Buried (Bone Secrets, #3)(81)

With Brian asleep in the backseat and Chris riding shotgun, Michael tried to call his father as they raced across Central Oregon in the dark. The Senator’s phone dumped into voice mail.

“Damn it!” He tried calling his parents’ landline at their home, and his mother sleepily answered.

“Michael?”

“Sorry, Mom. I’m trying to reach Dad. It’s important.”

“Is it about Daniel?” Her voice was instantly alert.

“Uh…” His mind went blank. He wasn’t ready to tell her about Chris. And Chris had asked to do it himself. “Not really. They’ve identified one of the female bodies from that pit as Katy Darby, remember her?”

Cecilia sucked in her breath. “Oh, that poor girl. We always wondered what happened to her. I had a gut feeling it wasn’t good. She had such a zest for life, and she loved working with your father. She was really going places. I knew she didn’t just run off.”

“The police want to ask Dad some more questions about her. He’s not answering his cell. Can I talk to him?”

“He’s not here, Michael. He and Phillip are leaving first thing in the morning for Japan. He’s staying at Phillip’s tonight.”

“At the governor’s mansion? That’s farther away from the airport.”

“They’re flying privately out of Salem to LA, meeting up with some other officials, and then flying out of LAX, I believe.”

“How early are they going?”

“I don’t know. He thought it was easier to stay down there than leave from here, so I had the impression it was a crack-of-dawn type flight.”

“I guess I’ll see if I can catch them before they go. I’m actually headed to Salem, but I’m several hours away.”

Michael glanced at Chris as he ended the call. “Feel like seeing The Senator today?”

Chris stared back at him.

“Better get your story ready.”



See the senator, thought Chris. In a few hours?

His life had completely turned upside down and inside out in a matter of hours. He’d put the senator and Cecilia out of his head years ago. It was the only way to keep his sanity.

He leaned back against the headrest and closed his eyes, a dizziness settling in his brain. For a few years as a kid, he’d fantasized about his reunion with his real parents, but he’d always felt a shadow watching over him, waiting for him to make one wrong move that would signal the Ghostman to kill them and Michael. So he’d stopped thinking about them, forcing himself to look at the Jacobses as his real parents, and he embraced Jamie as his sister.

But now it was time to own up to the truth.

His stomach churned, and he swallowed hard. He didn’t want a repeat performance of the scene in the alley.

“They’re gonna stop him, right? He’s not going to hurt anyone else.” He didn’t clarify whom to Michael.

“If the police don’t stop him, I will. They’ll spot that car on the highway, and I’m not going to stop until I know what he’s done with Jamie.”

Chris opened his eyes and studied his brother in the dim light. Even though it’d been twenty years, he knew the determined set of that stubborn jaw. When Michael had his mind set on something, he didn’t rest until he achieved it. Right now that obsession was Jamie.

He noted his brother didn’t say “when I get Jamie back.”

There was a very good chance his sister was dead.

Chris took a series of deep breaths. Everything was coming to a head. He was caught in the nightmare he’d been trying to prevent for twenty years. A killer had his sister.

He turned in his seat to check on Brian. The boy looked at ease with his head tipped back in the corner of a seat, his mouth slightly opened, deep in the sleep of childhood.

Brian was safe.

He might be able to put an end to his nightmares tonight. If he knew the Ghostman was behind bars, he’d be able to sleep.

Why him?

He’d asked that question for twenty years. Why had the Ghostman threatened his family and no one else’s? Obviously, he’d kept Daniel and the real Chris alive the longest because he’d had a taste for young boys. How much longer would they have survived? The real Chris wouldn’t have lasted another month. Maybe even a week.

“I still don’t know why he took us,” Chris told Michael. “We all asked him several times why he had to take all the kids from the bus. He never said why.”

“How did it happen?” asked Michael. “I never understood how someone could make a whole group of people and a vehicle vanish the way he did.”

“We were all back on the bus after touring the capitol building. The younger kids were getting whiny. It was a long day for them. I loved going there, you knew that. I loved visiting Dad’s office, and Uncle Phillip’s new representative office wasn’t too far away. Other kids weren’t excited about politics the way I was.”

Michael snorted. “Politics suck.”

“I wanted to be president one day.”

“I remember,” Michael laughed. “I was so f*cking jealous of you. The Senator gave you so much more attention because you wanted to follow in his footsteps.”

“No, I was jealous of you. You could do sports and didn’t care what other people thought of you. Your mindset was always independent and cool. I wanted to be like that.”