Харлан Кобен - The Boy from the Woods

“I’m not much of a talker.”

“But I’m a supergood listener,” Sondra said.

He nodded. “Yeah, that’s true.”

She took a step back. “Come on in, Wilde.”

And he obeyed.

When Wilde woke up, the first thing he thought about — even before he realized that he was in a strange yet familiar hotel room rather than his Ecocapsule — was Laila.

Damn.

Sondra sat in a chair with her feet tucked under. She looked out the window, her face lit by the morning sun. For a few long moments, neither one of them moved. She stared out the window. He stared at the profile of her face. He tried to read her expression — serenity? regret? contemplation? — and he realized that whatever he deduced would probably be wrong. Human beings were never that simple to read.

“Good morning, Sondra.”

She turned to him and smiled. “Good morning, Wilde.” Then: “Do you have to leave right away?”

Again, despite the warning he had just given himself on human beings, he tried to read her. Did she want him to leave — or was she giving him an out if he wanted to take it?

“I have no plans,” he said. “But if you do—”

“How about we order some breakfast?”

“That sounds great.”

Sondra smiled at him. “I bet you know the breakfast menu by heart.”

He didn’t reply.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean...”

Wilde shook it off. She asked him what he wanted to eat. He told her. She stepped into the suite’s living room and picked up the phone. Wilde got out of bed naked. He was padding toward the bathroom when his phone erupted.

Not buzzed or rang or vibrated. Erupted.

He quickly snatched it up and stopped the alarm.

“Everything okay?”

He looked at the screen. The answer was no.

He swiped left, which some might find ironic under the circumstances. It wasn’t Tinder — it was his security system. A car had pulled into his hidden road. No big deal. The alarm doesn’t sound for that. It just triggers the other motion detectors. Two of them had gone off. As he watched the screen, a third lit up. That meant people, at least three, were walking in the woods in search of his home. He swiped left again. A map came up. A fourth alarm triggered. They were traveling from the south, east, and west toward the Ecocapsule.

“You have to go,” Sondra said.

Wilde wanted to explain. “Someone is trying to find where I live.”

“Okay.”

“I mean, this isn’t some bullshit excuse.”

“I know,” she said.

“How long are you staying in town?”

“I’m leaving today.”

“Oh.”

“‘Oh’ or ‘whew’?” She held up her hand. “Sorry, that was uncalled for. I know you won’t believe this, but this is new to me.”

“I believe it,” he said.

“It’s not new to you though.”

“No, it’s not.”

“You didn’t sleep well,” she said. “You called out a lot. You rolled around like the blankets were binding you.”

“I’m sorry if I kept you awake.”

There was really nothing more to say. Wilde got dressed quickly. There was no kiss goodbye. There was no true goodbye. He preferred it that way. Sondra stayed in the suite’s other room while he got ready, so maybe she did too.

There was no time to travel on foot, so Wilde grabbed a taxi parked outside the Sheraton. He didn’t give the driver an address because he didn’t really have one. He had him drive up Mountain Road. Wilde rarely traveled on this stretch of highway. Too many bad memories. When the driver took the curve, the same curve David’s car had taken so many years ago, Wilde felt his hand grip the seat. He eased his breathing. The small white cross was still there, something Hester probably would have found unnerving if not ironic. Wilde had no idea who had put it there all those years ago. He’d been tempted to remove it — it had been there too long — but who was he to intervene?

“There are no houses up here,” the driver told him.

“I know. Just pull over when I tell you.”

“You going for a hike?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

Half a mile later, he gave the driver the signal. He handed the man a twenty for an eight-dollar fare and got out near the mountain’s peak. His small hidden road — the access point for his visitors — was closer to the mountain’s base. He normally climbed up the hill toward his home. Today he’d climb down, checking the security map on his phone as he did. From what he could make out from the motion detectors, his visitors were approaching the capsule slowly and carefully and from all sides with almost military precision.

Disturbing.

Why were they coming for him? And equally if not more important: Who was coming for him?

One might think it a stroke of luck that Wilde happened to be out the night of this invasion, but that wasn’t the case. If he’d been home, the alarms would have roused him. He would have taken off before they got within five hundred yards of the Ecocapsule. He’d long ago set up escape routes and hiding places, just in case anyone ever tried to get to him.

He could be gone in no time.

No one knew these woods like he did. In here, in this thicket, they would have no chance against him. It didn’t matter how many of them there were.

But the questions remained: Who were they, and what did they want?

Wilde eased down the mountainside, letting gravity make the journey easier. He veered to his right by a forked tree, toward the closest triggered motion detector. Being in the woods, amongst animals and wildlife, the motion detector could be accidentally set off quite easily. A deer goes by. A bear. Even squirrels or raccoons sometimes. But Wilde had a system, one alarm dominoing to the next before any warnings were issued, proving the movements had to be somewhat calculated and thus most likely human. Between the car parked on his road — ding one — and the follow-up triggers, he knew that this was no false alarm. It wasn’t one man or even two or three. More likely there were five or more.

Coming for him.

It was eight a.m. The woods were cool, that early crisp still in the air. Wilde moved with pantherlike quiet. He didn’t really have a plan here. It was mostly reconnaissance. Keep your distance. Learn about your adversary. Check out their positions and numbers.

Try to figure out what the hell they want with him.

He slowed when he reached the rock formation with a trigger motion detector. He checked the device, just to see if there was some kind of malfunction that might explain why so many had gone off. The detector was intact. He picked up the pace now.

And there they were.

Two men together working in tandem. Smart. One he could pick off, take out before he communicated with the others. But two would be much more difficult. They were dressed head-to-toe in black. They had their heads on a swivel, one taking the lead and looking forward, the other pulling up the rear. They stood far enough apart, so again they couldn’t be taken down by one assailant.

Professionals.

Wilde moved in for a closer look. They both wore earpieces. Probably communicating with the others. These guys were coming in from the north. There were teams coming in from the south, east, and west too. Assuming two men a team, that meant a minimum of eight opponents.

Wilde was good at tracking, obviously better than any of these guys, but that didn’t make him invisible. Overconfidence leads to mistakes. The men were armed. Their eyes constantly swept the landscape, and realistically, if Wilde wasn’t careful, there was a decent chance he could be spotted.

Every once in a while, the taller man checked something on his smartphone screen and changed their direction slightly. Whatever app they were using, it was clearly leading them to the Ecocapsule. Wilde had no idea what the technology was, but then again if someone wanted to find his home badly enough, there were tracking devices that would eventually lead them to it. He’d always known that. He’d prepared for it.