The Fear Trilogy

by Blake Crouch

  “Outside in the hallway.”

  “Tell her to come in.”

  Will called their daughter, and Devlin came, climbed into bed between them. They sat in the low light of room 429, huddled together under the covers, Devlin rubbing her mother’s round belly and doing most of the talking, answering an endless stream of questions about school, boyfriends, her disease, their new life in Colorado, both parents in tears half the time, laughing the rest.

  It had been over five years since they’d last been together. They talked and held one another and cried, all knowing in the back of their minds that they could sit on this bed for twenty years, for fifty, but it wouldn’t matter. There would be no real catching up, no recovery of lost time, no understanding of the damage the separation had caused. They were different people now—haunted, ridden with scars and nightmares. There was no going back to that stormy July night in Ajo, Arizona. That Innis family was gone, and they would have to find themselves and one another again, start over, and pray that somehow the pieces fit back together.

  Despite the joy and the overriding hope, it wasn’t until this moment, sitting in this bed together on the fourth floor of this old lodge, that they each understood how much had been stolen from them, the incomprehensible arithmetic of what they had lost.

  The Innises didn’t sleep that night. They walked together up and down the corridors, looking for the rooms where the rest of the women were kept.

  It was the most gut-wrenching, emotional two hours of Will’s life, setting these prisoners free, telling them that the people who’d held them here and destroyed their lives were dead, incapable of ever hurting them again. Most of the women broke down, hysterical with relief. A handful had gone mad. One laughed at the news. One just sat on her bed and stared out the window, comatose. Kalyn’s sister, Lucy Dahl, didn’t say anything when they unlocked her door, just walked out without a word, and Will couldn’t yet bring himself to broach the topic of her sister. In the north wing, they found two women emaciated from starvation, so weak that Will had to carry them down into the library, each weighing less than eighty pounds, their hair thinned, their teeth falling out. A woman on the third floor had died in her sleep at least a month ago, and after seeing her, Will stepped into the alcove and knelt down in a corner and wept. So much pain here, so much ruin.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  They pushed all the furniture into the lobby and brought in mattresses and blankets from the nearest rooms. Twenty-two women, half of them pregnant, crowded into the library as Will added logs to the fire and stoked up the blaze, the room of books warming, the fire shadows moving in endless patterns across the walls as the blizzard shrieked and snow piled up against the French doors. A woman who’d given birth that morning sat in a corner nursing her infant, mother and child wrapped in blankets.

  Will stood in the open doorway, looking across the library, wall-to-wall with mattresses. Some of the women were already sleeping, wrapped in each other’s arms, others crying softly to themselves and rocking back and forth, as if not quite ready to give themselves over to this reality, afraid it would vanish from under their feet as it had so often before.

  Will said, “Could I have your attention for a minute, please? My daughter and I are going to get some food from the kitchen, since we haven’t eaten all day. Is anyone hungry?” No one spoke or raised a hand. “Tomorrow, if this storm has let up, a bush pilot is supposed to land on a nearby lake at three in the afternoon. I’m going to head out early and try to reach him, fly back to Fairbanks and get help. Try to find a big seaplane to fly to this inner lake. Hopefully, come tomorrow evening, you’ll all be back in civilization, with your families en route.”

  A half hour later, Devlin sat on the hearth before the fire, eating beef stew and buttered biscuits.

  When she finished her late supper, she crawled under the covers next to her mother. She could feel the warmth of the fire through the blanket, the room dark, quiet, filled with the respirations of women sleeping, the crack and hiss of the flames devouring the wood, a slumber party like Devlin could never have imagined. She was asleep within a minute.

  Rachael lay on her side, facing her husband, his face awash in firelight. She thought for sure he’d aged more than five years, his features harder, leaner, not a hint of the baby fat that had once smoothed his jawline, given him those boyish good looks she’d fallen for in college. She even thought she saw strands of silver.

  Will opened his eyes. Rachael smiled.

  “Are you warm?” he whispered. She nodded, the child in her belly active. She wanted to take Will’s hand, let him feel the tiny thrusts of the baby’s knees and elbow. “You’ve got that deep-thinking look on your face,” he said.

  “It’s going to be difficult.”

  “What?”

  “Reintegrating, coming together again. I’m not sure how I’ll make it on the outside. I feel like I’m being released after a twenty-year prison sentence. Like I won’t know what to do with myself. How to be a mother again. A wife.”

  “We’ll make it work, Rachael.”

  “You say that, but . . . you don’t realize—”

  “I don’t care how hard it is.”

  “You say that now.”

  “I mean it now. I’ll mean it later.”

  “I want you to feel something.” She took his wrist and pressed the palm of his hand against the side of her stomach.

  “Kicking,” Will said.

  “Yeah. It’s his busy time. Usually wakes me up doing this in the middle of the night.”

  “You know it’s a he?”

  “Not for certain, but I’ve gotten good at telling. Feels like boy energy.”

  “How many have you had since you’ve been here?”

  “This is my fourth.”

  “What happened to the others?”

  “They sold them.”

  “Jesus. How far along are you?”

  “Six and a half months. I’m going to keep him.”

  “Why would you—”

  “I’ve had three of my babies taken away from me—a week after birth. I think they must sell them. I tried not to get attached, fought it. But it didn’t matter. They didn’t know what they came from. All they knew was that I was their mother, and I loved every one of them, and I still do. I want to keep this one. Raise him. Might be the only good thing about any of this. I know this is difficult for you. I’ve been damaged beyond repair in your eyes.”

  “I don’t feel that way, Rach.”

  “Well, if you do—”

  “I don’t.”

  “If you do . . . just understand that I don’t expect you to do something you aren’t capable of. You know, this almost would’ve been easier if you’d met someone, remarried. At least you wouldn’t have a choice then.”

  Will put his hands on Rachael’s face. “You’re still my wife. Devlin’s mother. I have no illusions about how hard it’s gonna be. But we are going to try. I want to.”

  “How do you feel about keeping this baby?”

  “Puts my stomach in knots, but maybe that’ll change. You can help me. Look, you were a psychologist, so keep in mind all you’ve been through. You’re in no shape to try to think about your life when you leave this place. Just try to stay in the moment for now. I am.”

  “Why didn’t you remarry?”

  “Because I’m in love with you.”

  “You didn’t meet anyone who—”

  “I never opened myself up to it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I still loved my wife. Even when I thought you were dead.” He reached out and wiped her face, touched the tiny white scar under her bottom lip that he used to kiss religiously. “Now close your eyes and think only about the fact that you’re lying between your husband and daughter. We both love you, and you’re safe. That’s it. Now sleep.”

  FIFTY-EIGHT

  The sunlight passed clear and sharp through the glass panes of the library windows.

  A perfect silence. No wind. No s
now driving against the doors.

  Devlin sat up and pushed off the covers, squinting in the brilliant light. Her father was already up. Her mother, too. She rubbed her eyes and yawned and went to find them.

  They were standing at the entrance to the lodge, holding steaming mugs of coffee, the doors pulled open, surface hoarfrost glittering outside under the midmorning sun, several feet of snow piled up on the porch. The lake water was still and deep green, rimmed with a layer of thin ice that smoked beneath the sun. The bodies of Ethan and the guards had been dragged away, their blood frozen on the stone. Rachael and Will turned as Devlin approached.

  “Morning, honey,” her mother said. Devlin stood between them, noticed for the first time that she was a few inches taller than her mother. “So how long will you be gone?” Rachael was asking.

  “Hope to be back tonight,” Will said, “but if we don’t reach Fairbanks until after dark, I don’t know. Can you keep things under control if we don’t come back until tomorrow?”

  “Yeah. But I worry about you going out there with the wolves loose.”

  “I’ll have the shotgun, plenty of shells.”

  “You have to take Devlin?”

  “Yeah, Buck and I will fly back here to the inner lake and pick her up. I want to get her into a hospital tonight. I worry all this is going to get her sick.”

  . . .

  In a supply room, four doors down from where Paul sat dead in a chair beside a cold fireplace, Will found snowshoes, a parka, and an extra box of twelve-gauge buckshot.

  He ate an early lunch of beef stew, and Will said good-bye to the women in the library, explained that he would try to return that evening, but if it wasn’t possible, first thing tomorrow morning at the latest.

  Rachael and Devlin walked Will to the front door, where he cinched the straps of his snowshoes down across the tops of his boots.

  Rachael hugged her husband.

  “I’ll see you soon,” she said, and watched him step outside and climb up onto the snowpack.

  She stood in the warm, direct sun, watching Will go, his snowshoes sinking into a foot and a half of powder with every step, her eyes burning from the harsh reflection off the ice crystals.

  Seconds before retreating back into the lodge, she and Devlin registered a distant droning, which grew exponentially louder with every passing second, until a floatplane buzzed the lodge’s roof, its engine screaming as it descended toward the water, the pontoons catching sun, glimmering like mirrors.

  Her heart leaped as the plane touched down midway across the lake, Will stopping just fifty yards out from the lodge—he wouldn’t have to make the long haul to the outer lake.

  The engine had cut off. Devlin was squinting, trying to make out the details of the plane, though it had almost reached the far end of the lake, more than a mile away.

  Her smile faded.

  Will had turned around, tracking back toward the lodge as fast as his snowshoes allowed.

  Something was wrong. Will was wearing that same worried expression he used to get just prior to opening arguments for a big trial.

  He reached them breathless and sweating.

  “What’s wrong?” Rachael asked.

  Will leaned over with his hands on his knees, drawing in lungfuls of cold air.

  He shook his head, gasping between ragged breaths. “That isn’t our plane.”

  The Lesser of the Evils

  FIFTY-NINE

  From the porch, Will and Rachael had an unobstructed view of the entire lake, the floatplane clearly visible at the far end—a piece of red amid all that blinding white.

  Will lifted the binoculars to his face as sunlight and frigid air streamed in, adjusting the knobs, bringing the plane into focus.

  “Okay, here we go. There are one . . . two, three . . . people standing in a foot of water, unloading the cargo pod, throwing duffel bags up onto the bank. They’re all wearing big white parkas, definitely dressed for the weather.”

  “Hunters?” Rachael asked.

  “They don’t look like hunters.” He drew in a quick shot of air.

  “What?”

  Will noted the sudden pressure in his chest, behind his eyes, strength flooding out of his legs as approaching footsteps echoed in the lobby.

  “What?”

  “I recognize one of them,” he said.

  “Who?”

  “Oh God.”

  “Will? Who?”

  He lowered the binoculars and stared at his wife. “Javier Estrada just climbed down out of the pilot’s seat.”

  “That man you and Kalyn—”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s he doing here?”

  “What do you think? We took his family, left them for days in a burned-out mall.”

  Devlin walked up, stopped between her parents, said, “So did you find out who they are?”

  “Bad men,” Rachael said. “Very bad men.”

  Will put his arm around Devlin, kissed the top of her head. “Who is it, Dad?”

  “Javier. But we’re gonna be all right, honey,” he said, wondering if the words rang as hollow for Devlin as they felt tumbling out of his mouth. “I need to talk to Mom. Stay here for a minute, okay?” He handed her the binoculars. “Keep an eye on that plane at the end of the lake, and the four men who just climbed out of it.”

  “No, Will. No fucking way. Absolutely not.”

  Will and Rachael stood in the corridor, twenty feet down from Kalyn’s room.

  “Rachael, we can’t do this on our own.”

  “She betrayed you. Tried to trade our daughter.”

  “I know, but we need her, and we’re running out of time standing here fighting about it.”

  Rachael flashed her eyes at the ceiling, her most vehement eye roll.

  “Wow, five years since I’ve seen that one,” Will said.

  She smiled. “Missed it, huh?”

  “I need you to trust me. As bad as Kalyn is and what she did, the man who’s coming here is ten times worse. We’re going to need her.”

  “The lesser of the evils. That’s where we’re at?”

  “Afraid so.”

  Will looked through the peephole, saw Kalyn under the covers, asleep in bed.

  “All right.”

  Rachael slipped the master key into the lock. It turned, and Will nudged the door open with the barrel of the shotgun.

  Kalyn sat up, her face swollen from a night of steady crying.

  “We’re in trouble,” Will said.

  Kalyn stared back, eyes darkened with shame. “I wanna see my sister. Is she okay?”

  “Yes, she’s fine. A plane has landed on the inner lake.” He hesitated, as if by not speaking his name, it might undercut the reality that the man had actually, impossibly, found them, that he was here, less than a mile away. “Javier and three men.”

  Kalyn’s face paled, the shame deferring to a crisp alertness, tinged with fear.