The Boy from the Woods(100)

“All the major networks?” Strauss asked.

“Plus some bloggers and Twitter accounts.”

“This is it, my friend. Hit send.”

One last chance for Wilde to act.

He heard the click of the key.

“Done,” Gavin said.

The relief in his tone was palpable.

“We need to free the kid,” Strauss said. “You have the coordinates to send to the Maynards?”

“Do you think we should wait?” Gavin asked.

“Why?”

“I don’t know. They may have more.”

“More?”

“More tapes,” Gavin Chambers said. “They could be holding out on us.”

“We can’t,” Strauss said. “This…it’s gone far enough, Gavin. That boy…”

“Yeah.” Wilde could hear the devastation now in Gavin’s voice. “Yeah, you’re right.”

“Hand me the ski mask. Let’s go finish this.”

Wilde came out from his hiding spot and pointed the gun at them. “No need.”

Gavin Chambers and Saul Strauss spun toward him. Wilde raised the gun.

“If you breathe wrong,” Wilde said, “I’ll shoot you both. Gavin, I assume you’re armed?”

“I am.”

“Holster under the left armpit?”

“Yes.”

“You know the drill. Thumb and index finger. Throw it over here. Do it slowly. Saul?”

“I’m unarmed.” Saul held up his hands and twirled slowly.

“Keep your hands on the desk where I can see them. Gavin, toss the gun.”

Gavin Chambers took the gun out of his holster and tossed it on the floor toward Wilde. Wilde picked it up and stuck it in his waistband.

“How did you figure it out?” Gavin asked.

“Lots of things. But the main one was the most basic. I kept wondering how Crash could be kidnapped so close to his own home with someone as good as you guarding him. The simplest answer? He can’t. So you had to be involved.” Wilde looked at Gavin, then at Saul. “I assume you guys hatched this idea after Naomi Pine ran away?”

“We did,” Gavin said.

“Made sense. Naomi goes missing. She has a tentative connection to Crash. So you know that if Crash goes missing now, everyone will tie them together. It gave you time. It gave you the ultimate diversion. You even said it to me, Gavin.”

“Said what?”

“At my Ecocapsule. The Ghost Army. Everything you did was about tactical deception.”

“And yet here we are.”

“Here we are.”

Gavin smiled. “We overdid it, didn’t we?”

“You did.”

“I didn’t expect the Maynards to bring you and Hester in.”

“Right, that threw you. It’s why you kept insisting I concentrate on Naomi. You knew that even if I was successful in finding her, I’d be no closer to the truth about Crash. The problem is, you both gilded that lily. Saul, you show up at the hotel bar to ask me about Naomi the night Crash disappears. Why? I didn’t realize it at the time, but even if you thought Crash and Naomi were close, why would you ask me to help you? You were just planting the seed so I’d go in the wrong direction. Then you”—Wilde looked back at Gavin—“you show up at the 7-Eleven with some suddenly unearthed secret message that again was supposed to make me think that Naomi was connected to whatever happened to Crash.”

Gavin nodded, seeing it now. “You asked me for a ride to the Maynards’.”

“Right.”

“That’s when you planted the GPS tracker in the car.”

“You’re a wealthy, successful man. You always have a driver or at least an expensive car. Suddenly you’re in a Chevy Cruze? I figured it was a rental.”

“But you didn’t know for sure?”

“I was just covering my bases. Then today Saul conveniently shows up by the school. He claims to have men following me, that he has an inside source at the Maynards’. But who would that be? Hester wouldn’t talk. Neither would my people. The Maynards? Not a chance. So it had to be the kidnapper. You, Gavin.”

“Eliminate the possible and whatever remains,” Saul said, quoting Arthur Conan Doyle, “no matter how improbable, is the truth.”

“Exactly. So when Saul drove me up to Sing Sing, I planted another GPS locator in his car. After you dropped me back near the Maynards’, you drove up to this rest stop. You didn’t stay long. Just to feed the kid, I guess. Look in on him. But the day before, according to the locator in Gavin’s Cruze, he had stopped here too. Why would both of you be in this fairly remote rest stop? You two had to be in on this together. Oh, and the finger coordinates being where I was found as a kid. Again, overkill. The only reason someone would do that would be to mess with my head. Of course, I got stuff wrong too. Like I figured you just rendezvoused at this rest stop. Met up, discussed things, whatever. But when I arrived just now, I was surprised to see it was closed.”

“How did you sneak in here anyway? We have sensors by all the entrances.”

“But not in the back. There’s a Dairy Queen.”

“So you found Crash in the Dunkin’ Donuts hut.”