Wayward, page 12
He stared down into her eyes, which seemed somehow bluer than he remembered, and unfurled the fingers of her left hand.
Fighting to ignore the electricity as their skin touched.
She didn’t pull away.
Her eyes flicked down at their hands.
She took the scrap of paper from him, clutched it in her fist.
Ethan said, “It’s really good to see you again.”
And walked out of the store.
* * *
The bells jingled on the inner doorknob of Wayward Pines Realty Associates.
Theresa looked up from her desk as a man she’d never laid eyes on before walked into her office.
She could tell immediately that he was new in town, whatever that meant.
He looked sheet-pale and bewildered.
Stopping at the edge of her desk, he asked, “Are you Theresa Burke?”
“I am.”
“They said I should talk to you about a house, but I don’t really know what—”
“Yes, of course, I can help you with that. What’s your name?”
“Um, Wayne. Wayne Johnson.”
She reached over and shook his hand. “Pleasure to meet you, Wayne. Please have a seat.”
She pulled out her binder of available listings and slid it across the desk to him.
He hesitated.
For a moment, she wondered if he was on the verge of storming out.
But he flipped it open, started turning through the pages.
She hated this. It was one thing to help someone who’d been in Wayward Pines for several years upgrade to a new house. They knew the deal, knew how to bullshit. But this poor man had just arrived. He had no idea what was happening to him. Why he was here. Why he couldn’t leave. She wondered if they’d threatened him yet.
After a minute, he leaned forward.
“See something you like?” Theresa asked.
He whispered under his breath, “What’s going on here?”
Theresa said, “What do you mean? We’re just looking at real estate. Look, I know buying a new house can be overwhelming, but I’m here to help.”
And she said it like she almost believed it.
Through the storefront window, something caught her eye—across the street, Ethan was emerging from Wooden Treasures with a slingshot in his hand.
* * *
Through the window behind the kitchen sink, Ethan watched the sky fading toward dusk. Houses began to glow. The valley filled with piano, courtesy of Hecter Gaither.
A winter’s-coming chill sharpened the breeze pushing through the screen. Ethan had been noticing it more and more—when the sun went behind the mountains, the cold sank almost instantly into town. An aggressiveness to the onset, which he found disturbing. He’d heard talk that the winters here were long and legendary.
Ethan let his hands linger in the warm dishwater.
Suddenly Theresa was beside him.
She set a plate down hard on the butcher block.
“Everything okay?” Ethan asked.
She’d been weird during dinner. Weird even for Wayward Pines. Hadn’t spoken a word. Hadn’t taken her eyes off her plate.
She looked up at him.
“Aren’t you forgetting something?” she asked.
“No.”
She was angry. Her green eyes smoldering.
“Didn’t you have something for Ben?”
Shit.
She’d seen him. Somehow, she’d seen him in the toy shop. But he hadn’t brought the slingshot home. He’d gone to his office instead, checked in with Belinda, stashed Kate’s gift in the bottom drawer of his desk.
Hoping to avoid this exact conversation.
“What’d you do with it?” she asked. “I think our son would love to own a slingshot.”
“Theresa—”
“Oh my God, are you actually going to try and deny it?”
He pulled his hands out of the water, dried them on the towel hanging from the stove door handle.
Felt an awful metal burn in the back of his throat that reminded him of the night he’d told Theresa about Kate. His expartner was already in Boise when he’d sat Theresa down and spilled everything. He couldn’t live with the lie between them. Respected her too much. Loved her too much. It had never been about him not loving his wife.
Theresa didn’t understand.
That hadn’t been a surprise.
But she didn’t throw him out either.
And that had been.
She had cried and been devastated, but in the end, loved him all the same.
Still.
Despite.
And the strangest thing happened—her response made him love her more. Showed him his wife in a light he’d never seen. Or rather, had missed.
Theresa took a step toward him.
“I saw you there,” she said. “In her shop. I saw you.”
“I was there,” Ethan said. “She gave me the slingshot for Ben, and I didn’t bring it home—”
“Because you wanted to hide it from me.”
“Why would she give me something clearly from her if we were doing something behind your back?”
“But you did hide it from me.”
“Yes.”
Theresa shut her eyes, and for a moment, Ethan thought she might be on the brink of going to pieces.
She opened them again, said, “Then why did you go to see her?”
Ethan put his hands on the stovetop and leaned back.
“It’s work, Theresa, and that’s all I can say.”
“Work.”
“I would never have gone to her otherwise.”
“And I’m just supposed to take your word for that?”
“I love you, and I wish I’d never met her. You have no idea.”
“What am I supposed to do with that?”
Theresa ran the tap and filled a glass.
Drank it down.
Set it down.
Staring through the window screen, she said, “Look, you got something from her that you couldn’t get from me. Some kind of experience beyond ours. I don’t hate you for it. I never did.” She turned from the sink and faced him, steam rising off the surface of the soapy water. Gaither was playing one of Mozart’s piano concertos. “But that doesn’t mean you didn’t hurt me,” she said.
“I know that.”
“I wonder if she makes you feel the way you make me feel. You don’t have to try and answer that. So it’s for work, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“So I guess that means…”
“I can’t talk about it.”
She nodded. “I’m gonna draw a bath.”
“I’m over her, Theresa. Completely.”
He watched his wife walk out of the kitchen, listened to the hardwood floor creaking under her footfalls as she moved down the hall toward the bathroom.
A door closed.
After a minute, he heard the muffled sound of water splashing into the clawfoot tub.
* * *
Ethan crawled into bed under the covers.
He lay on his side with his head propped up with one arm, watching his wife sleep.
The warmth of her body heated the space between the sheet and the comforter.
She’d left the window cracked open an inch off the sill and the air creeping in was cold enough to make him wish he’d pulled another blanket out of the oak chest at the foot of their bed.
He thought he might drift off for a half hour or so, and he tried to shut his eyes, but it just wasn’t happening.
So rarely did his mind ever stop.
Kate had undoubtedly read his note.
But what had she made of it?
Sitting in the coffee shop seven hours ago, he’d finally decided on a course of action.
Ripped a strip of blank newsprint off the latest edition of the Wayward Light and written:
They know about you. They’re watching you. They sent me to investigate you. Mausoleum. 2:00 a.m. Tonight.
12
1:55 a.m.
No moon and a billion stars in a black, black sky.
Frigid.
The small, duckless pond in the city park beginning to rim with ice.
In the afternoon, one of Pilcher’s men had delivered a new Bronco to the curb in front of Ethan’s house, the SUV identical to its predecessor, if not a trace shinier.
But Ethan had chosen to walk.
He thrust his hands deep into the pockets of his parka, fingertips tingling in the cold.
Soon he was moving alongside the river, the ruckus of water passing over rocks and the clean, sweet smell of it in the night air.
Had it only been two weeks since he’d crossed this river in the dead of night, the entire town in pursuit, and fled upcanyon?
He didn’t feel anything like that man anymore.
Ethan climbed over a disintegrating stone wall that looked straight out of a Frost poem, the rocks cold as blocks of ice to the touch.
The gravestones glowed like ancient faces under the starlight and the sound of the river fell away.
Ethan passed through waist-high weeds, through groves of scrub oak.
Here among the dead at the south end of town, the lights of Wayward Pines were all but invisible.
The mausoleum appeared in the distance.
Had she come?
The old Kate would have. No question.
But what about the new one? The Kate who’d lived in Wayward Pines for nine years. The Kate he no longer knew.
Something loitered in the back of his mind. Something ugly and off-balance.
Fear.
What if Kate and her group had tortured and murdered Alyssa Pilcher?
You have no idea what she’s capable of.
He couldn’t rid himself of what Pilcher had said yesterday morning, and as he approached the crypt, it occurred to him—I should’ve brought my gun.
The mausoleum stood in a stand of mature aspen trees that had already dropped their leaves—gold coins scattered in the dying weeds. The stone planters that framed the iron door had long since crumbled, but the columns retained their form.
There was no wind.
The river nothing more than a whisper.
He said, “Kate?”
No answer.
Dug a flashlight out of his pocket, swept the beam through the aspen, called her name again.
Ethan forced the heavy door open, its bottom dragging across the stone with a teeth-aching groan.
He put his light inside.
It fired the stone walls.
The stained-glass window in the back.
She wasn’t here.
He walked slowly around the perimeter of the crypt, shining his light into the surrounding weeds, which were already bending under the weight of a fragile glaze of frost.
Ice crystals glittering in the beam.
He arrived back at the entrance and sat down on the steps between the columns as the realization slowly dawned that she hadn’t come. He’d made a risky play, tipped his hand, and scared her off.
What would she do now? Run?
He killed the light.
The walk over from his house and the anticipation of seeing her had bolstered him against the cold, but now it came screaming in.
He struggled onto his feet.
Drew in a sudden breath.
Kate stood five feet away, a ghost in the dark, dressed completely in black with a hoodie pulled over her head.
As she moved forward, the blade of the butcher knife in her hand threw a glint of starlight.
Ethan said, “A knife? Really?”
“Thought I might be coming to a fight.”
“Did you now?”
“Never know these days.”
“Will you put it the fuck down? I didn’t even bring a gun.” She just stared at him. He couldn’t read her eyes in the low light, but her mouth was a thin, tight line. “What? You don’t believe me? Wanna pat me down, Agent Hewson?”
“Open your jacket.”
Kate slipped her knife into a makeshift sheath that had been constructed out of duct tape.
Her hands slid around his waist.
Then up and down his thighs.
Fast, thorough.
“You still got it,” Ethan said.
“Got what?”
“Still frisk like a pro.”
Kate stepped back. She looked at him with a hardness he’d not seen in her eyes before. At least not aimed at him.
“Are you fucking with me?” she said.
“No. Are you here alone?”
“Yes.”
“Where’s Harold?”
“You think we’re dumb enough to let you take both of us?”
“No one’s trying to take you, Kate. At least not tonight.”
“I don’t even know if I believe you.”
“But you came.”
“I had a choice?”
“How about we talk inside.”
“Fine.”
Ethan followed her up the stone steps into the crypt.
When they were both inside, she put her shoulder into the door and forced it shut.
Turned around.
Faced Ethan in the dark.
“Are you chipped?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“So they know you’re here.”
“Probably.”
Kate spun and grabbed for the door handle, but Ethan dragged her back.
“Let go!”
“Relax, Kate. It doesn’t matter.”
“The hell it doesn’t. They know you’re here.”
“Only my location. The mausoleum isn’t miked. I’m not miked.”
“But they know you’re talking to me tonight?”
“They sent me.”
She shoved him back toward the stained-glass window with a surprising burst of force and smoothed her clothes.
Ethan fished his flashlight out of his pocket, turned it on, set it on the floor between them. The light streaming up lit their faces grotesquely.
Their breath steaming in the cold.
“I need you to trust me, Kate.”
She leaned back against the wall, said, “I need you to prove that I can.”
“How do I do that?”
“What do they know about me?”
“They know that you and others remove your microchips. That sometimes you go out at night.”
“And they sent you to investigate me?” she asked.
“That’s right.”
“For what?”
“You really want to play it that way?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Two weeks ago you’re turning this town upside down, desperate to leave. Now you’re sheriff. Clearly working for them.”
“So you know there’s a ‘them.’ ”
“What idiot doesn’t?”
“What else do you know, Kate?”
She eased down onto the floor.
Ethan sat too.
“I know there’s a fence around the outskirts of town. I know we’re all under surveillance. All the time. I know that two weeks ago you wanted the truth.”
“Have you gone beyond the fence?”
Kate hesitated, then shook her head. “Have you?” She must have read it in his face, said before he even had a chance to lie, “Oh my God, you have.”
“Tell me about Alyssa.”
Kate didn’t flinch exactly, but he read the surprise in her eyes.
“What about her?”
“You know she was killed two nights ago?”
“Are you serious?”
“She was found naked in the middle of the road, stabbed to death. Tortured.”
“Oh Jesus.” She let out a long, trembling breath. “Who found her?”
“I did.”
“Why are you asking me about this?”
“Kate.”
“What?”
“You think they didn’t know you were talking to Alyssa?”
Her eyes darted, a flicker of panic setting in.
“She came to me,” Kate whispered.
“I know. I saw the footage. You were supposed to meet with her the night she died.”
“How do you know that?” He didn’t answer, just let the realization come. Kate’s face fell. “Oh. I see. She was with them.”
“Yeah.”
“A spy.”
“What happened that night, Kate? You were supposed to meet her here at one in the morning. She documented everything. What happened?”
Kate stared at the floor.
He said, “Maybe you’ll believe this. Maybe you won’t. But I am here as your friend.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Why?”
“Because I can’t take the risk of being wrong.”
“Tell me what happened. I can help you.”
“Do I need your help?”
“In the worst way.”
“What’s on the other side of the fence?”
“Don’t ask me that.”
“I need to know.”
“What happened to Alyssa?”
“I don’t know.”
“Did you kill her?”
“You tell me. Am I a murderer?”
“I don’t know you anymore.”
Kate stood. “That hurts more than you know.”
“Did you kill her?”
“No.”
Ethan grabbed his flashlight, struggled up onto his feet. “Tell me what you’re into.”
“Goodbye, Ethan.”
“I need to know.”
“For you? Or for the people who hold your leash?”
“They will kill you, Kate. You and Harold. They will disappear you.”
“I know the risk.”
