Blake Crouch - Snowbound

“Devlin,” he said, “tell me what’s going on here.”

“I’ve been in this lodge since early this morning, trying to keep from getting caught, looking for you. Then a little while ago, Kalyn found me. She took me upstairs. I thought we were sneaking out. Instead, she took me to this man named Paul. She was gonna trade me.”

Kalyn said, “Will, please—”

“Shut up. Trade you for what, Devlin?”

“Her sister, Lucy. They keep women here.”

“Why?”

“For the guests. So they can have sex with them, even kill them if they want.”

“Where’s Paul now? Was he one of the men I—”

“I shot him.”

“Oh, honey.”

“He was gonna hurt me. I didn’t have a choice.”

Will stared at Kalyn.

“You know me, Will.”

“No, I know my daughter. You’re a big fucking question mark right now.” Will stepped toward her, raised the shotgun, trying to spurn the blood lust he felt. Not even with Javier had he wanted to hurt something this bad.

Kalyn’s eyes ran over, and she wiped her face.

Will said, “Did you have this planned from the start?”

“No.”

“To use us to help you get here, then trade my daughter for your sister? Was that the deal?”

“No, I just got caught. I never would’ve let them keep you or her. I would’ve—”

“I should kill you right now,” Will said.

“Let’s lock her up, Dad. In one of the rooms.”

“Do we have a key?”

“I know where you can get one.”

“All right, but meanwhile . . .”

He swung the Mossberg’s composite stock into the side of Kalyn’s head.

FIFTY-FIVE

Will and Devlin walked together out of the library, leaving Kalyn unconscious on the floor. They turned the corner into the candlelit passage, the three bodies lying up ahead, thankfully obscured in the low light.

“Why don’t you hang back, Dev,” Will said. “No sense taking in what you don’t have to.”

“Okay, Dad. I think each of the guests has a master key that opens all the rooms.”

“And the dining hall is up ahead on the left?”

“Yeah.”

“Yell if you need me.”

Will went on, stepping carefully between lakes of blood as he negotiated his way past the men he’d killed, marveling at the merciful numbness.

Three torches had been ignited in the great dining hall, the walls aglow and the far end of the table littered with cards, poker chips, wads of cash, wineglasses, shot glasses, highballs, martini glasses, cocktail shakers, bottles of wine, liquor, and two enormous bongs, all shimmering in the firelight.

“Anybody in here? I won’t hurt you if you come on out.”

He walked to the near end of the table, the room reeking of cigars and marijuana smoke, soured with spilled alcohol and the licorice stench of absinthe.

Ten feet away, he spotted a dark shape lying down against the wall beside a potted spruce tree. Will’s finger moved onto the trigger.

He heard the sputtering of a drunken snore, and his eyes pulled detail out of the dark: an older silver-haired man having partied out of his league.

Something clanged in the kitchen.

“Come out of there!” Will hollered. “Your chance to do this without getting hurt is slipping away.”

The kitchen doors swung open and two men staggered out—a man in his late twenties, naked except for his boxer shorts, looking disoriented and sheepish, and a shorter, much rounder kimonoed man, balding and more sober.

“Tell him it’s cool, Reynolds.”

“Keep your mouth shut, Sean.” To Will: “What’s going on here?”

“Come closer.”

The men stepped forward into the full illumination of a torch.

“Who are you?” Will asked.

“Guests of this lodge. Who the fuck are you?”

Footsteps sounded outside in the passage. Will glanced over his shoulder.

“Just me, Dad.”

“I told you wait out there.”

Reynolds said, “Where’s everybody else?”

“They’re dead, sir.”

Sean said, “Oh shit.”

“Are you law enforcement?” Reynolds asked.

“No.”

Devlin sidled up to her father.

“Then what gives you the right to—” The racket of a pumping shotgun stopped him cold. Will turned, to see his daughter leveling a Mossberg on both men.

She said, “You with no shirt on, step out of the way, please.”

Sean staggered around the table and sat down unsteadily against the wall beside his father. Reynolds looked confused and terribly put upon.

“Honey, what are you doing?” Will said.

She shouldered the shotgun.

“I’m gonna kill that fat man.”

“No, Devlin—”

“Trust me, Dad, he has it coming.”

“In cold blood?”

“Yep.”

“Wait just a second.”

“Why are you so angry with me?” Reynolds asked.

“Remember that pregnant woman you raped this morning?”

“I don’t know what you’re—”

“You told her you’d made eighty-four million dollars this year? That you could kill her if you wanted?”

“I think you’re mistaking me for—”

“I’m not mistaking you for anybody.”

Will said, “Devlin, this isn’t the way to handle this. You didn’t have a choice with Paul, but you do now.” He reached for the shotgun, saying, “Here, give me that,” but his voice was lost in the shattering report. Will watched, stunned, as his daughter struggled to pump the Mossberg again.

Reynolds was sitting on the floor in a puddle of himself, not making a peep, just staring at the shredded kimono and all that was leaking through it.

Devlin approached him with the Mossberg already shouldered, said, “I hope you go to hell,” and shot him in the face.

When her ears quit ringing, the only sound in the room was Sean’s whimpering.

Devlin looked back at her father, saw something like disappointment or disgust.

“Please don’t look at me like that, Dad.”

Will just shook his head, and for a moment Devlin thought he might cry.

“You wanna know why I’m never going to lose a wink of sleep over that?”

“Why?”

Devlin reached into her pocket and pulled out a key.

“Come with me. I’ll show you who I watched him rape.”

FIFTY-SIX

They locked Kalyn, Sean, and his father into separate rooms on the first floor of the south wing, and Will followed Devlin up the staircase to the fourth, where they stopped in front of the door to room 429.

“Here.” She handed her father the master key.

“What do you want me to do with this?”

“Just open it.”

Will slipped the key into the lock.

“I’m gonna wait out here,” Devlin said. “You’ll need this.” She handed him a lantern, and Will turned the key, pushed the door open.

The room was dark. Someone lay crying in bed. He set the lantern on the table, assumed it was a woman under the covers, one of the captives.

Will said, “Everything’s okay now. The people who’ve kept you here and the man who hurt you today are dead.”

The covers turned back.

Will’s wife sat up, and he lost his breath.

“Rachael?”

Firelit tears trailed down her cheeks.

He had dreamed of this a thousand times—what it would be like to hold his wife again, to wrap his arms around her. None of them had approached the sweetness or the pain of this moment, and he was crying because of her smell. “You smell like you,” he whispered.

“Is this real?” Rachael asked.

“I promise it is.”

“Where’s Devlin?”

“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.