by Blake Crouch
She glanced back toward the cluster of saplings, Marcus already sitting up, trying to climb to his feet.
Kalyn crawled past the gas tank, the rear passenger door, stopping finally at the driver’s door.
You can do this. You have to do this. For Lucy.
She thumbed back the hammer, stood up, Marcus shouting in the distance, the whine of another car coming up the road.
Will?
Though the side window was deeply tinted, she could see the profile of the man’s head.
Glass shattered. Blood sprayed.
She jerked open the door behind the driver’s seat, the young man wide-eyed, shaking his head and mouthing “No” as he reached into his vest.
Two squeezes, center mass, gurgling, pieces of down floating between them.
The sound of the engine getting louder.
Three bullets left. Be judicious.
Marcus was coming toward the Suburban now, knife in hand, moving awkwardly, zombielike, his brain still reeling after the lapse in blood flow.
Kalyn ran toward him, ears ringing, stopped ten feet away, feeling comfortable enough with the .357 to draw a bead on the man’s face, yelled, “Drop the knife and stop right there!”
But he didn’t do either, just kept staggering toward her.
“I’ve shot your friends. I will shoot you. Do you want to die today, Marcus?”
He kept coming, Kalyn thinking, Maybe he doesn’t believe he’s capable of dying at the hands of a woman.
The shot took the top of his head off and he collapsed to his knees, toppled over in the moist, spongy soil.
Two bullets left. Not enough.
Kalyn ran back to the Suburban, opened the driver’s door. Sea Ice Eyes had slumped over into the passenger seat, and she hauled him out of the car, searched him, found the handcuff key and a handgun—.45 Smith.
The car engine had become deafening, and then she realized it couldn’t be a car, because the sound was coming from the lake.
A single-prop floatplane had just landed, its engine screaming as it sped shoreward.
Kalyn unlocked the handcuffs and crawled behind the Suburban, ducked down, watching through the rear tinted glass as the plane sidled up to the pier. The propeller had stopped. She heard the pontoons bump into the wooden posts. The plane’s door swung open, and a man climbed out. Impossible to see any detail in his face or even determine his height, since he was still thirty yards away and dimmed by the smoked glass.
As he walked down the pier, the Suburban’s rear passenger door opened. Shit. The young man with the ponytail fell out, struggled to his feet, and stumbled toward the plane, Kalyn watching him go.
Now the pilot had stopped. He stared at the injured man coming toward him, yelled something Kalyn couldn’t understand, then ran back toward the plane, scrambling up into the cockpit, the propeller sputtering to life.
She stepped out from behind the Suburban as the plane pulled away from the dock, saw the young man lying facedown in the grass. She sprinted the length of the pier as the engine roared, the plane gliding away from her, skimming the surface of the lake with increasing speed. It was already a hundred yards away. Two hundred.
The high-pitched whine sounded like a buzz saw as the plane lifted from the lake, climbing into the sky. It banked left and screamed west over the forest, disappearing after ten seconds, its engine no louder than the mosquito behind Kalyn’s ear.
She ran back to the young man and rolled him over. Lines of blood trailed from the corners of his mouth into the grass, his glassy eyes reduced to slits. She propped him up against a spruce tree, slapped his face.
“Where’s that plane going?”
He shook his head and ripped open his vest, looked down at the two dark stains on his shirt merging and spreading across his stomach. He began to cry.
“I can help you,” Kalyn told him, lying. “Get you to a hospital. You could survive this. But I need to know where that plane’s heading.”
His voice came ragged and wet: “I’m cold.”
“You wanna live?”
He nodded.
“Then tell me.”
He whispered something.
“What?”
“Hills.”
“What does that mean?”
“—ine Hills.”
“The ing hills?”
“Wolverine Hills.”
“Wolverine Hills?”
He nodded.
“Where’s that?”
The young man coughed up a mouthful of blood, moaned, “Please.”
“What’s his name? The guy who got out of the plane.”
His eyes grew more distant, like someone had pulled down the shades.
“Was this the last exchange, or was that man going to deliver me to someone else? I need to—”
He let out a long exhalation and the muscles in his neck and back relaxed. He drooped forward. Kalyn touched the side of his neck. She came to her feet, surveyed the scene—three bodies in the wilderness and darkness falling.
THIRTY-TWO
Will and Devlin walked into the rich-smelling coffee shop that doubled as an Internet café, waited impatiently for a computer, staring at the bizarre series of photographs that adorned the walls—black-and-white images of mating caribou. A college kid was setting up on the stage against the back wall, adjusting the levels on his amp and tuning an acoustic guitar. It was already dark outside, and Will was on the verge of ordering someone off a computer when one opened up.
He and Devlin shared a chair at one of the Macs. The connection was maddeningly slow, and it took five minutes for SoniyaMobile’s Web site to load. It had been three days since Kalyn had made him memorize her log-in ID and password. He remembered her ID immediately, but her password was alphanumeric, and it took him five tries to get it right.
When the Google map finally loaded, he said “Fuck” loudly enough for the patrons seated at adjacent computers and nearby tables to glance over and shoot him dirty stares.
Devlin said, “Oh no.”
The little icon representing Jonathan’s truck was already in northern British Columbia.
“He’s going home,” Will said. “Already delivered her to the buyer.”
“Is she dead?” Devlin whispered.
“Stop asking me that,” he replied, his words sharper than he intended.
The acoustic guitarist was now crowding a mic stand, strumming his guitar, and introducing what he described as experimental–hip-hop–folk.
“Trace it, Dad.”
“What?”
“You can see where all Jonathan’s truck has been. Here, I’ll do it.” She grabbed the mouse and moved the cursor up to the command menu. As she clicked on VIEW TRACKING HISTORY, Will’s cell phone rang. He pulled it out of his pocket, stared incredulously at the display screen.
“Who is it?” Devlin asked.
“I don’t recognize the number.”
He hit TALK. “Hello?”
“Will?”
“Shit, Kalyn, are you okay?”
“Where are you?”
“Fairbanks, Alaska.”
“Where in Fairbanks?”
“This coffee shop near the university. The Last Drop.”
“I’m ten minutes away. Stay put.”
Will closed the phone and stared at his daughter in disbelief.
Devlin began to cry.
Scars
THIRTY-THREE
Will and Devlin stood shivering outside the coffee shop, preferring the cold of the Alaskan night to the earnest warbling of the guitarist inside. At last, a black Suburban pulled into the parking lot, Kalyn grinning at them through what remained of the driver’s side window—tinted jags of glass.
She got out, and Will and Devlin walked over, embraced her.
“I’m so sorry,” Will whispered in her ear.
“Hey.” Kalyn framed his face with her hands. “I’m all right. Let it go.”
“What happened to you?”
“Let�
�s swap stories later. Right now, I want you to follow me. I have to ditch this car. It’s full of glass and blood.”
Will followed the Suburban for several miles through the heart of Fairbanks, coming at last to a Safeway. Kalyn parked in a far corner, spent five minutes wiping everything down—the steering wheel, doors, gearshift—anyplace she might have left fingerprints or sweat, skin cells or hair.
Then she climbed into the front passenger seat beside Will, said, “I’ve got a room at the Best Western. Head back the way we came.”
As Will pulled onto the Alaska Highway, Kalyn noticed the remains of the computer on the floorboard. She lifted a piece of the shattered keyboard, turned it over in her hand.
“That happened this morning outside of Whitehorse, Yukon,” Will said. “A moose was standing in the middle of the highway. I had to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting him, and the computer launched into the dashboard. We were trying to track Jonathan’s truck at the coffee shop when you called.”
“It was my fault,” Devlin said. “I was talking to Dad to keep him awake. I should have been holding on to the computer tighter than I was.”
Kalyn glanced into the backseat, reached out for Devlin’s hand. “Not your fault, baby,” she said. “Some things—they just happen. Nothing we can do.”
“So what happened to you?” Devlin asked.
“Jonathan turned me over to three men this afternoon at a warehouse, somewhere in Fairbanks. They drove me out into the countryside, to this lake. I was able to get away.”
By the way she said it, Will knew. “You mean you killed them.”
“Yeah.”
“Three men? How?”
“They made a mistake. Cuffed my hands in front of me instead of behind my back. If they’d done that, it would’ve made it impossible for me to do what I did. Or at least much more difficult. Also, they underestimated what I was capable of.”
“Who were they?”
“I’ve been trying to work that out. Seemed like muscle for organized crime.”
“There’s an Alaskan mob?”
“Probably an offshoot of an Anchorage syndicate. Turn up here.”
Will took the next exit onto S. Cushman, saw motel, hotel, and restaurant signs glowing in the distance.
“They were definitely delivering me to someone,” Kalyn said. “While I was dealing with them, a floatplane landed on the lake, came up to the pier. This man got out, saw that something had obviously gone wrong, and hauled ass out of there.”
“You find out where he was going?”
“I questioned one of the men before he died, but the only piece of information I got was a place called the Wolverine Hills. You heard of it?”
“No.”
“Me, neither. Hey, there’s the Best Western.”
As Will pulled into the hotel’s driveway, Devlin said, “Dad, your backpack’s buzzing.”
Will and Kalyn looked at each other, said, “Javier” at the same time.
“Hand it up here, Dev,” Will said, and then to Kalyn: “Jesus, how long’s it been since we put his wife and son in that mall?”
“Five days.”
He pulled into a parking space. “Five?”
“I know. Long time, but they had plenty of food and water. I’d anticipated this possibility, Will. It’s why I left some books in there, extra flash-lights. What number is the caller ID showing?”
Will glanced at the BlackBerry. “Same as before.” He pressed TALK, then SPEAKER. “Hello?”
“It’s been three days since your meeting with Jonathan. I have not interfered. You will tell me where my family is now?”
Kalyn snatched the BlackBerry out of Will’s hand.
“Hi, Javier. Really sorry we haven’t gotten back to you yet, but it’s been a crazy few days. I’m sure you understand.”
“No, I do—”
“Well, look, here’s the thing. As it turns out, I’m not going to tell you where Misty and Raphael are, because it wouldn’t matter. I killed them both last Saturday.”
Kalyn pressed END and immediately began to dial again.
Will said, “What are you—”
She waved him off, then waited through several rings before a voice answered.
“Yes, I’d like to report something. There’s a woman and a boy locked up in one of the dressing rooms in the children’s department of Belk. . . . That burned-out mall in Scottsdale . . . Desert Gardens Shopping Center . . . No, that’s all the information I have. . . . No, you can’t have my name.”
She ended the call and opened her door as the BlackBerry vibrated again.
Will said, “Come on, Kalyn—”
“Guess who’s calling back.” She powered off the BlackBerry, put it in her pocket.
“Are you crazy, Kalyn?”
She stood grinning by the open door.
Will turned off the engine, and he and Devlin opened their doors, got out.
“Too far,” he said as they walked toward the entrance. “Telling a man, even a bad one, you killed his wife and son? Too far.”
Kalyn stopped under the entrance overhang and faced him. “Why?”
“There’s a line.”
“Where?”
“Separates us from people like—”
“Fuck him, Will. Let that piece of shit taste what it feels like to lose your family.”
They showered at the hotel, then went out and bought new clothes at a Kmart to replace the filthy, road-shabby apparel they’d worn since Idaho. At a nearby steak house, they had supper, and after days of living on convenience-store food, they splurged and ate like gluttons, just glad to be together again, relishing the company, filling one another in on every detail of their respective journeys from Boise to Fairbanks.
They returned to the hotel, Will as tired as he’d ever been.
While waiting for the elevator, Kalyn spotted the unoccupied business center.
“No, let’s look in the morning,” Will said. “I’m worthless now.”
“Come on, only take a minute.”
They gathered around the computer, Kalyn at the keyboard, Will and Devlin looking over her shoulder.
She pulled up the Google home page and typed “Wolverine Hills” and “Alaska” into the query box.
The search results were unimpressive, not a single Web site devoted to the Wolverine Hills, and they were mentioned just two times in passing: under a place-name listing titled “Minor Ranges of the Alaskan Interior” and in a three-year-old forum posting—an outdoorsman inquiring if anyone had ever hunted caribou in the Wolverines.