Wayward, page 13
“And?”
“And I live my life on my terms. If my terms lead me down that road, so be it.”
“I just want to help you.”
“Whose side are you on, Ethan? Really?”
“I don’t know yet.”
She smiled. “First honest thing you’ve said to me. Thank you for that.” She reached out and took hold of his hand. Her fingers were ice, but the shape of the hand was familiar. The last time he’d held it was two thousand years ago on a beach in northern California.
Kate said, “You’re scared.”
Her face was inches from his. Her attention like a heat lamp.
“Aren’t we all?”
“I’ve been here nine years. I don’t know where I am. Or why. Sometimes I think we’re all dead, but in the quiet, dark hours of the night, I know that isn’t true.”
“What are you doing when you leave your house at night?”
“What’s beyond the fence?”
“I can protect you, Kate, but you have to—”
“I don’t want your protection.”
She tugged the door open, stepped back out into the night.
Five steps from the crypt, she stopped, turned, stared back at Ethan.
“The last time I saw Alyssa alive was two nights ago.”
“Where did you see her last?”
“We parted ways on Main Street. We didn’t kill her, Ethan.”
“But she was with you the night she died.”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
Kate shook her head.
“Where do you go at night, Kate? And why?”
“What’s beyond the fence?” When he didn’t answer, she smiled. “Thought so.”
“Do you love him?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your husband. Do you love him? Is it real?”
The smile vanished.
“See you later, Sheriff.”
* * *
He walked home not knowing.
Not knowing if Kate had lied to him.
Not knowing if she had been on the other side of the fence.
Not knowing if she had killed Alyssa.
Not knowing a goddamn thing.
She’d had that effect in their relationship too. He’d spend a day with her that felt like bliss in the moment, then come out on the other side unsure of where he stood. Second-guessing everything. He’d never understood if it was a conscious play on her part, or his own failing in letting this woman get so deep and tangled in his head.
He pulled off his boots just inside the front door and crept across the hardwood to the staircase. It was cold in the house, the floor cracking and popping under the weight of his footsteps.
Down the upstairs hallway to his son’s bedroom.
The door was open.
He moved to the bed.
Couldn’t have been warmer than forty-five degrees in the room.
Ben slept buried under five blankets, but Ethan pulled them up a little closer around his neck, touched the back of his hand to the boy’s cheek.
Soft and warm.
Truckloads of firewood were due to arrive any day now. Word was the town burned copious amounts of pine for heat through the winter, with each household receiving six cords. Pilcher had a small army of men making daily trips beyond the fence under heavily armed protection. Cutting trees and splitting wood for the entire town.
Ethan headed for his bedroom.
Stripped off his pants and shirt, left them in a pile in the doorway.
The floor was freezing.
He hustled to the bed.
Crawling under the covers, he turned over onto his side and pulled Theresa in close.
She radiated heat.
He kissed the back of her neck.
Sleep seemed like a long shot. Almost impossible lately to turn down the noise in the back of his mind.
He shut his eyes.
Maybe it would come anyway.
“Ethan.”
“Hey baby,” he whispered. She rolled over, faced him. Her breath in his face a familiar, gentle heat.
“Get your feet off of mine. They’re ice.”
“Sorry. I wake you?” he asked.
“When you left. Where’d you go?”
“Work.”
“To see her?”
“I can’t—”
“Ethan.”
“What?”
“Where?”
“It doesn’t matter, Theresa. It really doesn’t—”
“I can’t keep doing this.”
“Doing what? Us?”
“This town. And us in it. You. Her. Your job.” She leaned in close, pressed her lips against his ear, whispered, “Can I keep talking like this or will they hear us?”
He hesitated.
“I’m going to do it anyway, Ethan.”
“Then just be still.”
“What?”
“Be completely still.”
“Why?”
“Will you just do it? In particular, don’t move your left leg.”
They lay still.
He could feel his wife’s heart beating against his chest.
Ethan counted to fifteen in his head, then whispered, “Speak no louder than this.”
“I used to think that if I could only be with you again, have you here with us, that I could do this. Buy into the lie.”
“And?”
“I can’t.”
“You don’t have a choice, Theresa. Do you know the danger you’re putting our family in just having this conversation?”
Her mouth pushed hard into his ear.
A chill shot down his spine.
“I want to leave this place. I’m done, Ethan. I don’t care what could happen to us. I just want out.”
“Do you care what happens to our son?” Ethan whispered.
“This isn’t a life. I don’t care if we all die.”
“Good. Because we will.”
“You know that for sure?”
“A hundred percent.”
“Because you know.”
“Yes.”
“What’s out there, Ethan?”
“We can’t have this conversation.”
“I am your wife.”
Their bodies were pushed against each other.
Her legs were cool and smooth against his skin and the heat coming off her was driving him mad. He wanted to shake her. Wanted to fuck her.
“Why the hell are you getting hard?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s out there, Ethan?”
“You really want to know.”
And then her hand was on his cock.
“Are you thinking about her?”
“No.”
“Swear to me.”
“I swear.”
She slid away, down under the covers, and took him in her mouth. Brought him right to the edge. Then she came up and pulled off her nightie. She was sitting on top of him and her breath clouding. She leaned over and kissed him. Her nipples hard against his chest in the cold.
Theresa rolled over onto her back and pulled Ethan with her, pulled him inside.
She was loud and she sounded so beautiful.
As she started to come, she brought Ethan’s head down, her lips to his ear, his lips to hers. She moaned and said, “Tell me.”
“What?” He was breathless.
“Tell me…oooohhhhgodEthan…where we really are.”
Ethan buried his face into her ear. “We’re all that’s left, baby.” They were coming together, loud and hard, as in sync as they’d ever been. “This is the last town on earth.”
Theresa shouting yesyesyesohgoddontstop. Loud enough to cover his words.
“And we’re surrounded by monsters.”
* * *
They lay entwined and sweaty and perfectly still.
Ethan whispering into her ear.
He told her everything.
When they were. Where they were. About Pilcher. About the abbies.
Then he lay with his head propped up on one elbow, stroking her face.
Theresa stared at the ceiling.
She’d been here five years, a helluva lot longer than he had, but it had been a state of limbo. Of not really knowing. Now she did. Perhaps she had suspected before, but all uncertainty had just been burned away: aside from Ethan and Ben, she would never again see all of the people she had loved in her life before. They had been dead two millennia. And if she’d ever held out hope for leaving Wayward Pines, Ethan had just destroyed it.
There was no end date for her sentence in this place.
She was a lifer.
Ethan wondered which emotion was dominant—figured a full cocktail was flailing away inside her head: anger, despair, heartbreak, fear.
By the light of a distant streetlamp coming through the window, he watched tears form in her eyes.
Felt her hand begin to tremble in his.
13
WATER TOWER
VOLUNTEER PARK
SEATTLE, 2013
As Hassler approached the entrance to the water tower, a woman stepped out of the shadows beside the door.
She said, “You’re late.”
“By five minutes. Relax. He up there?”
“Yeah.”
She couldn’t have been much older than twenty. A thin, muscular build, crazy gorgeous, but with dead eyes. An interesting choice for Pilcher’s muscle. She certainly put out the confidence of someone who could handle herself.
She stood between Hassler and the door, blocking his way.
He said, “Do you mind?”
For a beat, it seemed like she might, but she finally stepped aside.
As Hassler moved past, he said, “Don’t let anyone come up.”
“Thanks for telling me how to do my job, g-man.”
The metal clanged under Hassler’s wing tips.
He trudged up the stairs.
The observation level was low lit, a circular brick wall punctuated with arched windows that had been covered in heavy-gauge screens to stop anyone from going through. More floor-to-ceiling fencing guarded the seventy-five-foot drop into the open spiral staircase.
Wearing a long black coat and a bowler hat, David Pilcher sat on a bench on the other side of the observation deck.
Hassler circled around and took a seat beside him.
For a moment, nothing but the sound of rain hammering on the roof above them.
Pilcher looked over with the faintest smile.
“Agent Hassler.”
“David.”
Out the window, the skyline of Seattle looked like a neon blur through the low cloud deck.
Pilcher reached into his coat and took out a fat envelope.
Set it in Hassler’s lap.
Hassler carefully opened it, peeked inside, thumbed through the hundred-dollar bills.
“Looks like thirty thousand to me,” he said, resealing the envelope.
“You have news?” Pilcher asked.
“It’s been fifteen months since Agent Burke’s disappearance and Agent Stallings’s death. There have been no leads. No new evidence. Now don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying anyone at the Treasury Department is ever going to forget that we had one agent killed and three go MIA in Wayward Pines, Idaho. But with no new information, they’re just spinning in their tracks and they know it. Two days ago, the internal investigation into my missing agents was officially deprioritized.”
“What do your people think happened?”
“The theories?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s all over the map, but nothing remotely close to a bull’s-eye. They had Ethan Burke’s ‘hope service’ today.”
“What’s a hope service?”
“Fuck if I know.”
“You went?”
“I went to the after-party at Theresa’s house.”
“I’m going to pay her a visit after you and I are finished.”
“Really.”
“It’s time.”
“Theresa and Ben?”
“I have a theory that if I can keep families together when possible, the transition will be smoother on the other side.”
Hassler stood.
Walked over to the window.
Stared out past the glass conservatory, which was illuminated with holiday lights.
He could hear traffic and live music down in Capitol Hill, but up here at the top of the water tower, he felt removed from everything.
Hassler said, “Have you given any thought to what we talked about last time?”
“I have. And you?”
“It’s all I think about.” Hassler turned, stared at Pilcher. “What will it be like?”
“What will what be like?”
“Wayward Pines. When you come out of whatever it is you call—”
“Suspended animation.” Pilcher’s face grew dark. He said, “You already know far more about my project than I’m comfortable with.”
“If I wanted to bring you down, David, I could’ve done that months ago.”
“If I wanted you dead, Agent Hassler—you and everyone you love—there is nothing in the world stopping me from making that happen. Not from prison. Not from the grave.”
“So we’ve established trust,” Hassler said.
“Perhaps. Or at the very least, assured mutual destruction.”
“No difference in my book.” Freezing spits of rain blew in the window. Hassler felt them misting the back of his neck with an unpleasant chill. “So, back to my question, David. What will it be like when you all wake up?”
“At first, work. Lots and lots of work. The town will have to be rebuilt. That’ll take some time. But then? I don’t know. We’re talking two thousand years from now. This tower we’re standing in will be in ruin. That skyline? Gone. All the people in this city and their children and grandchildren and great grandchildren disintegrated into nothing. Even their bones.”
Hassler clutched the fencing over the window.
“I want to be a part of it.”
“It’s no guarantee, Adam.”
“I understand that.”
“This is Columbus in search of the East Indies. Man flying to the moon. A million things could go wrong and we never wake up. An asteroid could hit. An earthquake. We could wake to a toxic atmosphere or a hostile world we never imagined.”
“Do you really think that’ll happen?”
“I have no idea what we’ll be waking up to. Only an image in my head of this perfect little town where humanity gets a chance to start over. That’s all that’s ever driven me.”
“So you’d let me come along?”
“I’m already fully staffed. What skill set would you bring?”
“Intelligence. Ability to lead. Survival skills. I was a Delta Force operator before I joined the Secret Service, but I’m sure you already know that.”
Pilcher just smiled, said, “Well, I guess you’re in.”
“I have one favor to ask, and if you agree to it, you can have this envelope back.”
“What?”
“Ethan Burke never wakes up.”
“Why?”
“I want to be there with Theresa.”
“Theresa Burke.”
“That’s right.”
“Ethan’s wife.”
“Yes.”
Pilcher said, “Are you in love with her?”
“I am actually.”
“And is she in love with you?”
“Not yet. She’s never stopped loving him.” Hassler felt the ulcer flaring in his stomach. That green flame of envy. “He cheats on her with his ex-partner, Kate Hewson, and still she takes him back. Still she loves him. Have you ever met Theresa Burke?”
“No, but I will shortly.”
“He doesn’t deserve her.”
“And you do.”
“I would love that woman like she was meant to be loved. She’ll be happier with me in Wayward Pines than she’s ever been in her life.” It took his breath away to say the words, to give them voice. He’d never shared this with anyone.
Pilcher laughed as he rose to his feet. “So at the end of the day, this is all just about you getting a girl?”
“No, it’s—”
“I’m kidding. I’ll make it happen.”
The men shook hands.
“When do we go under?” Hassler asked.
“It’s called de-animation. My superstructure is finished. All that’s left is to stock the warehouse and collect the last few recruits. I’m sixty-four years old, not getting any younger, and there’s going to be loads to do on the other side.”
“So…”
“We’re having a party on New Year’s Eve in Wayward Pines. Me, my family, and a hundred and twenty members of my crew are going to drink the best champagne money can buy and go to sleep for a couple thousand years. You’re welcome to join.”
“Two weeks?”
“Two weeks.”
“Where will people think you’ve gone?”
“I’ve made arrangements. It’s been seven years since my last public lecture. I’ve become a recluse. I’m guessing it’s fifty-fifty whether the AP even carries my obit. What about you? Considered how you’ll make your exit?”
“I’ll cash out my 401(k), empty my bank accounts, leave a messy trail to some shady purveyor of fake passports. That isn’t the hard part.”
“What is?”
Hassler glanced back out the window toward the mist-enshrouded hills of Queen Anne—Theresa Burke’s neighborhood.
“Knowing I have to wait two thousand years to be with the woman of my dreams.”
III
14
Tobias lay flat on his stomach in the swaying grasses.
He barely breathed.
Five hundred yards away, the abby emerged out of the forest of lodgepole pines.
“And I live my life on my terms. If my terms lead me down that road, so be it.”
“I just want to help you.”
“Whose side are you on, Ethan? Really?”
“I don’t know yet.”
She smiled. “First honest thing you’ve said to me. Thank you for that.” She reached out and took hold of his hand. Her fingers were ice, but the shape of the hand was familiar. The last time he’d held it was two thousand years ago on a beach in northern California.
Kate said, “You’re scared.”
Her face was inches from his. Her attention like a heat lamp.
“Aren’t we all?”
“I’ve been here nine years. I don’t know where I am. Or why. Sometimes I think we’re all dead, but in the quiet, dark hours of the night, I know that isn’t true.”
“What are you doing when you leave your house at night?”
“What’s beyond the fence?”
“I can protect you, Kate, but you have to—”
“I don’t want your protection.”
She tugged the door open, stepped back out into the night.
Five steps from the crypt, she stopped, turned, stared back at Ethan.
“The last time I saw Alyssa alive was two nights ago.”
“Where did you see her last?”
“We parted ways on Main Street. We didn’t kill her, Ethan.”
“But she was with you the night she died.”
“Yes.”
“Where?”
Kate shook her head.
“Where do you go at night, Kate? And why?”
“What’s beyond the fence?” When he didn’t answer, she smiled. “Thought so.”
“Do you love him?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your husband. Do you love him? Is it real?”
The smile vanished.
“See you later, Sheriff.”
* * *
He walked home not knowing.
Not knowing if Kate had lied to him.
Not knowing if she had been on the other side of the fence.
Not knowing if she had killed Alyssa.
Not knowing a goddamn thing.
She’d had that effect in their relationship too. He’d spend a day with her that felt like bliss in the moment, then come out on the other side unsure of where he stood. Second-guessing everything. He’d never understood if it was a conscious play on her part, or his own failing in letting this woman get so deep and tangled in his head.
He pulled off his boots just inside the front door and crept across the hardwood to the staircase. It was cold in the house, the floor cracking and popping under the weight of his footsteps.
Down the upstairs hallway to his son’s bedroom.
The door was open.
He moved to the bed.
Couldn’t have been warmer than forty-five degrees in the room.
Ben slept buried under five blankets, but Ethan pulled them up a little closer around his neck, touched the back of his hand to the boy’s cheek.
Soft and warm.
Truckloads of firewood were due to arrive any day now. Word was the town burned copious amounts of pine for heat through the winter, with each household receiving six cords. Pilcher had a small army of men making daily trips beyond the fence under heavily armed protection. Cutting trees and splitting wood for the entire town.
Ethan headed for his bedroom.
Stripped off his pants and shirt, left them in a pile in the doorway.
The floor was freezing.
He hustled to the bed.
Crawling under the covers, he turned over onto his side and pulled Theresa in close.
She radiated heat.
He kissed the back of her neck.
Sleep seemed like a long shot. Almost impossible lately to turn down the noise in the back of his mind.
He shut his eyes.
Maybe it would come anyway.
“Ethan.”
“Hey baby,” he whispered. She rolled over, faced him. Her breath in his face a familiar, gentle heat.
“Get your feet off of mine. They’re ice.”
“Sorry. I wake you?” he asked.
“When you left. Where’d you go?”
“Work.”
“To see her?”
“I can’t—”
“Ethan.”
“What?”
“Where?”
“It doesn’t matter, Theresa. It really doesn’t—”
“I can’t keep doing this.”
“Doing what? Us?”
“This town. And us in it. You. Her. Your job.” She leaned in close, pressed her lips against his ear, whispered, “Can I keep talking like this or will they hear us?”
He hesitated.
“I’m going to do it anyway, Ethan.”
“Then just be still.”
“What?”
“Be completely still.”
“Why?”
“Will you just do it? In particular, don’t move your left leg.”
They lay still.
He could feel his wife’s heart beating against his chest.
Ethan counted to fifteen in his head, then whispered, “Speak no louder than this.”
“I used to think that if I could only be with you again, have you here with us, that I could do this. Buy into the lie.”
“And?”
“I can’t.”
“You don’t have a choice, Theresa. Do you know the danger you’re putting our family in just having this conversation?”
Her mouth pushed hard into his ear.
A chill shot down his spine.
“I want to leave this place. I’m done, Ethan. I don’t care what could happen to us. I just want out.”
“Do you care what happens to our son?” Ethan whispered.
“This isn’t a life. I don’t care if we all die.”
“Good. Because we will.”
“You know that for sure?”
“A hundred percent.”
“Because you know.”
“Yes.”
“What’s out there, Ethan?”
“We can’t have this conversation.”
“I am your wife.”
Their bodies were pushed against each other.
Her legs were cool and smooth against his skin and the heat coming off her was driving him mad. He wanted to shake her. Wanted to fuck her.
“Why the hell are you getting hard?”
“I don’t know.”
“What’s out there, Ethan?”
“You really want to know.”
And then her hand was on his cock.
“Are you thinking about her?”
“No.”
“Swear to me.”
“I swear.”
She slid away, down under the covers, and took him in her mouth. Brought him right to the edge. Then she came up and pulled off her nightie. She was sitting on top of him and her breath clouding. She leaned over and kissed him. Her nipples hard against his chest in the cold.
Theresa rolled over onto her back and pulled Ethan with her, pulled him inside.
She was loud and she sounded so beautiful.
As she started to come, she brought Ethan’s head down, her lips to his ear, his lips to hers. She moaned and said, “Tell me.”
“What?” He was breathless.
“Tell me…oooohhhhgodEthan…where we really are.”
Ethan buried his face into her ear. “We’re all that’s left, baby.” They were coming together, loud and hard, as in sync as they’d ever been. “This is the last town on earth.”
Theresa shouting yesyesyesohgoddontstop. Loud enough to cover his words.
“And we’re surrounded by monsters.”
* * *
They lay entwined and sweaty and perfectly still.
Ethan whispering into her ear.
He told her everything.
When they were. Where they were. About Pilcher. About the abbies.
Then he lay with his head propped up on one elbow, stroking her face.
Theresa stared at the ceiling.
She’d been here five years, a helluva lot longer than he had, but it had been a state of limbo. Of not really knowing. Now she did. Perhaps she had suspected before, but all uncertainty had just been burned away: aside from Ethan and Ben, she would never again see all of the people she had loved in her life before. They had been dead two millennia. And if she’d ever held out hope for leaving Wayward Pines, Ethan had just destroyed it.
There was no end date for her sentence in this place.
She was a lifer.
Ethan wondered which emotion was dominant—figured a full cocktail was flailing away inside her head: anger, despair, heartbreak, fear.
By the light of a distant streetlamp coming through the window, he watched tears form in her eyes.
Felt her hand begin to tremble in his.
13
WATER TOWER
VOLUNTEER PARK
SEATTLE, 2013
As Hassler approached the entrance to the water tower, a woman stepped out of the shadows beside the door.
She said, “You’re late.”
“By five minutes. Relax. He up there?”
“Yeah.”
She couldn’t have been much older than twenty. A thin, muscular build, crazy gorgeous, but with dead eyes. An interesting choice for Pilcher’s muscle. She certainly put out the confidence of someone who could handle herself.
She stood between Hassler and the door, blocking his way.
He said, “Do you mind?”
For a beat, it seemed like she might, but she finally stepped aside.
As Hassler moved past, he said, “Don’t let anyone come up.”
“Thanks for telling me how to do my job, g-man.”
The metal clanged under Hassler’s wing tips.
He trudged up the stairs.
The observation level was low lit, a circular brick wall punctuated with arched windows that had been covered in heavy-gauge screens to stop anyone from going through. More floor-to-ceiling fencing guarded the seventy-five-foot drop into the open spiral staircase.
Wearing a long black coat and a bowler hat, David Pilcher sat on a bench on the other side of the observation deck.
Hassler circled around and took a seat beside him.
For a moment, nothing but the sound of rain hammering on the roof above them.
Pilcher looked over with the faintest smile.
“Agent Hassler.”
“David.”
Out the window, the skyline of Seattle looked like a neon blur through the low cloud deck.
Pilcher reached into his coat and took out a fat envelope.
Set it in Hassler’s lap.
Hassler carefully opened it, peeked inside, thumbed through the hundred-dollar bills.
“Looks like thirty thousand to me,” he said, resealing the envelope.
“You have news?” Pilcher asked.
“It’s been fifteen months since Agent Burke’s disappearance and Agent Stallings’s death. There have been no leads. No new evidence. Now don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying anyone at the Treasury Department is ever going to forget that we had one agent killed and three go MIA in Wayward Pines, Idaho. But with no new information, they’re just spinning in their tracks and they know it. Two days ago, the internal investigation into my missing agents was officially deprioritized.”
“What do your people think happened?”
“The theories?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s all over the map, but nothing remotely close to a bull’s-eye. They had Ethan Burke’s ‘hope service’ today.”
“What’s a hope service?”
“Fuck if I know.”
“You went?”
“I went to the after-party at Theresa’s house.”
“I’m going to pay her a visit after you and I are finished.”
“Really.”
“It’s time.”
“Theresa and Ben?”
“I have a theory that if I can keep families together when possible, the transition will be smoother on the other side.”
Hassler stood.
Walked over to the window.
Stared out past the glass conservatory, which was illuminated with holiday lights.
He could hear traffic and live music down in Capitol Hill, but up here at the top of the water tower, he felt removed from everything.
Hassler said, “Have you given any thought to what we talked about last time?”
“I have. And you?”
“It’s all I think about.” Hassler turned, stared at Pilcher. “What will it be like?”
“What will what be like?”
“Wayward Pines. When you come out of whatever it is you call—”
“Suspended animation.” Pilcher’s face grew dark. He said, “You already know far more about my project than I’m comfortable with.”
“If I wanted to bring you down, David, I could’ve done that months ago.”
“If I wanted you dead, Agent Hassler—you and everyone you love—there is nothing in the world stopping me from making that happen. Not from prison. Not from the grave.”
“So we’ve established trust,” Hassler said.
“Perhaps. Or at the very least, assured mutual destruction.”
“No difference in my book.” Freezing spits of rain blew in the window. Hassler felt them misting the back of his neck with an unpleasant chill. “So, back to my question, David. What will it be like when you all wake up?”
“At first, work. Lots and lots of work. The town will have to be rebuilt. That’ll take some time. But then? I don’t know. We’re talking two thousand years from now. This tower we’re standing in will be in ruin. That skyline? Gone. All the people in this city and their children and grandchildren and great grandchildren disintegrated into nothing. Even their bones.”
Hassler clutched the fencing over the window.
“I want to be a part of it.”
“It’s no guarantee, Adam.”
“I understand that.”
“This is Columbus in search of the East Indies. Man flying to the moon. A million things could go wrong and we never wake up. An asteroid could hit. An earthquake. We could wake to a toxic atmosphere or a hostile world we never imagined.”
“Do you really think that’ll happen?”
“I have no idea what we’ll be waking up to. Only an image in my head of this perfect little town where humanity gets a chance to start over. That’s all that’s ever driven me.”
“So you’d let me come along?”
“I’m already fully staffed. What skill set would you bring?”
“Intelligence. Ability to lead. Survival skills. I was a Delta Force operator before I joined the Secret Service, but I’m sure you already know that.”
Pilcher just smiled, said, “Well, I guess you’re in.”
“I have one favor to ask, and if you agree to it, you can have this envelope back.”
“What?”
“Ethan Burke never wakes up.”
“Why?”
“I want to be there with Theresa.”
“Theresa Burke.”
“That’s right.”
“Ethan’s wife.”
“Yes.”
Pilcher said, “Are you in love with her?”
“I am actually.”
“And is she in love with you?”
“Not yet. She’s never stopped loving him.” Hassler felt the ulcer flaring in his stomach. That green flame of envy. “He cheats on her with his ex-partner, Kate Hewson, and still she takes him back. Still she loves him. Have you ever met Theresa Burke?”
“No, but I will shortly.”
“He doesn’t deserve her.”
“And you do.”
“I would love that woman like she was meant to be loved. She’ll be happier with me in Wayward Pines than she’s ever been in her life.” It took his breath away to say the words, to give them voice. He’d never shared this with anyone.
Pilcher laughed as he rose to his feet. “So at the end of the day, this is all just about you getting a girl?”
“No, it’s—”
“I’m kidding. I’ll make it happen.”
The men shook hands.
“When do we go under?” Hassler asked.
“It’s called de-animation. My superstructure is finished. All that’s left is to stock the warehouse and collect the last few recruits. I’m sixty-four years old, not getting any younger, and there’s going to be loads to do on the other side.”
“So…”
“We’re having a party on New Year’s Eve in Wayward Pines. Me, my family, and a hundred and twenty members of my crew are going to drink the best champagne money can buy and go to sleep for a couple thousand years. You’re welcome to join.”
“Two weeks?”
“Two weeks.”
“Where will people think you’ve gone?”
“I’ve made arrangements. It’s been seven years since my last public lecture. I’ve become a recluse. I’m guessing it’s fifty-fifty whether the AP even carries my obit. What about you? Considered how you’ll make your exit?”
“I’ll cash out my 401(k), empty my bank accounts, leave a messy trail to some shady purveyor of fake passports. That isn’t the hard part.”
“What is?”
Hassler glanced back out the window toward the mist-enshrouded hills of Queen Anne—Theresa Burke’s neighborhood.
“Knowing I have to wait two thousand years to be with the woman of my dreams.”
III
14
Tobias lay flat on his stomach in the swaying grasses.
He barely breathed.
Five hundred yards away, the abby emerged out of the forest of lodgepole pines.
