Daniel tried to shut down his emotions, something that should come easily after so many years of practice. He ground his teeth. The ATV was close now, coming to pick up the passengers.
“Without you being such a bastard, I would never have met Captain Crane and I’d never have found the strength to sort my life out.”
“Congratulations.” He hoisted his packs and started walking.
“Joe thinks you killed that hooker, by the way—”
The two guys on the ATV shot him wide-eyed looks.
“—and got your rocks off watching Cam find the body and then taking care of her.”
There was a stone in his boot but he didn’t stop walking to dig it out. Anger escalated inside his brain. He didn’t want to be around anything or anybody that reminded him of Cam and that included Vikki Salinger.
But everything from the blue-green water of the bay to the smell of fish on the breeze reminded him of Cameran Young. His throat felt raw, his emotions pummeled like fresh meat.
God, he needed a drink.
He was off duty. He was on leave. He’d been a good boy while working this job, and now he was going to sink himself in enough alcohol to make at least one day disappear. And then it was time to find another willing body to sink into, without the emotional complications of giving a damn. Time to get Cameran Young out of his mind and body, and move on.
***
Griff sat in the detachment building, eating a cheese roll McCoy had made for him, contemplating whether or not to go home. But they were so close to getting DNA results back from the sperm on Sylvie Watson, and to identifying the fingerprints lifted from the knife found next to her ATV, that he couldn’t just up and leave. Part of him wanted to be the one to make the arrest. Not because he needed the ego trip or the adrenaline rush of taking down a killer, but because of that damn vow he’d made to Charlie Watson. After all these years he should know better than to promise something he might not be able to deliver.
But there were things about this case that bothered him…
Like the knife. Unless the killer was incredibly stupid—always a possibility—wouldn’t he have gone back to the area and searched for his knife when he realized it was missing? Unless he’d already left the area? Hmm. He brushed crumbs off his shirt and then off the desk into the wastepaper basket. Maybe the murderer was long gone?
McCoy flicked him a glance while he stared at the phone. Even though he’d put a rush on the evidence from this case, he was still waiting. The forensics lab had been backed up this morning by a home invasion and triple-homicide of a prominent New Brunswick family. Griff’s own worst nightmare—no matter how state-of-the-art his home security system or how hairy his dog.
He checked his watch, tapping his index finger on McCoy’s desk. She sat across from him filling out paperwork. Her short black hair was clamped to the top of her head from wearing her cap. At least there were some advantages to being bald—he didn’t get hat hair. The desk phone rang at the same moment his cell phone buzzed.
McCoy reached over to pick up her phone. He checked his display. Marcia.
Shit. Perfect timing as always. He went outside, the air cooler than it had been earlier, sea mist clinging to the coast and drifting over the knuckles of land in great ghostly shrouds.
“I was just about to call you.” Sweat collected on his brow as he lied. Since when had he become afraid of his wife? Since she’d threatened to leave him and take their kids with her.
There was a short pause, like she was gearing herself up to say something, which couldn’t be good. “I can’t take this anymore. I can’t take you being constantly away when I’m trying to fix our marriage—”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. We’re both trying to fix our marriage.” He tried to calm her down but he could hear her breath catch on the other end of the line. The sound knotted his stomach. “You know you and the kids are the most important part of my life.”
She ignored the sentiment. “But I don’t know if I want to fix it anymore. I don’t know if it’s worth it. I don’t know if it was ever worth it.”
That stabbed. “Marcia, we’ve been over this. You know my job takes me away from home. I offered to quit…” And she hadn’t taken him up on it. Thank God.
He heard her take a steadying breath. “I know. And I’m thinking that maybe you should.”
His heart gave a funny little quiver. Hell. Could he do it? For a woman who couldn’t bear his touch? He scrubbed his hand over his face. He had a stack of ongoing investigations piled high on his desk. Could he just let it all slide? Let the killers possibly walk free?
Over on the bluff, high above the water, Griff thought he recognized Charlie Watson staring off into the horizon. As if Griff needed any reminders of how many different directions he was being pulled in. “I’ll need to talk to my boss.”
“Does that mean you’re going to quit or not?” she asked. God, she sounded like a defense attorney.
“Let me finish what I started up here, okay?” He blinked his eyes hard against the moisture that was forming. The wind was sharp.
“You’ve got until midnight to get home.”
“Midnight?” Christ, she was totally unreasonable. “I can’t do midnight—”
“You’ve forgotten the date, haven’t you?”
Griff’s world slowed down and backed up into reverse. August 3. Shit. He rubbed his hand over his face. “I planned to be home, Marce. I really did. I even made dinner reservations at the Hotel Newfoundland.” Their wedding anniversary and he couldn’t even remember how many years they’d been married, except it felt like too many. He heard his daughter in the background, and a great slashing pain shot through his chest.
“I’ll be there. I’ll be home by midnight.” He closed the phone and squatted on the ground, clasping his head in his hands as nausea unwound in his stomach. Shit.
McCoy burst out of the building and he sprang to his feet as if he hadn’t been cradling a broken heart.
“We’ve got Daniel Fox’s fingerprints on the murder weapon.”
Fox, huh? Damn. He’d liked that guy. Griff tried to feel some sense of accomplishment, some sense of closure, but he just felt as if someone had shot him in the gut.
“Do we know where he is?” he asked, following her to the four-by-four and climbing in.
She grinned, those sharp features alive with the excitement of the hunt. “Spoke to the captain of the boat and he says Fox was just dropped in Nain. If he’s still around, he’ll be in the bar.”
Griff felt his pulse skip. Midnight. This meant he could keep his promise and still be home by midnight. “Let’s go pick him up.”
There was a knock on the window of the SUV and impatiently Griff punched the button to lower the glass. The blonde who leaned into the cab was dynamite, and Griff’s jaw dropped at the sight of her.
“I know who killed that prostitute.” She glanced at her fancy silver watch and tugged her lower lip with pearly white teeth. “I’ve got thirty minutes before I catch my ride out of here.” She tapped a lacquered nail on the window frame.
McCoy leaned across him. “You head into the detachment building and we’ll be right with you.”
They both watched her walk away and McCoy was the first to speak. “Viagra my ass.”
Chapter Seventeen
Fidelity, Valor, Honor 3rd Marine Division, USMC
Cam cleaned the lab and packed supplies she didn’t need anymore to ship back to Miami. She loved Florida, the heat, the sand, watching beautiful people strut up and down Miami Beach. Yet the thought of going home made her gag.
She slumped on her stool, staring at the rubber-gloved hands lying limply in her lap. The lab smelled lemon fresh because she’d cleaned it from top to toe. The only things that broke the silence were the freezers buzzing to life every half hour and the occasional footsteps passing down the hall.
The bulk of the hard work was finished, and she could start analyzing data and writing the report. She’d done it. Set up a
complex project in a remote region of the world. She’d coordinated the students, helped Vikki and, with Tooly’s help, had succeeded in all her objectives. She should be feeling damn proud. Instead she felt churned up and sick. Dumb. Used.
Daniel had gone on leave, for which she was glad. But now she got to torment herself with images of what he was indulging in during his days off. It didn’t take a Ph.D. to figure out that women would play front, center and any other position he could think of.
Cam slammed her hand down on the paper-covered counter so hard her laptop bounced. She couldn’t believe she’d not only had an affair with a notorious player, she’d also fallen in love with the sonofabitch. She squeezed her eyes shut. He was wrong for her on so many levels. He was a high-wire act without the safety net. He did what he wanted and to hell with other people’s feelings. He was an adrenaline junkie who took risks she could never imagine taking.
He was her ex-fiancé Dean times a million. Big bad alpha male, wanting things his way or not at all. She’d broken things off with Dean the moment she’d found out he’d cheated on her and she’d never regretted her decision. This time Daniel had made the choice for her. And he’d always been honest. She couldn’t fault him for lying or faking something that wasn’t there—on his side, anyway.
It was just as well she hadn’t told him how she really felt. She stared at the ceiling, imagining the look of mild concern that would flash over his handsome features before he slipped on those aviator sunglasses. Concern that she was going to ruin five minutes of his life.
It was lunchtime. She had to eat, but she wasn’t hungry. She began to shut down her laptop, suddenly remembered the photos she’d taken of Daniel before they’d become lovers. The idea that he was on her computer, hot and naked, made her grit her teeth. She would not moon over this guy. Hell, she’d been dumped before, and she wasn’t going to let this affair wreck one of the most exciting adventures of her life. Determined to erase the man from every aspect of her life, she opened the folder and found the images, which opened in a filmstrip.
And there he was. Arrogance and cynicism carved just as deeply as the muscles on his body, but close up there was a strain around his eyes, a tightness to his mouth. A strain that hadn’t been there the last time they’d gone to the lake. And she knew she had something to do with that brief attitude adjustment.
Her finger hovered over the delete button.
Whatever Daniel dreamt about last night had freaked him out, and he wasn’t the type to admit weakness to another human being. She figured it was related to what he’d gone through in the military. Being a scientist, she knew he probably needed treatment to get over the trauma. Being a woman, she knew he was too pigheaded to get it.
She pressed delete and then confirmed. She would not dwell on Daniel Fox; their relationship had always been short-term—she just hadn’t expected it to be this quick, or to be replaced so efficiently. The next image appeared automatically on the screen. She had to squint to get it in focus. Dirt? She almost deleted it before she realized what it was. The footprints.
What the hell was that thing? She hadn’t gotten a good look at it in the woods yesterday, but she’d recognize it if she saw it again. She typed in Labrador, mammal and five toes into a search engine and went through the field guide that popped up. Polar bear. No. Thank God. Raccoon, coati. No, no. Weasels, Skunks and Mustelidae. She’d never seen a weasel that big. It wasn’t a marten, or an otter, and it had stripes but it wasn’t a skunk. It wasn’t a ferret or a mink. She bit her lip and kept scrolling. Tooly would have recognized those creatures anyway.
Wolverine, badger. She halted mid-scroll and squinted at the picture. The American badger looked too small and fat, although individuals varied, or so the guide said. Its fur was the color of ashes and the creature pictured had a white stripe down the center of its snout that she was pretty sure the creature in the woods hadn’t had. And looking at the range, Labrador was too far north for it to be a badger.
Excitement stirred in her chest as she took a closer look at the wolverine pictured on the website. Description said it was the size of a small bear with a muscular neck and shoulders. That sounded about right. She added wolverine into the search engine, and Daniel’s image was replaced by a hunky Hugh Jackman.
Scrolling down, she found a website with drawings of tracks that looked very similar to the ones she’d seen on three different occasions now, and the distribution zone had Labrador shaded. But as she read further she got a tingle along her spine. The population had declined in Eastern Canada and was believed to have become extirpated by the mid-nineteenth century in Labrador and Quebec.
The creatures weren’t supposed to be found here anymore. That would explain why Tooly hadn’t recognized the tracks. She checked out the Canadian Government’s Species at Risk, Public Registry and saw that the wolverine was listed as a Schedule 1 Endangered Species.
And the light-bulb moment almost blinded her.
Holy-shmoly.
If the Department of Natural Resources knew about the presence of this rare mammal in the Mitshishu Brook watershed, it might dramatically impact the development of the hydroelectric dam. They weren’t likely to forego the mine project entirely, but they might relocate the dam to a valley south of Frenchmans Bight. Which would mean Tooly could stay in his childhood home.
A small part of Cam rekindled with excitement. She was sick of being miserable; it wasn’t in her nature to brood. This was great news and a hell of a distraction from depression. She searched the web for a contact address and it crossed her mind that rediscovering wolverine in this region would look pretty damn good on her résumé. And right now her career was all she had left.
She started an email to DNR but the photos she’d taken had no scale and were blurry and indistinct. Probably because her hands had been shaking from the fact Daniel had just stripped naked in front of her.
Damn. After her run-in with the RCMP over her lack of evidence about the poaching, she didn’t want to go running off to the authorities until she had solid proof the animal really existed.
She went to the window. The rain had stopped but it was cloudy and she didn’t think the helicopters would fly at all today. Pressing her lips together, she went over to her rucksack and pulled out her topographical map of the area. She smoothed it over the bench.
The ship was moored in a sheltered bay, and on the beach there was a small group of huts used by some geological surveyors. A rough track ran to the base of the waterfall. She traced the course of the river and found Tooly’s cabin and a trail marked nearby.
If she crossed the river near the braided shallows, the path led either to Frenchmans Bight or up to Tooly’s home.
Of course she needed an ATV, but she’d seen at least four parked beside the sheds on the beach. She shouldn’t have any trouble borrowing one from the guys there, as long as she didn’t tell them what she was planning to do. She doubted the mine company or its employees would be too thrilled to learn about the wolverine. And Dwight Wineberg wouldn’t hesitate to get rid of her and the creature if they got in the way of his precious company’s bottom line.
She picked up her daypack and clipped on her fanny pack. First she needed lunch and then she’d ask the crew for a ride to shore. As long as she had supplies, a radio and bear bangers, she didn’t see why she couldn’t go looking for evidence. The wet ground would be perfect for finding fresh tracks.
It beat the hell out of sitting around here reliving her humiliation and misfortune, all the while knowing exactly how Daniel was drowning his sorrows.
Daniel stowed his gear at his feet and ordered a beer. A cruise ship was in port, and the town was full of people photographing the Moravian church and locals’ homes. Daniel figured if the people of Nain went around photographing the tourists’ homes, they’d get arrested.
The barman delivered a beer and Daniel paid the guy, all the while watching that brown bottle with a mixture of longing and dread. He put his hands around it, the col
d piercing through to the bone. He lifted it an inch. It felt heavy, and he was already imagining the fresh slide of alcohol down his constricted throat. His hands shook.
A pretty local girl, who looked almost legal, wandered over to his table. “Mind if I sit down?”
He smiled but inside he felt as dead as the moon. “Help yourself.”
Someone dropped a glass, and the shattering explosion hurtled him straight into the past.
Sweat. Heat. Anticipation. A gunshot drilling the wall. Bullets whizzed through the air, the noise deafening, the familiar taste of gunpowder on his tongue. He picked up the pace, his heart thrashing under his body armor, plaster-dust sticking to the sweat on his skin as he raced for the last hostage. A man stepped into the hall.
Tap, tap. You’re dead.
He stood to the side of one door and tried the knob. Locked. He shot off the lock and in they went. A woman was sitting on a bed. Pretty black eyes.
He glanced back down the hall, checking for hostiles when he heard a single shot. His mistake. His mistake! He met the woman’s eyes as she turned the pistol from Maggie’s falling body toward him, her fingers squeezing as he tapped two into her heart. Her black eyes flared as she hit the floor. Heart pounding, he slotted one into her skull just to be sure. His breath stuck in his throat like razorblades.
Movement under the bed. A kid. Shit. Huge brown eyes, tears sparkling like diamonds on coal-black lashes. Patting him down. No explosives, no weapons.
The boy crawling over the dead mother while he put a field-dressing on Maggie’s shoulder to staunch the bleeding. Blood everywhere. He kept pressing down on the wound. And then his men had the hostage. He picked up the kid and they were running across the open courtyard. A shadow appeared in a blown-out window, something resting on a man’s shoulder—a grenade launcher?
Edge of Survival Page 22
