Dangerous Ground (Fiona Carver)

by Rachel Grant

  Was it possible someone had figured out who he was and why he was here?

  Was someone trying to stop him from finding Dylan?

  There was a part of Dean that was aware Dylan might be dead, but he refused to entertain that scenario. He would operate on the belief that Dylan was alive until he was faced with irrefutable proof otherwise.

  This wasn’t some bullshit thought experiment with a cat in a box.

  Dylan was alive. Dean would find him.

  The messed-up electronics supported that belief. Because why would anyone mess around with their phones and radios unless they had something to hide?

  Dean chose to believe the thing they were hiding was his brother.

  I’m here, man. If ever there was a time for some Wonder Twin power, it’s now.

  He closed his eyes and pictured his brother the last time he saw him. Several months ago. Dean had flown north to Seattle to see Dylan in his new, post-divorce life. They’d done the whole Seattle circuit. During the day, they’d visited the troll under the bridge and Gas Works Park, followed by a ferry ride across the Sound in the late afternoon. To their great luck and astonishment, a pod of whales had crossed the ferry’s path—several passengers who were regular commuters said it was only the first or second time they’d seen whales from the ferry—and Dean had taken several magnificent photos he’d subsequently sold with limited licensing to the Washington State Department of Transportation’s ferry division and the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.

  After the ferry ride, they’d watched a Mariners game in a Pioneer Square bar—it was an away game, or they’d have gotten tickets—and then they’d enjoyed live music in a blues bar.

  It had been the first time Dean had seen Dylan happy in so long, he hadn’t even commented on the fact that Dylan still wore his wedding ring. He got it. Dylan wasn’t ready to date, and the ring was a big deterrent.

  At least four women had approached them in the bar, and once eyes fell on the ring, they skedaddled. Some stuck around to flirt with Dean, but he was there for his brother and not a hookup, so he’d politely declined. That night in Pioneer Square, he hadn’t looked twice at any of the women who’d approached them, and neither had Dylan.

  So when Dylan had gushed about Fiona on the phone a few months ago, Dean had been elated his twin was dating again, even if he worried Dylan had gotten too serious, too soon—again.

  He told himself he’d always worry about Dylan, that it was in their DNA. But now, as he bounced across the marshy tundra with Dylan’s latest love at the wheel, and she’d given no indication she cared about him one way or the other, plus their radios and phones had been nuked, he decided his worry over Dylan’s infatuation with Fiona Carver was more than warranted.

  The shit of it was, there was no one for him to turn to. He was on his own and had been from the start. For the last ten years, Dylan had been the only person Dean could truly trust.

  He preferred it that way. The fewer people in your inner circle, the less you had to lose. He had sex when he wanted it and lots of friends among the beautiful and talented in the LA area. He was invited to all the A-list parties. He knew his assets: he was good-looking and had an awe-inspiring career. He was at the top of his game, and his work was in demand by all the major wildlife organizations. Movers and shakers in Hollywood wanted to associate with him, and it was fun because he didn’t need anything from the same celebrities who were so eager to court him as a friend.

  If someone turned out to be a dick, he simply deleted them from his contacts list and moved on, which was a luxury few who moved in the same circles could afford.

  Dean had a good life and was happy. He had his camera, his career—which included travel to all seven continents—sex without messy emotions or heartbreak, and his brother.

  But then Dylan disappeared . . . and nothing mattered anymore. He’d lost the most important piece of the equation that gave his life balance.

  He kept his focus on the road ahead as Fiona navigated the rough, muddy track better than he would have expected. She might not like driving on these roads, but she was good at it, even when she was in a hurry—which she was now.

  She didn’t trust him. Before this day—probably this afternoon—was over, he’d have to tell her everything and hope she’d keep his secret. Maybe even help him. She had Dylan’s phone, after all. And his field notes.

  But he couldn’t tell her yet. Not when she was terrified of him. And not when he wasn’t sure if he could trust her.

  “We’re almost to the study area. It’s large, though, given that it would have all the infrastructure required for the proposed base. I’m not sure where we’ll find everyone.”

  “How much of the area is accessible by vehicle?”

  “Not a lot, but we’ll see parked vehicles if they’re far from the road.”

  It took a full twenty minutes to drive across the study area, searching for parked side-by-sides to indicate where the others were working.

  “Maybe they went back to camp?”

  “I can’t imagine why they’d cut out early when the rain hasn’t started yet. The rule is to work when you can, and right now, we can.”

  “Head to camp. If they’re there, we can ask them why they quit early.” Much as he’d wanted to go to the volcano today, that wasn’t happening. The suggestion to go to camp might earn him some trust points, and he needed all he could get right now.

  She did a big, sweeping U-turn and headed in the direction of camp. They’d done quite a circuit today, crossing the entire island to get from the archaeological site to the study area while skirting around a volcano.

  “How far to camp from here?” Dean asked.

  “Twenty minutes or so, if we don’t get stuck in the mud.”

  “Not to be superstitious or anything, but I think you need to knock on wood now. Given how this day has gone.”

  She glanced around the interior, then lifted her hand from the steering wheel and knocked on her head. “That’ll have to do.”

  The road was slippery, and her focus remained on the road as they drove in tense silence for at least ten minutes. The vehicle rounded a curve and the view of the water and gray sky opened up. She squinted into the distance. “It looks like the helicopter is coming in. The rest of the crew is arriving.” There was relief in her voice.

  Dean shifted forward, looked in the direction she indicated, and saw the bird, but . . .

  It was rising. And getting smaller.

  “Um . . . it looks like it’s leaving, not arriving.” He glanced to the side to see her reaction.

  She pursed her lips, and her brow furrowed as she focused on the small retreating dot in the sky. “That doesn’t make sense.”

  With her focus on the sky, she didn’t see the pothole until the side-by-side lurched and her chin hit the steering wheel.

  She cursed and shifted back in her seat, returning her focus to the road. “We’ve booked the helicopter for the duration of the project. It stays here so we can evacuate if needed. Same as the boat. There’s no reason for it to be taking off so soon after delivering the rest of the crew.”

  He cleared his throat. “Well, not unless they’re evacuating.”

  “But . . . why would they evacuate?”

  Dean figured they were still ten minutes from camp, but they were on a slope, up above the sea-level camp, and the rain clouds remained just high enough that when the four-by-four rounded a bend, the view below opened up. Even at this distance, he could see choppy water. In the foreground, he could just make out a dark-gray cloud in the general vicinity of where the camp should be.

  Fat raindrops landed on the windshield as he stared at the cloud and tried to make sense of it.

  “That cloud doesn’t look . . . normal,” Fiona said.

  There were lots of dark clouds thanks to the threatening storm, but they were much higher in the sky. He frowned and lifted his camera to his eye so he could zoom in. “It’s smoke, not a cloud.”

  �
��Smoke?” Fiona’s voice took on a new level of alarm. “What . . . how?”

  “It would explain the helicopter leaving.” Through the lens, he scanned the pier and then the water. In the far distance, he just caught sight of the boat. He snapped a photo, or Fiona might not believe him as he said, “The boat’s gone too.”

  “What? The boat and the helicopter? We’ve been abandoned here?”

  He turned the camera to the rows of gray tents as smoke billowed from the center of camp.

  “It looks like it,” he said, his voice dry as he gave her the worst of the news. “One of the tents is on fire.”

  He hit the record button to capture video. Through the lens, he watched the dark cloud shift and shimmy—then a massive orange plume lit the sky, billowing outward as a thunderous noise split the air.

  TWELVE

  Fiona slammed on the brakes. This . . . wasn’t possible. She hadn’t just seen their camp get incinerated in a massive blast.

  Had they guessed the blast was coming, and that’s why they’d evacuated? Had the electrical problems somehow ignited the gas lines? The massive fireball had looked like it encompassed all the tents.

  Every single tent had been heated with gas. Something must’ve gone catastrophically wrong. And yet, it was hard to believe anything that catastrophic could be . . . an accident.

  Her hands shook as she hit the gas on the side-by-side. Surely the boat or helicopter would come back to get them, now that the explosion was past.

  The rain picked up, the patter of heavy drops on the hood gaining tempo. The rain would douse the fire, thank goodness.

  It took more than ten minutes for her to descend the slippery slope near the camp. By the time they were in range to truly see the damage, fog had rolled in.

  Bill continued using his camera as a telescope. “The boat is gone.”

  “Maybe you just can’t see it in the fog. Surely they’ll come back for us.”

  “I don’t think so. Not with the storm coming in. They got out just in time. It’s probably why they left when they did. Before we were back.”

  “So they were all called in because of the fire and told to evacuate. But because our phones and radios didn’t work, we’re stranded.”

  She could hardly wrap her brain around it. Was it all some horrific accident, or was it deliberate?

  The timing with the storm was convenient but also made the deliberateness of it all improbable. The storm was predicted but was supposed to hit later in the day.

  The vehicle headlights cut a small swath through the fog as they rolled closer to the smoldering gray mess that had been their camp less than fifteen minutes ago.

  The tents were gone. All of them. Completely destroyed.

  She stopped a fair distance from the wreckage. No telling if there was another fuel tank ready to blow.

  “They must’ve called for an evacuation after the first tent caught fire,” she said. Her voice had a dull sound to it—disbelief, probably, or maybe it was the roaring in her ears that could only be shock or alarm.

  “And with the storm coming in, neither helicopter nor boat could wait, especially when they had no idea when we’d return.” Bill’s voice was equally flat.

  In that moment, the steady rain turned into a downpour, proving the captain and pilot had made the right call. If anything, it was possible they’d waited too long, given choppy sea and air between Chiksook and safety.

  “The helicopter can’t come back for us in this.”

  “No. Not today.”

  They were stranded and didn’t have a phone or radio. The office tent was destroyed, so no Wi-Fi either.

  No shelter. No food.

  She glanced up at the sky. Water wouldn’t be a problem, but heat would.

  Without shelter, with this storm, they could die out here. It wouldn’t even take long.

  At least the rain was putting out the cinders that continued burning after the explosion. She looked to the man on her right. She didn’t trust him. And now she was stranded with him.

  They had to work together if they were going to survive the next twenty-four hours until rescue could arrive in helicopter form.

  “We need to see if there’s anything we can salvage,” she said, her brain clicking into survival mode. “We need food. Shelter. Fuel. And a damn working phone.”

  “We can go to the Unangax̂ village. Don’t they have phones?”

  She nodded. “I was thinking that too. But we might not be able to get there in this storm. There are a few sections of road heading that way that are particularly bad.”

  “Every side-by-side is supposed to be equipped with emergency shelter and other basics,” Bill said. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

  She reached in the back and grabbed her heavy-duty raincoat, the one she avoided wearing at all costs because it was stiff and didn’t breathe. But this storm required it. If they’d had working radios, they’d have known the storm prediction had changed for the worse and would have headed back to camp sooner.

  Today was one disaster after another, but this one . . . this was unfathomable.

  She pulled on the heavy raincoat before opening the side-by-side door in the two-handed grip that quickly became second nature here, as the wind was known to rip doors from their hinges if one wasn’t careful. Before stepping out into this kind of storm, she’d usually pull on her rain pants, which were thick, yellow rubber overalls, but it would be impossible to perform that maneuver in the tight cab, and she’d be soaked before she got them on if she paused to don them in the wind and rain. She’d just have to dry off her pants tonight in a cramped two-person tent.

  Things were about to get cozy between her and Bill.

  He’d donned a similar raincoat, and they met at the back of the side-by-side. A full fuel can was strapped to the back, thank goodness. They had plenty of gas to get to the village.

  Bill opened the rear storage compartment, and they both leaned in, taking shelter from the pummeling rain, and rummaged in the supplies. Flare gun and flares. Waterproof matches and a butane lighter. Rope and paracord. Windup flashlights. Several packets of modern meals ready to eat—MREs—along with protein bars and powdered milk and powdered electrolyte replacement. Basics that would see them through a day or two.

  She had more protein bars in her pack, and Bill probably did too.

  She frowned at what wasn’t there. “There should be sleeping bags and a tent. These vehicles are supposed to be stocked with emergency supplies in case we’re stranded overnight or in a big storm during the day.”

  “I have a feeling that the missing tent and sleeping bags are no accident.”

  Her belly churned. His words matched her own suspicions. It was all just way too convenient. “The broken radios and phones weren’t an accident either.” And the same two people were in charge of all these things: the maintenance men. She didn’t even remember either of their names, but they’d been on the island for days, installing the new generator and prepping camp for the team’s arrival.

  But then, the generator replacement must have been a different team. The one guy had reported the gray bunting call at least three weeks ago.

  She’d been worried about Pollux’s vetting of their geologists and ornithologists, but now she had to wonder how well the navy had vetted the maintenance crew. Or were they hired by Pollux too? She didn’t even know.

  Bill met her gaze. “Everything that’s happened was deliberate.”

  She could barely form the single-word response. “Yes.” She took a shallow breath and managed, “We’re stranded without supplies. On purpose.”

  Dean made a beeline for Fiona’s tent. He didn’t give a damn about his own belongings, but her tent had held Dylan’s clipboard and his phone. If anything survived this mess, please let it be those items.

  The pouring rain had doused the fire, and less than thirty minutes after the blast, the only sign of the fires were small plumes of smoke that dotted the ruins of camp.

  There was
something to be said for having very little wood as a structural element. The pallets that had served as front stoops for each tent would’ve incinerated, but everything else appeared to have melted, and the icy rain had halted the damage before it became a gooey, charred mess.

  The rubberized sheet that had covered the structure was a blackened blob, but—again thanks to the rain—it was cool to the touch, and Dean peeled it away to get to the items buried beneath.

  He located the footlocker first and flipped the latches.

  “That’s not the one with the sleeping bag,” Fiona said. “It’s in the other footlocker.”

  He shrugged, relief too great at seeing the clipboard had survived the blast. He tucked it into the bag they’d grabbed to carry any supplies they could salvage. “Could come in handy,” he said, knowing it was a weak excuse at best. “Let’s grab the bag from your bed and the one in the footlocker.”

  She ripped at the rubberized sheet that covered her cot and cursed. “My bag is destroyed.” He stepped beside her to see the charred and melted sheet adhered to the shell of her sleeping bag. When she’d pulled at the sheet, the shell of the bag had ripped open. Now rain poured down on the exposed polypropylene filling.

  He said a silent prayer that the second footlocker had survived as well as the first. The latches had melted, and the metal box was dented, but it was still sealed. He kicked at the latches, and they snapped. He opened the box and gave thanks for the sight of the orange stuff sack packed tight with the quality bag. He quickly crammed it into their sack. While he was at it, he grabbed the backpack with the extra survival gear and slung it over his shoulder.

  “Good idea,” Fiona said.

  “Let’s see if we can find that other phone. Maybe it will work?”

  “It’s locked.”

  “Maybe we can find a way around that.” He’d tell her the truth later. After they had supplies and this place was far behind them. He couldn’t freak her out now. He turned for the collapsed table and began digging around in the melted plastic.