Snowbound (25 page)

Will dutifully tread and retread his story, from start to finish, so many times that he could tell it without thinking, without feeling, to the special agents in charge with the FBI’s Phoenix and Anchorage field offices, to Inspection Division agents from the Bureau’s headquarters, to Border Patrol, ATF, even a detective from the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, successor to Teddy Swicegood, who had died of a stroke two and a half years earlier on a golf course in Sierra Vista.

The FBI had been looking for Kalyn Sharp for the last year, since it had come to light that she’d defrauded the Bureau, absconding with $150,000, which they suspected she’d used to track down her sister. They called her “a rogue agent, mentally unstable,” said that had she not been killed in Alaska, serious prison time would have loomed in her immediate future.

• • •

“Just to be clear, you do understand who this character was?” Agent Messing said, his big West Texas accent filling the drab hotel room.

It was two days before Rachael’s scheduled release from the psychiatric hospital at the University of Colorado, and this young DEA agent from the Phoenix Field Office sat on the couch in Will and Devlin’s suite at the Oxford in downtown Denver. Will had been staring out the window toward the Front Range, his patience worn ragged by the steady stream of agents from more law-enforcement agencies than he cared to keep track of.

He replied, “Kalyn told me he was with the Alphas.”

“Not
with
. Number-two honcho. We had a bug in a Tempe warehouse they’d been using. One in Jav’s car. One in his mansion. I could put my hand on the Bible and say he’s the scariest sumbitch I ever encountered.”

“You met him?”

“Once. At a Starbucks in Scottsdale. I’d been tailing him for a few days, and he made me while he was ordering.”

“What happened?”

“We had espressos on the patio.”

The agent unbuttoned his too-tight Belk suit, ran his fingers through a blond crew cut that let too much of his oily scalp shine through.

“What is it?” Will asked.

Agent Messing shook his head. “This ain’t for public consumption, and in fact, it can’t walk out of this room.”

Will got up, went over to the open door that led into Devlin’s bedroom, where MTV blared from the television.

He closed it, returned to the chair, and when he was sitting down again, Messing said, “I had reason to believe, and this is coming from a reliable source, that Javier wanted out.”

“Out of what?”

“Everything. His marriage. The Alphas.”

“Why the Alphas?”

“Greed probably. Whatever the motivation, it wasn’t rooted in goodness. Wasn’t ’cause he found Jesus. Nothing like that. The man is pure evil. But the point is, you don’t leave the Alphas. It’s blood in, blood out. Know what I mean?”

Will shook his head.

“You kill to join, and the only way to leave is through death. In light of this development, we really, really wanted to catch up with Mr. Estrada. For whatever reason, he was unhappy with the Alphas, and he could have made a devastating witness, blown the whole thing apart. Now, his widow’s a stone fucking wall, but if there’s anything else you might know or remember …” Will shook his head. “Well, here.” Messing reached into an inner pocket of his jacket, produced a card. “Anything surfaces, call me. Day or night.”

“I will.”

Messing stood and Will rose to shake his hand. “I’m guessing you’ve had a revolving door of visitors from every federal agency under the sun.”

“Yeah, it’s been taxing.”

“Then I won’t keep you. I’m glad you’ve got your family back, Mr. Innis.”

Will walked Messing out, decided as they stepped into the hallway just to go ahead and ask him.

“Tell me something,” Will said.

“Shoot.”

“Should I be worried?”

“Worried about what?”

“A visit in the middle of the night.”

Messing let out a soft sigh and studied the carpet under his dull shoes in a way that made Will nervous, like he wasn’t going to like the answer. He was half-wishing now he hadn’t even asked.

“I don’t know, Mr. Innis. It’s sketchy territory, trying to predict what the Alphas will and won’t do. I guess what it’ll probably come down to is whether or not you’re on their radar.”

“Do you think I am?”

“No way to know. I understand that’s not the piece of comfort pie you want to hear, but it’s the truth, I’m sorry to say.”

“What would you do?”

“If I was in your boots?”

“Yeah.”

Messing cracked his thick linebacker’s neck. “I’m gonna tell you something that’s gonna be both horrifying
and
freeing. There ain’t nothing you can do, short of move your family to some overpopulated Third World shithole and disappear. If the Alphas decide to come calling, you won’t stop them. Not with a shotgun under the bed. Not with different names. They’re just plain the nastiest motherfuckers anyone’s ever heard of. So live your life, Mr. Innis. Don’t look over your shoulder or buy a home security system or anything of the sort. Just pray you were a blip on their radar that has long since disappeared.”

It had been a little over two months since they’d landed in Anchorage, weeks that had taken years to pass. For five of them, Rachael had undergone treatment and counseling at the psychiatric hospital in Denver. But these last few weeks, leading up to Christmas Eve, they’d been together, seeing if the pieces still fit in that quaint farmhouse in Mancos, Colorado. Devlin wasn’t sick, and Rachael was eight and a half months pregnant. They’d hired a midwife out of Farmington, New Mexico, to attend the home birth, expecting to have a little one in the first or second week of the new year. Will was coming to terms with the fact that the child in that enormous belly of Rachael’s didn’t possess a single chromosome of his DNA.

He remembered Devlin’s birth, sixteen years ago, could still recall the lightning that had struck when she’d come screaming into the world, still teared up thinking about it—that fierce, inexorable love that had altered everything he thought he knew about priorities. What kept him up lately, these long December nights, was the fear that he wouldn’t feel those things when this baby came, wondered how you faked a thing like that, how you raised something you didn’t feel belonged to you.

He prayed to God every night that the lightning would strike again.

• • •

It had been a cool, dry Christmas Eve, and much to the Innises’ delight, little snow had fallen so far this season in the Mancos Valley. You could see patches of it gleaming under the sun or the moon on the rim of Mesa Verde, and the La Platas were buried above ten thousand feet. But the pasture out back stood bare; the river slacked off to a trickle. No snow lingered under the spruce trees that enclosed the farmhouse. There wasn’t even a fading patch to be found in the north-facing shadows—Devlin had gone looking that afternoon.

She was thriving, out of school for Christmas vacation and spending all her time with her mother—hoisting Rachael out of chairs, cooking for her, cleaning, helping to prepare the nursery in what had been an empty bedroom when she and her father were on their own.

It was only at night when she thought of Alaska, in bed, buried under covers, listening to the wind blow through the firs. A few nights ago, a pack of coyotes had moved through the pasture. Their yaps woke her at 3:00
A.M.
—evil, mocking laughter—and she sat up in bed, thought for half a second she was back in the Wolverine Hills, saw that huge white wolf with raging pink eyes standing at the foot of her bed.

She’d thrown back the covers and walked into the kitchen, poured herself a glass of water, and sat down at the table, listening to them howl until her hands quit trembling.

One of Rachael’s therapists in Denver had said something that applied to them all. If you let fear take hold, if you let it own you, your life ceases to be your own. She’d even given them a motto, a creed—concise, profane, and unforgettable. Devlin had glanced at the refrigerator clipboard where Will had scribbled it in black Magic Marker, thrice underscored.

Fuck the fear.

D
evlin is already rubbing her eyes. It’s nine o’clock, late for a six-year-old. She stands on her tiptoes and hangs the last ornament on the tree—a clear glass cactus. Her parents are sitting on the couch, sipping hot toddies—Arizona-style: fresh-squeezed orange juice, hot water, Grand Marnier, honey, dash of cayenne.

It’s a warm December night. Devlin climbs onto the sofa between Rachael and Will.

“Everybody up for
It’s a Wonderful Life
?” he asks.

“I’ll probably fall asleep before Harry falls through the ice, but sure,” Rachael says. Will walks over to the television set, finds the video in Devlin’s movie cabinet, pops it into the VCR. He brings the remote back with him. “Will, I’m cold,” Rachael says. “Would you get my sweatshirt?”

“I’m not sure how I feel about touching that hideous thing.”

She grins. “Back off my alma mater.” Will had gone to law school at Carolina while Rachael was finishing her undergrad work at Duke. The schools were only seven miles apart as the crow flies, but a more malicious rivalry you could not find in all of collegiate America. The sweatshirt was a badly faded navy blue, the letters—D-U-K-E—having long since peeled away, leaving only a less faded palimpsest of the word.

Will retrieves it from the sweater chest in their bedroom, brings it back into the den.

“Thanks, honey.” He sits down with his family, presses play. His dark-haired girls snuggle up on either side of him, and whether it’s the holiday or this movie that always makes him cry, Will is briefly overcome, keenly aware of what he has. There is only the small white lights of the Christmas tree, the glow of the FBI warning on the television screen. And for a moment, before the movie begins, the house is so quiet, they can hear the wind blowing out on the desert.

A decade later, in a different state, in what felt to each of them like a different life, the Innises were decorating another tree—a blue spruce Will had chopped down in a small grove by the river two days ago. Rachael lay stretched out on the couch in the living room, watching her husband and daughter hang unfamiliar ornaments and makeshift tube-sock stockings from the mantel. A fire was petering out in the small stone hearth. The farmhouse smelled of wood smoke, hot cocoa, the sap from their Christmas tree.

“You remember those hot toddies we used to make?” Rachael said.

Will smiled. “God, those were good.”

“What’s a toddy?” Devlin asked.

“It’s a hot alcoholic drink. We used to make ours with orange juice, Grand Marnier… . I forget what else we put in them.”

“Cayenne,” Rachael said. “Most important ingredient.”

“Maybe we can make them next year?”

“Definitely.”

• • •

Devlin sat at the end of the couch, opposite her mother, massaging Rachael’s feet. “I’ve got a great idea,” she said. “Let’s watch
It’s a Wonderful Life
, like we used to.”

“Do we still have that video?” Rachael asked.

“No,” Will said. “It got left in Ajo with everything else. But I guess I could drive into town, see if the video store’s still open.”

“No, don’t leave,” Rachael said. “We’ll remember it for next year.”

“Yes. Next year. We’ll do all our old traditions.”

“But I don’t want to go to bed yet, Dad. Can’t we stay up together a little longer?”

“Sure, baby girl. Of course we can.”

Rachael suddenly shivered, said, “Will, I’m cold.”

• • •

Will’s socks slid on the dusty hardwood floor as he walked down the hallway into their bedroom. He was already untucking the quilt from the corners when he happened to think of it. He let go of the cover and climbed across the mattress, knelt down on the floor on the other side, opened the deep drawer on his bedside table. There it was. Eight weeks and he hadn’t even thought about it until now. Hadn’t needed to. He reached into the drawer, pulled out Rachael’s navy blue sweatshirt.

He smelled it. The garment no longer carried her true scent, hadn’t for years.

He sat for a moment on the floor near the window, a view of the moonlit pasture through the glass, just holding Rachael’s shirt to his face, sliding his hands over the soft fabric, feeling the cloth between his fingers. He’d slept so many nights alone, this sweatshirt wrapped around his arm. When it had finally lost Rachael’s smell, he’d gone out and bought the perfume she’d worn, sprayed the sweatshirt with the fragrance.

I don’t need this anymore
, he thought. He stood, wiped his face, took Rachael’s sweatshirt with him, and walked out of their bedroom, back down the hallway, stopping where it opened into the living room.

They were still together on the couch in the light of the dwindling fire.

His daughter. His unborn child. His wife.

And he thought of all the women who’d been rescued from that lodge, imagined them in this moment, this Christmas Eve, back in their homes with families they had never expected to see again.

He delivered Rachael’s sweatshirt, saying, “We’re gonna need more wood to save this fire. I’m gonna go out and grab an armful.” Will walked into the kitchen. Devlin could hear him stepping into his boots, the doors opening, the screen door banging closed after him. She sat down on the cool hardwood floor beside her mother.

Rachael said, “So what were Christmases like for you and Dad while I was gone?”

“I don’t know. We didn’t do much. They were just, like … sad, you know? Really sad. Last year was the first time we actually put up a tree. What were yours like?”

“I never knew when Christmas came, honey. Usually, I didn’t even know if it was December, although there were days when I remember thinking,
This feels like Christmas
. Honestly, I’m glad I never knew when it came.

I think that would have broken me.” Rachael sucked through her teeth and winced. “Ooooh.”

“What? What’s wrong?”

She was rubbing her stomach. “Nothing. Just a little contraction.”

“Is it time?”

“No, honey. These are just Braxton-Hicks. You’ll know when it’s the real deal.”

“How?”

“I’ll be swearing like a sailor.”