Edge of Survival (5 page)

Katie splashed in and grabbed George’s other arm. “What do we do?”

“Tommy! Get on the radio and call up some help,” Cam shouted. “Hold on, George, we’re gonna get you out of here. Hold him upright,” she ordered the girls. Then she took a breath and plunged beneath the surface, finding purchase against the metal grid at her back, using both hands to work George’s foot free of the rock. Even beneath the surface she could hear him scream. She yanked and hoped she wasn’t causing more damage as she struggled with the rubber boot. Finally it slipped free, and George lurched backward as she burst to the surface. He was shaking from agony and shock, the frigid cold contrasting dramatically with the muggy air.

The sound of chopper blades throbbed through the sky. They were in luck. A pilot must have been nearby.

“Can you walk without help?” she yelled, turning back to George.

Clinging to Vikki, George tested his foot but grimaced and shook his head. His skin was bloodless, the color of lard. Cam grabbed one arm and Vikki took the other, hauling him over their shoulders, trying to support his weight. It was rough going, trying to help a one-legged man negotiate the rock-strewn riverbed without breaking any necks. They scrambled over the boulders and finally made it to the edge of the river. Cam’s teeth chattered from the temperature of the ice-fed water. Tommy held out his hand to grab George, whose leg dangled uselessly behind him as he was dragged up the bank. Vikki clambered up and out of the brook. Cam spied Daniel’s familiar blue-and-red helicopter at the landing site and considered the difficulty of getting George over the grassy swamp.

“Vikki, go tell Daniel we need a stretcher—”

“Hell, no.” The girl who’d just helped drag George out of the frigid water now plunked herself on a boulder beside the useless Tommy. “I’m not going anywhere near that psycho.”

Cam’s eyes stretched wide. It wasn’t the reaction she was expecting. Maybe Daniel Fox had pulled that how-to-kill-without-much-blood stunt on her, too. But Vikki wasn’t known for her discretion so it was odd she hadn’t mentioned it already.

Then she spotted him climbing over the small ridge carrying a first aid kit, looking strong and capable, and she couldn’t contain a sigh of relief. He might try his damnedest to annoy her but she already knew he could handle a difficult situation. As he got closer he flicked a quick frown at Vikki before kneeling beside George on the grassy bank.

“I think he’s broken his ankle,” Cam told him. “He got it trapped under a boulder and then fell backwards into the river.”

Daniel took in her drenched appearance, then looked at George and checked his pulse. “How you doing, George?”

“Hurts like a bitch,” George hissed through bared teeth.

“I need to remove your boot in case you’re bleeding.” Out of nowhere, Daniel pulled a lethal-looking knife and Cam flinched and almost lost her balance on the rocks.

Daniel raised his brows. “We’ve been over this, Doc.”

Cam nodded, but the savage glint of steel brought back a vivid reminder of the gash across Sylvie Watson’s neck.

He edged George’s waders away from the man’s body and sliced from the waist down, careful not to nick George’s leg as the wounded man tried to hold still.

“You have medical training?” Cam asked. Her clothes and waders were plastered to her body like a saggy second skin.

“Some.” Daniel paused in his ministrations, clearly impatient. “Get out of the water before you catch pneumonia.”

“I need to get my hat.” She jerked her thumb toward her ball cap, which bobbed against the fence. She’d already lost one yesterday.

“Tommy, go get the Doc’s hat,” Daniel ordered.

Cam opened her mouth to protest, but the boy was already in the water. “Heck, that’s the fastest he’s moved since I met him.”

George shrieked as Daniel sliced open the other side of the waders. Cam tried to crawl up the bank, but she kept slipping in the mud. Daniel hauled her out one-handed, like a sack of grain.

“Thanks.”

“Here’s your hat, Dr. Young.” With a smile, Tommy held out the sodden Florida Panthers cap. Suddenly the kid looked excited and motivated. Go figure.

She took the cap and wrung it out. “Thanks, and call me Cam.” Her teeth chattered. George was shivering, too. Daniel managed to get the guy’s waders off and threw the ruined green rubber beside the equipment coolers. Then he gently removed George’s sock.

Cam blew out a sigh of relief when she saw his foot. The joint looked puffy and swollen, the skin reddened, but no obvious bleeding or jagged bone poking through flesh. But the foot rested at an unnatural angle that made her stomach squirm.

“Can you wiggle your toes?” Daniel asked.

George nodded and twitched his toes, letting out a terrific groan as he did so.

“Pass me that rucksack,” Daniel told the kid, who once again jumped to obey orders. He slid the pack under George’s leg.

“You got any cardboard I can use for a splint?” Daniel’s focus was one-hundred percent on the injured man, and his confidence and calm under pressure reassured her.

She raced over and opened the coolers she used to haul her equipment.

“And a towel or something to pad it,” he called.

Cam grabbed a box that contained her cleanup kit and dumped the contents inside the cooler. She pulled out a foam pad she used to cushion fish during surgery. As they hadn’t done any tagging yet, it was clean. Some people might call that fortuitous.

Daniel manipulated the foam around the leg and ankle, followed by the cardboard, and positioned it beneath George’s injured foot.

“Hold this.”

Both she and Tommy supported the cardboard splint around the leg while Daniel secured it with duct tape. “Tommy, get on the blower and request a helicopter ride back to the ship for you, Vikki and Katie.”

“Why can’t I go with you?” Tommy coupled his whine with a resentful glare in Cam’s direction.

“I’m taking George and the Doc to Nain—”

“Why her? I can help—”

“Non-negotiable, Tommy,” Daniel told the kid, who stomped off.

“He can go—” Cam interrupted.

“I was on my way over to get you anyway. The RCMP want to question us both about the body you found yesterday. We’ll drop George at the clinic and circle back to Frenchmans Bight. May as well get it over with.”

Crap
. He made it sound as though she’d discovered poor dead Sylvie on purpose, when she’d rather have peed her pants than go in that restroom if she’d known what was waiting for her. Cam didn’t want to waste time talking to the police because she didn’t know anything. The char run only lasted a few weeks, and so far she’d caught
nada
.

Shame filled her.

Sylvie Watson had been murdered and deserved her respect despite the inconvenience to her schedule. What sort of person put her career before catching a killer?

Daniel helped George to stand. “Sorry, mate, this is going to hurt.” Then he bent and hoisted George in a fireman’s lift over one shoulder. He marched over the soggy, uneven terrain back to the helicopter as George cried out with pain.

Cam ran over and grabbed her fanny pack and daypack with her emergency supplies. “Don’t leave any equipment behind!” she called to her crew, who were standing around looking miserable and pissed.

“We’ve got it.” Vikki popped a stick of gum in her mouth and sat back to chew. “You watch out for the freak flying the helicopter because, personally, I’d rather take my chances in the wilderness with a knife-wielding maniac.”

***

Dwight Wineberg crouched behind a tree on top of a nearby hill and watched through binoculars. They had a new drill rig in operation on the next ridge and he’d spotted the eco-freaks when he’d been dropped off earlier. The interfering bitches were making his life harder than it should be and threatening men’s jobs.

He sniggered as George Mitchell fell in, laughed aloud as the women clambered over the rocks to rescue him. The bitch in the baseball cap looked like a drowned rat by the time she pulled George’s foot free. A strange delight uncurled in his belly, and a snort came out his nose when the old bastard dragged his crooked ankle up the riverbank. Dwight’s adjustments to the fence were working nicely.

Maybe they’d be gone soon.

The brunette had looked pretty shook up when she’d left the bar yesterday—not surprising, considering Sylvie had been in there decomposing. He smiled. Pity that prick of a pilot had turned up, else he might have followed her into the can and shaken her up a bit more. But it was just as well—he didn’t want his name coming up on a police report.

Thank fuck, he always wore a condom.

He spat out a bug that had crawled into his mouth. Dwight had never liked Sylvie. She had a tongue that could strip skin from flesh, so he usually put her mouth to better use. He’d seen her kid getting an eyeful once, but he hadn’t told her. She’d been too drunk to notice, and the nipper might as well know his mother was a whore.

Not anymore though.
Pity
. They were short of beavers around here.

The blonde sat on a rock, looking pissed. She was something else, like something out of a movie, and he knew exactly what kind of movie she’d star in if he was directin’. He licked his lips as his blood began to stir. Man, he’d like some of that.

The buzz of the radio sent a shock straight to his heart and he grabbed his chest, cutting off the noise.

Dammit
, he didn’t have time to worry about women. He had a mine to open, men relying on him. He knew how desperate some of their families were. He’d lived it and hated it. He slipped down the rock on the opposite side of the ridge, swearing as the thick tangle of tamarack scratched him.

Those women were in his way. He’d be damned if some overeducated dickheads would delay his mine. He had to get rid of them. Between Sylvie Watson’s corpse and a little bit of well-timed sabotage, how hard could it be?

***

Daniel walked into Bear’s Bar, where laptops and law enforcement personnel had replaced the beer jugs and roughnecks. He rested his shoulder against the jamb.

The Doc was leaning over a table as she recounted the details of how she found the body to an officer—she was so animated she used her hands as much as her mouth.

He’d made a brief stop at the ship so she and George could pick up dry clothes, but her hair was still damp, and mad curls sprang around that cute Sunday-school-teacher face. Her skin was so pale, her freckles jumped out at him across the room.

Shit.

He didn’t like the way he reacted to her, especially after he’d found out she had diabetes—as though he should be constantly watching out for her. No way, no how. Getting involved was not in his arsenal of personality traits because, these days, he was barely able to look after himself.

“Daniel Fox?”

He pushed himself away from the doorframe and looked up to see a RCMP Constable approaching him. “Yep.”

“We need to take your fingerprints and a voluntary DNA sample.”

Daniel tried not to let the words affect him. He wanted Sylvie’s killer caught just as much as everyone else. But he hated being placed under suspicion and doubt, when he’d spent most of his adult life willing to make the ultimate sacrifice to protect innocents. Of course, given one reporter’s assassination of his last mission, most people might think he was more likely to mutilate innocents in their beds.

“Fine.” He headed over to the bar where they had some sort of station set up. He could feel the Doc’s eyes bore holes in him as he crossed the room. What was she telling the bald guy? That he’d admitted he’d used his knife for more than chopping apples?

How can one human being kill another?

The memory of her words brought him out in a cold sweat because killing had always come easily to him when sanctioned by Queen and Country. He’d never questioned it. Not the role he played, not the bad guys he’d killed. But civilians dying—now that was something else entirely. Memories of the cameraman lying on the floor with that small perfect hole in his forehead swam through Daniel’s mind like a movie he couldn’t switch off and couldn’t look away from. His throat felt sore from suppressing the constant onslaught of emotion. He wanted to stuff his hands in his pockets to hide the shaking, but didn’t have that luxury as an officer took his fingers. The whisky behind the bar sang his name. If he wasn’t on the clock, he’d have sunk a quart.

“Nervous?” The officer asked as he rolled Daniel’s fingertips expertly across a digital screen.

Daniel held the man’s gaze. “Only of you boys cocking it up.”

“If you’re innocent, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”

“Yeah, that’s what they all say.” Daniel laughed without humor.

The officer used a cotton swab to scrape the inside of Daniel’s cheek. It took all of thirty seconds to get his DNA and fingerprints into the system. Waste of time, but what the hell. As long as it eliminated him from inquiries, Daniel didn’t care. He followed the officer over to where the Doc sat.

“Staff Sergeant Kershaw, this is Daniel Fox, the helicopter pilot, here for interview,” the officer said to the bald guy.

Kershaw twisted around and looked Daniel up and down with the sort of sweeping gaze that reminded him of his former commanding officer—the gaze looked casual but filtered details with the efficiency of activated carbon.

Kershaw turned back to the Doc. “Thanks, Dr. Young. You can wait outside.”

Daniel couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “You’ve got to be kidding?” The Doc was pale and her hands were shaking, and even though he wanted to chew up the words he spat them out anyway. “A woman had her throat cut in this bar yesterday and you’re just letting her—” he jerked his head at Cam, unable to say her name, “—wander around out there alone?”

He sat on the bench, effectively trapping her. He pressed his fingers to her forehead but she jerked back with a scowl. “Did you get enough to drink?” he asked. “You feel hot.”

“I’m fine.” She batted his hand away when he tried to touch her again.

“Did you eat?” He looked at Kershaw. “I don’t want her passing out on my watch.”

Kershaw was staring at him with curiosity in his warm brown eyes. Cam’s condition freaked Daniel out, and he didn’t know why. Except, he did. She had a vulnerability, a weakness, that could prove fatal. When she was flying with him, Cameran Young became his responsibility. Some days it didn’t matter how far you ran, other people’s problems still fucked you up.

“Did you check your blood sugar?”

She pressed her lips together and glanced under her lashes at Officer Kershaw, indicating that she hadn’t wanted to bring up her condition during her police interview. Jeez Louise. Talk about stubborn.

“Do it.” Daniel set his teeth against the unexpected surge of irritation. “She’s diabetic,” he explained.

He geared up to argue with the woman, but she surprised him by narrowing those super-green eyes and taking something out of her backpack. He didn’t know what it was until a small prick of blood bloomed on her finger. She got out a strip of paper and ran her gaze over the men.

“You don’t need to watch,” she said.

The RCMP Constable coughed and moved away but Daniel and Officer Kershaw followed the strip into the pink meter she pulled out, and waited for the beep.

“Eighty-one,” she said and shoved everything back into her pack.

“Is that good or bad?” the cop asked.

“It’s fine. I have my lunch in here.” She tapped her bag. “I’ll just go—”

“She can sit here and eat, right? I have to fly her back after we’re done anyway.” Daniel rested his hands on the tabletop, holding the cop’s gaze.

“We don’t usually interview people together, Mr. Fox.” Staff Sergeant Kershaw twirled a pen between his fingers.

“You have to excuse my mother, Staff Sergeant. She isn’t usually such a worrier…” Cam shifted as if to get up. Daniel didn’t move. If she wanted out, she’d have to climb over him.

Kershaw grinned and something feral unwound in Daniel’s gut.

“You want to play hide-and-go-seek with the sick bastard who sliced Sylvie, you go right ahead. But I don’t have time to search for you when I’m done.” It came out louder than he’d intended, and the ensuing silence echoed around the room.

Everyone stared. Self-disgust wound its toxic way through his intestines and made his stomach cramp.

“You can stay for now, Dr. Young.” Kershaw’s voice was calm and reassuring, immediately diffusing the tension.

Daniel figured the guy would be a brilliant hostage negotiator ’cause nothing seemed to faze the sonofabitch. Kershaw turned to a fresh page in his notebook. The apprehension that had grabbed Daniel by the throat eased back a little as everyone went back about their business.

“Talk me through what happened when you got here yesterday.”

Cam filled a syringe and turned slightly away as she injected herself in the stomach. Daniel winced in sympathy. Kershaw glanced over too, his eyebrows knitted.

“I arrived around 2100 hours. I gassed up on the way over and loaded some equipment down at the helo pad.” Daniel didn’t mention the beer the bartender supplied him on the sly. “I walked in here, found the Doc and her assistant sitting at that table over there talking to Dwight Wineberg, the foreman.” He pointed to the center of the room. “Then Doc went to the bathroom and a few minutes later I followed her.”