A Stranger in Town: a Rockton novel

by Armstrong, Kelley

  “I’m questioning what I did. You’re questioning what you will do—and leaning toward the path of least resistance.”

  She snaps upright, her eyes narrowing. I meet her gaze with a level stare and, after a moment, she gives a sharp nod.

  “All right,” she says. “I accept that assessment. That is why I’m consulting with you. I needed to know whether my fears were justified.”

  “I think you’ve already answered that.”

  “I am attempting, Casey, to admit that my assessment of my abilities can be overly confident, and therefore I’m seeking your advice.”

  I walk to Jay and look down at his unconscious form. “This man is alive because of you. Saving him would have been well beyond my medical skill set and Will’s. Yes, you have an ego, but you’ve earned it. Male surgeons have plenty of it. We just aren’t as accustomed to seeing it from women.”

  “Why?” she asks, and it’s a genuine question.

  I shrug. “Confidence is attractive in men. Humility is attractive in women. Not saying that’s right—it just seems to be how it is. If there is nothing more that a hospital could do for him, then I will tell the council you’ve offered to care for him. Ultimately, the choice is theirs.”

  She nods. “Then I am offering.”

  “And I will let you know what they say. For now . . .” I look from Jay to the three bodies on the floor to the open storage room door. “We need to look after Sophie. She deserves that much.”

  * * *

  There will be no autopsy for Sophie. Possibly no grave either, beyond the one we will place her in once the ground thaws. Sometimes it is possible to return people to their loved ones. Sometimes it is not.

  When residents come, they must answer that question in advance. If you die before your release, do you want us to attempt to return your body? Most say no. I suspect their loved ones would be appalled, but that’s really who a grave is for, isn’t it? Those who loved us and wish to have a place they can visit, knowing we are there. Except we aren’t. We are dust and earth, and it would make more sense to visit us through photographs and letters and memories.

  Returning a body isn’t easy. Before residents leave for Rockton, they can only tell friends and relatives that they’re “going away.” That means we can’t ship the family a covered casket and expect them to accept it without question. When residents insist on their body going home, it’s “found” in another location, through an anonymous tip. I apologize to any police department that has to deal with that particular mystery.

  Fortunately, that hasn’t happened since I’ve been here. We’ve had only one natural death, an older woman with no remaining family . . . because she’d murdered her husband. As for the victims of violence? There’s no way to send them home even if they wished it. I would never inflict that on a family . . . or a police department.

  The most we can do for Sophie is return her to where her companions lie. That’s partly consideration—at least she’ll rest among friends—but it’s practicality, too. When people come searching, if they do somehow find the grave, at least the bodies will be together.

  I’ll need to interview Diana and try to figure out what set Sophie off. I don’t expect to get anything. From Diana’s frantic babbling, Jay hadn’t even gotten to my question about the dual camps. He’d been easing her in by reminding her where she was and promising that we were looking after her. She’d seemed to understand. She’d been calm, a little teary-eyed. Then she’d realized she was restrained and panicked, and Jay made the mistake of being a compassionate human being. He started to untie her, just as Diana did that first morning. Diana wanted to check with me, but Jay said we were busy, and he’d take responsibility. He untied Sophie and then . . .

  We will never know what went through Sophie’s mind at the moment she attacked. I can guess, though. As hard as Jay had tried to reassure her, she hadn’t been reassured. Her mind still conjured the demons of her delirium, and she couldn’t help thinking she was a captive. After all, she was tied down, wasn’t she?

  She’d played tearful victim to relax Jay’s guard. It was the smart thing to do. It’s what I’d tell someone in her place to do. Play up your “feminine passivity” to get the guy to untie you. Once he does? Attack. Which she did, and with the language barrier, we couldn’t explain well enough to convince her she hadn’t been captured by monsters.

  She apparently did know English. Just enough to call me a liar. Lying about taking care of her. Lying about being a hospital. Lying about trying to help her friends.

  I’m not the one she’d attacked, though. That was the person she could communicate with. The one person who could have helped explain what was happening.

  Jay.

  If not for this, I think he might have passed his time in Rockton under our radar. Another quiet resident, here to take advantage of the sanctuary we offered. A decent guy who’d poked his head above the parapet to help.

  Did I take advantage of that?

  Did I properly explain the risks?

  I should have made sure Jay was protected. Despite Sophie’s outbursts, though, I considered her a low threat. Restraints and sedative, and she’d be fine. We just had to wait until she was lucid enough to understand the situation and stop fighting. Jay thought we’d reached that point, so he’d set her free.

  The blame ultimately lies with me for being too busy chasing corpses and killers to properly assess the danger Jay faced. Now he’s in a coma, possibly brain-damaged, because he tried to be helpful.

  When Dalton returns, I’m moving blindly through the exam room, tidying and straightening. He murmurs something to April, and the next thing I know, I’m walking through the forest to our backyard.

  He opens the door and nudges me through. I stop in the doorway, my heels digging in.

  “I need to speak to the council,” I say.

  “It can wait.”

  “It can’t. I need to talk to them and finish autopsying the settlers and move Sophie’s body and figure out what the hell I’m going to tell the residents and—”

  I stumble and grab the doorway, straightening as Dalton catches me. He says something. I don’t hear it.

  I need to get out of here.

  Out of Rockton.

  It’s like a horrible anxiety dream where every choice I make gets someone killed, and nobody else sees that. Nobody takes me aside and says, “You need to stop.”

  You need to get out of here.

  You’re only making things worse.

  Dalton rubs my arms, and I wheel to see him there, frozen in worry and rising panic.

  In his face, I see the problem.

  Dalton lets me do what I like, trusts me to make choices, because he loves me, and he’s terrified of losing me.

  What if I worked in the general store? Could I do that? Please?

  The words hover over my tongue. I taste hope in them, and I imagine saying them and—

  And what the fuck am I doing?

  Am I serious?

  Please, Eric, let me work in the store, so I don’t have to make the hard choices. So I’m spared the guilt of making another mistake. You can handle it all instead, okay?

  I take a deep breath. Then I lift one finger and gather my wits enough to walk into the kitchen, take the tequila bottle, and down a shot. Then I stand there, holding the counter as the alcohol burns through me.

  Storm slips in, and I jump. She must have followed us to the house. I somehow missed a giant black dog at my side until she sneaks in, sensing my mood and trying to be as unobtrusive as possible. Just like someone else . . .

  Dalton stands in the doorway, his expression saying he’s trying very, very hard not to hover.

  “I was about to ask if there were any openings at the general store,” I say.

  His gaze searches mine. It sounds like a joke, but he checks first and sees the truth. He walks over, fills the shot glass, and downs it, coughing slightly.

  “Yeah,” he says. “I was wondering whether Isabel�
��s still looking for help.”

  “You’d make a lousy bartender. Everyone would get exactly one chance to tell you their problems. Then you’d offer solutions, and if they came back complaining about the same shit, having done nothing to solve the problem, you’d send them packing. The Roc would go out of business in a month.”

  “Truth.”

  I push my shot glass toward him.

  He glances down at it. “You know if I fill that, I gotta dispense my unsolicited advice, too.”

  “That’s what I’m hoping.”

  He tipples a little into the glass.

  “Half a shot?” I say.

  “For half-assed advice.”

  I chuckle and down it.

  “This job sucks,” he says. “Yours and mine both suck, but especially yours. You have a fucking awesome knack for being right there whenever shit goes down. You made choices. Will made choices. Diana made choices. So did Jay. So did Sophie, and maybe she wasn’t in a mental state to make good ones, but her mistakes started when she chose to go out in the forest without a sat phone.”

  “Someone else in her group might have had one.”

  “Then she chose not to go back and get it.”

  “That isn’t fair.”

  He leans against the counter. “Yep, it’s not. Just like it isn’t fair to blame Will for taking a headshot to save you and Jay. Like it isn’t fair to blame Jay for trying to help out. Like it isn’t fair to blame you for holding off on your shot, hoping it wouldn’t be needed.”

  “I notice you left Diana out there.”

  “That’s ’cause I totally blame Diana for being a fucking idiot.” He catches my gaze and exhales. “Fine. Diana did warn Jay not to untie Sophie, and she’d been about to come and tell you when Sophie leaped up. However, I’m still blaming Diana for doing nothing after that except scream her fool head off.”

  I shake my head. He reaches into the cupboard and pulls out a bag of miniature chocolate bars. I’m about to joke that he’s ramping up his bribes to keep me here when I remember what I was just thinking a few moments ago.

  That hadn’t been fair. If I sucked at my job, Dalton would find me a new position. He wanted me here, but never at the expense of endangering others. Thinking that had been a moment of weakness and self-pity, and I’m glad I hadn’t said anything.

  “These are new,” I say as he hands me a couple of tiny bars.

  He shrugs. “Saw them in Dawson. Figured I’d hide them until you pulled out that electronic book reader you bought me.”

  “Uh . . .”

  He unwraps a bar as he gives me a sidelong look. “You saving it for a special occasion?”

  Another pause. “I was about to joke that I was saving it for a break between dead bodies, but that’d be in poor taste.”

  I try to smile, but my fingers tremble as I unwrap the bar. I keep seeing those corpses stacked like cordwood in the clinic.

  “You can make that joke,” he says. “As long as you don’t make the one about the increase in dead bodies since you arrived. That shit’s not funny.”

  “True, though.”

  “Bullshit.” He pauses, chocolate halfway to his lips. “Actually, no. You’re right. If not for you, we wouldn’t have any bodies in the clinic right now. They’d all be rotting in the forest, including Sophie.”

  “You never would have left her out there.”

  “Yeah, but in an alternate reality where you never came to Rockton, Sebastian and the other kids wouldn’t have been having a party on the lake, because even if he’d somehow still met them, I’d never have allowed them to hang together. I certainly wouldn’t have been there myself. So Sophie would have died in the forest. If somehow I was there without you, then there’d be no April and thus no one to save her. Even if another doctor did manage that, I’d have shipped Sophie south, trusting the council to look after her, and we both know how that would work out. So, no, without you, there’d be no bodies in Rockton right now. They’d all be rotting in the forest, with no one to investigate and make sure it doesn’t happen again. You figured out what’s going on with the hostiles. We’re going to stop this because of the work you did. These tourists and settlers aren’t the first people they’ve killed.”

  “Hostiles didn’t kill the settlers.”

  He frowns.

  “That’s why I was in the clinic. A bullet killed the boy.” I sigh. “And as much as I appreciate you bringing me back here for a break, I really do need to return to the clinic so we can autopsy his parents.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yep.” I waggle the bottle. “I have a feeling I’ll want more of this at the end of the night, but for now . . .” I cap it. “My pity party is over. Thank you for attending. However—”

  Storm scrabbles to her feet, nails clicking against the hardwood as Dalton’s head shoots up, eyes narrowing.

  “What the fuck?” he murmurs.

  I catch the sound then. The unmistakable drone of a low-flying plane.

  15

  Rockton isn’t on any commercial flight routes or any local ones—the founders chose our location well. That doesn’t mean it’s impossible for a small plane to randomly choose a path that takes them over us, which is why all of our buildings are constructed with structural camouflage. The council also invests in the latest technology for keeping us off radar, which is partly what interferes with the radios.

  Even with all that, it would only take a stray plane passing low enough to see people and buildings.

  Like a plane searching for a quartet of missing tourists who aren’t at their pickup point.

  Dalton and I are out the door in a shot, Storm racing past. We’re barely outside when Anders shouts, and we look to see the deputy running our way as others scan the skies.

  We stride to Anders.

  “No one’s seen it yet,” he says.

  “Hasn’t passed close enough,” Dalton says. “We’d all hear that.”

  Dalton turns, face upturned. He doesn’t shade his eyes. He’s listening, not looking. He pinpoints the sound and takes off at a lope.

  “Everyone inside!” Anders calls as I run after Dalton. “Sebastian? Maryanne? Jen?”

  He calls out names of people in sight and tells them to order people into their homes. Residents will obey. No one’s going to risk their security. By the time I’m running, the entire town is scattering, like mice seeing a hawk glide overhead.

  Dalton’s already in the forest. The plane’s engine roars, as if turning for a second pass. Not just idly crossing our airspace. Searching for something.

  Searching for four hikers.

  We are so unprepared for this. We—

  The plane banks, and I whisper “Shit!” as I see where it’s heading.

  To our airstrip.

  I kick up my pace as Dalton slows. He’s holding out a ball cap that I didn’t see him grab. I tug it on and pull my ponytail through the back. The hat is navy blue with a militaryesque emblem on the front. Rockton has multiple cover stories, in the event someone stumbles on it. One is “military facility.” That’s easy for me and Dalton to pull off. We’re physically fit and clean-cut, Dalton’s hair clipped to his summer crew cut. The advantage to the military story is that it’s not one the average person will question . . . nor does it inspire people to want a closer look.

  You’ve got an armed military compound out here? Er, okay, I’ll just keep moving, thanks.

  I’m thinking that when—

  “Shit!” I hiss again and grab Dalton’s arm. “We can’t do military.”

  He glances at me.

  “It’s a search party,” I say. “Foreign tourists missing in the wilderness. The first thing they’re going to expect is for us to help them. That’s part of the military’s job.”

  “Fuck. Rangers, then?”

  Park rangers is another option, but it’s the same problem. Any military or quasi-military organization will be expected to join in the search. We’d happily do that—and steer them in the wron
g direction—but they’ll also expect to set up base camp in Rockton.

  Ahead, the plane is coming in for a landing.

  “Just roll with it,” I murmur, pulling off my hat. “Follow my lead. We’ll . . . figure something out.”

  I have no idea what that even means. Maybe we can be scientists? Pretend we’re a research facility, privately run.

  We haven’t seen any hikers, sorry, but we really need to get back to our work.

  We reach the landing strip as the tiny plane rolls to a stop. It’s a Cessna TTx, which makes me blink and Dalton murmur “What the hell?” under his breath. The TTx is the Mercedes of small planes—a luxury puddle jumper for wealthy city dwellers with oceanfront summer homes.

  My parents had died in a plane like this. That’d been the sort of circle they traveled in after April and I had moved out. They’d eased back enough on the overtime to have a social life, with friends who’d owned small planes and used them where others might have summoned car service. The independent and the adventurous upper middle class.

  The door opens and out steps . . .

  I don’t have grandparents. Okay, that’s a lie. Technically, I do. I don’t know them, though. I think my paternal grandmother is still alive, but the story goes that they’d disowned my dad for marrying a girl who wasn’t white. Then along came April, and they welcomed Dad back into the fold. I followed five years later and . . . Well, their reaction made it obvious that they’d only reunited with my dad because he’d given them a pale-skinned granddaughter they could proudly push around in a pram. I was a different story.

  There are many things I wish I could tell my parents, now that I’ve found my footing in life and found the courage to say what needs to be said. I’d tell them how badly they fucked up, but I’d also tell them the things they did right, and this is one of them. My parents made me feel inferior to my sister in many ways, but the color of my skin was never one of them, and Dad gave up a relationship with his family to protect me from that.

  The situation with Mom’s parents was equally complicated. She left China for university and never went back. As an adult, I realize how unusual that is for someone of her heritage. Mom rejected her family and her culture with a ferocity that now speaks to me of deep pain.