Alone in the Wild (Rockton #5)
Kelley Armstrong
For Jeff
ONE
I wake buried under a hundred and forty pounds of dog. Storm knows she’s not allowed on the bed, so I lie there, brain slowly churning, until I remember I’m not in bed. I’m on the ground. Cold, hard winter ground—the floor of a tent that is definitely not big enough for two adults and a Newfoundland dog. Which tells me one adult is gone.
I lift my head. Sure enough, there’s no sign of Dalton. I peer at the glow of sunrise seeping through the canvas. I’ve slept in. It’s December in the Yukon, when dawn means it’s about … I lift my watch. Yep, 10 A.M.
I groan. Storm echoes it as she tries to stand, an impossible feat within the confines of this tent.
“Where’s Eric?” I ask.
Shockingly, the dog doesn’t answer. I blink back the fog of a night that started with tequila and ended with … Well, it ended strenuously enough to explain why I’m still in bed at ten, though apparently my partner had no trouble rising early.
We’d left Storm outside last night. That wasn’t cruel. It’s hovering around the freezing mark, positively balmy for this time of year. Storm has her thick coat and her companion, a wolf-dog named Raoul. We’d brought them on our weekend getaway both for company and for training, Storm as a tracker and Raoul as hunter. Raoul’s master doesn’t hunt. Not animals, at least.
If Storm is in the tent with the flap closed, that means Dalton let her in. It also means he’s taken Raoul. I rub my eyes and spot a note pinned to the tent flap.
When I push Storm, she grunts and shifts enough for me to scrabble over her and pluck off the note.
Hunting. Back for lunch. Coffee in thermos. Don’t wander.
The note is the model of reticent efficiency, and I would say that fits our sheriff to a tee, but I’ve also read his near-poetic academic and philosophical musings, ones that shouldn’t come from anyone without a Ph.D., much less a guy with zero formal schooling. That is also our sheriff. Two sides to the same coin. Only I get to see the second one.
I find not only coffee but breakfast in a dog-proof pouch at the end of the bed. Scrambled eggs with venison sausage, and bannock with … I lift the hard bread, still warm from the fire, oozing gooey brown dots. Bannock with chocolate chips. I laugh and take a bite. I won’t say I’m a bannock fan, but chocolate makes everything better.
I happily munch the bannock and wash it down with coffee. I don’t toss any scraps to Storm. Honestly, at her size, she’d never even taste them. Instead, she gets one of my sausages. As for the “don’t wander” part of Dalton’s note, I’m interpreting that as a suggestion rather than the imperative it seems. Oh, naturally he hopes I’ll take it as a command, but he knows better than to expect that. He means for me to stay close, and I will. I’m not about to stay in the tent for two more hours, though.
When I finish breakfast, I open the flap, and Storm clambers out to romp in the snow. She’s fourteen months old, which means she’s outwardly a full-grown dog, but inside she’s still a pup. At thirty-two, I understand the feeling. Or, I should say, I’ve regained the feeling after sixteen months in Rockton. Before that, while I remember a girl endlessly on the move, endlessly into mischief, that girl vanished when I was eighteen, shoved into hiding by the kind of mistake that banishes one’s carefree inner child. Out here, I’ve found her again … at least, when I’m not on duty as Detective Casey Butler.
Dalton and I are on vacation, which means we’re taking an entire two days off. Down south, we’d call that a weekend. Up here, with a police force of three, we take time off where we can find it.
Things have been slow in Rockton. The holidays are approaching, and it’s as if people decided to cut us slack as a seasonal gift. No assaults. No robberies. No murders. In a town of under two hundred people, the last should be obvious, but this is Rockton. Murder capital of the world, someone used to say. That someone knew exactly what she was talking about, having turned out to be a killer herself.
Rockton is special. For better or worse. Mostly better, but the crime rate is one of those “worse” parts. We can’t expect otherwise, really. We are a town of fugitives. Everyone here is running from something. Some are victims, on the run from ex-partners, stalkers, anyone who might want them dead through no fault of their own. This is the true purpose of Rockton—a refuge for those fleeing persecution. It’s also home to white-collar criminals, whose misdeeds pay our bills. Then there are those whose mistakes—often violent ones—brought them to Rockton under expensively bought cover stories given even to Dalton. So it’s no surprise that we have a murder rate.
For now, it’s quiet, and has been for six months. Which means Dalton and I can take an actual weekend off.
Storm and I play in the snow for about an hour before I realize that I should have stoked the fire first. While Dalton had left it blazing for me, he’s obviously been gone awhile, and by the time Storm and I collapse, exhausted, the fire is down to embers. I add another log, but it’s not going to take. We need kindling.
That’s life up here. Constant work just to survive. Heat doesn’t come at the flick of a switch. Food isn’t the nearest fast-food joint away. Water isn’t a simple matter of turning on a faucet. In Rockton, we simulate modern living as best we can—there are restaurants in town, and water does come from taps through a pump system—but everyone needs to work to put food in that grocery, to fill the water tanks when the stream runs low. One quickly develops a healthy respect for our pioneer ancestors.