Edge of Survival (21 page)

Griff’s world slowed down and backed up into reverse. August 3. Shit. He rubbed his hand over his face. “I planned to be home, Marce. I really did. I even made dinner reservations at the Hotel Newfoundland.” Their wedding anniversary and he couldn’t even remember how many years they’d been married, except it felt like too many. He heard his daughter in the background, and a great slashing pain shot through his chest.

“I’ll be there. I’ll be home by midnight.” He closed the phone and squatted on the ground, clasping his head in his hands as nausea unwound in his stomach. Shit.

McCoy burst out of the building and he sprang to his feet as if he hadn’t been cradling a broken heart.

“We’ve got Daniel Fox’s fingerprints on the murder weapon.”

Fox, huh? Damn. He’d liked that guy. Griff tried to feel some sense of accomplishment, some sense of closure, but he just felt as if someone had shot him in the gut.

“Do we know where he is?” he asked, following her to the four-by-four and climbing in.

She grinned, those sharp features alive with the excitement of the hunt. “Spoke to the captain of the boat and he says Fox was just dropped in Nain. If he’s still around, he’ll be in the bar.”

Griff felt his pulse skip. Midnight. This meant he could keep his promise and still be home by midnight. “Let’s go pick him up.”

There was a knock on the window of the SUV and impatiently Griff punched the button to lower the glass. The blonde who leaned into the cab was dynamite, and Griff’s jaw dropped at the sight of her.

“I know who killed that prostitute.” She glanced at her fancy silver watch and tugged her lower lip with pearly white teeth. “I’ve got thirty minutes before I catch my ride out of here.” She tapped a lacquered nail on the window frame.

McCoy leaned across him. “You head into the detachment building and we’ll be right with you.”

They both watched her walk away and McCoy was the first to speak. “Viagra my ass.”

Cam cleaned the lab and packed supplies she didn’t need anymore to ship back to Miami. She loved Florida, the heat, the sand, watching beautiful people strut up and down Miami Beach. Yet the thought of going home made her gag.

She slumped on her stool, staring at the rubber-gloved hands lying limply in her lap. The lab smelled lemon fresh because she’d cleaned it from top to toe. The only things that broke the silence were the freezers buzzing to life every half hour and the occasional footsteps passing down the hall.

The bulk of the hard work was finished, and she could start analyzing data and writing the report. She’d done it. Set up a complex project in a remote region of the world. She’d coordinated the students, helped Vikki and, with Tooly’s help, had succeeded in all her objectives. She should be feeling damn proud. Instead she felt churned up and sick. Dumb. Used.

Daniel had gone on leave, for which she was glad. But now she got to torment herself with images of what he was indulging in during his days off. It didn’t take a Ph.D. to figure out that women would play front, center and any other position he could think of.

Cam slammed her hand down on the paper-covered counter so hard her laptop bounced. She couldn’t believe she’d not only had an affair with a notorious player, she’d also fallen in love with the sonofabitch. She squeezed her eyes shut. He was wrong for her on so many levels. He was a high-wire act without the safety net. He did what he wanted and to hell with other people’s feelings. He was an adrenaline junkie who took risks she could never imagine taking.

He was her ex-fiancé Dean times a million. Big bad alpha male, wanting things his way or not at all. She’d broken things off with Dean the moment she’d found out he’d cheated on her and she’d never regretted her decision. This time Daniel had made the choice for her. And he’d always been honest. She couldn’t fault him for lying or faking something that wasn’t there—on his side, anyway.

It was just as well she hadn’t told him how she really felt. She stared at the ceiling, imagining the look of mild concern that would flash over his handsome features before he slipped on those aviator sunglasses. Concern that she was going to ruin five minutes of his life.

It was lunchtime. She had to eat, but she wasn’t hungry. She began to shut down her laptop, suddenly remembered the photos she’d taken of Daniel before they’d become lovers. The idea that he was on her computer, hot and naked, made her grit her teeth. She would not moon over this guy. Hell, she’d been dumped before, and she wasn’t going to let this affair wreck one of the most exciting adventures of her life. Determined to erase the man from every aspect of her life, she opened the folder and found the images, which opened in a filmstrip.

And there he was. Arrogance and cynicism carved just as deeply as the muscles on his body, but close up there was a strain around his eyes, a tightness to his mouth. A strain that hadn’t been there the last time they’d gone to the lake. And she knew she had something to do with that brief attitude adjustment.

Her finger hovered over the delete button.

Whatever Daniel dreamt about last night had freaked him out, and he wasn’t the type to admit weakness to another human being. She figured it was related to what he’d gone through in the military. Being a scientist, she knew he probably needed treatment to get over the trauma. Being a woman, she knew he was too pigheaded to get it.

She pressed delete and then confirmed. She would not dwell on Daniel Fox; their relationship had always been short-term—she just hadn’t expected it to be this quick, or to be replaced so efficiently. The next image appeared automatically on the screen. She had to squint to get it in focus. Dirt? She almost deleted it before she realized what it was. The footprints.

What the hell
was
that thing? She hadn’t gotten a good look at it in the woods yesterday, but she’d recognize it if she saw it again. She typed in
Labrador, mammal
and
five toes
into a search engine and went through the field guide that popped up. Polar bear. No.
Thank God
. Raccoon, coati. No, no. Weasels, Skunks and Mustelidae. She’d never seen a weasel that big. It wasn’t a marten, or an otter, and it had stripes but it wasn’t a skunk. It wasn’t a ferret or a mink. She bit her lip and kept scrolling. Tooly would have recognized those creatures anyway.

Wolverine, badger. She halted mid-scroll and squinted at the picture. The American badger looked too small and fat, although individuals varied, or so the guide said. Its fur was the color of ashes and the creature pictured had a white stripe down the center of its snout that she was pretty sure the creature in the woods hadn’t had. And looking at the range, Labrador was too far north for it to be a badger.

Excitement stirred in her chest as she took a closer look at the wolverine pictured on the website. Description said it was the size of a small bear with a muscular neck and shoulders. That sounded about right. She added
wolverine
into the search engine, and Daniel’s image was replaced by a hunky Hugh Jackman.

Scrolling down, she found a website with drawings of tracks that looked very similar to the ones she’d seen on three different occasions now, and the distribution zone had Labrador shaded. But as she read further she got a tingle along her spine. The population had declined in Eastern Canada and was believed to have become extirpated by the mid-nineteenth century in Labrador and Quebec.

The creatures weren’t supposed to be found here anymore. That would explain why Tooly hadn’t recognized the tracks. She checked out the Canadian Government’s Species at Risk, Public Registry and saw that the wolverine was listed as a Schedule 1 Endangered Species.

And the light-bulb moment almost blinded her.

Holy-shmoly.

If the Department of Natural Resources knew about the presence of this rare mammal in the Mitshishu Brook watershed, it might dramatically impact the development of the hydroelectric dam. They weren’t likely to forego the mine project entirely, but they might relocate the dam to a valley south of Frenchmans Bight. Which would mean Tooly could stay in his childhood home.

A small part of Cam rekindled with excitement. She was sick of being miserable; it wasn’t in her nature to brood. This was great news and a hell of a distraction from depression. She searched the web for a contact address and it crossed her mind that rediscovering wolverine in this region would look pretty damn good on her résumé. And right now her career was all she had left.

She started an email to DNR but the photos she’d taken had no scale and were blurry and indistinct. Probably because her hands had been shaking from the fact Daniel had just stripped naked in front of her.

Damn. After her run-in with the RCMP over her lack of evidence about the poaching, she didn’t want to go running off to the authorities until she had solid proof the animal really existed.

She went to the window. The rain had stopped but it was cloudy and she didn’t think the helicopters would fly at all today. Pressing her lips together, she went over to her rucksack and pulled out her topographical map of the area. She smoothed it over the bench.

The ship was moored in a sheltered bay, and on the beach there was a small group of huts used by some geological surveyors. A rough track ran to the base of the waterfall. She traced the course of the river and found Tooly’s cabin and a trail marked nearby.

If she crossed the river near the braided shallows, the path led either to Frenchmans Bight or up to Tooly’s home.

Of course she needed an ATV, but she’d seen at least four parked beside the sheds on the beach. She shouldn’t have any trouble borrowing one from the guys there, as long as she didn’t tell them what she was planning to do. She doubted the mine company or its employees would be too thrilled to learn about the wolverine. And Dwight Wineberg wouldn’t hesitate to get rid of her and the creature if they got in the way of his precious company’s bottom line.

She picked up her daypack and clipped on her fanny pack. First she needed lunch and then she’d ask the crew for a ride to shore. As long as she had supplies, a radio and bear bangers, she didn’t see why she couldn’t go looking for evidence. The wet ground would be perfect for finding fresh tracks.

It beat the hell out of sitting around here reliving her humiliation and misfortune, all the while knowing exactly how Daniel was drowning his sorrows.

Daniel stowed his gear at his feet and ordered a beer. A cruise ship was in port, and the town was full of people photographing the Moravian church and locals’ homes. Daniel figured if the people of Nain went around photographing the tourists’ homes, they’d get arrested.

The barman delivered a beer and Daniel paid the guy, all the while watching that brown bottle with a mixture of longing and dread. He put his hands around it, the cold piercing through to the bone. He lifted it an inch. It felt heavy, and he was already imagining the fresh slide of alcohol down his constricted throat. His hands shook.

A pretty local girl, who looked almost legal, wandered over to his table. “Mind if I sit down?”

He smiled but inside he felt as dead as the moon. “Help yourself.”

Someone dropped a glass, and the shattering explosion hurtled him straight into the past.

Sweat. Heat. Anticipation. A gunshot drilling the wall. Bullets whizzed through the air, the noise deafening, the familiar taste of gunpowder on his tongue. He picked up the pace, his heart thrashing under his body armor, plaster-dust sticking to the sweat on his skin as he raced for the last hostage. A man stepped into the hall.

Tap, tap. You’re dead.

He stood to the side of one door and tried the knob. Locked. He shot off the lock and in they went. A woman was sitting on a bed. Pretty black eyes.

He glanced back down the hall, checking for hostiles when he heard a single shot. His mistake. His mistake! He met the woman’s eyes as she turned the pistol from Maggie’s falling body toward him, her fingers squeezing as he tapped two into her heart. Her black eyes flared as she hit the floor. Heart pounding, he slotted one into her skull just to be sure. His breath stuck in his throat like razorblades.

Movement under the bed. A kid. Shit. Huge brown eyes, tears sparkling like diamonds on coal-black lashes. Patting him down. No explosives, no weapons.

The boy crawling over the dead mother while he put a field-dressing on Maggie’s shoulder to staunch the bleeding. Blood everywhere. He kept pressing down on the wound. And then his men had the hostage. He picked up the kid and they were running across the open courtyard. A shadow appeared in a blown-out window, something resting on a man’s shoulder—a grenade launcher?

Fuck! His men were going to die. Shit, shit, shit.

Mouth dry, heart squeezed, his finger tightening on the trigger of his MP5. A scream, a woman’s god-awful scream shattered his soul every single time.

The cameraman lay dead in the rubble with a smile on his face, the camera gripped tightly in his hand. Concrete dust drifted through the air like falling snow. The reporter yelled at him. She had soft brown curls and blood splashed across her chest. He grabbed her arm. She glared at him before she seized the camera from the dead man’s fingers.

He came back into himself, his breathing heavy and harsh. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. It wasn’t real. But it felt bloody real.

“You all right, man?” the bartender asked.

Daniel didn’t know how long he’d been sitting frozen, lost in time and madness, but the pretty girl had moved over to the pool table and he was alone. Thank God.

Shivers overtook his body like jitterbugs. His fingers closed firmly around the beer bottle. He just wanted it to all go away. He raised the bottle and closed his eyes and let the liquid touch his lips.

He slammed the bottle back down without taking a sip, the beer foaming up and overflowing onto the black lacquer table. Sweat slicked his brow. His stomach felt as though he’d been kicked by a camel.

He had a problem.

Not just a small problem. A big effing problem. He ran a palm over his sweat-laden brow. Boy, did he have a problem.

He had post-traumatic stress disorder.

He scrubbed his fingers through his short hair. PTSD. He couldn’t believe it had taken him this long to recognize and acknowledge the symptoms. He had all the classic signs—guilt, avoidance, dissociation, combined with flashbacks, nightmares and addiction. They’d studied it between postings back in Credenhill, so he knew all about the theory—he’d just pretended it didn’t apply to him. That he could deal with his problems on his own.

Drink had kept the monster at bay for a while. So had flying. So had running away from everything and everyone he’d ever loved. Meaningless sex had been another diversion—getting the physical release, the distraction, the exhaustion. But not engaging his mind, not giving a damn about his partners or himself, except getting their rocks off.

He hadn’t had meaningless sex with Cam.

He’d tried. Jesus, had he tried. But she’d had other ideas and kept forcing him to look at her when they kissed, making him laugh, compelling him to see the truly wonderful person she was.

They hadn’t just had sex.

Whether he liked it or not, he had made love with Cameran Young. And then he’d run away because she mattered to him and he was terrified of what that meant. He’d ditched her. She was the closest he’d had to a friend in years and maybe, just maybe, he should give himself points for giving a damn about someone besides himself.

That last mission had blasted all his training to smithereens because that reporter, that miserable bitch, had tried to destroy him after he’d killed the man she loved, and he’d half believed she was justified.

It had been sobering to realize there were some things the SAS could not fix, and the look of doubt in his mother’s eyes after she’d seen that news report was one of those things.

So he’d bolted. And here he sat in a dive in Nain, a burned-out emotional wreck, running away from the only person who’d pierced his guard in years. Bloody hell.