Those Who Wish Me Dead by Michael Koryta Read Free Book Online Page A

then. Everything you’ve built is done.”
    “It won’t happen, Allison.”
    She sighed again, and when he reached for her, she stayed motionless, unreceptive. The outline of her was visible in the dim room with the shades pulled and he could smell her hair and skin and he wanted to stop talking about this; their hours together in the summer were few and couldn’t be wasted on argument.
    “I can help him,” he said, tracing the side of her breast and squeezing her hip. “Whichever one he is, I can help him.”
    Long ago, when Ethan left the Air Force after years working as a survival instructor in every climate known to man and made his home in the Montana mountains, he’d had an idea of what he wanted to do with his skills. The Air Force trained survival instructors in every elite branch of the military; if an Army Ranger told you he was a survival instructor, it meant he’d been through the Air Force program; same for the SEALs, same for everybody, no matter what unit or how elite. Ethan had done well with those types because he understood something that needed to be understood. They were bad sons of bitches, they could kill you with any weapon known to man or with no weapon at all if necessary, and his job was not to impress them or try to match them; his job was to make them proficient in yet a few more areas of combat, known as SERE: survival, evasion, resistance, and escape. And in those areas? Ethan was as good as anyone got.
    One of the things he learned, teaching those warriors, was that a survivor had specific skills, and almost all of them were between the ears, a convergence of cognitive prowess and emotional control. Some of the muscled-up types had trouble with that. Others didn’t. But in the attempt to instill those ideas, he became fascinated with the concept of whether someone could build a survivor mentality. Did you have to be born with it, carry it in some twisted strand of DNA, or could you learn it?
    These were the things you had time to consider when you spent weeks in the desert, alone under a night sky so laden with stars it was hard to comprehend; or in the jungle, sleeping in a homemade hammock that kept you elevated from the insects that would otherwise devour your flesh; or in the Arctic, building a fortress out of ice blocks. What Ethan had decided, what he’d determined from years invested in the study and craft of survival, was that the gain could extend far beyond what he taught in the military. By now he’d helped teens from all around the country, in every circumstance imaginable, and he knew that he’d done good work, that he’d made a difference. You did the best you could, and you didn’t hold yourself responsible for the ones you couldn’t reach, because you couldn’t reach them all. You had to acknowledge that early, had to let yourself accept that some would falter despite your best efforts. He could not get his head around that with this summer’s special case, though. Whoever the boy was, Ethan wanted to make an impact. He believed that he could.
    Beside him in their bed, his wife was still silent.
    “Allison? Please.”
    She turned back to him then, rolling onto her side. Ran one hand up his arm and then held the side of his face, propping herself up on an elbow. Looking into his eyes.
    “I’d feel better if there was more help,” she said. “If you’d gotten a few people in here, just for these weeks. Reggie, maybe. He’d be good.”
    “Reggie’s in Virginia. He’s got his own thing.”
    “ Someone, then. So it’s not just you out there, alone.”
    “You know the agreement I made on this. I have to be alone.”
    “You’re taking them into the mountains tomorrow. The first morning, and you’re taking them up?”
    “It’s how it will need to go this summer. Not bad, just different. I want my usual patterns disrupted. Just in case.”
    “You should have demanded someone else come along.”
    “I love you,” Ethan said.
    “That’s sweeter than