Pines (5 page)

When he reached the entrance, he stared through the storefront glass into a dimly lighted pub called the Biergarten.

His heart swelled—still open.

He walked inside.

Three tables occupied, but otherwise, the place was dead.

He took a corner stool at the bar.

Through a pair of swinging doors drifted the sizzle of meat cooking on an open grill.

Sitting in this pub, his arms resting on the well-worn bar, he felt at peace for the first time in days. The memory of Stallings and the accident was near, threatening to muscle its way in, but he refused to let it dominate his mind. Simply breathed in and out and tried to stay as firmly planted as possible in the moment.

After five minutes, a tall woman with a pile of brown hair propped up with chopsticks pushed through the swinging doors and opened a hinged section of the bar.

She came around to Ethan, all smiles, and tossed a drink coaster down in front of him.

“Whatcha drinking?”

She wore a black T-shirt with the pub’s name screen-printed across the front.

“A beer would be great.”

The barkeep grabbed a pint glass and moved over to the taps. “Something light? Dark?”

“You have Guinness?”

“I got something like that.”

She’d already pulled the tap when he remembered he didn’t have any money.

She set the glass in front of him, cream foam spilling down the sides, said, “You just drinking, or you wanna see a menu?”

“Food for sure,” he said, “but you’re gonna kill me.”

The woman smiled. “Not yet. I hardly know you.”

“I don’t have any money.”

Her smile died. “OK, maybe you’re onto something.”

“I can explain. You see the car wreck that happened on Main a few days ago?”

“No.”

“You hear about it?”

“No.”

“Well, there was one, just a few blocks south of here, and I was involved in it. Just got out of the hospital, in fact.”

“So that’s where you got those pretty bruises?”

“Right.”

“I’m still trying to figure out what this has to do with you not paying me.”

“I’m a federal agent.”

“Same question.”

“Apparently, the sheriff has my wallet and phone. Everything actually. It’s been a huge headache.”

“So what are you, like, FBI or something?”

“Secret Service.”

The woman smiled, leaned toward him across the bar. It had been hard to tell in the lowlight, but in proximity she was damn good looking—a few years younger than Ethan,
with model cheekbones, short-torsoed and long-legged. Had probably been a stone-cold knockout in her twenties, although thirty-four or thirty-five—whatever she was now—didn’t seem to be treating her too badly.

“I don’t know if you’re a confidence man, and this is just a part of your game coming in here with your black suit and this crazy—”

“I’m not lying—”

She touched a finger to his lips. “The way I figure, you’re either exactly who you say you are, or you’re a spectacular liar. I mean, this is a good story, and I love good stories. Either way, of course I’ll let you have dinner on credit.”

“It’s not a lie...What’s your name?”

“Beverly.”

“I’m Ethan.”

She shook his hand. “Pleased to meet you, Ethan.”

“Beverly, as soon as I get my wallet and things tomorrow morning, I’m gonna come in here—”

“Lemme guess...and lay a big tip on me.”

Ethan shook his head. “Now you’re mocking me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“If you don’t believe me, I’ll—”

“I just met you,” she said. “By the time you’re finished with dinner, I’ll know whether or not I’ll ever see you again.”

“Too early to say, huh?” He smiled, feeling like he might be winning her over.

She brought him a menu, and he ordered potato wedges and a cheeseburger as rare as the health department would allow.

When Beverly had disappeared into the kitchen with his order, he sipped his beer.

Hmm. Something was off. It was flat, and aside from the faintest suggestion of bitterness in the finish, almost completely devoid of taste.

He set the pint glass on the bar as Beverly returned.

“I’m getting a free meal, so I’m hesitant to complain,” he said, “but something’s wrong with this beer.”

“Really?” She gestured to the glass. “You mind?”

“Go ahead.”

She lifted the glass and took a sip, licked the foam off her upper lip as she set it back down.

“Tastes fine to me.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“No, it’s flat and...I don’t know...it’s just...it doesn’t have any taste.”

“Weird. I don’t get that at all. You want to try a different beer?”

“No, I probably shouldn’t be drinking anyway. I’ll just have a water.”

She got him a fresh glass, squirted water over the ice.

* * *

He lifted a steaming-hot cheeseburger from his plate with both hands.

Beverly was wiping down the other end of the bar when he called her over, the burger poised in front of his mouth.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing. Yet. Come here.”

She came over, stood facing him.

“My experience,” he said, “is that about eighty percent of the time, when I order a hamburger rare like I just did, I get one well done. I don’t know why most cooks are incapable of cooking a hamburger the right way, but there it is. And you know what I do when I get one overcooked?”

“You send it back?” She didn’t look amused.

“Exactly.”

“You’re pretty goddamned difficult to please, you know that?”

“I’m aware,” he said, and dove in.

He chewed for a good ten seconds.

“Well?” Beverly asked.

Ethan set the burger back on his plate, swallowing as he wiped his hands on the linen napkin.

He pointed at the burger. “That’s an amazing piece of work.”

Beverly laughed and rolled her eyes.

* * *

By the time Ethan had finished the last crumb on his plate, he was the only customer left in the restaurant.

The barkeep took his plate away and then came back to refill his water.

“You gonna be all right tonight, Ethan? Got a place to stay?”

“Yeah, I sweet-talked the desk clerk at the hotel into letting me have a room.”

“She bought your bullshit story too, huh?” Beverly smirked.

“Hook, line, and sinker.”

“Well, since this is on me, can I offer you dessert? Our death-by-chocolate is out of this world.”

“Thanks, but I should probably get going.”

“What is it exactly that you’re doing here? In your official capacity, I mean. I understand if you can’t talk about it—”

“It’s a missing person’s investigation.”

“Who went missing?”

“Two Secret Service agents.”

“They disappeared
here
? In Wayward Pines?”

“About a month ago, Agent Bill Evans and Agent Kate Hewson came here on a classified investigation. As of this evening, they haven’t been heard from in ten days. A total loss of contact. No e-mail. No phone calls. Even the GPS tracking chip in their company car went dark.”

“And they sent you to find them?”

“I used to work with Kate. We were partners when she lived in Seattle.”

“Is that all?”

“Excuse me?”

“
Just
partners?”

He could feel a tremor of something—sadness, loss, rage—vibrating through him.

But he hid it well.

“Yeah, we were just partners. Friends too, though. Anyway, I’m here to pick up their trail. Find out what happened. Bring them home.”

“You think something bad happened?”

He didn’t answer, just stared at her, but it was an answer.

“Well, I hope you find what you’re looking for, Ethan.” Beverly pulled a check out of the front pocket on her apron and slid it across the bar.

“So this is my damage, huh?”

Ethan glanced down at the check. It wasn’t an itemized bill. Beverly had handwritten an address across the columns.

604 1ST AVE

“What’s this?” Ethan asked.

“That’s where I live. If you need anything, if you run into trouble, whatever...”

“What? You worried about me now?”

“No, but with no money, no phone, no ID, you’re in a vulnerable state.”

“So you believe me now?”

Beverly reached across the bar, let her hand rest on top of his for just a second.

“I always believed you.”

* * *

Outside the pub, he took off his shoes and started down the sidewalk in bare feet, the concrete cold, but at least he could walk without pain.

Instead of going back to the hotel, he followed one of the streets that intersected Main and headed into a neighborhood.

Thinking about Kate.

Victorian houses lined both sides of the block, set off by the glow of their porch lights.

The silence was staggering.

You never got nights like this in Seattle.

There was always the distant moan of some ambulance or car alarm or the patter of rainfall on the streets.

Here, the complete, dead quiet was broken only by the soft slap of his feet against the pavement—

Wait.

No, there was another sound—a solitary cricket chirping in a bush up ahead.

It took him back to his childhood in Tennessee and those mid-October evenings sitting on the screened porch while his father smoked his pipe, staring across the soybean fields when the chorus of crickets had dwindled down to a lonely one.

Hadn’t the poet Carl Sandburg written about this very thing? Ethan couldn’t recall the verse verbatim, knew only
that it had something to do with the voice of the last cricket across the frost.

A splinter of singing.

There it was—that was the phrase he’d loved.

A splinter of singing.

He stopped beside the bush, half-expecting the chirping to abruptly stop, but it kept on at a rhythm so steady it almost seemed mechanical. Crickets rubbed their wings together to make that sound—he’d read that somewhere.

Ethan glanced at the bush.

Some species of juniper.

Strong, fragrant smell.

A nearby streetlight threw a decent splash of illumination down onto the branches, and he leaned in to see if he could catch a glimpse of the cricket.

The chirping went on, unabated.

“Where are you, little guy?”

He cocked his head.

Now he was squinting at something barely poking up between the branches. But it wasn’t the cricket. Some sort of box instead, about the size of his iPhone.

He reached through the branches and touched the face of it.

The chirping grew softer.

He took his hand away.

Louder.

What the hell was the point of this?

The chirp of the cricket was emanating from a speaker.

* * *

It was nearly ten thirty when he unlocked his hotel room and stepped inside. He dropped his shoes and stripped naked and climbed into bed without even bothering to turn on the lights.

He’d cracked one of the windows before leaving for dinner, and he could feel a thin, cool draft breezing across his chest, driving out the day’s stuffy accumulation of heat.

Within a minute, he was cold.

He sat up, turned back the covers and the sheet, and crawled under.

* * *

Fighting for his life, losing, the creature on top of him frenzied as it tried to tear his throat out, the only thing keeping Ethan alive the crushing grip he had around the monster’s neck—squeezing, squeezing—but the thing had pure, brute strength. He could feel the hard ripples of muscle as his fingers dug into the milky, translucent skin. But he wasn’t stopping it, his triceps beginning to cramp and his arms bending back as the face, the teeth, inched closer...

* * *

Ethan bolted up in bed, dripping with sweat, gasping for breath, his heart racing so fast it was less like beating than a steady shuddering in his chest.

He had no concept of where he was until he saw the painting of the cowboys and the campfire.

The alarm clock on the bedside table changed to 3:17.

He turned on the light, stared at the phone.

Two...zero...six...

Two...zero...six...

How could he not remember his home landline? Or even Theresa’s cell? How was that possible?

Swinging his legs over the side of the bed, he stood and walked over to the window.

Split the blinds, looked down at the quiet street below.

Dark buildings.

Empty sidewalks.

Thinking,
Tomorrow will be better.

He’d get his phone back, his wallet, his gun, his briefcase. Call his wife, his son. Call Seattle and talk with SAC Hassler. Get back to the investigation that had brought him here in the first place.

He woke to a headache and sunlight streaming into his room through the gap in the blinds.

Rolled over, stared at the alarm clock.

“Shit.”

12:21.

He’d slept past noon.

Ethan crawled out of bed, and as he reached for his pants—balled up on the floor—he heard someone knocking on his door. Revise that—someone had been knocking on his door for quite awhile, and he was just realizing for the first time that the distant pounding wasn’t solely confined to his head.

“Mr. Burke! Mr. Burke!”

Lisa, the front desk clerk, shouting through his door.

“Just a sec!” he called out. He pulled his pants on and staggered over to the door. Undid the locks, the chain, tugged it open.

“Yes?” Ethan asked.

“Checkout is at eleven.”

“Sorry, I—”

“What happened to ‘first thing’?”

“I didn’t realize—”

“Have you been able to get your wallet yet?”

“No, I’m just now waking up. Is it really after twelve?”

She wouldn’t answer, just glared at him.

“I’m going to the sheriff’s office right now,” he said, “and as soon as I get—”

“I need your key back, and I need you to evacuate the room.”

“To what?”

“Evacuate the room. Get out. I don’t appreciate being taken advantage of, Mr. Burke.”

“No one’s taking advantage of you.”

“I’m waiting.”