“Because I can’t be with her. Look, I’m not going to stop loving her just because her husband’s around. That’s not the way the human heart works. I can’t just amputate what I feel. It’s not like we live in a big, wide world anymore where I can just move to another city, another state. There’s no alternate life waiting out there for me to get on with. This is it. We’re down to what? Two hundred fifty people? I can’t avoid her, and what I feel for her has defined me for so long now, I don’t know the person I’d be if I tried to walk away from it.”

“I hear that.”

“And the funny thing is, as bad as I am, I don’t have it in me to murder her husband. Is there a fate worse than being halfway evil?”

For a moment, the only sound was the lonely whisper of wind blowing across the rock.

The woman finally said, “I know you, Adam Hassler.”

“How?”

“I used to work for you.”

“Kate?”

“Is life weird, or what?”

“I can leave you alone now if—”

“I’m not judging you, Adam.”

He heard her get up, move toward him.

In a minute, she emerged out of the darkness, still just a shadow, and sat down beside him, their feet hanging off the edge together.

“Are your pants frozen too?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’m freezing my ass off. Do you think it means something that you and I both climbed up here to jump on the same night?”

“What do you mean? Like, is the universe saying ‘don’t’? Can’t we agree that the universe doesn’t give a shit anymore, and probably never did?”

Kate looked over at him. “I don’t care if we jump together or climb down together. But whichever it is, let’s just not do it alone.”

PILCHER

PILCHER

Someone grabbed his arm and pulled him down out of the truck. It was the first time he’d been outside in days, but he couldn’t see anything through the black hood over his head.

“What’s happening?” Pilcher asked.

The hood was ripped off.

He saw lights—fifty, sixty, maybe a hundred of them. Flashlights, torches, held by the residents of Wayward Pines, and by his own people from the mountain, all of whom surrounded him in a tight circle of bodies. As his eyes adjusted, he saw the buildings of Main Street looming above him, their facades and storefronts awash in firelight.

Two men stood with him in the circle—Ethan Burke and Alan Spear, his head of security.

Ethan approached.

“What is this?” Pilcher asked. “You throwing a fête for me?”

He looked around at all the faces, hidden in shadow, distorted by firelight. Angry and intense.

“We took a vote,” Ethan said.

“Who voted?”