Alone in the Wild

by Kelley Armstrong

  Lane lunges, and there’s nothing I can do about it except bark at him to get back, get the hell away from Nancy. He grabs Nancy and yanks her to him, and Tomas lunges toward them, but Lane already has his arm around Nancy’s neck, a hunting knife in his hand.

  “Why?!” Lane screams at his uncle, spittle flying.

  Tomas falls back with the force of that scream, the venom in it. Even Dalton startles. Storm growls, hackles rising.

  “Why do you care?” Lane screams at Tomas.

  “Do you mean why do I care about you?” Tomas says. “You’re my nephew, my brother’s child, you’re a son—”

  “I mean her.” Lane shakes Nancy. “Why do you care what I do to her? You knew what she was doing.”

  “I…” Tomas swallows, and when he says, “I’m not sure what you mean,” it’s obviously a lie.

  “That wild woman. Your wife was … was…” He can’t finish, his face choked with rage. “She betrayed you with a woman.”

  Nancy’s gaze shunts to her husband, but Tomas straightens, voice calm as he says, “That would be between my wife and myself, Lane. Yes, I knew, and I’ve done nothing about it, which means it is none of your concern.”

  “She betrayed you.”

  “I don’t see it like that.”

  Lane snarls, “My father always said you were a fool. He told me about her.” He shakes Nancy again. “How you married her even after she was found with another girl. You were a fool then, and you’re a fool now, but you’re still my uncle. You were good to me. Better than my father ever was. You were good to her, too, and we don’t deserve it, but at least I appreciate it. I care about you. I won’t stand by and watch you be humiliated by your wife.”

  Tomas goes still, drawing in ragged breaths. “Lane, let her go. Please. If you really do care about me, you will let her go. I love you. I’ll help you, no matter what you might have done.”

  “What I might have done?” Lane’s face contorts in a sneer. “You know what I did. I did what you couldn’t.”

  “Lane?” I say. “Stop right there. Whatever you are about to say, consider it before you do. Let Nancy go, and we can talk.”

  I’m not giving him a free pass. Once he speaks those words, though, he tumbles over a precipice. Admit to one murder, and it’ll seem easy to commit a second.

  “I don’t want to stop,” Lane says. “Why should I? I’m not ashamed of what I did. I—”

  “Lane?” I say. “That’s enough. Let Nancy go—”

  “Yes, I killed that woman. Shot her and left her to die. She deserved it, and so does this filthy excuse of a—”

  Dalton grabs Lane’s knife arm. He’d been sneaking up from behind, Lane so intent on his confession that he never realized Dalton was with us. Now Dalton yanks Lane’s arm back, the knife dropping. I run for the weapon. Tomas runs for Nancy and pulls her from the scuffle.

  Dalton wrestles with Lane. I can’t do more than stand back, my gun aimed. I could threaten to shoot Lane, but he’s in such a frenzy, I doubt he’d hear. I could hardly follow through either, with Dalton lost in that blur of blows.

  Dalton goes down, his knee buckling under a savage kick. Lane wheels and runs, and I lunge after him, but I’m too slow—my bad leg will never let me keep up with a fit young man. I see Storm. Lane is running across the clearing, past where Storm’s huge black form blends into the night. Her gaze swings on me, a question in it.

  I instinctively raise my hand for her to hold her stay. Then I remember my thoughts from earlier. Storm is a working dog, and I need to use her.

  “Go!” I say, pairing the command with a wave that releases her.

  She’s off like a shot. She isn’t built for speed, though, and she has to give chase, the two of us running after Lane, oblivious to whatever is happening behind us. Storm closes her gap, as I fall behind, my bobbing flashlight beam allowing me only glimpses of them ahead.

  Storm catches up, and she’s right behind him, and I think she’ll have no idea what to do next. Which proves, I suppose, that I really am a fretful parent, worrying about what I haven’t prepared my “child” for. My “child” is a dog. A predator. No one needed to show her what to do when Cherise posed a threat to me. And no one needs to tell her what to do when she catches up to Lane. One powerful lunge, and she’s on him, knocking him facedown in the snow.

  It’s the next part that confuses her, as it did with Cherise. She’s been taught not to hurt people. Even in play, she can never snap or snarl or growl, even grab an arm with the intention of clamping down. She’s too well trained here, those teachings overcoming instinct. She takes Lane down and then just stands on him, and looks back at me, but I’m fifty feet away. Lane flips over, shoving at her even as I shout a warning.

  Lane scrambles up, and Storm knocks him down again. He slams a fist into her chest, and a snarl of rage behind us tells me Dalton is coming. Yet he’s too far back, and so am I, and Storm’s trying to figure out what to do, butting at Lane while he hits her.

  I have to clamp my jaw shut not to call her back. I’m almost there. Lane’s unarmed and—

  A flash of silver.

  He has a knife.

  “Storm!” I scream, which is not a command, not a goddamn command at all. “Come! Storm, come!”

  The knife slashes. Blood sprays onto snow, and I scream again. Then something bursts from the forest. A blur of gray. I’m only ten feet away, close enough to see what it is. The wolf.

  He grabs Lane’s arm. His teeth clamp down, but the young man’s wearing a thick parka, and the wolf only hangs there. He bites hard enough to startle Lane into dropping the knife, though. Lane realizes there’s a hundred-pound wolf hanging off his shoulder, and he screams, kicking and punching.

  I’m there. Finally there. I ram the flashlight into my pocket, holster my gun, and grab Storm’s collar to drag her back. I ignore Lane. I know he’s my target, but there’s blood in the snow, and it belongs to my dog, and that’s what matters. The wolf can take Lane for all I care.

  Lane and the wolf fight, battling with growls and grunts and gasps of pain. Storm whines, her body trembling as I run my hands along it. She flinches when I find the spot where the knife went in, but she doesn’t stop straining to see the fight, nudging me out of the way when I block her view.

  The blade sliced her left shoulder. Her fur is wet and sticky with blood, and I tug out the flashlight for a look. It’s a slice, not a stab, and as I palpate the wound, she huffs in annoyance more than pain, Mom fussing over a scraped knee when her child just wants to run back onto the playground. That reassures me even before I get a good look at what is indeed a flesh wound, a shallow slice maybe two inches long. It’ll need stitches, and I’m sure as hell not letting her jump into the fight, but she’s all right.

  I see Dalton then. He’s circling Lane and the wolf, looking for an opening. His knee gives a little when he feints too fast, telling me Lane really did give it a solid kick. The wolf and Lane are squaring off, circling each other, Dalton outside looking for a way in.

  Looking for a way to get between Lane and the wolf.

  Oh, hell, no.

  I pull my gun. “Lane! Get on the fucking ground, and we’ll take care of the wolf.”

  Lane’s gaze darts my way.

  “You heard me!” I bark. “On the ground now.”

  He spins and kicks at Dalton, aiming for his wounded knee, and rage fills me, the kind of rage that let me shoot Blaine Saratori, the kind that had me put a bullet through Val’s head. But I learn. Each time, I learn because I can never pull this trigger and not question afterward. With Blaine, I have every reason to question. I made a mistake. With Val, I did not, but I still suffer for it, wonder if there’d been a way to protect Dalton without killing her.

  This time, there is no question. Dalton isn’t in lethal danger—Lane is just really, really pissing me off, trying to literally throw Dalton to the wolves.

  So I shoot, but it’s aimed over them. The gunfire startles Lane, and it warns Dalt
on, and between the two, Lane’s kick is aborted as Dalton dodges. Lane comes out running as he tears into the forest. The wolf starts to go after him, and my idiot lover leaps between them.

  “No!” Dalton shouts, startling the wolf, which skids to a halt.

  Dalton’s bigger than Lane, and he’s making himself bigger still, puffed up, gun out, shouting at the wolf. Personally, I’d let the damned beast go after the bastard, but this is why, no matter which roles we play best, the “good cop” is the guy in front of me.

  The canine stands his ground but shows no sign of attacking. Storm is fine, and her attacker is gone, and the wolf himself seems all right. He approaches Storm, stiff-legged, and we let them do the sniff-greeting again. Of course, he’s hoping for a reward from his rescued damsel, but this time, as soon as he sniffs behind her, she snarls and spins away, and after one more halfhearted try, he lopes into the forest.

  “Sorry!” I say. “No reward sex for you.” I turn to Dalton. “And definitely none for you. What the hell was that? Coming between a confessed killer and a wolf?”

  He pauses and then says, “I was worried about the wolf.”

  “Right answer.” I lift up to peck his cheek. “Even if it’s utter bullshit, and you just saw a dangerous situation and decided to play hero by leaping into the middle of it.”

  “I didn’t actually leap in. I was looking for a way to break it up.”

  “Refereeing a wolf fight?” I shake my head. “I don’t think the wolf would have listened. Hell, I don’t think either of them would have.” I look in the direction Lane went. “So I guess we’re stuck tracking him.”

  “Is Storm okay?”

  He bends to pet the dog, and I hand him the flashlight and point out the damage.

  “I should stitch her,” I say, “but we have surgical strips in our packs at camp. That’ll do. We just need some way to mark this spot so we can pick up Lane’s trail after.”

  Dalton digs into his pocket, and I’m about to point out that tying a marker to a tree won’t work at night. Instead he pulls out a package of surgical strips.

  “The man comes prepared,” I say as I take them.

  “Do I get reward sex for that?”

  “You just might. Now hold her steady while I clean the wound and plaster it shut.”

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Once Storm’s fine, we track Lane. It’s easy at first. He doesn’t have a flashlight or a lantern. In winter, under a three-quarter moon, the reflection off the snow is enough. However, that leads to a quandary for Lane. More open land means better light but deeper snow. His choices are clear sight or easy movement. He tries both, racing through thicker woods, and probably tripping over an obstacle or two until he veers to less dense forest, and then staggers through knee-deep snow. Eventually he finds a happy medium. He’s still walking through snow, though, meaning we barely need Storm to track him.

  At some point, he must realize that and he heads for the foothills. There he finds windswept rock to run across, and Storm earns her keep then. Ultimately, though, we lose him. Storm is wounded, and she’s been up since her wolf suitor came to call yesterday morning. She isn’t the only one flagging either. When Lane plays one too many tricks on us, we run out of the patience needed to keep Storm on target. We also run out of the will to push her when she’s so obviously exhausted.

  Lane has confessed to killing Ellen. He’s a threat to Nancy, but … While I won’t say that’s the Second Settlement’s problem, I have no jurisdiction here. The dead woman was their friend. The killer is their resident. I have no right to keep investigating. I will, if they ask for help, but I have a baby momma to find, and solving this crime doesn’t get me any closer to resolving that one.

  When Dalton came after me, he’d told Tomas to take Nancy home. That’s where we go, and it’s seven in the morning by the time we get there. It’d have been longer if we backtracked, but I’m blessed to be with a guy who doesn’t need to follow his own footprints to find his way in the forest.

  Tomas and Nancy haven’t told the elders anything. They’re waiting to talk to us, and I fear that means they want us to cover for Lane. They don’t. He didn’t kill Ellen in self-defense. He has no excuse and no remorse, and he followed up one cold-blooded murder by attempting another, this time against the woman who raised him.

  I can blame a twisted sense of loyalty to his uncle or the homophobic teachings of his settlement, but neither is an excuse for murder. Whatever his father and the settlement taught him, Tomas and Nancy raised him in a loving and open-minded home.

  We speak to the elders with Tomas and Nancy. Lane will face their judgment. They’ll wait for him to return, protecting Nancy and the children, and if Lane doesn’t come back, then yes, they would appreciate our help finding him.

  Afterward, Tomas and Nancy ask us to join them for breakfast before we leave. The children feed Storm, who is doing an excellent impression of a fur rug, sprawled on the snow, refusing to move. Apparently, she’s getting breakfast in bed, and I have no doubt she’ll rouse enough to eat it. I wouldn’t mind an hour of sleep myself before the long walk home, but I can also rouse myself to eat, and I know Tomas and Nancy want to talk to us.

  We’re barely settled into the small alone-hut when Tomas says, “I would like to ask for transportation down south. For my family.”

  “What?” Nancy says, startling enough that she nearly drops her breakfast bowl.

  Tomas doesn’t look at her. “We’ll go to Whitehorse. I should still have money in an old account. It’ll be enough to get us started. I’ll set up Nancy and the kids someplace outside the city, where they’ll be more comfortable, and I’ll rent an apartment and find work in Whitehorse.”

  “Did I miss our discussion on this?” Nancy says. “Because I’m quite certain I’d have remembered it.”

  Tomas folds his hands in his lap. “I should have done this twelve years ago. Taken you away instead of marrying you and tying you down with—”

  “With our children?” Her voice rises. “If I have ever—ever—given the impression that I consider our children anything but blessings—”

  “I don’t mean it like that,” he says quickly. “I just … I made a mistake, and I want to fix it now.” He looks at her. “I want to set you free.”

  “Set me free? Or be rid of me?”

  Dalton says, “Maybe Casey and I should wait out—”

  Nancy doesn’t seem to hear him. “I made a mistake. Not a mistake in what happened with Ellen. Maybe I should say that was wrong, but it was something I needed. The mistake was not telling you that I needed it and working out a solution together. If you want to leave, then I understand, but as for setting me free?” She meets his gaze. “You never held me captive. I could have left anytime I wanted. I didn’t want to.”

  I slide toward the exit, Dalton following, but Nancy stops us.

  “Yes, we apologize for making you bear witness to a very personal conversation,” she says, “but I have a feeling if you aren’t here, this won’t be resolved. You are our passage south. We need to decide this before you go.”

  That isn’t true. We’ll be back. But I understand what she’s saying. They’ve avoided this conversation for over a decade, and if we’re awaiting an answer, they can’t push it aside again.

  “Do you want this?” Nancy asks Tomas. “If you do, then yes, we’ll go south and start over in separate lives sharing our children. Because that last part is the most important. I’d never give them up, and I’d never ask you to. They are ours, whether we are together or not. But if you’re offering me a way out of this marriage, the answer is no. I don’t want that. If you’re saying I can stay on the condition this never happens again…”

  She meets his gaze. “I cannot promise you that. I have no idea if it will or won’t, and that is a very long conversation we need to have if we want to make this work. But I would like to make it work. You are my partner. You are my friend. You are my lover. Nothing has changed for me. With Ellen, I was answering
a question about myself that I should have answered twelve years ago. And I don’t know if I did. I found something I needed, but it didn’t change what I already have, and I’m not sure what to make of that. I need time to work it through, if you can give me that.”

  Tomas nods. That’s all he does. Wordlessly nods, his eyes glistening.

  “You want me to stay?” she says.

  Another nod, and a quiet, “Please.”

  “Then the question is ‘do we stay.’ And the answer…” She exhales. “The answer is no. Not here. Not after all this. It will be too hard for the children, and really, that’s just the excuse I think we needed to go. We’ll remain for the winter and then we’ll decide our next step.”

  And now, in the midst of tragedy, I need to ask them a question unrelated to any of this. I kick myself for not doing it earlier, but it isn’t as if I’d forgotten the reason we were here: to find Abby’s parents.

  Earlier, it’d been clear that Nancy didn’t realize Ellen had been trading goods to help Abby’s mother, so I didn’t see a lead there. Also, I’d suspected one of them might have murdered Ellen, so I hadn’t been about to expose Abby’s existence. Now, though, with Ellen’s death unrelated to Abby, there’s no reason not to ask.

  I ask with extreme care, hoping I won’t seem too callous.

  Sorry your nephew murdered your friend and lover, but while I’m here, maybe you could help with this other case?

  It helps, of course, that the “other case” is a lost baby. It’s hard to begrudge help with that. They are both horrified and relieved. Horrified that Lane almost accidentally killed an infant … and relieved that the child is safely in Rockton.

  “We had no idea,” Nancy says. “It makes sense, now that you’ve told us. Yes, she’d have wanted those scraps for diapers and the balm for breastfeeding. There were other items, too, and they all fit. She was helping a woman who’d borne a winter baby.”