A Dark Lure

by Loreth Anne White

  They reached her truck, which was parked outside the lodge. She helped Ace up into the cab.

  “His hips giving him trouble?” Cole said.

  “The vet thinks he might have early signs of degenerative myelopathy. It’s a progressive thing with no cure. I’ll just pick up my stuff from the office.”

  Cole climbed in beside Ace while Olivia unlocked the office from the outside door. She exited carrying a box of brochures, a book, and a credit card reader. She shoved these onto the seat between her and Ace and stuck her keys in the ignition.

  “Apart from being banished to the staff cabin, how did it go with Myron yesterday?” she asked as she fired the engine and put the truck in gear.

  He leaned back against the headrest. “It didn’t go. He threw me out at first sight and set up a formal meeting with me in the library for eleven this morning.”

  She cast him a quick glance as she pulled out onto the dirt track. He looked again at the scars on her wrists and wondered about her past, where she came from. Again, her words from the phone call dogged him.

  You know dick about surviving . . .

  “Do the campsite guests still approach via the logging road on the other side of the lake?” he said.

  “Yeah. Sometimes they’ll come all the way around and check themselves in. Mostly I just swing by once or twice a day and register them on-site. The cabin guests need to come past the lodge office.”

  At the campsite entrance she stopped the truck, reached across him, and popped open the glove compartment. He caught her scent. Clean, soapy. Fresh. It brought to mind shampoos with names like Rainwater or Forest Spring. She removed a pair of work gloves from the compartment, slipped them on, got out of the truck. He followed.

  She reached into the bed of the truck and hefted out a large sandwich board. It was yellow with black text that warned of bears in the area.

  “Want help?” he said as she lugged the signboard a few feet down the road. Wind was picking up and washing through the swaying pines with the sound of a river.

  “I’m good.” She placed the sign where the road forked. One side led to the small beach and picnic area, the other to the boat launch and campsites. Cole leaned against the truck, watching her, reabsorbing this place that was once so much a part of his life.

  She definitely had an awkward gait—he wondered about that. She wore no ring, demonstrated no overt sign of being attached to a man, yet she was a close friend of his cantankerous father.

  Cole was an astute observer, a cataloguer of facts, a reader of micro signs. It was a skill he’d honed over years of investigative reporting. Some called his powers of observation and memory uncanny, but it had made him damn good at his job. He could see through smoke and mirrors to the heart of a situation where others got sidetracked.

  And he was seeing a woman who was trying to hide. It raised questions in his mind. Hide from what? Where did she come from prior to eight years ago? Had she tried to kill herself? Why? When? What exactly was she to his father, to this ranch? What would she do when his father died and this place was sold?

  She pulled off her gloves as she approached the truck, her ponytail lifting in the wind.

  “Still getting problem bears in the fall?” he said with a nod to the sign.

  “More so over the last two seasons.” She opened the driver’s door and got in. He climbed back into the passenger’s side. “There’s a sow with two cubs-of-the-year who have been getting into garbage. Repeat offenders. We also had one get into the chickens last week.”

  She started the ignition, and headed toward the concrete boat ramp.

  A man in waders was tinkering with his boat on the ramp. He glanced up and waved. Olivia stopped the truck. She hesitated, then said to Cole. “He’s an old regular. I’m just going to say hi.”

  He watched her walk down to the ramp. Ace whined and licked his face again. Cole noticed for the first time the cloudiness in the hound’s eyes. He peered closer. “Hey, bud, you losing your sight, boy? You wanna go see what she’s up to?”

  His tail thumped.

  Cole helped Ace out of the truck, and they followed Olivia down the ramp to where she was talking to a craggy-faced, sun-browned man in his late sixties.

  “The trout biting?” Cole called out as he approached.

  “Got totally skunked this morning,” the old guy said as he pushed up to his feet. “They’re no longer feeding off the marl—the colder weather at night has driven them into deep water. I think they’re on glass worms now, which makes it tricky to lure them with anything else. They get suspicious.” He grinned, showing missing front teeth. “But I got two over twenty inches yesterday.” He reached for the rope at the prow of his boat, began hauling it up the ramp. Cole helped him.

  Once the boat was on the trailer, the man dusted his hands off on his waders. “I’m thinking of heading up to Forest Lake Monday. Maybe I can get a window in there.” He chuckled, then coughed, a hacking, rattling sound in his chest. “Before the big freeze and the snow blows in.”

  “It looks like that might be early this year,” Olivia said. “A weather warning has been issued for late Monday. You might want to think of heading home before it barrels in. This is Barney,” she said to Cole. “He’s one of our regulars.” She smiled. It put a dimple into her left cheek, and a lambency into her mossy eyes, and it punched straight into his gut. He stared. Bewitched suddenly. The light in her eyes faded, her features sobering as she noticed his reaction. She looked away. When she spoke again, her voice was changed, lower. “Barney, this is Cole McDonough, Myron’s son.”

  The old man scrubbed his grizzled beard. “Well, I never. Myron’s boy?”

  Cole gave a half smile. “Haven’t been called that in a while.”

  The old fisherman continued to scratch his whiskers, studying Cole intently. “You have his genes all right. You been gone a long time . . . over ten or twelve years or something? Before I met Myron and started coming here, that’s for sure.”

  Cole glanced at Olivia. She was watching him closely, too.

  “It’s been a while,” he said.

  “That was quite some movie, that Hunt for the Wild.”

  Surprise rippled through Cole. “You saw it?”

  “Hell, yeah. Who in Clinton didn’t see it? Myron brought a DVD down to the Cariboo Hotel. He sprang for beers and moose burgers on the house. He brought copies of the books along, too. Door prizes, he called them. We watched on the large screen in the bar. That was some party.” He shook his head, grinning a mad, gap-toothed grin.

  Cole stared at Barney, his chest suddenly tight.

  “Well, it’s been really good to meet you, son.” Barney reached out and gave Cole a hearty handshake and a slap on the shoulder. Another smoker’s cough rattled through his lungs. “Stop by for a drink, you hear? Myron used to do that before that chair took him. We’d cast a few lines together, tie a few flies.” He coughed again. “Damp weather is coming, all right. Hits my chest right here.” He thumped his sternum. “My rig is parked at number twenty-seven, right on the water. Like I said, I’m here until Monday, if that storm holds.” He jerked his head toward the sky. A bank of dark cloud was building low on the southern horizon.

  On the way back to the truck, Cole couldn’t help saying it.

  “I didn’t know.”

  She opened the truck door, bent down, and wrapped her arms around Ace’s belly. She hefted him into the truck. “Know what?”

  “That my father even saw the film. He never wrote or called to mention it.”

  She ducked into the driver’s seat and started the engine. “He’s seen both movies that were made from your books. Did you ever call to tell him they were showing?”

  He met her probing gaze, said nothing.

  She gave a shrug. “He’s got every single one of your books in his library. The Hunt for the Wild poster hangs i
n his office.”

  Cole swallowed, looked out his window, and cursed softly. He’d been hoping this would be simple. In and out. That his father’s anger and barriers would make it so. But this? No, he had not expected this.

  Olivia drove about a hundred meters and pulled up at a neat gravel clearing where two wooden outhouses flanked an information sign, two garbage bins, and a tap. She got out, pinned a new bear warning on the notice board, and replenished the box that held pamphlets. She returned to the truck for her gloves, then began to empty the full garbage bag from the first bin. She dumped it into the bed of the truck. Cole got out, came up behind her, and as she tried to heave the last bag out the bin, he took it from her.

  Their arms brushed. Their eyes met.

  Her mouth was so close. He could almost imagine the feel of her full lips against his. His pulse quickened as he saw the darkness of sexual attraction in her eyes.

  “I can manage.” Her voice came out hoarse.

  “You brought me along,” he said quietly. “The least you could do now is let me help.”

  She relented, letting him lug the heavy bag of garbage to the truck.

  She grabbed fresh rolls of toilet paper and replenished the stash in the outhouses. Then she hauled a rake from the back of her truck, and with fast movements she began to smooth out the gravel. Cole restocked the bins with fresh bags, and Ace watched them both from the truck.

  Sneaking a sideways glance at him, she tossed the rake back into the truck and climbed back into the driver’s seat, where she waited for him.

  He got in, patted Ace, and gave her a grin. “So, what’s next?”

  Her mouth tightened, and she refused to meet his eyes as she restarted the truck. “Check in the newcomers, see if anyone wants firewood. Let campers who haven’t gone out for the day know there’s a storm coming Monday night.”

  She drew up to a wide gravel area along the waterfront, which was occupied by fifth-wheel RVs and trucks. Awnings stretched out over picnic tables that were draped with plastic cloths. One table boasted a vase of fake flowers. Generators chugged, and the scent of wood smoke and bacon and coffee filled the air. Camp chairs had been positioned to afford a view of the lake, while others ringed the fire pits. A small satellite dish sat atop the corner of one RV.

  “So much for old-fashioned tenting and peace and quiet in the woods,” he said, taking in the scene.

  “It’s mostly what we get these days. Especially at this time of year when temperatures drop below freezing at night. These guys are equipped with everything including gas furnaces. Mostly retired couples, or single guys obsessed with hunting and fishing, like Barney, eking the last drops out of a season.” She reached for the clipboard on the dash, checked the vehicle registrations against her list.

  A couple sitting in chairs at one of the fire pits waved as their black poodle lunged at the end of his line, trying in vain to yap. He’d been de-barked, poor bugger.

  The old man got creakily up from his chair and ambled toward the truck, travel mug in hand. The woman shaded her eyes, watching them.

  Olivia put her elbow out the window. “Morning.”

  The dog lunged again, making a hoarse but valiant effort to warn them off.

  “Top of the morning to you, too. I see there’s some nasty weather building,” the man said with a nod to the south horizon. “Think it’ll hold until after the weekend?”

  “Forecast says so, but if it changes, I’ll let you know. You still planning on staying until Tuesday?”

  “We’ll play it by ear, keep an eye on that weather.”

  “How’s the fishing?”

  “Trout have turned skittish. Went out at first light—not a thing. Will give it a shot again this afternoon.”

  “Sounds like they’re onto the glass worms,” she said. “Any sign of the bears?”

  “They came through the barbecue pits during the night—knocked over two chairs.”

  “After the meat drippings, I bet. You guys need any firewood?”

  “We’re good.”

  They moved on.

  Farther along the lakeshore the campsites were small and nestled deep among tall evergreens and willow scrub with peekaboo views of the water. Olivia checked off three vehicle registrations against her book. She seemed to tense as they approached the next site.

  A gray Ford truck was parked across the entrance. She slowed, bit her lip.

  “What initially brought you out to Broken Bar?” Cole said casually.

  “I was looking for a change.”

  “Change from what?”

  Her eyes narrowed slightly. He could see her pulse racing above the bandana around her neck. The scarf was a different color from the one she’d been wearing yesterday.

  “From the north.” She reached for her clipboard, cash pouch, and credit card reader. “The job advertised was for a fishing guide, but it’s morphed into general ranch duties as staff has been laid off. I used to guide on the lake as well as do the trail rides. The rides stopped when most of the horses were sold last year. And of course everyone associated with the cattle has gone.”

  “A lot of work, ranching. Might be best to sell it.”

  Her gaze flashed to his. “Yeah, right. Seems no one is up for the job. End of an era and all that.”

  His jaw steeled. He thought of the generations of McDonoughs who had farmed this land. “You’re fond of this place.”

  “It’s my home. I hate to lose it.”

  “Where was home before this? Where did you grow up?”

  Her gaze probed his, as if searching for the trick in his question. “Look, you can talk to your father about what he wants from this ranch, and from me as an employee. Beyond that, I don’t see my role here as being your business.” She hesitated before getting out of the truck again. “For what it’s worth, Cole, Myron insisted I did not let you or Jane know that he was dying.”

  “Yeah. He made that clear.”

  “He figured you’d both . . .” She wavered. “He said he didn’t want you and Jane squabbling over inheritance and trying to sell the place out from under him while he was still alive. He’d rather you messed with the ranch once he was dead, and he wouldn’t have to witness what you did.”

  Cole held her gaze, a dark twist of anger threading through his guilt. He’d already signed papers. Jane was already moving ahead. He made a mental note to deal with Jane and those papers when he got back to his cabin. “So, why did you go against his wishes, then? Why did you call me?”

  She heaved out a heavy breath. “Okay, I’m just going to say this straight. In spite of his protestations, I had a gut feeling Myron needed to see his kids. You especially.”

  He raised his brow. “Meaning?”

  “I believe he needs to atone, for . . . whatever it was that happened between you and him. He needs to make his peace.” She swallowed. “I felt it might be good for him. Maybe even both of you. To say sorry.”

  “And you call me blunt?”

  “You asked.”

  “My old man doesn’t want to atone, Olivia. He doesn’t want anything to do with me. He hasn’t wanted anything to do with me or Jane since—”

  “Since after the accident. I heard. But sometimes people are broken and don’t know how to mend because they aren’t able to say what they need or deeply want. Sometimes you get to a point in life where you realize you’ve made a terrible mistake and you desperately need to fix it, but it’s so deep and bitterly ingrained you can’t start.”

  “Well, I never,” he whispered, his gaze lasering hers. “What are we now, the ranch psychotherapist? We’re all going to hold hands and sing ‘Kumbaya’ before he dies?”

  She glowered at him, her face reddening. “Well, fuck you, too,” she whispered. “I’ve said my piece. Calling you probably was a mistake. I’ll get you back to the lodge as soon as I’m done, t
hen you can do the hell what you want and clear out of here.”

  She got out, slammed the door, marched toward the gray Ford parked across the site entrance.

  He got out behind her. “Olivia—”

  “Spare me.”

  He hurried over, reached for her arm.

  She spun around, a wild heat crackling in her eyes. Electricity pulsed between them. Trees swished in a gust of wind, raining down dead needles.

  “I like him, okay. I like Myron. He’s been a dear friend. He . . .” An unexpected surge of moisture glittered into her eyes. She paused, glanced away, corralling her emotions. When she spoke again her voice was level.

  “He gave me a job. He gave me and Ace a place to stay when we both needed it most. I owe him. He’s dying and I feel powerless, and just wanted to help. Calling you was the least I could do. Now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, do with it what you will.” She turned, took two paces away, then swung back to face him, as if she was unable to drop it. “I had a harebrained notion you were somehow better than this, you know that?”

  “Better than what?”

  “I thought you might be big enough to take the initiative, to say sorry, make peace . . . before he passes.”

  “Where on earth did you get that idea?”

  “From your book, the way you write. I thought you had this . . . this view of the world that was somehow deep. That you cared about meaning.” Her eyes crackled with light. “But I was wrong. You’re a fraud.”

  She turned her back on him and stomped around the back of the Ford, disappearing down a track behind dense brush.

  Cole stared after her, dumbstruck. Wind swirled and rushed through the pines, as if whispering with memories, with the susurrating voices of the dead. He dragged his hand through his hair. She was right about one thing. This was a mistake.

  And he was wrong about another thing—this woman was not some Machiavellian seductress after an inheritance. Her feelings for his father felt genuine. And his cantankerous beast of a dad appeared to have helped a woman who Cole now believed was hiding a big-ass wound. A woman who’d maybe tried to kill herself because of it.