Snowbound by Blake Crouch Page A

door behind the driver’s seat and the boy and the woman got in, the woman crying, the boy silent, stoic.
    Kalyn climbed into the front passenger seat and slammed the door.
    “You got no right!” the woman said.
    Kalyn got onto her knees and faced the backseat. She looked at the boy. “What’s your name?” she asked. He glanced at his mother. “Don’t look at her. I asked you—”
    “Don’t you fucking think about talking to my son like that, you piece of—”
    “Raphael,” he said, his voice still prepubescent.
    “How old are you?”
    “Eleven.”
    “Raphael, I want you to do me a favor and buckle your mother’s seat belt for me.” He leaned over, fastened it. “Now buckle yourself in.” When he’d done that, Kalyn leaned down and snapped a second set of handcuffs around the boy’s slender ankles. “That too tight?” He shook his head. “Start driving,” she said to Will.
    “They under arrest?”
    “What does it look like?”
    “This isn’t how you said it’d go.”
    “Roll with it.”
    “I don’t feel comfortable—”
    “Drive, Will!” He shifted into reverse, backed down the driveway.
    “You’re dead,” the woman said. Glancing in the rearview mirror, Will could see her eyes narrowed and raging, eyeliner running down her cheeks. “Jav will take you apart. You have no idea what you just did. You just killed yourself, your family, friends, anyone who ever knew you.”
    “Where is he, Misty?” Kalyn asked.
    Misty spit in her face.
    Will turned onto the main road and headed downhill toward the guard station.
    “Where’s your father today, Raphael?” Kalyn asked, wiping her face. “At the Boulders?”
    He said nothing.
    Will didn’t see it happen, but he heard the bone crunch.
    “Fuck!” Misty was wailing, and looking in the rearview mirror again, he saw blood pouring out of her nose. Raphael was crying, too, Will swerving.
    “You can’t do that! I have rights, you bitch!”
    “I know the wife of Javier Estrada better not say one word to me about rights. Now I’m gonna crack your son’s head right the fuck open in front of you if you don’t tell me where your husband is.”
    “Kalyn, what are—”
    “You can’t do that!” Misty screamed.
    Kalyn raised the Glock.
    “The Boulders.”
    Oh my God
, Will thought.
Oh my God
. They were nearing the guard station and the front entrance. Kalyn turned around and sat down in her seat.
    “By the book?” Will said under his breath. “Was that by the book just now?”
    The gates parted. They passed through. Will punched the gas, boiling inside, and he hadn’t gone half a mile before he stomped on the brake and pulled over to the curb. He turned off the engine, opened his door, and jumped out into the brutal heat.
    Kalyn got out, too, slammed her door. They met at the front bumper.
    “Let me see your badge right—”
    “Just listen.”
    “You broke that woman’s nose, threatened to hurt her son. Let me see your—”
    “I used to be an agent.”
    “
Used
to?”
    “Listen to me, Will. Please.”
    He glanced back into the car. “I’m out of here,” he said. “I’m done with this.”
    She grabbed his arm. “I was an agent up until a year ago. They wouldn’t let me open this case. I investigated anyway. Used Bureau resources.”
    “They fired you.”
    “No one was doing shit to find out what happened to these women.”
    “They fired you.”
    “Yeah.”
    “Well that’s … that’s just great. You’ve manipulated me into this.”
    “I can’t get Javier on my own. I need you.”
    “So does my daughter.”
    “I know you’re scared,” she said. “I understand that. But we are
this
close to finding the man who took your wife.
This
close.”
    “She’s gone. Dead. I have a daughter to raise. He isn’t worth prison.”
    “Is your wife?”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “What if she’s alive, Will?”
    “She isn’t. It’s been five—”
    “But what if she is? Isn’t that possibility worth this?