The Wolf Gift (The Wolf Gift Chronicles 1)

He went online and ordered a laser printer for this library, and a desktop Mac to be delivered as soon as possible, and a number of Bose CD players, and a whole slew of Blu-ray. Bose CD players were the only obsolete technology he loved.

He unpacked the Bose players he,d brought - both of which were also radios - and put one in the kitchen and the other in the library on the desk.

He was not hearing any voices. The night was empty around him.

And the change was not happening to him.

For a while he drifted about the house, pondering, talking aloud to himself, thinking. He had to keep moving. He put signs where the televisions should be installed. He,d sit down, get up, pace, climb the stairs, roam the attics, come down.

He went outside into the rain, roaming the back part of the house. Under the overhang he looked into the various lower bedrooms of the servants, quarters, each of which had a door and a window on the stone walkway. All seemed in order, with simple somewhat rustic furnishings.

At the end of the wing he found the shed, stacked with a huge amount of firewood. A worktable ran along one side, with axes and saws hung on hooks on the wall. There were other tools, anything a man might need for repairs large and small.

Reuben had never held an ax in his hands. He took down the largest of the axes - it had a three-foot wooden handle - and felt the edge of the blade. The blade itself must have weighed about five pounds and was a good five inches long. And sharp. Very sharp. All his life he,d seen men in movies and television programs splitting logs with an ax like this. He wondered how he might like doing that out here himself. The handle itself didn,t weigh much at all; and surely the weight of the blade gave the ax its force. If it hadn,t been raining, he would have looked for the place where the wood had been split.

But something else occurred to him - that this was the only weapon he had.

He carried the ax back into the house with him and set it down beside the fireplace in the big room. It looked simple enough there - the paint had long ago peeled from the wooden handle - between the pile of firewood and the fire, almost out of sight.

He felt he could get to that quickly enough if he ever had a need. Of course - before some two weeks ago, it had never occurred to him that he could defend himself with any weapon, but he had not the slightest qualm now.

The restlessness was almost unsupportable.

Was he resisting the change? Or was it just too damned early? It had never come on him this early. He had to wait.

But he couldn,t wait.

His hands and feet were tingling. The rain was acutely loud now, and he thought he could hear the surf again, but he wasn,t sure.

He couldn,t bear it here any longer. He made a decision. He had no choice.

He took off his clothes, hung them up neatly in the closet, and put on the big loose clothing he,d bought in Santa Rosa.

He was swallowed by the giant hooded sweatshirt and oversized pants, but it didn,t matter. The brown trench coat was simply too big to wear, but he,d take it with him.

He took off his shoes and slipped into the huge rain boots. He put the scarf around his neck, tucked it in, and put the sunglasses in the coat pocket along with his phone and his wallet and his keys, and picking up the ski mittens, and his computer, he went out.

He almost forgot to set the alarm, but he remembered it and punched in the code.

All the lights were still on.

As he drove away, he could see in his rearview mirror the lights burning all over the first and second floors. He liked it. The house looked alive and safe and good to him.

Oh, this was glorious to own this house, to be here in this dark forest once again, to be close to this immense mystery. It felt good to work his feet as he drove. He stretched his fingers, then closed them tight on the leather-covered steering wheel.

The rain was washing over the windshield of the Porsche, but he could see through it quite easily. His headlamps flashed over the uneven bumpy road ahead, and he found himself singing as he rode along, pushing the speedometer as high as he dared to go.

Think. Think like a kidnapper who has to hide forty-two children. Think like a ruthless tech genius that can bludgeon a little girl to death and throw her on a lonely spit of beach in the rain, and get back to where he,s warm and comfortable, where he,s got his computer handy for routing his bank demands and his calls.

Why, those kids are probably right under everybody,s nose.

Chapter Ten

REUBEN KNEW THE BACK ROADS of Marin County the way he knew the streets of San Francisco. He,d grown up visiting friends in Sausalito and Mill Valley, and taking the inevitable hikes on Mount Tamalpais and through the breathtaking paths of Muir Woods.

He didn,t need to visit the sheriff,s office before beginning his little dragnet, but he did it anyway, because he was hearing the voices now clearly, all around him, and he knew he,d be able to hear their voices inside without their ever knowing it, of course, and they just might know something they were not telling the world.

He parked near the San Rafael Civic Center and took up his stand in the trees, far from the gaggle of reporters camped before the doors.

His shut his eyes, and sought with all his will to home in on the voices within the office, surfing for the likely words these people would be repeating, and within seconds he was picking up the threads. Yes, the kidnappers had called again, and they weren,t going to tell that to the public, no matter who was demanding it. "We tell what serves a purpose!" a man insisted. "And there is no purpose." "And they,re threatening to kill another child."

Babble and protest; point and counterpoint. The bank in the Bahamas would give them absolutely no cooperation, but in truth their hackers weren,t finding out anything there that was helpful on their own.

But the body of the little girl, rain or no rain, surf or no surf, had yielded soil samples from shoes and clothing that connected her to Marin. Of course that wasn,t conclusive; but the absence of any other soil samples was a good sign.

And it was all Reuben needed to confirm what he already suspected.

Cop cars were crawling the forest and mountain roads.

There were random checkpoints and house-to-house searches.

So law enforcement was his only enemy now as he began his search.

He was getting back in the car when something caught him off guard. It was the scent - the scent of evil that had been so unmistakable in the nights before.

He turned his head, uncertain, not willing to be drawn off on any errand other than the kidnap, and then the voices came clear to him from the melee of the reporters - two youthful, mocking voices, offering innocent questions, relishing answers that gave them information they already possessed. Sinister, particular, undeniable. "For our school paper, we just thought we,d come out here...."