no one could possibly love him. His victims might show him a mirror of love to win his kindness,
but they would never be able to return real love any more than he could receive it.

“You are the father of lies,” Ryan said. “You can’t be a true father.”

The man’s breathing thickened. “She wants me to be her father.”

“But deep inside she wants me to be her father.”

“You’re lying. You’re the father of lies! We both have the same soft skin. She’s the most beautiful person I’ve seen. I want
to be like her. She wants to be like me.”

“Given the chance, she would kill you.”

“You’re lying. You’re a filthy liar.”

“Given the chance, she would come to me.”

Ryan knew that he was departing from his resolution to remain perfectly stoic for her sake, but realizing that BoneMan saw
himself as a kind of Satan, he thought it only prudent to point out that in the real world, everyone fled the terrors of evil
and ran for the loving father.

The thought stopped him cold.

BoneMan withdrew a pair of handcuffs and tossed them onto the concrete in front of him. “Place them on your broken wrist and
turn around.”

He did as the man ordered, hands together behind his back. When Alvin had clasped the second cuff on his right hand, he grabbed
a fistful of Ryan’s hair behind his head and turned him around. Holding him with an outstretched arm, BoneMan pushed him forward,
maintaining a tight grip on his hair.

How many other victims had he experimented on to perfect this effective hold? He steered Ryan from the room and down a hall
toward a door at the end. Reached around him, removed an unlocked padlock looped through the latch, and shoved the door wide.

Lamplight filled the room beyond with orange light.

He steered Ryan inside and slammed the door behind them.

Already Ryan was looking, searching the room with wide eyes, but his head was tilted back and he couldn’t turn it to see the
entire space.

He was only interested in seeing one thing and his heart felt like it had lodged stubbornly in his throat, refusing to resume
its beat until he saw her.

But she wasn’t here.

Bethany wasn’t in the room!

BoneMan unlatched his handcuffs and released his hair. Ryan spun around looking, searching.

He saw the lamp.

He saw the bed.

He saw something fixed to the wall.

He saw a pot on the floor.

He saw Alvin behind him.

But he did not see…

A thin girl dressed in dirty flannel pajama bottoms and a filthy T-shirt stepped out of the shadows from behind a wood post
that had blocked his view of her.

This was his daughter. Her face was soiled and streaked with dried tears. Her long hair was tangled and matted and her eyes
looked like they’d been pushed deeper into blackened eye sockets.

This was Bethany.

And then Ryan saw that her left hand was swollen. Three of her fingers were crooked. Alvin had broken three of her fingers.

Ryan had spent two days calming himself; sinking slowly into the place of reason and reckoning where mindless knee-jerk reaction
was laid to rest so that even the cleverest of opponents could be outwitted and dismissed. He knew that he was working not
only
against
BoneMan but
for
Bethany, hoping to outmaneuver the one while drawing out the other. He was unequivocally committed to bringing to bear on
this matter the last reserves of his considerable skill, developed over countless hours in many continents, having saved too
many lives to count.

But in that moment, seeing Bethany for the first time in two months, the cords that moored his arms and legs to the harbor
of reason snapped and he felt powerless to hold his emotion at bay.

He was sobbing immediately, blubbering like a child as he stumbled forward, arms wide.

He couldn’t even say her name. He shouldn’t be overwhelming her like this, he was likely to terrify her, but he just couldn’t
stop himself.

Ryan fell upon her and wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into his chest. His mouth opened in an involuntary wail,
but he had no breath to weep with, no voice to cry out; his chest and throat were locked in a vise.

She didn’t move.

Behind him, BoneMan didn’t stop him.

Then he caught his breath and he began to cry aloud, shaking like a fool while his body enfolded hers. He kissed the crown
of her head and he held her close and he wept. He could smell the musky scent of sweat mixed with soap or lotion in her hair.

Tears streamed from his eyes and wet her hair as he sobbed, but he was too far gone to stop now. Nothing mattered more to
him now than this moment, clinging to his daughter.

She was alive. She’d been lost but he’d found her and now she was in his arms. No matter what happened, he would have this
moment.

“I love you,” he managed to say. “I’m so sorry. I love you so much.”

A hand pressed against his chest, her first gentle embrace. What had the monster done to her? She could barely move! He’d
beaten her into the ground and now she stood like a drugged doll, barely able to move!

The thought brought a chill to his bones and he kissed her head again, then again.

Dear Bethany! Dear Bethany, I love you so much, oh God, how I love you!

Her hand was pressing against him with surprising strength. She still had her strength, that was good, that was good to know.
And now her other hand, the one that was broken, pushed against his stomach.

“Don’t,” she said.

Her voice was strong as well. And it was bitter.

“Don’t!”

She pushed him harder and only then did it occur to Ryan that his daughter, who’d been in captivity for more than a week now,
was pushing him away. He was smothering her and she needed space to breathe.

But she was in his arms now; how could he dare let go of her now?

“Stop it!” She shoved hard. “Get off me!”

She was rejecting him? How was that possible? What had BoneMan done to her? He wouldn’t let her go, not after everything.
Not after seeing so many children die in the desert. Not after breaking Burton Welsh’s wrist. Not after breaking his own hand
and rushing here to save her.

Something slapped his face and he let go instinctively. Bethany glared past him, scorn etched deeply in her dirty face. He
turned and followed her stare, expecting to see that she was looking at BoneMan, but it was only an empty wall.