Jeffery Deaver - Roadside Crosses

As she pulled close to the house, Dance counted a half dozen police cars. Two ambulances as well.

The San Benito County sheriff, whom she'd worked with regularly, saw her and motioned her forward. Several officers stepped aside, and she drove over the uneven grass to where the sheriff was standing.

She saw where Travis Brigham lay on a gurney, his face covered.

Dance slammed the gearshift into park and climbed out, then walked quickly toward the boy. She noted his bare feet, the welts on his ankle, his pale skin.

"Travis," she whispered.

The boy jerked, as if she'd awakened him from a deep sleep.

He lifted the damp cloth and ice pack off his bruised face. He blinked and focused his eyes on her. "Oh, uh, Officer…I, like, can't remember your name."

"Dance."

"Sorry." He sounded genuinely contrite at the social slip.

"Not a problem at all." Kathryn Dance hugged the boy hard.

THE BOY WOULD be fine, the medic explained.

His worst injury from the ordeal-in fact, the only serious one-was from hitting his forehead on the mantel in the living room of Chilton's house when the San Benito County SWAT team stormed the place.

They had been conducting furtive surveillance-as they awaited Dance's arrival-when the commander had seen through the window that the boy had entered the living room with a gun. James Chilton too had pulled a weapon. For some reason, it then appeared that Travis was going to take his own life.

The commander had ordered his officers in. They'd launched flash-bang grenades into the room, which detonated with stunning explosions, knocking Chilton to the floor and the boy into the mantelpiece. The officers raced inside and relieved them of their weapons. They'd cuffed Chilton and dragged him outside, then escorted Donald Hawken and his wife to safety and gotten Travis to the paramedics.

"Where's Chilton?" Dance asked.

"He's over there," the sheriff said, nodding to one of the county deputy's cars, in which the blogger sat, handcuffed, his head down.

She'd get to him later.

Dance glanced at Chilton's Nissan Quest. The doors and tailgate were open and Crime Scene had removed the contents: most notable were the last roadside cross and bouquet of red roses-now tinged with brown. Chilton would have been planning to leave them nearby, after he'd killed the Hawkens. Travis's bike also rested near the tailgate, and in a clear evidence bag was the gray hoodie that Chilton had stolen and worn to impersonate the boy and that he'd picked fibers off to leave at the scenes.

Dance asked the paramedic, "And the Hawkens? How're they?"

"Shaken up, as you can imagine, a bit bruised, hitting the deck when we moved in. But they'll be fine. They're on the porch."

"You doing okay?" Dance asked Travis.

"I guess," he answered.

She realized what a foolish question it was. Of course he wasn't okay. He'd been kidnapped by James Chilton and been ordered to murder Donald Hawken and his wife.

Apparently rather than going through with that task he'd chosen to die.

"Your parents will be here soon," she told him.

"Yeah?" The boy seemed cautious at this news.

"They were real worried about you."

He nodded, but she read skepticism in his face.

"Your mother was crying, she was so happy when I told her."

That was true. Dance had no idea what the father's reaction had been.

A deputy brought the boy a soft drink.

"Thank you." He drank the Coke thirstily. For his days in captivity, he wasn't doing too badly. A medic had looked over the raw chafing on his leg; it wouldn't need treatment other than a bandage and antibiotic cream. The injury was from the shackles, she realized, and a wave of fury coursed through her. She glared at Chilton, who was being transferred from the San Benito to a Monterey County car, but the blogger's eyes remained downcast.

"What's your sport?" the Coke-toting cop asked the boy, trying to make conversation and put Travis at ease.

"Like, I game, mostly."

"That's what I mean," the young crew-cut officer said, taking the skewed response to be a result of the boy's temporary hearing loss from the flash-bangs. More loudly he asked, "What's your fave? Soccer, football, basketball?"

The boy blinked at the young man in the blue outfit. "Yeah, I play all those some."

"Way to go."

The trooper didn't realize that the sports equipment involved only a Wii or game controller and that the playing field was eighteen inches diagonally.

"But start out slow. Bet your muscles've atrophied. Find a trainer."

"Okay."

A rattling old Nissan, the red finish baked matte, pulled up, rocking along the dirt driveway. It parked and the Brighams climbed out. Sonia, tearful, lumbered over the grass and hugged her son hard.

"Mom."

His father too approached. He stopped beside them, unsmiling, looking the boy up and down. "You're thin, pale, you know what I mean? You hurtin' anywhere?"

"He'll be okay," the paramedic said.

"How's Sammy?" Travis asked.

"He's at Gram's," Sonia said. "He's in a state, but all right."

"You found him, you saved him." The father, still unsmiling, was speaking to Dance.

"We all did, yes."

"He kept you down there, in that basement?" he said to his son.

The boy nodded, not looking at either of them. "Wasn't so bad. Got cold a lot."

His mother said, "Caitlin told everybody what happened."

"She did?"

As if he were unable to control himself the father muttered, "You shouldn'ta took the blame for-"

"Shhh," the mother hissed sharply. His brow furrowed but the man fell silent.

"What's going to happen to her?" Travis asked. "Caitlin?"

His mother said, "That's not our concern. We don't need to worry about that now." She looked at Dance. "Can we go home? Is it all right if we just go home?"

"We'll get a statement later. No need right now."

"Thank you," Travis said to Dance.

His father said the same and shook her hand.

"Oh, Travis. Here." Dance handed him a piece of paper.

"What's that?"

"It's somebody who wants you to call him."

"Who?"

"Jason Kepler.

"Who's that?…Oh, Stryker?" Travis blinked. "You know him?"

"He went looking for you, when you were missing. He helped us find you."

"He did?"

"He sure did. He said you'd never met him."

"Like, not in person, no."

"You only live five miles from each other."

"Yeah?" He gave a surprised smile.

"He wants to get together with you sometime."

He nodded with a curious expression on his face, as if the idea of meeting a synth world friend in the real was very strange indeed.

"Come on home, baby," his mother said. "I'll make a special dinner. Your brother can't wait to see you."

Sonia and Bob Brigham and their son walked back to the car. The father's arm rose and slipped around his son's shoulders. Briefly. Then it fell away. Kathryn Dance noted the tentative contact. She believed not in divine salvation but in the proposition that we poor mortals are fully capable of saving ourselves, if conditions and inclinations are right, and the evidence of this potential is found in the smallest of gestures, like the uncertain resting of a large hand on a bony shoulder.

Gestures, more honest than words.

"Travis?" she called.

He turned.

"Maybe I'll see you sometime…in Aetheria."

He held his arm over his chest, palm outward, which she supposed was a salute among the inhabitants of his guild. Kathryn Dance resisted the temptation to reciprocate.

Dance walked across the yard to Donald and Lily Hawken, her Aldo shoes gathering dust and plant flecks. Crisp grasshoppers fled from her transit.

The couple sat on the front porch steps of Chilton's vacation house. Hawken's face was harrowing to see. The betrayal had clearly affected him to his core.