Brad Fisher sat awkwardly in the destroyed front passenger seat of Ethan’s Bronco, clutching the handle on the door as Ethan sped through town.
Brad said, “We were in the theater. You were talking. Then I looked over and she was gone.”
Ethan was trying to get ahead of his own thoughts, his own fear, fighting to see an endgame that didn’t involve mass casualties.
But the man was crying.
Ethan said, “She probably feared for her life, considering what she was doing with the children. Figured people would see her as a traitor.” He looked over at Brad. “How do you feel about Megan?”
This seemed to throw the man, to catch him off guard.
“I don’t know. I never really felt like I knew her or that she knew me. But we lived together. We slept in the same bed. Sometimes we slept together.”
“Sounds like a lot of real marriages. Did you love her?”
Brad sighed. “It’s complicated.”
The high beams fired across the dark sheriff’s station.
Ethan steered over the curb and took the Bronco right up the sidewalk, tires straddling the pavement. He brought it to a stop a few feet from the entrance. Climbed out, clicked on a flashlight as he and Brad reached the double doors.
Ethan unlocked them, propped one open.
“What are we grabbing?” Brad asked as they ran through the lobby and turned down the corridor to Ethan’s office.
“Everything.”
Brad manned the flashlight as Ethan pulled guns out of the cabinet and matched up the ammunition.
He set a Mossberg 930 on the desk and pushed in eight slugs.
Fed thirty rounds into the magazine of a Bushmaster AR-15.
Topped off the mag for his Desert Eagle.
There were more shotguns.
Hunting rifles.
Glocks.
A sig.
A .357 S&W.
The tranq gun he’d used earlier in the day.
He got two more handguns loaded but it was all costing too much time.
It took seven trips to haul the firearms and ammo-laden rucksack out to the Bronco.
Each time Ethan walked back outside with an armload, he heard new screams to the south of town.
Louder.
Closer.
Brad was shoving the bag of ammo through the busted back window as Ethan jumped in behind the wheel.
He checked his watch.
They’d burned seventeen minutes.
“Let’s go!” Ethan said.
Brad yanked the door open and climbed onto the broken seat.
Headlights blazed through the glass doors into the lobby.
Ethan glanced in the rearview mirror. Through the reddish glow of the taillights, a pale form streaked past.
He shifted into reverse.
They shot down the sidewalk and Ethan’s head hit the ceiling as the tires launched off the curve and slammed the suspension down onto the pavement.
He braked hard, brought it to a dead stop in the middle of the road, shifted into drive.
Something struck the passenger side door and a screech shook the interior of the Bronco.
Brad’s legs disappeared through the empty window frame.
He screamed.
Ethan couldn’t see the blood in the dark, but he could smell it—a strong, sudden waft of rust in the air.
He pulled his pistol, but the screams had gone silent.
All he could hear was the fading scrape of Brad’s shoes dragging across the pavement.
Ethan grabbed the flashlight, which Brad had dropped between the seats.
Shined it out into the street.
The beam struck the abby.
It was crouched on its hind legs over Brad, its face buried in his throat.
Ravenous.
Tearing.
It looked up, mouth blood-dark, and hissed at the light with the venomous warning of a wolf protecting its kill.
A little ways beyond it, the light showed more pale figures coming down the middle of the street.
Just fucking go. He’s gone.
Ethan punched the gas.
In the rearview mirror, a dozen abbies were scuttling toward the car on all fours. The one out in front came up alongside his door. It leapt at Ethan’s window, would’ve come through, but the Bronco accelerated just enough that it missed, hit the side of the car instead, and bounced off.
Ethan watched it tumble across the street and forced the pedal into the floorboard with everything he had.
When he looked back through the windshield, a small abby stood twenty feet ahead of the grille, frozen in the headlights, teeth bared.
He braced.
At contact, the bumper blasted the abby straight back thirty feet. He ran it over and dragged it for half a block, the Bronco jarring so violently he could barely keep his grip on the steering wheel.
The undercarriage spit it out.
Ethan sped north.
The rearview mirror showed a dark, empty street.
He breathed again…
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT, PINES, BOOK ONE OF THE WAYWARD PINES SERIES, IS NOW AVAILABLE IN PRINT, AUDIO, AND EBOOK
Secret Service agent Ethan Burke arrives in Wayward Pines, Idaho, with a clear mission: locate and recover two federal agents who went missing in the bucolic town one month earlier. But within minutes of his arrival, Ethan is involved in a violent accident. He comes to in a hospital with no ID, no cell phone, and no briefcase. The medical staff seems friendly enough, but something feels… off. As the days pass, Ethan’s investigation into the disappearance of his colleagues turns up more questions than answers. Why can’t he get any phone calls through to his wife and son in the outside world? Why doesn’t anyone believe he is who he says he is? And what is the purpose of the electrified fences surrounding the town? Are they meant to keep the residents in? Or something else out? Each step closer to the truth takes Ethan further from the world he thought he knew, from the man he thought he was, until he must face a horrifying fact—he may never get out of Wayward Pines alive. Intense and gripping, Pines is another masterful thriller from the mind of best-selling novelist Blake Crouch.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
David Hale Smith, Richard Pine, Alexis Hurley, Nathaniel Jacks, and everyone at Inkwell Management: Thank you for the support and counsel.
Angela Cheng Caplan and Joel VanderKloot: You’re rock stars. So grateful to have you in my corner.
A very special thanks to Jacque Ben-Zekry for a world-class edit on this book.
And Jenny Williams for an amazing copyedit on both Pines and Wayward.
David Vandagriff: Thank you. You know why.
To the team at Thomas & Mercer and Amazon—Andy M.F. Bartlett, Alan Turkus, Daphne Durham, Vicky Griffith, Jeff Belle, Danielle Marshall, Jon Fine, Sarah Tomashek, Rory Connell (gone but never forgotten), Mia Lipman, Paul Diamond, Amy Bates, Reema Al-Zaben, Kristi Coulter, Philip Patrick, Sarah Gelman, and Jodi Warshaw: What can I say? Everyone brings their A-game every day. It is a pleasure and a privilege to have your rocket engines strapped to my books.
Joe Konrath, Barry Eisler, Marcus Sakey, Jordan Crouch, Jeroen ten Berge, and Ann Voss Peterson: Thanks for the cheerleading, ass-kicking, and friendship.
Brian Azzarello: I should’ve thanked you last time for giving me the title Pines. So thank you!
Will Dennis at Vertigo: You helped immeasurably in the early stages of this series and gave me a sense of how big a world it could be.
The home team, Rebecca, Aidan, Annslee, and Untitled Crouch #3: Love you, guys. I hope you know how much.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
? 2013 PAUL PENNINGTON
Blake Crouch is the author of over a dozen best-selling suspense, mystery, and horror novels. His short fiction has appeared in numerous short story anthologies, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Cemetery Dance, and many other publications. Much of his work, including the Wayward Pines series, has been optioned for TV and film. Blake lives in Colorado. To learn more, follow him on Twitter, Facebook, or visit his website, www.blakecrouch.com.