Twenty minutes later, guided by the headlamp, she had already tripped four times—over semi-concealed rocks, tree roots, and twigs—so she dug out her flashlight and, despite some initial confusion with double shadows, the depth of vision was a welcome relief.
She trudged a mile down a slope packed with slightly thicker snow. Despite the deep holes sunk by each tiring step, her boot linings kept her feet dry.
A fallen branch, as grey in this light as the snow, caught her heel and she back-flipped and turtled, landing helplessly onto her pack with her legs and arms splayed out. She lay still for a while, winded, and scooped up some snow and sucked on it as she looked up, watching the tree canopy shiver as an eerie breeze whistled through. Suddenly realising it was foolish to lower her temperature, she spat out the remains of the snow, unstrapped her backpack and twisted herself out of it before getting back to her feet where, after wrapping her scarf around her face and yanking the hem of her parka down, she heaved her backpack on and continued walking.
This wind was going to be a friend, she saw. It was high, huffing away the clouds to let the moon through and a mellow light was already thankfully spreading around her. She paused to check her location—the base of Milligan’s Hill—and she pushed on. Her steps still sank deep but twisted a little on the pebbly terrain below the snow. She guessed it was a deposit of scree that had collected during spring rains, so she went on even more gingerly, wary of her footfalls as well as the branches scraping her outerwear. She was rubbing her arm where a surprisingly rigid limb had ripped through her parka sleeve when her boot caught under a rock and she pitched headlong into a fallen trunk.
When her eyes opened again she guessed she’d been blacked-out for at least five minutes. Her head was spinning and her forehead was aching and when she went to rub her brow, she discovered that when her head had hit the log, her headlamp had smashed. As she drew her hand away, she saw blots of blood on her glove.
She wobbled herself up to sit on the trunk, and slipped off the lamp strap. Attempting to wipe her head with her forearm sleeve, the shot of pain through her right arm jolted her. She could see blood seeping out of another rip and, looking around, saw that the offending branch at the base of the log was waving a tiny flag of her parka sleeve. Below it, pink bloodstains had spread into the snow.
Her arm only hurt if she lifted it, which also made her woozy. She knew she had to stem the blood and stop the cold seeping in through the tear in the fabric. She had to go on. Turning back was not an option.
Her GPS tracker had perched itself on top of the log, safely she thought, and the strap of her flashlight was balanced on the tip of her walking pole as though she’d carefully hung it there herself. After she oofed off her pack, she took out the first aid kit and, puffing some antiseptic powder through the rip, plastered her arm and then, after removing a few shards of glass from her head wound, cleaned and taped that too. For good measure, she sealed the slash in her ski jacket with two strips of duct tape, making an X. Ready to move off, she reached out for the tracker but the pain from her arm scorched her again.
Bad had just gone to worse: the GPS screen was smashed. She guessed the EPIRB function was still okay, but had no way of knowing without setting it off. She slipped it into a pocket, glad she had also brought the old-fashioned laminated map and compass, and she slogged onward.
As she reached lower and lower down the mountain, the snow was thinning, in increasing spots fingering itself out to rock and hard, bare dirt. She sped up; not too fast, since it was still icy and she was fretful of her arm, steering away from stray branches, especially as waves of occasional dizziness washed over her.
The map showed that Major’s Creek was coming up and she became tetchy about crossing it. Would it be frozen solid, or would the cover merely be a deceptive skin of easily cracked ice? She needn’t have worried, not about that, since pretty soon it was clear she wasn’t even close to Major’s Creek.
Under her flashlight, she carefully checked and rechecked the map. Where had she gone wrong? She trudged on another few hundred feet; still no creek. She went back, at least she thought so, but the ground was starting to rise when it should have been falling.
Her arm was pounding and her head was no better, but she had enough sense to take another pause. She slung her pack to the ground, parked herself on it and, under the side flap, her fingers felt around for two Mars bars and one of her bottles of water. Steady methodical chewing. It was calming, but only until her mind was sucked back to Ed’s betrayals.
She leant her head back to take a swig of water.
He must have been at this for months, she thought, the two-faced… Isabel replayed the sick, depraved banter in her mind.
She was lost, that was obvious to her. Three hours she’d been going and she didn’t have a clue where she was. She knew she’d been crazy to try this at night. But should she have stayed up at the shack, set off the EPIRB and waited? More importantly, should she do that now? She slipped it out of her pocket and looked at the shattered screen as though it would reply for itself.
It was 8:15 PM. Yet even with the wrong turn she’d obviously made somewhere, she was sure she’d get herself back on track, just like she’d done with her life. If she triggered the EPIRB it would take Search and Rescue at least the three hours she guessed she still had to go—but there was a good chance they would wait till daylight—and she needed to keep moving, not to stay stuck in this frozen, godforsaken spot.
Isabel ate a second snack bar and stowed her trash, slipping the empty bottle into the mesh pocket on one side of her backpack.
Calmer, she studied the map and, after about five minutes of mental backtracking, she calculated there was a good chance she was near Potter’s Mound, and if she simply headed west a little, she’d find a stand of black spruce.
SHE was right. Unfortunately.
She could smell the familiar earthy, sweet spruce perfume even before she saw them. Potter’s Mound was smack in the centre of the wolves’ urine-marked territory, and Andy Goodman’s prize female had been out on the prowl for a couple of hours, always keeping close to the den she’d established for when her litter came. Gretel was big. Nose-to-tail, she was five feet long, last time weighing in at 120 pounds though she was undoubtedly heavier now.
Gretel whipped her tail out from behind an old hemlock and her glossy black nose sniffed out something tempting. Near to the ground, she stalked forward and a few shards of broken glass flashed the moon into her yellow-green eyes.
She drew up to the log and started to paw at the alien shiny parka material but drew back sharply… her paw had been cut. She spied the stains on the snow but knew instinctively they weren’t hers, even before smelling them. Ignoring her paw—she’d had worse—Gretel’s snow-white snout dropped back down and sniffed around the strange bloodstains. Her ear brushed against the torn piece of sleeve hanging from the branch and she twisted up to inhale its scent. Her long back arched and, with her good front paw, she jabbed at the spatters of blood in the snow. She seemed to make a decision and turned, low to the ground, making a slow, stealthy pace toward the stand of black spruce, a blood-spotted track trailing behind her.
Halfway along, she stopped dead. Her head lifted and she sniffed the air.
She pulled her lips back to bare her teeth and her menacing, guttural growl cracked the silence.
60
“SO FAR, SO good,” Ed muttered to himself. Isabel was enjoying her last night up at her shack and Davey was at home in Bridgehampton with George and the housekeeper. Ed was overnighting at the Magiston Resort and had his head resting against the pillows before dinner, after a strenuous round of tennis on the indoor courts. He was here for his reunion of Loane’s Rangers, his old unit, together with the usual hand-picked ring-ins. Every two years he hosted his buddies at the historic Magiston for a quiet dinner. No spouses or partners. Ed was devoted to his Rangers, many of them having earned a spot working in the sprawl of his corporate empire, or somewhere else on
his team.
In pride of place in the centre of the grand table, always, would be the shot of Loane’s Rangers taken twenty-five years before: Ed flanked by ten men in camouflage flight suits, one of whom was cradling his baby girl swaddled in a matching camy blanket. Mel Abbott had fought with Ed in ’Nam but died rappelling in the Rockies in the early 1990s. His daughter was Niki, and Ed and the Rangers had virtually adopted her when Mel died.
At college, her tuition paid for by Ed, Niki had signed up for the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps program. Even as a kid she’d imagined herself as a pilot, unlike her dad; his passion had been fast cars and he’d even named her after Niki Lauda, the Formula One Grand Prix winner. What Niki loved most about flying was the exhilaration of calculated risk-taking, which didn’t exactly make her a great fit for the disciplined life of the military.
However, it was her knack of capturing in her photographs that same sense of living on the edge that made them so sought-after. After ROTC, she’d trained as an Air Force pilot and, despite her notoriety for breaking the rules, she attained the rank of captain. It was ultimately because of that reputation that she was frog-marched out of the service and pushed herself into full-time camera work, well, mostly full-time, as her Loane’s Rangers colleagues knew.
It was set to be a long night with much to celebrate, so Ed had taken an early nap. He bent sideways to check the hotel’s bedside clock. It was around seven, half-an-hour before cocktails. He lay back on his pillow and imagined Isabel, extinguishing the shack’s lanterns, her own head hitting the pillow just as his was getting up.
“Sleep well,” he whispered.
Niki’s soft blue eyes fluttered open and she brushed aside a strand of her red hair. “Wha…?”
61
IN AROMATHERAPY, BLACK spruce is used to suppress anxiety, but it couldn’t help Isabel. She sensed a presence, and froze. Not a wisp of breath escaped her as her ears strained… At first, she heard nothing but the wind, until she detected the low rumble coming at her from beyond the trees.
She slid the tip of her hiking pole into the snow and, as quietly as possible, unbuckled her pack at the waist and let her shoulders and arms slip it slowly to the ground, her right arm causing her to wince, though only a little. Her fingers closed around the knife handle sticking up from her belt pouch and, like a reed in a breeze, she twisted around for the empty water bottle in the side mesh pocket of her backpack, gripped its neck and yanked it out.
She waited.
A flash of moonlight flared over near the stand of trees the growl was coming from. In the glow, an animal’s snout began to make itself out. It was white. Abruptly, a pair of low luminous eyes blazed at her. Despite the tremble of panic, she calculated that they were too close to the ground… This was not a bear, it was something much smaller. And yet it was bigger than a snowshoe hare.
Instinct took over. She flicked on her flashlight and aimed it directly at the yellow-green eyes, praying the beam would startle whatever it was and make it scamper off.
Her torch lit up a wolf, and she almost dropped it in fright. Her heart was pounding as though she had already made a run for it, which her thrashing mind was telling her to do.
The beast defied the light, refusing to back off. It wouldn’t avert its eyes. They were riveted on her, staring her down, sizing her up. She could feel them gazing up and down her body, like the sum-total of all those sleazy eyes she’d had to endure over those years waiting tables, but far worse.
Her blood ran cold, and she clamped her jaw till it ached as she tried to still even her slightest movement.
The wolf’s sharp, bared teeth flashed the beam back at her as a thick string of saliva drew its way down from its muzzle to the ground.
Isabel was prey. She was sure of it. The assurance that no adult had ever been killed in North America by a wild wolf was looking scratchy.
She met its gaze halfway along her beam, and noticed a strange dark stain spreading out from under one of its front paws. In this poor, exaggerated light, the animal’s paw seemed to be bulging. She moved her beam, just a little. It was blood. Her whole body shook, remembering that the advice had actually been that no healthy wild wolf had killed an adult.
ANDY Goodman’s ears were assaulted by an unrelenting banging on the toilet door.
“You okay in there?” the barman shouted as he kept pounding. “Andy! You okay?”
“Hmm…? Yeah, I’m fine. Be out in a minute. Musta fallen asleep.” It wasn’t because of the booze; he’d only had four drinks the last couple of hours due to Brad knowing Andy liked to push it, but he’d started his ranger’s rounds early that day, around six, and this was as good a spot for a bit of shut-eye as anywhere else.
Andy wiped his nose and sniffed. “Must be all that fresh mountain air in here.”
As Brad swung out the door and walked back into Daisy’s, he flicked on the extractor fan.
With a furry tongue and a dry mouth, Andy sat for a moment in the dim light—the bulb dangling above him was dead—and heard a buzzing sounds from within the confines of his cubicle. “Brad, hey… cut it out.” His pants were still furled around his ankles but he now realised the noise was coming from down there, from his beeper hanging off his belt. It was flashing red.
Andy unclipped it and brought it up close to his eyes. Shit! Gretel was at 253 bpm. What the fuck was she doing? He scrolled back to read the log. She’d been up above 240 for fifteen minutes. Why hadn’t he woken?
Was someone—or something—chasing her? Was she on a kill? Before he could answer with even more speculation, he watched as his wolf’s heart rate slumped, in the space of a few seconds, to 83, a resting rate.
And then it plunged again, to 59, a beat of sleep. Or worse.
This was wrong. Way wrong. The beat drops were too rapid. She’d been attacked, or caught in a trap… bleeding to death. It had to be.
He was buckling his belt as he raced out through the bar, his head spinning around, searching for someone to help. Paul Dawkins was in one of the restaurant booths. Paul was a local garage mechanic and volunteer fire-fighter who had assisted Andy when Gretel was first introduced into the area; they had done the radio-collaring together. “Paul, Gretel’s in trouble up there.” He held up his beeper so Paul would understand. “We gotta go. Now!”
Paul was drinking margaritas with his wife and a couple Andy didn’t recognise.
“Gretel?” his wife asked warily. Her finger wiped the salt off the rim of her glass. She didn’t know any Gretels around these parts.
“One of Andy’s wolves,” Paul responded. “The pregnant one Andy was going on about…”
“Come on, man,” Andy yelled. “I need help, like fuckin’ urgent.”
Paul’s wife didn’t hide her disgust at his language, but Andy was the only one who didn’t notice; he was already out the door and Paul was following, leaving just a shrug and his party behind him.
GRETEL kept her head low to the ground. She began to slope toward Isabel, paw by paw, the dark splotches trailing behind her being whisked into the snow by her dragging tail.
Isabel didn’t breathe. She didn’t move. She kept the flashlight beam aimed directly at the wolf’s eyes, hoping to blind it or push it back as though she were wielding a Star Wars lightsaber.
As the wolf drew closer into the long, narrow cone of light, the snow cover flared the underside of her muzzle and made the beast loom even larger.
Suddenly, Isabel spotted more blood splatters in the snow… in between her and the wolf. They were hers. The wolf had been tracking her. Sniffing her.
With her teeth, Isabel pulled a glove off her hand. Careful to avoid sudden movements she delicately pressed her arm. Her hammering heartbeats were spurting blood out of the wound—she could feel it—and saw it oozing out from under the X of the duct tape and dripping to the ground. She felt like a target.
The creature stopped... fifteen feet back from her prey. She arched her back and, snout down, nosed into one of I
sabel’s bloodstains. The animal stretched out long and taut and, as though she had made a tactical decision, lurched to one side and started to circle Isabel.
Isabel was prey.
Her knife blade was ludicrously short, fine for slicing an apple not for hacking at a leaping, snarling carnivore. She feared the bottle in her other hand was also next to useless. She needed a better weapon and dropped her eyes to her backpack… The shovel. She also spied a rock protruding partway out of the snow. Staring back at the circling wolf, as though that might warn her off, she forced her shaking knees to bend, taking herself down slowly. No sudden movements. With her eyes fixed on the animal, she deposited the flashlight on top of her pack, aiming it at where the wolf seemed to be heading.
Her hand felt for the shovel and unclipped it as silently as she could. With the handle tight in her hand, her other, good arm raised the bottle by the neck and smashed it down onto the rock, shattering the brittle silence.
Isabel hadn’t expected it.
For weeks, she hadn’t had one of her flashes … but now, years of trauma welled up inside her…
She was fifteen… the gory wolf tattoo rippled on his tricep as that evil bastard lunged for her.
Her body shook uncontrollably.
But who was holding the fucking broken bottle this time! She almost screamed it out loud, but let it gag in her throat, not out of fear… out of defiance.
This time it would end differently. This time, she would be no victim. Too much depended on it.
“THE networks say he’s flying out to St Louis first thing tomorrow to visit Taylor’s widow,” said Niki, her voice raised so Ed could hear her in the bathroom.
He came out, looping his bow tie. “Perfect timing,” he said, nudging her elbow. “To dinner?”
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