The Boy from the Woods(91)

He didn’t explain more. He just took off, down the steps, out the door, into the sticky air. Sweat broke out on his face first. Would Crash really be there? In many ways, it was a great drop-off spot—remote, away from any roads or cameras, deep enough in the forest.

But why those particular coordinates?

Because someone wanted to seriously mess with Wilde’s head.

Without breaking stride, he stuck an AirPod into his ear and called Hester. When she answered, he said, “The kidnappers sent coordinates forty-one degrees, oh-seven—”

“Speak English, Wilde.”

“It’s a remote spot in the Ramapough Mountains. By the old burial site.”

“Wait. Are you saying—?”

“It’s the exact location where the police found me when I was a kid.”

“Holy moly,” Hester said. “Who would know about that?”

“The specific coordinates? The cops, maybe the press, I don’t know. It’s not a secret.”

“But it’s not a coincidence either.”

“No, it’s not a coincidence.”

“Where are you?” Hester asked. “You sound winded.”

“I’m running there now. I’ll call you back.”

Wilde knew the route, of course. He knew it would take Rola and whoever she brought longer to drive because there was no immediate road access. You had to hike more than a mile off the road to find the spot.

So why there?

Wilde was starting to get it now, starting to maybe piece together what the hell was going on. They’d hope to seed confusion and chaos. But maybe for the first time, Wilde was seeing things clearly.

He dodged to the left, ducked under branches, tried not to break stride. Decades ago, when the park rangers and local police surrounded him, he’d been using a Coleman dome tent and an Eddie Bauer sleeping bag he’d stolen from a house in Ringwood. He didn’t remember how long that particular camping site, far away from any hiking trails, had been his home, but when he saw them coming for him, young Wilde—what had he called himself back then? He didn’t even know his own damned name—had been tempted to run for it. He had done that before, of course, whenever anyone spotted him or got close.

Why?

Why had he always fled? Was it some kind of primitive survival instinct? Was man’s basic nature to fear rather than engage with other humans? He often wondered. Why, as a young child, had his instinct been to run? Was that genetic, human nature—or had something happened that made him that way?

But on that brisk early morning, with young Wilde in his tent and four officers and rangers surrounding him, he chose not to run. Perhaps because he realized that it would be futile. Perhaps because one of them was Oren Carmichael and even back then, Oren had a calming, trustworthy, safe aura.

Three, maybe four minutes until Wilde reached the coordinates.

He was north of the forest area called the Bowl, a mile or so from the New Jersey–New York state border. On the surface, this rendezvous had all the earmarks of an ambush. Wilde debated slowing down, taking some extra precautions now that he was getting nearby. Unless they were very good, he’d spot them with a fairly quick reconnaissance. If they were pros or snipers in trees, then his advanced scouting wouldn’t do any good. They could simply take him out whenever they wanted.

There would be no reason for these dramatics.

So no, this wasn’t an ambush. This was a distraction.

The woods grew thicker now, making it harder to see. Even as a child, Wilde had known not to make camp in clearings because he’d be too easy to spot. Most nights he’d surround his tent with twigs or even old newspapers. If someone (or more likely, some animal) came close, the sounds emanating from those twigs and papers would warn him. Wilde was a light sleeper, probably because he spent most nights as a child half listening for predators. Even now, while most people plunged deep into slumber, Wilde barely did more than skim the surface.

A hundred yards now.

He spotted something red.

Not a person. A few seconds later, as he hurried closer, he could see that the red thing was fairly small—maybe a foot high by a foot long.

It was, he saw now, a carry cooler, the kind that holds a six-pack and a couple of sandwiches.

Wilde felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise.

He couldn’t say why. It was just a cooler. But instinct is a funny thing.

He ran over and flipped down the handle. Then he opened the top of the cooler and looked inside.

Wilde had braced himself. But not enough. Still, he didn’t scream. He didn’t call out.

He just stared down at the severed finger with the smile-skull ring.





CHAPTER

THIRTY-FIVE



Naomi’s mother, Pia, lived in an ornate four-story Renaissance Revival town house off Park Avenue in Manhattan. A woman in a black French maid’s uniform opened the door and led Hester over the herringbone parquet floor, past the oak-paneled walls and the intricately sculptured staircase, and out back into a lush courtyard garden.

Pia sat in a chaise. She wore sunglasses, a beige beach hat, and an aqua blouse open at the top. She didn’t rise when Hester came out. She didn’t even turn and look at her.

“I don’t understand why you keep hounding me.”

Her voice was high-pitched and shaky. Hester didn’t wait to be asked. She pulled a free chair next to Pia and sat as close as she could. She wanted to get in the woman’s space a little.