The Wild Ways (17 page)

Read The Wild Ways Online

Authors: Tanya Huff

Tags: #General, #Fiction, #Fantasy, #Epic

BOOK: The Wild Ways
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The middle-aged man who’d wandered out of the security trailer when Paul hit his horn had opened the gate with no more than a yawn and a cursory glance at the paperwork. Nearly at the end of his shift, he clearly didn’t care about someone from head office arriving in the early hours to check out the mine. Paul had been counting on that. The man’s lack of professionalism, however, was not in Carlson Oil’s best interest, and Paul made a note of it.
It didn’t occur to him until he was on his way down the hoist shaft, elevator cables grinding out protests as the cage descended, that what he was doing might be considered dangerous. Under the dome of the borrowed hardhat, his scalp suddenly prickled with sweat. Paul had been down into the
Duke
before on one of the quarterly inspections, but that had been with a half dozen other people, another dozen up top in case something went wrong.
This morning, if something went wrong, he’d be entirely on his own.
He checked his phone, feeling unbalanced without his earpiece in.
No signal.
Entirely on his own.
At one hundred and fifty meters, he reached the first transfer station, a big open area about ten, maybe fifteen meters square. On that quarterly inspection, he’d been told the miners had called it Canaveral.
The safety engineer spread his arms. “It’s where they took off for the sky.”
“Yeah.” Paul brushed a bit of dirt off his sleeve.“I got it.”
He could go deeper, a lot deeper, but it wasn’t necessary and he had no intention of spending all day at this. Locking down the elevator, he dragged the pelts to one of the flat equipment carts—a negligible resale value had left them abandoned to rust—and loaded them alternately lengthwise/crosswise trusting their weight to hold them in place. After spending a moment working out how to switch the rails—the carts ran on steel lines like train cars—he pushed his loaded cart down C tunnel.
C tunnel.
It went out under the sea.
Oh, ha
. He flicked on his helmet light even though the tunnel lamps threw sufficient illumination, focused on the task at hand and not the kilometers of dark, silent, empty tunnels around him or the way he was probably drawing coal dust into his lungs with every breath, and walked briskly until he reached a point where the schematic on his phone told him he was under the Atlantic. Or maybe the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. Either way, he was absolutely not thinking of the water pressing down on the rock over his head.
Sweat rolling down his sides from a combination of exertion and humidity, he stopped at the next cross tunnel, flicked on the breaker for the lights, and unloaded the pelts, stacking them against the wall about five meters in. When he returned to C tunnel and flicked the breaker off again, the pelts disappeared. The darkness filled the cross tunnel so completely that when he held out his hand, he expected to meet resistance.
“That ought to be good enough for Catherine Gale,” he muttered.
The words rolled off down the tunnels, bouncing off the walls, not so much fading as disappearing into the distance, in constant motion until they finally reached a coal face and began the long trip back.
A conceit Paul knew was ridiculous.
Gale.
Gale.
Gale.
Any sound other than his own breathing or the motion of the cart or his work boots against the tunnel was a product of an early morning, not enough caffeine, and a unique situation.
About halfway back to Canaveral, returning the empty cart at nearly a jog, he stopped to drag his palm across his forehead, wiping the sweat off on his thigh.
Claws skittered against rock in the pause between inhale and exhale.
Not possible.
If he turned, he’d see C tunnel angling off until it curved out of sight.
He’d see slices of darkness marking the cross tunnels.
And nothing else.
Claws . . .
He didn’t turn. He scrubbed his palms against his thighs, got a better grip on the crossbar, and kept walking. Walking. Not running.
Not running until he could see the open gate of the elevator and then he abandoned the cart, raced down the last ten meters of tunnel and across the open area ignoring how many tunnels spilled out into it. How many open, unbarred, indefensible . . .
His boots slammed against the metal grate. He slammed the gate shut. His hands were
not
shaking as he keyed in the elevator codes and slapped a palm down on the big green button the moment it lit.
His hands were not shaking because there was nothing in those tunnels but abandoned machinery, four seal pelts, three suit bags, and the death of any chance Canada ever had to produce enough coal to supply the generators that kept the Maritimes powered up.
The lights for the main lines turned off at the surface. The tunnels were
not
growing dimmer.
The elevator jerked up a half meter, then began to rise smoothly toward the surface. Pressed against the side, Paul watched the walls pass, did not look down past his boots through the grate. Concentrated on the sounds of the motor and the winches and the chains.
Had it taken this long on the way down?
At the surface, he shut the system down, hung up his hardhat, and checked his watch when he finally stepped out into blue skies and sunshine.
An hour and thirteen minutes round trip.
The gate guard barely glanced his way before opening the gate to let him out. Paul composed his expression anyway. In many respects, Cape Breton was like one big small town. People were connected in ways no one in their right mind could anticipate and gossip was cheap and easy entertainment. It wouldn’t do to have the guard spread a story about how a man had left the mine, the empty mine, looking like he’d seen a ghost.
Or had heard claws against the rock.
At an hour and twenty-four minutes, his phone rang. He fumbled his earphone in, fading adrenaline making him clumsy.
“It’s about time, Paul. Where were you that I couldn’t reach you?”
“Dealing with
storage
at the
Duke
, Ms. Carlson.”
“
Storage?”
She repeated his emphasis. “For God’s sake, this is Nova Scotia; our phones have not been bugged.” He could hear her ring tapping against the plastic case. “And given that, I need you to find dirt on Mathew Burke. He’s with the union, he’s being rude at breakfast, is very likely obstructionist, and I want him out of my way.”
One hand on the steering wheel, thumb working the keyboard on his phone, Paul noted the name. “Out of the country?”
“Possibly. I definitely want him out of a job.”
“I’m heading back into Sydney now.” Beside Mathew Burke, Paul typed: BURY HIM. “Anything else?”
“A green tea soy latte waiting for me on my desk wouldn’t hurt. I’ve had a morning.”
 
“Because he’s my cousin, he’s having a rough summer, and I already told him he could come.”
Mark stared at her for a long moment, scratched under the waistband of his shorts, and shrugged. “If you’re not worried about contributing to the delinquency of a minor, Chuck, it’s no skin off my knees. And, hey, maybe we’ll pick up a couple of extra family friendly points.”
Knees?
Charlie wondered as Bo hung up his phone and glared at Mark. “We’ve got bigger problems than babysitting Charlie’s cousin. We don’t have a cottage reserved.”
“Yeah, we do.” Mark ducked away from Tim’s swing. “We do! I called as soon as they set the festival schedule.” He frowned. “At least I intended to call . . .” Tim’s second swing connected with the back of his head. “Look, I’m sure I called!”
“Dude, it doesn’t matter if you sent smoke signals.” Bo leaned forward and poked Mark in the chest. “There’s no reservation.”
As Mark and Bo argued, Charlie dug her phone out of the side pocket on her gig bag, pulled Bo’s phone from his hand, and dialed the last number he’d called. She had everything settled by the time Shelly wandered over to join them, carrying a box of pastry and two trays of coffee balanced one on top of the other—three to a tray—in an impressive bit of postcoital share the wealth.
“What’s with them?” she asked, putting the box down on the roof of the car, the coffees beside it.
“Mark forgot to reserve one of the cottages in Mabou.” The turnover Charlie plucked from the box was still warm. More importantly, the icing hadn’t been swirled on with intent to make her settle down and help Allie raise boys.
“Asshole. I need to shower.”
“Me, too.” The salt residue from her swim made her skin feel tight. “I took care of it.”
“Blackmail? Seriously,” she continued when Charlie just smiled around a mouthful of wild blueberry filling, “you can’t just get a cottage at the last minute.”
Bands had dibs on the ten cottages—one to a band—but on the Friday of the Mabou weekend, there was zero chance of one being empty.
“I can.”
“How?”
Charlie leaned out of the way as Tim grabbed for a Danish, then leaned back, snagged a coffee, and spread her arms. “The universe likes me. I want a cottage, I get a cottage.”
Shelly snorted and rolled her eyes. “Fine, don’t tell me, but I’m going to want the truth if I have to help hide a body.”
Gales seldom bothered to lie. Unfortunately, far too many of them were addicted to bad Jack Nicholson imitations. Before Charlie could decide if Shelly needed to be told she couldn’t handle the truth, her phone rang.
“Ride of the Valkyries?” Shelly’s brows nearly hit her hairline.
“Not my idea,” Charlie muttered. “I’ll just be over . . .” She pointed toward the ocean. “. . . there.” Figuring an auntie vs Valkyrie cage fight would would be an easy win for the auntie, Charlie’d never bothered changing the aunties’ chosen ringtone. “What can I do for you, Auntie Jane?”
“You can tell me if you’ve lost what little mind you have left, Charlotte Marie Gale.”
Auntie Jane was not the oldest of the Gale aunties nor was she usually the auntie who anchored first circle back with the bulk of the family in Ontario. She was the auntie who decided which of the other aunties would anchor first circle. Charlie wasted a moment feeling very sorry for Uncle Evan.
“Charlotte?”
“Is this about Jack?”
“Is this about Jack?” Auntie Jane punctuated the repetition with a disapproving sniff. “Why on earth would you think that? Could it be because you’ve arbitrarily . . .”
“Arbitrarily?” Charlie rolled her eyes. “Second circle anchor agreed as well as the entire first circle.” All three of them.
Auntie Jane refused to budge. “. . . arbitrarily decided to pull a Gale boy from his home? We do not allow our boys to go wandering about unsupervised, Charlotte.”
“I’ll be with him!”
“Children trying to raise children.”
“I’m nearly twenty-eight!”
“You’re third circle, Charlotte.”
Charlie took a deep breath. “He doesn’t need a mother; he has a mother and she’s a dragon. He needs to learn that there’s a way to be what he is
and
a Gale before he turns fifteen and judgment is passed. And,” she added, as she reached the pier and kept walking, “I’m here for a reason. Maybe that reason is Jack.”
“I very much doubt it. Have you even considered what your
friends
will say the first time Jack is even a little careless letting the dragon loose?”
“Depends. If he eats that idiot from
Tumble Down
who plays ‘White Rabbit’ on a set of Uilleann pipes, they’ll probably applaud.”
“Don’t be trite, Charlotte.”
“I trust Jack to be discreet, Auntie Jane. And I trust in my ability to shield him if he isn’t. And I’d very much appreciate it if you’d place a little trust in my ability as well.” Charlie snapped the phone closed. It had been over a decade since she’d played right field for the Darsden East high school softball team, but standing on the end of the pier watching her phone sink, she figured she’d made the cutoff man.

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