Device Free Weekend


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 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 © 2023 by Sean Doolittle
 Cover design by Caitlin Sacks. Cover images © Envato Elements.
 Cover copyright © 2023 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
 Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
 The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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 First Edition: February 2023
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 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
 Names: Doolittle, Sean, 1971- author.
 Title: Device free weekend / Sean Doolittle.
 Description: First edition. | New York : Grand Central Publishing, 2023.
 Identifiers: LCCN 2022042076 | ISBN 9781538706596 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781538706633 (ebook)
 Subjects: LCGFT: Thrillers (Fiction) | Novels.
 Classification: LCC PS3604.O568 D48 2023 | DDC 813/.6—dc23/eng/20220909
 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022042076
 ISBNs: 9781538706596 (hardcover), 9781538706633 (ebook)
 E3-20220927-JV-NF-ORI
 
 
 
 Contents
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Copyright
 Dedication
 The Pleasure of Your Company
 
 Chapter 1
 Chapter 2
 Chapter 3
 Chapter 4
 Chapter 5
 Chapter 6
 Chapter 7
 Chapter 8
 
 Queen of the Inside
 
 Chapter 9
 Chapter 10
 Chapter 11
 Chapter 12
 Chapter 13
 Chapter 14
 Chapter 15
 Chapter 16
 Chapter 17
 Chapter 18
 Chapter 19
 Chapter 20
 
 Outsiders
 
 Chapter 21
 Chapter 22
 Chapter 23
 Chapter 24
 Chapter 25
 Chapter 26
 Chapter 27
 Chapter 28
 Chapter 29
 Chapter 30
 Chapter 31
 Chapter 32
 Chapter 33
 Chapter 34
 Chapter 35
 
 Green for Go
 
 Chapter 36
 Chapter 37
 Chapter 38
 Chapter 39
 Chapter 40
 Chapter 41
 Chapter 42
 Chapter 43
 Chapter 44
 
 L8R
 
 Epilogue
 
 Acknowledgments
 Discover More
 About the Author
 Previous Works by Sean Doolittle
 
 
 
 
 Begin Reading
 Table of Contents
 
 
 
 
 Previous Works by Sean Doolittle
 Dirt
 Burn
 Rain Dogs
 The Cleanup
 Safer
 Lake Country
 Kill Monster
 
 
 
 For David Hale Smith
 Champion and Friend
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 CHAPTER 1
 IT HADN’T OCCURRED to Stephen Rollins that buying an island was something that anybody, even your old college roommate, could go out and do.
 Beau and Lainie said sure, why not? It’s just real estate. There were websites. Will and Perry claimed to know a couple who’d bought their own ghost town, and those people weren’t even all that wealthy. Not Ryan Cloverhill wealthy, certainly. Not cover-of-Time-magazine people, just regular ones.
 If he was honest, Stephen supposed he’d never quite fully grasped, even after all these years, that Ryan was cover-of-Time, own-your-own-island people. This was the same Ryan Cloverhill who’d mistakenly filled their apartment dishwasher with regular Dawn and flooded the kitchenette with suds.
 But that was a long time ago. Ryan Cloverhill—their Ryan Cloverhill—golfed with presidents now.
 And he’d invited them all for Labor Day weekend: Beau and Lainie, known internally as Blainey; Will and Perry, known as Will and Perry; Emma, of course.
 And Stephen, who’d spent the last month gravitating between opposing poles of delight and terror. He loved them all, his oldest and dearest friends. But when had they last spent any real time together in person, in the same place, all seven of them? A decade ago?
 Closer to two.
 Would they survive?
 “It’s a fair question,” Will said on the phone. “But worth the risk.”
 Perry agreed: “Get your ass on that plane, Rollie. The pleasure of your company is cordially required.”
 Blainey—predictably—seemed fixated on the numbers. “What did Will and Perry get?”
 “A four and a five,” Stephen told them. “I don’t remember who got which.”
 “Huh,” Beau said. “We got three and six.”
 “I got three,” Lainie joked from the other line. “You got six.”
 They’d been referring to their invitations, delivered earlier that week by private courier: heavy linen cardstock, clean Neutraface lettering, the geometric four-leaf insignia Ryan Cloverhill now used as a personal colophon. On the back of Stephen’s, in a splash of glitz that didn’t quite fit the minimalist design: a large numeral 2 stamped in silver foil.
 “I’m sure it’s not a personal ranking,” Stephen told them.
 Beau laughed. “Easy for you to say, number two.”
 “Anyway,” Lainie said, “I guess we know who number one is.”
 Emma, of course.
 Stephen never did manage to connect with her, somehow.
 At least not until Denver International, a dozen weeks later, when they found themselves hopping the same connecting flight to Seattle. It was Friday morning, thirty minutes before takeoff. Stephen had completed the list of tasks required to leave his entire life and business in Chicago behind for four days, which consisted primarily of setting out extra food and water for the cat and locking the door to his apartment. The big weekend had arrived.
 He saw Emma before she saw him. Stephen waited until she came within earshot, then said, “Of all the boarding gates in all the airports.”
 Emma Grant looked up, locking immediately on the sound of his voice. She’d been in hustle mode, joining the queue a touch on the late side, fighting with the zipper