“I made several.” Ted reached into his pocket and took out a fingernail-sized memory shard. “This one’s for you. It won’t play on any device in town, but in case something happens to me and the other copies of this footage, keep it in a safe place.”

Ethan slid the shard into his pocket.

Ted looked at his watch. “A few more minutes and we better be gone. What now? I considered just airing this footage on every screen in the mountain.”

“No, don’t do that. Go back to work. Carry on like nothing has changed.”

“I’m hearing there’s going to be a fкte tonight for the Ballingers. Word’s already spreading in the mountain they’re responsible for Alyssa’s death. What are you going to do?”

“I have something in mind, but I haven’t told anyone.”

“So just stand by?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” Ted took one last glance at his watch. “We better get moving. The cameras wake up in sixty seconds.”

It was four in the afternoon when Ethan reached the curve in the road at the end of town. He kicked the Bronco into four-wheel low, drove down the embankment and into the forest.

The ground was soft and patches of snow lingered in the shade between the pines.

It was slow going.

A half mile seemed to take forever.

He spotted the first pylon through the windshield, and as he approached, the cables materialized, and then the coils of razor wire along the top.

He stopped the Bronco thirty yards back.

Dark enough to warrant headlights, but he didn’t want to risk turning them on.

Sitting behind the wheel as the engine idled, he couldn’t escape what a fear-inspiring thing it was to behold.

Just some steel and current.

And considering all that it was expected to keep out of Wayward Pines, and what it was intended to keep safe, it seemed so very fragile.

Hardly like all that was standing between humanity and extinction.

Kate had been right.

The stump was unmissable.

From a distance, it looked like a great silver bear, standing on its hind legs, the dead, gnarled branches near the top raised high like threatening claws. The kind of ominous shape which, at dusk, might give someone a start.

Ethan parked beside it.

He grabbed the rifle.

Stepped down onto the forest floor.

It was getting dark too fast.

The door slam echoed through the woods.

Then silence rushed in.

He circled the stump.

There was no snow here, just a bed of compressed pine needles, and nothing that would indicate a door.

He opened the back window of the Bronco and lowered the tailgate.

Grabbed the shovel and the backpack.

A half hour into digging, the head of the shovel struck something hard. Throwing it aside, he fell to his knees, used his hands to tear out the rest of the pine needles—two, maybe three years’ worth of accumulation.

The door was made of steel.

Three feet wide, four feet tall, flush against the ground.

The handle was locked down to an eyebolt with a padlock, which years of rain and snow had rusted into oblivion.

One hard blow from the shovel broke off the lock.

He shouldered the backpack.

Loaded the rifle.

Slung it over his right arm.

He drew the big pistol and jacked a .50-caliber hollow-point cartridge into the chamber.

The hinges on the door creaked like fingernails down a blackboard.

Pitch black inside.

The damp-earth smell of a crawlspace.

Ethan tugged the Maglite off his belt, clicked it on, paired it with the Desert Eagle.

Steps had been cut into the earth.

Ethan carefully descended.

After nine, he had reached the bottom.

The beam of light showed a passageway framed up and supported by four-by-fours.

The construction looked makeshift and hurried, confidence not inspired.

Ethan walked under tree roots and rocks lodged in the dirt.

The walls seemed to narrow in the middle, his shoulders brushing against them, and he had to move like a hunchback so his head didn’t scrape the ceiling.

Midway through, he thought he heard the fence humming through the ground, thought he felt a tingling in the roots of his hair from his proximity to that astronomical voltage straight above his head.

There was a tightness in his chest, like his lungs were constricting, but he knew that was a purely psychosomatic response to moving through this subterranean space.

Then he was standing at the foot of another set of earthen steps, his light shining skyward onto another steel door.

He could go back, get the shovel, take an awkward whack at it.

Instead, he pulled his pistol, drew a bead on the rusted padlock.

Took a breath.

Fired.

An hour later, Ethan closed the tailgate and the back hatch.

He returned the rifle to the gun rack.

He draped himself across the hood, saltwater burning his eyes.

The light down here in the gloom of the forest was nearly gone.

It was so quiet he could hear his heart pounding against the metal.

When he could breathe normally again, he stood.

He’d been hot, but now the sweat felt clammy and chilled his skin.

“What the hell are you into?”

Ethan spun.

Pam stood peering through the tinted glass into the back of the Bronco, as if she’d materialized out of nothing.

Wore tight-fitting blue jeans that showed her figure and a red tank top, her hair pulled back into a ponytail.

Ethan studied her trim waistline.

She wasn’t armed as far as he could see unless she was packing something compact in the small of her back.

“You checking me out, Sheriff?”

“Do you have a weapon?”

“Oh, right, that’s the only reason you’re ogling me.”

Pam lifted her arms over her head like a ballerina, went up on point in her tennis shoes, did a little twirl.

She didn’t have a weapon.

“See?” she said. “Nothing in these jeans but little old me.”

Ethan pulled the pistol out of his holster, held it at his side.

Alas, empty.

“That’s a big gun, Sheriff. You know what they say about guys with big guns.”

“It’s a Desert Eagle.”

“Fifty caliber?”

“That’s right.”

“You could kill a grizzly bear with that beast.”

“I know what you did to Alyssa,” Ethan said. “I know it was you and Pilcher. Why?”

Pam ventured a step toward him.

Eight feet away.

She said, “Interesting.”

“What?”

“I’ve now closed the distance between us. Two steps—two big steps—and I could be all up in your personal space, and yet you haven’t even threatened me.”

“Maybe I want you in my personal space.”

“I made myself available to you and you would rather fuck your wife. What’s bothering me, the rub if you will, is that you’re a pragmatist.”

“I’m not following.” But he was.

“A man of few words and less bullshit. One of the things about you that make me want you. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that if there were any bullets in that gun, you’d have drawn down on me at first sight and wasted my ass. I mean, that’s really your only move at this point, right? Am I onto something?”

She took another step toward him.

Ethan said, “There’s something else you haven’t considered.”

“Oh?”

“Maybe I want you in my personal space for another reason.”

“And what might that be?”

Another step.

He could smell her now. The shampoo she’d used this morning.

Her minty breath.

“Shooting is so impersonal,” Ethan said. “Maybe instead of that, I want to pin you down and beat you to death with my bare hands.”