Bone Secrets 03 - Buried

Buells’.”
    “Buells’?” Chris’s focus jerked back to Michael. “What happened at the Buells’?”
    Michael brought him up to date.
    “They think it’s my gun? I have one like that back at the house…or I had one.
Fuck!
”
    Chris pushed off the stairs and paced to the end of the walkway and back, lips silently swearing. Brian abruptly stopped his balancing practice long enough to watch his father. Michael glanced at Brian, gave him a wink, and after a pause, the boy resumed concentrating on his foot placement.
    Brian knows more than Chris realizes. He watches out for his father probably as much as his father watches out for him. Not healthy.
    “No one can live like something’s gonna jump out of the bushes every minute,” Michael said.
    Chris stopped pacing and planted himself in front of Michael. “Then I have to eliminate the threat.”
    “Eliminate the Ghostman. That’s already on my to-do list. And every cop in the state of Oregon. I think you’ve got some support going on.”
    Chris took a deep breath. “Why our family? Why did the Ghost want to destroy our family? He never talked about…Jamie’s family the way he did ours. It was like he had a mission to mess us up.” He glanced at Brian, but the boy had found a bug on the far side of the wraparound porch to poke at.
    “What are you saying?” Michael said slowly.
Was the kidnapping aimed to hurt The Senator?
    Frustration crossed Chris’s face. “He never threatened the other kids’ families. Just mine. And I always felt like his focus was on me…I mean…like the other kids were there accidentally.”
    “The kidnapping was because of you? To get at The Senator? Or Mom?”
    Chris scowled. “But he never said that. I inferred it, I think. The real Chris and I talked about it over and over. Why was the focus on me?”
    Michael’s stomach coiled. “Fuck. You didn’t say what happened to Jamie’s brother,” he whispered. “It’s not good, is it?”
    Chris shut his eyes. “No. It’s not.”

    “Come on, Chris! Move it!” Daniel begged. “We can’t stop now.”
    Chris looked like he couldn’t take another step. Daniel had been almost carrying him for several hours. He’d hooked Chris’s arm abouthis neck and simply dragged. They hadn’t seen water since they’d left the hellhole. And that was yesterday morning. Daniel looked up, trying to judge the time, but he couldn’t see the sun. The forest was too dense.
    They would never find a way out of the woods.
    Daniel didn’t care. He’d rather die in the woods than spend another minute with the Ghostman. The boys had made an agreement. Death was preferable to the life they’d been living, and they would do it together. It’d been Chris who’d figured out how to keep the bunker lid from fully latching when the Ghostman left. They’d tried for years to get it open. Blocking the latch had taken coordinated timing and distraction during a visit. One boy to distract and the other to slip the small piece of wood into the latch’s socket. From the Ghost’s perspective, the lid had fully locked as he left.
    Before they escaped, Chris had been struggling with a fever for a few weeks. The Ghostman had given him some medicine, and Chris had seemed better, but then he was suddenly sicker than he’d been to start with. The last three days he’d had a cough that’d shook his whole body. Today, he’d spit blood when he coughed. Last night had been so cold…Daniel didn’t want to think about sleeping in the dirt again.
    He’d covered up Chris with dirt and leaves, trying to get him warm, then slept with his arms around him for body heat. Had he even slept? It felt like he’d woken up every ten minutes to strange sounds in the woods. He’d expected the Ghostman to leap out from behind every tree. Chris’s bony body didn’t offer much in the way of body heat. He swore both of them had shivered all night, but at least it hadn’t rained.
    He knew it was summer. He didn’t know the month, but he did know the year. This was the second summer since he’d been taken. To him, summer meant the hole was slightly less cold. And the Ghostman would wear shorts.
    He breathed deep. The air smelled so rich and clean. The hole had stunk. It’d stunk after the first week. If only the clean air was enough to give Chris the energy to keep moving.
    Just before full dark last night, he’d seen a light. A moving light far off in the woods, and he’d known HE was looking for them. At