People were smoking.
Talking over the music.
Smiling.
Laughing.
The smell of booze like perfume in the air.
And then Kate was standing in front of him.
She had died her hair back to that java brown, and she wore a black, sleeveless number.
Smiling and the glassiness of liquor glistening in her eyes like tears, she said, “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world.” She ran her hand down the left sleeve of his hoodie. “Looks like you had a rough hike in. Let’s get you into something dry.”
She led him through the crowd to the far side of the room. They swung around into an alcove where the clothes the people had worn here hung dripping from wooden racks.
“Forty-two long, right?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
She showed him to a black suit hanging from the end of a rack filled with dry, pristine formal wear.
“Looks like your old threads, huh? Shoes and socks right over there. Get dressed and come on out.”
“Kate—”
“We’ll talk in there.”
She left him.
He stripped out of his hoodie, his undershirt, his damp jeans. There was a bench against the wall and he sat down and pulled off his boots and inspected the incision.
A few of the stitches had popped, but he’d brought along extra gauze and tape.
He wrapped his leg tightly enough to stop the bleeding and used his damp undershirt to clean the line of dried blood that trailed all the way down to his foot.
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.