A Dark Lure
CHAPTER 1
Wednesday. Five days to Thanksgiving.
The library in the East End was quiet. Only 4:00 p.m. and already almost full dark outside, low cloud and a fine Pacific Northwest drizzle cloaking the city, traffic a watery blur behind the rain-streaked windows. He’d crossed the US border into Canada at the Peace Arch around noon, using a NEXUS card.
Now he sat at a computer station at the back of the long room, the bill of his ball cap pulled low over his brow. His clothing was purposefully generic—denim jacket, jeans, work boots. He’d chosen the East End because it was a place of blue collars and transients: street people, the homeless, humans who’d fallen through cracks in society. It was a landscape into which he could blend as effortlessly as a buck melting into a backdrop of dry thicket.
He opened up a social media page and scanned for new posts.
Nothing fresh. Or at least, nothing that interested him.
He clicked open another page, and then another. Still no responses to the posts he’d made from Portland two days ago. Before exiting each social media page he typed this message:
Still searching for my biological parents. I am eleven years old. Female. Born July 17 at Watt Lake, British Columbia . . .
For his own social media profile he’d uploaded a photo of a dark-haired kid that he copied off some mother’s Facebook site. It was the same image he used for all the adoption reunion sites he’d been routinely trawling since his release from an Arizona correctional facility a month ago.
Computer proficiency was something he’d accomplished while doing time for involuntary manslaughter. In prison he’d also learned from an inmate about the proliferation of these adoption search and reunion pages on social media. He’d had no access to the Internet while inside, but upon his release he’d immediately conducted a traditional Internet search for “Sarah Baker.” He’d found not one single online reference to Sarah Baker in the past eight years. Yes, there were others out there with the same name, but no sign of the Sarah he wanted. The countless archived newspaper articles, the feature stories that mentioned her, all seemed to have come to a screeching halt eight years ago. As if her slate had been wiped clean.
As if Sarah Baker had simply ceased to exist.
Or, she’d changed her name, taken on a new identity, was trying to hide.
That was when, on a hunch, he’d turned to the adoption sites.
On these public pages, without oversight or restriction, adopted children of all ages, along with the parents of kids surrendered for adoption, were seeking out and finding estranged biological relatives. He’d read the commentary of experts who claimed that while this new phenomenon was moving families toward more transparency, it also raised new questions. Pitfalls that authorities in the field hadn’t yet figured out how to handle.
For him it was a hunter’s wet dream.
At every opportunity on his way up to the border he’d stopped at libraries and Internet cafés. Casting out his lines. Dangling his lures like delicate dry flies, ever so gently, upon the surfaces of cyber pools and eddies where he felt his prey might be lurking in shadows, holding against the currents. Waiting.
Watching for a . . . He stilled as something snared his attention.
Mother looking for eleven-year-old.
Quickly he clicked on the link. Not a match. Wrong birth date. Wrong physical type. He rubbed the whiskers on his jaw—the hair dye irritated his skin. Overall this was a crapshoot. Perhaps she’d already reconnected with the kid. Maybe she didn’t want to know. Maybe she was happily married, had moved on. Or was dead.
But a hunter, a good hunter, possessed patience. He trusted his gut, and he always knew the mind and habits of his prey. Psychological profiling cut two ways. And he knew Sarah Baker.
He’d owned Sarah Baker.
He’d studied her for nine careful months before trapping her.
She’d been fully his for another five and a half months. Until he’d taken a risk born of hubris. A stupid mistake.
Words from his childhood sifted suddenly like smoke through his mind . . .
The only time you ever take a shot at last light, boy, is if you’re confident it’s going to be a clean kill shot, or you must be prepared to track down your wounded animal through the dark. Alone. You finish that job no matter what, no matter how many days or nights it takes, no matter how hungry or tired you get, you hear me, boy?
He’d prolonged the pleasure of his last spring hunt too long. He’d waited until very last light to take his final kill shot. He’d missed. She’d fired back and wounded him instead. And she’d slipped into the blackness of the forest.
But he felt in his bones that after she’d licked her wounds, Sarah Baker would come looking, if she hadn’t already. Motherhood was a powerful lure. And compassion, curiosity, openness—all her weaknesses. It was how he’d gotten her in the first place.
Wednesday. Five days to Thanksgiving.
The library in the East End was quiet. Only 4:00 p.m. and already almost full dark outside, low cloud and a fine Pacific Northwest drizzle cloaking the city, traffic a watery blur behind the rain-streaked windows. He’d crossed the US border into Canada at the Peace Arch around noon, using a NEXUS card.
Now he sat at a computer station at the back of the long room, the bill of his ball cap pulled low over his brow. His clothing was purposefully generic—denim jacket, jeans, work boots. He’d chosen the East End because it was a place of blue collars and transients: street people, the homeless, humans who’d fallen through cracks in society. It was a landscape into which he could blend as effortlessly as a buck melting into a backdrop of dry thicket.
He opened up a social media page and scanned for new posts.
Nothing fresh. Or at least, nothing that interested him.
He clicked open another page, and then another. Still no responses to the posts he’d made from Portland two days ago. Before exiting each social media page he typed this message:
Still searching for my biological parents. I am eleven years old. Female. Born July 17 at Watt Lake, British Columbia . . .
For his own social media profile he’d uploaded a photo of a dark-haired kid that he copied off some mother’s Facebook site. It was the same image he used for all the adoption reunion sites he’d been routinely trawling since his release from an Arizona correctional facility a month ago.
Computer proficiency was something he’d accomplished while doing time for involuntary manslaughter. In prison he’d also learned from an inmate about the proliferation of these adoption search and reunion pages on social media. He’d had no access to the Internet while inside, but upon his release he’d immediately conducted a traditional Internet search for “Sarah Baker.” He’d found not one single online reference to Sarah Baker in the past eight years. Yes, there were others out there with the same name, but no sign of the Sarah he wanted. The countless archived newspaper articles, the feature stories that mentioned her, all seemed to have come to a screeching halt eight years ago. As if her slate had been wiped clean.
As if Sarah Baker had simply ceased to exist.
Or, she’d changed her name, taken on a new identity, was trying to hide.
That was when, on a hunch, he’d turned to the adoption sites.
On these public pages, without oversight or restriction, adopted children of all ages, along with the parents of kids surrendered for adoption, were seeking out and finding estranged biological relatives. He’d read the commentary of experts who claimed that while this new phenomenon was moving families toward more transparency, it also raised new questions. Pitfalls that authorities in the field hadn’t yet figured out how to handle.
For him it was a hunter’s wet dream.
At every opportunity on his way up to the border he’d stopped at libraries and Internet cafés. Casting out his lines. Dangling his lures like delicate dry flies, ever so gently, upon the surfaces of cyber pools and eddies where he felt his prey might be lurking in shadows, holding against the currents. Waiting.
Watching for a . . . He stilled as something snared his attention.
Mother looking for eleven-year-old.
Quickly he clicked on the link. Not a match. Wrong birth date. Wrong physical type. He rubbed the whiskers on his jaw—the hair dye irritated his skin. Overall this was a crapshoot. Perhaps she’d already reconnected with the kid. Maybe she didn’t want to know. Maybe she was happily married, had moved on. Or was dead.
But a hunter, a good hunter, possessed patience. He trusted his gut, and he always knew the mind and habits of his prey. Psychological profiling cut two ways. And he knew Sarah Baker.
He’d owned Sarah Baker.
He’d studied her for nine careful months before trapping her.
She’d been fully his for another five and a half months. Until he’d taken a risk born of hubris. A stupid mistake.
Words from his childhood sifted suddenly like smoke through his mind . . .
The only time you ever take a shot at last light, boy, is if you’re confident it’s going to be a clean kill shot, or you must be prepared to track down your wounded animal through the dark. Alone. You finish that job no matter what, no matter how many days or nights it takes, no matter how hungry or tired you get, you hear me, boy?
He’d prolonged the pleasure of his last spring hunt too long. He’d waited until very last light to take his final kill shot. He’d missed. She’d fired back and wounded him instead. And she’d slipped into the blackness of the forest.
But he felt in his bones that after she’d licked her wounds, Sarah Baker would come looking, if she hadn’t already. Motherhood was a powerful lure. And compassion, curiosity, openness—all her weaknesses. It was how he’d gotten her in the first place.