Blake Crouch - Snowbound

A crowd had formed along the shore. People were taking pictures, shooting videos. Firemen and police officers stood guard behind a barrier of yellow crime-scene tape.

The woman sitting two rows back suddenly shouted, “Oh God, there’s Jimmy! It’s Jimmy! He’s a teenager!”

Devlin noticed that a handful of people had been allowed past the police barrier. They were gathered at the end of the dock—husbands, sisters, brothers, children, parents—and Devlin could see that every one of them stood crying, hands cupped to mouths, some outright weeping and prostrate, others signing “I love you” toward the seaplane.

The engines quit.

Devlin looked at her mother, her father, saw tears running down their faces, too. There was no stopping it, the emotion so sharp, so intense, it seemed to suck the oxygen out of the cabin. The women on the other side of the plane were unbuckling their seat belts, leaning across to look out the windows that faced the dock, searching for their loved ones amid the throng.

The pontoons bumped into the wooden pylons. The base crew went to work tethering the plane, tying down the props.

The families of the women pressed up to the end of the dock, and Devlin watched a man kneel down and reach out over the water, his hand just able to touch the window that framed his wife’s face.

His voice was muffled, but Devlin heard him say, “Oh God, Melinda! Oh God!”

“Jeff!”

A police officer walked over and patted the man’s shoulders, said, “Sir, I know it’s emotional, but we have some women on the plane who need immediate medical attention.”

“I’m right here, Melinda!” he yelled. “Right here!”

The officer led him and the others a little ways back from the plane.

The pilot opened the De Havilland’s door. Light streamed in. Devlin felt the frigid air, thought she smelled the ocean. A paramedic ducked into the plane—a young man with a goatee and stylish sideburns—his face darkening at the sight of the passengers.

He steadied himself and said, “We have ambulances waiting outside for everyone.”

Rachael stood up, said, “Take that woman in front first.”

The paramedic knelt down. “What’s her name?”

“Natalie.”

He was staring at an eighty-pound woman, severely malnourished and catatonic, who’d suffered so much trauma, it had destroyed her mind.

“My name’s Rick,” he said. “Your family’s here, Natalie. I’m gonna carry you out, okay?”

He unbuckled the safety belt and lifted the woman from her seat, turning around carefully in the cramped space near the door and the cockpit. Through her window, Devlin watched another paramedic take Natalie out of Rick’s arms. He was cradling her like a child, her eyes open yet seeing nothing. Someone draped a blanket over her.

A man emerged from the crowd, staggered toward Natalie. He was pale and shell-shocked, like he’d encountered a ghost or become one himself.

Rachael grabbed Devlin’s and Will’s hands. “Guys?” she whispered. “You see what you did? It isn’t just about our family.”

Outside, the paramedic said, “Is this your wife, sir?” The man had no voice, could only nod.

“Why don’t you come with me. You can ride with us to Providence.”

SEVENTY-FIVE

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 ware house 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.”