Snowbound

TWENTY-TWO

They walked into Kalyn’s apartment at 8:30 P.M., and before he touched his daughter, Will scrubbed his hands with soap and hot water at the kitchen sink.

Kalyn went back into her bedroom and closed the door.

Will knelt by Devlin. She was snoring quietly on the couch, and he curled up on the floor beside her, the heat working on him like a sedative.

His eyes closed. Through the thin walls, he heard children playing a video game in the adjacent apartment. A jet roared overhead, shook the floor.

Someone whispered into Will’s ear. He opened his eyes, saw Rachael standing by the couch.

“So this is our little Devi?” she asked.

“Yeah.”

“I can’t believe how perfect she is. Does she ask about me?”

“All the time, honey. All the time.” A strange light shone upon Rachael, like she was backlighted, the fringes of her curly black hair laced with glow.

Will opened his eyes, the apartment silent and dark, his face wet, Rachael gone.

“You awake, Dad?” Devlin whispered.

“Yeah.”

“What time is it?”

He glanced at his watch. “Midnight.”

“Did you see the man who took Mom?”

“Yeah, honey, I did.”

“What happened?”

“A lot happened.”

“Tell me.”

Will reached up, found Devlin’s hand in the dark.

“We questioned him.”

“Did Kalyn arrest him?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“She’s not an FBI agent. She used to be, but Kalyn lost her sister to Javier Estrada, just like we lost Mom.”

“So she lied to us?”

“Yeah.”

“But you aren’t mad?”

“Kalyn just wanted to find out what happened to her sister.”

“So what happened to Mom?”

“We still don’t know, just that Javier took her. But he isn’t the one who killed her.”

“Who did?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“What happened to Javier?”

“He got away.”

“Are we going home tomorrow?”

“No, I think we’re going to try to find out where Mom went. Would that be okay with you?”

“I don’t know. I just wanna go home.”

“Me, too, but I’m not sure I can walk away from a chance to know what happened.” He swelled with homesickness for their farmhouse in Colorado, wished he had Rachael’s sweatshirt with him now. He still slept with it on the hard nights.

“Sing to me like you used to, Dad.”

She squeezed his hand.

Two verses of “Sweet Baby James” put them both back to sleep.

A light in the hallway roused Will from sleep. His watch read 4:38 A.M., and there was a woman walking toward him. He thought, I’m dreaming again, because she looked like Rachael—big dark eyes, curly black hair. He got up, moving toward her now, his heart thumping in his chest.

They reached each other at the entrance to the hallway.

“What do you think?” the woman asked. She’d dyed and curled her hair.

“Why’d you do that?”

“So I’d look like the missing women.”

On close inspection, Will saw that Kalyn had used dark eyeliner and makeup to bring out her eyes. Colored contacts had turned them a brown so deep, it bordered on black. Excepting her height and the shape of her lips, she could have passed for Rachael.

“For a minute, I thought you were her. That I was dreaming.”

“You dream about her often?”

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No, the worst are when I dream all the bad stuff didn’t happen. Or that it was just a nightmare, and I wake up looking for Rachael in bed.”

Kalyn touched his arm. “Sorry I blindsided you yesterday. I was afraid you wouldn’t help me if I just told you what I was planning to do.”

“I probably wouldn’t have.”

“If you want to walk away from this,” she said, “I’ll drive you back to Colorado.”

“Tempting, but I need to know what happened to Rachael.”

“I’m glad.”

“One caveat. Devlin doesn’t go anywhere near a dangerous situation. That’s top priority.” Will looked Kalyn up and down as it hit him again what this thirtysomething woman had pulled off, what she was capable of. “Javier was right about one thing,” he said.

“What’s that?”

“You are very good.”

Kalyn let slip a little smile, and he missed her blushing in the semidark.

“So tell me,” Will said, “how are we going to do this?”