The Bone Tree (Penn Cage #5) - Greg Iles Page 0,6

martyrs into his embrace. I watched in silence while Caitlin reenacted the oldest ritual in the world, cradling the older man’s head and murmuring maternal reassurance into his ear. Touching my newly scarred face with my right hand, I drove the nails of my left-hand fingers into my palm. Pain is proof of life.

After Johnston expired, I comforted Caitlin as though I had some purchase on reality. But that was only another delusion, though I didn’t know it then.

Then . . . ?

With alarm I realize that these events happened only a minute ago, if that. Does a man in shock know he is in shock?

Probably not.

If I rewind history fifteen minutes, this chaotic mass of fire and smoke was a stunning lake house. Now its owner is being cremated in the ruins of his home, and we two survivors stumble about as reality slowly returns with soul-searing clarity. An imaginary newscaster’s voice speaks in my head: Brody Royal, multimillionaire sociopath, burned to death last night in a fire started by his antique flamethrower. Sadly, Royal was unable to complete the murders he was contemplating prior to his demise, due to a sudden and suicidal intervention by a man he’d ridiculed as harmless for the past twenty years—

Brody’s house shudders like some giant creature, and then, with the sound of cracking bones, one wing implodes. The heat diminishes for a few seconds, then suddenly intensifies, as though feeding on the evil within. Soon it will drive us farther back, away from Johnston’s body.

Caitlin stares at the burning wreckage as though she can’t quite grasp what’s happening. Five minutes ago we both believed we were dead, yet here we stand. Covered with ash and streaked with sweat, her face has a burn scar to match my own. I want to speak to her, but I don’t quite trust myself.

Beyond her, the lake’s mirrored surface reflects back an image of the tower of flame, and with a rush of fear I see our future in it. Like the pillar of fire the Israelites followed across the desert, this beacon too will lead men to us.

“Is that a siren?” Caitlin asks, looking away from the raging flames, and toward the narrow lane at the edge of the light.

“I think so.” My older ears belatedly pick up the distant whine.

“That way,” she says, pointing westward, away from the lake.

I peer through the darkness, but I can’t make out any police lights through the orange glare and waves of superheated air.

“What about Henry’s files?” Caitlin asks. “I should hide them.”

The charred box that Caitlin salvaged from the burning basement stands a few feet from Sleepy Johnston’s body. From the looks of the ashes inside, little of Henry Sexton’s journals remains.

“There’s nowhere to hide them,” I tell her.

“What about the boathouse?” she asks, a note of hysteria in her voice.

“They’ll search that. It’s too late anyway. A neighbor’s coming. Look.”

The nearest house is seventy-five yards away, but a pair of headlights has separated from the garage and begun nosing down toward the lane that runs along the lake here. Perhaps emboldened by the siren, the car’s driver has finally decided to investigate the fire. Must have heard the gunshots earlier, I think, or they’d have been here long before now.

The siren is growing louder and rising in pitch. “That’s probably the Ferriday fire department,” I think aloud. “But the law won’t be far behind. I hope it’s Sheriff Dennis, but it could be the FBI or the state police. They may question us separately. We need to get our stories straight.”

Bewilderment clouds Caitlin’s eyes. “We both lived through the same thing, didn’t we?”

I take her hand, and the coldness of it startles me. “I don’t think it’s quite that simple.”

“Everything you did in Brody Royal’s basement was self-defense. They were torturing us, for God’s sake!”

“That’s not what I mean. The tough questions won’t be about what happened in the basement. They’ll be about why it happened. Why did Royal kidnap us? Why did he want to kill us? We’ve held back a lot over the past couple of days.” And not just from the police, I add silently.

“What if we just say we don’t know?”

“That’s fine with me, so long as you don’t plan to publish any stories about it in the Examiner.”

At last, realization dawns in her eyes. “Oh.”

A half mile from the lake, the whirling red lights of a fire engine break out from behind the trees that line the levee, then veer onto