In this gripping new thriller from the No 1 Sunday Times bestselling author and creator of The Stranger, Wilde follows a tip that he hopes will finally solve the mystery of his abandonment, but instead sends him straight into the arms of a serial killer.
CHAPTER ONE
“At the age of somewhere between forty and forty-two—he
didn’t know exactly how old he was—Wilde finally found
his father.
Wilde had never met his father. Or his mother. Or any family
member. He didn’t know their names or where he was born or
when or how he, as a very young child, ended up living alone in
the woods of the Ramapo Mountains, fending for himself. Now,
more than three decades after being “rescued” as a little boy—
“ABANDONED AND FERAL!” one headline had put it; “A MODERN-DAY
MOWGLI!” shouted another—Wilde sat no more than twenty yards
from a blood relative and the elusive answers to his mysterious
origin.
His father’s name, he had recently learned, was Daniel Carter.
Carter was sixty-one years old and married to a woman named
Sofia. They had three grown daughters—Wilde’s half sisters, he
assumed—Cheri, Alena, and Rosa. Carter lived in a four-bedroom
ranch on Sundew Avenue in Henderson, Nevada. He worked as
a residential general contractor for his own company, DC Dream
House Construction.
Thirty-five years ago, when young Wilde was first discovered
living alone in the woods, doctors estimated his age to be between
six and eight years old. He had no memory of parents or caregivers
or any life other than scrounging around to survive in those mountains
alone. That little boy stayed alive by breaking into empty
cabins and summer homes, raiding the refrigerators and pantries.
Sometimes he slept in empty homes or in tents he’d stolen from
garages; mostly, if the weather was cooperative, young Wilde liked
to sleep outside under the stars.
He still did.
After he was located and “rescued” from this untamed existence,
Child Services placed the little boy with a temporary foster
family. With the onslaught of media attention, most speculated
that someone would come forward immediately and claim “Little
Tarzan.” But days turned into weeks. Then months. Then years.
Then decades.
Three decades.
No one ever came forward.
There were rumors, of course. Some believed that Wilde had
been born into a mysterious and secretive local mountain tribe, that
the little boy had run off or been handled in a somewhat negligent
manner, and so the tribespeople feared admitting he was one of their
own. Others theorized that the little boy’s memories were faulty, that
he couldn’t really have survived on his own in the harsh woods for
years, that he was too articulate and intelligent to have raised himself
with no parents. Something awful had happened to little Wilde,
these people surmised—something so traumatic that the boy’s
coping mechanism had blocked out all memory of the incident.
That wasn’t true, Wilde knew, but whatever.
His only early memories came in incomprehensible snap-flash
visions and dreams: a red banister, a dark house, a portrait of a
man with a mustache, and sometimes, when the visions decided
to be audible, a woman screaming.
Wilde—his foster father had come up with that apropos
name—became something of an urban legend. He was the local
boogeyman who lived alone in the mountains. If parents in the
Mahwah area wanted to make sure that their offspring came home
at sunset—if they wanted to discourage them from wandering
through those miles of thicket and trees—they’d remind their
children that once darkness set in, the Boy from the Woods would
come out of hiding—angry, feral, thirsting for blood.
Three decades had gone by and still no one, including Wilde,
had a clue about his origin.
Until now.
From his rental car parked across the street, Wilde watched
Daniel Carter open the front door and head toward his pickup
truck. He zoomed in on his father’s face with his iPhone camera
and snapped a few photos. He knew that Daniel Carter was
currently working on a new town house development—twelve
units, each with three bedrooms, 2.5 baths, and according to the
website, a kitchen with “charcoal-colored cabinetry.” Under the
“about” section of DC Dream House Construction’s website, it
read, “For twenty-five years, DC Dream House Construction has
designed, built, and sold top-quality, top-value homes that are
personalized to meet your needs and dreams.”
Wilde texted three of the photos to Hester Crimstein, a renowned
New York City attorney and probably the closest thing he
had to a mother figure. He wanted Hester’s take on whether she
thought there was any resemblance between himself and the man
who was supposed to be his biological father.
Five seconds after hitting send, Hester called him.
Wilde answered and said, “Well?”
“Whoa.”
“‘Whoa’ as in he looks like me?”
“Ask him why he left a little boy alone in the woods. Oh, then call me immediately because I’m super curious.”
“If he looked any more like you, Wilde, I’d think you were using
age-progression software.”
“So you think—”
“It’s your father, Wilde.”
He just held the phone to his ear.
“You okay?” Hester asked.
“Fine.”
“How long have you been watching him?”
“Four days.”
“So what are you going to do?”
Wilde thought about that. “I could just leave well enough alone.”
“Nah.”
He said nothing.
“Wilde?”
“What?”
“You’re being a candy-ass,” Hester said.
“Candy-ass?”
“My grandson taught me that phrase. It means coward.”
“Yeah, I got that.”
“Go talk to him already. Ask him why he left a little boy alone
in the woods. Oh, then call me immediately because I’m super
curious.”
Hester hung up.
Daniel Carter’s hair was white, his skin sun-kissed, his forearms
ropey probably from a lifetime of manual labor. His family, Wilde
had observed, seemed pretty tight. Right now, his wife, Sofia, was
smiling and waving goodbye as he got into his pickup truck.
The past Sunday, Daniel and Sofia had a family barbecue in
their backyard. Their daughters Cheri and Alena and their families
had been there. Daniel worked the grill wearing a chef ’s hat
and an apron reading “Trophy Husband.” Sofia served sangria and
potato salad. When the sun dropped low, Daniel lit the firepit, and
the entire family actually roasted marshmallows and played board
games, like something out of a Rockwell painting. Wilde expected
to feel a pang as he watched them, pondering on all he had missed,
but in truth he felt very little.
It wasn’t a better life than his. It was just different.
A big part of him wanted to drive to the airport and fly home.
He had spent the last six months living something of a normal,
domestic existence in Costa Rica with a mother and her daughter,
but now it was time to return to his remote Ecocapsule deep in
the heart of the Ramapo Mountains. That was where he belonged,
where he felt most at home.
Alone. In the woods.
Hester Crimstein and the world at large may be “super curious”
about the origin of “The Boy from the Woods,” but the boy himself
was not. He had never been. In his view, his parents were either
dead or had abandoned him. What difference did it make who
they were or what their reason was? It wouldn’t change anything,
at least not for the better.
Wilde was good, thank you very much. There was no reason to
add unnecessary upheaval to his life.
Daniel Carter turned the ignition key of the pickup truck. He
headed down Sundew Avenue and made a left on Sandhill Sage
Street. Wilde followed. A few months back, Wilde had succumbed
to the temptation and reluctantly put his DNA into one of those
online genealogy databases that were all the rage. It didn’t mean
anything, he told himself. If a match came in, he could still ignore
it if he chose to. It was a noncommittal first step, nothing more.
When the results came in, there was nothing earth-shattering.
His closest match was someone with the initials PB, whom the
site described as a second cousin. Big deal. PB reached out. Wilde
was about to respond, but life ended up throwing him a massive
curveball. Surprising even himself, Wilde ended up leaving the
woods he had always called home for an unconventional attempt
at family life in Costa Rica.
It hadn’t gone as planned.
Two weeks ago, while packing to leave Costa Rica, the DNA
genealogy site had sent him an email with the subject: “important
update!” They’d matched him to “a relative sharing far more DNA”
than “any other in your relative chain.” This account went by the
initials DC. At the bottom of the email, a hyperlink urged him to
“learn more!” Against his better instincts, he clicked it.
DC was, according to the age, gender, and match percentile,
Wilde’s father.
Wilde had just stared at the screen.
Now what? The door to his past was right in front of him.
All he had to do was turn the knob. Still, Wilde hesitated. Didn’t
this crazy, intrusive website work the other way too? If Wilde had
received notification that his father was on the site, didn’t it stand
to reason that his father received one saying that his son was
here too?
Why didn’t DC reach out to him?
For two days, Wilde let it go. At one point, he almost deleted
his entire genealogy profile. No good could come of this. He knew
that. Over the years, he had gone through all the possible machinations
that might explain how a little boy had ended up in the
woods, left alone for years, left (if we want to be frank) to die.
“My name is Wilde.” He took a few steps closer so that he wouldn’t have to shout. “I think you’re my father.”
When he’d called Hester about this paternal match and his
reluctance to pursue it, she’d said, “You want my take?”
“Sure.”
“You’re a schmuck.”
“Helpful.”
“Listen to me closely, Wilde.”
“Okay.”
“I’m a lot older than you.”
“True.”
“Quiet. I’m about to drop some knowledge on you.”
“Did you get that line from Hamilton?”
“I did.”
He rubbed his eyes. “Continue.”
“The ugliest truth is better than the prettiest lie.”
Wilde frowned. “Is that from a fortune cookie?”
“Don’t be a wiseass. You can’t walk away from this. You know
that. You need to know the truth.”
Hester was, of course, right. He may not want to turn that
knob, but he couldn’t spend the rest of his life staring at the door
either. He signed back onto the DNA site and wrote a message to
DC. He kept it short and simple:
I may be your son. Could we speak?
When he hit send, an auto-reply bounced back. According to
the website, DC was no longer in the database. That was both
suspicious and odd—his father choosing to delete his account—
but it suddenly hardened Wilde’s resolve to get answers. Screw
turning the doorknob; it was time to kick the damn door down.
He called Hester back.
If Hester’s name seems familiar, it could be because she’s
legendary television attorney Hester Crimstein, host of Crimstein
on Crime. She made some calls, used her connections. Wilde
worked some other sources from his own years in what is dubiously
dubbed “freelance security.” It took ten days, but eventually
they got a name:
Daniel Carter, age sixty-one, of Henderson, Nevada.
Four days ago, Wilde flew from Liberia, Costa Rica, to Las
Vegas, Nevada. Now here he was, in a blue Nissan Altima rental,
following Daniel Carter’s Ram pickup truck to a construction site.
He had stalled long enough. When Daniel Carter pulled up to the
town house development, Wilde parked on the street and got out
of the car. The construction noise was in full throat, deafening.
Wilde was about to make his move when he saw two workers
approach Carter. Wilde waited. One man handed Carter a hard
hat. The other handed him some sort of earplugs. Carter put them
all on and led his cohorts into the heart of the development. Their
work boots kicked up desert dust to the point where it was hard
to see them. Wilde watched and waited. A sign put up with two-by-
fours announced in too-ornate a font that vista mews—could
you come up with a more generic name?—would feature “three-bedroom
luxury town houses” with a starting price of $299,000. A
red banner slashing left to right read: “coming soon!”
Daniel Carter might have been the foreman or general contractor
or whatever you might call the boss, but the man clearly didn’t
mind getting his hands dirty. Wilde watched as he led his workers
by example. He hammered in a beam. He threw on protective
goggles and drilled. He inspected the work, nodding toward his
employees when he was happy, pointing out deficiencies when he
wasn’t. The workers respected him. Wilde could tell. Or maybe
Wilde was projecting. Hard to know.
Twice Wilde saw Daniel Carter alone and started to make his
approach, but someone always got there first. The site was busy, in
constant motion, loud. Wilde hated loud noises. Always had. He
decided to wait and catch his father when he got back home.
At five p.m., the workers started to leave. Daniel Carter was
one of the last. He waved goodbye and hopped into his pickup.
Wilde followed him back to the ranch on Sundew Avenue.
When Daniel Carter turned off the ignition and stepped out
of the truck, Wilde pulled up and parked in front of his house.
Carter spotted Wilde and stopped moving. The front door of
the ranch opened. His wife, Sofia, greeted him with an almost
celestial smile.
Wilde slid out of the car and said, “Mr. Carter?”
His father stayed by the open truck door, almost as though he
were debating getting back in and driving away. Carter took his
time, staring warily at the interloper. Wilde wasn’t sure what to say
next, so he went with the simplest:
“Could I have a word with you?”
Daniel Carter glanced toward Sofia. Something passed between
them, the unspoken language of a couple who had been
together some three decades, Wilde assumed. Sofia stepped back
inside and closed the door.
“Who are you?” Carter asked.
“My name is Wilde.” He took a few steps closer so that he
wouldn’t have to shout. “I think you’re my father.”
Extracted from The Match by Harlan Coben, out now.
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