Alaskan Wolf (7 page)

“No!” Patrick shoved Mariah onto the sled as he grabbed the driver's handle and hollered to the dogs, “Hike! Let's go!”

They immediately started running, pulling the
sled. Mariah was impressed with their obedience and unanimity, even as she was unnerved by the continuously increasing sounds of fracturing ice.

And then she screamed as she saw a jagged tear form in the glacier's surface right in front of them.

T
he roar around them was aggravated by the frenzied barking of all nine dogs. But Patrick was absolutely the leader of their pack. Even Mac, the lead dog, recognized it.

“Straight ahead!” Patrick shouted the command to the team.

Hoping he was making the right decision.

But they couldn't remain on the area of the ice where they were now. The crack was growing wider, longer. In moments, the part of the glacier where they stood would crash down into the water below.

Yet if this didn't work, they could sail into oblivion
as the huge ice chunk split off. Worse, they'd be crushed as it shifted while falling into the sea.

He couldn't help it. He reached down for Mariah, held her shoulder tightly in the same hand as he held the tugline, even as he grasped the handle bow in his other hand. To balance her, he told himself. Make sure she stayed steady.

Make sure
he
stayed steady.

The dogs leaped, beginning with Mac as sole lead dog, then one pair at a time, over the growing chasm, towing the sled behind them.

The noise of separating ice around them was deafening. For a second, they were airborne, Mariah and he, in the frail contraption that was the dogsled.

And then it landed on its runners and continued to plunge forward, towed by the heroic, unstoppable huskies.

Patrick breathed again—ignoring the sharp, tangy ozone scent still hanging in the cold air. He pulled gently on the tugline and yelled, “Whoa,” attempting to be heard over the receding, but still loud, noises behind him. He repeated it as the dogs slowed but did not immediately stop.

And when they were completely halted, when good old Mac turned in his harness, ready to be praised for his excellent work—tongue out as though he were laughing—Patrick laughed, too.

He hurried around the sled, hugged Mac and the other dogs.

And then there was Mariah. She had maneuvered her way out of the sled.

He took her into his arms, feeling the thickness of her protective outer clothing, peeling away the scarf that obscured her beautiful face.

“We're okay,” she breathed, smiling, her voice just loud enough to be heard over the cacophony still behind them.

“Yeah,” he said, and lowered his mouth to hers.

 

How could she feel on fire in the middle of such a frigidly cold environment?

And how could she feel so safe after such a frightening near-death experience?

None of it had to make sense, Mariah knew. Not here, engulfed in Patrick's arms, with his lips, his tongue, his hands touching her in ways that made reality evaporate into a sensual celebration of life. And anticipation.

Their kiss was incredible. Although her mouth was the only part of her body that was truly warm, heat radiated from there, as if that one point of contact with Patrick's bare flesh was igniting her with an eternal flame.

But reality returned when a tremendous splash could be heard from the water far below. Mariah
suddenly became aware again of their surroundings, their precarious situation. The dogs started barking anew. She pulled back, sad yet relieved as Patrick did the same.

Had only a few seconds passed? The sheered-off ice had apparently just hit the sea.

“We'd better move on.” Patrick sounded almost as rueful as she felt. “But…hold that thought.”

Smiling at him, she was rewarded with an answering grin so sexy that she once more regretted they weren't at a location where she could follow through with all that the kiss had suggested.

Only…as she turned to get back onto the sled, she remembered her real reason for being on the glacier. “Wait a minute,” she told Patrick. She pulled her camera from her bag and, carefully, retraced the path the sled had taken them.

Back toward where the icy edge of the glacier had sheered off—not far from where they stood.

Mariah did not get very close to the edge as she took pictures. But she saw a huge iceberg floating in the middle of Tagoga Bay—a formation that had not been there before.

Oh, Lord. This time, using her telephoto setting, she snapped picture after picture of the sea life down below. Dead fish appeared on the surface. A few sea otters—dazed? Dead? No, they were mostly moving,
albeit slowly. Dolphins in the distance blessedly swam away.

How, in this frigid environment, had the glacier calved so quickly, with no warning—except for the loud noise punctuated by the calls of killer whales she still hadn't seen? She'd also seen no indication of cracks in the surface, though there could have been a break below where they had been sledding and walking on the snowy face of the ice.

A shadow passed over them in the brilliance of the sunlight surrounding the area where they still stood. Several shadows. Mariah looked up to see three bald eagles soaring above, wings outstretched as if to take advantage of invisible yet powerful air currents. They were majestic, invincible, unfazed by the frightening experience that had just occurred below them.

And Mariah took full advantage by shooting their pictures, too—a tremendously uplifting contrast to the scattered, shattered creatures below.

When she was done, she couldn't help aiming the camera toward Patrick, who stood waiting at the rear of the sled. The dogs had assumed various positions of repose, and now looked unconcerned about the natural events that had resulted in their heroic leap over a potentially lethal void.

“Ready yet?” Patrick's tone was patient, but she could see, in the screen on her camera, that
he appeared anything but. He was clearly ready to leave.

Perversely, she did not want to comply…entirely. And after their awful experience up here, she wanted to find more good things to remember and write about, not just the unnerving.

“Sure,” she said. “Only…I know this was supposed to be a short excursion, but now that we're here I'd really love to head toward those peaks.” She pointed inland to her left, over his shoulder. “I'm still hoping to see more wildlife up here. Get closer to a grizzly bear, maybe. Plus, those mountainsides just a little farther look like great places for Dall sheep to hang out. And, most of all, I still really want to try to find a wolf.”

The
wolf.

She peered over her camera, just in time to see the irritation on Patrick's face disappear into total—but intriguing—blankness.

“All right,” he responded. “But I still don't want to stay out here very long.” He gestured toward the seat on the sled. “Let's go.”

 

The irony of it—maybe—was that there were indeed wolves in this area, Patrick thought as he got his dog team started over the ice in the direction Mariah had designated.

He'd spotted some in the distance often when
he came up here while in a similar form to them. Their pack mentality had caused them to edge in his direction, but he had discouraged them with growls and aggressiveness.

Wind whistled around the sled as he urged his team to even faster speeds, toward the ridges that no longer were so far away.

He was both irritated and impressed by Mariah's attitude. She'd gone through a scary, life-threatening situation and come out of it still filled with determination to accomplish her purpose.

He was ready to go back, though. He needed to record and send to the brass at Alpha Force all he'd seen, heard and smelled as the glacier had calved so violently and unexpectedly.

Some of those sensory phenomena had not seemed natural. Like last time.

Now, without Shaun to conduct online research on his behalf, he would have to do it himself. He had fortunately also brought a laptop computer but had only used it, since arriving here, to check email and send occasional messages to Drew Connell and other Alpha Force contacts.

Feeling a tug on his sleeve, he looked down. Mariah's beautiful face beamed, and she pointed off to their right. Had she spotted a creature she wanted to photograph?

He looked, and with his mind no longer focused
on his own musings, he also caught the scent: rabbit. No, here, it was snowshoe hares, white and nearly invisible against the snowy surface. Four were clustered around some sparse greenery thrusting up above the face of the ice.

“Whoa,” he called to his team softly enough not to startle the wild creatures any more than necessary with the sound and sight of the dogsled. He utilized the tugline instead to keep the dogs' attention and slow them down.

When they stopped, not far from the wary creatures, Mariah smiled at him warmly as she uncurled herself from the sled and started taking pictures.

And when she was done, she touched his shoulder with her mittens and leaned up to kiss him with cold yet heatedly suggestive lips.

“Thanks,” she said. “Now let's go back before we and the dogs freeze altogether. But thanks for your patience with me, Patrick. Those hares are lovely, and will make a wonderful addition to my article.”

As they got back on the sled and headed toward the van, Patrick thought that it wasn't the hares around here that were lovely.

And he was definitely grateful that Mariah had apparently given up searching for any wolves today.

 

“This was all so amazing,” Mariah told Patrick as they sat in the ranch house's kitchen, drinking hot chocolate.

The ride back had helped to warm her limbs and face, with the heat in the van on full blast, but her insides had yet to catch up.

“That glacier calving—my articles tend to be interesting, with a focus on local wildlife. I'm hesitant to include pictures of any suffering of the sea life we saw below, but it's part of what's going on here, and it's a direct result of whatever's happening to the glaciers. I'll have to consider that.”

Patrick had not sat down at the table with her. Instead, he leaned on the counter near the sink, also drinking cocoa. “I'd suggest another meeting with Emil Charteris and his family, especially his son-in-law, to get his opinion on the effects you saw. Maybe you can just mention them in your story without incorporating the worst photos.”

Interesting, Mariah thought. Patrick had zeroed in on pretty much the direction her thoughts had been heading. As if he gave a damn about the animals and her article.

She looked at him. She'd already, with no substantiation, gotten the impression that there was more to Patrick than an unambitious nomad who'd ended up here till the next time he decided to move
on. If he was that same Patrick Worley she'd found online, he had even once been in the military.

But he obviously wasn't now. And assuming he was the drifter he appeared to be, it was only her hormones talking, insisting that she lust after the guy.

But she could still appreciate his insight…

“That's what I had in mind,” she said. “Are you interested enough to join me when I get together with them next?”

“Why not?”

But she caught a fleeting expression that suggested his interest was a lot keener than his offhand comment.

Why?

 

When she got back to Inez's B and B around five that evening, Mariah called Emil Charteris and reached his voice mail. Next, she called Fiske's Hangout, and a harried-sounding Thea told her that Emil and his family had just walked in.

Mariah phoned Patrick. “Meet me at Fiske's in twenty minutes.” She let him know that Emil and his gang were already there. She arrived first after a cold trek along sidewalks illuminated only by streetlights. The place didn't seem as crowded as usual, a potentially good thing for getting a discussion going.
The piano player was in the middle of pounding out a Billy Joel medley including “Piano Man.”

Flynn Shulster sat at the table with Emil Charteris and his daughter and son-in-law. With the mouthy pseudoscientist spouting off, it might not be possible to direct the discussion the way she wanted. Nevertheless, Mariah had to try. She wended her way through what there was of the crowd and stood behind Jeremy Thaxton.

“Fairbanks,” Shulster was saying. “That was where I shot my last documentary in Alaska, but it's nothing like the area around here, right on the water.”

“Exactly what I hoped to talk about,” Mariah interrupted. “I was on Afalati Glacier earlier today on a dogsled ride, and the darned thing calved right under us.”

“Really?” Emil's head tilted as he seemed to notice her for the first time. “Have a seat and tell us about it.” He stood, but Jeremy was faster and brought over a chair for Mariah.

“Patrick Worley is coming, too,” she said. “He's the musher who took me on the glacier. I was out there researching my article and got some great wildlife photos of a grizzly bear, some snowshoe hares and bald eagles. But the creatures in the bay…” She shuddered. “I felt so bad for them. And the calving happened so suddenly.”

“It sure did,” Patrick said from behind her. He'd
brought his own chair over. “My job's potential longevity gets more limited every day. I'd really like an expert's opinion, Dr. Charteris, on what's causing the glaciers to come apart so violently and so fast.”

Emil's expression grew annoyed. “Like I've said, I'm here to study it. I'll report my findings to the government, but right now I have no definitive answers even for them.”

“When do you think you will?” Patrick's persistence only made Emil's frown deepen. “And as
I've
said,” Mariah interrupted, hoping to keep the others at the table from stomping off, “what I really want is an expert's opinion that I can quote about the effect on wildlife. Jeremy, here are the pictures I took.” She leaned over in front of him and began scrolling through the photos on her digital camera. “Even if you can't comment specifically on the research you're doing, can't I at least get a general quote from you about the effect this kind of glacier calving causes to the sea life?”

“It's having a terrible effect,” Flynn Shulster interjected. “And you may of course quote me. In fact, perhaps you and I should collaborate on studying the situation. Did you ever consider that the whole thing could be a government plot, and that's why they've given a grant to Dr. Charteris—to see if anyone can uncover the covert experiments being conducted by a top secret agency?”