“By who?”
“The bear.” She points to the hummock of brown and glossy fur at least twenty feet from the boat, then returns to Jean-Luc, pointing her camera at his torso, and adjusting the focus to take a close up. Rachel winces as the woman steps on a bloodied stone, noticing the smears down the boat’s side. As the Coast Guard continues to photograph the ruined body, Rachel focuses on the smear; hair, that can’t be the bear’s, has caught in splintered wood. Making an effort to seem interested in the body, she takes a closer step and reaches for the hair as the woman turns her back. With quick movements, Rachel leaves the scene and makes her way to the bear. Once close enough to the animal to compare them, she opens her palm, holding the hair in a pinch. The coarse hairs are at least two inches long, some black, some a dark copper, and others a deep chestnut. They remind her of pubes. She takes a sniff, and instantly regrets the pungent stench that invades her nostrils, dropping the hairs in disgust, but quickly bends to retrieve them.
“That’s tampering with evidence.”
Startled by the smooth baritone at her shoulder, she twists, and her view is immediately blocked by a muscular chest only inches from her face. The next moment, as she cranes her neck to look at the man berating her, and their eyes lock, is the most intense of her life, and the desire that overwhelms Rachel’s senses is so strong it takes her breath. Stunning too, and absolutely amazing, is that his reaction mirrors hers. Never in her life has the need to consume another human bitten her so hard. Sure, she’s fancied men in the past, felt that twinge of desire at the sight of a particularly sexy male, but this reaction was innate, instinctive, and on a whole different level of absolute, all-consuming need. As they stand with eyes locked, the entire world drops away, and all that remains is his face, and his immense, and powerful presence. Staring into his eyes, she loses herself completely. Silence sits between them, a delicious chord vibrating with ... what? Love at first sight? Lust? A soulmate?
The man is the first to break the silence with a distracted, “It’s evidence.”
She returns his mumbled words by holding out the hairs and simply saying, “They’re pubes”. Her shock is instant and she jerks her hand away, closing her fingers around the hairs, embarrassment stabbing at her cheeks like hot needles. “Sorry!”
“What?”
“Sorry! It’s just ... they look like pubes.” She opens her hand, a flower opening its petals, and holds the ‘pubes’ to show him. “See!” She takes the hairs in a pinch of fingers and holds them to her nose, and sniffs. “They smell like pubes.”
“Did you just ...” His face crumples in a grimace. “Did you just sniff those pubes?”
Realising her faux pas, the flush that was rising spreads like a fire from her chest, to her neck, and joins the heat on her cheeks. She stares at him, a rabbit caught in headlights, her mind refusing to string together any sensible kind of sentence.
“I ... No! they just look like pubes. I ... hell!”
A broad smile breaks out across the man’s face. She laughs with relief. “Sorry!” she blurts again, then glances at the dead man in the boat. How in God’s name can she be flirting with this man over an eviscerated bear whilst the body it had chewed through rests only feet away? Have you no shame! Her mother’s voice rings in her ears. Her cheeks, already hot, become fiery. No, mother. I’m just a whore.
She offers him the pubes.
“That’s okay, I’ll let you keep them.”
“I don’t want them! I was just comparing them to the bear. They’re not the same.”
“Oh?” He takes a step forward checking the hairs in her hands and then the bear’s. “Look like dog hairs.”
Dogs again!
“Or a wolf?”
“Yes!”
“You think they belong to a wolf?”
“I don’t know, but they are kind of coarse, maybe coarser than a dog’s?”
“Perhaps. Although I don’t think they’re connected to this ... crime.”
“Oh?”
“Nope. No dog, or even wolf, could have done this to the bear.”
“Then what do you think killed it?”
“We can’t say for certain, but the only thing on this island that could damage a bear to this extent, is another bear.”
She glances at the footprint. “But that’s a human foot.”
“It does look like one, ma’am, but sometimes what we see deceives us. Until an expert has taken a look at the evidence, then we can’t say for sure.”
“So, it could be human?”
“I can’t commit to that, ma’am.”
“But if it is human, then that means I was right, and someone was murdered.”
“Sorry?”
“Last night! I thought I saw a man running into the woods, but Michel ...” she slows, telling the Coast Guard that Michel was in her bedroom last night, would be awkward. She chooses her words carefully, “After I heard the noise, I looked out of the window to see what was making all the noise. It was horrendous, like someone, or some thing, being murdered, truly awful, it reminded me of the foxes at home, or the cats when they were having a fight, only ten times worse-”
“Miss?”
“Sorry! I’m rambling. Well, I thought I saw a man running, but it was dark. My ... one of the staff convinced me that it wasn’t. He said it would just be a bear.”
“And you didn’t think to come out and check.”
“Yes! Yes, I did, but Michel, the member of staff, said it was too dangerous.”
With a glance at the bear, the Coast Guard agrees. “The member of staff was correct. The Alaskan bush isn’t the place you go out into during the night to check on terrifying noises.” He pauses, then asks, “And where were you when you saw, or thought you saw, the figure running.”
Rachel turns to point to her room “There.”
“So, in your bedroom?” His brow furrows, and he shields his eyes with his hands as he surveys the side of the lodge.
“Yes. But it was too dark. It must have been at least two am.”
His voice takes on a more serious tone. “And you say you were looking out with the member of staff?”
Rachel’s cheeks tingle. His blue, and very attractive, eyes bore into hers. “Well – damn, she’ll have to admit it! – yes, he was in my room ...”
Never has she felt so ashamed as in that moment.
“At two am?”
Sink hole! Someone open up a sink hole beneath her feet! Heat radiates from her cheeks, and her stomach plunges as she notices emotion flicker over the man’s face. He’s disappointed!
“I see.” He crosses his arms, and she notices the bulk of his muscles, the worming veins across large hands, his height as he towers over her, and the breadth of his shoulders, his feet are massive in his boots. You know what they say about men with big feet. don’t you Rachel? The tingle on her cheeks is accompanied by heat. Big willies? No, potty mouth! Big shoes. For crying out loud! Shut up! “So,” she continues in an attempt to focus her mind and appear professional although that boat has perhaps already sailed, “the footprints here suggest that a man did run across the beach and into the forest.” Her cheeks burn, and she knows without looking into a mirror that her whole face has flushed a deep red, perhaps even puce. Why did he have to be so damned good looking? She always went to pieces around attractive men! “Which means ...” Her hysteria increases; here is perhaps something connected with Chris’ disappearance, but also, perhaps, an insane psychopath, who had been only feet from the lodge. She attempts to regain her equilibrium and improve the man’s opinion of her. “I think we should follow the tracks into the forest.” He raises a brow in what she hopes is admiration.
“We?”
“Yes. I’m an investigative journalist and I intend to follow this story and help discover the truth of what has happened here. Last week, my friend went missing from the cove around the other side of the island, and then Jean-Luc had a very suspicious package, and now-”
“Chris Mil
ler? The guest who died in the boating accident?”
“Yes, he was an actor, making a film about surviving in the wilderness, and I’m not convinced it was an accident.”
“That’s not something I can comment on, ma’am.”
“But you will be tracking the footprints into the wood, won’t you?”
“Well-”
At that moment, Carmel thrusts a mobile phone at the Coast Guard. Behind her, George is running across the beach. “Please, you read this!”
The Coast Guard takes the mobile, and reads the screen. “SOS!!!!! Trapped at Eagle Point. Attacked by wolves! Jerry and Suzy dead. Caleb dead. Please save me!” He scrutinizes the screen, “This came in yesterday! When did you see the text message?”
“Just now.” George says, his face flushed, his heavy frame heaving. “There must be a delay somewhere up there.” He points to the sky. “Wifi’s been playing up.”
The Coast Guard reaches for his radio.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Joshua beckons for the other men, and two females, to gather around. The journalist appears to be a little unstable, and he pairs her with Wade, a reliable older man whose head won’t be turned by her allure. With her gently rounded curves, obvious even beneath the thick fleece and overly-tight jeans, she is just the kind of woman Joshua loves to stroke his hands over. He’d been surprised at the wave of jealousy he’d felt as she admitted to being with a man last night. It was ridiculous! He didn’t even know her, but on first sight, he knew he wanted to ‘know’ her, and know her in a deeply satisfying carnal way. He focuses on giving instructions to the men, making efforts to retain his professional demeanour, and ignore the increasing need he has to be close to the woman.
She’d said her name was Rachel. That she was British was obvious from her accent, and he had a little trouble understanding some of what she said, particularly when she started rambling in that ditzy, confusing, way. She seemed nervous, and on edge, but who could blame her? She’d come to try and discover more about her friend’s disappearance, gone through the trauma of a plane crash, been stranded on a freezing Alaskan island, and then subjected to the horrifying sight of a dead man half-eaten by a now grotesquely disembowelled bear. The scene was horrifying, but the sight that had triggered warning bells in his head was the broken trellis at the side of the lodge and gouged wood beneath the bedroom window that Rachel had pointed out as hers. Something, very possibly the animal that had killed the bear, had climbed up the lodge wall to her window.
Rachel had insisted on joining them despite his objections, and Michel, the man she had admitted to being with the night before, had also insisted on coming along. Joshua notes with some satisfaction, and then anger on their behalf, that Michel seems more interested in ogling Kyla’s ass than talking to Rachel. Her efforts at engaging him in conversation are met with lacklustre interest, and Joshua realises that Michel is a hunter, already looking for the next adrenaline rush, and tracking a new target.
Pebbles crunch underfoot as the group move from the beach and into the woods. Expecting the trail of blood to peter out within a few feet of the bear’s body, he is surprised, and a little disconcerted when it runs almost vertically from the body to the first trees, and then into the forest proper. As they move further between the trees, the spatters of trailed blood pool, the creature perhaps injured and stopping to rest. The blood loss continues as spatters, with large droplets becoming smaller until finally only a spot appears here and there. The trail lost, he picks it up again by following snapped twigs, and trampled undergrowth. After at least forty-five minutes of walking through the forest, they reach a clearing. Joshua can find no sign of which way the wounded animal, or animals, went next.
“Is there any point in going on?” Boyd asks as Joshua checks for signs of where it went.
“Of course there is! George said that the group went to Eagle Point.”
“Then we should have started the search there, we could have found them by now.”
“We followed the route they took!”
“It’s been a day and a half. If wolves got them, there won’t be anything left to find.”
“There’ll be bones.”
“The woman could still be alive.”
“If she survived outside all night.”
“Wade’s right. She could be alive. We need to keep looking.”
Another hour passes without any sign of wolves, or the hunters they’d attacked. In the distance the promontory of Eagle Point bursts from the green forest and juts its jagged blackness to the sky.
“Pipe down, guys. We’re nearly at the point.”
“Can we rest a minute?” Rachel asks.
Cheeks flushed, hot beneath her padded, tightly-fitted jacket, she looks unused to the exertion, and he agrees.
“Thanks!” She walks ahead, to where a cluster of smooth and rounded stones sit surrounded by large ferns and takes a sip of water from a cannister.
A sour aroma tickles his nostrils. “Anyone else get that?”
Craig follows his lead and sniffs. “Yeah, kind of ... shitty.”
“Like wet dog.”
Rachel sniffs. “Pubes!”
“What?”
Her face flushes a deeper puce as Boyd snorts with derision – for some reason he has taken against the woman – but Joshua understands exactly what she means; the smell is the same as the pinch of hair she had pocketed as they’d spoken beside the mutilated bear. “Can you pass me them?”
She digs in her pocket, and pulls out the mess of hairs. He takes a sniff. His nose wrinkles. “She’s right!”
“Pubes? You’ve got to be shitting me!”
“No, they’re not pubes ... they just look like pubes ... these were taken from the boat back at the lodge. The scent is the same.”
The pinch of hairs is passed around the group, each member nodding their agreement.
“Stinks!”
“Pheweee! That is powerful.”
“Where’s Kyla?”
Alert to the concern in the question, Joshua scans the group and then the surrounding forest. The woman is nowhere to be seen.
“That bush pilot’s gone too.”
Silence falls among the group. Joshua recalls Kyla’s unprofessional giggle as Michel had whispered in her ear. He’d cringed, noticing Rachel’s frown of hurt, and decided that at the earliest opportunity he would remind Kyla that she was on duty, and that behaviour commensurate with her station as a member of the US Coast Guard was expected at all times, even if she did have the hots for the guy.
“I bet she’s with Michel!” Rachel blurts, echoing Joshua’s thoughts.
Relieved that none of his crew had voiced what they were all thinking – they were a team, and no one would talk another member down in front of a member of the public – he says, “They’ve just fallen behind.” As he asks Wade to check back along the route, Michel appears, fumbling with his trousers’ zipper.
“Where is she?” Rachel blurts.
“Where is Kyla?” Joshua directs the question at Michel with a steady glare?
Michel returns his stare with a shrug, then says, “She had to pee. I left her squatting behind a shrub.” The man’s laugh grates on Joshua’s ears. A pout sits on Rachel’s lips and he can’t tell whether the flush on her cheek is from the exertion of walking up an increasingly steep incline – possibly given her Rubenesque figure – or from embarrassment that her beau was no longer showing interest. He settles for both. Checking back down the track, he’s sure he sees the top of Kyla’s head appear from behind a shrub, but it disappears, and she doesn’t emerge from the path. He calls her name. She makes no reply.
“She’s probably taking a dump!”
Ignoring Michel’s coarse remark, Joshua says, “I just saw her ... so where is she?”
***
The sticky scent of the woman’s genitals clings to Max’s tongue. She had tasted ... divine ... ripe. Catching her had been easy. She hadn’t even known he was there, and he’d wait
ed until the last drip of urine had landed on the soil, clamped one hand around her mouth, thrust the other between her parted legs and clasped her to his chest. He’d carried her, slipping silently through the trees, away from the hidden man who had watched her squat until the urine had flowed, and the others waiting further up the hill. He licks the palm of his hand where her juices had smeared, yearning to take it into his mouth, and force his tongue into her dark place. The scent of ovulation is strong, and he will take her when she wakes. With the marks of his bite deep in her shoulder, her lips cut and bloodied from his kiss, her legs are splayed, the pink bud of her womanhood peeking from between the slit of hairless skin. New growth is already forcing its way across her mound, replacing the unnaturally cropped bristles with long and curling dark hair. He bends, licks the bud, inhales her scent to his memory, scoops her back into his arms, and runs with her through the forest.
***
After half an hour of searching the immediate area and finding nothing, they return to the point from which they had started beside the cluster of boulders, and Joshua declares Kyla officially lost. Michel has shown him the place where she had relieved herself. The evidence is there, the dark forest floor darker where urine has soaked into the soil, and droplets sit on the broken fronds of a young fern, but there is no evidence of Kyla, or that a struggle, or attack, had taken place.
The Kielder Experiment (Book 2): The Alaska Strain Page 17