* * *
Cypher leaves for Rockton, and by nightfall we’re made it to his winter cabin. It used to be owned by a settler named Silas Cox. Come winter, Cypher would rent a sleeping bag in the corner. Then Cox fell victim to the local cougar, and Cypher took over the lease. When spring arrives, he’ll be on the move, following game and trading, like Jacob. In winter, though, everyone wants a place to hunker down, and this is Cypher’s.
Since taking possession, he’s made repairs. Cox had been the kind of guy who builds a half-assed structure and stays until it rots. Cypher has filled cracks between the logs, fixed the roof, and added a sturdy food-storage compartment around back. When we get inside, we find as cozy a cabin as you could want. It’s only about ten by fifteen feet, but out here, extra room means extra heating. The interior has a fireplace, an underfloor icebox, a low bed, and a table with one chair.
Before we split from Cypher, he’d asked us to check his snares. Trapping is his preferred hunting method—he doesn’t use guns and has never mastered a bow. We leave Storm inside with some dried meat and head out in the dark, flashlights in hand. The snares haven’t been checked in two days, and we find two snowshoe hares, a marten, and a mink. Dalton skins the marten and mink for Cypher. The meat is only eaten late in a cold, hard winter, and we presume Cypher won’t want it, so we cook it up for Storm. What she doesn’t eat, I’ll dry in strips overnight in the fireplace and we’ll take it with us for her.
I cook one of the hares for our dinner. We don’t eat anything else with it. Cypher isn’t a gardener, and 90 percent of his food stores are meat, so we won’t raid his meager supply of dried greens, berries, nuts, and roots. We have a half dozen chocolate-peanut-butter protein bars in our packs and split one for dessert.
We’re in bed by eight. That’s what can happen when night falls by late afternoon, and you haven’t slept more than a few hours in days. We don’t sleep, though. No sex either. It’s been a long and unsettling day, and even after we crawl into bed, we don’t talk about it right away. We’ve let Storm stay in the cabin—there’s plenty of room.
I curl up with Dalton, my cheek resting on his bare chest, listening to his slow breathing. Feeling the tension, too, strumming through him, and waiting for him to speak.
“What happened today…” he says finally. “With Owen and Cherise…”
“Trying to sell me?” I say, my voice light. He’s on his back, and I roll on top of him, my arms crossed on his chest. “Owen came out first, and I had that situation under control, so I tried to defuse it rather than fight. I didn’t expect Cherise.”
I purse my lips. “Pretty sure no one expects Cherise. She is a piece of work. But I still wasn’t in danger of being carted off like a side of venison. I was trying to keep things cool until…”
I remember, and I shiver. I don’t mean to. I can’t help it. Under me, Dalton goes rigid.
“What happened?” he says.
“Cherise happened,” I say, again keeping my voice light. “I got a bit of a scare, but…”
I want to fluff it off. But after a moment, I say, “We’ll need to keep an eye on her. She’s smart as hell, and twice as vicious.”
He nods. Says nothing, his nod tight as he holds in whatever he’s thinking, whatever he wants to say.
“Eric?” I say.
“I’m concerned about Owen,” he says. “That’s not underestimating Cherise. She’s a fucking cobra. She’s smart, though, like you said, so I get the sense she can be managed. Very, very carefully managed. With any luck, she’ll decide she doesn’t want to lose Rockton as a prospective trade partner. But Owen…”
He exhales, breath hissing through his teeth. “The way he was looking at you…” Dalton makes a face. “I don’t mean I’m jealous. None of that territorial bullshit. Men notice you. They pay attention. You don’t pay attention back. If anyone tries anything, you take care of it—you don’t need me to protect you. But Owen … Fuck.”
“You know him.”
“Yeah.”
“What was he in Rockton for?”
Another exhale. “That’s what I want to talk to you about. If I’m hesitating, it’s just…” He waves his hands, gesturing, and I start to roll off, but he holds my hips. “It’s the usual bullshit, this part of me that wants to smooth it over, pretend it’s not that bad, so I don’t scare you off. I wouldn’t do that. You need to know. I just…”
Another helpless wave. “You were in the forest, playing with our dog, and a couple of psychos threatened to kidnap and sell you. That’s fucking nuts, and it’s just another day out here, and it shouldn’t be. Biggest thing you should need to worry about is the wildlife. But no, it’s the crazy people who want to kill you or, now apparently, sell you.”
I laugh. I can’t help it. It starts as a snicker, and then I’m sputtering, choking on laughter.
“It’s not funny, Casey,” he says.
“Oh, but it has to be, doesn’t it? Otherwise, we’ll become the crazy people.” I settle in and look down at him. “We’re in the Yukon wilderness. There are people here for this lifestyle, like you and me and most settlers. But there are also people with a certain level of eccentricity and, yes, crazy, who come here because of that. They’re here to escape the norms and rules of life down south. That can be a positive thing—they want something less rigid and more natural. Or their disregard for the rules of law is the reason they’re happier here, where they can do whatever they want. That’s going to mean, overall, a high quotient of…”
“Batshit crazy, as Ty said?”
“In every possible way, the good and the bad. It’s a world of extremes. It’s like walking down a city street and winnowing out all the average people, the people who are happy enough going about their lives. The people who don’t yearn for more, yearn for change, yearn for different. That’s who we have here, long-term. The dissatisfied and the dreamers and the doers and, unfortunately, the dangerous—those who want to box up their superego and let their id run free. You get that down south, too. It’s not as if people like Petra and Sebastian and Cherise and Mathias are some new species I never knew existed. I’ve met variations on all of them before. There’s just a significantly higher concentration here.”
“Yeah.”
“As for Owen…” I prompt.
Dalton sighs and reaches for his canteen, taking a slug and then offering me some, which I accept.
“Owen came to Rockton five years ago. I was deputy, and it was a little more than a year before Gene retired. Owen and I are about the same age, and that caused problems. He saw me as competition.”
Dalton rolls his eyes. “By that time, I’d had my bad experience with a woman, so he was welcome to them. It’s not like he’d have had a problem anyway. When he showed up, they paid attention. He screwed around a bit, and then he set his sights on Isabel, which I couldn’t figure out.”
I sputter a laugh. “Don’t let her hear you say that.”
“Nah, she said it herself. I don’t mean any insult. But she was fifteen years older, and he had his pick of women, and it wasn’t as if he knew her well enough to fall for her. He acted like a new stallion in a herd of mares, making his way through them, and when he came to Isabel, he figured he’d have a go and then move on. I mean, obviously she’d be all over that, right?”
“She wasn’t, was she?”
“Hell, no. Isabel might have an eye for younger men, but she’s never been hard up for attention, and she’s a helluva lot pickier than ‘young and good-looking.’ When Isabel rejected him, she figured he’d sweep up his wounded pride and stalk off. He didn’t. The more she said no, the more he wanted her. Pretty soon, she complained to Gene.”
“How’d that go?”
He shifts and makes a face. “I said this was shortly after my ‘bad experience.’”
I know what he’s talking about. When Dalton was young, he had plenty of women happy to introduce him to the joys of sex. He’d been in his late teens, and they’d been five to ten yea
rs older, so everyone knew it was just fun. Then he reached his early twenties and relationships became a possibility. He wasn’t interested, and if the women were, he stepped away. Then he hit the one who didn’t give up so easily.
“It wasn’t even one of my usual casual-but-committed relationships,” he continues. “We hooked up a couple of times, and she hinted at wanting more. Seeing the warning signs, I backed out, as gently as I could.”
“She didn’t take ‘no’ for an answer.”
He nods. “At first, it was like she was just trying to change my mind. But then … I’d come home, and she’d be in my kitchen, making dinner in her underwear. I’d be sleeping, and she’d slip into my bed. Hell, she walked into my shower once. Fucking scared the life out of me. First time I ever locked my doors.”
“Shit.”
“Yeah. It was bad. If another woman even talked to me, she’d get in their face, and it wasn’t like I was trying to pick anyone up. We’re talking conversations with women. Normal conversations.”
“What’d you do?”
“Tried to handle it myself. When I couldn’t, I asked other guys for advice. They laughed. Told me I should take advantage. So I went to Gene. He didn’t laugh, but he didn’t see the problem either. Even my mother wasn’t much better. She felt sorry for the woman, who’d obviously fallen hard for me, and said I should be more understanding. Maybe I should give her another chance. This woman is fucking up my life because she wants me back … so I should give in? Because, fuck yeah, that’s the kind of woman I want.” He shakes his head, and in his eyes, there’s old hurt, old pain, old anger.
“That’s bullshit,” I say.
“Yep, but it happens to women all the time, doesn’t it? That’s what I realized. Gene was telling me that this woman wasn’t a threat, wasn’t actually hurting anyone—including me. She just liked me a lot, as if…” He waves his hands. “As if that’s my fault, because I’m so irresistible.”
I smile. “I think you are. But yes, it’s bullshit, and yes, women hear that all the time. He just likes you. You should give him a chance.”
“Exactly. I pulled my head out of my ass and realized that when women came to us with the same problem, we didn’t do jack shit. If it wasn’t assault, then it was just a guy trying to get sex.”
“Boys will be boys.”
“Right. And this is my very long way of explaining what happened with Owen and Isabel. Iz came to Gene with her complaint. Gene told her to be firmer with her refusals.”
I snort a laugh.
“Yeah,” Dalton says. “No one is firmer with her refusals than Isabel. So I tried to handle Owen and made an even bigger enemy in the process. I also realized this wasn’t some guy being atypically aggressive with a woman. He had a past. He must. So I started digging. It was the first time I’d done that.”
“And?”
“First, I checked his reason for being here. As deputy, I didn’t have access to that, but I knew where to get it. I discovered that he’d come here after an attempt on his life. He’d had a fling with a married woman, and the husband went after Owen, who narrowly escaped. The man vowed to finish the job. So Owen came to Rockton.”
“Uh-huh. Not exactly how it happened, is it?”
“No, and Gene should have looked at Isabel’s complaint and at least wondered if there was more to Owen’s story. He didn’t. So I did some research when I went to Dawson. Turned out there was no fling, but not for lack of trying on Owen’s part. He was stalking this woman, and her husband went after him because the police wouldn’t. I also dug up his name as the defendant in a rape case. What they used to call date rape.”
“He wanted sex, and the women didn’t, so he took it.”
“I’m not even sure if he asked. It was a college thing. A frat party. She said he put something in her drink. He denied it and said the sex was consensual. It never went to court. She dropped the case and dropped out of college, claiming harassment from Owen and his buddies.”
“I wish I could say I’ve never heard that story before.”
“Yeah, so the fact this asshole has turned his eye on you has me worried. Just because Cherise has the upper hand in the relationship doesn’t mean Owen is harmless.”
“Thank you for telling me.”
“I’d never not tell you. As much as I hate making this place any scarier than it is.”
I hug him, and he pulls me into his arms as we curl up for sleep.
TWENTY-NINE
We’re asleep, and I’m dreaming of Abby. Dreaming that she’s lost in the woods, and I hear her crying, and I can’t find her. I’m running through the forest, bottle in hand, thinking she’s hungry and I need to feed her. I’m following her cries … and then she stops. Just stops.
I startle awake. Storm whines, and I realize she was already up. She’s still lying on the floor beside me, but she has her head raised, and she’s whining deep in her throat. She smells or hears something.
The cabin is silent and nearly dark, with just enough moonlight streaming in for me to see the outline of Storm’s massive head. She glances my way, and I catch the gleam of her eyes. Another whine, sharper now. She rises with the huff of propelling her big body off the floor. Her nose nudges me, and I run my hand over her head as I listen for what woke her.
A whisper of movement. That’s what I catch. The soft sound of a foot in snow. Then another. A noise follows. A grunt? I think of bears, but even if one woke from hibernation, the sounds are too soft for that. They’re too careful for that. Something is outside, and it is staying as quiet as it can.
A bump startles me. It’s a soft thud. Someone bracing against the wall? Trying to peer in a window?
I glance at Dalton, but he’s sound asleep. If I rouse him, however gently, he’ll startle awake with enough noise to scare off whoever is out there.
We’re several hours’ walk from Cherise’s camp, and I can’t imagine she’d have let Owen follow us. But they may have tracked us after sundown.
Another bump against the wall, and I peer at the window. Storm whines again. She’s rigid, staring at that wall, her tail sweeping the floor. It’s not a happy wag. It’s cautious, uncertain.
I slide out of bed and keep bent over beneath window level. I tug on jeans, a sweatshirt that turns out to be Dalton’s, and my parka. Then I retrieve my gun.
I glance at the bed again, in hopes my moving around has brought Dalton closer to waking, but he’s still dead to the world.
I head for the door. Storm follows, nails clicking. I back up and tell her to stay, adding reassuring pats. She is not reassured. When I pull on my boots, her butt bobs off the floor.
I consider. When Owen and Cherise first caught me, I’d wished Storm hadn’t been there. She was a weakness they could use against me. Yet she may have saved my life. It’s like Dalton with me. He’d love to tuck me away in a safe spot when danger strikes, but he knows I belong at his side, where we can look after each other. I need to start thinking the same with Storm. We trained her for work, and I have to let her do it, not play overprotective mom and tuck her away.
I give the release sign, and when she comes over, I tell her to stay close and stay quiet. As I ease open the door, she’s right beside me.
We slip outside, and I pull the door shut behind us. There’s a flashlight in my pocket, but I keep it there for now. I have my gun in hand instead, as I look over the snow-covered field. It’s a three-quarter moon on a cloudless night, and the light reflects off the snow, lifting the glade to soft daylight.
I adjust my gun and glance at Storm. Her nose works madly, but she’s still processing the danger, not ready to commit to a decision.
We start along the wall, toward the spot where I’d heard the thumps. The squeak and crunch of snow announces our approach, and there’s little I can do about that except keep my gun trained and my ears tuned for the sound of flight. Nothing comes.
I reach the corner and duck before peering around with my face at a height any intruder won�
��t expect. There’s no one in sight.
I ease around the side and check the back, in case the person ducked there. Nothing.
Backing up, I look at the snow. It’s trampled in a path from Cypher walking to his storage shed. I don’t see any other trail.
I bend to examine the prints. They all look to be from the same set of boots, which suggests they’re Cypher’s, but even as a prank he’d never sneak around a cabin with two armed cops sleeping inside. I’m still bent when I see smaller prints leading from the forest and back again, and I’m leaning in for a closer look when Storm growls. I turn to find myself looking at a pale figure poised at the forest’s edge.
I’m on eye level with it, and our gazes lock. I tighten my grip on the gun and rise as slowly as I can, while giving Storm the signal to stay where she is. She does, but she’s growling, her hackles raised. The intruder isn’t watching me now. He’s looking straight at her. He takes a step our way. Then another.
Storm feints, obeying the order to stay while surging forward in warning. He stops, tilts his head, considers, and then cannot resist another careful step.
It’s the lone wolf from the other day.
He’s paying me no attention. I’m not the one he’s here for, not the one he’s curious about. He takes another step as he watches Storm. She makes a noise that starts as a growl, then switches to a whine before ending with a growl. She is curious, too, as she was with the sled dogs. Curious yet wary. She is no longer the pup who tore after a young cougar. She bears the scar from that encounter, and it has carved a path in her neural network, straight to her memories, as my scars do to mine.
I lower my hand to pet her head as I murmur reassurances. The wolf is as tall as Storm, but she’s significantly heavier, all thick muscle to his wiry frame. Between her size and my gun, she is safe. If she becomes distressed, we’ll withdraw into the cabin. But it is safe to satisfy her curiosity.
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