Hunted in Alaska, page 9
“It always is.” He frowned and stared into the dancing blaze.
“I can wait for a fireside chat until the tea is served.”
He nodded without another word.
Hayley dumped water into a camp dish for Mack and fed him the last of the canine meal bars from the stash in her pack.
She rubbed the animal’s soft flank as he ate and drank. “You’ll have to hunt for yourself from now on, buddy.”
He let out a muted woof as if he understood her words. Living in the Alaskan wilderness for half the year at a time had rendered the malamute a capable hunter, a survival skill many of his breed never needed to learn in civilized environments.
A few minutes later, Hayley handed Sean a mug of steaming liquid with a tea bag draped over the side. “No sweetener, I’m afraid.”
“There’s a limit to the luxury?” A smile flickered on his bearded face that was not reflected in his somber gaze. “This is great. Thanks.” He took a sip and smacked his lips.
Hayley settled into a cross-legged pose and nursed her tea. The nutty, faintly citrusy odor of the oolong was as comforting as the rich taste and warmth going down her throat. She said nothing further to Sean, oddly content to respect his choice whether or not to follow through with the explanation of his nightmare.
“Where to start?” Sean muttered. With his shuttered expression and soft tone, he seemed to be addressing himself, not her. Then his gaze lifted and snapped into focus on her face. “I killed my mother.”
Hayley stiffened and choked on the tea halfway down her windpipe. “Wha-at?”
Sean’s face went as red as the flames. “That didn’t come out right. Sorry. That aspect of the car accident that killed her is always at the top of my mind so that bit slipped out first.” He let out a long breath. “The years pass, but I’ve never stopped dreaming about that night. The collision. The shattering glass. The screams.” His eyes slammed closed, and he visibly shuddered.
For leaden seconds, Hayley sat frozen. Then she lowered the tea mug from her face.
“This is what happened when you were seven?” The question came out thready, and she cleared her throat.
He nodded without meeting her gaze.
She leaned toward him. “How can a small child cause a car accident?”
He shrugged and took another sip of his tea, then laid the mug aside, his expression bleak. “It was the first time I’d been allowed to sit in the front passenger seat of the family car, and that was only because our back seat was filled with food and Christmas gifts for the local women’s shelter. I was excited and fiddling with knobs and gadgets on the dash. Mom told me to quit, but it was like I couldn’t help myself. She had a travel mug of hot coffee in the console, and somehow I managed to tip it onto her leg.”
“So, she got distracted and hit something?”
“No.” Sean shook his head like a dog shedding water. “Another driver ran a red light and hit us broadside.”
“You’ve lost me.” Hayley studied Sean’s drawn face. “If another driver hit your vehicle, how was the accident your fault?”
“I shouldn’t have been fooling around with the car gadgets.”
“Agreed.”
“I shouldn’t have spilled coffee on my mother.”
“Absolutely not, but—”
“Don’t you get it?” Sean snarled. “If I hadn’t distracted my mother, maybe she would have seen that other car and done something—anything—to avoid the wreck.”
“And maybe—probably—the other vehicle would have struck yours anyway.”
Sean gaped at her with his brows jammed together so tightly only a sliver of space remained between them. “It was my fault,” he rasped. “He said it was.”
“Who said?”
“My f-fath—” Sean seemed to choke over completing the word.
“Your father?” Heat scalded through Hayley’s veins. Was the sensation mainly fury at Sean’s dad or compassion for Sean? A turbulent cocktail of both, no doubt. She reached out and gripped Sean’s shoulder. “That’s ridiculous.”
She stopped herself from blurting out cruel. How could a parent say such a horrible thing to their small child? Especially when the child has just lost his mother, and the father has just lost...his wife. The white heat inside her cooled to embers.
“Sounds like grief talking.” Her tone had moderated. “How often has he said this to you?”
“Only the once. Right after it happened.”
“And the statement stuck with you all these years.”
“How could it not?”
“Maybe you should have a talk with your dad. It’s possible he doesn’t even remember saying those words. People blurt out all kinds of unfair and unkind things in the grip of grief. I should know.”
Acid churned in Hayley’s stomach. She should know indeed. Turning away, she grabbed the backpack and dug out the last of the beef jerky.
“Never mind me. I shouldn’t be meddling. The psychology clinic has closed for the day.” She held out a pair of strips toward Sean. “As advertised. Cold breakfast.”
His dark gaze snared hers and held fast, even as he accepted the jerky from her fingers. Was he considering her suggestion to clear the air with his father? Or was he wondering what painful past she was hiding beneath those glib words, I should know, and the abrupt change of topic? How soon would it be her turn to bare unhealed wounds? Not soon, if she had anything to say about it. Not soon at all.
Maybe it would be healthy if you did, a tiny voice, sounding strangely like her sister’s, whispered in her heart.
Hayley closed her inner ears and chomped a bite out of her jerky.
* * *
In between bites of his breakfast, Sean sipped at the warm tea with determined concentration. What was the matter with him that he’d laid such a bombshell revelation on this woman he barely knew? Something about Hayley stripped away his defenses like no one else he’d ever met. Or was that impression only because they’d come together under such dangerous circumstances? She had proven herself a true and brave ally so perhaps he could be excused for trusting her deeply so quickly.
Her sharp response to his blurted revelation about his responsibility for his mother’s death had shaken assumptions he’d harbored for over two decades. Those assumptions had long ground like grains of sand in his soul, slowly forming a protective callous in his heart that bore no resemblance to a beautiful pearl. The sense of being damaged goods had kept him a loner for a long time. His tough, independent mindset was part of what made him ideal as an undercover agent.
The few people he’d told of his sense of guilt—including the counselor he’d been assigned to see for mental health clearance before he went undercover—had responded with sympathetic platitudes designed to soothe rather than resolve. Not that he’d believed resolution possible, and he’d always figured others also saw the situation as irresolvable. At least, the counselor had signed off on his fitness for duty in the dangerous undercover realm. At the time, that was all that mattered to him.
But Hayley had skipped platitudes and jumped straight to confrontation. Ridiculous, she’d dubbed his assumption of guilt. Heat flared in Sean’s belly. What did she know? She wasn’t there when it happened. But then, she’d agreed he’d been misbehaving when the accident occurred. However, she didn’t make the automatic leap between his bad actions and the car crash.
Absently, Sean chewed on the jerky, the salty savor strong on his tongue.
Sure, from his adult perspective, he mentally acknowledged the blame was not his alone. The other driver had run a red light. But ever since that day when his dad had verbally confirmed Sean’s culpability in his mother’s death, he’d never been able to shake off the conviction of fault. What if he had kept his hands to himself in the car that day? What if he hadn’t knocked the coffee onto his mother? What if Mom had not been distracted? Would she still be alive?
He would never know the answer to the what-ifs. All he had was an acute awareness of what he’d done as a careless kid and that his father held him responsible. No wonder the man had gone off to sea more days of the year than he was home with his son.
But Hayley made all that reasoning sound bogus. Maybe his father hadn’t meant what he said. Sean had never asked. Mostly because he couldn’t bear to hear those words again from the lips of his only remaining parent. Maybe it was time for him to man up and have a difficult conversation with his father. But what if the rickety bridge that remained of his relationship with his dad couldn’t bear the strain of the question?
“We need to make a plan and plot a course.” Hayley’s brisk words broke into Sean’s bitter musings like a hatchet through ice.
Sean gave himself a mental shake. “Right.” He rolled a crick out of his neck. “As badly as we need to acquire a sat phone, I’m not sure how we can use this cabin as a site to ambush our pursuers. There are too many of them. How likely is it that we can successfully outrun or evade the crooks on our trail?”
“That depends on how much farther we press on toward Nenana.”
“Isn’t reaching civilization our goal?”
Hayley shook her head. “Overland on foot, the journey would take weeks in the best of circumstances, and these aren’t it. Serious winter will close in soon, and only a trained musher with significant supplies and a skilled dogsled team should even think about being out here.”
“So, it’s back to finding a way to call for help. We need the trooper’s sat phone.”
“Or Patterson’s.”
Sean snorted. “That guy is hunkered down in your cozy cabin, waiting for the grunts to deliver the goods—us. There’s no doubt in my mind he was in the search plane that found us, and he and the pilot returned to base.”
“What if we could get back to my homestead and retake the cabin?”
Sean finished the last of his tea and set the mug on the hearth with a dull clank. “That’s a thought. We’d have to double back on our pursuers and sneak past them. Any ideas on how best to accomplish that feat?” He offered her a grin. “I’ve got faith in you, wilderness woman.”
A blush spread across her cheeks as she returned his expectant gaze with steady brown eyes. What did she see when she looked at him? Disheveled and grimy, he must appear as rough as someone in a mountain man saga. But Hayley pulled off cute despite the hardships of the past days.
“Glenn’s a sharp tracker,” she said, “but I have a route in mind where we might be able to convince him we’re serious about reaching Nenana—at least long enough for us to wheel around, creep past the criminal crew and make a break for home base. There, we’ll only have to overcome two opponents—Patterson and the pilot. The drawback with that plan is even if we convince Glenn we’re heading ever deeper into the bush, he’ll eventually break off pursuit and take the crew back to the cabin himself.”
“Because he’ll know the wilderness will kill us without further effort on his part.”
“Bingo. So, if we get around them, we’ll have to travel fast to stay ahead—even faster than we’ve been going thus far.”
Sean let out a low whistle through his teeth. “Then we’d better get on the move. Dawn is near enough to create a glow to travel by.”
With a groan, he forced his aching body to a standing position. The wooden floor beneath his stocking feet was chilly. He glanced around and spotted his boots huddled in the shadows on the far side of the hearth, along with his jeans and socks.
Hayley laughed. “For a while there, after I got the fire going, your clothes were steaming like a clambake. They should be dry and toasty now.”
Sean managed a grin as he grabbed the jeans and snugged them on over the long johns. Then he put on the boots. The footwear was warm through and through. “Once more, thank you from the bottom of my heart. How is your ankle today?”
“Better.” She lifted a foot and swiveled it around. “I told you it wasn’t a bad sprain. We should be able to make good time today. The morning leg of this journey will have us continuing to head northeast toward Nenana. Deeper into the bush. I’ll be looking for promising terrain to hide our double-back from Glenn.”
“If he picks up our trail after our waterway trick.”
Hayley frowned. “He will. It’s only a matter of time. How much time could spell the difference between success or failure of our little ploy.”
“Got it.” Sean jerked a nod. “Before we get too far, we’ll need a water source.” He gestured toward the canteen sitting by the backpack. “There can’t be much left in there after high tea this morning.”
“No worries,” Hayley said, stooping to stuff their Mylar blankets into the mouth of the pack. “There’s a spring behind the cabin. One of the reasons this structure was built here. But eventually, a water source wasn’t enough motivation for anyone to linger in such a remote spot. Thus, the cabin was abandoned.”
“How are we fixed for food?”
She frowned and shook her head. “I have a couple of MREs for us at lunch. We’ll need the calories.”
Sean chuckled. “Meals ready to eat? I suppose the military isn’t the only source for those these days.”
Hayley turned her attention to the fire and began to poke at it with a stick, separating the smoldering remnants of logs so they could no longer feed off each other and would soon burn out. “MREs are readily available in wilderness outfitter stores. I’ve also got a good-sized bag of pine nuts my brother and I dried over the summer, but that’s about it. We’ll have to forage for supper.”
“How much forage is available this late in the year?”
She smirked, hefted the pack and led the way toward the door. “Won’t you be surprised. Your taste buds will be, anyway.”
“I can hardly wait.” His tone was dry.
She let out a low chuckle as she pulled wide the door and admitted a whoosh of cold air that scoured Sean’s cheeks. The darkness outside had only begun to pale toward a grim dawn. The day ahead did not beckon; it threatened.
Hardening his jaw, Sean slung the Winchester rifle and the automatic rifle over opposite shoulders. Then he tromped after Hayley as he pulled on his warm and dry gloves and hat. A handgun would have been a nice addition to their armament, as well as more ammunition for the guns in their possession, but wishing didn’t get them anything. Hopefully, Patterson’s crew were also feeling the pinch of low ammo.
As he stepped out the door, a gust of wind stole his breath. He hunched deeper into his jacket as Hayley led them around to the back of the structure. She must be heading for that spring she mentioned. They placed their feet carefully in the predawn dimness. A few feet into the trees, they met a lichen-covered wall of rock. Skirting the low cliff face, Sean followed his guide over and around tumbled boulders. A gentle tinkle of water soon met his ears.
Then they came in sight of the water’s source emerging in little more than a slow trickle from a crack in the cliff face a few feet off the ground. A small pool of liquid gathered in a rocky hollow, while the rest of the stream crept onward obliquely in a narrow but gradually widening path that sported a thin sheen of ice.
Hayley pointed in the direction the water led. “There’s another marsh occupying a low spot in the terrain over there, but we’ll only be skirting it.” She knelt and began filling the canteen.
“I’m happy to avoid any marshes, but I’m a little nervous about the lower temperature today.”
“Me, too.” She rose, screwing the cover on the canteen. “The heavy air feels like a storm brewing, and it’s likely to be snow, not rain. And in this wind—” She shook her head without finishing the sentence.
Sean got the picture. Their horrible situation would become exponentially more dangerous if a blizzard struck. That the circumstance would be equally dire for their pursuers offered marginal comfort. The status of hunter and hunted would mean nothing if they all froze to death.
God, please help us.
Sean inhaled a sharp breath. What was up with the brief prayers he’d been spurting since he’d met Hayley? He and God hadn’t been on speaking terms much since his mom’s passing. She’d always brought him faithfully to church, but his father’s family weren’t churchgoers, and his own attendance had fallen by the wayside. If they survive this mess, maybe it was time to rethink his neglect of faith.
NINE
Hayley led her little troop along the edge of the marshy ground and soon found what she’d been looking for—a significant stand of cattails. She reached over and pulled one out of the ground and studied the root.
“Looks good and healthy.” She sent a glance toward Sean, who was standing, hands on hips, with his eyebrows raised.
“Good for what?”
She waggled the root at him. “You’re looking at supper.”
Sean scowled. “Don’t tell me it’s going to taste like chicken.”
Hayley laughed. “No, more like potatoes. Give me a hand. There are a couple of forage bags in the pack. We’ll put about a dozen roots in one bag and the heads—the cattail part—in another bag.”
“We can eat the heads, too?”
“Nope, but they make excellent fire starters. If it were spring, we could harvest and eat the pollen and the shoots. The stalks would also be tender and edible.”
Sean rolled his shoulders and dug out the forage bags. “You’re the expert. I’ll have to trust you.”
“Good choice.” She showed him how to peel the fibrous outer coating from each root before placing it in the bag. “If we wait until the root dries to peel away the excess fiber, the chore becomes extra difficult. It’s best to take the time to do it now.”
They finished their task, stored their harvest and moved on. Hayley led them along a path skirting the marsh but on dry ground. After a mile of leaving decent tracks in the soft turf, they came to a rockier area and she turned away from the marsh to follow a terrain less apt to leave traces of their passage. Mack crisscrossed from side to side or ahead or behind them, sometimes sniffing the ground, other times scenting the air. Occasionally, he darted off into the trees but always came back into sight within a few minutes.
