The Goodbye Man

Klein snorted at this claim. “You’re not getting away with this.”

“Here’s what comes next, Mr. Klein. You never arrived here. You’ll drive back through Hope’s Corner and keep going twenty miles, then turn around, head in this direction and drive off the road.”

Klein blinked in surprise. “Hold on a minute.”

“Make it look real. The crash, I mean. When you get out of the hospital, and back to work, you’ll move on to other stories and you’ll make sure that no one from your news site tries to cover the Foundation again. I don’t know how you’ll do that but that’s in your lap.”

“Hospital?”

Hugh handed his tablet to Adelle — then lunged forward and, before the reporter could lift a protective arm an inch, Hugh delivered a palm-open blow to Klein’s nose. The reporter barked a scream. Hugh then pointed to the man’s mouth as he glanced at one of the Assistance Unit men, who stepped behind him and wrapped his hand over Klein’s lips. Hugh moved closer, gripped the reporter’s left wrist, and twisted — Shaw, a champion wrestler in college, knew what was coming. He didn’t hear the sound as the shoulder popped from the socket; dislocations are loud internally but not to the world. Klein’s second scream was higher pitched, though muffled from the slab of a palm pressed against his face. He sagged.

Hugh gestured and his man lowered his hand, withdrew a tissue and wiped Klein’s blood from his fingers. Hugh adjusted his stance, centered himself briefly and, lightning fast, drove a fist into the reporter’s cheek. This time Shaw could hear the bone break.

Klein went out for a moment. The Assistance Unit men kept him upright.

Hugh leaned forward. “Can you hear me, Mr. Klein?”

“Wh... why?” He spit blood. He was crying. “No more. Please, please...”

“Can you hear me?”

The reporter started to lift his arm and wipe the blood that streamed from his nose and mouth but screamed again; he’d used the arm with the dislocated shoulder.

Hugh grimaced, apparently irritated at the sound. “You understand what I said?”

“No stories.”

“And no police. Other than to tell them about your accident. Because if you say anything more” — he gestured at Klein’s shattered face — “there’ll be consequences.”

“No, no, please.” Sniffing. “I’ll do anything.”

Hugh nodded to the others.

The men guided the staggering reporter into the forest behind the Administration building. Shaw could see that they turned left toward the parking lot. Apparently there was a path there that ran north and south, hidden by foliage. Via this route they could get to the lot and not be seen by anyone in the camp. Shaw backed away through the bushes and returned to the front of the Administration building.

This changed everything.

Hugh and the other three might be the isolated negatives the deprogrammer had told him about. After all, Hugh seemed to take the reporter’s incursion like a personal violation, and his sadistic response was absurdly out of proportion. Everyone else in the camp could be helpful professionals. Still, the fact that anyone here would resort to violence like that, when they could easily have called the police to report a trespasser, told Shaw that this was no place for anyone vulnerable and suicidal.

He’d stumbled when it came to protecting Adam Harper. He needed to find out how much danger the other members here were in.

Of course, there was a problem.

Facial recognition...

The initial application to the Osiris Foundation required a picture; it made sense to match that against the applicant who arrived in person. But they were using recognition software that prowled through public — and likely private — databases to weed out undesirables and catch intruders, like reporters and spies from competitors.

If the FR system failed to identify him, he’d stick with the original plan: participate in the Process himself and see what this place was all about — find out if Adam had been bullied enough that he found suicide a better alternative to dealing with the police.

Of course, if the recognition came back labeling him as Colter Shaw, he supposed he could just sprint for the gate, make a camp in the surrounding woods and reassess from there.

Forget the luggage. He’d lose his computer but he’d lost computers before.

Never put inanimate objects before your hide.

So, leave the truck, sprint to the parking lot and vault the chain link, take to the forest. Follow Harbinger Road back to Snoqualmie Gap. Call Mack, have money wired. Then buy what he needed and trek back here, setting up a base nearby, and start his surveillance.

That is, if he weren’t beaten so badly that would not be an option.

The front door opened. It was the Intake receptionist. She seemed to take note that he was standing, not sitting on the bench. “Please come in, Mr. Skye.”

He was glancing toward the path that would take him back to the parking lot. He saw three tunicked Assistance Unit guards standing in a circle in front of their building. How many were there in total? And how many subscribed to their boss’s bare-knuckle approach to security?