by Dani Harper
The intensity of his gaze gave way as he laughed. “Sorry about that. I was trying to get this tire off and nearly missed you. Hasn’t been a vehicle by here in a while and the cell phone doesn’t work in this particular spot. Dead zone.”
“Don’t you have a radio?”
“Sure. I can radio my office in Glennallen loud and clear, no problem. But since I’m here, there’s no one to answer it. And the local garage only takes phone calls.” He balanced the tire against his leg and stuck out a large hand. “Josh Talarkoteen. Sorry about the dirt. I had to use the spare this morning already so I’m reduced to begging for a ride to town.”
“Kenzie Macleod.” Her hand was engulfed by his, but the sensation was more than pleasant. “Two flats in one day? That’s just cruel.”
“No, that’s just backcountry Alaska.”
She grinned then. Flat tires were also the stuff of backcountry Chile, backcountry Egypt and backcountry Oregon. “Sure, come on.” She led the way to her truck.
He rolled the tire behind her. “You’re not worried that I’m a serial killer? I can ride in the back, no problem.”
She turned and looked at him with amusement. He was much too tall for one thing. He’d practically have to fold himself in half to fit beneath the truck canopy. For another, humans were usually only dangerous in a group. A single human—even one with an official sidearm—wasn’t a match for a Changeling, even if she didn’t take on her wolfen form. She couldn’t say that, of course. “I have four older brothers who’ll hunt you down like a dog if you try anything.”
“Duly noted. I’ll be sure to control my tendencies, homicidal and otherwise.”
She flipped opened the canopy and yanked down the tailgate, began shoving gear to one side. He heaved the tire in and quickly brushed away the smudge of dirt it left on her sleeping bag.
“Going camping?”
“I work outdoors.”
“Me too, most of the time. I was just checking out a report of someone taking deer out of season. What is it you do?”
“Dig in the dirt. Archaeology, ancient history.”
“I’ve heard the National Park Service is doing some excavations in the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park. That you?”
“Nope, completely different project. And I work solo.”
He didn’t say anything to that, but looked like he was considering it as he got into the truck. She paused with her hand on the gearshift. “So what town are you going to?”
“Copper Center. We’re about 50 miles from Glennallen, so no point going back there since we’re more than halfway to Copper. How ’bout you?”
Copper Center? That didn’t sound one bit familiar. Kenzie fumbled for her map, ran her finger over her planned route. It was true—she’d turned the wrong way at the intersection. “Dammit,” she said aloud. She’d been too busy thinking about other things, something which seemed to be happening with alarming frequency lately.
Josh ducked as she threw the map behind the seat without folding it. “I take it you hadn’t planned to visit the fair village of Copper?” he ventured.
“No. No, dammit, I turned right instead of left at the tee. I’m heading up near Chistochina.”
“Well, the tourism committee at Copper Center will be deeply disappointed. Myself, I’d be more than pleased to go back to the turnoff. I can call Frank’s Garage in Glennallen to come get me from there.”
“You’re sure?”
He nodded. “Frank’s a buddy of mine.”
She put the truck into drive, then swung a U-turn that a stuntman would be proud of. For a moment, he was glad he’d put on the seat belt. They settled into an easy pace, however, not too far above the speed limit, and he relaxed.
“So, you must be looking for old Ahtna stuff,” he ventured.
She looked over at him, and there was a quick punch to his senses as her eyes, silver gray with long thick lashes, met his. Her fair skin was tanned and her dark hair was naturally tousled into pleasant waves. Like she’d just gotten out of bed ...
“I’m looking for an Athabaskan fish camp north of Chistochina. The Ahtna tribe gave me permission to dig up along the river.”
“That’s pretty impressive. They don’t give permission to just anyone to dig on their ancestral lands.”
“I think a lot depends on how much respect you have for their culture. Plus they’re very concerned about preserving that culture.”
“True, especially after they’ve just signed a new oil exploration agreement. They don’t want any ancient history trampled. So why do you work alone?”
“Lots of people like to work alone.”
He should have paid attention to the defensive note in her voice. “Well, if you ever get tired of being alone and want to experience the nightlife at Glennallen, I’d—”
“Why is everyone and their dog so concerned about me being alone? First Connor gives me grief, then James, then my mother phones me—I’m doing just fine by myself, dammit, and I don’t need people worrying about my love life.” She put her hand to her head then, as if she had a headache. “I’m really sorry, it’s not your fault. I don’t know why I’m yelling at you.”
He wisely kept quiet for a whole minute before responding. “Family riding you pretty hard?”
“They mean well.”
“That makes it tougher sometimes. You should hear my aunts and my sisters start in on me. They think I should have a dozen kids by now.”
“They do?”
“Hell, yeah. It’s like some kind of crime against nature to be single at my age.”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-two. And I know better than to ask yours.”
She glanced at him quickly as if startled. “Why is that?”
“Well, because you don’t go around asking women their age if you want to be popular,” he laughed.
“Oh. Oh, right.” She looked oddly relieved.
“So tell me about your dig. Why Chistochina?”
“I believe signs point to there having been a major settlement there.”
“Well, there’s still a settlement if you want to get technical. Most of the hundred or so folks who live in Chistochina and the surrounding area are Ahtna.”
“I mean an ancient settlement. Just after the last Ice Age, in fact, ten or twelve thousand years ago.”
He whistled in appreciation. “Okay, that’s old. Even Mamie Dalkins wouldn’t remember back that far.”
“Who’s Mamie Dalkins?”
“A sweet little old lady in Gakona who keeps trying to ply me with food. I met her after she shot a bear on her back porch.
Kenzie’s eyebrows went up. “She shot it herself ?”
“Hell yeah. She can’t weigh more than 90 pounds soaking wet, but the bear made the mistake of keeping her up all night, trying to get into the house. I think it could smell the salmon she’d been canning in the kitchen, but whatever it was, when she got up the next morning, she shot him.”
“Is that how you got involved?”
“She called me to report a dead bear, so yeah, I had to check on it. Christ, the thing was sprawled across her steps and it had to be nine feet tall. I don’t know how much it weighed but it was one of the biggest grizzlies I ever saw. Mamie felled it with one shot too, although she shot it a second time to make sure. It’s a wonder the gun didn’t knock her down with the recoil.”
“What on earth do you do with a dead bear on your porch?”
“Well, the rules say if you shoot a bear in self defense, you have to report it, which she did. They also say you have to skin it out and turn the hide over to Fish and Game. I couldn’t ask a little old lady to skin a thousand pound bear—although I’ll bet she’d manage it somehow—so I did it for her. Been friends ever since. Of course she keeps trying to give me jars of canned bear meat, but other than that, we get along great.”
“She canned the meat?”
“No kidding, every last bit of it smoked, canned, or frozen. She even made some kind o
f bear sausage. I’m sure it’ll last her the rest of her natural life—or maybe mine. I wouldn’t put it past her to will it to me.” He gave a mock shudder and Kenzie couldn’t help laughing.
“I take it you don’t like bear meat?”
“Had some when I was five. It was greasy and stank like bear, and it didn’t agree with me. Put me off of it ever since. Funny how the little things that happen to you as a kid are so intense.”
“Yeah.” Her smile faded, and he wondered what she was remembering.
“Anyway, I don’t know what kind of information you already have, but Mamie would know who to talk to if you need to do any research on local legends. She knows everything that goes on in the Copper River basin, past and present—and what she doesn’t know just hasn’t happened yet.”
“Sounds like Lucinda Perkins and Mabel Rainier back home. Between the two of them, they know everything there is to know.” She made a face then. “And they give free advice.”
“Let me guess, they’re concerned about your love life too?”
“Immensely concerned. So much so that they had to discuss it in the middle of the damn grocery store. That got Mavis Williams to leave the produce department and join in. Then Enid Malkinson got involved and if that old Siamese cat of hers hadn’t suddenly jumped out of her bag and run through the store, I’d probably still be there.”
“Four to one. That’s tough odds. You usually only get that at family gatherings.”
“Dunvegan’s a small town and my family’s lived in the area for decades. Even though I’m not there much, everyone feels entitled to an opinion.”
“Dunvegan,” he repeated. “Isn’t that in Canada?”
“Northern Alberta.”
He grinned then. “Nice to meet a fellow countryman.” He pointed at the road ahead. “There’s the turnoff. You can just drop me off up there.”
“Wait a minute, you’re Canadian?”
“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you about it when we go out for dinner. Would you prefer bowling or dancing afterward?” It was satisfying to see her control wobble as she steered the truck to the shoulder.
“Jeez, do you feel sorry for me or something? I’m not going out with you, no matter what country you’re from.”
“Naw-aw, I made the offer before I heard how concerned your family was, so it’s hardly a pity date. How about giving me your phone number?”
“No,” she said, and brought the truck to a jerky stop.
He shrugged, and produced a dog-eared business card with the Fish and Game logo from his shirt pocket. “I’ll give you mine then. If you have any trouble with bears, give me a call. There’s a lot of big griz up there, all gathered to catch salmon at this time of year, and they can be a problem when you’re camping.” He waited a second, then added. “It’s my job.”
He didn’t think she’d take it, but at last she plucked the card from his fingers and stuffed it in her own shirt pocket—which he couldn’t help but notice was tantalizingly rounded, and the button had to be directly over her ...
“Thanks, I’ll keep that in mind,” she said without conviction. Damned if her bottom lip didn’t look just a little bit sulky. He was torn between wanting to kiss it and wanting to laugh. Since either choice would likely be harmful to his health, however, he opted to get out of the truck. “Wait.” He leaned back in the window. “Be sure to leave the Richardson Highway or you’ll end up in Fairbanks. Take the Tok Cutoff and you’ll come right to Chistochina.”
She saluted him and Josh walked back to get his tire. He thumped on the canopy after he put the tailgate back up and watched the pickup drive away until he couldn’t see it anymore. It was the Fourth of July, and he could swear that there were fireworks going off in his bloodstream, thanks to Kenzie Macleod. And her initial outburst had been downright endearing rather than irritating. Why would that be? And why would the woman who’d just turned him down be miles more attractive to him than that cute redheaded waitress at The Caribou? Could it be those big gray eyes that arrested him? Or maybe it was her long, long legs.
Or maybe it was the bright blue aura that surrounded her. She probably didn’t know she even had it, never mind that he could see it. And Josh would bet money that she had no idea what it had revealed to him.
Last summer, Kenzie had ordered a high-resolution satellite image of the Copper River basin directly north of Chistochina. The results had helped her choose the site for the dig, but that was only the beginning. Now that she was here, she needed to perform a surface survey, walking miles upon miles in careful patterns. Most archaeologists assembled teams in order to cover more ground. Not Kenzie. She worked alone and efficiently, simply using her lupine form to pace out the vast area on four tireless feet. The advantage was that she had a feel for the terrain that went far beyond the visual. Archaeology was both a science and an art, and her instincts—as vital as her education—were telling her she’d found the right spot on a forested shelf of land above the river flats.
The Chistochina River wound a bright blue serpentine path between spruce-covered bluffs and hills on its way to the much larger Copper River. This high spot would be where the ancient Ahtna had set up camp, where they could see for miles, where it was safe from flooding, and where they had ready access to the salmon that came upriver to spawn each year. Moose and caribou were plentiful most years but the salmon were far more dependable, leaving the ocean to travel countless miles up the Copper and its tributaries.
Field conditions were excellent. At this time of year, the earth was dry, but not too dry. Kenzie dug a test pit about a meter deep and examined the colors and textures of the soil strata, confirming that the site did indeed have the potential she had hoped for. The scent of the earth was primal and exhilarating, and she found herself wondering if her brother James felt this way when he was planting fields. Perhaps they were a little bit alike after all.
Finally she selected her datum or mapping point at the southwest corner of her planned dig site and laid out excavation units with strings and metal stakes. Each unit was about two-by-two meters, and she marked off about twenty of them, although it was unlikely she would uncover them all. One of the rules of modern archaeology was never to dig up the entire site, saving some areas untouched for what future technology might be able to reveal. It was a principle that science had learned the hard way, after many early archaeologists threw away countless shards of broken pottery, bits of burnt wood, animal bones and shells, stone and obsidian fragments, mistakenly judging them to be worthless. Only the intact artifacts were kept and studied and all that the so-called garbage might have told future generations of archaeologists was lost forever.
It was late in the afternoon when Kenzie surveyed her initial work with satisfaction. Time to set up her campsite. Usually it would be within a stone’s throw of the dig but she found herself strangely restless. Deciding to take a break and stretch her legs, Kenzie left the camping gear in the truck and went looking for possible cell phone reception. Her work took her to isolated places where her cell was usually little more than a paperweight, so it was a pleasant surprise to discover a reliable four-bar signal on top of a knoll. Even more pleasant was the stunning view of the Chistochina River. She decided then and there that she’d found her home base for the next four months. The site was high above the river and was a hike of nearly a mile to her dig. The distance was nothing to her, of course, an easy stroll. And if the dig site was ten miles away, it would still be worth it to have cell reception. She parked the truck on the flats below, next to the rough and overgrown miner’s trail that had begun its life long ago during the gold rush days, and hauled her supplies up to the top of the hill.
Once the tent was pitched and her gear unpacked, she sank into a camp chair overlooking the river. The shadows were getting long, although the sun wouldn’t actually set until 11:30—and then for only about five hours. She loved that about the north—lots of time to work. And the nights were never totally dark, the skies remaining more of a
deep twilight. Further north in Alaska, the sun didn’t dip below the horizon at all at this time of year, but Kenzie preferred a short night rather than none at all. As a Changeling, she instinctively appreciated those magical hours ruled by the moon, even if she didn’t have to obey the moon herself.
Without warning she found herself wondering what Josh was doing, as she had many times throughout the day. She still couldn’t remember his last name but she sure couldn’t forget anything else about him. Those eyes had been the color of obsidian when they flashed in the sun, but it was the intelligence and humor behind them that intrigued her. Okay, well, he was also unquestionably hot and she figured he’d be a treat for any woman to look at.
But she had been the one to look, to notice, to appraise... What was wrong with her? Why would she find a human so intensely attractive? If her inner wolf had been able to purr, she was sure it would have each and every time an image of Josh popped into her head. The strange feelings were no doubt left over from all the family stuff she’d left behind in Dunvegan. Her siblings, the new baby, the Pack, the sense of home, of belonging. Not to mention both the subtle and not-so-subtle pressure to find a mate. She was still mortified about blurting that out to a complete stranger. But it was just further proof of the stress she was feeling. And she was never going to see Josh again, so it hardly mattered, did it?
Her inner wolf whined a little at that thought....
Kenzie rolled her eyes. Obviously she needed a distraction, preferably one with some sense and especially one that wouldn’t lecture her. Probably wouldn’t lecture her. Pulling out her cell phone, she speed-dialed Birkie and was relieved when her friend answered.
“Hey there, sugar. Good to hear your voice. You all set up?”
“Pretty much. Got a nice spot above the river valley—you should see it, Birkie. So has my niece got a name yet?”
“Well, they went through the whole family tree, figuring maybe they’d name her after somebody, but they couldn’t agree. In the end it was Culley that accidently named her.”