Ethan headed for his bedroom.

Stripped off his pants and shirt, left them in a pile in the doorway.

The floor was freezing.

He hustled to the bed.

Crawling under the covers, he turned over onto his side and pulled Theresa in close.

She radiated heat.

He kissed the back of her neck.

Sleep seemed like a long shot. Almost impossible lately to turn down the noise in the back of his mind.

He shut his eyes.

Maybe it would come anyway.

“Ethan.”

“Hey baby,” he whispered. She rolled over, faced him. Her breath in his face a familiar, gentle heat.

“Get your feet off of mine. They’re ice.”

“Sorry. I wake you?” he asked.

“When you left. Where’d you go?”

“Work.”

“To see her?”

“I can’t—”

“Ethan.”

“What?”

“Where?”

“It doesn’t matter, Theresa. It really doesn’t—”

“I can’t keep doing this.”

“Doing what? Us?”

“This town. And us in it. You. Her. Your job.” She leaned in close, pressed her lips against his ear, whispered, “Can I keep talking like this or will they hear us?”

He hesitated.

“I’m going to do it anyway, Ethan.”

“Then just be still.”

“What?”

“Be completely still.”

“Why?”

“Will you just do it? In particular, don’t move your left leg.”

They lay still.

He could feel his wife’s heart beating against his chest.

Ethan counted to fifteen in his head, then whispered, “Speak no louder than this.”

“I used to think that if I could only be with you again, have you here with us, that I could do this. Buy into the lie.”

“And?”

“I can’t.”

“You don’t have a choice, Theresa. Do you know the danger you’re putting our family in just having this conversation?”

Her mouth pushed hard into his ear.

A chill shot down his spine.

“I want to leave this place. I’m done, Ethan. I don’t care what could happen to us. I just want out.”

“Do you care what happens to our son?” Ethan whispered.

“This isn’t a life. I don’t care if we all die.”

“Good. Because we will.”

“You know that for sure?”

“A hundred percent.”

“Because you know.”

“Yes.”

“What’s out there, Ethan?”

“We can’t have this conversation.”

“I am your wife.”

Their bodies were pushed against each other.

Her legs were cool and smooth against his skin and the heat coming off her was driving him mad. He wanted to shake her. Wanted to fuck her.

“Why the hell are you getting hard?”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s out there, Ethan?”

“You really want to know.”

And then her hand was on his cock.

“Are you thinking about her?”

“No.”

“Swear to me.”

“I swear.”

She slid away, down under the covers, and took him in her mouth. Brought him right to the edge. Then she came up and pulled off her nightie. She was sitting on top of him and her breath clouding. She leaned over and kissed him. Her nipples hard against his chest in the cold.

Theresa rolled over onto her back and pulled Ethan with her, pulled him inside.

She was loud and she sounded so beautiful.

As she started to come, she brought Ethan’s head down, her lips to his ear, his lips to hers. She moaned and said, “Tell me.”

“What?” He was breathless.

“Tell me… oooohhhhgodEthan… where we really are.”

Ethan buried his face into her ear. “We’re all that’s left, baby.” They were coming together, loud and hard, as in sync as they’d ever been. “This is the last town on earth.”

Theresa shouting yesyesyesohgoddontstop. Loud enough to cover his words.

“And we’re surrounded by monsters.”

They lay entwined and sweaty and perfectly still.

Ethan whispering into her ear.

He told her everything.

When they were. Where they were. About Pilcher. About the abbies.

Then he lay with his head propped up on one elbow, stroking her face.

Theresa stared at the ceiling.

She’d been here five years, a helluva lot longer than he had, but it had been a state of limbo. Of not really knowing. Now she did. Perhaps she had suspected before, but all uncertainty had just been burned away: aside from Ethan and Ben, she would never again see all of the people she had loved in her life before. They had been dead two millennia. And if she’d ever held out hope for leaving Wayward Pines, Ethan had just destroyed it.

There was no end date for her sentence in this place.

She was a lifer.

Ethan wondered which emotion was dominant—figured a full cocktail was flailing away inside her head: anger, despair, heartbreak, fear.

By the light of a distant streetlamp coming through the window, he watched tears form in her eyes.

Felt her hand begin to tremble in his.

13

Water Tower

Volunteer Park

Seattle, 2013

As Hassler approached the entrance to the water tower, a woman stepped out of the shadows beside the door.

She said, “You’re late.”

“By five minutes. Relax. He up there?”

“Yeah.”

She couldn’t have been much older than twenty. A thin, muscular build, crazy gorgeous, but with dead eyes. An interesting choice for Pilcher’s muscle. She certainly put out the confidence of someone who could handle herself.

She stood between Hassler and the door, blocking his way.

He said, “Do you mind?”

For a beat, it seemed like she might, but she finally stepped aside.

As Hassler moved past, he said, “Don’t let anyone come up.”

“Thanks for telling me how to do my job, g-man.”

The metal clanged under Hassler’s wing tips.

He trudged up the stairs.

The observation level was low lit, a circular brick wall punctuated with arched windows that had been covered in heavy-gauge screens to stop anyone from going through. More floor-to-ceiling fencing guarded the seventy-five-foot drop into the open spiral staircase.

Wearing a long black coat and a bowler hat, David Pilcher sat on a bench on the other side of the observation deck.

Hassler circled around and took a seat beside him.

For a moment, nothing but the sound of rain hammering on the roof above them.

Pilcher looked over with the faintest smile.

“Agent Hassler.”

“David.”

Out the window, the skyline of Seattle looked like a neon blur through the low cloud deck.

Pilcher reached into his coat and took out a fat envelope.

Set it in Hassler’s lap.

Hassler carefully opened it, peeked inside, thumbed through the hundred-dollar bills.

“Looks like thirty thousand to me,” he said, resealing the envelope.

“You have news?” Pilcher asked.

“It’s been fifteen months since Agent Burke’s disappearance and Agent Stallings’s death. There have been no leads. No new evidence. Now don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying anyone at the Treasury Department is ever going to forget that we had one agent killed and three go MIA in Wayward Pines, Idaho. But with no new information, they’re just spinning in their tracks and they know it. Two days ago, the internal investigation into my missing agents was officially deprioritized.”

“What do your people think happened?”

“The theories?”

“Yeah.”

“It’s all over the map, but nothing remotely close to a bull’s-eye. They had Ethan Burke’s ‘hope service’ today.”

“What’s a hope service?”

“Fuck if I know.”

“You went?”

“I went to the after-party at Theresa’s house.”

“I’m going to pay her a visit after you and I are finished.”

“Really.”

“It’s time.”