Walking back into the party, Ethan couldn’t deny that he felt like a brand-new man. There’d been a mirror in the changing room, and he’d combed his wet hair over to the side in the style he’d worn back in his g-man days.
Someone had constructed a bar along one side of the cavern.
Ethan threaded his way toward it through the crowd and installed himself on an open stool.
The bartender wandered over.
White oxford, black tie, black vest.
Refreshingly old-school.
He threw a cocktail napkin down on the dark, scuffed wood of the bar.
Ethan recognized him from town. They’d never spoken, but he worked the cash register several days a week at the grocery store.
“What’ll it be?” the man asked, no indication that he knew or cared who Ethan was.
“What do you have?” Ethan asked, glancing at the bottles lined up on the wall in front of a mirror. He saw bourbon, scotch, vodka. Brand names he recognized, but they were all nearly empty. Unlabeled bottles of clear liquor seemed to be in ample supply.
The mirror had been framed with dozens of Polaroid photos. One toward the center caught his eye. It was a close-up of Kate and Alyssa, both women dressed like flappers—newsboy caps, bobbed hair, gaudy makeup, and pearls. Their cheeks were pressed together. They looked drunk, in the moment, and irredeemably happy.
The barkeep said, “Sir?”
“Johnnie Walker Blue. Neat.”
“Those bottles are actually more for atmosphere and extra special occasions.”
“All right. Then what do you recommend?”
“I make a mean martini.”
“By all means.”
He watched the barkeep pour from various unmarked bottles into a big martini glass, which he set on Ethan’s napkin and garnished with a wedge of green apple.
The man said, “Cheers. First one’s on me.”
As Ethan raised the glass to his lips, he heard Kate’s voice: “Now try and keep an open mind.”
She claimed the barstool beside him as he sipped.
He said, “Wow. Well at least they got the glassware right. Until now, I’ve never actually wanted to untaste something.”
It was odorless, but on the tongue the overwhelming note was burn, followed by a strong citrus pucker, and a finish that was mercifully short, like the flavor had just fallen off a cliff.
He carefully returned the martini glass to the napkin.
“You aren’t going to tell me this bathtub gin grows on you.”
Kate laughed. “You look good, Agent Burke. I have to say the elegance of the black suit and tie suits you a thousand times better than that woodsy sheriff getup.”
In the reflection of the mirror, people were dancing to a slow jazz tune. He spotted Imming and his goons in tuxedoes, passing a mason jar and watching the band.
Ethan reached for the stem of the martini glass, thought better of it.
“Nice digs,” he said. “How’d you get all of this up here?”
“We’ve been bringing things for years. Glad you could make it.”
“Well, I barely did, and I still don’t understand what it is I made it to. Is this a costume party?”
“Kind of.”
“So what’s everyone pretending to be?”
“See, that’s the thing. Nobody here is pretending, Ethan. This is a place to come and be who you really are.” She turned in her barstool, surveyed the crowd. “We talk about our past here. Our lives before. Who we were. Where we lived. We remember the people we loved, who we’ve been separated from. We talk about Wayward Pines. We talk about whatever we want, and we have no fear of anything inside this room. It isn’t allowed.”
“Do you talk about leaving?”
“No.”
“So you’ve never been to the fence?”
She sipped the foul concoction posing as a martini.
“Once.”
“But you didn’t go to the other side.”
“No, I just wanted to see it. Since we started coming to this cave, we’ve had three people cross to the other side.”
“How?”
She hesitated. “There’s a secret tunnel.”
“And let me guess.”
“What?”
“None of them ever returned.”
“That’s right.” She stepped down off her stool. “Dance with me.”
Ethan took her hand.
They walked across the uneven rock into the throng of slow dancers.
He cupped his hand to her back but kept a respectful distance.
“Harold won’t mind,” Kate said. “He’s not the jealous type.”
Ethan pulled her closer, their bodies almost touching. “How about this?”
“When I said he’s not the jealous type, that wasn’t a dare.”
But she didn’t pull back.
They danced.
He hated how good it felt to touch her again.
“What do all these people think of me being here? They act like they don’t even realize the sheriff is in the house.”
“Oh, they realize. We had discussions about it. I convinced them you could be trusted. That we needed you. I stuck my neck out.”
“You do need me. That’s true.”
“Question is, do we have you?”
“If I say no, will I wind up naked and stabbed to death in the middle of the road?”
He felt Kate’s fingernails dig into his shoulder.
There was fire in her eyes.
“Not me, not any of my people laid a finger on Alyssa. We aren’t revolutionaries, Ethan. We don’t come to this cave to stockpile weapons and plan a coup. We meet here to be in a place where we aren’t watched. To feel like human beings instead of prisoners.”
He guided her away from the music.
“I’ve been wondering something,” he said.
“What?”
“Two things really. First, how did you figure out that you had a microchip in your leg? Second—how did you know that if you removed the microchip, the cameras wouldn’t see you? I don’t know how you could possibly have just guessed that.”
She looked away from him.
Ethan pulled her out of the main cavern and into the colder passageway.
It had been there always—he saw it now. An embedded suspicion. But up until this moment, until he’d actually voiced the question, the simplicity of the truth had eluded him.
He said, “Kate, look at me. Tell me the truth about Alyssa.”
“I did.”
God, he’d forgotten how well he knew this woman, how easily he could see straight through her. He thought of the photograph of Kate and Alyssa behind the bar as he caught something else in her eyes that she could no longer hide—pain, loss.
“She wasn’t only their spy, was she?”
Kate’s eyes filling with tears.
“She was yours too.”
They spilled down her cheeks and she let them go.
She said, “Alyssa reached out to me.”
“When?”
“Years ago.”
“Years? So you know everything. You’ve known all this time.”
“No. She never told us what was beyond the fence. She said it was for our own safety. In fact, she made it clear that leaving would be death, that all of us, her included, were stuck here. I believed her. Most of us did. I never knew where Alyssa came from. Where she lived when she wasn’t in town. How she knew all these things that we didn’t. But she hated how we’re treated. These conditions. She said there were others like her who felt the same way, and she gave her life to help.”
“She was your friend?”
“One of my best.”
“So the bell pepper, the secret notes, Alyssa’s investigation…”
“All for show. They made her investigate us. Maybe they were onto her. Suspected what she was doing.”
“Do you know who they are? Did she ever tell you?”
“No.”
In the cavern, the band was playing a new song, something fast.
People were jitterbugging.
Ethan said, “Was Alyssa even here three nights ago?”
“No, there was no meeting. Too risky. But she’d been here plenty of times before. The night she died, I met her in the crypt. We talked about what she was going to do. They were expecting a full report from her. They wanted her to name names, to turn us all in. So examples could be made.”
“What did you and Alyssa decide she should do?”
“Make up an excuse for why she didn’t get to see our group. It was the only option.”
“What time did you and Alyssa part ways? This is very important.”
“As I was walking home, I remember hearing the clock strike two.”
“And where was this exactly?”
“Corner of Eighth and Main.”
“Where’d she go after you left her?”
“I have no idea.”
“No, I mean which direction?”
“Oh. I think she started walking south down the sidewalk.”
“Toward the hospital?”
“Right.”
“And there’s no possible way one of your people killed her? Maybe someone who knew she knew the truth? Who was willing to do anything to get it?”
“Impossible.”
“You’re absolutely certain? Those boys who brought me here tonight had more than a few rough edges. And machetes.”
“Well, they don’t trust you. But they loved Alyssa. Everyone did. Besides, it’s no secret among my people that there’s a tunnel under the fence. Alyssa wasn’t stopping anyone from leaving.”
“Then what does stop them?”
“The people who left and never came back.”