Snowbound (26 page)

It was a cold night, windless, starry. The gravel crunched under Will’s boots.

The woodpile stood against the stone chimney at the side of the house. He filled his arms with logs and carried them to the front porch, dropped the first load at the foot of the steps. On the way back to the woodpile, he stopped. He could see the pasture in the distance, glowing under the full moon. There were shadows moving across it.

He froze. The thudding of his heart seemed to pluck at the silence like a guitar string as he counted half a dozen deer sauntering over the turned earth, working their way toward the river for an evening drink. They looked albino in the moonlight, so bright out there, he could see their breath clouds.

Will exhaled slowly as the fear receded, and he wondered if it would always be this way—that breathless anxiety as he rounded corners, listening for clandestine footsteps in the silence, looking for movement where none should be. He could tell himself a thousand times that the Alphas would never come for them, but that didn’t mean it would or wouldn’t happen. Messing had been right. These things, he couldn’t control.

Live your life, Mr. Innis.

Fuck the fear.

Will reached into his pocket, pulled out Javier’s BlackBerry, which he’d taken from Kalyn’s pack two months ago, before they’d flown out of the Wolverine Hills.

He kept it charged and always with him like a pocket time bomb, waiting for a call—from whom, he did not know. Maybe Jav’s wife or an Alpha compadre.

He turned it on, stared at the glowing screen. There had been no calls.

The BlackBerry wasn’t going to vibrate. He’d been holding on to this device as an obsessive-compulsive talisman—he checked for messages every hour—as if before the Alphas came for them, they would call first, as if nothing could happen to his family without advance warning, as long as he religiously checked for incoming communication.

“I should throw this piece of shit at the chimney,” he said aloud, his grip tightening around the BlackBerry, his finger inadvertently pressing a button on the side.

The screen changed to show a list of folders, sms outbox drawing his attention, and he clicked the icon to open the folder containing sent text messages, wondering why this hadn’t occurred to him before. Maybe he could find some phone numbers and addresses of Javier’s associates, forward them on to Agent Messing.

The last two text messages had been sent to the same phone number, Phoenix area code:

FRIDAY, October 19, 2007 • 10:41
A.M.
AKDT J—Arctic Skies, Buck Young. We leave at 1:00
P.M.
today for the Wolverine Hills: 200 miles west of Fairbanks. K.

THURSDAY, October 18, 2007 • 11:03
P.M.
AKDT J—Fairbanks, Alaska. Here in one piece, but barely. K.

He opened a calendar on the BlackBerry, his heart accelerating, mouth running dry. Eleven
P.M.
, on October 18, would have been the night he, Devlin, and Kayln spent in Fairbanks at the Best Western. October 19, the day they’d flown to the Wolverine Hills. The BlackBerry had been in Kalyn’s possession both days.

What the hell? You told him where to find us?

And a barrage of pieces that had been needling Will ever since he’d met Kalyn started to fall out of orbit and assemble themselves—things that had bothered him subconsciously, that had set up shop under his skin while he’d been too distracted, or unwilling, to pay them credence.

So you wanted out
, he thought.
You and Jav. And you brought us along for what?
He smiled as it hit him.
Because just disappearing wasn’t enough. You needed witnesses to your deaths to get the Alphas and the FBI off your backs.

He stood in the shadow of his house, trying to fit it all together, his mind passing through bewilderment, anger, then coming to rest in a state of awe as everything at last made perfect sense. What performances.

They’d put his life, and his daughter’s, in danger, but he’d gotten Rachael back, returned twenty-two women to their families, and for that, perhaps, he could play along.

Will hurled Javier’s BlackBerry into the stone chimney, the device exploding on impact.

He walked into the backyard, stood looking through the windbreak of spruce trees into the pasture, spotted the herd of deer still scrounging the banks of the Mancos River.

He looked up at the stars in the navy December sky and wondered where Kalyn was tonight, trying to make some kind of sense of her, but like a prism, each memory gleamed from a different facet, and all he arrived at was,
Who
are
you?

The FBI agent who showed up at my house, all business, on a crisp October night?

The femme fatale who kidnapped a family and interrogated an Alpha at gunpoint?

The woman who showed kindness and warmth to my motherless daughter, and sacrificed herself in the back of a semi to find her sister?

The deer had caught wind of him, six heads raised, two of them antlered, the racks the color of the moon where the moonlight struck them.

The broken woman with scarred wrists I almost made love to in a Fairbanks hotel?

Will sat down slowly in the dead grass and watched the deer evaluate his scent, lose interest, and go back to their nighttime wandering.

May you find your peace, Kalyn.

Looking over his shoulder, he could see the adobe glow of firelight on the walls inside his house and the strands of white lights that Devlin was wrapping around their pitiful spruce. It was filling him up now, this sense he’d come to the end of something, that he was turning out of a bad corridor, though into what, he didn’t know. Just that it was someplace new, and he had his family with him.

That was more than enough.

He’d been trying to catch the bartender’s attention for five minutes, with no success. The club was packed, the music appalling, and all he wanted was a nightcap, something strong and classic that you didn’t have to slurp out of someone’s navel.

The hard bump jolted him from his annoyed reverie, and he turned, ready, but it was just a very drunk young man—twenty-one, twenty-two—holding a Corona with lime in each hand, taking full advantage of the all-inclusive amenities. He wore a baseball cap turned sideways on his head, and no shirt, for the benefit of anyone who might desire an unencumbered view of his magnificently sculpted abs.

“Watch out there, bro, ’kay?”

Javier glanced down at his boots, spilled beer foaming on the iguana skin as a surge from the dance floor pushed the college boy within range.

“Watch out? You just bumped into me,” Javier said. “Why are you telling
me
to watch out?”

One of the young man’s friends grabbed his arm, “Come on, Brian, I found that piece of ass we saw at the pool today.”

But Brian jerked his arm away. “Nah, man, nah.” His face becoming flushed with rage. “What the fuck is
your
problem, bro?” He poked a finger into Javier’s chest,
cerveza
sloshing onto Javier’s black silk shirt, so close now, Javier could see his pupils—booze-dilated into huge black plates.

“Nothing,” Javier said.

“What?” Brian turned his head, displaying his ear to Javier in an exaggerated fashion.

“Nothing,” Javier said, louder.

Brian nodded. “That’s right. That’s what the fuck I thought.”

“What did you think?”

“What?”

“You said, ‘That’s what the fuck I thought.’ Like you had already formed an opinion prior to my response.”

“Yeah,” Brian said, pointing in his face now, “I could tell you were a little bitch and that you wouldn’t do shit.”

Javier nodded, smiling, “Very perceptive of you, Brian.”

Then he turned toward the bar, the bartender coming his way now, raised a finger to catch her attention as the college boy drifted back toward the dance floor.

• • •

He strolled the Fun Ship’s Empress Deck, the glasses pleasantly cool in his hands. Though he could still hear the bass pulse of the Christmas Eve rave at the Galax-Z dance club on the upper deck—a trip hop remix of “Silent Night”—it felt good to be walking away from that madness toward the bow.

They were thirty miles off the eastern bulge of South America, and the stars shone in clustered swarms. Farthest he’d ever been from Sonora.

He’d been planning to kill her tonight, but he figured he might as well play it safe, wait until they reached Rio. There was such joy in the anticipation.

• • •

She put her hands on the railing and leaned over the bow, the dark water six stories below, tropical air clinging to her skin like sweaty satin.

Kalyn turned at the sound of approaching footsteps. Javier passed through the illumination of a deck light and handed her a glass, Kalyn registering the sour waft of tequila.

“Patrón,” he said. “Sorry, best they had.”

They clinked glasses, stood leaning against the railing. Somewhere out in all that dark lay the coast of Brazil. They would dock in Rio de Janeiro on New Year’s Eve.

“How is Kalyn tonight?”

“All right, I guess. Missing Lucy.”

Javier sipped his tequila. “I’ve been thinking a lot about Raphael.”

“You’ll see him again.”

“I hope.”

She said, “We did a good thing, you know.”

“I’m aware.”

“Doesn’t it feel good to you?”

“I suppose.”

She looked over and smiled, thinking of that night just a year ago, when she’d finally caught up with him. He’d wanted a way out—they both had—and she’d shown him a door. Now they were standing here together at the bow of a cruise ship, en route to South America, with $425,000 between them that Javier had taken from the safe in that Alaskan lodge. He still scared her, something diamond-hard and unknowable in those blue eyes, but she liked that he scared her, and she liked his heat.

“Merry Christmas, Jav.”

“
Feliz Navidad
, Kalyn.”

The engines of the cruise ship hummed beneath them, a low, steady bass line, and Kalyn leaned over just enough so their elbows touched.

Javier said, “What are you doing?”

“This.” And she kissed him for the first time, for a long time.

When they came apart, she said, “But you know something?” The corners of her mouth and her tongue were tingling. “You still hurt my sister, you fucking psychopath.”

Javier smiled at this, but the smile faded and he stared in disbelief, watching Kalyn bend down, her knees grazing the pool of blood, and wrap her arms around his thighs.

Then she hoisted him up onto the railing, grabbed the handle of the knife she’d embedded in his gut, and pushed him into the Atlantic Ocean.

Blake Crouch is the author of over a dozen bestselling suspense, mystery, and horror novels. His short fiction has appeared in numerous short story anthologies,
Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine
,
Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine
,
Cemetery Dance
, and many other publications. Much of his work, including the Wayward Pines series, has been optioned for TV and film. Blake lives in Colorado. To learn more, follow him on 
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, 
Facebook
, or visit his website, 
www.blakecrouch.com
.