“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.”
SEVENTY-NINE
It was a cold night, windless, starry. The gravel crunched under Will’s boots.
The woodpile stood against the stone chimney at the side of the house. He filled his arms with logs and carried them to the front porch, dropped the first load at the foot of the steps. On the way back to the woodpile, he stopped. He could see the pasture in the distance, glowing under the full moon. There were shadows moving across it.
He froze. The thudding of his heart seemed to pluck at the silence like a guitar string as he counted half a dozen deer sauntering over the turned earth, working their way toward the river for an evening drink. They looked albino in the moonlight, so bright out there, he could see their breath clouds.
Will exhaled slowly as the fear receded, and he wondered if it would always be this way—that breathless anxiety as he rounded corners, listening for clandestine footsteps in the silence, looking for movement where none should be. He could tell himself a thousand times that the Alphas would never come for them, but that didn’t mean it would or wouldn’t happen. Messing had been right. These things, he couldn’t control.
Live your life, Mr. Innis.
Fuck the fear.
Will reached into his pocket, pulled out Javier’s BlackBerry, which he’d taken from Kalyn’s pack two months ago, before they’d flown out of the Wolverine Hills.
He kept it charged and always with him like a pocket time bomb, waiting for a call—from whom, he did not know. Maybe Jav’s wife or an Alpha compadre.
He turned it on, stared at the glowing screen. There had been no calls. The BlackBerry wasn’t going to vibrate. He’d been holding on to this device as an obsessive-compulsive talisman—he checked for messages every hour—as if before the Alphas came for them, they would call first, as if nothing could happen to his family without advance warning, as long as he religiously checked for incoming communication.
“I should throw this piece of shit at the chimney,” he said aloud, his grip tightening around the BlackBerry, his finger inadvertently pressing a button on the side.
The screen changed to show a list of folders, SMS OUTBOX drawing his attention, and he clicked the icon to open the folder containing sent text messages, wondering why this hadn’t occurred to him before. Maybe he could find some phone numbers and addresses of Javier’s associates, forward them on to Agent Messing.
The last two text messages had been sent to the same phone number, Phoenix area code:
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 19, 2007 • 10:41 A.M. AKDT
J—Arctic Skies, Buck Young. We leave at 1:00 P.M. today
for the Wolverine Hills: 200 miles west of Fairbanks. K.
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18, 2007 • 11:03 P.M. AKDT
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.