Alone in the Wild (Rockton #5)(92)

Yes, Casey, they have a pet dog named Summer, and this isn’t Abby’s father. It’s pure coincidence that their dog is also, apparently, missing.

Dalton’s hand tightens on Baptiste’s shoulder. “You see those guns pointed at you, kid? Those mean ‘Don’t move.’”

“Just like the one you had pointed at me,” Petra says.

“You moved,” he says.

“And could have gotten you both shot up with those pellets,” I say.

Those pellets.

He was carrying a gun loaded with buckshot.

Like the weapon used to kill Ellen.

The weapon Lane swore he didn’t have.

Yet Lane also swore he murdered Ellen.

A flash of Tomas saying Lane had a friend who died last year. Then Felicity saying she and Sidra hung out with two kids from the Second Settlement.

Shit.

Questions and theories ping through my brain, and I squeeze my eyes shut and push them back. Gather more data. Work this through.

“Where is Sidra?” Felicity says.

“That’s what I’m asking you,” Baptiste says, as they lock glowers. “You took her back to your grandfather, didn’t you?”

“She’s missing?” Felicity’s eyes snap. “You lost your baby, and now you’ve lost Sidra?”

“I didn’t lose—”

“Enough,” Dalton says. “Felicity, go sit over there with Petra. Baptiste, you and Sidra have a baby?”

“Had,” Felicity says. “Had and lost—”

Baptiste swings on her, and Dalton and I both raise our weapons, ready to order him back, but it’s only a warning lunge, accompanied by a snarl.

“Felicity?” I say. “Sit and be quiet, please. Even if he provokes you.”

“I’m not the one—” Baptiste begins.

“You don’t get along,” I say. “That appears to be an understatement. But we need answers, and we aren’t getting them with you two spitting at each other like bobcats.”

That is really what they look like, backing up, glaring at one another. It reminds me of Diana and Dalton, Diana convinced he’s keeping her from me, and Dalton hating the way she’s treated me. The lover and the friend as rivals. It doesn’t need to be that way, but sometimes it is, and as with Dalton and Diana, it goes deeper, to a fundamental personality clash that the competition only exacerbates. I suspect that’s the same here—that even without Sidra in the middle, these two never got along.

I walk to Baptiste’s other side, forcing him to turn away from Felicity.

“You have a baby,” I say.

He nods, and I see the struggle to remain calm, not to shout that his child is missing and his wife, too, and he doesn’t have time to stand around answering my questions. The fact that he’s trying suggests I was right—he’s not usually a hothead who threatens strangers with shotguns. He’s backed into a wall and acting out of character.

Is he? If he killed Ellen, then shooting Petra wouldn’t be “out of character.”

Tuck that aside. Focus.

“A girl or a boy?” I ask.

“A girl. Summer.”

“How old is she?”

“Thirty-eight days,” he says, so quickly that I suspect, if given a moment, he could tell me the number of hours, too.

“What happened to Summer?” I ask.

“The wild people took her.”

Petra snorts. “Is that the Yukon equivalent of ‘dingoes ate my baby’?”

I give her a hard look, but she meets my gaze, her expression saying she’s already decided these aren’t suitable parents, based on nothing more than the fact that she doesn’t want them to be.

“Evidence suggests dingoes may actually have eaten that woman’s baby,” Dalton says.

When I look at him, he shrugs. “I read about the case. The problem with her story was that dingoes weren’t known to take children. The problem with your story, kid, is that the same applies to those you call the wild people. They don’t have kids. It’s against their rules. So they sure as hell aren’t going to steal one.”

This isn’t entirely true. We know Maryanne’s group prohibited children, but that doesn’t mean others followed the same laws. Dalton’s just putting Baptiste on the offensive, trying to break his story.

“We found evidence,” Baptiste says. “The wild people came, and they took her.”

“They snuck into your tent in the night?” Petra says. “Plucked her from your arms while you slept?”

“We did not sleep with her in our arms. Sidra’s mother lost a child by accidentally suffocating her in the night, so Summer slept in a box that I built. It was evening. I was hunting, and Sidra was with the baby. She was making dinner while Summer slept in her box, right near the fire. Someone grabbed Sidra from behind. Put a sack over her head. She fought, but she was overpowered. She heard grunts of communication, like the wild people. She smelled wild people. While she was bound and blinded, they took our baby. In her place, they left one of their skulls, the sort they use to mark territory. They told Sidra not to come for Summer. The voice was low, guttural, like the wild people. They said Summer was theirs. Sidra screamed and screamed, and finally I heard her and came running. We found tracks. We tried to follow them, but they went on the ice and we could not.”