Strong hands positioned her against the pillow; she accepted the bowl and raised it to her lips. It tasted better than anything she had ever eaten m her life; she gulped it like a savage.
Netta nodded with satisfaction, then took another bowl to Brian. “Here. You were too worried to eat before.” He hesitated, and Netta patted his shoulder. “She’s going to be all right. I think you willed her to recover. Drink this—it will keep up your strength.”
Her hunger partially assuaged, Malinche sipped slowly and looked around the room. She was on a cot in Netta’s small living area, the same room she had visited what now seemed like ages ago. The stove poured out heat, the array of carvings still sat on a shelf near the table. The carvings reminded her; her hand fluttered to her throat, bare now of her jade talisman.
She surveyed the other people; there weren’t as many as she had originally thought. The small size of the room had given her that impression. Even the four other people in it—Netta, Brian, and two men she didn’t know, seemed a crowd.
“She will be all right. Her spirit has returned.”
Malinche glanced at the speaker who was squatting on a stool in a corner, half hidden in shadows. He was extremely old, with a face the color of worn leather wrinkled with exposure to the elements. Age had honed away all excess flesh and he looked as fragile as the feather of an arctic tern. His eyes, though, black and alert, belied any infirmity. His gaze was so compelling that once meeting it, she found it difficult to glance away.
“This is Ganook,” Netta said, in answer to Malinche’s unspoken question. “He is a great healer. We sent for him when Tommy arrived from the ice field with you both.”
The other man, apparently Tommy, nodded. It was difficult to tell his age, but Malinche guessed he was in his middle thirties. In the overheated room, he wore only a shirt, denim pants, and fur mukluks, but spread over a chair were a heavy fur parka and leather leggings.
“How long have we been here?”
Brian bent toward her and smoothed her hair back from her face as though caressing a rare treasure. The touch was infinitely tender. “Several hours,” he said. “You’ve been a regular sleepyhead.”
“Please. Tell me what happened.”
Brian glanced at the old man, who nodded. “You conked out on me just as Tommy here arrived in his sled. We loaded you on and brought you here,” he said. “That’s just about it.”
Just about it! They had been in the middle of a heaving field of ice with crevasses opening all around them. “How did he get across the cracks in the ice?”
Tommy grinned. “You tourists shouldn’t wander around where you don’t know what you’re doing.”
“Hey,” Brian said, smiling. “I should resent that, but I don’t feel like quibbling with our rescuer.”
“It wasn’t that easy,” Tommy admitted. “We’re used to traveling on the ice field, finding spots where we can cross, but there were times I wasn’t all that sure myself. But I figured you had to be out there so I kept going.”
“How did you figure that?” Malinche handed her bowl to Netta who refilled it and brought it back. “I didn’t think anyone knew we were there.”
“You had to be somewhere around here,” Tommy said. “Your four-wheeler was still parked outside. At first we didn’t worry about it—figured you were in somebody’s house or even, knowing how crazy you whites are, you might just be walking around. But when the four-wheeler was still there, several hours later, we thought we’d better look around.”
Netta nodded, picking up the story. “We asked everybody if they’d seen you. You weren’t in any of the houses. The last anybody remembered seeing you was when you were walking toward the shoreline.”
“You weren’t inside a house, you weren’t on the shore,” Tommy said. “Only one place you could be—on the ice. Though I couldn’t think of anybody dumb enough to do that.”
“We didn’t exactly go of our own accord,” Brian said, fingering the bandage on his head.
“Yeah, we finally figured that out,” Tommy replied.
“No more than Charlie was out hunting seals alone,” Netta murmured.
Brian’s grip tightened on Malinche’s hand, and she suspected he was thinking the same thing she was. They had come very close to meeting Charlie’s fate. She gazed up at him, feeling his concern pour over her like warm honey. His love? For one minute out there on the ice, she had thought he was about to tell her he loved her. Probably it had been a hallucination, brought on by cold and fear and hunger—and wishful thinking.
Ganook spoke again, a soft whisper that seemed to come from far away. His eyes looked into a distance invisible to the others. “There is evil out there. Strong evil. I have felt it for many moons. I felt it gathering around the artist who brings dragons to life. Then around the best hunter in the village. Now, the two of you. You must be constantly on guard. The evil is strong.” He took a small pouch from somewhere in his clothes and handed it to her. “Keep this with you—it may help.”
Drawn by the power in his words, Malinche gave him her full attention. He seemed to belong to another age; she had seen no one like him among the Natives she knew, almost all of whom dressed in Western clothes, had Western names. Ganook made all that influence seem a passing fad. He remained the real voice of the people, their soul, never silenced though often ignored.
Something stirred inside Malinche, something basic and ageless. Her spine prickled, her hair rose on the back of her neck. Men and women like Ganook had led the people since time began, healing, prophesying, guarding. Shamans were said to commune with the spirits, to travel under the earth and to the moon, and into the hearts of people. She had never believed that—or had she? Was this what she was searching for?
Old myths she had forgotten returned to her, myths told to her by the people of the village where she had lived until she was seven. She clutched the pouch tightly in her hand. At the moment she didn’t doubt this old man knew what he was talking about. “Sir—do you know where the evil lives. Who it is?”
He gave her a benign smile. “No. But great danger surrounds you and the young man.”
“We figured that,” Brian said dryly. “It doesn’t take magic to figure it out, not when your plane’s been tampered with, you’ve been shot at, and attacked and left on the ice “ Obviously, he wasn’t as impressed as she was with the shaman’s manner and words. “Someone must have been hiding in that shed and hit us over the head when we walked by.”
“We thought the same,” Netta said, “so we looked around. We saw snowmobile tracks, and no one in the village had been near it for weeks.”
“Someone must have seen him,” Brian insisted.
Tommy shrugged. “There was a big crowd down on the shore when we found Charlie. Most people had parkas on. It would be easy enough to pull the fur over your face, disguise yourself, especially since we had our minds on other things.”
“Then he could have been right there in the crowd.”
“A stranger was there,” Ganook agreed.
All heads swung toward him. He seemed only half attentive, his eyes fixed on some object none of them could see.
“How do you know?” Brian demanded.
Ganook smiled. “Oh, the information didn’t come from the spirit world. I noticed him because I had seen him before. I glanced at his face, by chance, really. Even though he was all bundled up, wearing our Native garb, I remembered I had seen him before. At the Eskimo Gathering.”
Brian sucked in his breath. “What did he look like?”
Ganook ignored the question, intent on telling his story in his own way. “The one stranger I had seen before—the other was new to me.”
“There were two strangers!”
Again Ganook ignored him. “The one I had seen before wasn’t tall and he wasn’t young, but he was powerfully built. Hard blue eyes, a harsh mouth, jaw like a rock. The other was tall, but slimmer, and his eyes showed nothing.”
“The first sounds like a good descrip
tion of Carl Bettnor,” Brian said, “but I can’t think of who could have been with him.”
“I didn’t say they were together,” Ganook replied, a slight reproof in his voice. “In fact, I got the impression that the slim man would rather not be seen by the first. An impression only.”
Brian sighed, dropping his head into his hands. “I don’t think we’ve any choice now. We’re going to have to go to the police. About what happened to us, and about Charlie.”
The three Natives bowed their heads in acquiescence.
BRIAN GLANCED DOWN at Malinche striding along beside him. They’d been back in Kotzebue only a couple of hours, but she’d bounced back marvelously from her ordeal on the ice. She seemed to have recovered physically, but he wondered how long it would take to erase the terror from her heart. She was so impossibly dear to him. His throat tightened, as he watched the wind sweep her dark hair away from her face and bring a hint of color to her deep ivory skin.
Her beauty tore at his heart. But then, he had known she was beautiful from the first minute he saw her. Now he knew she was courageous, intelligent, compassionate.
And determined. She had wanted to involve the police when Charlie had been killed, and he hoped she wasn’t going to be disappointed now. He didn’t want her to ever be disappointed or unhappy or—most importantly—ever in danger again.
The police station was only a block from the hotel and they had decided to walk, even though the wind was warning of an imminent storm. In spite of the cold, sweat sprang out on his face. If the storm had burst upon them while they were stranded on the ice, they would have had no chance at all. Not even Tommy’s skill could have saved them.
Yet was that the entire reason he hesitated to commit himself to her? Perhaps she could overcome the hardships. She had certainly done better than he had expected. But could he bear the guilt of taking her from her privileged life. Was he egotistical enough to think their love would be worth it? And how it would hurt if she did run home to “Daddy.”
And if they hadn’t been rescued just at that time, he would have told her that he loved her.
Was that the reason he was drenched with sweat? Not the closeness of their escape from death, but his escape from commitment? And he truly wasn’t sure which escape he was most grateful for. Not that he didn’t love her. That was precisely the problem. He couldn’t deny any longer that he loved her with all his heart. His soul. Every fiber of his being.
But if he had actually said the words, and she had responded, he would have been lost. He was a realist and he knew she could never be happy in his world. Oh, she had managed well so far, had gone through incredible hardship without complaint, but that had been forced on her.
But what would happen when she had a choice? His world was harsh and lonely, no place for a delicate beautiful woman. No woman could be expected to put up with the hardships, the lack of social amenities, the rigors of a geologist’s life. By definition, they inhabited the lonely places of the earth. His stays in Anchorage were short, his times in the field long. She was tough, resilient, he had to admit it. But she’d had no choice. And there would always be Daddy to the rescue.
An hour later they returned to the hotel. Looking at Malinche’s despondent face, Brian took no joy in the fact that he had been vindicated. The sheriff had listened politely, but said there was nothing he could do. The Eskimo, Charlie, had clearly died from an accident. Malinche and Brian had no clue as to who had abducted them, so what could he do?
They climbed the stairs slowly to their rooms. Malinche seemed near collapse. “Do you think someone is pressuring him?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Our story might sound pretty thin to someone who didn’t know all the facts.”
By unspoken agreement, they went to Brian’s room. Even walking along the corridor, Malinche found herself glancing at the closed doors, wondering if someone waited within. Would she ever regain the nerve to stay alone? Not until this thing was resolved, at least.
He unlocked the door and she entered ahead of him, her hand straying to her neck where the dragon, now missing, had hung.
She flung herself down in the room’s one comfortable chair. “I think the dragon must be the key, though I can’t understand how. Dimitri must have made hundreds of the things.”
Brian didn’t reply. He stretched out on the bed, eyes closed. With a wrench, she realized how exhausted he must be. The bed wasn’t made for a tall man; his feet hung over the edge.
At the ridiculous sight, a surge of tenderness brought tears to her eyes. He looked so vulnerable, so young, with dark shadows under his eyes, his skin still pale from loss of blood. His injury had been much worse than hers, and yet he had watched over her all the while she slept at Netta’s.
It must mean something. It must mean he cared for her. She couldn’t be imagining that out on the ice, just before they were rescued, he was about to tell her so. But maybe she had willed it so strongly that she had heard what he hadn’t said.
She rose and went to sit beside him on the bed, gently pushing his hair back from his face, and bending down to kiss his lips. He murmured something, but didn’t awake.
Why wonder and speculate, when she could just ask him? Force the issue. It was time she knew where she stood. Those days were long gone when a woman waited passively for a man to declare his feelings.
She wasn’t sure when her own had changed so drastically, when she had come to trust him so completely. As for his macho need to be in command—without his decisiveness, his firm will, they wouldn’t have made it off the ice Yes, she knew her own feelings; she loved him. But could he love her the way she needed to be loved?
He didn’t open his eyes. His deep, even breathing told her he was asleep. She drew the comforter from the foot of the bed and placed it gently over his lean body. Then she slipped off her shoes and cuddled in beside him. She would lie here, safe and protected, until he woke. Then they would talk—before or after they made love…
She needed him now, needed to envelop him in herself, needed to feel his passion that set her own desire blazing. Needed to know it wasn’t temporary…
In his sleep, he turned toward her, drawing her into the curve of his long body. One hand found her breast, closed around it. Blissfully, she relaxed against him. In less than a minute, she, too, was asleep.
From somewhere far away came a determined pounding. Thud. Thud. Thud. She struggled up out of a deep sleep trailing fragments of darkness and dreams. She flung one arm out to where Brian had been lying.
Nothing. She jerked instantly awake, heart pounding, and glanced frantically around the room. Then she relaxed; he was standing at the door.
“Okay, okay. Don’t break it down.” He opened the door. Joe Pasco practically fell into the room.
“Brian! I just heard. Are you two all right?”
“Yeah, we’re okay.” Brian’s hand sought the back of his head. “Took a bit of a bump on the head, but nothing serious.”
“That’s not what I heard. It sounded serious to me. Another hour or so and the two of you would have been dead.” He glanced at Malinche. “How is she?”
“I can speak for myself—I’m fine.” Malinche sat up and smoothed her jeans over his hips. She knew Pasco resented her, possibly because he thought she was unduly influencing Brian. “Mostly we were just cold and hungry.”
Pasco certainly looked concerned, she admitted. A dark stubble covered his jaw, and he seemed to have aged in the past day or two. His red eyes indicated he might have had a sleepless night himself. Well, he would be concerned, she thought, if he had hit them over the head, abandoned them on the ice, and then heard that they were alive and well. Very concerned.
Brian might be thinking the same thing. He was looking at Pasco a little warily.
“I figured you’d be out of town by now,” he said to Pasco. “Kotzebue must have more attractions than I thought. Where’s Wilson?”
“Haven’t seen him all day. He said he had something to take care
of, and he’d be in touch. He might have gone back to Anchorage. But—well, I couldn’t leave until I knew you were okay.”
The man actually sounded sincere, Malinche thought; worried, but sincere.
“Sit down,” Brian said, perching on the foot of the bed, his face grim with purpose. “Joe, I have some questions, and I want you to be straight with me. We’ve been friends, and I don’t forget that But I need to know if you’re involved in this—whatever it is.”
Pasco seemed to develop a strong interest in his fingernails. “Brian, I’d tell you anything I know. But I don’t know anything. You’re right about one thing—there’s pressure coming from somewhere. The best I can do is tell you to drop this thing.” He glanced at Malinche. “Whatever is going on, you two have a tiger by the tail.”
“Then if Universal Oil is involved, it’s at a high level,” Brian mused. “But why are you following me around? It’s too much to believe it’s just coincidence.”
Joe shook his head miserably. “I don’t have a clue about what’s going on. I was just told—to keep you in sight.”
“Who told you that?”
Pasco didn’t respond. Brian would have pressed the issue, but the door, which Brian had neglected to lock after Joe’s arrival, opened silently, and Jim Wilson entered the room.
“Hi,” he said easily, his pale eyes making a quick survey. “I wondered where everybody was. Anyone interested in dinner?”
Three pairs of eyes gazed at him in surprise. His mundane question did little to alleviate the tension in the room If he felt it, he ignored it.
Joe spoke first. “Well, hi, Jim. I thought you were long gone. You mentioned taking a plane out of here.”
“I’m leaving on the next flight,” Wilson said, walking to the window and pulling aside the curtain. It was a casual movement, but Malinche knew the window afforded a good view of the street and the entrance to the hotel. “I expect all of you will be doing the same.”
“Can’t be too soon for me,” Joe grumbled. “I wandered around all day, looking for something to do. Don’t know what you found so fascinating.”
Under The Midnight Sun Page 14