Alaska Heart

by Christine DePetrillo

  “Great. We’ll add stalking to your resume.”

  Clearly not a time for sarcasm.

  “I picked the others randomly. They were there, walking down the street, buying groceries, mailing a letter, having dinner. But you…you stole my attention as soon as I saw you in Ram’s Den. I was going to come over to talk, but then the musher slid in next to you. I knew I didn’t have a shot once you saw him. Everything in your body language told me you were attracted to him.”

  It hadn’t seemed like Brian had seen me that night in Ram’s Den but then again, once Dale had come in, I hadn’t paid attention to anything else in the bar.

  “And in the library,” Brian continued, “his stupid mutt got to you first.”

  He’d seen me then too. How could I have been so oblivious? In New York, every stranger was suspicious. I’d always been ready. But here, in Alaska, I had let my guard down in more ways than one apparently. How damned stupid.

  “But I’ve got you now, don’t I?” Brian said. His voice crawled throughout me, raising goose bumps on my skin.

  I stared at Brian, trying my hardest to figure out a.) the best course of action and b.) how in the hell I had ended up in this predicament. I didn’t want to say anything to send him completely off his rocker, but I didn’t want him to think I was too afraid to defend myself either.

  “How do you know I wouldn’t have been interested in you, Brian?” Placating him seemed like my best defense. “You didn’t give me the chance to decide, now did you?”

  His dark brows furrowed as he contemplated what I’d said. “I saw you, Alanna. As soon as Ramsden walked into the tavern, he captivated you.”

  “Only because he was bold enough to sit right next to me.” Keep him talking.

  “Cocky, you mean.”

  “Either way. He had the balls to spark up a conversation. Where were your balls?”

  Okay, that may have been too much, but sometimes fear made me mouthy. I couldn’t help it. I expected my camera to burst into bits at any moment such was my grip on it.

  “You’ll excuse me if my balls are a bit shy.” Brian adjusted his cap. “I’ve been cast aside more times than I can count. Sure, I get the initial interest going. Women like my eyes, my smile, but eventually the hat comes off and…” He choked a little on his words. “The look of revulsion is what gets me. To see a woman’s face go from interested to repulsed in less than ten seconds is a blow to the ego.”

  “Again, you didn’t give me the chance. How do you know my reaction would have been the same as other women?”

  “I saw the look on your face in your room last night when you got a better view of my head, my scar. You didn’t look at Ramsden that way. I know your kind, Alanna.”

  “You don’t know me.” I had to get him to land, but how?

  “I’m going to get to know you. That’s what this trip is about.” He leered. “I’ll know every inch of you. I’ll know you better than Ramsden did.”

  His words iced the blood in my veins. He licked his bottom lip as he peered out the front window of the Super Cub.

  “Dale didn’t get to know me that well. We only spent a few days together.” I had thought he knew me, but he accused me of being a game-player. Thought I’d lead him along and then just drop him.

  “Don’t lie to me, Alanna. It’s not necessary. I saw how you cried last night. Ramsden knows you…intimately. So will I. I have plans for us.”

  “What are your plans exactly?”

  “Do you want to spoil the surprise?”

  “I think I’ve endured enough surprise for one morning,” I said. Still had room for more sarcasm next to my mounting fear. Go figure.

  “Oh, there’s still more to come.” Brian’s tone was lilting as if he were truly enjoying this deranged little flight.

  This was so one of those days when I should never have gotten up. I mean, yeah, weird shit like this happens all the time in New York. But here? And to me? Who would have thought it possible?

  I peered out my window again and noticed an open field surrounded by pines ahead.

  “Why don’t you land this sucker, and we’ll get on with your plans below.” I inched over toward Brian despite every instinct to stay far away from him. I reached over to pull his hat off, but he shirked away from me. He wasn’t as calm as his exterior suggested. Good to know. “Are you afraid of me, Brian?”

  He snickered, but held his hat on his head. “No. Why would I be afraid of you?”

  I tugged on his hat again. “Then don’t hide from me.” A book of sayings Meg would employ to make a guy putty in her hands would be extremely useful at this point. I wasn’t as good at that particular skill as she was.

  Reluctantly, Brian slid his hand off his hat, allowing me to ease it off and toss it behind us. The scar was horrendous. No denying that. But any woman with half a heart wouldn’t use it to disqualify Brian. The psychotic tendencies, perhaps, but not the scar.

  Concentrating on not letting my hand tremble, I ran my fingers through Brian’s short hair, skimming across the scar. He shuddered under my touch.

  “Something like this shows how strong you were. You know, to be able to survive,” I whispered. He closed his eyes, and the plane angled downward toward the field. “Land, Brian. Please.”

  He turned his head toward me, his eyes still closed. When he opened them, he was so close his breath warmed my cheeks. He surged forward, crushing his lips against mine, and I let out a screech.

  “That’s what I thought.” His jaw tensed as he turned his attention back to piloting the plane.

  “I…you surprised me. I wasn’t ready.” Major mistake, but he had moved so quickly. His rough kiss was a painful reminder of what I was losing in not being with Dale.

  Shit, would I ever see Dale again? Would I ever see anyone again? Would I get the chance to explain to Dale that he was so much more than a game to me?

  Struggling to swallow quietly and wondering if Brian could hear my pulse having a full-blown rock concert inside of me, I leaned in and pressed my lips to his neck. His muscles tightened, and I cupped his face. His chin was smooth shaven, not at all like Dale’s scruffy, whiskered one.

  “Give me a chance, Brian.” I kissed a trail along his jaw though it caused my insides to flop. This whole thing might have been easier if Dale hadn’t stirred genuine feelings in me. Hadn’t I been faking my emotions every day before meeting him?

  Now that I knew real love, pretending to be interested in Brian was downright painful. Death by crashing into a mountaintop would probably be even more so, therefore I forged a path with my lips along Brian’s cheek.

  “If I land in Denali, you’ll run,” Brian said, though his voice had an encouraging note of pleasure in it. “They’ve all run, but I’ve been quicker.”

  “Where will I run to? Denali is crawling with bears and such. Do you think I want to wander around down there alone?” I tried to make the idea seem ridiculous, but a face-to-face with a bear might not be so bad considering my current situation.

  Brian chewed on his bottom lip as he thought about my reply. He didn’t trust me, but he wanted to.

  “You can’t fly around forever. The gas tank on this toy has to be tiny. You have to land sometime.” I settled back into my seat. My retreat to my side of the cockpit bothered him, and Brian kept looking back to me, at the distance I had put between us.

  He let out a low growl and coasted over the trees toward the open field. Landing a plane probably wasn’t regularly allowed in Denali, and I hoped that would bring out the authorities. Authorities with weapons preferably.

  The Super Cub rolled to a stop as Brian powered down the single engine. We both removed our headphones. Now I had to think of a plan. Getting him to land had worked. Getting away was another matter.

  “You hungry?” Brian asked.

  Sure, a good abduction always builds up my appetite. “Not yet.”

  “You’re too busy thinking of a way to hurt me, aren’t you? So you can get away.” Brian
reached behind us and grabbed his cap. Putting it back on, he stared at me.

  “I’m not going to hurt you.” I even managed a chuckle with that one. Hollywood would be knocking down my door in no time. Assuming I made it home and could be behind my apartment door to hear them knocking.

  “Not if I hurt you first, you won’t.” His steel blue eyes lasered into me, pinning me in place like a bug in a little boy’s collection. He lunged forward, and his hands grabbed my throat. I hacked at his wrists with my hands, but his grip had tightened around my neck. I couldn’t swallow. I couldn’t scream. All I could do was think about the other women he had strangled and dumped by the Chena. I didn’t want to be one of them.

  In the tight cockpit, I couldn’t maneuver my legs to help me out of his hold. I frantically scanned the area for something—anything—I could use in my defense. The only thing I found within reach was my camera, still in my lap. As my lungs struggled for air and my vision grew hazy, I curled my fingers around the camera. I depressed one of the buttons, causing the flash to blink in a staccato pattern. It was enough to distract Brian.

  In that millisecond of disorientation, I brought my hand up, camera in palm, and bashed it into the side of Brian’s face. I nailed him square on the cheekbone, and he howled. He pulled his hands off my neck to press them to his face. I had split the skin on his cheek, and he gaped at his own blood sifting through his fingers.

  “Whore.” He reached for me again, but I had pulled the door open beside me. After leaping from the Super Cub, I fell to the ground, completely missing the footholds below the door. The cold ground scraped into my palms and knees, but I scrambled to my feet and bolted for the trees.

  Brian descended on me almost immediately. His long legs had no trouble closing the small gap between us. He pulled me down by the shoulders, and my legs crumpled beneath me. I landed in a patch of snow with Brian on top of me. We tumbled down a small decline, and I clawed at the muddy ground, gaining some space again. I hopped to my feet and ran. Didn’t look back.

  My palms burned from the gashes in them. Fresh blood dribbled down my wrists, but I pushed on. Brian crunched through the terrain only steps behind me. I leaped over fallen logs and snow mounds, my lungs heaving with each movement. Though I had left my gloves and hat in the plane, I wasn’t cold. Sweat doused my entire body as I ran for my life. All those extra minutes on the treadmill had not been in vain.

  Denali passed by me in a dizzying swirl of white, brown, and green. What had looked so picturesque only a week ago with Dale now crawled with danger. I had no idea where I was headed, but had to keep moving.

  I cried out when Brian’s arms wrapped around my waist in a vise grip. He wrestled me to the ground. My head snapped back, and my skull knocked into a small boulder. The pain blasted through my head, and my vision wavered.

  “Told you I’d have to hurt you,” Brian snarled.

  “Yeah,” I gasped, pointing to his face, “but I hurt you first.”

  The last thing I saw before passing out was the swelling on his cheek.

  ****

  When I awoke, my lower body was cocooned in a thick sleeping bag. My ankles were bound, and I sat against a tree. No. Wait a minute. Scratch that. I was tied to the tree. I wriggled a little, but the rope that held me captive was securely tied. The movement made my head scream in protest. The back of my neck was wet. Sweat or blood? It didn’t make a difference at this point.

  Brian was not in the immediate area. How long had I been out? Apparently long enough for him to go back to the plane, get rope, and tie me. A makeshift camp had been set up as well. A small beige tent sat a few yards away from me, and the remains of a fire still glowed in the center of the little clearing in front of me. It looked as if an animal had been spit-roasted over the fire, and I cringed at the thought of Brian skinning and eating the poor creature.

  The patch of sky peeking between the treetops above me grew dark as a light snow fell. I’d left all my stuff in the plane, so I had no way to contact anyone. No phone. No laptop. Nothing.

  Except the multi-tool in the back pocket of my jeans.

  Fidgeting around, I maneuvered my hand to my pocket and sighed at the small bulge. My fingers wormed their way into my pocket, and I fumbled around until I had the knife firmly in my grasp. I carefully extracted it and worked the blade open.

  At the snap of a twig to my left, my head jolted up, and pain swam through my skull. Brian’s chokehold had bruised the muscles in my neck.

  “Welcome back, gorgeous.” Brian knelt beside me. “Have a nice snooze?” He slipped his backpack off his shoulder and opened it. The slice in his cheek was purpling beneath the dried blood.

  I was glad I got in at least one shot. “How long was I out for?”

  “Longer than I thought you would be. It’s Wednesday night. You pretty much lost a day.”

  Lost a day! This was getting worse by the second.

  “Brian, this is ridiculous. What are you going to do with me?”

  “Ah…pretty much whatever I want.” He looked around. “Absolutely no one to stop me out here.” He plunged his arm into his pack and extracted something that looked like a high-tech squirt gun. “But my first order of business is to mark you as one of mine.” He scuttled next to me and unzipped the sleeping bag. He pulled a knife from the pocket of his jeans.

  Hacked to pieces by a lunatic. Wasn’t that the reason I hadn’t wanted to come to visit Dale in the first place? Life was so twisted sometimes.

  I clamped my eyes shut as Brian cut into my jeans with the knife. He was strangely careful not to touch my flesh with the blade. When a good-sized hole was started in my pants, he ripped it open with his hands to expose my upper thigh.

  “I usually prefer the forearm, but because I had to tie you up we’ll improvise. Besides, you’re not like the others. You’re special.” He pushed up the sleeve of his jacket to reveal his own arm. My eyes zoomed in on the tattoo sprawling over his skin. It had been splayed across the TV too many times this week for me not to recognize it.

  A wolf’s head. Gaping jaws. Bared, bloodthirsty teeth. Narrowed, yellow eyes.

  “How could you kill all those women?”

  “Taught them manners is more like it.” The words slid past his clenched teeth. “I tried charm first, and it worked for a little while, but women are so…harsh, Alanna.”

  When he looked at me, tears rested at the corners of his eyes. His emotions were all over the map, changing with the wind. An unstable psychotic was worse than your run-of-the-mill lunatic. He brushed away the tears and focused on my exposed thigh. Slipping his hand inside the hole in my jeans, his cold fingers caressed my skin. I tried to move away from his touch, but I had nowhere to go, no options.

  “Hold still now. You don’t want me to mess up my work here.”

  “Brian, please,” I begged as I discretely sawed the ropes binding me.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “You won’t have to live with it for long. In fact, you won’t have to live long at all.” His gaze shot to mine, and the crooked grin that spread across his lips was down right insane. “I’ve let you live longer than the others. I’ve been generous.”

  Why didn’t that comfort me?

  Brian lowered the ink gun until its tip needled into my skin. It pinched, but it wasn’t the pain that had me screaming.

  “Hush now. I can’t concentrate.”

  I jammed up my knees, but Brian moved with me and swayed out of range. He straddled both my legs and took a minute to trace the contours of my chin with his fingertip. He was so much bigger than me. I couldn’t throw him off.

  “I like the fire in you. Even if it causes me to get a few bruises.” He skimmed his fingers over his puffy cheek. “The others weren’t a challenge at all. But you…you’re going to be worth the effort.” He traced a wavy line along my thigh. “Oh, and you’re absolutely gorgeous when you’re unconscious, you know.”

  Had he touched me while I was out? I shuddered at the thought.

&
nbsp; Brian bent over my leg again and resumed his drawing. Each line he colored in threw me deeper into hopelessness. Nothing I could say would stall him any longer and when he was done with the tattoo, then what? Would I wind up like the other women he had dumped by the Chena River?

  No. The voice that sounded in my head was a little Meg and a little Dale. No, I wasn’t going to go out this way. No fucking way.

  “I think you could get help, Brian.” I flinched when he fumbled with the ink gun.

  “I make my own help.” He gestured to the tattoo. “This helps.”

  “Obviously it doesn’t help. You wouldn’t have to keep doing it if it helped.”

  He shook his head as he continued to sketch in the wolf on what used to be a pristine piece of thigh. “Maybe I like doing it.”

  “You’re a successful writer, Brian, for a popular magazine. Surely your life means more than this.”

  He shook his head.

  “You do work for Expedition Earth, don’t you?” Was I a complete moron? Did I believe a stupid story he had fed me about being a writer?

  “Yes, I do work for Expedition Earth,” Brian said. “Killing is only a hobby.”

  “Ever try tennis?” Fear hadn’t numbed my sense of humor. Good to know. “You could find someone. Someone who’ll love you. All of you. You don’t have to do this.”

  “Don’t I?” He brought his face to within inches of mine, and fury filled his cobalt glare. “Could you look at this every day? Could you?” He threw his hat off and angled his head so his scar filled my vision. Up that close, every detail hit my eyes. Something of that magnitude must have taken multiple staples to seal.

  “It’s not that—”

  “No, no, no.” Brian’s rage cut me off. “Don’t tell me it’s not that bad. It is bad. It felt bad. It looks bad. It reminds me every damn day how I had everything and then lost it all.”

  Now it was my turn to be angry. “People have everything and lose it all the time, asshole. You think you’re the only one to suffer that? C’mon.” I even managed an eye roll.

  “Your little affair with the musher hardly qualifies as ‘having everything,’ Alanna.” His tone was acidic and condescending.