“Grace? Brody here. That address I gave you earlier? Any calls go out in the last few seconds?”

He scowled at his cell as he scribbled a number on the back of a napkin. “Where the fuck is that number from?” His writing slowed at her answer. “Really? Who’d want to live out there?”

No wonder he couldn’t find Chris Jacobs. He was hiding out in one of the remotest parts of the state.

“Thanks. You’re a doll. Dig up everything you can on this number for me, okay? I need to know just where I’m going. And I owe you a big one, Grace. Drinks are on me next time.”

Michael felt adrenaline dump into his veins. Time for a trip.

Chris erased his phone message and sat in the evening light, his brain spinning. He’d always known the call would come. Now that it had, it was almost anticlimactic. He’d lived this moment a thousand times, dreamed it even more. The call had come and gone, and the world still went on, not stopping like it should.

A large weight lifted from his chest. No more waiting. Time to put the wheels in motion.

He breathed the sweet air deeply and listened to the silence. Only the normal, nearly inaudible sounds of nature reached his ears. The breeze rustled the tall grass around his cabin. No vehicle sounds, no human noise. As it should be.

For ten years he’d speculated every time his cell rang. Would this be the call? Would he be ready when it came? Maybe it’d never come. He’d had his plans in place for several years now. Checked and double-checked every few weeks. He’d thought them through and through, hoping to find a way to avoid them altogether. But there was no way out. He’d known if the call ever came he would have no choice but to act.

An image of the Ghostman flitted across his memories, and he mentally crushed it down. The Ghostman stood for failure; Chris wasn’t going to fail. The Ghostman had haunted his dreams for a long time. Not dreams, nightmares. Nightmares of torture and pain.

He turned to his laptop and typed the usual words into the search engines. Nothing. How had the phone call come before the computer warning? He shifted in his seat, brow wrinkling in mild surprise. Anyone with a little skill could find whatever he needed. Anyone with a lot of skill could manipulate that information to do as he pleased. Like him. Computers hummed under his fingers, their languages as second nature to him as English. Or Spanish. He had alerts on many phrases and names, but none had been tripped in the last twenty-four hours. Tomorrow would be different. The story would be everywhere. The cursor blinked. Taunting him to run another search. Chris closed the lid.

A quiet cough came from the other end of the bungalow. Chris silently padded down the hall and stopped, pushing open the bedroom door. Brian didn’t move. Chris could see the outline of his son under the thin covers and hear the soft sounds of the boy’s breathing.

Chris’s heart clenched, and he ran a hand over his jaw, feeling the faint raised seam of bone beneath the skin where it’d never healed correctly. His son would never suffer. He would never experience the horrors that men can inflict on children. He would only know love and peace. It was a familiar mantra. One he’d repeated every day for the short eight years of his son’s life.

Was that about to change?

“I don’t want to do that again.” Detective Ray Lusco shook his head as he stared into his coffee at the diner. “I don’t know if I can face another set of distraught parents like that. Shit. I feel like the bad guy.”

Mason nodded in agreement with his partner. The only thing worse than discussing the death of a child with parents was being the one to deliver the news. And that was what he and Ray had spent the day doing. The parents had been informed of the find yesterday, but conclusive evidence hadn’t emerged until today. Most of them had long ago accepted that their child wasn’t returning, but the parents of nine-year-old David Doubler had always believed their son would walk in the door one day.

They’d talked with several sets of parents in the office of the medical examiner. Weeping and acceptance had been the staples for the day. Until the Doublers. The Doubters described the couple better. The parents had brought in tiny dental X-rays of their son’s teeth. Twenty-year-old X-rays that the mother had kept in an envelope in case their son’s body was found one day. David Doubler Sr. had argued with Dr. Campbell’s identification.

Mason shook his head. David Sr. had met his match with the feisty odontologist. Lacey Campbell had calmly placed the films on a viewbox next to the films she’d taken on the skull and proceeded to give the father a calm lesson in reading dental X-rays. Even Mason had seen the match. David Sr. had refused. “Baby teeth all look alike,” he’d argued. “Every kid had silver fillings back then.”

Dr. Campbell had quietly pointed out the distinctive white shapes the silver created on the boy’s first permanent molars. David Sr. had shaken his head. It wasn’t good enough for him. The chief medical examiner had stepped into the room at that moment. Dr. James Campbell could tell his daughter was about to pull out her hair in frustration.

“Maybe this would help,” the gray-haired ME had said and held out a plastic baggie to the parents. “You recognize this? It was found with the remains of this child, about where his neck would have been.”

Mrs. Doubler had stared at the silver strands in the baggie and promptly burst into tears. Mason had swallowed hard. He’d known the shape of the pendant on the chain. His son had worn one for years after being diagnosed with juvenile diabetes.