Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 09 - Hunter's Moon

by Hunter's Moon(lit)

  "Somebody could always shinny up the cable on that traveling block,"

  Jack said. He caught her eye. "Sorry." "It's not funny," she said severely.

  "No, it's not," he said. "But for some reason I'm in a good mood anyway.

  So sue me."

  He kissed her, a long, slow, savory kiss as the rising wind rippled through the campsite, setting spirals of golden aspen leaves to dance around them in a whirlwind of delight. There was a shout from the creek, and as they looked Klemens came stumbling up the bank. "Come!" he said.

  "Come see!" "Hell," Jack said. "You think he knows about the cabins?"

  "Or noticed the rifles were gone," Kate murmured. She plastered a false smile on her face and stepped forward. "What is it, Klemens?" "Come see!" he said. His face was red with excitement and for the moment at least he had forgotten his troubles. "Come now! I saw some moose fighting! Come see!"

  Kate and Jack followed him to the creek and down the bank. The other side of the creek was thickly crusted with stands of spruce, cottonwood, alder, aspen and diamond willow, a thicket impenetrable even by light, but after five minutes walk it thinned to a small meadow fed by a tiny stream that was the last tributary to join the Nakochna before the Nakochna itself joined the Kichatna.

  They heard it before they saw it, and they didn't need to follow his pointing finger to see it. Mutt heard it before any of them, and bounded ahead to watch avidly, quivering with interest.

  "I heard noises," Klemens said, lowering his voice and half crouching behind a salmonberry bush. "Look what I found!"

  They saw.

  Two bull moose were squaring off, stamping and snorting and grunting, tearing the hell out of the trees and bushes lining the edge of the little glade. There were half a dozen cows grazing in the brush; the reason for the fight. They seemed unimpressed, sparing not even a glance for the ruckus being raised on their behalf.

  And a ruckus it was, with the two bulls uttering cries that sounded somewhere between a drunken pig and a mad cow. "Old Sam was right," Kate said, "they are like drunks in a bar."

  One bull was younger, with a fork on one side of his rack and a spike on the other. He was game, though, and he was almost as big as the other older bull, which was a good thing, because so far as rack size was concerned he was totally outclassed.

  "What do you think, seventy inches?" Kate said

  "Sixty, maybe," Jack said. "Okay, sixty-five. Not a record, but nice.

  I'm glad Dieter isn't here."

  Klemens glanced at Jack, and then looked back across the creek.

  The rack on the older bull was, in fact, magnificent, broad, evenly balanced brow palms and an equal number of brow tines, four to each side. The older bull was using his rack to advantage, ripping up what seemed to be quite half the trees in sight, yelling and bellyaching all the while, the noise rising in volume as feelings escalated. The object was to intimidate, to throw the opponent off guard, if possible to force a retreat before it came to blows.

  The other bull, perhaps too young to know better, refused to back down.

  The older bull smacked its lips and charged. Seven feet high at the shoulder, nine feet in length and weighing close to a ton each, the clash of flesh and bone and antler when the moose collided was felt all the way across the creek.

  "Mein Gott" Klemens said. He'd forgotten to whisper.

  It didn't matter, as the noise of combat was so loud that nothing could be heard over it. The younger bull, either too stupid or too horny to give, met a second charge head on. One of the brow tines of the older bull sliced open his forehead and blood flowed liberally down the young bull's head and neck. He didn't even notice, and tried to gouge his opponent with his single brow tine. The older bull treated this attempt with the disdain it deserved and stepped out of reach.

  "Look!" Jack said, pointing.

  Unbeknownst to either of the fighting bulls, a third bull, smaller in size as well as in rack, sidled quietly out of the trees and, while the other two bulls were preoccupied, proceeded to mount one of the cows.

  She stood where she was, accepting him placidly, her legs braced against the force of his thrusts. When he was done he dropped back to all four feet, gave her a friendly nuzzle, for all the world like a John taking leave of his Friday afternoon hooker, and ambled back into the trees.

  Meantime, the battle between the two other bulls was still going on, with no quarter asked or taken.

  Jack laughed so hard he had tears in his eyes. Even Klemens was smiling.

  They watched until the younger bull received a second cut, this one on his flank from a point on the brow palm that would have impaled him if he hadn't jumped out of the way. He lost interest after that and headed for the hills. The older bull, tired but triumphant, gathered up his harem and began moving them upstream.

  "You were right," Klemens said, staring after them. "It is good that Dieter is not here." He met Jack's eyes squarely.

  "Klemens," Kate said impulsively, "did you mean to kill Fedor?" Klemens looked at her, startled, but said immediately, "No, Katerina. I did not.

  I'm sorry," he said to Jack. "You told me to stay, and I didn't. I'm not like Berg, I don't wander, but I did this time. And then I was alone, and frightened, and I saw movement in the brush." He shrugged, a slight movement that betrayed his weariness. "I was frightened," he repeated.

  "I shot. I would give anything if I hadn't, but I did." Kate hesitated, looking at Jack. He raised an eyebrow.

  "Was Fedor talking to anyone about the legal troubles DRG is having with the United States government?"

  "What?" Either Klemens was the best actor who ever lived or this was news to him. "How did you know about that?"

  "Come on, Klemens, it's been on CNN," Jack said. "We have cable in Alaska now, you know."

  "You do?"

  "Yes, and you haven't answered Kate's question. Was Fedor talking to someone about DRG? Was he a secret witness for the plaintiff, any one of the plaintiffs?"

  Klemens sat down heavily on a nearby stump. "Was he a spy, do you mean?

  No, I will not believe such a thing. He worked for me, he was a good worker, an honest worker, a hard worker. There was the relationship with Hendrik, of course, but Dieter said it was my department and that it was up to me.

  Fedor was a good worker in spite of his, ah, in spite of the way he was, and I kept him on because of it. I liked him," Klemens said defiantly.

  "He would not spy." "You're the head of finance, right?" Kate said. He nodded. "I don't have to tell you, Klemens, it's all in the numbers. If a plaintiff wants information about a corporation he's suing, his best bet would be to hire him a spy in the finance department." "Wait,"

  Klemens said. Color crept into his face. "Wait one moment, please. You think Fedor was a spy, a-what? An informant, isn't that the word?"

  "Perhaps."

  On a note of rising wrath, Klemens said, "And you think Dieter found this out and had me kill him?"

  "Perhaps," Kate repeated.

  Klemens surged to his feet. The German fell from his lips in a steady stream, punctuated by savagely gesturing hands and reaching a decibel level to rival the outcries of the fighting moose.

  He finished with a final, brief statement and stood glaring at them for a moment.

  Mutt gave a low

  "Whuff." He jerked around and stared at her as if he might give her a swift kick in the ribs for her presumption. Don't do that, Kate thought, don't do it, Klemens, not if you like your foot the way it is now.

  He didn't, swerving back to face them. "I did not kill Fedor for Dieter!" "I think we got the message," Jack murmured as Klemens pushed past him.

  He looked down at Kate. "Do you believe him?"

  "I think I do," Kate said thoughtfully. "Jack, I'd really like to know what Hendrik wrote in Fedor's diary. Do you think--"

  "No," Jack said firmly. "We're not taking chances with any of these people. We'll wait for the troopers, Kate."

  "Yeah, I know. You're right
." She shivered. "The wind's picking up.

  Let's go make some coffee. They'll probably want something hot to drink when they get back."

  A couple of hours later she began to get restless. "They should be back by now, shouldn't they?" She went to the door.

  So far the storm was all wind and no precipitation, the gray clouds high above. She walked out into the yard and looked east. There the clouds looked lower and wetter and infinitely more threatening.

  Jack followed her, sliding his arms around her from behind.

  She turned and looked up at him, his face as well known to her as her own. He'd shaved two years ago after discovering that most mass murderers wore beards. Kate wasn't supposed to know that, but one of Jack's coworkers had told her on the sly, and she was saving the sliver of information for when it would do her the most good. He was tall, well over six feet, and burly, with untidy dark hair that continually fell into deep blue eyes, eyes that could on occasion see right through you and out the other side.

  He was also loyal and trustworthy and brave and true. And he loved Jimmy Buffett only less than herself. Maybe this roommate stuff was going to be all right after all.

  He smiled down at her. "What?" "I thought you could read my mind."

  He grinned appreciatively, and then his gaze shifted from her face to behind her and the smile faded. He opened his mouth and the back of her head exploded.

  An immense shadowy pit opened up invitingly at her feet and she fell forward into its muffling arms.

  Jack seemed to be falling with her, and the last thing she saw before they were enveloped in darkness was a gray streak arrowing toward her, ears flattened and teeth bared.

  There was a boom that reverberated through her bones, a single, agonized yelp and then nothing.

  THIRTEEN.

  May I have her as a pet?

  KATE WOKE ON HER SIDE IN THE DIRT. THE STEADY throbbing at the back of her head was the first thing she recognized, and it took several moments to understand that she was still at George Perry's hunting camp, that the sky was dark with clouds, and that she seemed to be alone. This bothered her, but she didn't know quite why.

  She couldn't sit up. This puzzled her. Why couldn't she get her hands beneath her and push?

  Investigation revealed that they had been secured behind her back. Her feet seemed to have been immobilized, too. She couldn't move, couldn't reach up to feel the back of her head, which felt as if a piece of it were missing and all the exposed nerve endings were screaming for help.

  Since she couldn't move, she thought. At first there was nothing, a blank, black space devoid of faces, names, places. There was nothing there.

  Panic gathered in her gut and threatened to rise up and choke her. She closed her eyes in fierce concentration. Her head throbbed with it but she wouldn't stop, not until she knew it all.

  Who am I? she thought. Think, Kate.

  Kate. Kate, that was it, Kate Shugak, star of the Anchorage district attorney's investigative staff, lover of Jack Morgan, granddaughter of Ekaterina Shugak, owner of a 160-acre homestead in the Park.

  Or no. Emaa was gone, she remembered now. And she didn't work for the DA anymore. But she still slept with Jack Morgan every chance she got, and she still owned her father's homestead.

  Tendrils of memory felt their way through the pain, one at a time.

  George Perry hiring her to guide the last week of August. The hunt before this one, which had gone off like clockwork, everyone had tagged their moose and shot enough ptarmigan and geese to fill up the rest of their freezers and gone home rejoicing.

  The second hunt. The Germans. Fedor's death. Hen drik's. George taking the first body to town. Hiding the weapons and tossing the cabins.

  Klemens and the feuding moose. Jack. That gray streak, all furious yellow eyes and white teeth. The booming sound just before she blacked out. The subsequent yelp of pain and rage.

  Her eyes snapped open.

  She was facing the log in front of the lodge. The smooth white wood of the trunk was an inch from her nose. Spruce needles were digging into her cheek.

  She waited, listening. There was no sound but the rustle of the wind in the trees overhead. A shift of her hips and she was rolling to her right, so that she could see the yard, a roll that should have been hindered by the presence of a357 on her hip, but wasn't because the .357 was no longer there.

  The yard looked much the same, with one exception.

  Jack lay sprawled on his face twelve feet away, a dark stain blotting the back of his shirt.

  Something, some sound she did not recognize, ripped out of her throat.

  She launched herself toward him, wriggling, twisting, writhing, worming her way over rock, exposed roots, slivers of wood, ejected shell casings, cigarette butts, moving with agonizing slowness. Her universe narrowed to that one thing, all her ambition focused on achieving that one goal, to get to Jack.

  Which was why she didn't hear the footsteps, and was totally unprepared for the hand that reached down and grabbed her braid.

  The hand used it to haul her to her feet. Pain sliced through her scalp and an involuntary cry escaped her, a sound of which she was instantly ashamed.

  A grinning face appeared in front of her own, a face she had seen calm, expressionless and unchanging but never grinning, hugely, as it was now.

  "Have I told you how much I like your hair?" Eberhard said.

  In one of those quirky, quantum shifts of memory, she recognized the parody of Jack's nearly identical words the day before. Coupled with the sight of his lifeless body, the memory brought a welcome upsurge of rage, and with it a return of all her senses.

  She masked it immediately. "No," she said. She couldn't quite manage a smile, but she was able to say, "How much do you like it?"

  He took a fat loop of braid around his hand and jerked, and she stumbled forward until their faces were almost touching. In an odd way she was grateful for the support, as a wave of nausea seemed to begin with the dull pain in her head and roll over her entire body.

  "A lot," Eberhard said. "I look forward to seeing it spread out on my pillow."

  The rage beat back the nausea and this time she did manage a smile.

  "You'll like it even better then."

  "And your brown skin, I like that, too. Very smooth. I will like to touch it. Too bad about the scar. It mars perfection." Eberhard looked over her head. "I like this one. May I have her as a pet?"

  "Of course you may, darling," Senta's voice purred. Involuntarily Kate turned her head to see Senta smiling down at her. "So long as you kill her afterward."

  Eberhard grinned again and stretched out his free arm to cup the back of Senta's head. He pulled her into a grinding, carnal kiss. She responded with little grunting sounds that reminded Kate of the rutting moose in the meadow. It was animalistic and entirely without affection or tenderness.

  Eberhard used Kate's braid to muscle her closer, shoving his knee between her legs to rub her crotch with his thigh. Another, duller wave of pain radiated from her head and she fought back a second surge of nausea and willed herself not to shrink away.

  Senta laughed at Eberhard when he let her go. They both looked at Kate, identical predatory smiles on their faces. "Perhaps we could share her,"

  Senta suggested.

  Eberhard liked this idea. "Perhaps we could. We have all night, liebchen, before the plane returns. And I think this one will do anything we ask of her, just to stay alive. Look at her, she hasn't even looked at her man, for fear it will make us think she cares for him, that she might want revenge for him. How much farther will she go? It could be--" he bent his head and ran his teeth along Kate's jaw

  "--amusing to find out."

  He bit Kate, hard, where jaw and throat met.

  She stood motionless in his grasp, enduring it because she had to, because for the moment there was nothing else to do. Now was not the time to fight.

  Soon, but not now, not yet.

  His hand cupped her breast
and squeezed, not gently. Ruthlessly Kate restrained her instinctive shrinking, her cry of protest. Not now, not yet. She chanted the words over and over again in her mind, like a mantra, reaching for strength. She should have been encouraging his advances if she wanted to gain any herself, but she couldn't quite bring herself to do more. She looked past his shoulder instead of up into his face.