The Final Twist by Jeffery Deaver (free ebooks romance novels txt) 📕

depicted was Locomotive Number 4014, and was an impressive piece of machinery. It had a 4-8-8-4 wheel arrangement, which, she explained to him a few years ago, was the number of locomotive wheels from front to back; it’s how the machines are classified.

“Biggest expansion engine there ever was. It weighed more than a million pounds. It’s in a museum in Los Angeles. I want to see it someday.”

“We’ll make sure that happens.”

“You’ll come too, Russell?” she asks.

“Sure.” The older brother doesn’t look up from his book. Colter wonders what he’s reading. Russell has been into spy thrillers lately.

Mary Dove is in the kitchen, preparing dinner, while Ashton is in his study, the door closed, where he disappeared an hour ago after learning that his sons were all right.

Colter stretches and happens to glance to the mantel, where he sees a trio of framed pictures—two artist renderings and one photograph. The picture to the left is a sketch of a woman who has some Native American features. A handsome face, black hair parted severely in the middle, the sides dangling to her shoulders. She is Marie Aioe Dorion, the nation’s first mountain woman. She was of Métis heritage, indigenous people in the central part of the United States and southern Canada. Widowed early, Dorion survived in the wilderness for months with two small children, in hostile territory.

The center picture is a reproduction of a painting of a handsome, rugged man wearing leather and a raccoon hat that encompasses much of his head. He is John Colter, an explorer with the Lewis and Clark Expedition.

The photograph on the right is of Osborne Russell, the explorer, politician and judge, who was in part responsible for founding the Oregon Territory. He is the most recent of the three, surviving into the late 1800s; hence the photographic image.

These three individuals were the sources for the Shaw children’s names.

The study door opens and Ashton walks into the living room. He has changed a lot, Colter thinks, in the years since the family left the Bay Area for the Compound—to escape some threats that troubled him greatly but that he hasn’t discussed much with the children, other than to warn them to be on the lookout for strangers on the Compound. His hair has gone mostly white and is often, like now, mussed. He wears jeans, a white shirt with pearl buttons—Mary Dove made it—and a leather vest. On his feet, tactical boots, the sort a soldier might wear.

He is carrying a cardboard box.

“Everyone,” he says.

The three children look up. Mary Dove remains in the kitchen. The word was uttered in his speaking-to-the-children tone.

When they settle he looks at them one by one. Finally he says, “Never deny the power of ritual. Do you know what I mean?”

“Like in Harry Potter? The ceremonies at Hogwarts?” Dorie is a fan, to put it mildly.

“Exactly, Button.”

Colter is thinking of the Lord of the Rings trilogy but he doesn’t say anything.

Russell seems to be thinking of nothing in response. He just watches his father and the box he is holding.

“A general rule of survivalism is: ‘Never risk yourself for a stranger.’ But that’s not what I believe. What’s the good of learning our skills if we can’t put them to use and help somebody else?”

The three of them—his children, his students—sit motionless on couch or chair, looking up at the intense eyes of their father.

“Colter saved somebody’s life today. And I thought we should have a ritual.”

The boy’s face burns and he’s sure it turns red. Dorion’s, on the other hand, blossoms with happiness as she looks Colter’s way. He gives her a smile. Russell now gazes at the fireplace, where the flames had turned from energetic blue to subdued orange.

Ashton reaches into the box and extracts a small statuette of an eagle in flight. He hands it to Colter, who takes it. It’s heavy, metal. He’s worried that his father will expect him to make a speech. At fourteen he has rappelled down hundred-foot cliffs and borrowed a motorcycle from a friend in White Sulfur Springs, the nearest town, and hit ninety miles an hour on a road of imperfect asphalt. He has also pulled a pistol on an intruder in the Compound—that incident last year—and sent him on his way.

He would do any of those again rather than make a speech, even to this small audience.

“But he couldn’t have done that without the love and support of his brother and sister. So our ritual includes both of you too.” Ashton reaches into the box once more and takes out a statuette of a fox and hands it to Dorion. Her eyes ignite with pleasure. The only thing she likes more than locomotives is animals.

“And here’s yours.” He hands Russell a bear statuette. His brother says nothing but stares at the bronze, weighs it in his hand.

Shaw suddenly has a snap of understanding. The statues echo the nicknames of the children. Dorie is the clever one. Russell the reclusive one. And Colter the restless one.

Then the ritual is over—no speeches required—and Mary Dove announces that it’s time to eat.

After dinner—which would have been bighorn sheep but is now elk—Colter takes the statuette into his bedroom and sets it on a shelf beside his copies of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, Ray Bradbury’s short stories and a half-dozen law books, which for some reason he enjoys reading.

—

Now, years later, in the kitchen of the Alvarez Street safe house, Colter Shaw was looking at the same statue as intently as he was the night of the avalanche.

He recalled that when he left home to attend the University of Michigan and was packing his duffel bag for the trip he had noticed that the eagle statue was nowhere in his room.

Yet here it was now.

There was only one possible explanation for its appearance. His father had taken it with him when he’d come to the safe house. It was, maybe, a sentimental reminder of his son, something that Ash wanted