TEN

The journey back down the side of the hill to the valley seemed a lot shorter, but it was well past dark by the time they got to the river. They stopped to gas up the snow machines and wolf down steaming bowls of ramen that Ruthe insisted they take the time to cook on her single-burner Coleman stove. "It's been a long day and we're all tired. We need fuel to get us home. Drink lots of water, too, and keep a bottle handy, tucked in somewhere it won't freeze."

She had them stuff peppermints into their outer pockets. "A sugar hit for the road," she said, "when we start to run out of steam."

"We could stop at one of the villages," Johnny said. "We could," Ruthe said. "I don't think we should. Once the word gets out, there's going to be a stream of rubberneckers up there, and some of them won't stop with looking."

She looked at Johnny. He nodded. "You're right. Best to get the word to Jim as fast as we can. He can fly in tomorrow at first light." He looked at Van. "You want to drive awhile?"

A smile broke through the strained look on her face. "Sure!"

Ruthe. The Gruening River caribou herd. The Suulutaq trailer. Mac. The rush to tell Jim. The attack.

Van.

Vanessa.

He pulled himself inch by painful inch to his knees and looked around.

His snow machine sat twenty feet away. The sled was gone. The sled with all their supplies in it. Memory returned in a terrifying rush.

"Van," he tried to say. "Ruthe." He staggered to his feet. "Van! Ruthe!"

He thought he heard a low moan from one direction and staggered toward it, almost falling over a dark, huddled lump. It was Ruthe. "Ruthe!" he said. He shook her, possibly a little less gently than he should have. "Ruthe!"

She groaned again. In the steadily increasing light of the rising moon her face looked bleached of all color, like a death mask. "Johnny?"

"Yes," he said, almost sobbing. "It's me. Are you okay? Here, squeeze my hands. Good, now push your feet. Good. Good."

"Where's the girl?" she said, raising her head.

He staggered to his feet. "Van! Vanessa! Where are you, Van?"

He found her beneath the lip of the riverbank. She didn't answer his call, she didn't move, and he was shaking so badly from fright and the cold that he could barely pull down her collar to check the pulse in her throat. It beat strongly against his fingers, warming it. "Oh, Van," he said, his head drooping. "Oh, Van."

Her voice was a thready whisper. "Johnny. What happened?"

Her voice, the sense of her words was like an on switch for a fury he hadn't known was there. He surged to his feet and very nearly howled at the sky. "Those assholes jumped us!"

"What assholes?"

"Those assholes on the snow machines!"

She raised herself painfully to one elbow. "I know you're mad, but don't yell, okay?"

Her pitiful little smile melted his heart. "Okay," he said, mastering his anger, not without effort, at least for the present, and dropping again to his knees. "Sorry."

"It's okay. I understand, believe me." Van tried to rise and faltered, putting a hand to her head. "Oh," she said, and then leaned over and vomited in the snow. He tried to help her, to hold her hair out of the way, and then brought her handfuls of clean snow so she could rinse out and off.

She looked up at him and smiled again, this time a little less tentative. "Tell me you don't know how to show a girl a good time," she said.

He surprised himself by laughing. It was a pale effort but it was real.

He got back to Ruthe to find her on her feet. She was wheezing slightly. "Are you okay?"

"Think I busted a rib," she said.

"I think that asshole busted it for you," he said, his anger coming back to a simmer. "Fucker was using a two-by-four."

"I see they took your sled. Why didn't they take the snowgo, too?"

"Not enough drivers, probably. I don't remember really well, but I think there were only three of them, one for each machine."

"Where's mine, then?"

They found it a thousand yards up the river, nose buried in a drift beneath the lip of the riverbank and miraculously still with the sled attached. "I pushed the throttle all the way up, last thing before I fell off," Ruthe said. "It must have got away from them and they were scared they'd get caught if they wasted time looking for it."

"Not as scared as they're going to be when I catch up with them," Johnny said fiercely. The thought of beating on the guy with his own two-by-four was as warming as the fire Van had started next to his snow machine.

He fumbled for the pocket that held the PLB and pulled it out. He held it up and said to Ruthe, "Are we in trouble now?"


Her sleep was made restless that night by dreams of Johnny heading off over the horizon on a snow machine, laughing over his shoulder at her just before the machine carried him over the edge of a cliff. And dreams of Jim, too, although these dreams were less story and more snapshot, Jim kissing her much against her will-really and truly, against her will-the day Roger McAniff went on a killing spree in the Park, Jim crouched behind the bar after getting his Smokey hat shot off during the most recent shoot-out between the Jeppsens and the Kreugers, Jim bleeding all over the floor of Ruthe and Dina's cabin after she'd beaned him with the file box. And bleeding all over her afterward.

She was jerked awake before she got to the really good part, by Mutt's full-throated bark and vehicle lights flashing across the interior of the house. She got up, pulled on sweats, and trotted downstairs. She reached for the.30-06 at the same time she switched on the porch light, which revealed Bobby's snow machine stopped in the yard, engine running, one person dismounting and running to the stairs. A frisson of nameless fear shivered up her spine. She put the rifle back and opened the door. "What's wrong?" she said before Dinah had her foot on the bottom step.

Dinah looked up and without preamble said, "Johnny triggered his PLB. Jim got the word and the location and he's on his way there with Bobby."

Kate ran upstairs and found clothes, ran back downstairs, pulled on bibs, parka, and boots, grabbed her gloves, goggles, and rifle, and ran outside. Dinah had pulled Kate's snow machine out of the garage and Mutt was already waiting next to it. The engine started without fuss, Mutt hopped up behind, and Kate slid the rifle into its scabbard and followed Dinah up the trail, swung wide onto the road, where both women opened up the throttles.

The miles sped by as Kate tried very hard not to think of all the different ways Johnny could have gotten hurt going down the river. A pickup could have run into them. A snow machine pileup. Some drunk in one of the villages could have been shooting at hallucinations and they got in between him and his target. The river could have opened up one of its inexplicable leads and they could have fallen in, and Johnny's last conscious act before the water closed over his head was to trigger the PLB.

She could feel the beginnings of hysteria, a coldness seeping over her from the inside that was worse than the windchill without. No, she thought, very firmly. You don't know anything. Don't speculate, don't borrow trouble. It'll be as bad as it is and you'll deal. Right now all you're doing is going from your house to Bobby's. All you have to do is hold on until you get there.

The trees lining the road blurred, the stars overhead were a silver smear against the black sky. They met no traffic along the way, and in Niniltna Dinah slowed down just enough to take the turn for the road leading downriver that led to the Roadhouse and then opened up the throttle again. Kate stuck to her tail like a burr, Mutt holding the shoulder of Kate's parka in her teeth to maintain her balance. The two miles between the village and the turnoff at Squaw Candy Creek passed in a blink and then Dinah was negotiating the trail that led to her and Bobby's house. Kate saw with dismay that Bobby's truck wasn't outside.

They killed the engines and went into the house, shedding outerwear as they went.

"I'm freezing, let me make some coffee," Dinah said.

"Talk while you do," Kate said. At her side stood Mutt, tense and ready to rip a new one in whatever had Kate so upset. She looked up and Kate rested a hand on her head. Mutt's ears flattened and she gave an interrogatory whine.

"It's okay, girl," Kate said with more confidence than she felt. "Everything's going to be fine." She hooked the rung of a stool with her foot and sat down. Mutt, not entirely convinced, allowed herself to be persuaded to sit, too, but she wouldn't move from Kate's side, leaning against her thigh, a solid, anxious presence. When Dinah gave her a strip of moose jerky, she took it politely, gave it a gnaw or two, and then set it down, which had to be a first.

"Where's my goddaughter?" Kate asked belatedly.

"With Bobby. We figured it was better Katya was in the truck with him."

"What happened?"

"At about-" Dinah glanced at the clock on the wall and calculated. "-I guess it would have been about one a.m… maybe one thirty, everything happened so fast I wasn't paying attention to the time… Jim banged on the door. He said that Johnny's PLB- Your idea?"

"Yes."

"I think I'll have one welded to Katya's ankle. The Park equivalent of a Lojack. Anyway, Jim said Johnny's PLB went off and wherever the alarm is received alerted Kenny Hazen, who called Jim. Who evidently was in Niniltna?" A raised eyebrow.

Kate raised her shoulders. "I don't know, work, I guess. He didn't make it out to the house last night."

"We need cell towers in the Park and we need them now," Dinah said. "Jim was going out after them. Bobby said he'd ride shotgun. Jim said no, he didn't know what the situation was, if anyone was hurt or how badly, be better if Bobby brought his truck, and the snow machine trailer, too."

Kate drew in a sharp breath.

Dinah held up one stern hand, like a traffic cop, and repeated

Kate's own admonitions to herself almost word for word. "Don't, Kate, don't borrow trouble. They'll bring them back and then we'll see. We can handle whatever happens. Just keep calm."

But Kate noticed that her hands were a little unsteady with the teakettle.

They drank in silence. The minutes crawled by, the drag of every second like a fingernail on a blackboard. It was twenty-plus miles from Bobby's house to where Jim said the PLB was transmitting from. Bobby and Jim would have taken the road to a mile or so past the turnoff to Camp Theodore, Ruthe's eco-lodge. There they would have left the road to Bernie's and taken to the river.

Kate walked to the window and looked out. It was a clear, cold night, and it was early enough that there shouldn't be any traffic on the river and less on the road. She stared at the track that led from Bobby's yard to the little bridge that crossed Squaw Candy Creek and disappeared into the trees, willing the nose of the white Blazer with the trooper seal on the side to appear.

It didn't. By a sheer act of will she turned her back on the window and walked away.

Bobby's house was one large, open A-frame room, except for the bathroom in one corner-bedroom, kitchen, living room surrounding the central work station in one continuous space. At the work station, a doughnut-shaped desk supported a whole bunch of electronic equipment, which was connected to a snake's nest of wires writhing up a central pole to disappear through the roof. Outside, they were connected to antennas and microwave shots and who knew what else hanging off the 112-foot tower that stood out back.

Bobby Clark had lost both legs below the knee in Vietnam. After too long in a vet hospital, he spent the intervening years making a lot of money in endeavors that no one was so impolite as to inquire into before he arrived in the Park, flush in the pocket and with a mind to buy land and build. The A-frame and the tower went up the first year and shortly thereafter Bobby became the NOAA weather observer for the Park. It was gainful employment that gave him a vague aura of respectability and more important, a verifiable income. If said income didn't come close to equaling his expenditures at least its existence laid the hackles of law enforcement personnel who might be otherwise inclined to inquire as to the provenance of his additional funding.

Bobby broadcast Park Air from that same console, a pirate radio station featuring pre-seventies rock and blues, with occasional forays into post-acoustic Jimmy Buffett, and irregularly scheduled public service programs featuring swap and shops, talk radio, and broadcasts for messages on the Bush telegraph. He flew a Super Cub specially altered to accommodate his disability, drove a pickup and a snow machine ditto, and he was Dinah's husband and the father of a three-year-old imp named for Kate. She'd delivered the imp and done duty as best man and maid of honor both at Bobby and Dinah's wedding, all three on the same day, the memory of which never failed to give everyone involved the heebie-jeebies.

She looked around the room, noting the distance between Katya's crib and the California King not that far away, and her eyes came to rest on Dinah, who was watching her with a worried expression. "You're going to need to add on," Kate said. "Katya's getting to be an age where she could seriously interfere with your love life."

Dinah actually smiled. "Tell me about it. She's already interrupted us a couple of times. There is nothing more, um, deflating, than a three-year-old kid saying, 'Daddy, get off, you're squishing her!'"

Kate laughed dutifully.

"We've already talked about building another room," Dinah said. "Where will you put it?"

Appreciating Kate's determination to act as normally as possible, Dinah fell into discussing the proposed addition. It would be built on the east side of the existing house, cutting a hole in that wall, extending the foundation, and building the room on top of it. "She's almost too big for the crib now anyway, she's been climbing in and out of it for almost a year. We think-"

Mutt's ears pricked up and she padded forward. "Listen," Kate said sharply, running to the window.

The white Blazer bumped into the clearing, followed by the brand-new black Ford Ranger Bobby had bought Dinah for her birthday that year. The motion detector lights on the outside of the A-frame lit up the two snow machines lashed to the trailer it pulled, both of them looking worse for wear.

Kate gave something like a sob. "Kate-," Dinah started to say, but by then Kate was out the door and halfway down the steps.

Jim popped his door and stuck his head out. "They're okay, Kate," he said. "They're all okay."

By then Johnny was out of the cab and on the ground, looking tired and beat up, and Kate had her arms around him and her face buried in his bib overalls. She wasn't crying, she never cried, but she didn't want anyone to see whatever it was on her face. His arms came around her, hugging her back just as fiercely.

She might have sniffled, just a little, and then she forced herself to let him go. "You're okay, then," she said, a little gruffly.

"Yeah," he said, with a long sigh.

She looked past him, at Ruthe and Van, Ruthe angry, Van exhausted. "All of you?"

"Yeah. All of us. Kate?"

"What?"

He suddenly looked older than his years. "Mac Devlin has been murdered."

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