A Darkness Absolute (Casey Duncan #2)(62)

“When did that change?”

He walks in silence, thinking. “After she got back. Not right away. At first, she was grateful. She apologized to me. Told me I’d been right to want her to stay out of the forest and thanked me for putting so much effort into finding her when it was her own stupid mistake. I said everyone underestimates the danger out here, and it’s so easy to get turned around in the forest. Everything seemed fine. And then it wasn’t.”

“When did it go wrong?”

“Maybe a week or two after that? I remember she’d taken a few days off, and we still seemed to be okay, and then she started making excuses for skipping our meetings—they were daily back then, me giving reports. I figured it was trauma. Isabel agreed. We decided to give her space, but it only just got worse after that. I never tried figuring out what changed her mind about me. I just thought…” He shrugs. “I thought it was me. Our styles clash, I was too rough around the edges, she wasn’t accustomed to men like me. Whatever the reason, I sure as hell wasn’t going to change to make her comfortable.”

“It wasn’t you,” I say. “Something more happened. After she got back.”

“I see that now. I just wish I had a clue what it was.”

*

As we walk, I ask Dalton more about the relationship between Rockton and the “locals.” I know the basics, of course, but now’s the time to hammer those down to specifics—before I meet Cox and say anything I shouldn’t.

The issue, of course, is that Rockton might be hidden from the air, but on the ground, it’s not exactly shielded by an invisibility barrier. Well, it kind of is, given the architecture. Sutherland passed out fifty meters from town without realizing how close he was.

The problem is that we don’t stay in town. We come out to hunt, to fish, to gather berries, to chop trees, and just to get out and move around. When you’re in a region with so few people, a passing stranger is going to get your attention.

So how big a secret is Rockton? If you live in the immediate area, you know there’s a settlement. You just don’t know what kind of settlement it is. If you ask Jacob or Brent, they’ll pretend it’s a commune or wilderness retreat, but the Yukon isn’t the kind of place where people like answering questions, so most don’t ask. Their own wild imaginings are far more entertaining. Even Brent has a list of conspiracy theory explanations for Rockton, and no real interest in learning the truth.

What about those from Rockton? Men like Tyrone Cypher. Cypher hadn’t run away. He’d just said “fuck this” and walked out. His “fuck this” had been directed mostly at the new sheriff—Gene Dalton. Like Dalton, Cypher hadn’t been above throwing his weight around. Unlike Dalton, he didn’t need an actual excuse to do it. Also, as Jacob said, he was crazy. So the council demoted him to deputy and Gene to sheriff. After a few years, Cypher stormed off, declaring he’d rather live among “savages” than the so-called civilized folk of Rockton.

Did he talk about Rockton after he left? Maybe. But Dalton figured anyone who spent five minutes with the guy wouldn’t have believed a word that left his mouth. Whatever Cypher has said, it’s never come back on Rockton. The Yukon wilderness is a nest of interlocking secrets, and if you go after someone else’s, they might retaliate by digging up yours.

As we walk, Dalton follows Jacob’s landmarks and points them out to me, part of my ongoing survival education.

See that ridge? If you can count two points, you’re heading northeast. Three, you’re heading east. One? Due north. You want to head back to Rockton? Over your shoulder, you’ll see the ridge as two peaks, the smaller one to the left.

There’s a lightning-struck tree right up here. Take a good look at it. It’s a white spruce, like the lightning-struck spruce over by the lake, but see how this one’s split? Right down to the base. That’s how you tell the two apart.

This is the language I’m learning. The little things that are, to him, as natural as saying, Head up to the Tim Hortons, then swing a left at the light and keep going until you hit a one-way street.

I’m in the lead and have been for a while, my instructor letting me take the wheel. Keep an eye out for crisscrossed felled pines and then make a left, forty-five degrees.

When I don’t quite get it right, he prods my shoulder blade, steering me. This time, though, his hand falls and grips, and that’s my brake.

“We’re getting close,” he says. “There’s a clearing to the right, and I’m going to guess that’s where Cox built his shelter. Which means we need to watch for traps.”

“Booby traps?”

“That’s common for those who hunker down someplace alone and exposed. We had them when Jacob and I were growing up.”

That’s how Dalton words his past life—“when Jacob and I were growing up” or “when I lived out here.” Never “when I lived with my parents.” Maybe that’s too confusing when he has two sets. But I think it’s more that the two sets are confusing to him.

After the Daltons brought him into Rockton, he waited for his parents to rescue him. When they didn’t, the only way he could deal with that was to reject them and accept what everyone told him—how lucky he was to have been “rescued.”

Then he grew up and realized he’d actually been kidnapped. And he still has no idea why his birth parents didn’t come for him. If he’s ever asked Jacob, his brother didn’t have an answer.