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  “You’ve had your chance to talk. We’re moving on to another phase in our plan. Wish we didn’t have to, but there’s apparently no other way,” said Jack.

  The ambient light was fading. Zeph and Noah were closing the giant, vertical louvers, set after set, blackening Valhalla. The outdoors, the valley, the great expanse, disappeared.

  “You’re going to trap the other guys too, aren’t you?” said Davis.

  Noah answered, while activating yet another set of louvers. “Actually, we thought of that, but it’s just not practical. We can’t catch and control all the hunters. Three’s our max!”

  “So, what are you doing then?” asked Lennox.

  “Relax, all you have to do is sit there,” said Jack.

  “And try not to make him angry!” added Zeph.

  Jack smiled, amused by Zeph’s comment. He reached over for a remote controller.

  “Enough talking.”

  Jack clicked a button and music pumped up loud, filling Valhalla, shaking the entire house. Jack threw the controller back onto a couch and walked out of the living room, the music reverberating.

  “Turn that shit off!” yelled Lennox, but to no avail.

  Moving to the music, Jack hopped to every door and every window in the house, locking it down, closing every curtain and every blind, securing every latch and locking device, including the metal bars installed just after Lennox’s break-in the previous year.

  Valhalla was no more.

  In its place rose a fortress, armoured, impenetrable, and dark.

  “Did you send the email?” asked Jack, when he got back to the living room.

  “Yeah, it’s done,” said Noah.

  Jack put his arm around Noah’s shoulders.

  “I love you, bro,” said Jack.

  “Me too,” said Noah. “Now we wait, right?”

  “Now we wait.”

  “I’m hungry,” Zeph said.

  “You’re always hungry!”

  “What are we doing?” asked Zeph.

  “Nothing. Waiting.”

  “Then we should eat.”

  “Fine, let’s eat.”

  They moved to the kitchen and fixed themselves an elaborate meal of cold cuts, microwaveable pre-prepared frozen foods, chips, soda pop, milk and cookies.

  They fed some of it to their captives, offering Millet some of the less sugary items.

  After they’d eaten, the three boys went room-to-room, double-checking their supplies like soldiers preparing for war.

  And it was a war. Their declaration had just gone out from Noah’s laptop to a dozen or so carefully selected email addresses, one of which belonged to the Deputy Chief of Police of Beaufort County. Once Tom ‘Brooder’ Doran had read the short message, he wasted no time gathering his staff, his vehicles, and his weapons. Then he headed out to the house owned by the unusually trouble-prone Carignan family.

  On the way, Tom attempted to phone Chief Arthur Bernier, but his wife Gabrielle made it clear he was in no shape to join in the operation.

  “Look, he’s the Chief of Police, for God’s sake,” Tom said. “Can you remind him of that? I’ve got a situation here! Three residents are being held against their will at the Carignan house. Tell him that. And by a bunch of armed kids. He should be there with us, with me, to work this through. Christ, Gabrielle, tell him anything you have to tell him, stick him in the shower and give him coffee. He needs to get out here. What am I supposed to do with these kids?” said Tom.

  But he was truly “indisposed,” she told him, which Tom understood to mean he was totally pissed. Wasn’t that just fucking perfect.

  Then that’s the way it would have to be. Though Tom wished he had the old man next to him now.

  He ran the message he’d read over and over in his head as he drove toward the Carignan house at the head of a caravan of police, first responders, and volunteers.

  “We have Claude Millet, Jeffrey Lennox, and Keith Davis,” it said. “Their lives are in peril unless the Town of Beaufort and the seven hunters of September 23rd, 2012, respond to our demands. Be warned, no one is to try to enter our house, or we’ll shoot them, just as our father was shot. Another message, with our demands, will follow soon.”

  The words resonated in Tom. The seven hunters of September 23rd, 2012. Seven hunters. Those kids knew precisely who they were, but what dark plan had they set in motion?

  They were coming to the house now. It looked ominous on this grey day.

  The rain fell.

  PART 3

  CROSSING THE LINE

  CHAPTER 10

  CHOOSING SIDES

  Tom instructed his staff to set up their vehicles in a half-moon formation past the gravel driveway and over the lawns of the Valhalla gardens. He didn’t care if their vehicles destroyed grass and bushes. Their intervention took precedence. Three men were being held hostage. As strange as it was, a couple of kids were responsible, and Tom had a good idea why. But what could they possibly expect would come from doing this?

  Tom took out his cell phone and scrolled in his call history for Catherine Carignan’s number. When he found it and dialled, it rang and rang.

  “Where’s their mother?” Tom asked Sergeant Hanes.

  “Don’t know,” he answered.

  “We need to know if she’s in the house or not? Her car’s not there, or it’s in the garage. Usually they park outside, I think.”

  Molly Kearns, a junior officer in training, came over from her cruiser and handed Tom a piece of paper. Tom compared the number with the one he had just dialled.

  “This is the house phone number,” she explained.

  “Okay, thanks,” said Tom, dialling it.

  “Hello.” It was the younger boy.

  “This is Deputy Chief Tom Doran of Beaufort County Police. Who am I speaking with?” verified Tom.

  “Noah.”

  “Okay, Noah, who’s in charge in there?”

  “We are.”

  “Who’s ‘we,’ Noah?”

  “My brother Jack, Zeph and me.”

  “Zeph? Who’s Zeph, Noah? A friend?” Tom turned to Molly and Sergeant Hanes. “There’s a third kid in there with them. Name’s Zeph. I think it’s a nickname. Kid of the neighbours over that way. Send somebody to find the parents, now.” Then, he turned his attention back to the phone. “Noah, where’s your mom? Is she with you?”

  “Nope, she’s at work. She had nothing to do with this.”

  “Noah, can I talk to Jack?”

  “He’s kind of busy,” said Noah.

  “Yeah, I’m sure he is, but can I speak with him?”

  “I’ve got to go, Deputy Chief Doran.”

  “No, no, stay with me a second, Noah, please.”

  “We’ll contact you with our prepared statement very soon. Bye.”

  “No, no, stay on the line!”

  But it went dead. “Noah?” Tom cursed under his breath, even as he admired the kid’s composure and firmness. He pocketed his phone.

  “That went well,” said Tom, sarcastically, to Hanes and Kearns, and then walked toward the home’s main door.

  Bang!

  A shot rang out near Tom. His entire staff dived for cover, whipping out their guns, holding their breaths, watching Tom to see what he would do next.

  Tom stayed calm and moved slowly forward.

  Bang!

  Another shot, the sound even closer to Tom.

  He looked up at the Carignan house. A rifle barrel stuck out of an upper bedroom window, darkened toward the inside.

  Sergeant Hanes, now leaning on the far side of his cruiser, raised a rifle toward the window. Tom motioned with his open hand for him to do nothing. Hanes sighted the window but loosened his trigger finger. The rifle in the window was still pointed in Tom’s direction.

/>   Tom stepped back, returning to Sergeant Hanes. “Alright. We’ll wait this out a bit,” Tom told his crew. “Let’s get their mother here. Let’s get in contact with her. Her name is Catherine Martelle-Carignan. Not sure if she uses her married or maiden name now. She’s a widow to their father, you know the story. She may be real touchy about things. Say whatever you have to say but get her here calmly and fast. We’ll see if she can talk them down.”

  Tom sized up the gigantic house from behind the vehicle barricade. The bedroom window was now closed. He could hardly imagine what was going on in there. How could three kids—assuming their mother wasn’t involved, or any other adult—have taken three local hunters hostage and then calmly controlled the situation? These kids were not to be underestimated.

  “Hey, Brooder, what do you think they’re trying to do?” said Hanes.

  Tom didn’t have time to answer him. His cell phone vibrated, and he pulled it from his pocket.

  “It’s from the Carignan boys,” said Tom to his staff, reading the message, then looking up at them with a sense of urgency. “Where’s the laptop?” he asked.

  Tom tried again to reach Catherine. An automated voice told him “the message box of the caller you are trying to reach is full.”

  Tom briefly thought of throwing his phone into the woods, but shoved his phone back in his pocket instead.

  Catherine was already on her way, speeding along Highway 10 to Beaufort. As her Audi roared, she tried to imagine what her sons were up to and and, in spite of what happened, how peaceful being in Beaufort must be for them.

  Catherine had gotten up later than usual after a sleepless night. Then she was slow to make herself a coffee and slow to shower and dress. The coffee was soothing, and as she sipped it, she thought of the mint tea she had sipped with Nora Vineberg. That had been soothing, too. She didn’t take care of herself enough, she thought. No, she didn’t take care of herself nearly enough. Things should change, she thought. And change they would, considering the position she had put herself in since that mint tea with Nora Vineberg. Her world would change as soon as Mulroy Arsenault got wind of Nora and Saul’s change of heart. George Mulroy, and even Kevin, would get to the source of the Vinebergs’ new perception of the Larivée Technology Park development. When her name came up, they would go to war.

  Bring it on, thought Catherine.

  Catherine turned off the highway, and the road narrowed. There was a growing number of cracks and fissures in the pavement the closer she got to the forests, and then the pavement turned to dirt. A light rain made it gooey, like clay.

  Whatever form the war with Mulroy Arsenault took, Catherine was ready. Tired, but ready. She thought of her boys. She missed them. No matter what decisions she made, life would get more complicated from here on. She had to be okay with that, she told herself.

  A young deer blocked the road. It was lanky and quite still, chewing leaves.

  Catherine braked immediately, but her tires skidded on the gravel. The fawn, as surprised as it was frightened, snapped into action. For an instant, it hesitated about what direction to take, and then, after a brief snaking path, almost a dance, it chose the same direction as Catherine’s skidding car, which was beginning to arc toward the side of the road. The fawn kicked, and its hooves knocked against the front chassis. It was all happening so fast.

  The fawn got away unscathed, to Catherine’s relief, and the Audi came to a halt as its front wheels completed their arc, digging themselves into a mound of roots and earth on the side of the road. When all was motionless, Catherine remembered one of her last thoughts before the encounter with the fawn. She remembered thinking that she didn’t take enough care of herself. How true that was. She wiped her brow, turned off the ignition, and opened the door.

  She walked around the car to see if there was any damage. It seemed okay. She had been lucky. The fawn had been lucky. There was no sign of it and no sign of any other deer. They often moved in herds. That much, Catherine knew.

  She went to get back into her car, thinking of checking her phone, in case there was a message from her boys. She swung the car door open and reached for the door panel where she kept the phone in airplane mode.

  Which was when she heard the roar of an oncoming pick-up truck. A flash of blue and yellow screeched by in a ball of dust, millimetres from where she was standing. Its horn was blaring, its engine was roaring, and its large tires were grinding against the uneven road. She flattened herself against her car.

  Enough close calls. Catherine hurried into her car, started and revved the engine, and moved on.

  Catherine hated gas stations. She had never had any especially bad experience when filling up, and the attendants were usually friendly, but she found gas stations creepy. Maybe it was the smell of the grease and the tires. The quicker she could get out of there, the better.

  She checked her phone before getting back on the road, and it was inundated with work emails and messages. One day she would take the time to learn to use a hands-free system, she had resolved.

  And that was when she heard a message from Beaufort Police, requiring her presence immediately at her home in Beaufort County. An incident had occurred, something about her sons taking someone, or several men, hostage.

  This couldn’t be true.

  She started driving and, despite the rules against operating a phone while driving, she played the message over again. And then again. She tried to call the police back, then stopped and speed-dialled the Valhalla number instead.

  No answer. What the hell was going on?

  She drove faster.

  Kevin Mulroy was not looking forward to his meeting with his father. It always meant trouble, when he was called in at the last minute. At least he wasn’t hung over this morning. He had been trying to avoid alcohol over the past few days. There was too much at stake, and he was aware that his reputation with the firm had taken a beating.

  He had to find Catherine, and he had a bad feeling he would fail. He had left messages on both her numbers. He had texted or called nearly everyone in senior management. And he was now going door to door within the company, to all her usual hangouts. He had checked in the marketing department, where she liked to review graphic work. He had just poked his head in the engineering division, where her office was located.

  “Have you seen Catherine?” he asked the team members, all of whom were focusing on their own missions and deadlines. A few heads tilted up, with questioning looks. But zip, she wasn’t there.

  Kevin went all the way in to her office. Were her things there? Was she in the building at all?

  Catherine hated clutter, he knew, and she kept her office in perfect order. This morning he found nothing out of the ordinary, except that she wasn’t there. He had turned to leave when he noticed Catherine’s laptop on her desk, and only her laptop. Everything else had been cleared. This seemed odd. Out of curiosity, he reached over to the computer and moved the mouse, activating the cursor. The screen brightened. Kevin had no trouble reading the words that appeared on it, filling the screen.

  “I quit,” is all it said.

  Kevin was stunned. He turned to the other section of the desk, where there was a second computer, a desktop, its wide screen also black. He went to it and jiggled the mouse. The screen lit up.

  “And fuck you, Mulroy,” it said.

  The rain had stopped. Tom and his small crew gathered at a stone bench in the Valhalla gardens, focused on an open laptop. Tom was looking at an email from the Carignan boys.

  “Is this public?” asked Tom.

  “I don’t think so, only if someone were to share the link you just received,” explained Hanes.

  “That’s all we need,” said Tom, bringing the cursor to the link.

  Click, click.

  The computer screen went black for an instant, then filled with a dimly lit shot of the inside of the Carig
nan house. The camera panned over to show three captive hunters, who were hardly moving. The camera panned again to show the makeshift rifle turret and Noah sitting behind the rifle.

  “You crazy kids,” said Tom, thinking out loud, echoing the sentiments of his fellow officers.

  They continued watching as the camera moved on to show a chair in the living room, where Jack was sitting, rifle in hand. He sat up, filling the screen with his head and shoulders. He looked tired and his hair ruffled, but his sharp blue eyes shone brightly into the camera.

  “There’s just three of us. My brother Noah, our friend Zeph, and me, Jack. By now you know, and you’ve seen, that we were able to capture three of seven weekend hunters. Four remain out there somewhere, without a care in the world. We know who they are. We believe all seven are guilty, to some degree, in our father’s death. They killed our father, whom we loved. He was a great father and didn’t deserve the end he got. I had a speech written, but that doesn’t matter.” Jack paused, without taking his eyes from the camera.

  “Look, all we want is information. That’s it. We want the truth about the shooting of Paul Carignan on September 23rd, 2012, at 8:00 p.m., just outside our home at 702 Chemin Van Kleet, in Beaufort County. For those involved, this is your chance to step forward and take responsibility. If you don’t, we know who and where you are, and we’ll strike against you, your loved ones and your friends. We don’t believe we’re wrong about this. We don’t want any of this, but there was no other way. And if you don’t come forward, we’ll do what we have to do. Be ready!”

  Jack got up and stepped out of frame, tossing loose pages of the script he hadn’t followed.

  The video froze on a black frame.

  Tom, and everyone with him, took a deep breath. The video was a lot to take in.

  “Okay, have we been able to reach their mother yet?” asked Tom.

  Hanes seemed to grumble with impatience.

  “You have something better to do?” said Tom, stepping away.

  “Where’re you off to?” asked Hanes.