In the Barren Ground (23 page)

His body tensed, but he still didn’t look at her. “Sabotage?”

“Cables, all of them, severed from the satellite dish to the broadcast tower. It could take weeks to repair if NorthTel can’t fly parts and techs in these storms. You said I had enemies, but this is not just about me now—I want who did this.”

Still not looking at her, he sliced off another wad of flesh. “What makes you think it’s them?” She heard a slight tension in his voice now and it gave her a punch of satisfaction.

“It’s my first line of investigation,” she said.

He swiveled the carcass on the hook so that he could access the uncut side of the buck. The animal’s head spun round to face her—open mouth, tongue. Tana’s pulse quickened.
The animal had no eyes.

“Where are the deer’s eyeballs?” she said.

“Someone took them, while the meat was hanging.” He sliced off another slab.

Tana stared at the empty sockets, her pulse starting to gallop.

He cast her a sideways glance. His green eyes were watchful, reading her. Gone was the crackling mirth, the quick, easy grin that she’d encountered the first few times she’d met him. A dark, hot energy radiated off him now. The place smelled of sweet meat, tinged with metallic copper. She needed air suddenly. “What do you mean, someone took the eyes?” she said.

“Just that. They’re a delicacy for some people out here.”

Tana dug into her pocket and removed the bagged tool she’d shown Chief Dupp and Alexa Peters earlier. “You seen this before?” She held it out to him.

“Where’d you get that?”

“It was pinning a frozen deer eyeball to my police station door.”

His hands stilled. And what she saw in his features worried her.

“When?” he said.

“It was there this morning.”

“That’s not Damien’s style, Tana—to knock out the whole town. Or hurt pets. Or screw around with eyeballs from
my
buck. He knows where his bread is buttered.”

“Then whose style is it?”

Silence. His gaze locked with hers.

The words from that poem snaked through her mind.

For here is bitter and cold where the sun hangs low. Where a midnight caribou mutilation awakens a howl of emptiness with ice where once there was heart
. . .

A darker thought followed as her attention returned to the gutted dear—its heart and other organs gone—and she thought of Selena Apodaca’s heartless torso lying in ice and snow. What if this wasn’t about illegal liquor, and revenge? What if the poisonings and the sabotage and the eyeball were all linked to what was up on her whiteboard, and the fact that
she
was asking questions around town, linking old attacks?

“I can tell you one thing,” she said. “Maybe this isn’t Damien’s style when he’s alone, but stick a guy into a gang and a weird pack mentality can take hold.” She paused. “But you know all about gang psychology, don’t you, O’Halloran, and what it can make people do?”

He turned away, shoulders tight. He stared at the deer carcass. Wind gusted into the shed, swiveling the deer. The meat hook creaked on its hinge.

“So, you going to tell me where his hide is?” she said.

“Fuck,” he said quietly.

“You got a problem?”

“I got a problem taking a cop into his hide, yeah.”

“I didn’t ask you to
take
me, I just asked you to tell me where it is.”

“And what are you going to do when you get there?” he snapped.

“Question them. They’re my top suspects, my first line of investigation in the sabotage. Depending on what I hear, or see, I’ll act accordingly.”

“They won’t cooperate with you. All you’ll be doing is putting yourself in a dangerous situation.”

“I can’t
not
address this—or them. What kind of statement would that be making of me as a law enforcement presence in this town?”

“Well, you’re not going alone. You’re right about his mates from Wolverine Falls—they can get trigger-happy, especially if they’ve been drinking. I don’t know what they’re capable of. Place is also booby-trapped.”

“And
you
can get in?”

“Yup.” He wiped his blade on a cloth, slid the knife into the sheath at his hip.

“Because you supply them with booze?” she said.

“Yup. You got it.”

“No, I don’t get it. I don’t get why you want to escort me into Damien’s hide. Because if this is about my pregnancy—”

“What if it is?”

She stared at him, his words from last night echoing through her mind.
I fucked up my own life. I don’t want to give a shit, and usually I get by pretty well.
Conflict twisted through Tana. She couldn’t trust this guy. Yet she also knew that barging into Damien’s hide to confront his armed gang on her own was a dumbass move.

. . .
you might be compelled to take a kick, or a bullet, but you’ve got another life to think about now. A little civilian life . . .

Tana swallowed. Either it was waiting for backup from Yellowknife, which might never come. Or it was Crash O’Halloran. Or it was doing nothing to assert her police presence in town, and letting a bunch of kids run her, and Twin Rivers. And possibly worse.

“Look, you want my help or not? Because the only way you’re going out to that hide is on the back of
my
snow machine.”

“I have my own machine—”

“With RCMP written all over it. No, we go on my equipment, my gear, my terms. Because I sure as hell am not going to be responsible for getting you killed.” He shucked off his lumberjack shirt as he spoke. He followed this by removing his T-shirt.

His torso was ripped, tanned, and sported more ink. His shoulder was badly scarred. His abs, too, as if a knife blade had been scored across his belly several times. Like torture marks. He was all sinew and muscle and fluidlike movement as he turned his naked back to her, and ran water into a sink at the back of the shed. The heat from the water steamed into the cold air.

“Give me a minute while I clean up.” He began soaping his arms.

Tana stared at the back of him. The way his jeans were slung low on his hips made her hot inside. Uncomfortable. Old tensions twisted painfully through her. She’d gotten into way too much trouble trying to drown her pain—herself—in lust, in fierce, mind-numbing, risqué sex. Coupled with alcohol it had become a crutch, a way to blot it all out. Then an addiction—a mixed-up Russian roulette that she’d played with herself after Jim’s death. A form of saying “fuck you, world.” A kind of self-hatred, self-flagellation even, that all tied back to her deep lack of self-worth. And now she was pregnant. And here she stood, trying to start over, watching this ex-con covered in serious organized crime tats, soaping blood off himself before taking her out to a gang hide in the woods. A person of interest in what could possibly be a bizarre serial murder case.

She shouldn’t trust him.

He glanced over his shoulder, as though he’d felt her watching, assessing. As though he could read her thoughts about his body. Heat washed into her face as his gaze held hers. And his eyes darkened.

She cleared her throat. “You need to come clean with me first. About those Devil’s Angels tats. About who you really are, what you did to land in prison, what you’re doing here. Or it’s no deal.”

His eyes narrowed. A defiance set into his stubbled jaw.

“Right,” she said. “Forget it.” She turned and exited the shed, moving fast into the snow and cool air.

CHAPTER 28

Crash splashed cold water over his face, and braced his hands on the crude basin in his work shed. He stared into the rust-pocked mirror above the sink. He knew what Tana was seeing. She was seeing what he wanted people to see—a badass, jaded, washed-up shit. Fuck. It’s what he
was. What he’d become.
Not a good man. A man who’d lived too long in a world of extreme violence and corruption, where good guys and bad guys changed places in a heartbeat. Where justice was not black, nor white, and sometimes was written in blood.

And he’d been good at that life.

He swore bitterly.

Now he was being forced to make a decision. Help her, and maybe screw up five or six years of waiting. Watching. But waiting for what, exactly? His taste for blood revenge had dulled. Oh, he wanted retribution alright, but maybe not in quite the same sharp, deadly way he’d first come for it. But he still wanted it.

He could let her go, stick with the order of things, carry on with his plan. But if she and that unborn child of hers got hurt—it made no sense. It cut right back to the heart of why he’d come out here in the first place. To avenge the deaths of a mother and unborn child.

He grabbed a towel, scrubbed his face dry, tossed the towel over a bench, and unhooked a fresh shirt he’d left hanging beside the basin. He pulled it on, snagged his jacket, gloves. Shoving his arms into his jacket, he went after her.

“Tana!” he yelled as he saw her disappearing around the side of his house. He broke into a run, caught her by the arm.

She swung around, eyes sparking. Her mouth was close. She was breathing heavily, their breaths clouding together. Snow settled like confetti on her fur hat. He wanted to kiss her. By God, he just wanted to kiss that full mouth, bury himself in her freshness and youth, cover himself in it. His eyes burned, heat seared his chest. And suddenly he ached—to start again, a second chance, just to try. But he didn’t dare. He could not do that to her. She was young, idealistic. He was far too jaded, carried too much dangerous baggage. She was going to be a mother, and there was no way in hell he could realistically be there for her, or a kid, so why in hell was his head even going there?

“Information,” he said slowly. “A way to pass under the radar.”

“Excuse me?”

“It’s what I’m doing here, with the bootlegging, the dope running, because I want underground information. I want bigger jobs from the lodge. And they’re starting to come. Bigger jobs equals more, better information.”

She blinked. Wind gusted, sending flakes dancing and laughing about them. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She shook his hand free, turned and walked away.

He watched her go.

Just let her go . . . let her go, let her go . . .

She was stubborn. She’d do it—find that hide on her own, confront Damien and his gang. He thought of her whiteboard, the dog poisonings, the sabotage, the isolation of the town—her. The deer eye skewered to her door, very possibly stolen from
his
deer . . .

Fuck!

“Tana!”

He caught up to her again under his bedroom window. “Stop, just listen—hear me out. I was UC.”

She blinked. “Excuse me?”

“Until five years ago.”

“
You
. . . were an undercover
cop
?”

“For almost four years I was part of a joint FBI, RCMP, Interpol, and Canadian Security Intelligence Service task force—Project Protea—formed to track laundered diamonds that were being used to finance organized crime, drugs, human trafficking, prostitution, terrorism. I was seconded to the joint team from major crimes in Edmonton, because I was uniquely positioned at the time to move deep undercover—I had particular experience in diamond trafficking and the infiltration of Asian organized crime into the local diamond industry.”

She swallowed. Her gazed dipped over him, as if she was taking him in anew, weighing the odds of him lying.

“The tats—”

“I infiltrated a chapter of the Devil’s Angels in Vancouver. They held control of the port. They were the intermediary, and we needed to crack them first.”

“The scars?”

He gave a soft snort. “I was shot. Knifed. Tortured at one point. Left for dead in a bust that went sideways. Got addicted to heroin as part of a test to gain entry to the Angels’ inner sanctum.” He hesitated. “My UC gig, my policing career, ended when the Vancouver city police force—unaware of the international deep-cover Project Protea operation—moved in on a major deal I had going down with a human trafficker. I was shot in the head while attempting to flee with the conflict stones that I was trying to get into the system for laundering. It left me in a coma for almost a fortnight. I went in for over a year of extensive rehab—for the heroin, brain damage. I had to learn to walk again. To feed myself again. I was put out to pasture on disability.”

Something changed in her features as she regarded him. And he knew what she was thinking: Is he sane now? How is that gray matter functioning now? And yeah, he sometimes asked himself those same questions.

“What you said about your wife, your daughter—”

“I lost them because of the job. Whenever I went home for a break I was like a K9 who was not happy until he was back on the scent. It became like crack. I was in too long, too deep. I . . .” Crash dragged his hand over his wet hair. “My family was collateral damage, Tana. And I regret it.”

Her eyes tunneled into his, an intensity crackling around her. “And you’re here, looking for information, because?”

“Because that deal that went bust was supposed to help net us the international syndicate that controlled the illegal diamond trade—the laundering of conflict stones—among other sophisticated criminal enterprises. We had to cut our losses after the bust. We never got to finding out who comprised the syndicate, and who controlled it. But while I was going through that year of rehab, it became an obsession for me. I didn’t stop looking. I
couldn’t
stop trying to piece together every little thing I’d learned over those four years undercover that cost me everything, including my career. I think I know who runs it now. And I think he’s here, Tana.”

“Who?”

A noise sounded above them. Both Crash and Tana glanced up. Nothing. Just a small gap open in the bedroom window, the breeze billowing a drape.

“Come,” he said, watching the drape for a moment. “Let’s go finish this in my workshop.”

Mindy scurried around to another window from where she could watch Crash and Tana returning through the snow to his outbuildings. He was a
cop?
Fuck. Men were such liars. All of them. She’d thought he was super cool with his plane and his liquor runs, and the dope. He was nothing but a fucking liar, duping them all.

She saw Crash place his hand on the back of the constable’s jacket, guiding her into the doorway of the workshop attached to his shed where he dressed game. Like they were now fucking soulmates-in-blue, or something equally pathetic. Her eyes blurred.

Her chest hurt. Really hurt. He’d even had a wife and a
daughter.
Fucking, fucking, fucking liar. She swung her heel, and kicked hard at the base of the bed. Pain screamed through her toes. And she didn’t care. She hobbled to the kitchen, and dug through the drawer for the meat thermometer. She found it, yanked up her shirt, and began stabbing the sharp tip of the thermometer into the fat flesh of her stomach.
Stabbity, stabbity, stabbity. Stab.
Blood swelled in shiny red beads from the small holes. It started to dribble down into the waistband of her pants. She loved him. She hated him. Hated Tana for coming here. She wanted to kill Tana Larsson.
Kill, kill, kill.

Crash had been the only one there for her in a way that she’d needed. He’d saved her from that shed in which she’d been sleeping, and he’d sobered her up. Mindy figured she’d have him some day. He’d have made love to her eventually, if not for Tana coming into town. Mindy had believed that the only reason she and Crash hadn’t had sex yet was because he
cared
, and he was waiting for her. Until she was older.
Mindy, you’re too young. You need to find a good man your own age. You need to go to school . . .
Tears streamed down her face.