In the Barren Ground Read online

  “What about the red chopper?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. Coincidence?”

  “I’m not feeling big on coincidence with this. And trapper Eddie? He’s always out there.”

  “I don’t see him for this. And the boot print is not his—I’d stake a lot on that. There’s also a possibility that the print has nothing to do with the actual murder.”

  “What about Crow TwoDove, and his taxidermy tools? He’s accustomed to taking out hearts and guts. Could he have stepped over some line and started working on humans, copying from the book?”

  “Crow can’t read,” Crash said.

  “He doesn’t need to read. This cannibal beast thing is a local myth, an old story that any local could have heard told around a fire.”

  “Yeah, but someone actually wrote down those lines from the book, and copied the drawing. This definitely ties into that book, and someone who can read.”

  “True.” Tana’s mind went to the author, Henry Spatt, and the other names she’d listed on her whiteboard.

  “I need to go out to WestMin again,” she said. “I need to interview the rest of the winter crew at the camp, check their boots, their histories. If Harry Blundt and Markus Van Bleek were already staking this area and mapping out a mine four years ago, they would have had teammates, and those same mates could be at the camp now. They’d potentially have had opportunity in all cases.”

  “Would be a lengthy expedition out there on snowmobile,” Crash said. “Might have to wait for a break in the weather so that I can fly you in.”

  She met his eyes. He held her gaze. And something surged between them—a bond, tangible. Plus something darker, a little more sly. It made Tana feel scared. Vulnerable. And in the whisper and tick and rush of the wind, she heard her gran’s voice.

  Vulnerability isn’t good or bad, Tana. It’s not a dark emotion, nor a light one. It’s not a weakness. It’s the birthplace of all feelings. If you run away from it, if you fear it, and shut it out, you will be shutting out all that gives purpose and meaning to life …

  She couldn’t go there. She could not rely on anyone but herself right now—she had to do this motherhood thing, her job, on her own. She had to prove she could. She’d made far too many mistakes with sex, and men. She needed to separate that out from what was important now, get on track. And Crash was so wrong. He had heavy issues he was still trying to resolve. He lived like Jim—on the edge, daring the universe to take him, maybe even wanting to be taken. She couldn’t bear caring, and losing, again. It would just kill her. She inhaled deeply.

  “It’s hard to see anyone for this, you know?” she said. “Doing this depraved, incredibly raw, and violent thing, and still living, functioning normally among a community. Must take so much energy to hide it. To plan it, clean up. Look normal.”

  “Normal is relative, Tana.”

  He was right. She’d thought Jim was normal. You never really knew what hid behind the eyes of others.

  Crash took her mug, and unzipped the vestibule. He emptied out the dregs and cleaned the mugs with snow, stashed them back in the pack. “You should get some sleep if you can. The worst of this weather should let up by morning, and if the forecast holds, there’ll be a slight lull before the next big one rolls in. We should manage to reach Twin Rivers before that socks us in again.”

  Tana pulled her wool hat down over her ears and cuddled into her sleeping bag. Crash did the same, and they pressed together in the small tent. He reached up and clicked off the lantern. Their orange globe went out and the dark wilderness seemed suddenly, impossibly vast. Just them together with a skein of orange fabric between them and the universe out there. Tana’s mind went to the shredded bits of orange tent she’d seen at the Apodaca-Sanjit massacre. She thought of Crash wrapping Regan Novak’s remains into his tent fabric four years ago, and she shivered.

  “Cold?” he said in the dark.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You going to call this in now, Tana?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I don’t have answers, but I have enough questions to force Yellowknife to send in a homicide team. I have Spatt’s book, and it’s clearly a blueprint for murder. Someone out here is stalking and hunting humans, using Spatt’s words as a map, and to instill fear before he strikes. Maybe it’s Spatt himself. We need forensics out here, fingerprints taken, DNA analysis, a fast track on those autopsy results. I’ll get it now.”

  “Will you deal with Cutter?”

  Tana heard the layers in his question.

  “No,” she said quietly. “Sergeant Leon Keelan. But I don’t care who I deal with … I have enough evidence now. I’ll go through central dispatch, make sure other people hear about this—the coroner’s office, pathologists, Apodaca’s and Sanjit’s parents. It’ll embarrass Cutter and Keelan into fast action, if nothing else. They won’t be able to ignore this, or me. Not this time.”

  He fell silent, and she wondered if he was sleeping. She listened for a while to the storm and the cold crept in, right into her bones. Her body gave an involuntary shudder, and Crash put his arm over her.

  “Come closer,” he whispered, his breath warm against her neck. Her body went ramrod rigid. Her heart began to stutter.

  “Don’t fight it. Survival value. Body warmth.”

  Reluctantly, she tried to relax into his arms as he spooned her.

  “What about you?” she whispered. “What are you going to do about Cutter, Sturmann-Taylor?”

  She heard him inhale deeply.

  “You still want to kill him?”

  “No, Tana. Not any more.”

  Relief rushed through her. “What changed?’

  “You,” he whispered.

  Fear rose again, tension twisting in her stomach, her mouth going dry. She wanted his touch, his mouth to press firmly against her neck. She ached for his body, warm and naked in her arms. To feel him between her legs. Her eyes burned. And on the back of it all came another worry—Cutter and Sturmann-Taylor, Van Bleek, what they could do to her and her baby in this wild and isolated place, and no one would know.

  “So what are you going to do, then?” she whispered.

  “FBI,” he said. “Interpol. I’m going to take everything I’ve gathered over the years to one of the old guys who was on the joint ops task force. Give it to him, let them look at Sturmann-Taylor and Cutter from the outside. Combined with the intel accumulated by the task force over those four years, plus the information I’ve gathered about Sturmann-Taylor, the lodge, the people he flies in, Cutter’s role—it should show them where to look. I think they’ll find the rest of the pieces now.”

  Wind blew, and snow brushed and rustled against the tent fabric.

  “So, thank you, Tana,” he whispered, resting his lips ever so slightly against the skin under her hair at the nape of her neck, the weight of his arm over her body heavy and warm. Heat washed into her belly and her nipples tightened with an exquisite ache. “I think it was destiny,” he said, and she heard the old smile in his voice. “That brought you to me, and gave me the missing pieces. Maybe, finally all those years will have been worthwhile.”

  He was talking about more than just his UC operation. He was talking about the personal losses he’d incurred through it, the choices he’d made years ago to stick with the job while losing his family. He was talking about Lara and his dead baby, and how he felt he hadn’t protected her from having her brains blown out all over him. She swallowed and held dead still for fear of arousing him, or herself, further, and eventually she heard Crash’s breathing deepen and grow more rhythmic as he fell asleep.

  Only then did she allow her muscles to fully relax. But just as she was drifting off, she gasped.

  He came awake instantly.

  “What is it?”

  She felt it again, a rolling motion in her tummy, a little punch from the inside. Emotion filled her eyes.

  “My baby. It moved. Here, feel it.” She opened her sleeping bag and guided his hand under he
r thermal underwear. His palm was rough and warm on the tight skin of her stomach. Her baby rolled over again, kicked. A little thump.

  “Did you feel it?”

  He made no reply. She rolled over and turned her face toward his, and she saw the gleam of wetness on his cheeks. “Yes,” he whispered, voice thick. “Yes, I felt it.”

  He kept his hand there on her tummy, and they lay like that for a long while, just connecting with the precious little human life in her womb. And Tana no longer felt alone. This was real, this little creature growing determinedly inside her. This man holding her.

  “Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?” he said.

  “No,” she said softly. She hadn’t wanted to find out. She’d been hoping for a boy, because in her experience girls had it tough. But right now, she didn’t care. It was hers. Her baby. And for just this nanosecond in time, she thought it might all work out okay.

  A little tribe, Gran, I’m building my own little tribe …

  Tana finally drifted slowly toward sleep with Crash holding her like that, his hand on her belly, warm against the storm. To be held like this, not judged, not used, no pressure for sex … to feel no shame at all in this rugged man’s arms, to feel the raw bond of friendship … the feeling was indescribably profound. And intimate.

  CHAPTER 38

  Saturday, November 10. Day length: 7:20:37 hours.

  It was 3:24 p.m. when Crash drew up outside his house on his snowmobile. He and Tana had finally made it back into Twin Rivers around 2:30 p.m. The snow had stopped falling and wind was now pushing through the valley, briefly clearing away some of the cloud cover. He’d escorted her to the police station where her dogs had gone insane with happiness to see her. Both animals looked as though they were going to be fine, and it had lifted his heart to see her with them.

  Rosalie would still be at the station for a while, and Bob the maintenance guy had been up on the roof. He’d cleared the small antenna that fed through to the mobile satellite phone dock inside the office, enabling Tana to use her portable phone inside. And now, in this small window before the next storm rolled in, she’d be able to contact Yellowknife and call in a major crimes team. How soon detectives might be able to fly into Twin Rivers was another question, but at least backup would be on standby. Crash had told Tana he was going home to shower, change, see that the airstrip was being plowed before the next dump arrived, and to check on his business. He also wanted to see that Mindy was okay.

  He killed his engine and the sound of a scraping plow filled the air. The contract guy was busy running his blades over the strip. Crash removed his helmet, waved. The man waved back from inside his truck.

  Gathering his gear, Crash trotted up the porch stairs. His house was in darkness despite the twilight. Snowdrifts had blown up across his front door. He frowned. Mindy must not have left the building since the snow had started falling. But why so dark?

  He tried the door. It was unlocked. He pushed it open, stepped over the snow piles, and entered his house. The interior was cold, all the heat off.

  “Mindy?” He dumped his stuff in the mudroom, clicked on the lights, and removed his boots. “Mindy—you here?” No answer came.

  He made his way through to the living room, flicking on the lights and turning up the heat. The baseboard heaters ticked and creaked as they came to life. Empty booze bottles and beer cans littered the coffee table. He cursed.

  “Mindy!”

  Silence.

  Crash marched down the hall and flung open the door to the spare room. The bed was mussed up, the closet open, empty. He swore again. She must have had a relapse, got drunk, and boomeranged right back to that old boyfriend of hers. She hadn’t done that for almost two months. He’d hoped she’d kicked that bad habit.

  Feeling uneasy, he made for the bathroom, stripped down, and stepped into a steaming shower. A cocktail of adrenaline and anxiety churned through his gut as he soaped himself and thought of Tana. And her case. Of Mindy. Of his next steps in contacting the FBI, Interpol, the choices he was making that would put him out there again.

  He dried off, dressed in clean gear, and made his way into the kitchen to grab a beer or two. Or at least see if Mindy had left him any to grab. He’d told Tana he would bring takeout from the diner, and he was in the mood for a brew with his food tonight. His plan was to spend nights at the station until Tana’s backup arrived. In the meanwhile, Rosalie and her dogs were with her, and people were out and about in the village, making full use of the break in the weather. Whoever might have killed those four, and who’d been trying to spook Tana, was not someone who wanted to get caught. That much was evident from the remote locations chosen for the killings, and the considerable efforts made to cover up the crimes. This was some sick son of a bitch who skulked in darkness and shadow. He’d wait until nighttime to strike, when and if Tana was alone. If he was going to strike near home at all.

  The blood caught his attention the moment he entered the kitchen—smears of it on the white stove and across the counter. His pulse kicked. He lowered his gaze to the floor. There were drops on the linoleum. He crouched down, gently touching the tip of a finger to one of the dark beads. Tacky. Old. His heart beat faster as he came to his feet. Then he saw it—the meat thermometer lying on the countertop behind a bowl of mandarins. Slowly, a dark sensation leaked into him. Crash picked up the thermometer. Traces of blood smeared the silver shaft designed for spiking into raw meat.

  Shit.

  Mindy had done this once before in his house, that he knew of, hurt herself. He’d found her cutting her arm with a razor blade after she’d discovered that her jackass of an ex-boyfriend was screwing someone else. Tana’s words filtered suddenly into his mind.

  … How vindictive is Mindy? She’s made no secret she hates me, and likes you. The deer eyes are a link between you and me. Could she have done this—be trying to say something?

  Crash headed fast for the mudroom, punched his arms into his jacket, pulled on his snow boots. He grabbed his hat and gloves and stepped out into the cold. The noise of an approaching chopper pounded the air, and out of the clouds emerged a bright-yellow bird—Twin Squirrel. Heather.

  As Crash descended the stairs, the Squirrel landed gently in a swirling blizzard of a downdraft and swishing conifers. He stopped to watch the doors open and three guys hop out as the rotors slowed. Contract workers for the ice road, judging by their gear. They ran from the chopper in a crouch, making for a truck idling down near the end of the runway, waiting to pick them up.

  The rotors stopped, and the pilot door opened. Crash made his way over as Heather removed her headset, and jumped down in her winter flight suit.

  “Hey,” she said with a smile, her blue eyes mirroring the color in the gaps of cloud behind her. “Took a run in the weather window.” She nodded to the men climbing into the truck, which was puffing white exhaust clouds into the air. “Those poor bastards were stuck out at their job site in the storm for two nights.” She laughed, closing her door behind her. She made for the hangar. “Never seen anyone so happy to get a ride back to civilization,” she called over her shoulder.

  “Have you seen Mindy?” he asked, following her into the hangar.

  She stopped, turned, looked into his eyes, and must have seen the worry in his face, because she said, “No, why? What’s wrong?”

  He exhaled in frustration. “I don’t know where she is. Last time I saw her was … shit, I think it was Tuesday or Thursday morning.”

  “I saw her Tuesday afternoon,” she said. “I thought you meant had I seen her today.”

  “Where?”

  “She was walking along the road to the village. I drove by in time to see her getting into a dark Ford truck.”

  “Whose truck?”

  “I don’t know. Gray. It had a logo-sticker thing across the tailgate—a red ram’s head.”

  “Markus Van Bleek? Shit.” Suspected assassin. Trafficker of women, diamonds …

  “You didn’t try to stop
her?”

  “Crash, I’m not Mindy’s keeper. I don’t know where she was going.”

  “Which way did the truck go?”

  “Northeast. The road to Wolverine Falls.”

  Van Bleek had a friend with a cabin up there. Crash had made it his business to know where Van Bleek went, the company he kept. And if the South African merc hadn’t left town in this small gap of weather, chances are he’d still be here, because returning to the WestMin exploration camp via land in this new layer of deep powder would be a full-on expedition that could take all day and longer. Crash spun around and made for his machine.

  “Hey,” Heather called after him. “Where are you going?”

  “To find Mindy.”

  Before mounting his sled, he dialed Tana’s sat number with his own portable sat phone. He glanced up at the sky, checking the weather as the phone rang. Would be full dark in minutes. And already a fresh bank of black clouds was broiling in from the north. His call kicked to an automated voice mail system. Clearly, Tana was still busy on the phone to Yellowknife. He left her a message saying he was heading out to find Markus Van Bleek because Mindy had gone with him to Wolverine Falls two days ago, and he believed she could be in serious trouble.

  “Markus might even be our guy. If I’m not back before Rosalie leaves tonight, please get someone to come stay with you.” He killed the call, pocketed his device, pulled on his helmet, and straddled his machine. He gunned the engine, revved, and roared around the back of his house, punching through drifts, taking a shortcut toward the road that led upriver to Wolverine Falls.

  CHAPTER 39

  Tana paced in front of her whiteboard. It was 5:14 p.m. and black outside. She’d phoned Yellowknife as soon as they’d returned from the wilderness, and had been relieved to not only get a satellite signal through, but to learn that neither Leon Keelan nor Garth Cutter were in the building. Her call had gone to a young detective in major crimes—Corporal Mack Marshall—to whom she’d relayed her information. He’d jumped all over it and secured a green light to form a team that was on standby for the first possible flight out of Yellowknife.