The Children of Red Peak Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Craig DiLouie

  Excerpt from One of Us copyright © 2018 by Craig DiLouie

  Cover design by Lisa Marie Pompilio

  Cover images by Getty Images and Shutterstock

  Cover copyright © 2020 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Author photograph by Jodi O

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  First Edition: November 2020

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: DiLouie, Craig, 1967– author.

  Title: The children of Red Peak / Craig DiLouie.

  Description: First Edition. | New York, NY : Redhook, 2020.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2020007118 | ISBN 9780316428132 (trade paperback) | ISBN 9780316428101 (ebook)

  Subjects: GSAFD: Suspense fiction. | Mystery fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3604.I463 C48 2020 | DDC 813/.6—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020007118

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-42813-2 (trade paperback), 978-0-316-42811-8 (ebook)

  E3-20201007-JV-NF-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Chapter 1: Remember

  Chapter 2: Run

  Chapter 3: Mourn

  Chapter 4: Create

  Chapter 5: Pray

  Chapter 6: Sing

  Chapter 7: Confabulate

  Chapter 8: Rebel

  Chapter 9: Regret

  Chapter 10: Protect

  Chapter 11: Journey

  Chapter 12: Help

  Chapter 13: Confess

  Chapter 14: Worship

  Chapter 15: Love

  Chapter 16: Lose

  Chapter 17: Suffer

  Chapter 18: Dream

  Chapter 19: Atone

  Chapter 20: Leap

  Chapter 21: Return

  Chapter 22: Ascend (1)

  Chapter 23: Ascend (2)

  Chapter 24: Ascend (3)

  Chapter 25: Choose

  Chapter 26: Seek

  Chapter 27: Die

  Chapter 28: Forgive

  Acknowledgments

  Discover More

  Meet the Author

  A Preview of One of Us

  Also by Craig Dilouie

  For my wonderful children: May you always smile at the past and

  find meaning in the present.

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  After these things, God tested Abraham, and said to him, “Abraham!”

  He said, “Here I am.”

  He said, “Now take your son, your only son, whom you love, even Isaac, and go into the land of Moriah. Offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the mountains which I will tell you of.”

  Abraham rose early in the morning, and saddled his donkey, and took two of his young men with him, and Isaac his son. He split the wood for the burnt offering, and rose up, and went to the place of which God had told him.

  —Genesis 22:1–3

  1

  REMEMBER

  After years of outrunning the past, David Young now drove straight toward it.

  His Toyota hummed south along the I-5 as the sun melted into the coastal horizon. The lemon trees flanking the road faded into dusk. Most nights, he enjoyed the solitude of driving. He’d roll down the window and disappear in the sound of his tires lapping the asphalt, soothing as a Tibetan chant.

  Not this time. California was burning again.

  The news blamed the wildfire on a lightning strike in the sequoias. Dried out by the changing climate, the forest went up like a match. Outside the car, the air was toxic. A crimson glow silhouetted the Sierra Nevadas like a mirror sunset.

  Red Peak called to him from all that fire and ash.

  David turned on the radio to drown out his memories. He’d spent years forgetting. In all that time, he hadn’t kept in touch with the others. He hadn’t even told his wife about the horrors he’d survived. Claire believed he was visiting a client and not on his way to the funeral of an old friend to whom he owed a debt.

  He didn’t want to go, but Emily was dead, and he had her letter.

  I couldn’t fight it anymore, she’d written in flowing cursive.

  All those years ago, five children survived. Now there were four.

  He found a parking space at the All Faiths Funeral Home and cut the engine. Cars filled the lot. A sizable crowd had come to attend Emily’s wake, friends and family who wanted to say goodbye.

  Whatever happiness she’d found hadn’t been enough for her.

  He turned on the overhead light to inspect his appearance in the rearview. People said he had both charisma and looks, a genetic gift from his mother. Under dark, wavy hair, his angular face was sensitive and inspired trust.

  Tonight, wild eyes stared back at him, the eyes of a man he didn’t know or had forgotten. The eyes of a scared little boy.

  You have children you love more than anything, he told his reflection. You have a job that allows you to help people escape the worst of what you suffered. You’re alive. The past isn’t real. It’s dead and gone.

  “I’ll be okay,” he thought aloud and opened the car door.

  The warm night air smelled like an old brick fireplace. The mountains burned in the east, bright and close.

  David turned his back on the view and lit a cigarette, a crutch he revisited in times of stress. He took a long drag, but it tasted terrible and only made him fidget more. He ground it under his shoe and went into the funeral home.

  Black-clad mourners filled the foyer and lobby, mingling in the air-conditioned atmosphere heavily scented with fresh-cut flowers and sharp cleaners and the acrid tinge of wood smoke. Organ music droned over the murmur.

  Stomach rolling, David scanned the faces. There was nobody here he recognized. He stood in awkward tension on the thick carpet. He should visit Emily’s body and say goodbye, but he wasn’t ready for that, not yet.

  Then he saw her. Emily, still a child, reaching to tuck her long blond hair behind her ear, a frequent gesture he remembered well.

  His heart lurched. He was seeing a ghost.

  A man sat on the folding chair next to the girl and stroked her hair while she frowned at a tablet resting on her lap. On her other side, a towheaded boy played with his own device.

  Her children, h
e realized. Around the age of his own kids. The girl was about the same age as David when he first met Emily in 2002.

  They slouched in their chairs, miserable and bored. They didn’t understand how profoundly their world had changed, not yet. After his mother died, David had taken a long time to process as well. A stabbing pain of homesickness stuck in his chest. He missed his own children back in Fresno, safe in Claire’s care, still naive to how cruel the world could be.

  The man caught him staring and rose to his feet with a scowl.

  David held out his hand. “You must be Emily’s husband.”

  “Nick.” His breath was thick with whiskey. “Who are you?”

  “David Young. I’m sorry for your loss, Nick.”

  Still protective, distrustful. “How did you know Emily?”

  “We grew up together.”

  The man’s scowl softened until he wasn’t looking at David at all. Emily’s suicide had broken him. “Where did…?”

  David waited until the silence became awkward, then said, “She was a very good friend. In fact, I was just thinking how much your daughter resembles her back when I knew her.”

  He and Emily used to talk about how all they had was each other, how they’d spend the rest of their lives protecting each other.

  “She never mentioned you.” Nick shambled back to his kids.

  David released the breath he’d been holding and retreated as well. He found himself walking without direction among the black-clad mourners, who murmured in small groups and shot him curious glances as he passed. He’d always had a difficult time sitting still, but now he had a purpose for it. As long as he appeared he had somewhere to go, nobody could draw him into conversation, and the mourners would remain raw impressions instead of real people.

  He reached into the pocket where he kept his phone. He thought about going outside to call Claire and tell her he’d arrived safe at his hotel. If he did, however, he might not come back inside. Instead, he edged closer to the viewing room.

  On the far side, Emily’s white casket lay surrounded by arrangements of lilies, carnations, roses, orchids, and hydrangeas. He glimpsed slender lifeless hands clasped over her breast. At the doorway, a large poster mounted on an easel displayed photos of her life. Emily smiling at the camera, holding a baby, hugging her children, posing with her family.

  David found it jarring to see her grown-up. She was still so familiar, but the intervening years had turned her into a stranger. His breath left him in a gasp as nearly fifteen years rushed past in an instant.

  Her smile was still the same, however. A smile that lit up the room. He leaned for a closer look at a photo of her on a windy beach at twilight.

  How did you fool them all for so long? he thought.

  Or maybe she’d fooled herself.

  A familiar voice said: “I thought I was gonna find you hiding in a closet.”

  Again, a strange sense of vertigo. He wheeled to find a teenage boy wearing a comfortable grin. The boy morphed into a man.

  David shook his head and smiled. “You’re still an asshole, Deacon.”

  Now in his late twenties, Deacon Price appeared much the same skinny kid with his boyish face and easy smirk. But he’d styled his shaggy hair into an emo swoop that shadowed one eye, and he wore a black T-shirt, leather wristbands, jeans, and Chucks. His shirt advertised he liked HOT WATER MUSIC. An odd choice for a funeral. Then again, Deacon’s outfit struck David as some kind of uniform.

  A long time ago, they’d been best friends.

  “You dyed your hair black,” David said after a tight hug. He didn’t mention the tattoos that covered his friend’s arms.

  “And you got older.”

  “Okay, let me guess.” He made a show of studying Deacon. “Stock broker.”

  “Nice try.” Deacon chuckled. “Musician. My turn.” He took in David’s black suit, white dress shirt, black tie, and shiny shoes. “Bible salesman?”

  David snorted. “Hardly.”

  “Then you must be a cult deprogrammer.”

  “Wow, how did you know?”

  His friend rolled his eyes. “It’s called Google, dude.”

  “Right.” David flushed with a little embarrassment. He’d never checked up on his old friends. “I’m an exit counselor, though, not a deprogrammer.”

  Usually paid by the family of a cult member, deprogrammers retrained a person out of their belief system, and some used kidnapping and confinement. Exit counseling was voluntary, more like an addiction intervention.

  “Whatever you say.” Deacon shrugged, the difference lost on him. “Did you think I wasn’t coming? I assume you got the same letter I did.”

  “I don’t know what I was expecting.” David thought about it. “Now that I’ve come all this way, I feel funny, like I don’t belong here. Don’t you? Whatever life Emily made for herself, I wasn’t part of it.”

  Deacon’s eyes roamed the room until settling on Nick. “On the other hand, these people weren’t a part of her life with us. I don’t think they even know.”

  “You talked to Nick, her husband?”

  His friend ignored the question. “Which do you think was the real Emily?”

  David shook his head, which hurt just thinking about it. He was having a hard time processing who he even was right now. “I need a smoke.”

  “Excellent idea.”

  They emerged in the dim parking lot.

  Deacon lit a cigarette. “Is Angela coming?”

  David leaned against the funeral home’s brick wall and blew a stream of smoke. “I seriously doubt it.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’s angry.”

  Deacon snorted. “So some things don’t change.”

  “Only she’s a police detective now, so it’s even scarier when she gets mad.”

  “I wonder what she made of Emily’s letter.”

  “I know she’s mad at Emily for doing what she did.” David didn’t want to talk about his big sister, with whom he rarely kept in touch. He gazed across the parking lot toward the distant red glow. “Jesus. Look at it. I hope it rains soon.”

  Deacon cast his own eyes toward the fire. “Two million acres going up this year, all thanks to climate change. The ol’ Reverend was right. The world’s coming to an end. Only it’s happening so slowly, hardly anybody is noticing.”

  He didn’t want to talk about the Reverend either. “So how are you, Deek? How’s life been treating you?”

  Deacon pursed his lips. “Uh, good, David. How about you?”

  “I’m doing good. Real good.”

  They smoked in silence for a while, which suited David just fine. Nothing stirred among the cars parked in the dark lot. Deacon seemed to want to pick up where things left off years earlier. David was one bad vibe away from fleeing to his car. A little small talk wouldn’t hurt. A little quiet.

  His friend had never known how to take things slow. He seemed ready to talk everything out. He’d read Emily’s letter and found some hidden meaning.

  David gazed toward his car, which promised the safe routines of home.

  A woman emerged from the gloom to pose with her hands on her hips. “You boys. I leave you alone for fifteen years, and look what you get up to.”

  Beth Harris was still petite, though she’d filled out in womanhood, and her long, straight, sandy hair was pulled back in a bun instead of flowing free around her shoulders. Otherwise, the years had done little to age her pixie face.

  David hugged her. “It’s really nice to see you.”

  She patted his shoulder. “You were brave to come.”

  He released her, and she and Deacon regarded each other with goofy grins. They stepped into an embrace that was far friendlier than the one she’d given David.

  Get a room, David heard his twelve-year-old self say.

  At last, they let go, though the tension between them hung in the air.

  “Look at you.” She appraised Deacon. “Rock ’n’ roll star.”

  “
You’d never guess what put me on this path.”

  “We’re going to talk,” she said and turned to David. “But we’re going to take it slow.” She reached into her purse and produced a silver flask. “I brought a little bottled courage to guide us on the path.”

  David smiled as Beth handed it over. The strong scent alone braced him. Rum. The alcohol burned down his throat with a warm, fuzzy aftermath. He passed the flask to Deacon, who tossed his head back in a long swallow.

  Beth shot David a questioning glance. “No Angela, huh?”

  “Nope.”

  Deacon stared at the distant fire. “God, look at it now.” The fiery glow shimmered and pulsed in a natural light show. “It reminds me… Listen. Can I tell you guys something about the last night at the mountain?”

  Beth raised her hand. “Going slow, remember?”

  Deacon shuddered and took another long swig. “Okay.”

  “So. Have either of you visited Emily yet?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Then we should tear off that Band-Aid first.” Her large brown eyes flickered between them. “We can visit her together.”

  David produced his box of Marlboros. “I need a quiet moment. You guys go ahead.”

  “We have to say goodbye.” Beth rested her hand on his arm. “Once you do, you’ll take all that weight off your shoulders.”

  He put away his cigarettes. “All right.”

  They entered the funeral home and threaded the crowd toward the viewing room. David’s heart crashed like a rock flung at a brick wall.

  Beth slipped her hand into his. “I’m right here with you.”

  He answered with a vague nod. There was no controlling his legs anymore. He simply floated toward the casket. Emily lay with her hands clasped as if to hide where she’d parted the flesh of her arms with a razor.

  Memories flashed across his vision, which fragmented into puzzle pieces. Emily sat next to him in a dark supply closet. Gripped his hand while his mother purified herself in the Temple. Said goodbye the day they left for separate foster homes and promised they’d be together again, as it was meant to be.

  He groaned as Emily’s corpse rematerialized before him. Sweat soaked through his dress shirt. He was shaking. Was going to be sick. The stress of revisiting the past. All the smoke in the atmosphere. Something he ate.