In the Barren Ground (5 page)

“Get some rest, okay?” Tana said. Civilian safety was her priority, and although MacAllistair seemed stable on her feet, she definitely smelled like she’d had one too many. Eyes showed it, too. “I’ll need an official statement from you, too. Please remain at the camp until I return. If the forecast holds, the coroner should be able to get in by daybreak—”

“Forecast is irrelevant.” Irritation laced her tone now. “Headless Man has its own weather. It’s the topography, the cold lake, the warmth from the muskeg swamps, the cliffs—it can make for dense fog where the skies are clear everywhere else.”

“We’ll hope for the best, then.”

MacAllistair eyed her, a wariness showing in her features, a subtle hostility in her eyes at being challenged. Tana got this a lot. She was a very young, female cop in a vast wilderness that rewarded independence, freedom of spirit, that attracted a rough breed of cowboy—women as well as men—strong people who tended to eschew bureaucracy, including the arm of the law. Civic trappings like running water, sewer, electricity, grocery stores, and the security of calling 9-1-1 for help were not high on a true northerner’s radar.

“Fine,” MacAllistair said quietly. “I’ll wait. But if you’re trapped out there for any length of time . . . I got work to do. I fly for Boreal Air, and there’s a last rush on before the serious meteorological stuff hits in a few days and we’ll be socked in for God knows how long. My base is in Twin Rivers. I rent a place from Crow TwoDove. You can find me there.”

As MacAllistair spoke, O’Halloran approached them with the last of Tana’s gear, snowflakes settling on his World War II jacket.

“Thanks,” Tana said, taking her bag from him. “You can clear out if you want. I might be a while.”

“Gee, thank you, officer.”

“I need your number, though. To call for a return flight. Otherwise, I might be able to catch a ride with the coroner’s crew.”

He inhaled deeply, stuck his hands in his pockets and looked away for a moment, as if debating something, then said, “Look, I don’t fly for the Mounties. I got my own living to make.”

“This’ll pay.”

“I don’t need
your
pay.”

Damn him. He was going to make her beg. “Could be a long-term contract,” she lied. She doubted he’d even clear the criminal record check required for him to become a contracted civilian to the RCMP. But she sure as hell could use him until they did send someone up here to replace Jankoski.

“Told you, don’t want it.”

Their gazes locked. Wind, snow gusted. She needed to get going. She could hear Markus firing up his quad. Seconds were ticking. “Send me your invoice for tonight, then.” She turned and walked toward the waiting ATVs. As she did, she heard MacAllistair say to O’Halloran, “I saw you out there Friday, Crash. Saw your bird parked just on the other side of the cliff from where those kids were working. Around lunchtime when I was flying another crew.”

“Wasn’t me.”

Tana slowed, her interest suddenly piqued.

“An AeroStar 380E—bright red? How many of those around?”

“I said, it wasn’t me.”

“
Had
to be. I tried to raise you on the radio.”

Tana set her bag down, lowered herself into a crouch. She began to retie her bootlaces, straining to catch the rest of their conversation.

“Like I said, must’ve been someone else, maybe hunting, prospecting. An AeroStar is one of the most economical ways of getting around.”

“I know. I bought a kit myself, secondhand off a guy up in Inuvik. Untouched. I’m pretty much done building the thing, but I’m having issues with the sprag clutch. I was hoping to bounce some ideas off you.”

Tana moved on to her other bootlace. Van Bleek was revving his engine, getting impatient. Urgency crackled through her.

“Well, give me a shout when you’re back in town,” O’Halloran said. “We’re probably going to be grounded in a few days. I’ll come out, take a look then.”

“We ready to roll, Constable?” Van Bleek yelled.

Snow was coming down heavier now. Swirling fat flakes, dense mist creeping up from the lake, strangling lights with ghostly halos.

She gave a thumbs-up sign, got to her feet, hurried over. Strapping her last bag onto the quad, she removed her muskrat hat, tucked it down the front of her jacket, and donned the helmet and goggles Van Bleek had left on her seat. He’d also left the engine warming for her.

He pulled out ahead of her quad, his headlights bouncing off fog. “Stay right up my ass,” he yelled. “Some tricky navigational shit ahead.”

They trundled toward the black lake, mist swallowing them. Something made Tana glance back over her shoulder.

O’Halloran was standing like a ghostly silhouette against the brightly lit maw of the hangar. Hands in pockets. Just watching her.

Unease feathered into her chest.

Crash watched the young Constable Tana Larsson disappearing into the fog with Van Bleek and a dark, inky feeling sank through him. With it came tension. Resentment. A strange sense of time running out.

Van Bleek was dangerous, depending on who was asking, and who was paying. But so far as Crash knew, if his information was correct, the cop should be safe alone with him in the wilderness, at least for tonight. And as long as she wasn’t stepping into Van Bleek’s scummy pond.

He swore, spun around, and marched back to his plane. Last thing he wanted—needed—was to worry about some rookie cop’s little ass.

He was long done worrying about people.

Besides, she was a law enforcement officer. It was her choice. She needed to handle the work that came with the territory. And yeah, sometimes cops lost. And got killed.

Part of the job.

Not his problem.

CHAPTER 5

Tana picked her way carefully up the slick incline that led to the esker’s south ridge. Her breath rasped in her chest and it billowed like smoke in the glow of her headlamp. Temperatures had been falling steadily as she’d followed Van Bleek’s ATV into the silent maw of Headless Man Valley. And they continued to drop as she stepped gingerly into the boot prints left by Van Bleek as he hiked ahead of her through the snow-covered boulders like a silent Cyclopean monster with his head-mounted spotlight leading the way.

A cliff loomed somewhere in the fog to her right. She couldn’t see it, but felt its skulking presence.

Despite the cold, sweat pearled and trickled between her breasts. Her pack was heavy. Her regulation flak vest underneath her down jacket, secured tightly with Velcro strips, did not offer good breathability. It had a dense, claylike consistency, and with each step up the hill it pinched the flesh between the bottom edge of the jacket and her gun belt where her stomach was growing chunky. The vest alone added an extra five to ten pounds to the overall weight she was lugging. She’d been fatigued and feeling off-color to start with.

They’d abandoned the quads down along the shoreline when the trail had narrowed and grown too steep to negotiate with wheels. According to her Garmin, they should be reaching the top of the esker ridge any moment now. From there they should be able to see down into a valley that lay at the base of a cliff where the bodies had been found.

She stilled suddenly as her hairs prickled up the back of her neck.

Something was off.

Then she heard it. A faint, rising howl. Distant. She listened as it rose into the primordial darkness. It was joined by others, escalating in a crescendo. A sound so wild, so haunting, it never failed to ripple chills over Tana’s skin. Especially now, thinking of what they were eating out there. Her pulse quickened as the howls were answered by several yips, then a long, drawn-out moan from the opposite direction. She felt as if they were surrounded by wolves out there in the dark somewhere.

Van Bleek, up ahead, also stilled to listen.

“Must be another pack or two, coming in for the kill,” he called down to her.

Tana turned in a slow circle, her headlight making shadows leap and snowflakes attack out of the dark. There was something else giving her the chills, not just the howls. She could feel it—something right here. Watching them from the fog. Something heavy and silent and malicious.

She swallowed.

Van Bleek resumed his hike up the trail. Tana studied his hulking silhouette as he moved into the distance, trying to catch her breath, to recapture her calm, her control. The man moved with the quiet, coiled, watchful efficiency of a hunter, she thought. A predator himself—as if completely unafraid and in tune with this wild terrain. Tana didn’t trust people who had no fear. Fear was normal, a survival tool. She knew the wilderness, too. She could hunt with the best—had learned from her dad, on those occasions that he’d saved her from her mother and taken her with him, before vanishing for months again, years even. Tana knew fear. Of many kinds. And out here, she was keenly aware that she was a fragile human, with limited night vision, vulnerable against a pack of wolves working in concert from the fringes of darkness. Or any other animal that could see in the night.

She started after Van Bleek before he vanished entirely into the mist, and she mentally channeled her thoughts onto the tasks that lay ahead. It bolstered her, gave her a renewed sense of purpose.

Another ten minutes or so into the hike, and a small stone clattered noisily down the rocks to her right. Tana froze, breathing hard. Her heart thumped a steady
whump whump whump
of blood against her eardrums. Slowly she moved her head, panning her headlamp over the area where she’d heard the noise. But her beam was useless. It bounced back off the fog instead of penetrating it. The sense that something was out there, hidden just behind the wet curtain of mist, intensified.

Another rock clattered down the slope. She jumped, and became acutely aware of her rifle and her 12-gauge pump action on her pack.

“You okay down there?” Van Bleek called.

“Heard something.”

He ran his headlight across the slope. Twin orangey-red glows suddenly bounced back.
Shit
. Tana’s stomach jerked.

“Bear!” she yelled, reaching for her shotgun. She shook free her gloves, put gun stock to shoulder, heart jackhammering. She curled her finger around the trigger. Mist swirled, and the hot orange orbs vanished.

But it was still there. Just hidden.

She sighted down the barrel at the spot where the glowing eyes had disappeared, her body anticipating the explosive impact of the bear. If a grizz charged now, she was toast. At this distance, with this visibility, she was unlikely to stop the animal before it was on her, even if she did place her slug just right. Stones clacked to her left.

She swung her gun after the sound, sweat breaking out on her brow under her hat.

“Can you see it?” she yelled.

Van Bleek panned his light slowly across the slope again. Silence was suddenly suffocating. Bears were cunning predators. It could have stalked around behind them. Could be anywhere.

Time stretched.

“I think it’s gone!” Van Bleek called from above. Tana waited another moment, then reluctantly lowered her weapon and put her gloves back on. But as she did, out of her peripheral vision, she caught a shadow. She tensed, spun. Her movement caused her boot to slip on a layer of ice underfoot and she went down hard, smacking her elbow into rock. Pain speared up her arm, stealing her breath. Her gun dropped and slid down onto a lower boulder.
Fuck.

Van Bleek turned his spotlight on her.

“You need a hand?”

“I’m fine,” she snapped, blinking like a mole into Van Bleek’s beam. “Get that light off me so I can see.” She reached down to retrieve her shotgun, frustration riding her hard. She held onto that emotion, used it to beat back fear before it beat her. “Rocks are slick,” she said as she heaved herself back onto her feet under the weight of her pack. “Why don’t you aim that damn thing where the danger is instead of at me, huh?” Van Bleek was watching her, waiting for her to gather herself.

“I’m fine.” She dusted snow off her pants.

He hesitated. “You sure you’re not hurt?”

“What part about ‘fine’ did you not hear?”

He eyed her a second longer, then turned and resumed his climb. But he’d dropped his pace noticeably.

“No need to slow down on my account,” she yelled after him. “I said I’m
fine.
”

He had the audacity to chuckle softly. Smug asshole.

It was 11:40 p.m. and snow had stopped falling by the time they crested the ridge. They heard them first. A wet snarling, snapping, growling. Crunching. The sound of animals feeding on flesh. Bones.

Human flesh and bones.

Van Bleek made a rapid sign for her to lower herself. She crouched slowly to the snow beside him.

“See?” he whispered, pointing. “Over there.” Tana blinked, her brain trying to process what she was seeing in the darkness.

Shapes. Shadows. Animals—the wolves, she couldn’t tell how many—were fighting and tearing at what she reckoned were the bodies of Selena Apodaca and Raj Sanjit. Bile rose up into her gullet. “Sweet Jesus,” she whispered.

“What do you want to do?” Van Bleek said.

“Scare them off those kids,” Tana said without hesitation. From her breast pocket, she removed two little pencil rocket launchers, gave one to Van Bleek. She handed him flare cartridges. “Take these. I want to see how many animals are down there, and what kind.” She screwed a flare cartridge into her own launcher, using the light of her headlamp to see what she was doing. “You go first,” she said. “Try to fire into the air right above them. Then I’ll shoot mine.”

Van Bleek shot off his flare. He aimed true. It exploded into a mushroom of bright pink cloud above the massacre. There was a yelp, squeals. Some of the wolves retreated, but two big ones stood their ground over their kills—wet, foaming, bloody mouths as glowing eyes looked in their direction. A kick of fear shot through Tana’s adrenaline at the aggression she saw in the alphas’ postures. She fired her own flare farther to the right of the one Markus had expelled, in the direction several animals had run. Her flare exploded with a massive crack above them, frizzing brightly into the mist. The canines cowered, but this time they did not flee. Five in total that she could see. One of the two alphas and a smaller wolf slinked back to the carcasses.

“They’re not going anywhere,” she said quietly. “They’ve been emboldened by the blood.”

“And the taste of human meat,” Van Bleek said quietly.

Tana slid her rifle out from her pack. “You take those two big ones on the left,” she said, focusing through her sight on the carnage below. “I’ll start with the animals on the right.”

They fired, reloaded, fired, and launched more flares. Like soldiers on a ridge they worked in concert to slaughter the pack. Below, wolves cried, yelped. Snapped. And fell. The killing was over in minutes. Silence was suddenly deafening. She could smell the sulfurous powder from the flares. Tana’s heart boomed. Sweat slicked her body. A kind of pain burned behind her eyes. “We had to do it,” she whispered more to herself than Van Bleek. “They’ll need those animals for necropsy. They’ve eaten from those kids’ bodies—they’ve been acclimated to human flesh. We had to kill them all.”

Van Bleek remained silent beside her, just staring down into the valley as the light from their flares dwindled and flickered out. Darkness closed around them. Tana swiped the back of her glove over her mouth. Her hand was shaking. “We need to get down there,” she said. “Before more scavengers come. Need to secure the remains of those poor kids.”