Gone for Good

But it was my turn now.

I prepared myself. I let the kick land and quickly trapped his foot against my stomach with one hand. With the other, I held the broken glass. I jammed it into the fat of his calf. He screamed as the glass sliced deep into his flesh. The sound echoed. Birds scattered. I pulled it out and stabbed again, this time in the hamstring area. I felt the warm gush of blood.

The man dropped and began to flail, fish-on-the-hook-style.

I was about to strike again when he said, “Please. Just go.”

I looked at him. His leg hung useless. He would not be a threat to us. Not now anyway. I was not a killer. Not yet. And I was losing time. The Ghost might be back soon. We needed to get away before that.

So I turned and ran.

After twenty or thirty yards I looked behind me. The man was not pursuing me. He was struggling to a crawl. I started running again when I heard Katy’s voice call, “Will, over here!”

I turned and spotted her.

“This way,” she said.

We ran the rest of the way. Branches whipped our face. We stumbled on roots, but we never fell. Katy was good to her word. Fifteen minutes later, we headed out of the woods and onto Hobart Gap Road.

When Will and Katy emerged from the woods, the Ghost was there.

He watched from a distance. Then he smiled and stepped back into his car. He drove back and began the cleanup. There was blood. He had not expected that. Will Klein continued to surprise and, yes, impress him.

That was a good thing.

When he was done, the Ghost drove down South Livingston Avenue. There was no sign of Will or Katy. That was okay. He stopped at the mailbox on Northfield Avenue. He hesitated before dropping the package through the slot.

It was done.

The Ghost took Northfield Avenue to Route 280 and then the Garden State Parkway north. It would not be long now. He thought about how this had all begun, and how it should end. He thought about McGuane and Will and Katy and Julie and Ken.

But most of all, he thought about his vow and why he had come back in the first place.

57

A lot happened in the next five days.

After our escape, Katy and I naturally contacted the authorities. We led them to the site where we’d been held. No one was there. The shack was empty. A search found traces of blood near where I’d stabbed the guy in the leg. But there were no prints or hairs. No clues at all. Then again, I had not expected there to be. And I was not sure it mattered.

It was nearly over.

Philip McGuane was arrested for the murder of an undercover federal officer named Raymond Cromwell and a prominent attorney named Joshua Ford. This time, however, he was held without bail. When I met with Pistillo, he had the satisfied gleam in the eye of a man who had finally conquered his own Everest, unearthed his own special chalice, conquered his toughest personal demon, however you want to put it.

“It’s all falling apart,” Pistillo said with a little too much glee. “We got McGuane nailed on a murder charge. The whole operation is ripping at the seams.”

I asked him how they finally caught him. Pistillo, for once, was only too happy to share.

“McGuane made up this phony surveillance tape showing our agent leaving his office. This was supposed to be his alibi, and let me tell you, the tape was flawless. That’s not hard to do with digital technology—at least, that’s what the lab guy told me.”

“So what happened?”

Pistillo smiled. “We got another tape in the mail. Postmarked from Livingston, New Jersey, if you can believe it. The real tape. It shows two guys dragging the body into the private elevator. Both men have already flipped and turned state’s evidence. There was a note, too, telling us where we could find the bodies. And to top it off, the package also had the tapes and evidence your brother gathered all those years ago.”

I tried to figure that one out, but nothing came to me. “Do you know who sent it?”

“Nope,” Pistillo said, and he did not seem to care very much.

“So what happens to John Asselta?” I asked.

“We have an APB out on him.”

“You’ve always had an APB out on him.”

He shrugged. “What else can we do?”

“He killed Julie Miller.”

“Under orders. The Ghost was just hired muscle.”

That was hardly comforting. “You don’t think you’ll get him, do you?”

“Look, Will, I’d love to nail the Ghost, but I’ll be honest with you. It won’t be easy. Asselta is out of the country already. We have reports of him overseas. He’ll get work with some despot who will protect him. But in the end—and it’s important to remember this—the Ghost is just a weapon. I want the guys who pull the trigger.”

I did not agree but I did not argue either. I asked him what this all meant for Ken. He took a while before answering.

“You and Katy Miller haven’t told us everything, have you?”

I shifted in my seat. We had told them about the kidnapping, but we decided not to tell them about communicating with Ken. We kept that to ourselves. I said, “Yes, we did.”

Pistillo held my gaze and then shrugged again. “The truth is, I don’t know if we need Ken anymore. But he’s safe now, Will.” He leaned forward. “I know you haven’t been in touch with him”—and I could see in his face that this time he did not believe that—“but if you somehow manage to reach him, tell him to come in from the cold. It’s never been safer. And okay, yes, we could use him to verify that old evidence.”

Like I said, an active five days.

Aside from my meeting with Pistillo, I spent that time with Nora. We talked about her past but not very much. The lingering shadows kept crossing her face. The fear of her ex-husband remained enormous. It enraged me, of course. We would have to deal with this Mr. Cray Spring of Cramden, Missouri. I didn’t know how. Not yet. But I would not let Nora live in fear for the rest of her life. No way.

Nora told me about my brother, how he’d had money stashed away in Switzerland, how he spent his days hiking, how he seemed to seek peace out there and how peace seemed to elude him. Nora talked about Sheila Rogers too, the wounded bird I’d learned so much about, who found nourishment in both the international chase and her daughter. But mostly, Nora told me about my niece, Carly, and when she did, her face lit up. Carly loved to run down hills with her eyes closed. She was a voracious reader and loved to do cartwheels. She had the most infectious laugh. At first, Carly had been lonely and shy with Nora—her parents, for obvious reasons, did not let her socialize much—but Nora had patiently worked past that. Abandoning the child (abandoning was the word she used, though I thought it was too harsh), taking away the only friend Carly had been allowed to have—had been the hardest part for Nora.