A Soldier's Pledge
Nadia Nichols
She's never lost a client, but this could be a first!Cameron Johnson thought she'd found the perfect life as a guide and bush pilot in Canada's Northwest Territories until one of her clients disappeared in the wilderness. Jack Parker had been searching for the dog that saved his life when he was deployed in Afghanistan—a dog his sister had helped bring stateside only to lose him along the Wolf River.Jack's traveling on a prosthetic leg, and after just one day Cameron’s sure he'll be ready to give up and climb into her canoe. Once she finds him. Well, she's about to get a thorough lesson in stubbornness from a veteran who won’t give up…
She’s never lost a client, but this could be a first!
Cameron Johnson thought she’d found the perfect life as a guide and bush pilot in Canada’s Northwest Territories until one of her clients disappeared in the wilderness. Jack Parker had been searching for the dog that saved his life when he was deployed in Afghanistan—a dog his sister had helped bring stateside only to lose him along the Wolf River.
Jack’s traveling on a prosthetic leg, and after just one day, Cameron’s sure he’ll be ready to quit and climb into her canoe. Once she finds him. Well, she’s about to get a thorough lesson in stubbornness from a veteran who won’t give up...
“This smells like real cowboy coffee.”
“It’ll float a spoon,” he said.
“Just how I like it.” She took a sip. “Perfect.”
Her eyes were as dark as her hair, fringed with thick lashes. Her face was slender, cheekbones high, lips curved in a smile. In the dim confines of the tent, after that plunge in the icy river and the mighty struggle with the canoe, she should have looked like a scrawny wet rat, not a sexy fashion model.
“Why are you here?” he said, blunt and to the point.
She shook her head, took another swallow of coffee. “My boss dropped me off up at the lake so I could canoe downriver and deliver a message from your sister.” She ran the fingers of one hand through her wet, shoulder-length hair, sweeping it back from her face, and gazed at him frankly. “She’s very worried about you. I spoke with her on the phone yesterday. She told me what happened to your dog, and she feels bad about it.”
He made no comment. He had nothing to say to this girl about his dog or his sister.
His life was none of her business.
Dear Reader (#ulink_6ed4e520-9508-54e2-8eb5-c90db66cc9cf),
Like many fictional stories, A Soldier’s Pledge found its origins in real life. One segment of a documentary was being filmed at my workplace. The documentary was called Searching for Home: Coming Back from War, and one of the soldiers being filmed for the documentary had lost his leg while serving a tour of duty in Iraq.
I am deeply indebted to Sergeant Brandon Deaton for his personal insight into a wounded warrior’s difficult journey back from war. Any inaccuracies are my own. This story is about a fictional character, but is dedicated to all soldiers, past and present, who served and sacrificed to protect our nation, and to those who served and didn’t come home.
Nadia Nichols
A Soldier’s Pledge
Nadia Nichols
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
NADIA NICHOLS went to the dogs at the age of twenty-nine and currently operates a kennel of twenty-eight Alaskan huskies. She has raced her sled dogs in northern New England and Canada, works at the family-owned Harraseeket Inn in Freeport, Maine, and is also a registered Maine Master Guide.
She began her writing career at the age of five, when she made her first sale, a short story called “The Bear,” to her mother for 25 cents. This story was such a blockbuster that her mother bought every other story she wrote, and kept her in ice-cream money throughout much of her childhood.
Now all her royalties go toward buying dog food. She lives on a remote solar-powered northern Maine homestead with her sled dogs, a Belgian draft horse named Dan, several cats, two goats and a flock of chickens. She can be reached at nadianichols@aol.com.
Contents
Cover (#u2951cbbf-1e0b-5f7a-b2c3-75884538e870)
Back Cover Text (#u53470e81-0910-5a60-b5e5-3c8d044cdf50)
Introduction (#ufca2cf86-1528-5185-8e33-f366e6069912)
Dear Reader (#ulink_08d598ad-3983-5d76-a06f-c767a3f7e14a)
Title Page (#u127b0822-1200-5663-858d-818ed89eb782)
About the Author (#uadcaac08-0212-5a45-ab7c-4027f348a7b9)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_e8e44739-3f83-5b4f-ae04-b44c6bc376f6)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_5384c2cc-0f5c-5440-b436-6f8c85e65d00)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_40b683c9-5848-5b0d-9248-9e42a5f32938)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_4c104e54-4b70-5dcd-92cb-4be87fe4ee35)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_af9a6599-2f0b-5791-9dae-e337aeec88cc)
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_b814a55f-5e5e-5d84-b72b-27a90a87d038)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_229d121c-7c96-54e4-bb3a-61aa1e56eb2a)
SHE FIRST SAW him through the smoke of a forest fire. He was standing on the end of the dock where the smoke jumpers waited for the planes, backpack and rifle case resting at his feet, staring off across the river. Normally the ferry landing could be seen on the opposite shore, but with the wind out of the west, smoke roiled over the water like thick fog that glowed a dark molten red in the sunrise. Cameron took a second sip from her first cup of coffee and squinted out the window of Walt’s cluttered office.
“That him?” she asked, leaning forward until her nose almost touched the grimy, flyspecked pane. Stupid question. Who else would be standing there at dawn? Her brain was muddled from lack of sleep and three beers at the pool hall the night before.
“That’s him,” Walt said, his voice as rough as hers from breathing smoke for days on end. “Said he drove all night to get here and there’s a big storm front right behind him. Been waiting there pretty near two hours.”
“Well, he’ll have to wait a little longer, smoke’s too thick to fly. Jeez, Walt, I can’t believe you called me at oh-dark-thirty to get me down here. This was supposed to be my first day off in over two weeks.”
“Wind’s going to shift pretty quick. I listened to the forecast. You’ll be able to get him where he wants to go.”
“Where’s that?”
“Kawaydin Lake, headwaters of the Wolf River.”
“He’s taking a fishing trip in the middle of a forest fire?”
“Didn’t see a fly rod or a kick float. He’s traveling light. His total kit weighed under fifty pounds.”
“When’s he want to be picked up?”
“Doesn’t. Says he’s going to walk down the Wolf to the Mackenzie.”
Cameron laughed aloud. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Says it’ll take him eight days, and he’ll send us a signal on his GPS transmitter when it’s time to pick him up.”
“He might be standing on that dock for eight days if the wind doesn’t shift. By the way, this coffee’s terrible. When and if Jeri ever comes back, give her a raise. A big one. Then tell her if she leaves again you’ll fire her, and if she stays you’ll marry her.”
Walt looked like he hadn’t bathed, shaved or slept in two weeks, which was just about how long the fire east of the park had been burning out of control and just about how long Jeri had been gone. The first two weeks of August had been fourteen miserable days of nonstop work and bad coffee.
“Plane’s all gassed up, ready to go,” Walt said.
“I thought the park service closed the area down to nonessential personnel.”
“They’ve okayed this because it’s way outside the fire area and it’s not inside the park. Don’t complain. This works out good for us. He’s paying a lot of money to get flown out to that lake.”
“Speaking of flying, the plane was running rough enough to spit rivets yesterday, Walt. She’s overdue for a checkup.”
“He’s paying a lot of money,” Walt repeated. “That plane’s not up for inspection for another month. She’ll get you there and back, and you know it. It’s three hours’ flying time, round-trip. You’ll be napping in your rusty old trailer by noon. Look, see that? The wind’s already shifting out of the south, just like they said it would.”
Cameron glanced at her wristwatch and thought about how dog tired she was. If she’d known about this job in advance, she wouldn’t have played pool until 2:00 a.m. “What about Mitch? Can’t he do it?”
“He ferried a big crew of smoke jumpers out to Frazier Lake yesterday to fight the fire, then he was going to drop another crew back in Yellowknife. He won’t be back till late this afternoon. C’mon, Cam, it’s an easy hop. I’ll throw a bonus at you for flying him out there.”
“How much?”
“Hundred bucks.”
She took another sip of stale, bitter coffee. It was no better than the first. “Walt, that’s your second joke of the morning. You’re on a real roll.”
“Hundred fifty.”
“Two hundred fifty and a week off, paid, or I’m going back to bed and you can fly him out there yourself.”
Walt hesitated. “Hundred fifty and two days off if we get the heavy rains they’re predicting tonight. If not, you’ll have to keep flying the jumpers. I don’t have any other pilots right now, you know that, and you also know we need the money.”
Cameron tugged on the brim of her Gore-Tex ball cap and sighed in defeat. Walt’s expression instantly brightened. “Good. I’ve already loaded supplies that you can drop over to Frazier Lake after you get the Lone Ranger situated.”
“That’s wasn’t part of the bargain.”
“Mitch’s plane was overloaded with smoke jumpers. He didn’t have room for any provisions. Those jumpers have to eat, and you can swing over there easy as pie on the way home.”
“Easy as pie. Right.” She attempted another swallow of coffee and looked out the grimy window. The sky was brightening as the wind shifted and pushed the smoke to the west. The old red-and-white de Havilland Beaver tied to the dock rocked gently on small river swells. Cameron thought about the past four months, moving up here after an ugly divorce, living in a battered old house trailer two miles from the airstrip, flying as much as she could because when she was flying she could outrun her past, and if she flew fast enough and far enough, who knew? She might catch a glimpse of the future, and maybe it would look good.
“What’s the Lone Ranger’s name?” she asked.
* * *
THE WONDERFUL THING about the red-and-white Beaver, tail number DHC279, was the tremendous amount of noise it generated in midflight, that great big Wasp engine roaring away, metal rattling, wind whistling through all the cracks. The noise made conversation impossible, which suited Cameron right down to the ground. She had no desire to make small talk with clients when flying them to their destinations. She hid behind her sunglasses and liked to be alone with her thoughts. She never tired of studying the landscape, the rivers and lakes, the mountains and valleys, the wilderness that appeared so pristine, so untouched by human hands. This wild landscape was a balm to her spirit. She liked to daydream about building a cabin in this valley, or maybe that one, down where those two small rivers converged...or that next valley wasn’t bad, either; it had a natural meadow that would make a good garden spot.
And hey, was that a wolf down there? No, two wolves, trotting along the riverbank. The spotting of wildlife from the air never ceased to thrill her.
Her passenger made no attempt at conversation but seemed equally content to watch the world slip beneath the plane’s wings. The forest fire’s destruction was visible west toward the park. Thick plumes of smoke nearly obliterated the dark bank of clouds advancing from the south. If this front brought the promised rain, two intense weeks of flying smoke jumpers in and out of the park would come to a welcome end.
The plane touched down on the lake just past nine thirty after a one-and-a-half-hour flight. Cameron taxied toward the shore, cut the engine, popped her door open and climbed down onto the pontoon. When the bottom shallowed up, she lowered herself carefully into the water, well aware of how slippery the smooth stones could be underfoot. Bracing her heels, she caught hold of the wing rope to pivot the plane. A second rope hitched to the pontoon acted as a tether, and she hauled the back of the floats toward shore.
Her passenger opened the side door and climbed onto the pontoon, hauled his pack out of the door behind him, slung his rifle case over his shoulder and closed the door. He waded ashore with his pack and rifle case, and leaned both against a big round rock near the shore’s edge. She hadn’t noticed his limp when he was getting into the plane back at the village. She’d been too busy prepping the plane. He straightened, turned to look at her and took off his sunglasses. Good-looking man. Well built. Short military-style haircut. Squint lines at the corners of clear hazel eyes that had seen too much, maybe. Strong features. Early to mid-thirties. But there was something about him that made her uneasy. Not many chose to be dropped off alone in such a remote spot, with so little gear.
“Thanks,” he said.
“You’re welcome,” Cameron replied, hiding behind her shades. “My boss says you’re planning to follow this river out to the Mackenzie?”
“That’s right.”
“It’s rough going through there. Wild country. Going solo’s pretty risky, and what you’re carrying for gear isn’t much.”
“It’ll get me there.”
“Did you hurt your leg jumping out of the plane?”
“No,” he said.
The wind gusted, and the plane tugged at the tether rope like a balky horse. Cameron tugged back. “This is grizzly country. They can hang along the rivers like brown bears this time of year, and they can be territorial.”
He leaned against the rock, half sitting, and folded his arms across his chest.
“We’re the intruders here,” she continued. “A brown or grizzly will bluff charge. If you get into a Mexican standoff and the bear charges, wait until he crosses the point of no return. Chances are if you stand your ground he’ll stop twenty, thirty feet out or better. No need to shoot him. Of course, if it’s a sow with cubs, all bets are off.”
“I’ll try to remember that.”
She felt a twinge of annoyance. Most guys enjoyed talking to her. Most guys actually came on to her. Something about young women pilots really got them all hot and horny. This one spoke politely, but she had the definite impression he just wanted her to go away. “Most people who get flown into this lake want to fish for char or canoe down the Wolf, or both. It’s a beautiful stretch of river. Not too many people know about it.” Why was she trying to make conversation with a man who didn’t want to talk? He’d brought a weapon. Clearly he understood about the bears. “What’s your contingency plan if you get into trouble, say you break your leg or something?”
“I have a GPS transmitter. When I reach the Mackenzie, I’ll request your flying service to pick me up.”
“You really think you can make that distance in eight days?”
“Yes.”
“Well, in case you don’t, we fly year-round. If you signal us six months from now, we’ll pick you up, and if you get into any trouble, I guess you know how to hit an SOS button.” Cameron flushed from the effort of anchoring the plane and making awkward conversation. “Well, it’s your party. I’ll leave you to it. Have a nice hike.”
She unfastened the tether from the pontoon, wrapped it neatly, climbed back into the cockpit, slammed her door harder than necessary, put on her safety harness and fired up the old Beaver. She taxied slowly back out into the lake, taking her time and casting frequent frowns toward the shore, where the man still leaned against the large smooth rock, watching her depart. This remote lake was large and deep enough to make a good place for floatplanes to drop clients, though not many came up here. Most wanted to be flown to the Nahanni, or to Norman Wells. Cameron had never been to this lake before, though she’d dropped adventurers at other lakes with their gear and canoes. Cheerful adventurers, too. Totally the opposite of the taciturn Lone Ranger.
His name was Jack Parker, and he hailed from a place called Bear Butte, Montana, according to the contact information left at the plane base. After the Beaver lifted off the surface of the lake, she banked around for one last glimpse of him sitting on the rock beside his rifle and pack. He lifted his arm in a slow wave, and she dipped one wing in reply. She felt uneasy leaving him there, a loner with an untold story, and wondered if the world would ever see him again.
* * *
THE FLIGHT TO Frazier Lake was uneventful, and the provisions were off-loaded enthusiastically by the crew there. They were glad to get the supplies. She lifted off immediately afterward, declining an invitation to lunch because she didn’t like the look of the weather rolling in from the south. “Gotta go, boys, I’m flying right into that stuff.”
Ten minutes later she changed her flight plan, radioing Walt. “I’d be home napping in my rusty house trailer by now if you hadn’t sent me to Frazier,” she said. “Ceiling’s dropping like a rock, and I’m heading back to Kawaydin Lake. I’ll wait there till conditions improve.”
“Roger that,” Walt said.
“You owe me two weeks’ paid vacation,” she said. He squelched the radio twice, and she laughed aloud. “Cheap bastard.”
Thirty minutes later Cameron was back at the lake, and it was just starting to rain. She landed the plane and taxied to the place where she’d dropped off the Lone Ranger, who was predictably nowhere to be seen. She waded ashore with the tether rope after pivoting the plane, and tied off to the nearest stalwart spruce at the edge of the lake. If the lake got rough, she’d have to taxi back out into deep water and drop anchor to protect the floats from damage, but right now it was fairly calm and she was curious to see how far the limping Lone Ranger had walked. She pulled off her waders and laced on her leather hiking boots while sitting on the same rock her passenger had used, then folded over the tops of her waders to keep them dry. She strapped a holstered .44 pistol around her waist, shrugged into her rain gear, switched her ball cap for her broad-brimmed Snowy River hat and shouldered a small backpack she always carried in the plane with her own emergency gear.
It was raining hard now, big drops hammering like bullets onto the lake’s surface, each impact creating a small explosion. The sound was deafening. She’d reached the lake just in the nick of time to set the plane down ahead of the bad weather, so she was feeling pretty good about things. This heavy, soaking rain would drown that forest fire once and for all. If it rained hard for two days, all the better. It had been a dry summer.
The Lone Ranger’s tracks were quickly being erased by the rain, but they were still easy enough to follow along the shoreline. They made a beeline for the wooded shore on the north side of the headwaters of the Wolf River. She followed them, intending to walk a few miles or until the wind came up and she had to return to the plane. With his pronounced limp and the rough terrain, she figured she’d catch up to him before too long.
When she saw the tent set up on a small bluff, set back from the edge of the river and not one hundred yards from the headwaters, she came to a surprised halt. For a man whose agenda was to hike nearly eighty miles in eight days, he’d set up camp a good twelve hours early. He could have covered five miles, easy, ten if he pushed hard. It was a blue tent with a darker blue fly, made all the gloomier by the rain, which created such a racket bouncing off the fly she could walk right up to the tent without being heard, so that’s what she did.
“Hello the camp!” she said outside the tent’s door, which was zipped up tight. There was no response from within. Her sense of uneasiness built. Why had he come out here all by himself? Perhaps he had no intention of walking to the Mackenzie. Maybe this whole trip had been a suicide mission. Had he already done himself in? Was he lying inside the tent, dead? “Hello the camp!” she shouted.
“Hold your horses,” a man’s voice said, rough with sleep. The door unzipped. He looked out at her, fatigue shadowing his face, and motioned for her to enter. It was a small tent, hardly big enough for the both of them, but she shrugged off her pack, left it in the vestibule created by the fly, and crawled inside on her hands and knees. It was more than a little odd making her way into the Lone Ranger’s tent, but it beat conversing in the pouring rain.
His pack and rifle case took up the rear wall. His sleeping bag was laid out. He doubled it onto itself and sat on it, one leg straight out, the other drawn up to his chest. She sat down cross-legged on the sleeping mat. The door of the tent was open, and the dark blur of river tumbling past the door made her dizzy.
“Sorry to bother you, but the weather closed in and I had to turn around,” Cameron explained before he could question her unexpected visit. “Since I have to wait out the bad weather, I thought I’d just make sure you were on the right trail.”
He grinned wryly at that. They both knew there were no trails except those made by wild animals in this land. “You’re wondering why I made camp when there’s a good ten hours of daylight left.”
Cameron removed her hat, which was dripping water onto the floor of the tent. “None of my business how far and fast you travel,” she said. “You can camp wherever and whenever you like.”
“I’ve been on the road three days and drove all night to make the floatplane base first thing this morning after hearing the weather forecast. Figured I had a narrow window of opportunity to get flown in.”
“You figured right,” she said.
“My plan is to rest up today and get a fresh start in the morning.”
“Good plan.”
They sat and listened to the rain pounding down on the flimsy tent. Cameron hoped the tent pegs held under the strain. “Well,” she said after a long awkward moment, “I’ll get back to the plane, and as soon as there’s a break in the weather, I’ll head home.”
“Good plan,” he said.
“I probably could’ve made it okay, but my father always told me that optimism has no place in the cockpit.”
“Sound advice.”
Once again he’d succeeded in making her feel foolish. Last night at Ziggy’s, three men had hit on her while she was playing pool. She could have gone home with any one of them, if that was her game. It wasn’t, but she liked knowing that she could have her pick. She enjoyed the attention of men when she wanted it, and was used to flirting, having her drinks paid for, then spurning her admirers, holding them at arm’s length and sometimes breaking their hearts. This guy annoyed her. No ring on his finger, not married and not the least bit interested in her. Wanted her to leave so he could go back to sleep.
Cameron pulled on her hat. She loved her Snowy River hat and thought it made her look especially sexy. To most guys, anyway.
“Well, okay then, I’ll head back to the plane,” she repeated. He made no response.
She crawled back out of the tent and into the torrential downpour, pushed to her feet, gave a small wave to the Lone Ranger and headed back toward the plane. “What a weirdo,” she muttered to herself as she trudged away, not sure if she was talking about Jack Parker or herself.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_5283aa1e-61ca-596b-9ddd-77cbe4678085)
AFTER SPENDING A miserable cramped night sitting in the plane, sating her hunger with four granola bars and her thirst with water from her kit, Cameron was relieved when morning brought a higher cloud cover, lighter rain and the welcome opportunity to head home. She pumped water out of the plane’s pontoons—they both had slow leaks—then pushed the plane into deeper water and hopped back on board. She wondered if the Lone Ranger had already broken camp as the Beaver’s pontoons rocked free of the lake and the plane roared into the air. Would he hear her taking off? Was he still asleep or was he already on the trail? What did she care? Why was she even thinking about him?
All she cared about right now was getting some coffee. Not Walt’s coffee. His wasn’t fit to drink. When she got back, she was heading to the diner. She was going to order a huge plate of ham and eggs and toast and greasy home fries, and a bottomless cup of very strong hot black coffee. Her stomach growled in anticipation. A stiff headwind slowed her progress, but even so she was taxiing up to the dock by 7:20 a.m. Walt came out to tie off the plane.
“You owe me,” she said as she climbed out. “Big time.”
Walt was wearing one of his expressions. “Listen,” he said slowly as they walked down the dock toward the office. “Got a phone call yesterday after you left. It was from that guy’s sister. Lori Tedlow was her name. I couldn’t follow her conversation too good, she started crying, so I told her you’d call her back just as soon as you returned.”
Cameron halted abruptly and rounded on her boss. “What? I have nothing to tell her. She already knows where he is, right? You told her where I dropped him off, right? What more could I add to what she already knows?” She felt another surge of annoyance at this latest development.
“She was upset. Crying. You’re a woman. Women are better at handling stuff like that. She’s waiting for your call.”
“Walt, I’m starving. I haven’t had any coffee, I’m crippled from spending the night in the plane and I want my bonus money.”
“Yeah, I heard you lost a bundle at Ziggy’s, playing pool the other night.”
“Hank cheats. So does Slouch.” Cameron entered the office, tossed her ball cap on the desk, pulled the band from her ponytail and finger combed her dark shoulder-length hair. “One of these days they’ll pay, soon as I figure out how they’re doing it. I’m missing way too many easy shots I could make blindfolded when I was twelve.”
“I won’t be able to get your money till the bank opens. Coffee?” Walt asked, lifting the pot from the hot plate.
“No way. The coffee you make should be banned. I’m going to the diner for a real cup of joe and a big breakfast, and then I’m going to take a long hot shower in my rusty old trailer, and then I’m going to come back here and collect my bonus, so you better have it ready. Bank opens at nine. I’ll be back at nine thirty sharp.”
“If I have your bonus ready, will you make the phone call?” Walt asked hopefully.
“Nope. You talk to the Lone Ranger’s sister. I’m just the pilot who flies the plane. You’re the boss. You get the big bucks for handling all the drama. Tell her he was fine when I left him yesterday. I can’t vouch for how he is today. Wet, probably.” Cameron pulled her hat on and started for the door.
“I know how Hank and Slouch are fouling your shots,” Walt said as she reached for the doorknob. She paused and looked over her shoulder. “If you make that phone call for me, I’ll let you in on their dirty little secret.”
She hesitated just long enough to make Walt squirm before nodding. “Deal.”
* * *
TWO HOURS LATER she was back at the floatplane base, clean, well fed and dialing the number Walt had provided her. A woman’s voice answered on the third ring, and Cameron studied the words she’d carefully drafted on a paper napkin while she ate her breakfast at the diner.
“Mrs. Tedlow?” she said, speaking slowly. “This is Cameron Johnson. I’m a pilot for Walt’s Flying Service, and Walt asked me to call you when I got to the office this morning.” She read the words aloud over the phone to the Lone Ranger’s sister in Montana. Writing her opening had been clever. She had a tendency to get tongue-tied on the phone, so she’d made extensive notes in preparation for this call.
“Thank you so much for getting back to me, Cameron,” the woman replied. “I really appreciate it. I’m afraid I wasn’t very coherent when I called yesterday. I apologize for that. I was just so relieved to have finally located my brother. And please, call me Lori.”
“Walt understands completely how upset you were yesterday.” Cameron shot a glance at Walt, who gave her an encouraging nod and two thumbs up. “He’s a very understanding man.” She scanned her notes and continued reading. “I just wanted to let you know that I saw your brother yesterday afternoon, and he was just fine. He’d set up camp and was going to get a good night’s rest and start his hike today. It’s not raining nearly so hard now, so it won’t be bad going at all.”
“It’s raining up there?”
“First real rain we’ve had all summer, and it was coming down cats and dogs yesterday.”
“Oh no!”
“It’s not a bad thing. We needed the rain. We’ve been fighting a big forest fire up here, and thanks to this downpour it’s just about out.” She was getting way off script. She turned over the napkin and continued reading from her notes. “Your brother told me he was carrying an emergency transmitter, and he’s programmed our number into it. If he gets into any trouble at all, we’ll get him out. We have good search and rescue up here, what with the park being so close to us and all.”
There was a frustrated sound on the other end of the line. “My brother wouldn’t signal for help if he was being eaten by a grizzly. He’s an army ranger, and they all think they’re invincible. Look, Cameron, I’m going to be blunt. He checked himself out of Walter Reed—that’s a military hospital near DC. He was in rehab. He was badly wounded in Afghanistan and needs medical supervision and treatment. He can’t be wandering around in the wilderness. He has to be brought back before he gets into trouble. He could die out there in the shape he’s in.”
Cameron shot Walt an exaggerated frown. “I guess I’m not following you. You expect us to find your brother and bring him back? That’s not our job.”
“I know that, but you have to understand, this is all my fault. I’m to blame. This has to do with his dog.”
“This is about a dog?”
“I should have told him about his dog last summer after it happened, but I didn’t want him to freak out or be distracted when he was still deployed and doing dangerous soldiering stuff. I knew he’d be really angry at me, so I just kept putting it off. I kept lying to him and telling him everything was fine, and then when I went to see him in the hospital last week, I told him what happened and he just...” Her voice squeezed off and ended in a high pitched, mouse-like squeak.
Cameron waited a few moments for the woman to collect herself. She covered the phone and mouthed to Walt, “I bet she’s a blonde.”
“I’m sorry,” Lori continued shakily.
“No need to apologize, Lori. I think I understand the situation. You were taking care of your brother’s dog while he was deployed and something bad happened to it, and when you finally told him, he freaked out and took off.”
“It’s worse than that.” She paused, and the sound of her blowing her nose came over the line. “This wasn’t just any dog. This dog saved his life in Afghanistan. Twice. They featured the story on the national news down here in the States. We held fund-raisers to get the dog home because Jack was so attached to her. It took forever and three thousand dollars, but we finally got her flown back here a year ago last June.
“My fiancé and I had been planning for two years to do this paddling trek in Northwest Territories last July. My mother offered to take care of the dog, but she was really sick from her chemo treatments, so we thought we’d just bring the dog along with us rather than put her in a boarding kennel, you know? She’d gotten to know us and was well behaved. We traveled up where you are to take a canoe trip down the Wolf River to the Mackenzie, and then to Norman Wells.” There was a snuffling noise, another squeak or two, and then Lori resumed. “Everything went fine until a huge bear came into our camp on the second night. It walked right in while we were cooking dinner. The dog chased the bear off and she never came back. We waited there awhile, then moved a short distance downriver to get away from our cooking spot and stayed for two days hoping she’d return.”
“The bear probably killed her,” Cameron said. “Bears don’t like dogs very much.”
“That’s what we figured. Still, we didn’t know. Maybe she got lost, couldn’t figure out where we went, or maybe she was hurt and just lying out there. We waited for two days, looked around as best we could, then left her there. That’s the bottom line. When I told my brother about it in the hospital, he told me to leave. Wouldn’t talk to me, he was so upset. It was awful, the worst moment of my life. The next morning when I went back to see him again, he was gone. They told me he got up in the night, got dressed and walked out.”
“So now he’s up here, searching for a dog that’s probably been dead since last summer,” Cameron said. What a cheerful story, she thought to herself.
“There’s more,” Lori continued amid another round of sniffling, nose blowing and mousey squeaks. “Like I said, my brother got all shot up in Afghanistan. That’s why he was at Walter Reed. He was wounded four times and lost the lower part of his left leg. He spent the last two months in the hospital. At first they weren’t even sure he was going to make it. He was only recently fitted with a prosthesis and had just started physical therapy and rehab.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, but I’m not sure how I can help.”
“Don’t you see? He’ll die out there if you don’t go get him!”
“Me? How’m I supposed to rescue someone who doesn’t want to be rescued?”
“He’s depressed. There’s no telling what he’ll do. He probably brought a gun with him, too.” Cameron thought about the rifle in the case. “He could be planning to kill himself. Lots of veterans do. Twenty-two veterans commit suicide every single day, twenty-two, and I don’t want my brother to be one of them. I don’t want him to become a statistic because of something I did. This is all my fault. We shouldn’t have brought Ky on the canoe trip. We should have put her in a boarding kennel.”
“Ky’s the name of the dog?”
“Yes.” Loud sniff. “That’s what he named her because she looks so much like a coyote, but she looks more like a small wolf to me. They have wolves in the mountains of Afghanistan, where he was deployed. He really loved that dog. I mean, she was just a pup when she followed him out of the mountains. She bonded to him, and he got really attached to her.”
Cameron gnawed on what was left of her fingernail. All her fingernails were short and chewed. The past year had been a hard one on her nails. Walt moved into her line of sight, eyebrows raised in question. She shook her head and blew out a sigh. “Look, Lori, I’d like to help, but I don’t know what I can do. He has an emergency GPS with him. He can signal if he gets into trouble. Tell you what. If you come out here, I’ll fly you back to the lake and you could try to catch up with him. He’s probably not traveling very fast.”
“Believe me, I was going to fly up there yesterday but my husband Clive—we got married last August, right after our canoe trip last summer—said he wouldn’t let me go even if I hired a guide because I’m eight months pregnant. I told my brother where the bear came into our camp. It was just above a trapper’s cabin on the north shore of the Wolf. It’s the only cabin on that entire river.”
“Let me guess. You want me to look for your brother there.”
“He can’t make that kind of walk on a prosthetic leg. No way. He’ll die out there. If you could just find him and tell him how sorry I am about his dog and how much he’s needed back home, if you can just bring him back out, I’ll pay you good money.”
“Why don’t we give him the eight days he asked for? If he doesn’t show up, we can go look for him.”
“Because we’re afraid he might be suicidal,” Lori said. “Eight days is way too long to wait, and besides, there’s something else. My mother’s really sick. She didn’t want him to know how sick she was. She didn’t want me to tell him about the cancer. She didn’t want him to worry about her while he was in Afghanistan, and then when he got hurt and was shipped stateside, she made me promise not to tell him, but he really needs to know. He has to come home. You have to find him.”
Cameron gnawed on another fingernail. “What if he won’t come?”
“He will, if you tell him how bad things are with our mother,” Lori said. “Will you do it? I’m begging you.”
“Why didn’t you tell him that his mother was so sick when you saw him at the hospital?”
“I was going to, but he got so mad at me when I told him about his dog. He wouldn’t even look at me. I couldn’t add that awful news to what I’d just told him. I was going to give him time to calm down and tell him when I came to see him the next day, but he’d already gone.”
“I don’t know how much time I can spare,” Cameron hedged. “I have my job to consider.”
“Then consider this,” Lori said, her voice suddenly all steel with no trace of a mousey squeak or sniffle. “My husband Clive and I have some money in our savings account, money we were going to put toward our baby’s college fund, but we’d spend all of it to get Jack back safe and sound. I’ll pay you five thousand for getting him off that river and back to a town where we can pick him up, and a generous bonus if you can find him fast enough so we can get him back to Montana just in case my mother takes a turn for the worse. She’s holding her own right now, but that could change. What do you say? Do we have a deal?”
Cameron glanced out the window at her rusting eighteen-year-old SUV with its bald tires, badly cracked windshield and crumpled front bumper, thought about the leaks in her rusting house trailer rental, the carpet and furniture that reeked of old cigarette smoke and the moldy ceiling tiles that dropped onto the floor when it rained, and wondered how far into the future five grand would carry her. She thought about Johnny Allen’s sexy red Jeep that he’d just listed for sale. She didn’t have to think on it for long. “Okay, I’ll do it.”
After she hung up the phone, she met Walt’s questioning expression with a thoughtful frown. “Looks like our Lone Ranger really is a ranger, an army ranger, and I just went from being a bush pilot to a bounty hunter.”
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_b02b4ed7-d98c-5537-9210-525e23113635)
THE FOLLOWING MORNING she and Walt were flying the old red-and-white Beaver through a moderate rainfall back to Kawaydin Lake. Strapped to one of the Beaver’s struts was an eighteen-foot beat-up canoe they’d borrowed from one of the villagers. Behind her in the cargo compartment were provisions enough to feed an army for a week. She’d hashed out a reasonable plan for getting the Lone Ranger out to the Mackenzie River where the plane could pick him up. Walt would drop her off at the lake. Cameron would take the canoe down the Wolf River, stopping periodically to check for his tracks, and when she caught up with the wounded soldier, she’d seduce him with the idea of traveling by canoe. She figured he’d be easy to persuade after two days of bushwhacking along the river’s edge in the cold rain. By the time she found him, he’d be all over his depressing search for that long dead dog and be ready to head back to soft beds and civilization.
“They’re a critical part of my strategy,” Cameron explained when Walt questioned the amount of high end foods, including several bottles of decent red wine and three pounds of freshly ground Colombian joe.
“You must’ve shelled out a small fortune on all this fancy food and wine.”
“I only spent what I won last night at the pool hall, after shoring up that rotten section of flooring from underneath. Wish you could’ve seen those two pool sharks trying to make the floor sag and the pool table tilt without being too obvious about it. I skunked ’em in six straight games, made enough for all these groceries and then some.
“This is going to be the easiest money I ever earned,” she told Walt. “In four days, I’ll have this soldier roped, tied and delivered to his sister and that five grand will be in my bank account.”
“Better not spend it all before you earn it,” Walt advised her at the lake while helping her load the heavy cooler into the canoe in a cold dreary rain. “You might not find him, and even if you do, he might not want to come out with you.”
“Oh, I’ll find him, and I’m pretty sure he’ll jump at the chance to travel with me.” She held up two bottles of wine. “In my experience, men only care about two things. Food and sex, and wine goes good with both.”
“Did you bring handcuffs in case your strategy doesn’t work?” Walt asked.
“Duct tape,” Cameron said, stashing one bottle inside her tent bag, the other inside her sleeping bag duffel, then tucking both into the tight folds to protect them from the river’s tossing. “Duct tape works for everything. There’s a lot of money riding on this, Walt. You can count on hearing from me in four days.”
* * *
WITHIN THE HOUR the tethered canoe was loaded, and she was ready to set off. She helped Walt push the plane away from shore, waited while he taxied out onto the lake and then watched him take off and head south into a wet overcast. It was 4:00 p.m. If she started paddling now, she might overshoot the Lone Ranger before dark. Her travel time would be much faster than his, just drifting with the current down the river. The smartest thing might be to spend the night where he had first pitched his tent, then get on the river by dawn before he had a chance to break camp. He’d be easy to spot that way. His tent fly was blue and highly visible, assuming he was camped right at the river’s edge. But setting up camp right away would mean just sitting there for hours while the rain came down, waiting for the bears to find her cooler full of goodies and rip it apart.
Maybe she should just plan on deliberately overshooting the Lone Ranger and wait for him to catch up to her. If she spotted him stumbling along the shore while she was drifting effortlessly by, all the better; she’d put ashore slightly downriver of his position to give herself enough time to tidy up, get pretty and pry the cork out of one of the bottles of wine.
Then again, she’d spent a late night at the pool hall, fleecing those cheats Hank and Slouch out of all the money they’d taken from her. Hitting the sack early and drifting off to the soothing sounds of the rushing river and the rain pattering on her tent had a certain appeal. She could always haul her food up into a tree to keep it from the bears.
Whatever she decided to do, the Lone Ranger would eventually drag his bruised and battered body into her cozy comfortable camp, and she’d have him. That much was certain.
* * *
WAKING UP WAS the hardest thing; those first few moments between sleep and full consciousness, when reality came back with a sickening rush. Mornings meant remembering over and over again, on a daily basis, all the bad things that had ever happened to him. Mornings meant losing his friends all over again. Mornings meant losing his leg all over again. Mornings meant looking at that alien contraption that now substituted for his lower left leg, lying within arm’s reach on the damp tent floor. Mornings meant fitting the socket carefully over the liner and socks covering the stump of his left leg, those eight inches remaining below the knee. Mornings meant pain. The stump was raw and inflamed from yesterday’s long struggle, and even after adjusting the number of socks over the liner, the suspension socket went on hard. It was a routine he’d never once imagined would be a part of every morning for the rest of his life, but he knew he was one of the lucky ones. He’d seen plenty of soldiers less fortunate.
He could hear the river rushing past, the light drumming of rain on the tent’s fly. He could smell the damp earth and the resiny tang of spruce, the wetness of his gear. The rain would keep the insects down, but a few more days of it and his gear would be moldering. He lay back on his sleeping bag until his breathing and heart rate had steadied. Then he did sit-ups. Fifty of them. Numbering each one under his breath. He used to do one hundred effortlessly. Now he could barely manage fifty. He needed to get fit because he was going back to Afghanistan, and he was going back as a fully functioning soldier. When he was done with the sit-ups, he rolled over and did push-ups.
The pain was everywhere. There was no place he didn’t hurt, but he had learned to ignore it, to live with it. They’d given him drugs for the pain at Walter Reed, but the drugs had messed up his head. He preferred the pain. It kept him focused. He needed to stay focused on his mission.
He had to find Ky because he knew she was alive. He knew this as surely as he knew that he was alive, even though by all rights they should both be dead. He’d allotted himself eight days to find her, but he’d take twice that if he had to. He wasn’t going to leave here without her.
He rolled over, sat up, reached for his pack and dragged it toward him. Inside were his provisions, and they were minimal. Dried food, first aid and personal supplies, spare clothing, tool kit, his four-pound spare prosthesis. He pulled out a protein bar and ate it, drank the water he’d purified last night. Shifted enough to open the tent door so he could see the river. Yesterday’s progress had been slow. The water levels were high from the rain, and any shoreline he might have been able to walk on was underwater. He’d had to bushwhack inland, away from the choking tangle of alder and willow that grew along the river. Each step was a conscious effort, a struggle. He’d only recently been fitted with his prosthesis. The specialist at the rehab center had told him he’d need weeks of physical therapy to learn to use it properly.
He much preferred the physical therapy of the wilderness. If he hadn’t learned to use the damn thing after eighty miles of rough walking, they could have it back and he’d whittle himself a peg leg. He figured he’d barely made three miles yesterday, three long hard and painful miles, which left seventy-seven more ahead of him, but he wasn’t going to look that far ahead.
One step at a time was the measure of all journeys.
Breakfast over, he zipped on his left pant leg, laced the leather hiking boot on his right foot and called himself fully dressed. The cargo pants with removable legs had been a good investment. They were made of a lightweight, tough and fast-drying cloth. He could get the prosthesis off easily at day’s end, and even if he slept in the rain-wet pants, they dried quickly. Taking his kit, he crawled out of the tent and into the drizzle. He made his way to the river’s edge, crouched and splashed water on his face, washed his hands, brushed his teeth, finger combed his close-cropped hair. Didn’t bother to shave. Nobody to scare with his five o’clock shadow. Stuffing everything back into his kit, he was about to return to camp when movement on the river caught his eye.
A canoe came around the bend from upriver, a battered red canoe with one person seated in the stern, using the paddle as a rudder.
For a moment he could scarcely credit what he was seeing, because this early in the morning and in this wilderness setting he shouldn’t be seeing anything even remotely human. But as the canoe drew closer, he knew beyond a shadow of doubt that the person in the stern was that same girl who’d flown him out to the lake. The girl who’d looked too young to be driving a car, let alone flying a big bush plane in the far north. There was no mistaking that Aussie hat and the slender boyish figure that not even the orange life jacket could hide.
Before he could rise to his feet she spotted him, and he caught the flash of a smile. “Good morning!” Her cheerful greeting floated loud and clear over the rush of the river and the patter of rain. “Fancy meeting you here!”
She ferried the canoe across the strong, swift current like a voyageur, paddling with short strokes from the waist and using her upper body for leverage. It was pretty obvious she knew what she was doing in a canoe. She came toward him at a good clip, and was almost to shore when the canoe fetched up hard against a hidden rock, swung broadside to the current, spun backward in a tight arc around the submerged rock, backed hard into the downstream eddy and pitched sideways, spilling her into the river with a loud, undignified squawk.
To her credit she came up swiftly, paddle in hand. She flung the paddle onto the riverbank, grabbed the nose of the canoe and began hauling it ashore. The river swept her along, but within ten yards she got her footing and lurched backward out of the water, both hands clamped to a snub line fastened to the nose of the canoe. By the time he reached her, she had things pretty much under control, but the canoe had taken on water and was heavily loaded with gear, securely lashed in place or it would have been floating down the river. She was having trouble finding a spot to haul the canoe out. She had her heels braced against the pull of the river, and tossed the slack coils of rope to him when he came near.
“Tie her off to something, anything,” she ordered. “And hurry, this current’s strong.” She struggled to keep it from ripping the canoe out of her grasp.
He plowed through the dense tangle of alder and willow with the rope, hauled himself up the bank, found a black spruce that looked up to the task and snubbed off to it. When he returned to the river, she was watching for him over her shoulder.
“Okay?” she said.
“Okay.”
She relaxed her grip on the rope, and the canoe remained obediently tethered to shore. She was soaking wet from her swim and out of breath from the struggle to hold the canoe. Her hands flew to her head, then she stood staring downriver, stricken with shock.
“You all right?” he asked from the riverbank. “Did you hit your head?”
“I lost my Snowy River hat. I loved that hat.” She stared downriver through a veil of rain, as if it might be floating just out of reach or stuck on an overhanging branch. Her shoulders slumped, she dropped her hands and looked back at him. “I didn’t see that rock. I was too busy looking at you. Stupid of me. Now I’ll have to unload the canoe and bail it out.”
“When you’re done bailing, my camp’s just a few yards upriver. Coffee’s on.”
Her expression brightened. “Thanks,” she said.
He made his way back to the camp. The coffee was boiling over. He shut off the little multi-fuel stove and poured himself a cup. A part of him felt guilty not staying to help with the job of unloading the canoe, but he was equally annoyed that she’d invaded his morning and literally crashed his party uninvited. What was she doing here? It obviously had something to do with him, and he didn’t like that one bit.
Forty minutes later she tramped into his campsite. Her hair had come loose from the ponytail and was dripping with river and rainwater. She crawled into his tiny tent on her hands and knees, and took the insulated cup he offered with a grateful smile. She sat cross-legged and inhaled the steam.
“Thanks. This smells like real cowboy coffee.”
“It’ll float a spoon,” he said.
“Just how I like it.” She took a sip. “Perfect.” Her eyes were as dark as her hair, fringed with thick lashes. Her face was slender, cheekbones high, lips curved in a smile. In the dim confines of the tent, after that plunge in the icy river and the mighty struggle with the canoe, she should have looked like a scrawny wet rat, not a sexy Abercrombie and Fitch fashion model.
“Why are you here?” he said, blunt and to the point.
She shook her head, took another swallow of coffee. “My boss dropped me off up at the lake so I could canoe downriver and deliver a message from your sister.” She ran the fingers of one hand through her wet shoulder-length hair, sweeping it back from her face, and gazed at him frankly. “She’s very worried about you. I spoke with her by phone yesterday. She told me what happened to your dog, and she feels bad about it.”
He made no comment. He had nothing to say about his dog or his sister. His life was none of her business.
“She wanted me to tell you how sorry she was that she didn’t tell you right away, when she got back from the canoe trip last summer, and she wanted me to try to make you understand that the reason she didn’t tell you when you were in Afghanistan was because she was afraid you’d be upset by the bad news, and you’d get hurt because you were distracted.”
He pulled his pack toward him and began stuffing his sleeping bag into the bottom compartment.
“I mean, I can understand how bad your sister feels,” she continued. “And I can tell you, she was genuinely upset on the phone. She wanted me to find you and bring you out by canoe. She also said to tell you that your mother is really sick, and you need to come home right away.”
“My mother’s fine. I talked to her on the phone every day while I was at Walter Reed. I talked to her the day before you flew me out here, and she was fine. She’d have come to visit me herself when I was in the hospital, but she’s afraid of flying. My sister just told you to tell me she was real sick to get me to quit looking for a dog she thinks is dead. She feels guilty about leaving Ky out here, and she should. How much did my sister’s rich banker husband of hers offer you to find me?” he asked, not pausing in his work.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Cameron said.
“Sure you do,” he said. “You’ve wasted your time, and now you’re wasting mine.”
She finished the coffee in the mug and sat dripping quietly onto his tent floor. “I figured that’s what you’d say, but I promised her I’d try.” She watched him in silence for a few moments. “Listen, I could help you look for the dog. We could travel downriver until noon, beach the canoe, then I could walk back to this campsite, looking for tracks while you set up camp. We’d cover a lot more ground that way.”
“Tracks?” His flinty gaze locked with hers. “You know as well as I do there’s no tracking anything along this shoreline. Right now this journey is all about leaving my scent and hoping Ky gets downwind of it.”
“Well, leaving a scent trail won’t work worth a damn until it stops raining,” she said. Her eyes dropped from his, and after a brief pause she scrambled out the door and went down to the river. He watched her crouch there and wash the metal mug. His guts were churning. His sister shouldn’t have put either of them in this awkward position. It wasn’t the young pilot’s fault that she’d been sent on an impossible mission. He shouldn’t take his anger out on her. He finished packing his gear. The only thing left to do was pack up the tent, lash it to his pack and keep walking.
* * *
CAMERON TOOK HER time washing the mug, reflecting on her next move. His hostile response to her arrival hadn’t been unexpected. What she hadn’t anticipated was ramming the canoe into that submerged rock, getting all her gear wet and making a fool of herself, but that wasn’t altogether a bad thing. At least she’d found him, and rather easily, in fact. The rest of her job would be much simpler. It was just a matter of wearing him down, and the rough country would do that for her.
By the time she returned to the campsite, he’d taken down and packed up the soggy tent, donned his rain gear, shouldered his pack and picked up his rifle. They faced each other, separated by five feet of steady rainfall. “Thanks for the coffee,” she said, handing him his mug. “I’ll be heading downriver as soon as I get the canoe repacked.”
“Good,” he said.
“There’s a trapper’s cabin about a day’s easy paddle from here. Maybe twenty miles, by my calculations. That’s near the place where the bear came into your sister’s camp. I figure that’s the best place to start searching, so I’m going to find that camp, off-load most of my gear and wait for you there. You’re welcome to join me right now. We could make day trips up and down the river from there.”
“Walking this river’s my best shot at finding her, and I prefer to do it alone.”
“Suit yourself.” She stuck out her hand. “My name’s Cameron Johnson, by the way. I don’t believe we’ve ever been formally introduced.”
It took him a moment, but he returned the gesture. His hand clasp was brief and firm. “Jack Parker.”
“I have a satellite phone in my canoe, if you want to call your sister and ask her how your mother’s doing.”
“I don’t.”
“Suit yourself.”
She turned on her heel and retraced her path back to the canoe, where her small mountain of gear was piled untidily on the rough bank. The canoe, relieved of the weight of water and provisions, was safely hauled up on shore. She slid it back into the water, secured snub lines front and rear to the most stalwart of alders, and commenced repacking. There was a skill to packing a canoe, and Cameron knew it well. It took her less than thirty minutes to accomplish the task and lash the gear securely. During that time, she’d rethought her plan of action.
The wind was shifting out of the west. By nightfall the rain would have stopped, and she’d have a chance to dry out her gear. In the meantime, she’d drift downriver four, maybe five miles and set up camp in as nice a spot as she could find. She’d build a good cook fire, plan a hearty supper, get things ready for his arrival, then walk back upriver to meet him. She had three more days to land her man, but in spite of them getting off on the wrong foot, she didn’t think it would take nearly that long.
* * *
THE RAIN STOPPED before noon and the wind picked up, shredding the heavy overcast and providing brief, promising glimpses of blue sky. Jack had made poor progress. The walking was so rough along this stretch he’d had to bushwhack farther inland than the day before. At one point he’d gotten so turned around in the thick undergrowth he’d had to pull out his compass and take a bearing to navigate back to the river. The protein bar he’d eaten for breakfast had long since burned off, and he was hungry. He found a fallen log to sit on and ate another protein bar between swallows of water. His leg was really sore, but he didn’t see the point in examining it. There was nothing he could do except clean it well at night and keep the socks and liner as clean and dry as possible. The doctors had told him it was going to take some time to get used to the prosthetic limb, and adjustments would need to be made. This was just part of the breaking-in period and it was bound to be painful.
During his lunch break, the mosquitoes arrived in a hungry swarm and had him rummaging in his pack for gloves and mosquito netting. The netting had an elastic hem, and he pulled it over his hat and down onto his shoulders. The gloves were leather gauntlets. The swarm would have to find their lunch elsewhere. He rested only ten minutes, then pushed off the log and continued his journey downriver.
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_de10be5b-0726-5340-8456-f20910ec06ee)
CAMERON’S CAMPING SPOT was picture perfect, situated on a raised point of land overlooking the river. A nice breeze kept the blackflies and mosquitoes at bay, and a stately spruce with a sturdy branch about ten feet up provided the anchor point for the peak of her tent, making the pole unnecessary. Along the river’s edge, she gathered enough partially dry driftwood to build a fine campfire come evening. On the downriver side of the peninsula, she’d beached the canoe in a calm backwater eddy. Because the river curved around this point of land, the site offered good visibility both upriver and down.
Cameron felt quite pleased with the efficient way she’d set up camp. She took her time because there was no hurry. She built a functional stone fire ring for cooking, then erected her thirteen-pound center-pole Woods Canada nine-foot-by-nine-foot tent with its deluxe midge-proof screening on the doors and windows, blew up the thick air mattress, laid her sleeping bag atop it and set the novel she was reading on her pillow next to her little LED headlamp. It was a very homey nest and something to look forward to, come bedtime, plus it was plenty big enough for two people, which might end up being a distinct possibility if she played her cards right.
Gathering kindling from the nearby woods, she laid the fire in the ring then set up two camp chairs flanking it. When all was completed, she stood back to admire the campsite. Everything was shipshape, almost as if she did this on a daily basis. Almost as if she knew what she was doing. The thought made her laugh out loud.
* * *
FOR LUNCH SHE fixed herself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and ate it sitting in a camp chair, admiring the river views. The sun swept out briefly, warmed her skin then vanished behind scudding clouds. Amazing how just a little dose of sunshine bolstered the spirits. She finished her sandwich and drank some tea from the thermos she’d filled the day before. The tea was still vaguely warm, strong and delicious. Earl Grey.
Afterward she sat with her kit in her lap, pulled out the small mirror, leaned it against the backrest of the second chair and brushed then braided her hair. She deftly applied eyeliner and mascara, some lipstick, a little foundation to hide the freckles over the bridge of her nose. It took minutes and completely transformed her. She smiled approvingly at her image. “Not bad.”
She had earlier contemplated taking a postprandial siesta but decided to scout upriver instead, in order to see how much ground the Lone Ranger had covered, how far he had left to travel and then figure out when to plan supper for his arrival. The wine, a nice organically grown 2011 Les Hauts de Lagarde Bordeaux, really should breathe awhile before being served.
She checked the pistol on her hip, pulled on her ball cap and shouldered her day pack. Hiking would feel good after being cramped in the canoe. A few hours should be plenty of time to find Jack Parker and shepherd him back here. She hadn’t come that far downriver from where she last saw him. She checked her watch and started out.
* * *
TWENTY MINUTES INTO the upriver slog, she stopped to don her mosquito netting. Once away from the river and the breeze, the bugs were fierce. She’d already inhaled enough to qualify as an appetizer before supper. She was sweating from exertion. Her eyes stung from the makeup. Everything she brushed against was wet. Rainwater still dripped from the spruce trees, and having left her rain gear at camp, she was soon as drenched as she’d been after her morning swim, and the temperature was dropping.
The walking was tough, but she’d known it would be. She didn’t bother looking for signs of a lost dog because she knew that Ky was long dead, and searching for a dead dog, as far as she was concerned, was a complete waste of time.
One hour into the hike, she paused for a break. She should have found Jack by now. Even with the tough going she was probably covering at least a couple miles an hour, and he had to have made two miles since leaving his camping spot. It was entirely possible she could have missed him. They were both bushwhacking inland, away from the river, and the undergrowth was thick. Maybe he’d reach the campsite before she did.
She beat her way out to the river to get her bearings and was grabbing two handfuls of alder branches to steady herself on the riverbank when she heard the whistle from upriver. At first she thought she might be hearing the wild, territorial whoop of a pileated woodpecker, but then she heard it again. Definitely not a woodpecker, and ravens made all kinds of noises, but that wasn’t one of them.
Was the Lone Ranger signaling for help?
She balanced herself carefully, released her grip on the alders, pushed up her mosquito netting and returned the finger whistle with a high-pitched, shrill one of her own. She thrashed through the alders and moved away from the riverbank where the walking was easier and the sound of the rushing river not so loud. She took off the mosquito netting and stuffed it into her jacket pocket, rearranged her hat, smoothed her wet hair. Then she whistled again, just in case he hadn’t heard the first signal. In this whistle she tried to convey a calm reassuring signal that she’d soon be there. No need to panic. Help is on its way.
There was no response to her second whistle, which was odd.
Cameron waited a few moments, then pushed onward. It wasn’t long before she spotted him working his way slowly along with his backpack and rifle case, and wearing a veil of mosquito netting pulled over his hat. She had to get pretty close before she could read his expression behind the netting. He didn’t seem too pleased to see her, but she was getting used to that. He most certainly didn’t look panicked.
“I heard your whistle, and I thought you might be in trouble,” she said.
“I’m not.”
“Do you always whistle when you walk?”
“Isn’t there someplace else you’d rather be?” he asked.
“Not particularly. I haven’t had a vacation in years. It’s a beautiful day, and I’m enjoying myself. It’s nice to get out of the canoe and walk a bit.”
“Then maybe you should turn around and walk back to your canoe.”
Cameron blew out her breath. “Look, all I’m trying to do is help you out. You’re looking for the dog, I’m looking for the dog. If we both look, that’s twice the search power.”
“The only thing you’re looking for is to make some money.”
She started to voice her indignation and inhaled a mosquito instead. By the time she’d coughed the insect out of her lung, he’d walked past her and continued on his journey. She turned and followed after him, fumbling her mosquito netting back out of her jacket pocket and spitting out pieces of wings and proboscis.
“I’ve set up camp about a mile downstream from here,” she said, pulling the netting over her head. She was past the point of trying to look sexy. “It’s a real nice spot, good breeze, no bugs, high and dry. I’ve got a couple steaks marinating and a nice bottle of wine ready to go.”
“They must be paying you a lot of money.” He didn’t turn around when he spoke, just kept moving forward at that slow steady pace.
“Your sister’s worried you might be suicidal.”
“If I was going to commit suicide, would I torture myself first by trying to walk down this river?”
“How should I know? I’ve never been able to figure out why men do the things they do,” Cameron said, adjusting the netting over the brim of her hat. “My ex-husband was a complete mystery to me.”
He paused and half turned toward her. “I came out here to find out what happened to my dog. That’s all.”
“What if you don’t find him?”
“Her. I plan to keep looking until I do. She’s out here somewhere. She wasn’t killed by that bear. Hurt, maybe, but not killed. She was wild when I found her in Afghanistan, and she knows how to survive. She’s a fighter. She’s smart and she’s tough. I came out here to find her and bring her home, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
He resumed walking with his stiff, awkward limp. She matched his pace, keeping three steps behind. “Where’s home?”
“Northern Montana. A place near Bear Butte, on the Flathead Reservation.”
“Aha! No wonder you’re so tough. You’re not only the Lone Ranger, you’re Tonto.”
“Just because you live on the rez doesn’t make you an Indian. Whites can own land there. The Allotment Act of 1904 gave every Flathead Indian a certain amount of land on the reservation. The rest of the reservation land was sold off to whites in a typical government scam, half a million acres. One of the settlers who bought a holding was my great-grandfather. He married a Kootenai girl and had a bunch of kids. My mother has the place now, but it’s falling down around her. She should just give it back to the Indians. It rightfully belongs to them.”
“But you’re part Kootenai, so that makes it your home, too.”
“I only call it home because I was born and raised there.”
“You said when you find your dog you’re going to bring her back there, so it’s more than just the place you were born. You must want to go back.”
He kept walking and didn’t respond.
“What about your army career?” Cameron asked after a respectful interlude of silence. “Don’t you have to go back and finish that up first? How many years have you been a ranger in the army?”
“How many years were you married?” came his curt reply.
“Too many,” Cameron said, ignoring the jab. “Getting married to Roy was a big mistake. He liked women. All women. He said he liked me best, but I got sick of sharing him with all the others about a year after saying ‘I do.’ I didn’t know what I was agreeing to when I said my vows. How could I cherish and honor someone who was screwing around with every willing female north of 60?”
Each step was a study of caution, navigating the tangle of underbrush, fallen branches and mossy logs.
“Anyhow,” she continued, “Roy was a real sweet talker. He could charm the pelt off an ermine. My father raised me while working in a string of backcountry sporting camps, so I was brought up among men, but those men were all too respectful to be anything but polite to me.
“Then along came Roy. He was hired by the same big outfitter me and my daddy were working for at the time, so that’s how I met him. He was flying trophy hunters and fishermen into the bush, same as we were. Roy was dashing and handsome, and he was the first man who made me feel pretty. He told me I had a smile that could light up New York City. I think I fell in love with Roy on our very first date. He took me to the village dump so we could watch the bears pawing through garbage, but that was just an excuse to get me alone in his pickup truck. He was the first man who ever kissed me, and holy boys, could Roy ever kiss.”
“How would you know?”
“How would I know what?”
“How would you know Roy could really kiss if he was the first man who ever kissed you?”
Cameron laughed at the silly question. “Either a man can kiss or he can’t, and any female worth her salt can tell the difference between a good kisser and a bad one right off the bat. She doesn’t have to kiss a thousand men to know something as simple as that. Anyhow, I finally figured out how Roy got so good at kissing, and when he wouldn’t give up his philandering ways after we got married, I divorced him. I suppose we’ll run into each other from time to time, we’re both still bush pilots flying in the north country, but I won’t be kissing him, that’s for sure. I’ve learned my lesson.”
“Where’s your father now?”
Cameron focused hard on the ground at her feet. “Oh, Daddy flew his plane into a mountainside about a month after I got married. He was a real good pilot, careful. It was an unexpected turn of real bad weather, rotten luck and mechanical failure that killed him.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me, too,” she said. It still twisted her up inside to talk about it. She guessed it always would. “Were you ever married?”
“Nope.”
“Smart.”
He was having more and more trouble getting his leg over obstacles. Finally he stopped. “You go on ahead. I’m just slowing you down.”
“Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll go start the cook fire. You can’t miss the camp. Just follow the river. It’s not much farther. We’re almost there.”
Cameron took it as a very good sign that he didn’t put up any argument about sharing her camp. It had been a hard slog, and he was ready for a break. They both were.
This was only day two, and things were working out just the way she’d planned.
* * *
BY THE TIME he reached the camp, the sun was angling into the west. Cameron had started the campfire and opened the bottle of wine. The steaks were nicely marinated, the potatoes were all dressed and wrapped in aluminum foil jackets, ready to be nestled into the coals, and she’d made a salad, courtesy of the well-stocked cooler. Best of all, the breeze was still stiff enough to keep the bugs down. She had removed her mosquito netting, changed into dry clothes and touched up her makeup. The stage was set.
He didn’t say anything when he arrived at the camp site, just looked around, laid his rifle case down, shrugged out of his pack and dropped into one of the folding camp chairs. He pushed the mosquito netting back over the top of his hat and sat there, looking completely wrung out. Cameron poured a glass of the bordeaux into one of the fancy polycarbonate nesting wineglasses that were a wedding gift she’d never used, and handed it to him, then poured a second glass for herself and sat in the other chair.
They gazed at each other across the small cook fire, which was already settling into a nice bed of coals. She took a small sip of wine, wondering what she should say. His pant legs were soaked from walking through the wet brush, and she wondered if he had a dry pair in his pack. She wondered if she should suggest that he change into dry clothing because the evening was shaping up to be a chilly one.
She pondered why she was wondering if she should say these things when normally she would just say them. She’d never been bashful when it came to speaking her mind, and Walt had told her more than once that she was downright bossy, yet all she could do was sit with her wineglass clasped in both hands and watch him and wonder what to say.
“I have a plan,” she blurted out, startling herself because she hadn’t thought to speak aloud, not while he was looking at her that way. He raised his wineglass and took a taste, still watching her over the small campfire.
“You give me the clothes you’re wearing,” Cameron continued, “I put them in my laundry sack, and tomorrow morning first thing I take them down to the trapper’s cabin. I’ll leave them there, hanging all around the outside of the cabin. Then I come back up here, pick you up and we leapfrog our way back to the cabin. You can walk a bit, or I can drag something of yours and do all the walking while you take the canoe. We’ll cover a lot more ground and lay a good scent trail that way. If your dog survived that run-in with the bear, chances are she stayed in the area. That cabin is the only human structure along this whole river. She’ll pick up your scent and home in on it.”
He took another swallow of wine. His eyes never left her face.
“My daddy had a couple hunting dogs when I was little,” she said. “Bang and Vixen. Every once in a while they’d run off on a hot trail, and when they hadn’t come back by dark he’d leave his wool jacket there on the ground. Sure enough when he went back the next day those beagles were right there by his jacket, waiting for him.”
She set her wineglass on a flat stone, put another chunk of driftwood on the fire, raked out a bed of coals, nestled the potatoes on it and covered them with more coals. “I hope you like steak and potatoes,” she said. “That’s tonight’s special.” She used a piece of driftwood to nudge the live fire to one side of the fire ring, then laid the grill over the narrower end and the exposed bed of coals. “I won’t do a dirty steak, don’t like the grit. I prefer throwing steaks on a hot grill.” She rose to her feet, fetched the bottle of wine and topped off his glass. “There’s an old saying, ‘Wine gives strength to weary men,’” she said. “Sometimes when I’m really tired, the only thing that gives me the strength to cook and eat my evening meal is sipping a glass of wine first. That’s good wine, isn’t it?”
She sat back down in her chair, cradling her own glass. “Bet I could catch us a char for breakfast right off this point when the sun sets.” She gazed out at the river. “See that riffle halfway across? Right below it. Bet there’s a beauty or two just laying there in that back eddy. Do you like trout? Rolled in cornmeal and fried in bacon fat, it’s the best breakfast ever.” She took a taste of the wine and congratulated herself for choosing so well.
“Roy didn’t like fish,” she continued. “He liked to catch them, but he wouldn’t eat them. How can anyone trust a man who won’t eat a wild caught trout?” She stretched her legs toward the fire, flexed her ankles and admired her L.L.Bean hunting boots. “These Bean boots are good boots for this kind of travel,” she said. “They sure are good for tramping in the woods and canoeing. If I’m lucky, I can get four months out of a pair.”
She cast a covert glance from beneath her eyelashes. Was he falling asleep on her? She pushed out of her chair, retrieved the steaks from the cooler and laid them on the hot grill. The steaks hissed. Fragrant smoke curled up from the bed of coals. “Maybe you could tell me a little something about your dog,” she said. “Like how you found her in Afghanistan.”
He shifted in his chair, pulled off his hat and laid it on his knee. “I didn’t find her,” he said. “She found me.”
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_c5abe09e-4b26-54fa-b53c-8195c347a76b)
SHE FOUND HIM in the Hindu Kush, in the rugged mountains along the Pakistan border. He was on advance patrol, the only American in the group of four. They were scouting for a possible Taliban training camp in some of the roughest, wildest mountains they’d been in north of Hatchet. For over a week they’d had little contact with the outposts to the south, and they’d been unable to find the rumored camp. He kept to himself when they bivouacked that night, preferring to keep his own company. Ever since the outpost attack at Bari Alai, he hadn’t really trusted Afghan soldiers.
He ate a cold MRE, drank from his water bottle, eased the small of his back against the side of the mountain. The sunset illuminated a jagged wall of snow-covered peaks to the west. If he hadn’t been living so long in this place of war, he would have thought this country was beautiful, but it was hard to admire the mountains when each and every day was a struggle of straight up or straight down, carrying gear that weighed close to seventy-five pounds, and wondering when and from where the next attack might come, and if he would survive it.
There was enough light remaining to work on a letter to his mother he’d been writing for the past week. He pulled it out of his pocket along with the pen, used his thigh as a paper rest and added a few sentences. “These mountains at sunset remind me of home. If this war ever ends, I could be looking right at the future ski and snowboard capital of Pakistan. Hindu Kush could become a popular tourist trap. This mountain range is part of the Himalayas, and the mountains are rugged and wild. Hard traveling. We camp when we can go no farther.”
He could hear the three Afghan soldiers talking and laughing quietly, and he could smell pot on the faint updraft. They smoked it every night in spite of rules and regulations.
“Ask Danforth for help with the haying this summer,” he wrote. “Offer him half the crop if he’ll cut it all and put your half in the barn for you. That should be enough for you to winter what’s left of the cattle and horses. Use the money I sent you to cover the missing mortgage payments. I’ll send more next month. The bank shouldn’t be hounding you like that. Clive should keep that from happening. Never mind what Otis Small tells you about anything. Otis likes to stir up trouble. Keep counsel with Kootch. He’ll steer you straight every time.”
A high yelp of pain jerked his head up. All three Afghan soldiers were picking up stones and flinging them down the slope at a running animal. There was another yelp as another stone struck home and tumbled a leggy dark-colored creature head over heels. It ran off and vanished. It looked like a dog.
“Knock it off,” he commanded just loud enough for them to hear.
The Afghan soldiers laughed, but the stones fell from their fingers and the fleeing animal escaped. Dogs weren’t treated as pets in this country, and they weren’t treated kindly. Sometimes they were used for target practice. In Kabul, herding dogs were used for dog fighting, their tails and ears cut off at a young age. They ran in packs, usually, and struggled for survival.
Jack returned to his letter home, and with what little remained of the daylight, finished it. He was folding it to slip back into his pocket when he noticed movement to his right. His eyes focused on a pair of canid eyes watching him from a clump of brush in the mountainside, perhaps twenty feet distant. The eyes were dark and wary. The animal’s coloring, thick fur, pointed muzzle and upright ears gave it the appearance of a western coyote or brush wolf. He thought it might be the same animal the Afghan soldiers had been stoning, and his hunch was proved correct when the animal moved a few steps and he saw that it was limping.
It was just a pup, maybe four months old, with that big-pawed, leggy clumsiness that had made it such an easy mark for the stone-throwing Afghans. Hip bones and ribs jutted through thick fur. It was starving. Jack reached inside his jacket and pulled out a strip of jerky. He tossed it toward the pup, who vanished the moment he raised his arm but reappeared moments later to snatch up the piece of beef. It disappeared again temporarily, then peeked warily from cover. He tossed a second strip of jerky.
There was only one reason he could think of that a stray pup would be on this mountainside. The Taliban and insurgents often used packs of dogs in their camps as an early-warning system. It was highly probable they were near an enemy training camp. In fact, one might be just over the next ridge, and this half-wild pup may have strayed from there. He glanced to where the Afghan soldiers lounged with their pipes, and a few moments later, moving in a crouch and carrying his weapon, he joined them and shared his observations with Maruf.
“Could be,” the senior platoon leader agreed, nodding. “Tomorrow we will find out.”
“I’m going up the ridge now, under cover of dark,” Jack told them. “You stay put. Post a guard. I’ll have a look into the next valley.”
He left the radio with them, a decision he was later to regret, then stashed his pack carefully beneath a clump of mountain brush. With the last of the fading light, he picked an almost vertical path up the mountainside, moving from cover to cover. At one point, the slope became so steep he was crawling upward on his hands and knees. By the time he’d ascended to the top of the ridge line, a good half mile above where he left the Afghan soldiers, he was sweating profusely and struggling to catch his breath in the thin air.
He moved cautiously forward in the gloaming, keenly attuned to any sounds or movements that would have hinted at the enemy’s presence, but there was just the cooling sweep of wind from the glaciated mountains to the east. The wind was not in his favor, but it shifted as darkness thickened. He flattened himself on the rough, stony ground and looked through his night scope into the deep valley below him.
A jolt of adrenaline quickened his pulse when he spotted several small mud-walled houses at least one mile distant. Tents flanked both sides of a small river that divided the narrow valley. There were twelve tents in all, and three buildings. Unbelievable that way out here in this impossible terrain he’d find a Taliban training camp. The rumors had been true.
Excitement coursed through him. It was too dark to return to his men, so he crawled back down as far as he dared in near darkness, then spent an uncomfortable night beneath the sheltering foliage of a big clump of vegetation, dozing off and on, uneasy with the noises that seemed to originate from every direction. The loose rattle of a stone, the sudden tug of wind hissing through brush, the faint murmuring from the distant river. Every small noise brought him from the edge of sleep to a state of instant adrenaline-fueled alertness, but there was no attack. No swarm of insurgents creeping stealthily over the ridge line to knife or shoot him in his sleep.
As soon as there was enough light to move, he returned to his former position. His pack was where he’d stashed it. The three Afghan soldiers were sleeping in a row where he’d left them sitting the night before. No guard posted. That sort of careless behavior could get them all killed, and he felt a surge of anger at their flouting of his orders. He checked the coordinates of his position in the GPS unit inside his pack. All he had to do now was rouse the Afghan soldiers and radio those coordinates to his commanding officer. The scouting mission would be a success, and the Taliban encampment would be eliminated within hours.
Jack shrugged into his pack and descended toward the sleeping Afghan soldiers. His furtive approach went completely undetected. As he drew near, he paused uneasily, focused hard and realized with a jolt of shock that they weren’t sleeping. They were dead. Their throats had been cut and their weapons, packs and his radio had been taken. He scouted carefully before moving closer, and for a few moments he crouched beside them, assessing how much time had passed since they’d been killed. Several hours at least, long enough for them to stiffen. Those noises he’d heard last night had not been his imagination. He was a dead man, too, if they caught him out in the open like this after sunup.
Crouching low and hugging the cover of brush, he raced the sunrise and angled down the steep slope toward the river valley far below, where he would find better cover. He moved slow enough to keep rocks from tumbling noisily down the slope, fast enough to make his thigh muscles cramp and burn. At every moment he expected a bullet to slam into him and push him into the abyss.
He was well over thirty miles north of a friendly outpost, and that mileage was measured in straight line distance. He knew from experience how hard mountain miles could be. The valleys were easier to travel but more dangerous in terms of potentially hostile encounters, and hostiles were all around him. Still, there were brown trout in that river, and timbered forests and drinking water, all powerful incentives for taking the risk. He had no other options, really.
In two hours of furtive travel, he’d gained the cover of the timber, and another hour later the river. There had been no sign of the enemy, no hint that his presence had been detected. Perhaps they thought the scouting patrol had consisted of only the three Afghan soldiers. He’d cut no fresh human sign, not even down near the river. When it became too dark to travel farther, he found a place to hole up, away from the river, tucked back into the slope in a shallow cave created when a big pine toppled toward the water. The massive tree truck gave him good cover in front. Nobody could sneak up on him from behind and cut his throat.
He shrugged out of his pack, took a long drink of water from his bottle and pulled out an MRE. He was halfway through eating it when he lifted his gaze and realized, after a few beats, that he was gazing straight into the eyes of that same stray pup he’d encountered the evening before. The pup was flattened beneath the brush to the right of the tree trunk, blending nearly perfectly with its surroundings. Its ears were erect, muzzle pointing toward him, eyes bright and wary. He took a scoop of food onto his fork and flipped it toward the pup, who waited several long moments before darting out, snatching the mouthful of food and retreating.
Jack was uneasy knowing that the pup had followed him all day and he hadn’t spotted it. The sky above him had been active with large birds, but he’d seen nothing on the ground, and he’d been checking his back trail continuously. Had he missed the enemy, too? He finished the MRE, sharing every other mouthful with the pup, who darted out immediately and snatched it off the ground. He could have eaten another meal, but there was a long journey ahead. He rummaged in the pack for the GPS unit and calculated his position. He was a little over twenty miles from the outpost. He’d only made ten straight line miles since finding his dead soldiers. Twenty more miles didn’t seem that far, but when moving carefully and trying to avoid detection, those miles would be long and slow.
He slipped the GPS onto his belt next to his water bottle, wanting to keep it near. He was exhausted but unable to relax. He rested sitting up, using his pack for a backrest, draping his sleeping bag over his shoulders like a blanket and cradling his weapon in his lap. He closed his eyes but knew he wouldn’t sleep. He couldn’t get the image of those three dead Afghan soldiers out of his mind.
A noise roused him in the middle of the starlit night, a low, almost inaudible warning growl coming from the pup. He gathered his legs beneath him and let the sleeping bag slide off his shoulders. He was lifting his weapon and preparing to rise to his feet when the night exploded around him and all hell broke loose. Lightning and thunder, muzzle-flashes and bullets, an ambush on his position and no place to go except straight into it. He dove forward, rolled and came up all in one motion, firing at the nearest spit of flame, then raking the muzzle to the right and triggering another burst. He jumped over a fallen form, crashed through the brush and ran like a jackrabbit, zigzagging and dodging.
How many were there? Four? Five? He wasn’t going to stick around to find out. Another movement to his right, and he swung his weapon and fired another short burst, kept running. Felt something sting the calf of his leg and pushed on. He’d always been a good runner, and he ran now as he’d never run before. He could hear shouts coming from behind him, nothing up ahead. He dodged among trees. Slowed down when the canopy closed out the starlight and the darkness became too thick. Sped up when he could see the ground again.
He ran as if his life depended on it, because it did. He ran until he had to slow down, catch his breath, and even then he kept moving, walking fast, pausing from time to time to listen for sounds of pursuit over the pounding of his heart. He heard nothing but that meant nothing. They could be right on his heels. They were stealth fighters, and they were very good at it.
For over two hours he pushed hard. He paused only once, to check the burning in his calf. His pant leg was soaked, his boot full of blood. He had no idea how bad the wound was, nor was there time to find out, but he knew the bone wasn’t broken and counted himself lucky. If the bullet had struck bone, they’d have had him, and he’d be dead right now. He tied his bandanna around his calf to try to staunch the bleeding, then angled toward the river, and when he reached it he walked in. The water was frigid. He continued downriver in the shallows along the water’s edge. This wouldn’t slow his pursuers much, but they might think he’d crossed the river. He’d walk like this as long as the night covered his movements.
Too soon the sky began to brighten, and he lost the cover of darkness. He scouted ahead, searching for places where he could leave the river without leaving tracks. He stripped off his jacket and wrapped it around his lower leg when he came to an outcropping, and then climbed onto it. The ledge ran back far enough to get him off the immediate shoreline before ending in a choke of brush. He kept his jacket around his leg while he was on the ledge to prevent a blood trail, and removed it only after he was well into the brush. He moved back into the woods and kept moving, but his head wasn’t as clear as it should have been, and he could feel his strength failing him.
They could be right behind him, but he had to hole up. He found a place where he could make a stand if he had to, and he pulled his jacket back on because he was cold, really cold. He thought he’d just rest a while, listen and watch his back trail and be ready to fight if they caught up with him. He would stay alert because to sleep would be fatal. Disciplined vigilance was his only chance.
Don’t fall asleep.
That was the order he gave himself just before he passed out.
* * *
HE OPENED HIS eyes on the bright dawn, and the sight of the grayish-colored pup lying beneath the brush with him, almost within touching distance, head on its paws, watching him. “Back in Montana the ranchers would use you for target practice,” he muttered. “They don’t care for coyotes.”
His calf was throbbing, his head ached, he was desperately thirsty and sick from all the adrenaline, but he was still alive and the enemy hadn’t caught up to him. Yet. He ate some jerky for breakfast, drank water from his bottle, tossed the last three strips of dried meat he fished out of his pocket to the pup, figuring he’d make it back to the outpost within hours. He left the bandanna tied over the wound, pushed awkwardly to his feet, took up his weapon and started out. He could barely hobble, but he was sure once he got moving his leg would limber up and travel would get easier. When he looked back over his shoulder, the pup was following him, no longer trying to hide. That day the hours passed in an endless and painful blur, but there was no sign of the enemy.
Or the outpost. He was traveling far too slowly.
That evening he made his way back to the river to refill his water bottle. He drank his fill crouched by the river, knowing that would be the only supper he got. That night was colder than the last. When he awoke, stiff and aching and chilled to the bone, the pup was within hand’s reach, lying right beside his injured leg. When she saw he was awake, she raised her head off her paws and tensed, ready to flee at the slightest aggressive move from him. He extended his hand slowly, and she sniffed it. He touched her for the first time, a light stroke that brushed the black-tipped hair along her back while she remained rigidly motionless and watched him steadily with those dark golden eyes. He stroked her for some minutes, slowly and gently, and as he did the wary caution left her eyes and was replaced by something else entirely, and from that moment she was his.
That day his progress was slow and halting, and he rested often. If he was still being followed, the enemy would have picked him off by now as he hobbled slowly along. That evening he drank his fill again at the river and wondered if the pup would stick with him when he had no food to offer. The temperature dropped and snow fell during the night, and in the morning, the pup was lying on top of him, her nose tucked beneath his chin, warming him with her body. That day his progress was slower than the day before. His strength gave out, and he collapsed at dusk. He could travel no farther. He knew he was within striking distance of friendly territory, and his last conscious thought was how important it was that his unit get those GPS coordinates.
His discovery by a scouting party the following morning caused quite a stir, not only because he’d been out of radio contact for so long that they’d just about given him up for dead, but also because he was being so fiercely guarded by the wild pup who refused to let anyone approach. It took some doing by one of the scouting party to drag her away. He made a noose from a belt, attached it to a long pole and slipped it over her head. Two of the party returned to the outpost and brought back a stretcher. By that time Jack had roused enough to tell them about the pup and make them remove the noose from her neck. They loaded him onto the stretcher, and she dogged their heels all the way back to the outpost. She shadowed him in the medic’s tent and followed him when they transferred him to a waiting truck. He was barely aware of any of it.
“The medics say your leg’s infected and needs surgery,” Lieutenant Dan Royce said as they slid the stretcher into the bed of the truck. “We’re transporting you to Hatchet. They have a better setup there. That wild dog can’t go. You know the rules,” he said when the pup tried to climb into the bed of the truck.
“Sir, that dog’s the only reason I found that Taliban training camp. She saved my life.”
“I didn’t make the rules, Parker, but I have to enforce them. You can’t keep the dog.”
Ruben Cook, who had helped carry Jack back to the outpost and was standing with a group of soldiers, said, “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of her for you.”
Jack looked at him, dizzy from the morphine. “She saved my life,” he repeated. “Treat her good.” He reached out one hand to the pup as she gazed at him with that intense golden stare.
“I’ll be back,” he told her as Ruben replaced her makeshift collar and pulled her out of the truck.
It was over sixty rough road miles to the next outpost. Jack didn’t remember much of the journey itself or the surgery that followed. When he woke up, he thought he was still out in the bush, hiding from the enemy, and an experienced army nurse talked him back to reality. The following morning the same nurse roused him gently and said, “Sergeant Parker? There’s something you should see.”
She helped him out of bed into a wheelchair and pushed him to the door of the tent. Outside the mobile hospital, a crowd of medical staff had gathered to stare at a starving, half-wild pup who had just limped into the camp. “One of your men forwarded a message for you yesterday,” the nurse explained. “He said that your wild dog got loose and chased after your truck when you left the camp. None of us ever thought it would make it this far.”
Jack spent five days at the mobile army hospital unit. His “wild dog” stayed under his cot, shared his meals and accompanied his every movement. When he returned to his unit, the pup’s presence was discreetly ignored by his commanding officer, especially when less than two months later she alerted the outpost to a hostile intruder wearing an improvised explosive device. Her growling caught Jack’s attention, and he exited the mess tent just as she sank her teeth into the intruder’s leg. Jack tackled the hostile, who was subdued, arrested and later tagged as a Taliban trainee. He was sixteen years old and wearing an IED that had failed to detonate.
From that point on, Jack’s wild dog became the camp’s highly regarded mascot. Jack worked to teach her basic commands, which she picked up quickly, but she never took to any of the other soldiers. They nicknamed her “Ky” because she looked like a coyote, and tempted her with the choicest of tidbits to gain her trust, but her loyalties belonged to Jack. She would answer to no other.
Jack began to worry about her fate, should he be killed in action or shipped stateside. While his unit was on leave in Kabul three months later, he contacted his sister and began the arduous process of getting Ky safely back to the United States. It was a process that took months but was ultimately successful. When he last saw her, Ky was huddled in a dog crate at the airport awaiting shipment to his sister in Montana. Her intense yellow gaze was fixed on his face, and her expression was one of fear and anxiety.
“You’ll be okay,” he reassured her. Those words had haunted him ever since his sister’s visit while he was at Walter Reed.
* * *
“SO, THAT’S WHY I’m here,” he said, returning to the present and looking across the campfire at Cameron, who had listened quietly while he told the story of a soldier and his dog. “I told her she’d be okay. I lied.”
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_1fa8bbcd-022e-5cbe-bf96-f778275490da)
CAMERON REFILLED JACK’S wineglass a third time while he told her his story. The wine, after a long and challenging day, had loosened his tongue. The man who had been so aloof, so silent, had revealed a side of himself that she suspected few had ever seen.
“You didn’t lie,” she said. “You did what you thought was right. You couldn’t have known what would happen. Your sister did her best, too. A bear came into their camp. Your dog chased it out. That was nobody’s fault.”
The sun had set and the air was chilly. She forked a big steak and a potato onto his plate, buttered and seasoned both, added a generous side of dressed salad, nestled a knife and fork on the plate and handed it to him.
“No more talk,” she ordered. “Eat.”
Cameron fixed her own plate and sat. She was ravenous. The steaks were grilled to perfection. They ate in silence while the river rushed past and the deepening twilight brightened the campfire. When they were done, she covered the grill with coals, threw a few more pieces of wood on the fire and let the heat burn the grate clean. In bear country, one kept a clean camp. One also camped a good distance from the cook fire, but she was stretching the rules in this instance due to Jack’s exhausted state.
“Now,” she said, “you go into the tent and get out of those wet clothes. I’ll put your pack inside, and you can set up your sleeping bag in there. No point in setting up two tents. I’ll wash these dishes in the river.”
She gathered the supper dishes and went down to the river’s edge to give him time and privacy, and to think about her next moves. He was exhausted but well fed, and he’d drunk half a bottle of wine. Things were going pretty well. It baffled her that anyone could be so attached to a dog, but people were funny about their pets. Some put more value on a dog than a human. Her father’s hunting dogs were good hunting dogs, but they’d been focused on two things: her father and hunting. To them she’d been an ancillary figure in the family pack. By the time she was fifteen, both had died of old age and they’d had no other dogs. The life of a bush pilot in the far north was unfavorable to owning pets.
The river water was cold. Years of traveling in the bush had taught her to carry all essentials on her person, so when the supper dishes had been scrubbed clean she fished her toothbrush and a tiny tube of toothpaste out of a pocket and brushed her teeth and washed up as she crouched on her heels beside the river.
In a few days she’d be rich. She’d buy Johnny Allen’s red Jeep with the money. It was flashy and bold, with a good stereo and aggressive tires. The guys would think that was sexy.
When she’d finished with her nighttime routine, she walked quietly back to the tent, unzipped the door and eased inside. Darkness wrapped around her like a thick blanket, but she could make out a long shape lying prone against the far wall, darker than darkness. She stripped down to her camisole and panties and slipped into her sleeping bag, only then switching her LED headlamp on low, providing just enough light to read by. She picked up her book, nestled into her comfortable bed and cast a secretive sidelong glance toward her quarry. In the dim light she could see only that he was there. Awake? Asleep? She didn’t know. It was a shame he hadn’t seen her matching black and very sexy underwear, but tomorrow was another day.
“No talking in your sleep and no snoring,” she said softly, and turned the page of her book.
“No worries” came the low reply.
* * *
WHEN JACK OPENED his eyes, it was already light and Cameron was up and gone. Her sleeping bag was rolled neatly into its stuff bag and sitting on the cot. He could smell wood smoke and coffee. He dressed in clothes that were still slightly damp from the day before and moved to the door of the tent. She was nowhere to be seen, but a small fire burned in the fire ring, and the coffeepot was off to one side where it would stay warm without boiling. A cup had been placed thoughtfully beside it. He exited the tent and filled the cup, taking a long appreciative look at the predawn wilderness that stretched away from him in all directions; the river, the mountains, the forest; mist rising from the rushing water into the cool morning air. He spotted her down on the riverbank, fly casting to that spot below the riffles she’d spoken about last evening. Her movements were practiced, graceful. The girl could also fly-fish, among all her other talents.
He took a sip of hot coffee. Rich and delicious. Perfectly brewed. He expected nothing less after the meal she’d served him last night. He carried the coffee down to the river, upstream of her, and washed the sleep from his face. He contemplated shaving but discarded the idea. The last thing he wanted was for her to think he was trying to look good for her. The sooner they parted ways, the better. In the meantime, he’d add to his scruffy look.
He returned to the campfire, poured more hot coffee into his cup and walked down to where she was fishing the river.
“Good morning!” She greeted him with a bright smile after making an impressive double haul and delivery, the fly settling clear across the river from her. “You must be raring to go. You slept like the dead last night.” She watched the fly drift quickly toward the big boulder.
“Did I talk in my sleep or snore?”
“If you did, I didn’t hear you. I was tired, and the sound of the river was nice.” She was fishing the drift, watching the fly. “I hope you’re hungry. I caught three trout while you were sleeping.”
“I could eat.”
She smiled, and at that moment a trout struck her fly. Within five minutes she’d landed a fourth trout, an eighteen-inch arctic char. She walked into the water to release the fish without lifting it out. “What a beauty,” she said, watching it swim away, tired but uninjured. “I file the barbs on my flies. Makes catching them a little harder but hurts them less, especially if you release a lot, like I do.”
“Admirable,” he said.
She reeled her line in and cast a glance in his direction. “You don’t like me much.”
“Not true. You’re a great cook, and your coffee is excellent.”
“But you think I talk too much,” she said, bending to lift the stringer of cleaned trout out of the cold water. She gave him a critical up and down. “I see you’re wearing the same clothes you had on yesterday. What am I supposed to ferry down to the trapper’s cabin?”
“Three stinky socks. I draw the line at backpacking in the nude, especially when it’s buggy.”
“You didn’t bring a change of clothes?”
“I brought a set of long johns, spare socks and underwear.”
“Three’s an odd number of socks.”
“I have an odd number of feet,” he said.
She flushed and dropped her gaze. “Well, I’ll fix you a good breakfast before I leave. You’ll need it.” She marched back to the campsite, and he followed at a slower pace. In jig time she had bacon frying and the trout prepped and ready to slide into the bacon fat while he studied the map she handed him. He unfolded it over his knee and tried to figure out their location.
“The black circle halfway down the Wolf is where the cabin is,” she told him. “It’s a little farther than I thought. And that other mark upriver of it is where I think we’re camped right now. I don’t know how long it will take me to reach the cabin.” She forked the cooked bacon onto a plate. “Calculating distances on a twisty river can be tricky. I’ll unload the heavy gear, most of our food into the camp and then ferry the canoe back up here. That’ll take me considerably longer. You can keep hiking downstream, so I won’t have to come back so far.” She thought about her plan for a moment and frowned. “What if we miss each other on the river?”
“Why don’t you just stay at the cabin, and I’ll meet you there.”
She thought about that suggestion briefly, then shook her head. “We should stick together. That’s the safest way. You should come with me.”
“No, thanks. I’ve seen the way you handle a canoe.”
She lifted her chin. “I’m good with a canoe. I just didn’t see that rock because I was distracted by you.”
“Not my fault I have that effect on women.”
“If you took the canoe down to the cabin, I could do the walking,” she offered, ignoring his comment. “I’ll drag your socks behind me on a piece of parachute cord and lay down a good scent trail. I could make ten miles easy before dark, camp the night and meet up with you at the cabin tomorrow. Have you ever paddled a canoe?”
“Hell, I’m part Indian, remember? I can paddle, and shoot a bow and arrow and my tomahawk skills are unmatched. It’s a genetic thing.”
Cameron took a slow breath. “There’s no need for sarcasm. I’m only trying to be helpful. I think we’d make better time if I did the walking and you did the paddling.”
“Backpacking along this river with no trail brushed out is tough work. My sister must be paying you a small fortune.”
Her expression turned to stone as she slid the three char into the frying pan. Bacon fat spattered. The edges of the trout curled. His mouth watered. He figured if there was a grizzly within ten miles, they’d have company for breakfast, but any bear would have to tackle him first to get a bite of that fish.
“I’m offering to help you,” she said. “It was a genuine offer. Do you want to find your dog, or don’t you?”
He had no response for that. They sat upwind of the small cook fire and ate the three trout and finished off the pot of coffee. He thought of Ky when he tossed the fish bones into the coals. Thought about how she’d shadowed him, slept beside him, watched over him, protected him, loved him. Depended upon him. He thought about how he’d let her down. He had to find her. Ky was out here, somewhere, and he had to find her.
Cameron was offering to help. Why did she irritate him so much? Was it because he was sure she was being paid handsomely to guarantee he made it out to the Mackenzie? Was it because he didn’t like being chaperoned? What red-blooded man wouldn’t want to keep company with a great-looking gal who could cook and clean and set up camp and drive a plane and paddle a canoe and fly-fish with such panache?
“Who taught you to fly a plane?” he asked as he ate the last of his bacon.
“My father. I use to fly everywhere with him, and he taught me to work whatever controls I could reach. I soloed as soon as my feet could reach the rudder pedals, but I’d been flying since I was six. That’s when my mother left. It’s how we get around up here, and my father couldn’t leave me alone, so he took me with him whatever job he was on.”
“What happened to your mother?”
Cameron glanced up from her plate and gave a little shrug. “She went bonkers, living way out in the bush. Some people just can’t stand the isolation. She had two miscarriages after she had me, so I never did have any siblings. One day this wealthy dude from back east came to shoot himself a trophy bear. My mother was cooking for the sporting camp then, and he stayed for ten days. He killed his bear and when he left, she went with him and that was that.”
“Do you ever hear from her?”
“Nope. I have no idea what city she’s living in, but I bet it’s a big one and I bet she doesn’t miss the wilderness.”
He studied her as she concentrated on her breakfast. She was beautiful, really, even dressed in a well-worn sage, violet and pink plaid flannel shirt, synthetic zip T-shirt, cargo pants and L.L.Bean boots. Her glossy black hair was pulled back in a short braid, and she wore no jewelry, sported no piercings or tattoos. Her skin was clear and glowed with health. He couldn’t imagine any mother turning her back and walking away from her only child, leaving her to be raised in remote hunting and fishing camps way out on the edge of nowhere. But her father had done a good job raising her. She was unpretentious, down to earth and completely at home in the wilderness.
“Cameron’s an interesting name for a girl.”
“It was my mother’s maiden name.”
“Did you go to school?” he asked.
“Sometimes. I can read and write, if that’s what you’re wondering. We’d winter in Fort Simpson, and there was a school there. My dad was pretty lax about it. Said I could learn more in the out-of-doors than I could ever learn inside four walls. The only thing he demanded of me was that I learn to read because he said knowing how to read was the most important thing. He taught me math, though, because it was essential for flying.” She finished her breakfast and licked the grease off her fingers before wiping them on the napkin. “I thought school was boring. I graduated, passed all my exams with flying colors even though I hardly ever went to class. My dad said that’s because I read so much.”
“If you don’t mind my asking, how old are you?”
“Twenty-four.” She smiled at his expression. “You’re not the first person who thought I wasn’t old enough to legally drink. What about yourself?”
“Thirty. Old enough to drink.”
“But never married. I think I know why.”
“Enlighten me.”
“You’re afraid of rejection, so you never dared ask.”
“Wrong.”
“Then why isn’t a good-looking guy like you married?”
“I asked my college sweetheart to marry me before I was shipped out on my first deployment. She said yes and promised she’d wait forever if she had to. I gave her a ring. My deployment lasted nearly a year. When I got back, she was six months pregnant. She gave the ring back and married another guy.” Were Cameron’s eyes dark blue or brown? He couldn’t tell, even though he was looking right into them while he spoke.
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