If that’s what’d happened with Daniel, it might actually work in his favor.
He gave Daniel another breath.
Come on, buddy. You’re okay. You’re gonna be okay.
But Daniel didn’t come to.
Kyle tried again, then shook him and slapped his face, hoping to revive him.
Nothing.
Another breath.
Then another.
Come on!
Kyle was leaning down to give him one more breath when his friend’s body lurched and he coughed up a mouthful of water, then gasped for air.
Hurriedly, Kyle rolled him onto his side so he wouldn’t swallow any water again and so he could clear out his mouth.
Daniel coughed twice, spitting out more water as he did, then drew in a long hoarse breath as deep shivers began to wrack his body.
Shivers are good. They’re the body’s way of trying to stay warm.
Kyle held him. “You’re alright, man. Just breathe.”
Daniel nodded.
“I’m gonna get you to shore.” Kyle was still supporting Daniel’s back. “You okay on your own?”
“Yeah.” Daniel wasn’t exactly sure that was true, but he didn’t want his friend to worry about him. “I’m good.”
It took a lot of effort, but he was finally able to scootch over so his back was against the middle seat of the rowboat.
Kyle offered him his coat, and he accepted. He sloughed off his wet shirt and slipped on the warm, dry jacket while his friend hoisted the anchor, revved up the motor, and aimed the skiff’s bow toward the mainland.
Nicole watched as Michelle fell asleep.
The girl hadn’t wanted to take a nap, but while she was reading her a story—something about a moonbeam becoming friends with a unicorn—Michelle had ended up nodding off beside her on the bed.
Gently easing herself to her feet so she wouldn’t wake her up, Nicole went to get her cell phone from where she’d left it in the kitchen.
She’d just started looking up online news articles about the wolf shootings when there was a knock at the front door.
Going to the living room, she peered out the window beside the Christmas tree. Two police officers stood on the porch. From their uniforms it looked like they were troopers with the state patrol.
Another knock.
A bit apprehensively, she opened the door. “Yes?”
“Hello, ma’am,” the taller of the two men said. He was holding out his badge. “Is this the Goessel residence?”
“Yes.”
“And you are?”
“I’m Nicole. I’m the babysitter.”
“Nicole.” He put the badge away. “We’re looking for Daniel Byers.”
“Okay.”
“He disappeared from a hospital in Duluth early this morning. We understand that Kyle Goessel is one of his friends and we’re following up on . . . Wait—” He appraised her. “You said your name is Nicole. Are you Nicole Marten?”
“Yes.”
“Your name was favorited on Daniel’s cell phone as well.”
“He’s my boyfriend.” Say what they’d expect you to say. Don’t act weird. “What do you mean you’re looking for him? Is he okay?”
“Well, that’s what we’re trying to ascertain. We don’t know his current location. He’s not here?”
“No.”
The other officer cut in. “And do you know where he is?”
Sure, she had an idea of where he was, but Daniel and Kyle might be anywhere between here and Bayfield, so, officially, she didn’t know.
She went with that and shook her head. “Uh-uh. I saw him at the hospital yesterday, but I couldn’t tell you where he is now.”
“Do you mind if we come in and take a little look around?” the first cop said.
“I don’t think you better. Mrs. Goessel’s not here.”
“She’s not?”
“No. Like I said, I’m the babysitter.”
“We’ll be quick. I promise we’ll—”
“No. Daniel’s not here. And you can’t come in.”
The officer eyed her coolly. Finally, his partner handed her an official-looking business card. “If you hear of anything, please call us. My cell number’s on there.”
“Thanks,” she said noncommittally.
She watched them return to their patrol car and when they were pulling away she tried Kyle’s number.
No answer.
She texted him to call her right away. If the cops were out searching for Daniel, he needed to be on the lookout for them.
Then, distracted by her thoughts about him, she went back to finding out what she could about the wolf poaching.
Who would have been able to access those wolf tags? Who would even think of killing those wolves?
Of all the people she knew, Ty Bell was the first one to come to mind: not only was he the kind of guy who might actually do something like this, he might have been able to access the tagged wolf locations from his dad’s office.
He’d also been the person who found the second wolf.
How convenient.
She thought of ways to narrow things down and had an idea.
Tapping at her phone’s screen, she did a search to see if there was any evidence that the wolves had been shot after or before school hours and if there were any more details about Ty’s discovery of that second poached wolf.
CHAPTER
FORTY-EIGHT
Daniel stood in Larry’s shower with one hand against the wall to keep his balance and stay on his feet. He’d stripped down to his underwear and now blasted the hot water.
At first, the heat didn’t seem to do any good, but as the tiny bathroom steamed up, the shivers began to subside and he started to regain his strength.
Both Larry and Kyle had crowded into the bathroom to make sure he didn’t collapse. The shower curtain was yanked to the side and water was pooling on the floor, but Larry didn’t seem to care and simply tossed some towels down to sop it up.
“So, you feeling any better?” he asked Daniel concernedly.
“Starting to. Yeah.”
Daniel tried to let the hot water rinse away the dark residue of fear that had lodged in his mind when he was under the ice, but it didn’t work. He guessed it would stay with him for a long time, probably forever—especially the image of that demon grinning at him, trying to drag him down into a nothingness that would never end.
On Saturday, Nicole had said that Job had been so haunted by his nightmares that he wished he could be strangled and killed.
The way things were going, Daniel could start to understand how the guy might have gotten to that point.
You’re holding on to the edge of the cliff.
Don’t.
Let.
Go.
When he was finally warmed up, he stepped out of the shower and toweled off.
Before leaving for the kitchen to round up something hot for him to eat, Larry lent Daniel a set of clothes. Since he was almost as tall as Kyle, the clothes didn’t fit much better than Kyle’s had—long arms but tight across the shoulders—but Daniel didn’t mind. He was just glad to be here.
To be alive.
To be out of the clutches of that lake.
Kyle joined Larry in the kitchen while Daniel changed.
Outside the window, Daniel could see that it was still snowing and it was nearly dark.
Man, he’d been out of it, hadn’t even noticed how much time was slipping away. Larry and Kyle must have been working on warming him up for longer than he’d thought.
Once he was dressed, he followed the smell of stew down the hall.
As Daniel took a seat at the table, Larry asked him again if he was okay and he reiterated that he was fine.
“You w
ere not looking good, amigo,” Kyle said. “Blue is not your color.”
“Good to know. Listen, thanks for pulling me out.”
“No problem, but I gotta say, when you’re dead, you’re heavier than you look.”
“I’ll try to lose some weight before drowning again.”
“A few weeks of Zumba should do it.”
“Only if you join me.”
“I’ll have my people get back to you.”
Larry went to the stove and ladled out three bowls of stew. “Do you want some coffee or tea or anything?” he said to Daniel. “Something hot to drink?”
“No thanks. I’m not really thirsty.”
“I can’t imagine why not.”
Larry found three spoons, dipped them into the bowls and delivered them to the table, carrying all three at the same time to save himself a trip across the kitchen—which wasn’t really that big anyway.
Daniel accepted the stew. “Thanks.”
“Yeah.”
After Larry took a seat, silence settled over the table. As they ate, Daniel tried to relax, but failed.
The blur of Jarvis Delacroix’s corpse hanging in the lighthouse tower had been troubling enough, but then digging up Betty’s corpse and using one of her leg bones to pry open the trapdoor was even worse.
And then there was the little excursion under the ice with that demon pulling him down.
Man, what a day.
He couldn’t stop thinking about Jarvis Delacroix speaking to him in that raspy, long-dead voice: “Two thousand six hundred and seventy-five days. Remember what happened on August twenty-eighth.”
When he’d first heard the words, he’d wondered what they referred to, but now that he had a chance to think things through, the answer came to him almost immediately.
Two thousand six hundred and seventy-five days ago was August twenty-eighth.
And that was the last day he’d been in the barn when he was a kid.
Just sixty-four days before Grandma died.
But he couldn’t remember what happened that day in August, or why he’d never gone back to the barn again.
“So,” Larry said gravely, “Kyle told me someone burned down the lighthouse while you were inside it.”
“Yes.”
“And neither of you have any idea who it might’ve been?”
They both shook their heads.
“Sorry about those oars and that life jacket,” Daniel told him. “I’m guessing they might be gone for good.”
Larry waved that off, then set his spoon next to his nearly-empty bowl. “Listen, I need you boys to be straight with me. On the one hand I’m wondering why on earth you would have chanced crossing that ice in the first place just to get to a deserted lighthouse, but on the other hand, I’m much more curious why someone would have lit it on fire while you were inside. I need to know what’s really going on here.”
Daniel and Kyle exchanged a glance.
“So?”
Daniel set down his spoon. “It’s going to sound nuts if I tell you.”
“Try me.”
Well.
Okay.
He decided that since Larry had helped them out as much as he had, he did have a right to know, so he told him about the blurs of the girl in the white nightgown, the strange handwriting in English class, Jarvis’s diaries, and his father’s disappearance.
He even shared about the psych ward and getting out of there with the help of someone who apparently worked for some sort of clandestine government agency.
Larry listened in silence.
“I told you it was going to sound nuts.”
“Well, you nailed that one.”
“My mom’s stuck in Alaska and I need to find my dad. That’s why I crossed the ice. I thought the answer to what’d happened to him might somehow lie inside that lighthouse.”
“And did it?”
“No.”
Admitting that was hard.
Daniel considered bringing up seeing the demon in the lake or Jarvis’s corpse in the tower or finding Betty’s skeleton in the root cellar, but decided that Larry probably didn’t need to know everything. He could tell Kyle all that stuff later.
“This person on the island”—Larry had finished his stew and was getting a beer out of the fridge—“the one who started the fire, you don’t know where he went or how he got out there?”
“No,” Kyle answered. “It was a man, though. I could tell that much by his size, by how he walked.”
“Well, there is a dock around the other side of the island.”
“I didn’t see it from the tower,” Daniel said.
“Doesn’t surprise me, not with the snow falling. It’s not that big, but locals would know where it is. I can make some calls, see if anyone else had a boat out on the lake today. It’s a small town and there aren’t that many people who would’ve been running rentals. In fact, if anyone else was, I’d be surprised.”
“How did the person who set the fire even know we would be there?” Daniel wondered aloud. “How could that be?”
“It does seem pretty suspicious. I mean, there’s no way it was just a fluke that he ended up there while you were there. Who knew you were going to that island this morning?”
“Just Mr. Zacharias and Nicole.”
“Nicole?”
“My girlfriend.”
“Ah.” Larry nodded. “Okay. So here’s where I’m at: If someone tried to kill you, can you give me one good reason why I shouldn’t call the state patrol or our local sheriff’s office and tell them everything?”
“Because the authorities think I had something to do with my dad’s disappearance. They’ll take me in and we won’t be any closer to finding him.”
“Even after everything that’s happened—I mean, a guy burning down that lighthouse—ou still think they’ll suspect you?”
“They’ll at least take me in for questioning. Right now we can’t afford that. It’s already way later than I thought it would be before we were gonna head back, and we’re not any closer to finding my dad.”
“So what do you think is the best thing we can do right now to move forward on locating him?”
“Kyle and I need to get back to Beldon. That’s where Mr. Zacharias dropped me off. He said he’d contact me through Kyle’s cell phone, but—” He caught himself. “Oh.”
“What?” Kyle asked.
“I left it in the root cellar. Sorry about that.”
“Root cellar?”
“Under the keeper’s house. I was down there when the guy started the fire. I guess I owe you a phone.”
“Yeah, well.” He brushed it off as no big deal. “It was time for an upgrade anyway.”
Larry appeared to be deep in thought. “Honestly, I’m not really sure where to take things from here. I have the sense that we should call your mom, Daniel, and tell her about your near-drowning, but I guess right now that would just make her more worried. And if I called your mother, Kyle—I’m not even sure what I would tell her.”
“I’ll explain everything to her. Just let me do it in person.”
“When you get back tonight?”
“I was thinking more along the lines of next month sometime.”
Daniel couldn’t tell if his friend was being serious or not.
“Tonight,” Larry emphasized.
“Okay.”
“And I have your word on that?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. And this Mr. Zacharias you mentioned, Daniel—how are you going to get in touch with him?”
“I’m pretty sure he’ll find a way to get in touch with us.”
Larry pulled out his cell phone. “Take this along. With the snowstorm I’m not excited about you two driving back without a phone. I can get it back in the next d
ay or two. Maybe I’ll swing down your way and see my sister for Christmas. In any case, I have a landline for the business so you two can still call me if you need to.”
“Okay.” Kyle accepted the phone. “Thanks.”
“Be safe out there. I don’t like the condition of those roads, and they’re not going to get any better.”
After Daniel and Kyle had assured Larry that they would be fine driving home through the storm, they said goodbye, and left for Beldon in Kyle’s car.
PART VI
CARVED NAMES
CHAPTER
FORTY-NINE
5:21 P.M.
70 MINUTES LEFT
Nicole Marten was back at her house.
About half an hour ago, Mrs. Goessel had returned home. The guy who was with her reached out to shake her hand. “I’m Glenn Kramer. I don’t think we’ve met.”
“Nicole. Nice to meet you.”
“You too.”
“I’m a gun collector.”
“Um. So I’ve heard.”
Okay, this is awkward.
They shook hands, he told everyone Merry Christmas, and when he was gone, Mrs. Goessel asked Nicole if she’d heard from Kyle.
“No. Not since he left this morning.”
“Huh. I haven’t been able to reach him either. That’s a little strange, don’t you think?”
“Maybe. I don’t know. Any word on Daniel’s dad?”
“I haven’t heard any news.” Michelle came to her mom’s side and Mrs. Goessel picked her up. “So, anything exciting happen while I was gone?”
Nicole wasn’t sure if she should mention the state troopers stopping by, but decided that if she did bring it up, Mrs. Goessel would realize Daniel had escaped from the hospital and might wonder what was going on.
“Pretty quiet,” Nicole said.
“And was Michelle a good girl?”
“She was okay, I guuuuuess,” Nicole told Mrs. Goessel with a wink.
“How long till Santa comes?” Michelle asked impatiently.
“Not until morning, dear.”