Chilling Effect (An Aroostine Higgins Novel Book 2)

by Melissa F. Miller

  “Officers.” He nodded toward Hunt and his colleagues as he trotted past them on a diagonal, beelining toward the girl and her mother.

  As he crossed the road, his shoes fell heavily in the dry dirt, drawing Ruby’s attention. She met his eyes over her daughter’s head. Her cocktail waitress warpaint was in place—bright red lips, flushed cheeks, and blue eyelids—but all that makeup couldn’t hide her drawn, tight expression or the worry that clouded her eyes.

  Although she couldn’t know exactly what he planned to say to her, her look blazed a warning: Not in front of Lily. He nodded once, almost imperceptibly, just enough movement to assure her he understood.

  “Ruby, Lily, how are my two favorite ladies today?” He smiled down at the girl as he fell into step beside the pair.

  Lily giggled for a second but then grew serious. She contemplated him, wide-eyed. “Did you know that some kids don’t go to school year-round like we do? Becky Proudfoot told me her cousins in New Jersey don’t have school all summer.”

  He considered everything he knew about Ruby Smith’s precocious daughter. Then he nodded. “Those poor kids.”

  “I know.”

  Beside her, Ruby indulged in a proud maternal smile. Then the girl switched gears and pointed to the twisted wreckage across the street. To his eye, it wasn’t recognizable as a Jeep, but somehow she knew.

  “What happened to Aroostine’s car? Is she okay?”

  Lily’s eye flew to her mother’s face, seeking reassurance. Ruby cleared her throat. Before she could speak, Boom crouched beside the girl, meeting her on her eye level. Her luminous eyes were already filling with tears.

  “Lily, listen carefully. Aroostine’s car blew up but, this is important, she wasn’t inside when it happened. I saw her with my own two eyes, run clear of the car before it exploded. She and her husband didn’t die.”

  Ruby’s eyebrows shot so far up her forehead they seemed to meet her hairline.

  “Do you promise?” Lily asked.

  “I promise.”

  “Where is she? Is she hurt? Can I see her?”

  Boom answered her questions in order and honestly. Childless himself, he knew that some people would frown on telling a girl Lily’s age the truth. Bunkum, that was what he thought of that. Children, after all, are people living in this imperfect world. It wasn’t his place to shield her from reality. But he took pains to explain it on a level she could understand.

  “I don’t know where she is. She ran away, so I don’t think she’s badly hurt or she wouldn’t have gotten far. And since we don’t know where she is, we can’t see her.”

  “But I want to see her.”

  “I’d like to, too.”

  She chewed on her lower lip and considered the information he’d given her.

  “Will she come back?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did someone try to hurt her?”

  “Maybe. I don’t think the police have decided yet if the explosion was an accident or on purpose.”

  Ruby pulled a face at that. He shrugged at her. Everyone with two brain cells to keep one another company was well aware that the car bombing was intentional. But Chief Johnson hadn’t yet made the official call. So his answer was technically true.

  The girl dropped her eyes to the ground but asked no more questions. He suspected she was thinking about her neighbor, murdered just one day earlier, but he respected her right to her private thoughts and said nothing.

  Ruby cleared her throat again. “Listen, Lil, let’s get you home, and you can get started on your homework. I’m going to ask Mr. Cowslip to stay with you tonight while I’m at work. Would you like that?”

  Lily’s head snapped up. Her worried eyes now shone with excitement. “Really? Will you, Mr. Cowslip? After I do my homework will you tell me about the Dream Daughter?” Her eyes darted from her mother’s face to Boom’s.

  He smiled. For all their infatuation with technology and the world off the reservation, the children of White Springs loved nothing better than to gather in a tight circle around Boom and hear him tell stories of their people and the old ways of living.

  “I’d be honored. On one condition.”

  “Okay?” the girl breathed.

  “Stop calling me Mr. Cowslip. Call me Boom—or Grandfather.”

  She smiled up into his face, and it was as if the sun itself had slipped from its anchor in the sky and beamed out from the girl’s soul.

  Ruby placed the mug of steaming tea on the scratched but polished table and handed him a honey dipper and pot of honey.

  “Local?” he asked.

  “From Mary’s bees.”

  He swirled the viscous, golden liquid into his hot drink. She glanced at the closed door to Lily’s bedroom, where she’d set up the girl with a glass of water, a plate of apple slices, and her school books.

  “You’ve done a good job with her, Ruby.”

  She flushed with pleasure and pride at the compliment and let her long eyelashes flutter down to her cheekbones.

  “Thank you, Boom. I’m trying so hard. She’s a special girl.”

  “Yes. She is.” He sipped his tea.

  “Is everything you said true—about Aroostine and her husband?” She asked the question in a low, husky voice, barely above a whisper.

  “Of course it’s true. They’d just left my home—they’d come to ask me to help keep watch over you and your daughter.”

  Ruby made a small sound, a little mew. He paused to let her speak, but she said nothing.

  He continued, “I was watching from my doorway. They got into the vehicle and immediately got back out. Joe checked the engine, seemed satisfied that everything was in order, then started the engine. Aroostine started to get into the passenger side, but something must have seemed wrong to her. She crawled beneath the car and emerged a moment later, screaming Joe’s name. They ran toward the field and seconds later . . . the Jeep was in flames.”

  He stopped here, and the two of them sat in silence. He was picturing the scene. He wondered what images were running through her mind’s eye.

  Finally, she spoke. “Why did they run? I mean, once they were free of the fire. Why didn’t they come back and ask you for help?”

  That question had been running through his thoughts for hours.

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure we’ll ever see them again, Ruby. They may not be sure who they can trust here. Or they may just be too frightened. Or . . .”

  “Or what?”

  He could tell from her tone that she knew what he didn’t want to say. He sighed. “Or they may be regretting their promise to help you. They don’t have any real connection to us, to our people. They may have decided you and Lily aren’t worth getting mixed up in our bloody battles, Ruby.”

  Her chin jutted out. “They wouldn’t do that.”

  Boom placed his palms flat on the table and pierced her with a look.

  “We don’t know them. And they don’t know us. I hope I’m wrong. But if I’m right, you have my word that I will take care of you and Lily. Now, it’s time for you to kiss your daughter good night and get up to the casino for your shift. You don’t want to give Lee any reason to be suspicious of you.”

  She blanched at the reminder that she was about to totter into the lion’s den on four-inch heels for an eight-hour shift of slinging drinks at drunk white tourists.

  “Give me strength,” she muttered.

  “Ruby Smith, if there’s one thing you have in spades, it’s strength.” He flashed her a comforting grin and was gratified to see a small smile bloom on her tense lips.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  When the sun threatened to dip behind the distant purple mountains, Aroostine stopped walking and turned to face Joe, who’d been lagging about a half step behind. He jerked to a halt.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “It’ll get dark fast out here once the sun sets. We should find a good spot to stop for the night, set up our shelter, and get some dinner.”
>
  “Dinner as in a burger and fries or dinner as in another handful of grass and berries?”

  She gave him a wistful smile.

  “Sorry.”

  Then she narrowed her eyes in thought. She had planned to skip making a fire. She was confident they’d be able to stay warm for one night without one. Plus it would be a hassle to start one without the benefit of matches, and smoke would be a telltale sign, liable to lead bad guys right to them. But . . . a fire would give them more options for food. And there was something comforting about sitting in front of a fire on a dark night. The heat, the light, the dancing flames.

  She scanned the horizon. Nobody was going to find them, not out here. Not tonight.

  “What?”

  “Do you think you could catch a fish or two with your bare hands?”

  “Maybe. Probably. Why?”

  “Let’s find a shelter then you go down to the stream and catch us some dinner while I get a fire going.”

  “You’ve got yourself a deal.”

  His bravado couldn’t hide the fact that he wasn’t at all certain he could catch a fish without a rod. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that she’d given him the easier of the two jobs.

  “Great.”

  She turned and surveyed their immediate surroundings. For just one night, there was no point in constructing a shelter. It made more sense to find a natural shelter. Her grandfather’s voice sounded in her mind:

  Location first. High and dry ground—uphill from the stream. Southern exposure to take advantage of the sun’s heat and light. Facing east to capture the sun’s early rays for warmth.

  She identified the general vicinity that would satisfy all of her grandfather’s requirements just over the next ridge. Before she headed toward it, she turned to Joe and pointed. “I’m going to head up that way and get a fire started. Good luck.”

  He blew her a kiss and headed down toward the stream. She hoped it took him a good long while to either catch a fish or give up because it had been about two decades since she’d started a fire without a man-made fire starter.

  It’s like riding a bike, she told herself, even though it was nothing at all like riding a bike. She trudged up the hill. Shelter first. Then the fire. She scouted and rejected a handful of options—a fallen log, a tangle of boughs. Then, in the foothills of the mountain, she spotted a rock outcropping that checked all the requisite boxes.

  Home sweet home.

  She sidled into the space between the rock walls and pounded on them with her hands. No loose stones or debris came crashing down on her. She swept the ground clear of twigs and pebbles with her feet. The sleeping arrangements would be adequate once she lined the ground with leaves for bedding.

  Time to tackle the fire.

  She worked quickly, gathering rocks to create a low, semicircular wall and digging out a shallow bowl of the dirt within the space. Then she loaded her arms with dry, dead tree branches and carried them to her fire pit. Each time she brought back an armload of sticks, she scanned the brilliant, cloudless sky overhead.

  Uneasiness had been building in her veins ever since she’d spied the beaver watching them on the ridge. She couldn’t shake the idea that her spirit guide was portending danger. A snippet of a documentary on unmanned drones that she must have seen months earlier kept spooling through her mind. A scrawny boy, no more than six, maybe younger, was pointing to the cloudy gray sky overhead and explaining to the filmmaker in halting English that the parents in his village no longer let the children play outside when the sky was blue. The clearer the day, the more likely a drone attack. Everyone knew, he said, that the bombs didn’t fall when the sky was dark and cloudy.

  A low-flying hawk swooped by, and its shadow blocked the sun for a second. Aroostine’s entire body tensed and she froze, waiting for the light and blast that would mean the end. Then the bird circled away and the sun returned. She exhaled and dropped the pile of kindling to the ground with the rest.

  She knelt on the hard earth beside it and worked to regulate her breathing. As her heart rate slowed, her fear and anxiety began to turn to hot anger. Anger at whomever was out there, wishing her dead. Anger at the penny-pinching desk jockey who’d approved the use of a civilian site to test armed drones. And anger at the scientists and military strategists who’d created a weapon that could destroy a life without conscience.

  That same documentary had included a piece about the distant operators of the drones. Young men, mostly, barely out of their teens, who remote controlled the bombs from thousands of miles away. Watching the action on a screen, as if they were playing video games. And the distance seemed to make the destruction as unreal to those boys as a video game. They didn’t have to lock eyes with the target, didn’t have to hear the screams, see the hot blood and disintegrating body parts.

  They simply jerked their joysticks, pressed their buttons, and watched the distant, grainy explosions as their bombs hit their targets. “Bug splats” they called the dead; evidence—according to a psychologist who’d been interviewed—that they were so far removed from the battle they didn’t even regard their victims as human. The psychologist had warned that this sort of warfare—detached, clean, mechanical—was unlike any that had come before it and would likely take an eventual toll on the bomb operators that no one would be prepared to address.

  At the moment, Aroostine’s concern was not for the emotional distress that might someday befall those video game playing boys, but for her and Joe, alone on the run under an endless sky.

  Joe. She wondered how he was faring. Whether he was successful or not, he’d likely be returning from the stream soon. The light was fading quickly now. She roused herself to action.

  She stood and walked to a thicket of long grasses and shrubs to the left of the fire pit. She plucked several long cattails and weeds for tinder and fluffed them in her hands until the material formed a loose cloud. She wove in some long grass and scraps of bark she’d picked up along with the kindling then placed the little nest of material in the center of the hollowed-out pit. She separated the kindling sticks into the thin slivers she would use to start the fire and the thicker branches she would add once she had a blaze started. Remembering her grandfather’s long-ago caution to use slow, sure movements, she piled the sticks around the ball of tinder, propping the sticks against each other so they formed a tent over the tinder. She worked out from the center, adding the larger, heavier branches in a constant, careful rhythm.

  She rarely thought about her adoptive parents when she was in the woods—they weren’t outdoorsy people—but the process of building the fire reminded her of building houses of cards with her father when she was home sick from school with strep throat. She’d been bored, tired of being stuck in bed, but had been too drained to do much else. He’d shown up in her room with a deck of playing cards and proceeded to teach her how to carefully place the cards so as to construct ever taller and more sturdy houses. She could see his long, steady fingers placing each card with precision and then hovering, still, for a moment while she held her breath to see if it would stay or if the entire structure would go tumbling down.

  Now her hands were suspended, just as his had been, over the teepee shape she’d built around the tinder. She waited. Waited. The sticks held. She exhaled slowly and went off in search of two stones and Joe, holding thoughts of her grandfather and her adoptive father in the same space in her mind. It felt right, surprisingly.

  Joe heard footsteps approaching from behind. He craned his neck and saw Aroostine making her way down the steeply sloped bank.

  “Hey.” He gestured toward the three rainbow trout still flipping intermittently on the ground beside him.

  “Hey, yourself. Wow, I’m impressed.”

  He grinned. He was, too, to tell the truth. He hadn’t had much confidence in his ability to catch a single fish with his hands, let alone three, but it hadn’t taken long. The front of his shirt was sopping wet but he’d managed to snag—and, more importantly, h
ang on to—three medium-sized trout.

  “Yeah, although I think that’s all she wrote. I haven’t seen another fish in several minutes.”

  “Three’s plenty.”

  “That’s kind of what I figured.” He glanced down at the fish, which appeared to have taken their last gasping breaths. “So, now what?”

  She flashed him an apologetic smile. “Well, first I need to find two rocks to serve as my flint and steel. While I’m doing that, can you look for a really sharp rock on the bottom of the stream, something we can use to take their heads off?”

  “Sure.”

  “And a big flat one that we can use as a pan.”

  He nodded then pushed his already wet sleeves up farther and started feeling around on the stream bed. Aroostine moved slightly downstream and squatted near the water’s edge. She stuck her hands in the water and pulled up two clumps of rocks then began to sift through them, discarding those she deemed unsuitable in a pile to her left.

  “You’re really going to start a fire by banging two rocks together?”

  “I really am.”

  Joe had learned not to doubt his wife when it came to matters of nature, but the idea sounded so far-fetched, like something out of a bad movie, that he felt his mouth twist into a knot of disbelief.

  She caught his look and laughed. Her breath rustled her long bangs, pushing them away from her face.

  “There’s no magic to it. Flint is pretty much any one of a couple different hard quartz rocks. Some people call it chert.” She sifted through several large rocks in her hand. “Out here, it looks like jasper is pretty common.”