Snowbound

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.

EIGHTY

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.

“Patron,” 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.”