No Fixed Line (A Kate Shugak Investigation Book 22)

by Dana Stabenow

  “How’s that?”

  “Semper paratus,” she said. “Always ready.”

  He fumbled in back of him for the condom he’d brought out with the wine, and jumped when she bit him. “Hard not to be around you.”

  He felt her smile against his skin. “Hard is the word.” Her hand dropped below the surface of the water and he caught his breath. He grabbed her by the hair and pulled her head back to get at her mouth again—god, how he loved her mouth—but she pulled away. He went after her blindly and she grabbed his head and said, “Matt. Wait.”

  “Why?”

  “Listen.” She shook him. “Matt, listen!”

  He pulled back and stared at her. “What? It’s the wind, it’s—” And then he heard it, faintly, over the sound of the gale whistling and wailing up the canyon walls, the scream of a jet engine, faint at first, growing rapidly nearer and louder.

  “What the—”

  The sound of the engine increased to a roar as it passed overhead and then as suddenly ceased. A second later a booming crash made them both jump. Even above the wind they could hear tearing metal screaming in loud, abruptly truncated protest.

  Five seconds could not have passed. To Matt it felt like an hour and even as he was up out of the pool he was cursing himself for his slow reaction. The door banged open and he tore into his clothes, yanking on everything from the skin out including his down bibs and parka. Next to him Laurel was pulling on her own. “Do you think anyone could have survived that?”

  “Won’t know until we look. Not likely, though.” He stuck foot warmers to the bottoms of his socks and made sure she did, too, before stamping into his Sorels.

  “Still have to look, I get it. Can we take the sled?”

  “Not very far, but we will as far as we can.” He put hand warmers into his down mitts and pulled them on.

  “We brought the snowshoes, right?”

  “On the trailer. Part of the survival kit.” Although he doubted either the terrain or the weather would allow their use. Bulked up to twice their natural size by their Arctic gear they lumbered out of the house and went around to the side where the sled and the trailer were parked next to the woodpile. He yanked off the tarp while she climbed on and pressed the starter. That blessed engine came to life at a touch and he sent up silent thanks to Yamaha engineers. He clipped the first aid pack to an eyebolt screwed into the inside of the trailer. Laurel scooted back and he climbed on the seat in front of her. They slipped goggles over their parka hoods. Matt took one precious moment to run over everything they’d done since they’d heard the crash, trying to think of anything he’d forgotten. It was always the one thing you didn’t bring that you desperately needed at the scene.

  The skis had frozen into the snow but they only had to rock the snow machine a few times before it came loose. Matt gave it some gas, a very little, and they left the negligible shelter of the cabin and crept slowly but purposefully into the center of the canyon, the wind howling into their faces. It increased in volume and in noise and seemed to be trying to shove them off the sled and the sled over on top of them. “Hold on!” Matt said, and stood up to lean forward, shifting his body weight out over the skis. The light cast by the sled’s lamp was obscured by fine, dense snow blowing horizontally across their path, only briefly and sporadically illuminating the homicidal rocks, ridges, and outcroppings that obstructed their way. Matt kept their speed at just above a crawl, hoping to minimize the damage if they did collide with a chunk of Quilak granite. All too soon the canyon narrowed and the ground rose so steeply that the snowmobile’s engine rose to a protesting whine. Matt was just about to put it into neutral and break out the snowshoes when Laurel said, her voice faint against the wind, “Look!” Her mitt pointed over his shoulder.

  For a brief lull the snow cleared and revealed what he had taken for another small outcropping but was in fact the vertical stabilizer of an airplane. It loomed up momentarily out of the darkness and then the snow closed in again. He goosed the gas and the sled’s engine yowled in protest but it moved forward far enough that the headlight caught the one thing that was not like any other in this roaring wilderness. From what he could see, which wasn’t much, the rudder had more or less survived the impact. One of the horizontal stabilizers was pretty chewed up while the other was completely gone. The fuselage forward of the tail extended maybe eight feet. The snow was coming down so hard that in another ten minutes they might have passed it by if the wreckage hadn’t partially blocked what was left of the little canyon before it turned into a mountain ridge.

  “Scooch back!” She did and he didn’t step off the sled as much as roll off it, trying to spread out as much of his weight as possible. He didn’t know how firm the snow here was, he didn’t want to posthole through it if he didn’t have to, and he didn’t want to break out the snowshoes until and unless he absolutely had to. He rolled over until he was just below the wreckage, and then he squirmed forward on his elbows and knees until he bumped his head against the fuselage. In spite of all his Arctic gear, in spite of the hot pads in his boots and mitts, the cold was beginning to make itself felt. He paused, trying to snatch some of the oxygen going by him at what felt like the speed of sound. He couldn’t smell any fuel so the wings were probably not nearby, which was at least a relative mercy. The very last thing he wanted to have to deal with in this blizzard was a fire. He turned over and used his heels to push himself to where he could grasp the ragged edge of the fuselage where it had torn itself from the rest of the aircraft. He pulled himself alongside it and around it and then through it, with the stray thought that he wished the sadist who presided over his annual fitness certification could see him now.

  The fuselage seemed to be pretty well wedged into the cliff face, and he walked his elbows forward until his head was partially sheltered from the storm and squinted around. It was dark inside and fast filling up with snow. A headlamp. Yeah, he sure could have used a headlamp about now. There was a flashlight back in the first aid kit in the trailer instead of in his pocket, too.

  By some freak of physics the floor of the fuselage was almost level. He could make out the vague outline of a single remaining airplane seat. Wires and strips of interior laminate dangled from places where the bulkhead had ripped open and what looked like stuffing, probably from one of the seats. He wiped the snow from his goggles. And there, in the back—

  “Fuck!”

  He tested the edge of what was really just some ribbing sandwiched between a couple of pieces of aluminum. It seemed steady enough, like maybe it wouldn’t shift beneath his weight and roll down the side of the canyon and over himself, Laurel, and the sled, in that order. And Kate Shugak’s cabin, let’s not forget that possibility, the one that might actually get him killed. He got his feet beneath him. The wreckage held steady, wedged between the snow and the rock. He duckwalked forward, one cautious hand and foot at a time.

  They were kids, belted together into the last seat remaining on the aircraft, which astonishingly had remained bolted to the floor. Let’s hear it for the FAA and strict aviation safety regulation enforcement. They were both limp, hanging from their seatbelt, and frost was already forming on their faces and clothes. He stripped the mitt from his hand and felt for pulses. Faint, but there.

  The boy was wearing a T-shirt and shorts, the girl a sundress with a cardigan over it. Neither of them was packing much in the way of body weight. He had to get them down to the cabin and into the warm.

  He took one precious moment to clear his mind and think it all out before moving into action. He stripped off his parka and laid it out on the floor. He cut the seatbelt with his belt knife and rolled them inside the parka side by side. He cut lengths from the dangling wiring and used it to tie the parka tightly around them, and then more to fashion a rope which he tied to the wiring around the parka in a makeshift three-point harness. He shoved them and the parka and the wiring harness out of the fuselage and into the weather. All he had on beneath the parka was a T-shirt and
the bib of his Carhartts and the snow stung his exposed skin with a fury that made him feel like it was drawing blood. Yeah, should have put his hoodie on under his parka, too.

  The wind was blowing so hard that it pushed the parka full of kids sideways over the slope of snow instead of straight down to the sled, but Laurel had seen what he was doing. She had put on her snowshoes while he’d been inside the wreck and she stepped out and snagged the edge of the parka as it went by. He wiped his goggles again and let himself down onto the snow, too tired now to be careful. His foot promptly sank in up to the hip.

  “Fuck.” He knew his fatigue signaled the onset of hypothermia, but he managed to pull himself out onto his belly and more or less swam over the surface of the snow to the sled. Laurel helped him put the kids in the trailer and shoved him in after them. She climbed on the sled and they started to move. He realized that during the time he’d been inside the wreck she had also turned the sled around so that it was pointing downhill.

  I’m so keeping her, he thought.

  The journey back was quicker than the journey up, and they got the kids into the cabin in short order. Matt collapsed into the single chair and started to shake. Laurel jammed as much wood into the stove as it would hold, rolled the kids in front of it and then went back outside to shut off the sled and tarp it up. Back inside she stripped off her Arctic gear and then had to find a pair of wire cutters to get the kids out of the parka.

  “N-n-no unnecessary m-m-movement.” His teeth were chattering so hard he could barely get the words out. “Are-are-are their clothes wet? Is the p-p-p-parka?”

  She felt them, and shook her head. “The snow is fine and dry. None of it stuck.”

  “L-l-leave them on the p-p-parka. Get out the h-h-hot p-packs and t-t-tuck them in around them. C-c-cover them up with b-b-blankets.”

  She did so, working quickly and efficiently, and then emptied a bottle of water into the tea kettle and put it on the Coleman with the burner on high. While she waited for it to boil she got his boots and bibs off and pulled a sleeping bag up to his chin, working the zipper around so his hands were free. A few minutes later he was sipping gratefully at a steaming mug of chicken bouillon, steadying it with both hands so he wouldn’t spill most of it down his front. After what felt like a very long time his shivers began to abate and he relaxed against the back of the chair with a long sigh. Her expression, which had been looking a little pinched, began to smooth out. She nodded at the children. “Should we wake them up and try to get something hot into them?”

  “No. They’re warm and dry. I’ll check their body temps in a minute but I think we got to them in time.”

  There was a murmur from one of the children. Laurel was at their side a moment later, smoothing the hair back from the boy’s forehead as he blinked up at her.

  “Why, they’re beautiful, Matt,” she said. “And they might be twins they look so much alike, although the girl is smaller.”

  Matt heaved himself to his feet and shuffled forward, mug in one hand and holding up the sleeping bag with the other, until he could watch over her shoulder.

  “Hey, guy,” she said gently. “Don’t worry, you’re okay, you’re alright, everything’s fine. You’re safe.”

  He muttered something they didn’t catch. “What did you say?” The boy’s eyes widened and he struggled to sit up. “No, no, don’t do that. You need to stay where you are and get warm. What’s your name?’

  He struggled against her hands. “Mi hermana! Mi hermana!” Tears filled his eyes.

  “What?”

  “Your sister?” Matt said. “Buddy, she’s right there, right next to you.”

  Laurel, catching on, patted the girl. “Right there, see?”

  The boy turned his head and saw the girl unconscious next to him and grabbed her shoulder. “Anna! Anna!”

  “Buddy, no, stop that.” Matt knelt down awkwardly and put his hand on the boy’s forehead. “She’s okay. Ella es okay. Let her sleep and get warm. You’ll be okay, too. All okay. Okay?”

  Something about Matt’s slow deep voice was reassuring to the boy. He rolled over on his side, wrapped his arms around the girl, and was out for the count.

  Matt shuffled back to the chair. Laurel got a mug of her own and climbed into his lap, drawing up her legs and snuggling into his shoulder. He gloried in the shared warmth of her body. Those moments out in the storm were the single most vivid reminder of his mortality he’d ever had.

  “‘Ella es okay?’” Laurel said finally.

  He had just enough energy left to shrug. “One year of high school Spanish. I only took it because Crystal Topkok did. I was hot for her big time.”

  She raised her head and they looked at each other.

  “What the actual fuck?” he said.

  She knew what he meant. What was anyone doing in the air in this weather? At this altitude? Anywhere near the Quilak Mountains, a sharp-toothed array of dedicated plane killers on a good day? “Pilot error?”

  He snorted. “You think?” He looked at the kids. “At least we got them out. At least they’re alive.” He leaned his head back against the chair and closed his eyes. “Good work.”

  She looked at his face, drawn with exhaustion and the delayed beginnings of exposure. He hadn’t hesitated after the crash. He had moved immediately to respond even though the chance of survivors was next to none, and he’d taken it for granted that she would help, no questions asked, no matter what it took.

  She snuggled her head back into the hollow between his shoulder and his neck. His heart beat strongly and steadily in her ear, and she closed her eyes, letting the warmth of the fire and his body seep into hers.

  I am so keeping him.

  Two

  TUESDAY, NEW YEAR’S DAY

  The Park, Kate’s homestead

  “TWO PACKAGES OF YEAST? REALLY?” Vanessa peered over Kate’s shoulder. “You put barely a teaspoon in that rustic loaf of yours.”

  “Ah, but this is fry bread. It’s not sitting overnight in the refrigerator, we’re making it today. We want the dough to come up fast.” Kate stirred the yeast into the warm water and nodded at the saucepan. “Test the milk.”

  Vanessa dabbled a finger. “Baby bottle warm.”

  “Perfect.”

  Vanessa turned off the burner. “What next?”

  “Oil, sugar, salt, add the milk, stir it all together, and then let it stand for fifteen minutes. Meantime get out the big cast iron frying pan and put it on the big burner.” Kate put the dirty dishes in the dishwasher and set the kitchen timer, and for the umpteenth time in the last four years made a mental bow of gratitude toward the Park, which had hand-built her a new house with all the modern conveniences. She still missed the cabin her father had built, burned down by an asshole too nearly related to the young woman now sharing a bed with Kate’s adopted son, but a dishwasher, a clothes washer, a flush toilet and a shower went a long way toward alleviating any lingering nostalgia. “Coffee?”

  “Sounds good.”

  They sat down at the table. Kate added half and half and sugar. Vanessa gave the requisite shudder, to which Kate gave the requisite response, as in none.

  “How long have you been making fry bread?”

  “Can’t remember a time when I wasn’t elbow deep in dough of some kind.” Kate smiled. “This recipe comes from a friend, Joyce White, who lives in the Valley. It’s better than Emaa’s. Although I never would have said that out loud while she was alive.”

  Vanessa was a slender young woman with chin length dark hair in a fashionably asymmetric cut, large eyes with impossibly long, thick lashes, and a solemn expression.

  “I like the haircut, by the way,” Kate said.

  “Thanks.”

  “We haven’t had much chance to talk. How was your first semester?”

  Vanessa shrugged. “All right, I guess.”

  “Wow. I’m drowning in your enthusiasm over here.”

  “I don’t know, Kate.” Vanessa turned her mug around betw
een her hands. “I don’t know if I’m cut out for college. It’s just one kegger after another, and who’s hooking up with who. I thought I’d seen people drunk in the Park, but…”

  “I remember,” Kate said. “College isn’t about drinking, it’s about swilling. Find the ones who don’t.”

  “Where?”

  “The library, maybe?” Kate was absurdly pleased when a smile, however fleeting, crossed Van’s face. “What about your classes?”

  “Please don’t ask me if I’ve declared a major.”

  “Okay. Any good teachers?”

  “There’s a journalism teacher I like.”

  In her senior year Vanessa had been the editor of the King Chronicle, the Niniltna High School online newspaper. “So, that’s good.”

  “Yeah, but he’s old and he can barely email. The future of news is online. I don’t think the guy even knows what Facebook is.”

  “I thought Facebook was only for old folks nowadays anyway. What about your other classes? Any joy there?”

  Vanessa shook her head. “Getting the required stuff out of the way. It’s all just a rehash of high school.” She drank coffee and looked at Kate. “The good teachers are watching Juneau. They know what’s coming, and they’re looking for jobs somewhere else, and you can’t blame them. We’ll be lucky if there’s a University of Alaska left after this legislative session. I don’t want to go to school Outside. And college isn’t cheap, Kate.”

  “I’m begging you, tell me you didn’t take out a college loan. We talked about this—”

  “Oh god no. My grandparents had an education policy that matured when I was eighteen and with the stickpicker job over at Suulutaq during the summer, I’m fine for spending money. But…” She shrugged. “It just feels like I could be spending that money better somewhere else.”

  Kate thought about it. “Okay,” she said, “I get it. College isn’t for everyone. I went because my grandmother insisted and she was a lot older and tougher than I was. And it helped me get a job in Anchorage.” Unconsciously her fingers traced the white scar that bisected her brown throat nearly from ear to ear. It had shrunk a good deal since the pedophile had come at her with a knife at the end of the case that proved to be the last in her career as an investigator for the Anchorage DA. “But consider this.” She leaned forward and caught and held the young woman’s eyes. “Once you get a degree, you can’t lose it, it can’t leave you, it can’t divorce you, it won’t die on you, it’s yours for life. Damn few other things in life will ever achieve that kind of permanence. And remember that it’s never about the major to future employers. It’s that you proved you finish what you start.” She sat back. “What does Johnny say?”