In the Dark

  PRAISE FOR LORETH ANNE WHITE

  “A masterfully written, gritty, suspenseful thriller with a tough, resourceful protagonist that hooked me and kept me guessing until the very end. Think CJ Box and Craig Johnson. Loreth Anne White’s The Dark Bones is that good.”

  —Robert Dugoni, New York Times bestselling author of The Eighth Sister

  “Secrets, lies, and betrayal converge in this heart-pounding thriller that features a love story as fascinating as the mystery itself.”

  —Iris Johansen, New York Times bestselling author of Smokescreen

  “A riveting, atmospheric suspense novel about the cost of betrayal and the power of redemption, The Dark Bones grips the reader from the first page to the pulse-pounding conclusion.”

  —Kylie Brant, Amazon bestselling author of Pretty Girls Dancing

  “Loreth Anne White has set the gold standard for the genre.”

  —Debra Webb, USA Today bestselling author of The Secrets We Bury

  “Loreth Anne White has a talent for setting and mood. The Dark Bones hooked me from the start. A chilling and emotional read.”

  —T.R. Ragan, New York Times bestselling author of Her Last Day

  “A must read, A Dark Lure is gritty, dark romantic suspense at its best. A damaged yet resilient heroine, a deeply conflicted cop, and a truly terrifying villain collide in a stunning conclusion that will leave you breathless.”

  —Melinda Leigh, Wall Street Journal bestselling author of Secrets Never Die

  OTHER MONTLAKE TITLES BY LORETH ANNE WHITE

  The Dark Bones

  A Dark Lure

  In the Barren Ground

  In the Waning Light

  The Slow Burn of Silence

  Angie Pallorino Novels

  The Drowned Girls

  The Lullaby Girl

  The Girl in the Moss

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

  Text copyright © 2019 by Cheakamus House Publishing

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Montlake Romance, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake Romance are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542003834

  ISBN-10: 1542003830

  Cover design by Caroline Teagle Johnson

  For my Mom and my Man, and all the doctors and nurses who cared for them over the time it took to start, write, and finish this book. And for my dear siblings and daughters from near and far who helped keep the home fires burning. I love you all. More than words can ever say.

  CONTENTS

  NOW

  THE SEARCH MASON

  THE LODGE PARTY DAN

  THE LODGE PARTY STELLA

  THE LODGE PARTY AMANDA

  THE LODGE PARTY DEBORAH

  THE SEARCH CALLIE

  THE SEARCH MASON

  THE LODGE PARTY MONICA

  THE LODGE PARTY NATHAN

  THE LODGE PARTY KATIE

  THE LODGE PARTY JACKIE

  THE SEARCH CALLIE

  THE SEARCH MASON

  THE LODGE PARTY BART

  THE LODGE PARTY NATHAN

  THE LODGE PARTY STEVEN

  THE LODGE PARTY JACKIE

  THE SEARCH MASON

  THE SEARCH CALLIE

  THE LODGE PARTY STELLA

  THE SEARCH CALLIE

  THE LODGE PARTY DEBORAH

  THE SEARCH MASON

  THE LODGE PARTY MONICA

  THE LODGE PARTY DEBORAH

  THE SEARCH CALLIE

  THE LODGE PARTY STEVEN

  THE SEARCH CALLIE

  THE LODGE PARTY NATHAN

  THE LODGE PARTY MONICA

  THE LODGE PARTY KATIE

  THE LODGE PARTY MONICA

  THE LODGE PARTY STELLA

  THE LODGE PARTY DEBORAH

  THE SEARCH MASON

  THE LODGE PARTY STELLA

  THE SEARCH CALLIE

  THE SEARCH MASON

  THE SEARCH CALLIE

  THE SEARCH MASON

  THE SEARCH CALLIE

  THE SEARCH MASON

  THE SEARCH CALLIE

  THE SEARCH CALLIE

  NOW DEBORAH

  NOW DEBORAH

  NOW MASON

  NOW STELLA

  NOW MASON

  NOW MASON

  THE LODGE PARTY DEBORAH

  THE LODGE PARTY STELLA

  THE LODGE PARTY STELLA

  NOW MASON

  NOW CALLIE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  NOW

  Sometimes the only thing to fear . . . is yourself.

  Sunday, November 8.

  Before the waitress delivers my breakfast, I take the sugar packets out of the container on the diner table and quickly sneak them into my pocket. I wolf down the “Kluhane Bay loggers’ three-egg special” she brings, then call her back to ask for more toast. I break the toast into bits, use them to mop up bacon fat and yellow smears of egg residue on my plate. I gulp down the rest of my coffee, then shoot a glance around the diner.

  It’s empty.

  The server has gone into the back.

  I drink the contents of the cream pitcher. My belly is now bursting. Even so, I take a white napkin and wrap it carefully around a leftover piece of crust that I simply can’t fit in. I slip the crust into the pocket of my loaned down jacket where the sugar packets are hidden.

  The diner is warm, yet I keep the jacket on because a deep-seated cold still lingers at the very marrow of my bones. The doctors said I’m fine. They said I was lucky. They all said the same thing—the cops and paramedics, the search and rescue people. I believe it. I am incredibly lucky, and I thank the stars that aligned in order for me to survive.

  And here I am, with only a bandage around my skull plus a headache and a few cuts and bruises. I’m the one who made it.

  For in the end, there can only be one.

  And to make it to the end is to reach a beginning, is it not? Wasn’t it T. S. Eliot who wrote words in that vein? That the end is where one starts, and only those who have risked going out too far can possibly learn just how far one can actually go?

  Perhaps I will feel warm again tomorrow. Perhaps then my feral need to eat will subside.

  A movement outside the window attracts my eye. It’s the female police officer, Constable Birken Hubble, coming up the sidewalk from the lake. Hubb, the others call her. Hers was the first face I saw when I came round at the tiny facility that serves as a hospital in this remote northern town. She’s one of the three cops stationed in Kluhane Bay, this place I found myself in after being plucked by helicopter from the raw jaws of the wilderness.

  I watch her walk. Hubb is short, blonde, and substantial, with a gun-belt swagger more akin to a waddle. She has a pink-cheeked, happy resting face that peeps out from under a muskrat hat with furry earflaps. Behind that deceptively congenial countenance, she’s still all cop, though. I know something about wearing a Janus mask. Perhaps that’s why they’ve sent her to fetch me—they think I might slip and tell her something. They believe I am hiding something.

  The Kluhane Bay Mounties want to interview me again, formally, they said, at the tiny clapboard Royal Canadian Mounted Police detachment down the road from the lake. They already asked me countless questions at the hospital after I was
evacuated, and after I’d been stabilized by the doctor and nurses. I’ve told them everything I can.

  The diner door swings open. Hubb enters with a blast of cold air. She wipes her nose with the back of her big black glove and nods at me. I’m the sole patron in the establishment—hard to miss. The diner occupies the ground floor of the only motel in town. I’ve been put up here by the cops.

  I rise from my chair, pull on the gloves I’ve been loaned, and ask the waitress to put my meal on the hotel tab. I follow Constable Hubble out into a biting wind that blows from the lake.

  As I walk alongside Hubb, hunched into my borrowed jacket, the wind makes my eyes water and my nose run. With my gloved hand I dig into my pocket for a tissue I put there earlier. As I pull out the tissue, the wrapped toast crust comes out with it and tumbles to the frozen sidewalk. I stop in a flare of panic, then quickly snatch it up from the ground. I tuck it safely back into my pocket, and joy suddenly fills my soul. I laugh. I have saved the toast. I will not go hungry later. And it’s beautiful out—the misty swirls and tatters of clouds, the soaring, snowcapped peaks all around, the lovely quietness and isolation of this remote northern British Columbian town.

  I am struck by the poignant, incredibly sharp, almost unabsorbable exquisiteness of the world, of just being. It’s a feeling incommensurate with the direness of my situation. But fifteen days ago I was dropped into a fathomless pit, right into the black wilderness of my very own soul. And down there I saw the Monster, and the Monster looked back into my eyes, and I saw that the Monster was me.

  But I turned away from those accusing eyes. I climbed and clawed my way back out. And I left the Monster down there. Far, far away.

  I have been saved.

  Reporters will come. Cameras, questions, judgment. It’s a gauntlet I must yet run. But right now, on this crisp, snow-blown morning on the shores of Lake Kluhane, it’s just Hubb and me. I have a pocketful of sugar and a toast crust, just in case.

  Once inside the police station, Hubb ushers me into a tiny windowless room with dirty-white padded tiles. In the center is a bolted-down table, plastic chairs, one on either side. I glance up at the ceiling and spy a small camera in the upper corner.

  “Sergeant Deniaud will be with you in a moment,” Hubb says, and closes the door. Almost immediately the suffocation starts. My hands clench and unclench. I met Sergeant Mason Deniaud at the hospital. He was with the search party who helped bring me out of the woods.

  The clinic nurse told me that Mason Deniaud is new in Kluhane Bay. He’s a veteran big-city homicide detective who—for some reason yet to be ascertained by the members of this small community—has opted to relocate to this northern policing backwater.

  I eye the camera again. And a bead of unease lodged deep in my chest begins to swell and pulse.

  The door opens.

  Deniaud enters holding a file of papers and a notebook and pen. His dark hair is shot through with silver at the temples. He wears an RCMP uniform and a bullet-suppression vest. I imagine as a homicide investigator in the city, he’d have dressed in nice suits with a tie. His eyes are gray, his gaze equal parts shrewd and assessing, and wounded. This man has been damaged. His is a quiet demeanor that belies some dangerously dark and crackling undercurrent beneath his skin.

  What are your secrets, Mason Deniaud?

  What lies do you tell?

  Because we all lie.

  Every one of us, and whoever claims they don’t is the biggest liar of all.

  A flash blinds me—a memory. Blood. Terror in the eyes of another. My heart beats faster.

  “How are you feeling this morning?” Mason says as he goes to the opposite end of the table. He sets his file and notebook down on the table before shucking off his RCMP jacket. He drapes it over the back of a chair. “How’s the head injury doing?”

  I touch the dressing on my brow, almost expecting my fingers to come away bloody again. I feel only the rough, comforting fabric of the bandage.

  “I . . . Much better, thank you. Just a small headache.”

  “Sleeping okay at the motel?”

  “Yes,” I say. “And you—did you sleep well?”

  His gaze ticks to mine.

  He studies me.

  He’s assessing whether my question is born of innocent politeness or whether I’m mounting a subtle challenge to his authority—trying to make him human, less law enforcement official, put him more on my level.

  “Yes. Thank you,” he says calmly.

  But the lines at the corners of Mason Deniaud’s eyes tell a different story. I suspect he’s not slept well, and perhaps insomnia is some kind of new normal for this ex–homicide cop. I’m not a bad profiler of people. I know all about new normals.

  “Thank you for coming in.” He holds a hand out to the chair closest to me. “Please, take a seat.”

  I glance again at the camera and cautiously seat myself. I place my palms flat on the table, but the urge to escape continues to mount. I feel it as a pulsing, mushrooming pressure beneath the bandage around my skull. Can feel it in the throb of my toes. This claustrophobia, too, is some kind of new normal after my existing in mountains and forests for so many nights and days. In that feat alone, I tell myself, lies real power. I’m powerful now. I’ve done things others could not, and did not.

  I survived.

  “Coffee? Tea, juice, water?” he says.

  I shake my head.

  Mason opens his notebook, scans a few lines of scribbled text, tells me that our interview is being recorded, and asks me to state my name for the record. He then looks me directly in the eyes and says, “Would you like to have anyone present?”

  I shake my head.

  “Are you certain? We can provide you with a victim service worker, or you can ask for counsel—”

  “No.”

  He studies me for a beat. “Okay. Feel free to ask for a break at any time.”

  “Who’s watching?” I ask with a tilt of my chin toward the camera.

  “Two RCMP officers.”

  “Detectives?”

  “Yes.”

  I worry my lip with my teeth and nod. My palms are going sweaty on the tabletop, despite the chill inside my bones.

  “I’d like to go over again, in detail, what happened after the group left the lodge.”

  Another memory flash. The sound of gunshots. A body swinging by the neck. Screams—such terrible screams . . .

  “Take it slow,” he says. Friendly. Gentle. Encouraging. “And again, let me know if at any time you decide that you’d like someone present.”

  Nine Little Liars thought they’d be late.

  One missed the plane, and then there were eight . . .

  “Let’s start with the morning of Sunday, October 25—the rendezvous at the Thunderbird Lodge floatplane dock when everyone met.”

  I stare into his probing, gray eyes. How can this Mountie ever begin to understand? How can anyone?

  We became a group with feral instincts, each of our weaknesses exaggerated and sharpened by guilt and fear and hunger and exhaustion. By the very need to survive. To live. That kind of struggle amplifies aspects of a personality in disturbing ways, ones you might never anticipate. It changed our reality. Perhaps I never understood Reality until now.

  Now I know Reality is a fluid and ephemeral thing, and it’s contingent on those around you. And out of context, what you experience might never be grasped by one who was not there. How do you explain that you were taken, within a matter of hours, from the heart of civilization into the dark of the woods, into the black heart of a Grimms’ fairy tale?

  I clear my throat. “There were eight of us on the dock that morning,” I say carefully. “Eight including the tour guide.”

  THE SEARCH

  MASON

  Friday, October 30.

  Darkness came early in Kluhane Bay at the end of October, especially in the long shadows of the granite mountains. And when it arrived, it was complete. No soft, anthropogenic light haze over
the town. Kluhane Bay was barely even a town. It was unincorporated in that it had no municipal status, no mayor, and no town council. Policing fell to a small three-officer satellite detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s North District of BC, which was headquartered in Prince George.

  Kluhane was home to maybe six hundred year-round residents who lived in wooden houses that hunkered along the few windblown streets on the shores of Lake Kluhane, one of the largest natural lakes in northern British Columbia. Summers were beautiful, and drew outdoor enthusiasts. But in winter the lake would freeze, and the wind would howl fiercely from the north. There was a small airstrip, a new waterfront promenade, a tiny post office, and some other essential stores and services, including a bakery, a gas station, and a motel with a diner downstairs. Beyond the last streets of town, only logging roads and ATV tracks punched thin access threads into dense, endless forests and craggy mountains. Kluhane Bay was the definition of isolation, and Sergeant Mason Deniaud felt it now as he fisted the wheel of his 4x4 police truck and negotiated a steep and rutted logging road up into a twilight that seemed to close in concert with the trees and clouds behind him.

  The call had come a half hour ago.

  Two hunters had stumbled upon the crash site of a floatplane. The aircraft had gone down in trees along the side of a ravine that funneled the white waters of the Taheese River down from Taheese Lake. The hunters had managed to radio a friend, who’d called the Kluhane Bay police via landline. No cell service in Kluhane. Nothing for miles and miles. Mason was technically the cop in charge of the detachment, but this was no desk job. One of his two officers, Constable Birken Hubble, was already on scene taking statements from the hunters. His other officer, Jake Podgorsky, was on his day off.

  Mason’s headlights lit upon another water bar. The logging road had been deactivated—deep ditches cut diagonally across it at intervals to mitigate erosion. Engaging his four-wheel drive, he approached the ditch at a thirty-degree angle. It lost him traction on the incline. As his leading tire hit the bottom of the trough, he spun his wheel in the opposite direction, then came carefully up and out the other end. But the rear of his truck had insufficient clearance. His exhaust pipe and bumper clunked and scraped against stones. He cursed.