Whiteout (Aurora Sky (7 page)

“I have no interest in reward money,”
she
stated.
She folded the paper in half three times until it was compact enough to fit inside her jean
s
pocket.
Her posture was more rigid than usual as she met my suspicious gaze with a glassy stare.

The paper crinkled in Dante's fist. “You know what this means?”

I
broke eye contact with Giselle to look at my partner in crime. Maybe we should start calling ourselves Bonnie and Clyde.

Dante didn't have to say the rest.
I knew what it meant all right.

The agency had outed us.

 

    
     

 

Truck loaded, we rolled away from the vamp cabin, the birch trees pressing in on us from both sides. Driving out didn't appear much faster than walking in. At the end of the road, we passed a banged-up Bronco with a dented passenger's side and a missing bumper. It had been parked on the side of a slightly wider dirt road preceding the private driveway.

Once we reached the Parks Highway, the truck stopped
j
ostling around. Usually it was a relief to be on the highway. In the past it had comforted me knowing t
hat in some small way I was still connected to Anchorage.

But that was before I found out our identities were in enemy hands. Now I wanted to cover my face or duck down every time a car passed from the opposite direction.

Nothing should
have
surprise
d
me a
t this point, but I couldn't believe Melcher had so easily given us up. It had to be the agency. Who else knew we were on the run? Who else would know Dante and I worked together? Who else would print my high school yearbook photo? They'd ruined my senior
year. Why not toss up my school picture to rub more salt in the wound?

There wasn't anything about us being vampire hunters on the paper, but how else would the
flyer
end up in the hands of a vampire unless the agency placed it there?

“There's got to be so
meone else we could report Melcher to,” I said. “Someone more accessible. Maybe someone else on Elmendorf Air Force Base.”

“We can't trust anyone working directly under Melcher,” Dante replied. “I only trust Sergeant Holmes
,
and the only way to reach him i
s through a new recruit sent to boot camp.”

“What are you talking about?” Giselle asked.

My foot tapped against the floorboard in thought. “Selene!” I said suddenly. “Melcher threatened to send her to boot camp. I'm sure she'd be more than happy to help br
ing about agency reform.”

“Agency reform,” Giselle sneered, her condescending tone reminding me too much of Jared. “I thought we were out for revenge, not reform.”

“Both,” Dante said.

Giselle seemed almost to freeze in place. Her body, even her breath, s
tilled.

She had no reason to go manic. It
wasn't
like I had any clue where Selene was being kept—no way to contact her. Melcher might not even send her to boot camp.

Dante also began tapping. His fingers beat out a rhythm on the steering wheel as though pl
aying a flute. Hopefully that meant he'd come up with an idea. “What we need are informants of our own.”

“Informants?” I repeated, unsure of what direction his mind had taken.

“Double agents,” Dante clarified. “We need Noel.”

Wasn't that what I'd been tryi
ng to tell him all along?

“In that case, shouldn't we be heading south
or using the phone to reach her
?” I asked.

“It's too risky,” Dante said. “At least right now. We need to disappear for a while. Drop way off the radar. When the time is right, we'll see
what the situation is in Anchorage. Ma
ybe even do a stakeout
. Wouldn't be my first time keeping tabs on someone.”

I turned in my seat to face him. “Right, and that lasted how many hours before you got tired of watching your subject and decided to engage h
im instead?”

He chuckled before answering. “Hey, I lasted a full day and night.”

“Wow, a full day and night. However did you manage?” I asked sarcastically.

Dante squeezed the steering wheel and pulled himself forward, chest rising. “It wasn't just a stake
out. I also went undercover.”

“Yeah, you told me about that. I seem to recall you saying something about kicking back with a vampire and drinking beers.”

I watched Dante's face closely. His grin widened. “My vamp pal Buck. See? I can play nice with the
ones who make an honest living and drink beer, not blood. You may also recall that my activities led to the agency's knowledge of tastings.”

“And your capture,” I said, shooting Giselle a dirty look.

“I would have found him one way or another,” Giselle inf
ormed me.

“How did you know to go to the tasting in the first place?”

“I followed you from your house up to the hillside.” Giselle stared out the window as though speaking to someone else.

Dante shifted in his seat. “Then she came in and lied to me. Said m
y girl was in trouble.”

Rather than linger on the “my girl” part of Dante's speech, I turned to Giselle.

“Why not go after Jared yourself from the beginning?” I asked. “Why go to all the trouble of stalking me and my family? Kidnapping Dante and Gavin? Thr
eatening Valerie and me—stabbing her?”

Giselle pursed her lips as my voice rose.

“I tried locating Jared first,” she said. “The police in Sitka had let him go by the time I
regained consciousness
. They said he was a detective from Anchorage. I came to Anch
orage, but the trail ran cold, as did yours. But I did find your family
,
and I found you as soon as you returned to town. Jared would have seen me coming anyway. I needed someone else to betray him. Someone he wouldn't expect. Someone highly motivated.”

I
straightened in my seat.

“I did my part. Too bad you didn't take Jared out when you had the chance.”

“I'll get him soon enough,” Giselle said cryptically.

Something in her tone sent a chill skating down my spine. For Giselle,
“
soon
”
could mean decades, cen
turies even. It could also mean within the year, month, or week.

Why did I get the feeling that both she and Jared were done waiting?

 

 

 6

Home Base

 

A couple hours north, Dante slowed the truck and took a left off the highway. At first I thought he was making a pit stop for Tommy or himself, but he continued down a bumpy road, following tire tracks over about three inches of snow.

I leaned forward. “Where are we going?”

Dante looked over and grinned. “There's a remote fishing lodge out this way.
Closes up for the winter. Could make an excellent home base during the off season. We should check it out.”

The road weaved through spruce trees. At a fork in the road, Dante slowed and turned onto a path covered in fresh snow. We were the first to drive t
hrough the powder.

I wouldn't mind a little stability while we figured things out. I wouldn't mind regular access to plumbing, heat, and electricity either.

“I don't suppose they keep the power on for the winter,” I said.

Dante glanced my way. “Keep
dreaming, Sky.”

I sighed. “They have to have beds, at least.”

“Fully furnished,” Dante answered. “And there's a big fireplace in the lobby. It shouldn't be too hard to get that going.”

“Won't the smoke attract attention?”

“Out here? Anyone who lives in the
area year round is going to use their woodstove in the winter.”

“We don't need a fire,” Giselle said.

“Well, I want one,” I said. The extra warmth outweighed the minimal risk.

Dante was right
;
any full-time resident wintering in the interior would be usi
ng a woodstove. Checking each one would be like checking under every pebble on a rocky beach. The agency wasn't looking for smokestacks
;
they were looking for actual sightings. They were expecting vamps to call us in.

The truck bumped along the road at fif
teen miles an hour.

“Any chance we'll make it there before summer?” I asked.

Dante chuckled. “All it will take is one good snow dump and we won't be able to access the place by truck, which means neither will anyone else.” His eyes glimmered. “We're going
to need a couple of snowmachines.”

Giselle cocked her head to the side. “I don't understand. If there's snow, why do we need to make more?”

“Huh?” Dante said.

“Why do we need snow-making machines?”

“Oh right. You're not originally from around here,” Dante
said. “‘Snowmachine' is the Alaskan term for snowmobile.”

Giselle's head remained tilted. “That doesn't make sense.”

Dante took one hand off the wheel. “It's a machine that drives on snow. It makes sense to me.”

The truck plowed through a three
-
foot snowd
rift on the right side of the road. Giselle's shoulder bumped mine before the truck straightened out.

“Is this the only road in?” I asked.

Dante grinned. “Affirmative.”

“Good. Where are we going to get snowmachines?” I asked.

“I know where we could pick u
p a couple,” Dante said. “The father of a friend keeps some at his cabin outside Fairbanks. He has a trailer for transporting them there too.”

I glanced sideways at him. “So when you say pick up, you mean steal?”

“I mean borrow for the winter,” Dante said.

“Right, because he's not going to miss his machines in the winter.”

“The guy's probably insured, and even if he isn't, he can afford to replace them. It's a small price to pay for the greater good.”

Dante slowed the truck around a turn, heading through sp
ruce. It looked like a forest of oversized Christmas trees. For all I knew, we'd be spending the holidays here.

Eventually the landscape opened up and snow
-
covered mountains rose in the distance. Several small cabins dotted the open plain.

“Do people live
out here?” I asked. I didn't see any smoke rising from the chimneys.

“Nope,” Dante said. “These cabins are owned by the lodge. Available summers only.”

The road took a slight turn to the right. Actually, once we left the woods, it was difficult to discern
the road from the rest of the terrain since both were covered in snow.

A
large
one-story
,
log-trimmed building came into view up head. Dante drove toward it. The area in front, like the road, was covered in snow and undisturbed. Five long wooden steps led
up to a wide
,
covered porch and a set of double doors with twisted birch wood for handles. The boarded
-
up windows were about as inviting as a haunted house.

Dante drove up to the steps and stopped the truck. I
j
umped down after he stepped out of the truck
, my feet leaving imprints in the snow. Tommy whined, and Dante pulled the seat forward for the golden retriever to pass. Giselle was the last one to step onto the snow
-
covered ground. She grabbed her pack before striding up to the lodge's front steps. At
the door, she set her pack down and unzipped the smallest front pouch. She pulled out a small kit and took out a thin tool
,
which she stuck inside the door's lock.

One moment Giselle's head was bent over the wooden handle, the next, she straightened out an
d pulled the door toward her. “We have access,” she stated.

“Home sweet home,” Dante said, heading for the doors. He glanced back at me. “Coming?” He stopped at the door and held it open for me. “Ladies first.”

Yes, ladies trespassing first. Leave it to th
e women to lead the way. I stepped inside and shivered.
D
ark, closed
-
up buildings always felt colder inside than outside.

Dante whistled. “Hey, Tommy.”

Tommy's nails drummed over the stairs as he raced in to
join us. He hurried ahead, not
wait
ing
for the
guided tour.

Dante handed me a flashlight.

“Thanks,” I said.

The three of us pointed our flashlights into an open lobby with a high ceiling. White sheets covered the furniture. From the shapes, they looked like long sofas and chairs, coffee and end table
s arranged in clusters near a great big fireplace.

We wandered slowly through the lobby, light beams alternating from the floor to the surrounding room.

Dante aimed his light at the fireplace. “See? We'll have a nice, cozy fire in here.”

“There's a kitchen
back here,” Giselle called.

Dante and I headed toward her beam of light at the end of the open room. To the left, the lobby led into a partially walled off room. There were four tables pushed against a wall, but no chairs. It looked like a small breakfast
nook. One opening led into the lobby, the other had a set of stainless steel swinging doors.

Giselle held one door open, pointing her flashlight around a kitchen, the light reflecting off stainless steel appliances.

Dante aimed his light at the refrigerat
or. “I don't suppose there's any leftover pie in there?”

My nose wrinkled. “If there was, you wouldn't want to eat it.”

“I'd eat old pie over fresh blood any day,” Dante said. He turned and headed back through the eating area. Tommy followed closely on his
heels and passed him in the lobby.

I kept pace with Dante, who took a left turn into the east wing of the lodge, and down a long hallway. There were twelve rooms, six on each side, and each door was propped open with a triangular piece of wood lodged betw
een the door and the floor.

“Pick a room, any room,” I said, shining a light inside the first one we came to.

The furnishings were sparse, but not covered like the sofas and chairs in the lobby. There was a wooden dresser, small desk and chair, a bed
frame
, and a mattress, but no pillows, sheets, or blankets.

There was another open door inside the room, and I pointed my light at it. The beam bounced off a mirror and blinded me momentarily.

Flashlight lowered, I
walked inside,
leaned over the sink
,
and turn
ed the brass handle. No water came forth. Not even a drop. Of course the plumbing would be off for the winter, but it was still disappointing.

The next bedroom we passed was identical to the first—as was the third, fourth, fifth, and so on down the hall.

“
Are they airing these rooms out or something?” I wondered aloud.

“Probably letting the whole place breathe as much as possible during closure,” Dante said.

He led the way forward. Actually, Tommy led the way. Follow the golden tail.

 We walked to the very end where there was a thirteenth door, the only one closed.

“It leads to the river,” Dante said.

I put a hand on my hip. “And no one's going to check on this place before next season
?”

Dante grinned. “Nah. I think the owners spend
winter in Mexico or the Caribbean. One of those places. I can't remember.”

“Must be nice,” I said under my breath.

Dante leaned against the wall and grinned at me. “We'll winter here.”

“And what do we do in the summer?” I asked. “Move into a ski lodge?”

Da
nte chuckled. “Not a bad idea. If we keep moving, no one will ever be able to find us unless we want them to.” Dante pushed away from the wall. “See a room you like?”