Edge of Survival (23 page)

Cam’s nose throbbed and her skull felt as delicate as fractured crystal.
What the hell is going on?
The smell of exhaust fumes choked her, and she was jostled in the air, her stomach in freefall. The noise was deafening. The pain in her face felt like she’d been hit with a brick. Even her teeth hurt. She squinted at the dark forest whipping past overhead. She was trussed up, knees to chest, bouncing up and down on the back of the cargo rack of the ATV. Her hands were bound.

What happened?

The air rushed over her, drawing gooseflesh over her skin. They went over a bump, and she banged her head on one of the metal bars.
Ouch.
Damn, she wasn’t wearing a helmet. She raised her head and recognized Tooly’s silhouette. And then she grimaced because the lack of a helmet was the least of her worries.

Tooly had killed the wolverine.

He’d knocked her out.

She tried to flex her fingers. The blood wasn’t flowing, and she couldn’t feel her fingers. Another rut and she went flying up in the air and landed hard. Damn, she was going to fall off!

Which was what she wanted, she realized. She didn’t give herself too much time to think about it. There was a bungee cord stretched over her. She pushed the hook with her knuckles even though the metal gouged her skin. It sprang loose. There was a second one and she shoved that one free too. Next rut they went over she pushed against the ATV and felt herself fly. The ATV carried on without her and she hit the ground, the impact smacking her knee, and she cried out.

Tooly must have felt the shift in weight of the machine or heard her cry out because the sound of the engine changed immediately. Winded, she managed to roll into the bush at the side of the track. The vehicle stopped, and then started to come back. She froze, praying he would carry on past her in the darkness, but he didn’t. The ATV stopped directly in front of her, so close she could feel the heat of the engine vibrating through the damp air.

“Why are you doing this? I tried to help you!” she yelled.

Tooly spat. “It is my land! You come here and say you want to help me? It is
my
land!”

“But the wolverine meant you could stay! You don’t have to leave—”

He laughed. “I don’t want to stay, you stupid woman. I want what everyone else has. To be rich. To be warm. To feel the sun in the winter.” He got off the machine and knelt beside her. She recognized her fanny pack strapped around his waist. He unzipped it and pulled out a vial of insulin and filled a syringe. He’d watched her do it many times.

Every fear of death coalesced into his black shadow. Heart exploding, she scrambled backward through the leaves and branches and mud. Rough fingers grabbed her ankle and pinched the skin, then he threw himself on top of her, winding her as she smashed against the ground. Branches scratched her face, rocks dug into her flesh. Her fingers found nothing but mud for purchase. He pinned her with his weight and lifted her shirt. Cold air hit her and she flinched and struggled as he thrust the needle deep into her flesh, injecting a full syringe into her hip.

“I haven’t eaten!”
Oh God!
Panic grabbed her throat. “You can’t do this to me! I’ll die.” Her voice echoed through the coming darkness. Horror. Fear. Terror. All those childhood nightmares grown up and intensified.

He eased his weight off and she rolled, trying to butt him with her head. He knocked her back. She cried out as he pressed down on her injured knee, sweat breaking out of every pore in her body.

Zeroing in on her weakness, he put one hand on her knee and squeezed. She gritted her teeth against the pain as he slowly inched up her shirt. A gnarled brown finger brushed her lacey bra, pulled back the material to unveil her breast. Her stomach roiled with disgust. She tried to pull away but he squeezed her kneecap again and her vision blurred red with pain. He flicked her nipple with his thumb and watched it pucker in the cold air. He did it again, his expression implacable as stone.

“Pretty.” He pulled her shirt back down and leaned back on his heels. “Pity.”

Bile moved up her trachea and back down, burning every inch. He wasn’t going to rape her.
Please God.
He wasn’t going to rape her. Then he began undoing the rope on her wrists and she didn’t know what to think.

“You killed Sylvie…” Her eyes went wide as events suddenly clicked into place.
Oh my God
. He stopped what he was doing and stared at her. She closed her mouth. Dammit, she shouldn’t have said anything. Her heart drummed crazily and even though it was almost dark now, his eyes glittered.

“She blackmailed me. The little bitch threatened to tell the authorities she’d seen the wolverine unless I shared my money with her, like she’d earned it.”

“So you killed her?” Her tone was incredulous.

“She should have shut her stupid mouth. And you should have minded your own business.”

Terror slammed Cam’s heart as he pulled out a big knife. The knife he’d butchered Sylvie with. She froze as he trailed the point from her stomach to her crotch with a considering look on his face. All the saliva in her mouth disappeared.

But her voice didn’t waver. “Don’t you think two murdered women will draw a bit too much attention to you?” Her throat was raw.

“Yes.” The old man flicked the knife under her chin and grinned his decayed smile. “Otherwise I’d make better use of that mouth of yours.”

“I’d bite it off first, you old bastard.”

He whacked her in the side of the head with the hilt of his knife and she fell back. He went back to work on the rope that tied her ankles. “So you have to die of natural causes. Of your own frail ignorance.”

And then she was free and she tried to climb to her feet, but her limbs weren’t working and she scrambled on the muddy ground. She dragged herself through the dirt and leaves on her damaged knees, desperate for escape.

He didn’t try to stop or follow her and she didn’t understand, but she kept crawling. A tree scratched her face, and the angry buzz of mosquitoes drilled her ear. And then she heard him call out in the darkness.

“Goodbye, Cameran Young. Have a nice death.” The ATV started up and the noise echoed and faded into the distance as he drove away. The fierce surge of triumph faded when she realized she was all alone in the vast wilderness, and the insulin had already gotten to work.

Daniel throbbed like fuck from being Tasered. He’d almost gotten out of the building when that goddamned Mountie had connected with his back and given him the longest five seconds of his life. Long enough to cuff him, drag his ass back here and lock him up in a holding cell. He’d had worse injuries but didn’t remember any of them hurting this much.

They’d given him a few hours to cool off but frustration scratched inside his skin with sharp insistent claws. Cam was in danger. He searched the room, but there was no window, no heating vent.

“Bloody hell.” He forced himself to slump on the bed. The mattress was as thin as a slice of bread and about as comfortable. There was a strong lemon antiseptic smell that didn’t quite disguise the hint of vomit.

Not
how he’d figured he’d be spending his leave.

He made himself look like a defeated piece of shit. Not too difficult under the circumstances, but his brain was in overdrive waiting for the next opportunity. He should never have left Cam alone. Now she was lost in the woods—or worse.

He wouldn’t think about worse.

She was lost, her vehicle had blown a tire, or she’d gotten confused on the trails in the mist and was cold and wet and miserable. She would have taken food and insulin supplies, but what if she was wet and wearing the wrong gear? What if she broke an ankle and couldn’t walk? What if she fell into that pool by the falls and drowned? Or met an angry bear?

Shit. Fuck. Wank. Bollocks.

She could be dead by morning.

They’d handcuffed his wrists in front of him. Cam was out there alone and they’d Tasered him and put him in fucking handcuffs. Rage soldered muscle to bone. He had to force it out of his mind. He was waiting. He’d thought he’d forgotten all his old skills but they simmered just below the surface.

Footsteps.

Finally.

He closed his eyes. The key turned and in walked an old Inuk man with lines of grief etched deep into his face.

Who the hell?

Daniel spotted a gun in the old man’s hand and didn’t stop to think. He launched himself, blocked and jabbed the old guy in the eyes, before jamming his palms into the guy’s chin. The old man crumpled and spat out a tooth. Blood pooled on the linoleum. Who the hell was this? Where were the cops? Daniel heard another set of feet racing down the hall.

“Charlie!” And then a cop, the CO, if Daniel figured correctly, slid to a halt in the doorway, one hand fishing for his gun.

In for a penny, in for a pound.
Daniel launched himself at the Mountie, a blitz of muscle memory and aggression that dropped the man to the floor before he could draw his weapon. Daniel placed two fingers on a pressure point and watched him slip into unconsciousness. He dragged the cop inside the cell and put the old man out too, playing for time. There was no sound from the front desk and Daniel rifled through the cop’s pockets, looking for the keys to the cuffs.

He maneuvered the old man onto the bed, stuffed a sock in his mouth and handcuffed his wrists behind his back, covering him with the blanket, tucking it in as securely as he could. The Mountie was coming around so Daniel administered the knock-out move again and gagged this guy more securely with the man’s black dress socks. Then he used the guy’s shoelaces and personal cuffs to truss him up like a Christmas Goose and dragged him behind the door, the spot least likely to be seen by the casual observer.

“Sorry, mate.”

The cop had come around and was glaring at him furiously, but also looking at the old guy with worry.

“He’s not hurt,” Daniel assured him. Although the old coot had wanted him dead. Who the hell was he anyway? Daniel picked up the gun off the floor and checked to see if it was loaded. It was. The cop’s eyes flickered.

“I didn’t kill Sylvie Watson and I’m not running away.” He ignored the skeptical eyebrow of the man whose wrists were lashed to his ankles. “Listen. Cameran Young has diabetes and she hasn’t returned to the ship we are stationed on. She’s alone in the woods and she could die if she doesn’t receive medical attention.” He stared at the old man who lay on the bed, watching him. “I didn’t kill Sylvie, and I’ll turn myself in
after
I make sure Cam’s safe.” He was about to ruin his life. Again. “So if you start a manhunt, do it between Mitshishu Falls and Mitshishu Pond and be on the lookout for any sign of Cam or an ATV.”

He went to the doorway, about to commit the serious crime of escaping police custody. Dammit, he’d already assaulted a police officer, and unless Bobby Riley was waiting down at the airstrip—not likely, considering it was full dark now—he was about to commit grand larceny. And when he gave himself up, or got caught—whatever—he’d be deported back to the UK after serving a considerable amount of time in prison. He’d never fly again. He’d never see Cameran Young again. Even the thought tore holes in his gut.

But it beat the crap out of her dying cold and alone in the bush.

He went back and checked that the cop and old man could breathe okay and then went out the door, locking it behind him. He peeked into the main part of the police station, but it was empty. Moving fast, he tossed the keys and gun on a desk. His bags sat on a nearby table and he grabbed them, ignoring the shotgun because he didn’t want to be considered armed and dangerous.

Quickly, he headed out into the night and went looking for a helicopter to borrow.

“You think he’s telling the truth?” McCoy didn’t look willing to believe Fox’s story.

They were in the bar where they’d arrested Fox earlier, but it wasn’t as though there was a big selection of eating establishments in town. There’d been a buzz of conversation when they’d first walked in, but since they’d refused to give any details, people had stopped approaching them with questions. It was natural for a small community to be concerned about a killer in their midst. But Griff wasn’t convinced Fox was their man.

“Arnie Winter’s prints are all over that knife. Fox’s prints overlaid Winter’s.” Griff pressed his lips together. “Exactly the way they would have if Fox was telling the truth.” So maybe someone
was
trying to frame him for murder. “We don’t even know if that was the murder weapon—”

“It had Sylvie’s blood on it,” she whispered the last with her eyes darting around the room in case anyone was listening.

Griff shrugged one shoulder. It wasn’t jiving for him. Maybe if the semen on Sylvie’s body came back as Fox’s he’d be more convinced, but even that was circumstantial. The killer might not have left any semen behind. “I spoke to Fox’s old CO and his troop commander. They both have the highest regard for the guy. I got the feeling everyone thought he’d taken the rap for something he shouldn’t have.”

He finished his burger and downed the last of his soda water. He checked his watch. Eight o’clock. There was a flight from the mine company heading out of here in about thirty minutes that he could hitch a ride on, and if he just accepted the initial forensic evidence and went with the flow, he could be home by midnight in time to save his marriage. But he didn’t believe Fox had killed Sylvie, and he didn’t want to charge a decorated war hero unless he was one-hundred-percent certain he had the right guy.

“How old are your kids?” McCoy asked, out of nowhere.

The pressure tightened around his throat, reminding him of everything he stood to lose if he didn’t save his marriage. Marcia wouldn’t stay on the island. “Fourteen and sixteen.”

“You must love them a lot.”

He raised his brow, wondering if his thoughts were that obvious.

“Johnny—” She coughed and her ears went scarlet. “Sergeant Leland told me they were good kids and you were devoted to them.”

Great, now he was being talked about behind his back. He waited as McCoy blustered her way through the moment.

“We weren’t gossiping. He was just telling me what a fantastic guy you were and to be frank, I think he was trying to warn me off.” She looked down and away. “He thought I had a crush on you and that was why…”

Ha.
“Why you wouldn’t sleep with him,” Griff finished for her. He would have smiled except the irony wasn’t lost on him that he was sitting here with McCoy, attractive in her own flinty way, on his wedding anniversary. And nobody was getting any action.

She grimaced and leaned back, keeping quiet. She and Griff had formed an odd sort of bond over the aftereffects of Viagra. It usually took months of teamwork to establish this kind of easy rapport.

Griff glanced at his watch. Two RCMP officers had been sent to Frenchmans Bight to apprehend Arnie Winters and bring him in for questioning. Could he squeeze in a five-minute interview with the miner before he left? Get a feel for their next-best suspect before he ran home to placate his wife?

“The poaching incident occurred ten days
after
Sylvie was murdered,” McCoy pointed out, shoveling in a fry. She’d polished off a burger and was working her way through a mountain of fries. Griff didn’t know where she put it.

“So, if Fox is telling the truth, whoever planted the knife knew where the ATV was and is probably our killer. If it was Daniel’s knife, why would it have Arnie Winter’s prints on it, and why would he take it back to the ATV and leave it there? It doesn’t make sense.”

“Unless he wanted to get caught,” McCoy said.

“The guy I just Tasered did
not
want to be in a cell.”

“No.” They held each other’s gaze for a moment. “Do you think she’s all right? The biologist?”

Griff wiped a napkin across his lips. “We’ll get SAR out for her at first light. I don’t want anything to happen to her, but I don’t know what else we can do. It’s dark. We have no clue where she went…hopefully she hunkered down somewhere and will turn up safe in the morning.”

“And if she turns up dead?” McCoy asked.

Shit
. Griff curled his fingers into fists beneath the table. “Let’s concentrate on the positive for now.” But for some reason he didn’t sound convincing, not even to himself. Maybe he should have let Fox go after her? But maybe he was wrong about Fox; maybe he was being deceived by a highly trained operative. But there was something tortured in the man’s eyes that he recognized…

Love.

Get used to the torture, buddy
. Love and water-boarding had a lot in common.

McCoy finished and they both stood at the same moment. Griff grabbed a toothpick on the way out. Walking up the road, he worked at a piece of gristle stuck between his back molars. It was dark early tonight because of the lousy weather. It had been a shitty day all around. He was tired. He had to go home. But he sure as hell didn’t want to.

They got back to the station and McCoy used her key because it was after six. When they’d left, Sergeant-in-Charge Percy Roblin had been in his office, holding the fort. Everyone had been pulling overtime since the murder and they were short-staffed. They walked through the door and, though the man’s office light was on, Griff couldn’t see him anywhere. He was probably in the washroom. There was an old Colt .45 revolver on a desk next to a set of keys. Griff frowned at the firearm.

“What are we going to do with Fox?” McCoy asked.

Griff thought about it and checked his watch. He had to get home. “Release him for now.”

“Really?” Her eyebrows shot up and her lips parted.

“There’s no motive and we’re still waiting on DNA. Let him go for now.”

She sighed.

He grinned. “You just want him where you can get your hands on him.” She gave him an irritated glare and then went through to the back where they had the ex-soldier locked up.

“Griff!” McCoy’s voice rang through the station.

Griff dashed to the cell. The scene that met his eyes defied belief. Red-faced, Charlie Watson lay on the bunk, hands cuffed behind his back as he tried to escape the sheets that pinned him. Sergeant-in-Charge Percy Roblin lay bouncing, pretzel-shaped, on the floor. The man’s gun was still in his belt. McCoy was trying to unlock the handcuffs, but Griff put a staying hand on her arm and ripped the gag out of the cop’s mouth.

“Daniel Fox do this to you?” he asked.

“The sonofabitch went crazy and attacked me. Get me out of these!” Roblin glared at McCoy, who started fumbling with her keys again.

“Wait,” Griff told her. He went over and pulled the sock from Charlie Watson’s mouth. “What are you doing here, Charlie?”

“Let me out of these cuffs, McCoy, or your next evaluation is going to recommend psych appraisal.” Roblin’s face contorted with rage.

McCoy took a breath and then fumbled her keys and dropped them. “Sorry,” she muttered.

Griff used the distraction to help the old man upright. “Who let you in here, Charlie?”

The old man’s eyes darted to Roblin on the floor.

“Keep your mouth shut, you fool!”

“But the man said he didn’t kill Sylvie.” Charlie’s eyes filled with confusion. “After he tied us up, he could have killed us both. But he said he wasn’t running away, he was going looking for some girl who was in trouble near Mitshishu Brook and would turn himself in when she was safe. He said he didn’t kill my baby.”

“And you believed that pile of bullshit?” Roblin spluttered.

But Griff did believe it, and from the look in Charlie’s eyes he’d believed it too.

“You had a gun?” Griff rested his hand gently over the old man’s clenched fists. That explained the Colt lying on the desk. McCoy had undone Roblin’s cuffs and was working on the shoe laces while the man writhed and polished the linoleum.

He nodded. “Fox took it, but he didn’t hurt either of us.” Shock whitened the old man’s face. Dammit.

“Why’d you come here today, Charlie?”

The old man looked away, the inner corners of his eyebrows pulled up in an expression of extreme guilt.

“I didn’t know Charlie brought a frickin’ gun with him, he told me he just wanted to look his daughter’s killer in the eye,” Roblin protested, finally getting his feet beneath him and stamping the blood back into his limbs. “Fox is armed and dangerous.” Roblin bent down and fixed his laces. “I’m going to nail that sonofabitch and put him away for so long he’ll be a drooling geriatric before he sees freedom.” He pulled out his firearm and checked the magazine. The metallic snap echoed around the room with grim finality as he chambered a round.

Griff climbed to his feet.

Daniel Fox wasn’t armed or dangerous, but he’d humiliated Roblin. He was a wanted man and would get no mercy or pity from the Sergeant-in-Charge of this detachment. Daniel had broken out of custody—for love, it seemed. If it wasn’t so friggin’ serious, it would have been sweet. Griff now had half an hour to save his marriage, his kids, and Daniel Fox.

***

Hunger picked at her bones with sharp canine teeth. It was dark and so cold the tips of her fingers tingled in that deceptive prelude to numbness. She wiped her nose on the cuff of her jacket, shivers racing over her body. Despite the frigid temperature, she was sweaty and clammy, and doggedly ignoring the lightheadedness that spelled disaster.

She needed a plan.

An owl hooted. The primeval sound lodged in the fear center of her brain and made her freeze as her heart pounded. There was a loud crack of a branch, but she didn’t know where the sound came from or what it was. The blackness was impenetrable and she held back a cry.

What should she do?

The buzz of insects filled the air as they fed off her blood. She slapped them away, pulled herself to her feet, gingerly testing her weight on her injured knee. It hurt like hell. Tooly planned to kill her, and if she didn’t come up with some sort of survival strategy, he was going to succeed.

She swayed. How could she have been so rash and naïve? Normally she was cautious, too scared to take risks. Life was planned and plotted, every angle considered and all eventualities covered before she tiptoed in. But not today. Today she’d grabbed it by the proverbial horns, and it had grabbed her back by the jugular.

She tripped over a briar, crashed to her knees, the pain so excruciating that moisture ran from her eyes and her stomach heaved. But there was nothing to throw up. No food, just insulin hunting down every molecule of glucose in her body.

Dammit. She hauled herself to her feet again, using the limb of a tree, shielding her face because the branches scratched like sharp claws. She didn’t know where she was or where she was going. Blindly she staggered on.

Daniel.

She’d been too chicken to tell him she loved him. He was too big a risk taker and she was too damned scared of the consequences of falling in love with a man who mainlined adrenaline. But with sudden clarity she realized Daniel would never have let her go off alone like this. How ironic that the risk taker would have instinctively known the safer option when it came to her survival? And no matter how hard she’d tried, her grasping and feeble attempts to live her life to the fullest had resulted in nothing but stunted glimpses of that paradigm.

The flaw with her foolhardy little ideal was that she was too terrified of dying to really go for it. She was pretty sure Daniel had thumbed his nose at mortality more times than she’d had orgasms. And after the last few weeks that was saying something.

Was that why she was so attracted to him, because he was unafraid of her darkest fear?

Her vision swam, which was weird considering she couldn’t really see anything. She felt her way slowly onward through the night, hearing the sound of rushing water and forcing herself to take another slow measured step. She became aware of a change in the air around her. It took her a few seconds for her eyes to adjust but she was in a clearing full of large shadowy boulders, near a stream. Faint ribbons of starlight reflected off the dark surface of the water. She sank to her knees and sat panting on the unforgiving bedrock. She lay her cheek against a moss-covered boulder. God, her head hurt.

She just needed a little rest. That was all she needed, rest. Then she’d get up and go kick that old man’s butt. And she’d tell Daniel she loved him, even if he didn’t love her back because that was really living life to the fullest. Taking chances. The intense pulsing pain beat at her skull while sweat cooled on her skin. She closed her eyes just for a moment.

Flying in darkness with low vis might have given him a cheap thrill a few weeks ago, but right now it was just another obstacle in a long list of complications. Thankfully, he’d spent eleven years training for danger, disasters and impossible missions, and he was ready to use everything he had to make sure Cam was safe. And okay, he’d look pretty damn foolish if he found her drinking tea at Tooly’s, but he didn’t care about looking stupid. He didn’t even care about doing time. There was no other choice he could have made, because protecting the woman he loved was the right thing to do.

Honor.

He swallowed the emotions that constricted his throat. It was a small word, but Daniel realized it meant everything to him. And he’d lost it the day he’d killed that civilian cameraman. Now he was stealing it back.

But Cam’s life was more important than even his honor.

He’d found another of the company’s Bell 206B workhorses parked at the airstrip. He’d run a quick inspection and fueled her up and then he’d liberated the machine from her pilot, who was probably sneaking a beer in town. With a bit of luck Daniel would have the bird back before sunrise and the pilot wouldn’t have a clue his helicopter had gone AWOL.

He headed north, using the instruments and staying high enough to avoid all possible fixed landmarks in the region.