“It’s nobody’s fault except whoever is behind it all,” Gage said. He gave Robert a pointed look.
“What are you looking at me for?”
“If I’m not mistaken, you have a pilot’s license,” Gage said. “You would know how to sabotage Hugh’s airplane when we were occupied unpacking.”
“Hey, I didn’t touch the man’s plane. I had nothing to do with all of this, and I’m sick of you fingering me for it.”
“He’s got a point,” Nadia said. “And I think I remember that the police investigated you over your wife’s death. Any truth to you killing her?”
The rain suddenly seemed like sharp pings of ice hitting the survival blanket in the following silence to where before it had been soothing. Now it sliced like Nadia’s words.
“What’s she talking about, Robert?” Tern asked.
His face turned red, and so did his eyes. He squeezed them shut as he dragged in deep breaths. “You really are a bitch, Nadia. I can’t believe I—shit.” He pinched the bridge of his nose as though to keep his emotions at bay.
“What happened, Robert?” Gage said, quiet and reassuring, the voice of a confidant.
“I killed my wife.” When he raised his head, tears flooded his red-rimmed eyes. “She was everything to me. When she got breast cancer, she was positive she’d beat it. She was so damn optimistic that she had me believing it too. Even when they carved her up, butchered her breasts from her body, we still had hope. But then the cancer went to her bones. She was only twenty-nine. Chloe was three. How does cancer kill you at twenty-nine?” He dropped his head again and swore, angrily wiping away tears. “She was in so much pain. They’d given her weeks, maybe a month to live. She begged me to end her suffering.” He raised his head and looked at Tern.
She gasped, seeing all the love and grief he still felt shining in his eyes.
“How could I say no?” he asked. “What kind of coward was I if I couldn’t grant her dying wish? There was nothing else I could do to ease her suffering, except help her end it.”
Holy cow, Tern had no idea. Robert was a hell of a lot deeper than she ever figured. He’d never let on that he could feel like this. That he could love like this.
“Shit. I can’t—” Robert crawled out into the rain and was gone. He blended right into the forest as he disappeared.
Tern made to go after him but Gage grabbed her arm. “Let him go.”
“But he could be in danger.”
“Give him some time. He’ll be okay.”
“Why did you do that?” Tern asked Nadia.
Nadia dropped her head in her hands. “I don’t know.” She fisted her hands in her hair. “I’m just so damn scared and frustrated.”
“We all are, but that doesn’t give you the right to attack him like that.”
Nadia’s eyes narrowed before she dropped her gaze. “You’re right. I’ll apologize when he returns.”
The rain continued to pour with no sign of stopping. The ground they sat on was being overcome with the runoff needing some place to go. Water seeped in and soaked their clothes where they sat. It was going to be a miserable night.
Then they heard Robert shout.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
“Get out here, guys!” Robert hollered.
Tern’s heart, which had jumped at Robert’s first shout, bumped back into a normal rhythm, though she still felt light-headed.
“This had better be good or I’m going to kill him,” Gage said. He crawled out of the shelter and held a hand out for Tern and Nadia.
“Bring all the gear,” Robert yelled. His voice came from the south, but they couldn’t see him.
“What the hell?” Gage said, gathering up his backpack and Robert’s, and then wrestled Tern for hers. She didn’t have the strength and didn’t put up much of a fight. Her headache had subsided to a constant throb, one that she thankfully could handle. There were other things that she couldn’t. Rain slashed her face and dripped down her neck. She hated being wet and cold. Being wet on a sandy beach in the tropics was a hell of lot better than the wilds of Alaska. She tried to visualize herself in a sunny spot with the rays of the sun shooting through a steamy tropical downpour, but she couldn’t pull it off.
“Wish I had someone to carry for me,” Nadia grumbled, hitching her pack onto her shoulders and ripping down the Mylar blanket. “She isn’t the only one who got bashed in the head today.”
“But she’s the only who was really hurt,” Gage said.
“Hey, I was bleeding.”
“Not long enough to be of real concern.” Gage turned his back on Nadia and hollered to Robert, “Where the hell are you?”
“Head south, across the brook. You’ll see me.”
“I hope this isn’t a trap.” Gage handed his rifle to Tern. “Be ready for anything.”
“You don’t think someone has Robert, and is using him to get us out into the open?” Tern asked.
“With the way this crazy trip keeps twisting, I wouldn’t be surprised if aliens landed and asked me to take them to my leader. Just be on your guard, okay?”
“I want to go home,” Nadia said.
They ignored her and crossed the brook, following the trail Robert had left. He hadn’t been covert in his wanderings. They trudged through the thick trees, ending in a small oasis of a meadow. A pond, with a pair of nesting swans that would make a fine dinner, was at one end, being fed by the brook. Wildflowers bloomed like confetti. The wet smell of earth and rich plants thickened the air. It was a truly enchanting spot.
“Over here,” Robert shouted. They still couldn’t see him, but Tern noticed the sharp line of a roof in the mountain side, nearly taken over by the vegetation.
“Is that…”
“I sure as hell hope so,” Gage said. They trudged through the tall wet grasses toward the structure. As they ventured closer, an old sod cabin materialized. It blended into the trees, the logs having been overgrown with moss and the sod roof blooming with flowers making it a part of the landscape.
Nadia screamed and fell.
“Careful, there’s a fence of sorts!” Robert yelled.
“Would have been nice to know that ahead of time,” Nadia complained, pulling herself up from the ground.
“You okay?” Tern asked. By the look on Nadia’s face, she was ready to hurt someone.
“Yeah, just tripped.” She rubbed at a muddy spot on her shin.
Robert appeared from inside the open door of the cabin. “I tripped in the same spot, that’s how I noticed this.” He held his arms out as though he was presenting them with the keys to the town hall. “Isn’t it great?” A smile stretched across his face, a welcome relief from his earlier grief.
“It’s perfect, Robert,” Tern said, giving him a genuine smile.
“Way to go,” Gage added.
“It’s a dump,” Nadia said.
“You’re more than welcome to use the crappy shelter we built.” Robert smirked as Nadia shut her mouth. He gestured wide with his hand. “Come in. Let me give you a tour. It’s fascinating.” Robert disappeared into the dark shadows of the cabin.
Gage entered first, and by the tension in his shoulders, he was ready for anything. Tern was next, followed by Nadia. It took a minute for her eyes to adjust to the darkened interior but when she did, it was like traveling back in time.
“Wow,” she said, venturing farther into the one room cabin. There was an old potbelly stove in the corner, a stack of chopped wood waiting to be used. A hand pump sat on the counter with a tin bowl for a sink. In the opposite corner rested a double bed, all made up with a quilt that had faded to cream. Dust covered everything. There were fine shafts of light coming in through the rough degraded chinking of the logs, but they left the door open in order to bring in more.
“Look.” Robert produced a can without the label. “What do you think is in this?”
“Nothing I want to eat,” Nadia said, with a curl of her lips. “What about botulism? You don’t even know how o
ld it is.”
“It isn’t bulging.” Robert studied the mystery can. “It’s steel instead of aluminum so maybe thirty years give or take. I say we open it and take a look. It would have been frozen nine months of every year it was out here, so it can’t be that bad.”
“Don’t let your hunger make you stupid,” Gage said, but then shrugged. “What the hell, open it. We’ll take a look. I’m not above walking on the wild side in order to quiet my stomach.”
“I don’t care if it isn’t inedible. I’m just so happy to be out of the rain,” Tern said. “Thanks, Robert, for wandering off.” She put a hand on the back of his shoulder, offering a bit of comfort for his wife’s death.
“Anytime,” he said quietly, understanding.
“Let’s see if we can warm this place up.” Gage set his bundle down and knelt by the potbelly stove. “Whoever left this place was planning to return. I wonder how many decades ago that was?” He opened the stove and barked out a laugh. “There’s a fire already set. See any matches?”
“You’re not going to burn down the place if you light up that thing, are you?” Nadia asked. A scowl seemed to have permanently taken up residence on her face.
Gage looked at the rough log ceiling and back to the stove. “No, I don’t think so. Whoever built all the way out here had planned to stay for a while. This was no slapstick shack.”
“I think the meadow outside was cleared to build this cabin,” Robert said. “Whoever homesteaded this area might have tried raising animals. It would explain the remains of the fence out there.”
“Who would live all the way out here?” Nadia asked.
“A lot of people settled all over Alaska looking to escape for some reason or another,” Tern said. “The town of Ruby isn’t far from here, if I have my bearings right. Maybe a hundred miles or so. You have to remember that Ruby was a huge gold strike. This place was crawling with gold prospectors back in the early nineteen hundreds. Ruby rivaled Fairbanks for the center of civilization in Alaska.” She looked around. “I’d say whoever built this cabin wasn’t mining for gold. Miners were a tent-city kind of people. This guy wanted to put down roots. Plus, by the looks of what’s left here, I’d say it’s roughly fifty to seventy years old. And he had a woman with him.”
“What makes you say that?” Robert asked.
“The quilt, the neatness.” She picked up a porcelain teacup covered in dust and trailing a few cobwebs. “The knickknacks.”
“Wonder what happened to them?” Nadia asked.
“Probably sickness, or the harshness of winter was more than they counted on.” Tern shrugged. “Who knows?”
“They’d planned on coming back,” Gage said, taking the lighter Robert offered him to start the fire. “The place is laid out in welcome.” The flame caught on the bits of dried moss and licked the kindling until the flames greedily ate at the bigger logs. Gage looked above him to the stove pipe. “Now we just hope there isn’t anything stuck in the pipe, like a buildup of creosote.”
They all waited with baited breath, but the smoke continued up the pipe and out.
“I think we’re good,” Gage said, closing the door to the stove and adjusting the damper.
“Now, if we had some caribou steaks to cook,” Robert said, rubbing his hands and holding them out for the heat. “Illegal or not, I’d settle for those swans swimming on the pond out front.”
Tern looked around the neatly organized cabin. Other than dust, she doubted anyone had been in this place since the people who’d lived here had left. Even animals had left it alone. Tern studied the cabin joists. The man had been a decent carpenter. She’d seen cabins made like this. They were partially dug out of the earth, and the earth was laid back on top of the roof to add in insulation for the brutal winters and cooling for the summers.
There were people in Fairbanks who still lived in cabins constructed like this one. Her eyes followed the joists to where they met the walls. They were hand notched, snug and tight much the way the Chatanika lodge was that her father had built with the help of his father.
“This place gives me the creeps,” Nadia said, rubbing her hands up and down her arms.
“I love it,” Tern said.
“It’s a damn sight better that than shelter Gage and I threw together,” Robert said, grinning from ear to ear. He unzipped his jacket. “And downright cozy. I’m already warming up.”
Gage unzipped his jacket too. “Great job, Robert. Finding this place.”
“It’s more like it found me.” His smile turned goofy. “Weirdest thing. I felt kinda pulled here, and then when I was calling myself every kind of fool and started back, I tripped and saw it. It was like someone was leading me here. You don’t think it could have been the spirit of my wife, do you?” He blushed as he spoke the words.
Tern walked up to him and laid her hand on his arm. “Maybe. This place is charmed.”
“Charmed?” Nadia scoffed. “Like as in spells and witchcraft?”
“In a way. See here—” she pointed out the things she’d noticed “—in the old ways we used to protect our homes with herbs that deterred insects and such. A lot of tribal people practice what you would call pagan rituals as a means of protection. Today we know that the reason the dried plants protected against animals is because the plants produce a strong repellant that human noses can’t detect. Whoever built this cabin had knowledge of such things.”
“I don’t believe in any of that stuff,” Nadia said.
Tern studied her. Nadia was obviously agitated. Something here was bothering her, while the three of them seemed almost at peace. “Are you allergic to anything, Nadia?”
“Why?”
“It would explain why you’re apprehensive about this place and the rest of us aren’t. Something’s got under your skin.”
All eyes turned on Nadia, and she took a step back. “If I am, I don’t know what it is. But this place makes my skin crawl.”
“Well, you have a choice to stay here out of the rain and cold, or camp outside in the elements,” Gage said. He actually seemed okay with her leaving. Even Robert seemed as though he liked the prospect.
“No one is going anywhere,” Tern said. “Come on, Nadia, let’s see if there’s anything we can salvage from the cupboard. I don’t want to eat whatever is in that can either.”
“What?” Robert shrugged. “If we cook it, that should kill whatever might have taken up residence.”
“You’re gross,” Nadia said.
“I’m game,” Gage said.
“Must be a guy thing.” Tern shook her head and smiled for the first time that day. Amazing what a roof and some heat could do to lighten a mood.
“Let’s make a clothes line,” Gage said to Robert. “More of our clothes are wet than dry.”
“Smashing idea.”
Nadia joined Tern in the little area cornered off for the kitchen. Other than the water pump, tin bowl for a sink, it was made up of a long split log for a counter and rough cut timbers for cabinets. Someone had used fabric, sewed in a casing, and strung string through it to make a curtain for cupboard doors. Tern very carefully moved the fragile fabric aside. It was thin and had a faded pattern of might have been sailboats.
There were more cans on the shelves, but also coffee canisters. A sniff identified one full of cocoa.
Nadia gasped. “Hot chocolate?”
“Looks like it.”
She also found powdered milk, sugar, and flour, all sealed tight from bugs. She could work with this. There were also bowls, utensils, pots and pans, all meticulously put away. A woman had definitely worked in this kitchen. Tern glanced around the cabin. Had there been children?
“Here.” She handed the bowl to Nadia. “I need this washed out and filled with water. Robert, would you go with her to get some water?”
“You betcha,” Robert grabbed for his jacket.
“Someone’s done a three-sixty,” Nadia mumbled.
“You seem upset about that. What’s your deal?
”
“I don’t know. I just don’t like any of this.”
“None of us like it. We’re coping because we have to.”
Nadia sighed. Tern watched her leave with Robert. She needed to find some alone time to talk with Nadia even though that was the last thing she wanted to do. The woman was driving her nuts. She caught Gage’s eyes on her. On the other hand, Gage was also driving her crazy. Only in another way completely.
“Need anything?” he asked.
“Plenty,” she said before the filter closed between her brain and mouth. His eyes heated and she knew hers had done the same. She turned back to the kitchen and resumed her rummaging.
“What can I help with?”
She cleared her throat. “Dust. Let’s see if we can’t dust this place out.”
“Okay.” Gage headed straight for the bed and carefully folded the corners of the quilt on top of itself before picking it up and taking it outside to flip it out under the roof-covered front of the cabin. He returned much sooner than she’d hoped. But he concentrated on what she’d asked him to, and when Robert and Nadia returned they had the kitchen wiped down. The place was looking downright homey.
As a summer place, it would be the perfect getaway.
There were simple carvings of fish, bear, wolves, and other animals harder to identify as the carver hadn’t been that talented. She wished there were some writings or a journal to give a history of the people who’d lived here.
“No journal, I bet,” Gage said. She jerked at his words. “What?” he asked.
“I was just thinking journal and then you said it.” She hated that she was so in tuned with him or him with her, and pointed to the carvings sitting on the shelf, hoping to change the subject. “One of the occupants was probably Native Alaskan. Yupik or Athabascan. They told stories from generation to generation using carvings like that. Not much was written down. We’ll probably never know.”
“There might be record of this place. Someone had tried to homestead the area, maybe there are records in the borough. When we get back, I’ll look into it.”
Death Cache Page 22