In the Dark

by Loreth Anne White

  Stella’s features went tight.

  “So when were you going to tell us this, Stella?” Steven asked.

  “I didn’t want to say right away. Fear, worry, is not a good thing when—”

  “When what? Jesus. Who are you to decide what’s right and wrong for us to know?” Steven barked. “You’re just the pilot, not the boss of our lives, for Chrissakes.”

  “There’s a chance I could fix it in the morning. If I can—if it’s an easy fix—you’d never have to have known about it.”

  “So you thought you’d play God?” Steven snapped. “Because we would all panic.” He wagged jazz hands at the sides of his face.

  “And you’re not panicking?” she said.

  Silence swelled in the kitchen. It felt for a bizarre moment as though the house were listening. Alive. Hostile. Nathan felt hairs rise along his arms. He was sensitive to these things. He could feel trees in the forest watching and listening to him.

  Bart broke the silence. “When did you learn the radio was damaged?”

  Stella inhaled deeply and palmed off her wet cap. “It was working when I flew into Thunderbird Ridge yesterday afternoon. I discovered it was malfunctioning right after we took off this morning.”

  They stared at her, stunned.

  Bart cleared his throat. “So someone damaged it during the night at Thunderbird?”

  “It looks that way,” Stella said.

  “So we have no way of getting word out?” Steven asked. “Nothing at all. And no one is expecting us to call, either, because we told family and friends we’d be out of cellular contact at some secret location for ten days.”

  Nathan said, “If we’re not back within the ten days, at least West Air will know where to send people to find us.”

  “No, they won’t,” Stella said. “I only received the GPS coordinates by text last night. I called them in to my dispatch when I took off this morning, but that’s when I realized the radio wasn’t working.”

  “Yeah,” Jackie said. “Didn’t you guys notice that we were only hearing her end of the conversation in our headsets? We heard no replies from West Air dispatch. It’s supposed to be two-way communication.”

  So that was what Jackie had confronted Stella about at the dock, Nathan thought. That was what they’d been arguing about.

  “What about Amanda Gunn?” Bart asked. “Does she have the coordinates?”

  “No. Like I said, I got them exclusively via direct text from the RAKAM Group.”

  “So the RAKAM Group knows,” Nathan said. “They will send someone.”

  “Yeah, right,” Jackie scoffed. “The RAKAM Group who apparently faked this whole fucking thing. Do you really think they’re going to send someone to get us out now?”

  “Fuck,” said Bart. “Why would someone do this? What in the hell is this? What’s going on?” He looked from one to another, his arms beginning to show strain under his heavy load of logs.

  “We need to do some triage here,” Stella said. “That storm front is socking us in. Right now it’s just heavy rain, but it could turn to snow before morning. But we’ve got our bags, warm clothes. We’ve got wood. We can make fire.” She nodded to the open cupboards behind Steven. “Looks like we won’t go hungry immediately. So we’ll eat, hunker down, stay warm until the storm blows through, then we’ll fly home and report this.”

  “No . . . no, I am not accepting this situation.” Anger pulsed in Steven’s words. Anger that was underscored with panic. It gave Nathan a smug satisfaction to see the surgeon flustered, frightened.

  “Listen to her, Steven,” Nathan said. “It makes sense. We could potentially fix the radio in the morning and have it all sorted out by tomorrow. There’s nothing more we can really do in the dark with the storm closing in. Monica is getting Deborah bathed and warmed up. You’re the doctor—you can look at Deborah’s ankle. We’ll warm up some of the food from those tins in the cupboards and figure out what do next.”

  “How long was this front forecasted to last?” Jackie asked Stella.

  “Several days.” Stella rubbed her mouth. “Maybe a full week.”

  Another beat of silence filled the room. The wind scratched tree branches along the wall outside, and a strange moan came down the stone mountain.

  A whistle shrieked. They all jumped. The kettle. It was boiling and the steam was causing it to shrill loudly.

  They laughed out of nerves. An ugly sound. All except Jackie, who scowled silently at them.

  Steven removed the kettle, his muscles rippling like a visible current under his shirt.

  “Nathan,” Stella said, “why don’t you go help Monica get Deborah onto the sofa in front of the hearth? Bart, could you build the fire?”

  Bart seemed to suddenly recall he was cradling an armful of split wood. “Yeah, yeah, sure.” He exited the kitchen with his load.

  “Where is Katie?” Stella asked.

  “Filming outside the front entrance,” Jackie said curtly as she turned and walked out of the kitchen.

  Steven poured hot water over a tea bag and said to Nathan, “Who in the hell does that pilot think she is, ordering us around? Who made her boss? Who put her in charge of—”

  “Oh, shut up, Steven. She’s the one making sense,” Nathan said, voice clipped. But something about Stella was now bugging him as well, something he couldn’t put his finger on.

  “And I’m not?” snapped Steven. “Is that what you’re saying?”

  A bitterness filled Nathan’s mouth. He lowered his voice. “I know you, Steven.”

  Steven’s eyes narrowed. They held a look of poison. At this very moment Dr. Steven Bodine looked like a man who could kill. And Nathan knew for a fact he already had.

  “Oh, do you now?” Steven said.

  “I do.” Nathan’s words came out slow, deliberate, his gaze locked on Steven’s. “Monica told me a lot about you. We shared. Everything.”

  Steven swallowed.

  “The reason Stella Daguerre rubs you the wrong way is because she doesn’t prostrate herself in front of your golden surgical godliness—am I right? You feel she disrespects you and undermines you. She irritates you because she’s actually more in control than you are, and she’s a woman to boot. One who’d never think to open her legs for you.”

  “Fuck you, Nathan,” Steven whispered. Heat crackled between the men. “You know fuck.” The surgeon glanced at the door and dropped his voice to an even quieter whisper. “There’s a reason your wife cheated on you.”

  “I could destroy you, Steven. I could destroy your clinic.”

  “And if you do, you go down, too, brother. Both of you.” A pause. A slow smirk. “And you don’t have the balls. You know what your problem is, Professor Fungus? The trouble with you is you actually love her.”

  Nathan’s neck muscles corded. His hands fisted. He glanced at the array of knives in the block on the counter. For a wild moment he actually felt like grabbing one and sticking it deep into Steven Bodine’s gut. He wanted to kill him. Yes, he did.

  Steven’s smirk deepened. He picked up the mug of tea. “She controls you, Prof. She’s got you tight by your thinning short ones.” He carried the mug past Nathan, bumping into him as he whispered into his ear, “The pussy-whipped professor doesn’t have the cojones to take me down, do you now, Nathan?”

  The words hung in the empty kitchen like a dare.

  Nathan’s heart thumped against his ribs. His fingers twitched at his sides.

  He glanced again at the knives.

  THE LODGE PARTY

  KATIE

  Katie Colbourne helped Stella carry bags to the rooms upstairs while the others got the fire going downstairs. Stella wore a headlamp she’d brought with her—part of her pilot emergency kit on the plane. And they’d lit one of several kerosene lanterns they’d found in a storage area off the kitchen.

  On the top floor were seven bedrooms, each with a door opening onto the U-shaped balcony that looked down over the great living room. Four bedrooms o
verlooked the lake, and the remaining three had windows that faced the base of the mist-shrouded mountain behind the lodge. Each room hosted a double bed, a freestanding wooden closet, plus a chest of drawers. A small bathroom led off each. The decor consisted of antique pieces from a mix of periods.

  “There’s a room for each of us,” Katie said to Stella as they placed bags outside the doors.

  “As long as the married couple shares a bed,” Stella said, entering one of the lake-view rooms. “Do you want this one?”

  Katie entered behind Stella. She plonked her bag down beside a dark four-poster bed with white linen that was faintly yellowed. She touched the linen, then lifted a corner and sniffed it. It smelled stale. A small shiver chased down her spine.

  Stella went to put her own bags in the adjacent room, then rejoined Katie.

  “I found another kerosene lantern.” The pilot held up an old copper lantern with a flickering flame. Shadows jumped and trembled around the room as Stella moved. A noise reached them from outside. A rhythmic chop, chop, chop. Bart splitting more logs for the fire.

  Katie watched Stella go to the window and peer through the gloomy twilight. She was looking at her plane. Katie joined her.

  “What do you think actually happened to the radio?” Katie asked quietly.

  Stella inhaled deeply. The pilot’s face was pale and angular in the lantern light. She looked even thinner, tired. Emotion glinted briefly in her eyes.

  “I don’t know. I can only assume someone got into the Beaver during the night, or in the very early hours of the morning, and cut the wires that lead to the antenna. The radio is an after-manufacture addition.” She paused. “Someone knew what they were doing. They went in there with purpose.”

  “But why?”

  “That’s the million-dollar question, isn’t it? Why are we all here? Why us?”

  “What do you think is going on?” Katie asked.

  The pilot pursed her lips, thinking. “I just don’t know. Could be a terrible mistake that I was sent the wrong coordinates.”

  But she didn’t look convinced.

  Quietly, Katie said, “Talk to me, Stella. Tell me what you’re thinking.”

  The pilot smoothed her hand over her hair. “I should have included a radio check in my preflight routine. But it was working yesterday, so I . . . Shit. I’m so sorry, Katie. This is my fault.”

  “No, it’s not. You were brought on board for all the same reasons as the rest of us were—with a view to securing a contract. If we’ve been bamboozled, so have you.”

  “Apart from Nathan,” Stella said.

  “What?”

  “Nathan. He’s just here as his wife’s guest. He wasn’t invited as a potential tender.”

  Katie held the pilot’s gaze. “Do you think that’s significant?”

  “I don’t know.” She fell silent a moment, a look of consternation creasing her brow. “I feel like I know Jackie Blunt from somewhere. And that she also recognizes me. But she says not. And . . . maybe I’ve even seen Dr. Steven Bodine before. But . . .” Stella swore again. “This whole thing is pure freaky.”

  Katie felt a tightening in her belly. Stella seemed familiar to her, too. But Katie couldn’t place her. Something bigger and darker than she was able to grasp seemed to hover over them all, connecting them in subterranean ways they couldn’t figure out yet.

  “Is anyone on this trip familiar to you?” Stella asked.

  Katie’s pulse quickened. She turned to look out the window as she considered her reply, but it had grown fully dark out, and all she saw now were the flickering reflections of herself and of Stella holding the lamp. Cold air emanated from the windowpanes. The glass was thin. It let the outside in.

  “I recognize grocery heiress and Holistic Foods CEO Monica McNeill, of course,” Katie said slowly. “She was a big local name back when I covered the Vancouver news. Very involved in charities and the whole farm-to-table organic movement at the time.”

  “Monica’s from Vancouver?” asked Stella.

  “Yeah. They—she and her husband—used to live in Kitsilano.” A memory washed through Katie at the thought of the swanky Kitsilano neighborhood in Vancouver, just over the bridge from the downtown core. She’d covered some hot-button stories in that area. But she could think of no place where she’d actually run across Monica McNeill in person. But the feeling she knew Stella began to bang louder among a jumble of forgotten memories inside Katie’s head. While working for the TV station, she’d met so many people, covered so many stories, and it was all so many years ago that things ran together in a blur.

  “Have you and I met before?” Katie asked Stella.

  Stella angled her head. “I . . . don’t think so. I mean, I know your face from the news channel, but I’m sure I’d recall having met a real live television personality.”

  Anxiety deepened inside Katie.

  Stella reached out and placed her hand on Katie’s arm. “It’ll be okay. We’ll work it out. Come, let’s check out that last room and then go down and sit by the fire and have something to eat.”

  Stella carried the lantern toward the door. Katie turned to follow. Shadows pounced and scurried, and the movements on the wall made her turn her head. That’s when she saw it—the big painting. It had been hidden from Katie’s view by the antique closet when they’d first entered.

  It was huge—took up half the wall. Done in dark oils. It depicted a life-size rendering of a little girl holding a lantern up in one hand. The girl looked to be about six years old. She wore a diaphanous white nightdress and had bare feet. Her face was turned, as if to look at the painter. Fine blonde hair blew in a soft cloud about her face. In her other hand the girl held a small golden scale with a shallow bowl on either side. Weighing down one of the bowls was what looked like a tiny human heart. The child’s face showed a sly smile.

  Bile rose in Katie’s throat. Her heart began to hammer. She couldn’t move. Couldn’t breathe.

  Stella reached the doorway, turned. “Katie? What’s the matter?”

  “I . . . I . . .” Katie reached her hand out toward the painting. “That.”

  Stella frowned and hurriedly reentered the room to see what Katie was pointing at.

  “A painting?” Stella said.

  “Who . . . who painted it? Where is it from?” Katie’s voice was hoarse, strangled by sudden fear.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Read it—can you read that signature at the bottom?”

  Stella gave her an odd look, then moved toward the painting of the little girl. She held the lantern aloft and bent closer to the signature at the bottom right.

  “It says JUSTICE.”

  “Can you read the name?”

  Stella looked at Katie. “There is no name. It just says JUSTICE.”

  Time elongated. As if in slow motion, Katie stumbled toward the four-poster bed and sat on it, suddenly unable to support her weight. She stared at the painting. She was going to throw up.

  Stella quickly set the lamp down on the bedside table and seated herself beside Katie. She took her hand. “Katie, look at me. What’s going on?”

  “The painting . . .” Words died in her throat. Fear clawed her heart.

  “It’s beautiful,” Stella said. “It looks like some antique piece.”

  “It’s Gabby.”

  “What?”

  “It . . . it’s Gabby. My daughter.” She felt stricken just saying the words.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I . . .” Tears filled her eyes. Confusion clouded her brain. With trembling hands she ferreted in her jacket pocket and brought out her cell phone. She powered it on and opened her photo app. “See?” She held a photo out toward Stella.

  Stella took it. She fell silent, stared at the photo, then looked up at the painting. Her gaze met Katie’s. Stella looked shocked. “It’s the same,” she whispered. “The same pose, same nightdress, same bare feet, same hair, the same smile on her face.”

  Katie swi
ped away the tears streaming down her face. “Apart from the scales of justice and the human heart in the bowl. What . . . what is that . . . thing supposed to mean?” Katie began to shake violently. The most precious being in her life was her little girl. Gabby. The child who’d changed her, everything about her. Made her rethink the meaning of the world, and even the worth of her marriage to an adulterous man.

  “Did you . . . Who would have seen this photo?” Stella asked. “Did you post it on social media?”

  “I . . . I know I shouldn’t have. I knew it probably was not the smartest thing to publish pictures of my daughter where anyone could access them. Especially given that I was a media personality. But . . . it’s such a gorgeous photo.” She held Stella’s gaze. “Do you think I’ve put my baby at risk? Oh God.” Her hands flew to her mouth. “What if something is going to happen to Gabby while I’m trapped here? What if—”

  Stella placed her hand on Katie’s arm. “Katie, please, don’t think like that. Try to relax. Hysteria is not going to help any one of us. We need to keep clear heads in order to work through this.”

  With trembling hands Katie smeared away more tears.

  “Think for a minute,” Stella said. “Who is with Gabby right now?”

  “Her father.”

  “And you trust him with Gabby?”

  “Oh God, yes. With Gabby. He . . . he might have cheated on me, but he utterly adores his daughter. He’d kill for Gabby.”

  A frown creased Stella’s brow. She watched Katie’s face for a moment.

  “I don’t mean he’d kill kill. Just that . . . if she was threatened . . .” Her voice faded.

  “Then she will be fine.” But as Stella glanced again at the painting, Katie wasn’t so certain that the capable pilot believed her own words. Stella could just be saying things to appear solid.

  “Do you have children, Stella?”

  “No. I . . . I can’t.”

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  Stella waved the words away. “It’s okay. Just a fact, that’s all.”

  “Are you married?”