Snowbound (19 page)

Will and Devlin walked together out of the library, leaving Kalyn unconscious on the floor. They turned the corner into the candlelit passage, the three bodies lying up ahead, thankfully obscured in the low light.

“Why don’t you hang back, Dev,” Will said. “No sense taking in what you don’t have to.”

“Okay, Dad. I think each of the guests has a master key that opens all the rooms.”

“And the dining hall is up ahead on the left?”

“Yeah.”

“Yell if you need me.”

Will went on, stepping carefully between lakes of blood as he negotiated his way past the men he’d killed, marveling at the merciful numbness.

Three torches had been ignited in the great dining hall, the walls aglow and the far end of the table littered with cards, poker chips, wads of cash, wineglasses, shot glasses, highballs, martini glasses, cocktail shakers, bottles of wine, liquor, and two enormous bongs, all shimmering in the firelight.

“Anybody in here? I won’t hurt you if you come on out.”

He walked to the near end of the table, the room reeking of cigars and marijuana smoke, soured with spilled alcohol and the licorice stench of absinthe.

Ten feet away, he spotted a dark shape lying down against the wall beside a potted spruce tree. Will’s finger moved onto the trigger.

He heard the sputtering of a drunken snore, and his eyes pulled detail out of the dark: an older silver-haired man having partied out of his league.

Something clanged in the kitchen.

“Come out of there!” Will hollered. “Your chance to do this without getting hurt is slipping away.”

The kitchen doors swung open and two men staggered out—a man in his late twenties, naked except for his boxer shorts, looking disoriented and sheepish, and a shorter, much rounder kimonoed man, balding and more sober.

“Tell him it’s cool, Reynolds.”

“Keep your mouth shut, Sean.” To Will: “What’s going on here?”

“Come closer.”

The men stepped forward into the full illumination of a torch.

“Who are you?” Will asked.

“Guests of this lodge. Who the fuck are you?”

Footsteps sounded outside in the passage. Will glanced over his shoulder. “Just me, Dad.”

“I told you wait out there.”

Reynolds said, “Where’s everybody else?”

“They’re dead, sir.”

Sean said, “Oh shit.”

“Are you law enforcement?” Reynolds asked.

“No.”

Devlin sidled up to her father.

“Then what gives you the right to—” The racket of a pumping shotgun stopped him cold. Will turned, to see his daughter leveling a Mossberg on both men.

She said, “You with no shirt on, step out of the way, please.”

Sean staggered around the table and sat down unsteadily against the wall beside his father. Reynolds looked confused and terribly put upon. “Honey, what are you doing?” Will said.

She shouldered the shotgun.

“I’m gonna kill that fat man.”

“No, Devlin—”

“Trust me, Dad, he has it coming.”

“In cold blood?”

“Yep.”

“Wait just a second.”

“Why are you so angry with me?” Reynolds asked.

“Remember that pregnant woman you raped this morning?”

“I don’t know what you’re—”

“You told her you’d made eighty-four million dollars this year? That you could kill her if you wanted?”

“I think you’re mistaking me for—”

“I’m not mistaking you for anybody.”

Will said, “Devlin, this isn’t the way to handle this. You didn’t have a choice with Paul, but you do now.” He reached for the shotgun, saying, “Here, give me that,” but his voice was lost in the shattering report. Will watched, stunned, as his daughter struggled to pump the Mossberg again.

Reynolds was sitting on the floor in a puddle of himself, not making a peep, just staring at the shredded kimono and all that was leaking through it.

Devlin approached him with the Mossberg already shouldered, said, “I hope you go to hell,” and shot him in the face.

When her ears quit ringing, the only sound in the room was Sean’s whimpering.

Devlin looked back at her father, saw something like disappointment or disgust.

“Please don’t look at me like that, Dad.”

Will just shook his head, and for a moment Devlin thought he might cry.

“You wanna know why I’m never going to lose a wink of sleep over that?”

“Why?”

Devlin reached into her pocket and pulled out a key.

“Come with me. I’ll show you who I watched him rape.”

They locked Kalyn, Sean, and his father into separate rooms on the first floor of the south wing, and Will followed Devlin up the staircase to the fourth, where they stopped in front of the door to room 429.

“Here.” She handed her father the master key.

“What do you want me to do with this?”

“Just open it.”

Will slipped the key into the lock.

“I’m gonna wait out here,” Devlin said. “You’ll need this.” She handed him a lantern, and Will turned the key, pushed the door open.

The room was dark. Someone lay crying in bed. He set the lantern on the table, assumed it was a woman under the covers, one of the captives.

Will said, “Everything’s okay now. The people who’ve kept you here and the man who hurt you today are dead.”

The covers turned back.

Will’s wife sat up, and he lost his breath.

“Rachael?”

Firelit tears trailed down her cheeks.

He had dreamed of this a thousand times—what it would be like to hold his wife again, to wrap his arms around her. None of them had approached the sweetness or the pain of this moment, and he was crying because of her smell. “You smell like you,” he whispered.

“Is this real?” Rachael asked.

“I promise it is.”

“Where’s Devlin?”

“Outside in the hallway.”

“Tell her to come in.”

Will called their daughter, and Devlin came, climbed into bed between them. They sat in the low light of room 429, huddled together under the covers, Devlin rubbing her mother’s round belly and doing most of the talking, answering an endless stream of questions about school, boyfriends, her disease, their new life in Colorado, both parents in tears half the time, laughing the rest.

It had been over five years since they’d last been together. They talked and held one another and cried, all knowing in the back of their minds that they could sit on this bed for twenty years, for fifty, but it wouldn’t matter. There would be no real catching up, no recovery of lost time, no understanding of the damage the separation had caused. They were different people now—haunted, ridden with scars and nightmares. There was no going back to that stormy July night in Ajo, Arizona. That Innis family was gone, and they would have to find themselves and one another again, start over, and pray that somehow the pieces fit back together.

Despite the joy and the overriding hope, it wasn’t until this moment, sitting in this bed together on the fourth floor of this old lodge, that they each understood how much had been stolen from them, the incomprehensible arithmetic of what they had lost.

• • •

The Innises didn’t sleep that night. They walked together up and down the corridors, looking for the rooms where the rest of the women were kept.

It was the most gut-wrenching, emotional two hours of Will’s life, setting these prisoners free, telling them that the people who’d held them here and destroyed their lives were dead, incapable of ever hurting them again. Most of the women broke down, hysterical with relief. A handful had gone mad. One laughed at the news. One just sat on her bed and stared out the window, comatose. Kalyn’s sister, Lucy Dahl, didn’t say anything when they unlocked her door, just walked out without a word, and Will couldn’t yet bring himself to broach the topic of her sister. In the north wing, they found two women emaciated from starvation, so weak that Will had to carry them down into the library, each weighing less than eighty pounds, their hair thinned, their teeth falling out. A woman on the third floor had died in her sleep at least a month ago, and after seeing her, Will stepped into the alcove and knelt down in a corner and wept. So much pain here, so much ruin.

They pushed all the furniture into the lobby and brought in mattresses and blankets from the nearest rooms. Twenty-two women, half of them pregnant, crowded into the library as Will added logs to the fire and stoked up the blaze, the room of books warming, the fire shadows moving in endless patterns across the walls as the blizzard shrieked and snow piled up against the French doors. A woman who’d given birth that morning sat in a corner nursing her infant, mother and child wrapped in blankets.

Will stood in the open doorway, looking across the library, wall-to-wall with mattresses. Some of the women were already sleeping, wrapped in each other’s arms, others crying softly to themselves and rocking back and forth, as if not quite ready to give themselves over to this reality, afraid it would vanish from under their feet as it had so often before.

Will said, “Could I have your attention for a minute, please? My daughter and I are going to get some food from the kitchen, since we haven’t eaten all day. Is anyone hungry?” No one spoke or raised a hand. “Tomorrow, if this storm has let up, a bush pilot is supposed to land on a nearby lake at three in the afternoon. I’m going to head out early and try to reach him, fly back to Fairbanks and get help. Try to find a big seaplane to fly to this inner lake. Hopefully, come tomorrow evening, you’ll all be back in civilization, with your families en route.”

• • •

A half hour later, Devlin sat on the hearth before the fire, eating beef stew and buttered biscuits.

When she finished her late supper, she crawled under the covers next to her mother. She could feel the warmth of the fire through the blanket, the room dark, quiet, filled with the respirations of women sleeping, the crack and hiss of the flames devouring the wood, a slumber party like Devlin could never have imagined. She was asleep within a minute.

• • •

Rachael lay on her side, facing her husband, his face awash in firelight. She thought for sure he’d aged more than five years, his features harder, leaner, not a hint of the baby fat that had once smoothed his jawline, given him those boyish good looks she’d fallen for in college. She even thought she saw strands of silver.

Will opened his eyes. Rachael smiled.

“Are you warm?” he whispered. She nodded, the child in her belly active. She wanted to take Will’s hand, let him feel the tiny thrusts of the baby’s knees and elbow. “You’ve got that deep-thinking look on your face,” he said.

“It’s going to be difficult.”

“What?”

“Reintegrating, coming together again. I’m not sure how I’ll make it on the outside. I feel like I’m being released after a twenty-year prison sentence. Like I won’t know what to do with myself. How to be a mother again. A wife.”

“We’ll make it work, Rachael.”

“You say that, but … you don’t realize—”

“I don’t care how hard it is.”

“You say that now.”

“I mean it now. I’ll mean it later.”

“I want you to feel something.” She took his wrist and pressed the palm of his hand against the side of her stomach.

“Kicking,” Will said.

“Yeah. It’s his busy time. Usually wakes me up doing this in the middle of the night.”

“You know it’s a he?”

“Not for certain, but I’ve gotten good at telling. Feels like boy energy.”

“How many have you had since you’ve been here?”

“This is my fourth.”

“What happened to the others?”

“They sold them.”

“Jesus. How far along are you?”

“Six and a half months. I’m going to keep him.”

“Why would you—”

“I’ve had three of my babies taken away from me—a week after birth. I think they must sell them. I tried not to get attached, fought it. But it didn’t matter. They didn’t know what they came from. All they knew was that I was their mother, and I loved every one of them, and I still do. I want to keep this one. Raise him. Might be the only good thing about any of this. I know this is difficult for you. I’ve been damaged beyond repair in your eyes.”

“I don’t feel that way, Rach.”

“Well, if you do—”

“I don’t.”

“
If
you do … just understand that I don’t expect you to do something you aren’t capable of. You know, this almost would’ve been easier if you’d met someone, remarried. At least you wouldn’t have a choice then.”

Will put his hands on Rachael’s face. “You’re still my wife. Devlin’s mother. I have no illusions about how hard it’s gonna be. But we are going to try. I want to.”

“How do you feel about keeping this baby?”

“Puts my stomach in knots, but maybe that’ll change. You can help me. Look, you were a psychologist, so keep in mind all you’ve been through. You’re in no shape to try to think about your life when you leave this place. Just try to stay in the moment for now. I am.”

“Why didn’t you remarry?”

“Because I’m in love with you.”

“You didn’t meet anyone who—”

“I never opened myself up to it.”

“Why?”

“Because I still loved my wife. Even when I thought you were dead.” He reached out and wiped her face, touched the tiny white scar under her bottom lip that he used to kiss religiously. “Now close your eyes and think only about the fact that you’re lying between your husband and daughter. We both love you, and you’re safe. That’s it. Now sleep.”

The sunlight passed clear and sharp through the glass panes of the library windows.

A perfect silence. No wind. No snow driving against the doors.

Devlin sat up and pushed off the covers, squinting in the brilliant light. Her father was already up. Her mother, too. She rubbed her eyes and yawned and went to find them.

They were standing at the entrance to the lodge, holding steaming mugs of coffee, the doors pulled open, surface hoarfrost glittering outside under the midmorning sun, several feet of snow piled up on the porch. The lake water was still and deep green, rimmed with a layer of thin ice that smoked beneath the sun. The bodies of Ethan and the guards had been dragged away, their blood frozen on the stone. Rachael and Will turned as Devlin approached.

“Morning, honey,” her mother said. Devlin stood between them, noticed for the first time that she was a few inches taller than her mother. “So how long will you be gone?” Rachael was asking.

“Hope to be back tonight,” Will said, “but if we don’t reach Fairbanks until after dark, I don’t know. Can you keep things under control if we don’t come back until tomorrow?”

“Yeah. But I worry about you going out there with the wolves loose.”

“I’ll have the shotgun, plenty of shells.”

“You have to take Devlin?”

“Yeah, Buck and I will fly back here to the inner lake and pick her up. I want to get her into a hospital tonight. I worry all this is going to get her sick.”

In a supply room, four doors down from where Paul sat dead in a chair beside a cold fireplace, Will found snowshoes, a parka, and an extra box of twelve-gauge buckshot.

He ate an early lunch of beef stew, and Will said good-bye to the women in the library, explained that he would try to return that evening, but if it wasn’t possible, first thing tomorrow morning at the latest.

Rachael and Devlin walked Will to the front door, where he cinched the straps of his snowshoes down across the tops of his boots.

Rachael hugged her husband.

“I’ll see you soon,” she said, and watched him step outside and climb up onto the snowpack.

She stood in the warm, direct sun, watching Will go, his snowshoes sinking into a foot and a half of powder with every step, her eyes burning from the harsh reflection off the ice crystals.

Seconds before retreating back into the lodge, she and Devlin registered a distant droning, which grew exponentially louder with every passing second, until a floatplane buzzed the lodge’s roof, its engine screaming as it descended toward the water, the pontoons catching sun, glimmering like mirrors.

Her heart leaped as the plane touched down midway across the lake, Will stopping just fifty yards out from the lodge—he wouldn’t have to make the long haul to the outer lake.

The engine had cut off. Devlin was squinting, trying to make out the details of the plane, though it had almost reached the far end of the lake, more than a mile away.

Her smile faded.

Will had turned around, tracking back toward the lodge as fast as his snowshoes allowed.

Something was wrong. Will was wearing that same worried expression he used to get just prior to opening arguments for a big trial.

He reached them breathless and sweating.

“What’s wrong?” Rachael asked.

Will leaned over with his hands on his knees, drawing in lungfuls of cold air.

He shook his head, gasping between ragged breaths. “That isn’t our plane.”