Midnight Sun (23 page)

Tanana Valley State Forest, Alaska

September

I
t was a show tunes kind of afternoon, which was unusual for Isabel, but the words to the old songs came to her effortlessly as she walked downslope, deep in the Tanana Valley State Forest. Loud, full-voiced singing was necessary to warn bears she was hiking in this remote Alaskan wilderness and was intended to scare the creatures away. Given her off-key voice, singing pretty much guaranteed humans would stay away as well. A decided bonus.

Although, now that she was on day four of the timber sale survey, she was ready to be done. She’d had enough solitude this week and wouldn’t mind meeting up with Nicole for a beer at the Tamarack Roadhouse. It was getting late, already after five p.m., and she was still a two-hour hike from her truck, but her extra-long lunch excursion put her behind schedule and she had one more parcel to inspect before she’d be done with the archaeological survey. It was worth the long day to avoid hiking all the way back here tomorrow.

Most of this week’s survey soundtrack had been sad songs, but yesterday had been Vincent’s birthday, so her melancholy was understandable. Then suddenly, this afternoon Rodgers and Hammerstein popped into her head. She’d started with
Oklahoma!,
continued with
The Sound of Music,
and now she’d moved on to Gilbert and Sullivan’s
The Pirates of Penzance
,
 
specifically, “I Am The Very Model Of A Modern Major-General.”

She’d feel ridiculous singing at the top of her lungs, except after months of working in Alaska, she’d grown used to the need to make noise while conducting pedestrian survey. She’d found straight-up talking to herself disconcerting, so she’d taken to singing. Now it was second nature. She barely even heard her own voice as she studied the ground for telltale signs of prehistoric human activity.

She paused, taking a deep breath, preparing for the next rapid verse, when she heard a branch crack, followed by a grunt.
 

Not the grunt of an animal, but one of a human. In pain?

She stopped. With her head cocked toward the wind, she listened. Again she heard a sound. Faint. Human. Definitely not happy.

She scanned the woods. The underbrush was thick and mosquitoes vicious. Whenever she stopped walking, they swarmed. She fought the urge to wave her arms to shoo them away so she could listen.

But all she heard was wind. Birds. Buzzing mosquitoes as the bloodsucking females feasted on her cheeks and arms. Normal forest sounds.

She slapped away the biters. Maybe she’d heard a wolverine. Their grunts could easily be mistaken for human. Shaking off the foolish notion she’d cross paths with another person out here on the edge of the bush, she resumed walking and singing, but the happy beat was lost. Now she sang solely to ward off bears. She scanned the ground as she walked, looking for signs of prehistoric occupation or use. Her job was to find archaeological sites that would be destroyed by the coming timber harvest. That was what she was here for. She needed to focus on what paid the bills.

The ground sloped at a grade above fifteen percent. Poor conditions for finding a site, because the ground was too steep for occupation. If there were a site in the vicinity, she’d find it at the base of the slope. She continued in that direction, determined to do a good job for her employer, the Alaska Department of Natural Resources.

Branches snapped below her, to the right.
 

She stopped signing midword.

Any number of fauna could have triggered it. She hadn’t seen any scat, at least nothing fresh and therefore worrisome, for the last half mile. But still, she dropped a hand to the grip of her pistol while the other grabbed the bear spray. Of the two, the pistol was the least effective, but the noises had her on edge. While a pistol wasn’t good defense against a bear, it was excellent for dealing with humans.

These woods, remote, abundant with resources, yet marginally accessible due to logging roads, could be a gateway to the bush for people on the run. Maybe she’d been foolish to brush off the noise as a wolverine.

Another sound carried on the breeze, and she ducked behind a tree to listen and wait. In her gut, she knew she wasn’t about to face down a bear. She held the gun in front of her, pointed upward, clasped between both hands like a prayer. Her heart pounded, but she had no real understanding of why. This just didn’t feel
right
.

She couldn’t stay behind a tree gripping a gun forever and eased out from her feeble hiding spot. Slowly, silently, she crept down the hillside toward whatever—or whoever—had made the sounds.

She spotted him immediately. Sunlight filtered between the leaves, highlighting the red splatter of blood that covered the man’s face. He lay still. Unconscious or dead?

She’d heard of archaeologists finding bodies on survey before, but the accounts always had the earmark of urban myths—two people removed from the teller of the tale. She’d never met anyone who’d actually encountered a corpse themselves. She supposed she’d considered how scary such a find would be, but hadn’t really thought beyond that, because really, it just didn’t happen.

It was like planning for a head-on collision. She’d been certain that sort of thing would never happen to
her.
Car accidents, kidnappings, tornados, and random bodies in the woods were all on the list of things that happened to other people.
 

And yet here she was. Adrenaline flooded, frozen with shock, and facing a body in the deep, bear-infested woods.

Her past speculation had been wrong. It wasn’t scary; it was utterly terrifying. Worse than facing down a bear, a pair of rattlesnakes, and a brown recluse all at the same time. Nature, she could handle. This wasn’t nature.

This was murder.

She glanced left and right. She would never hear anyone approaching over the roar of her racing pulse. She stepped toward the man, slowly. Gun out. Pointed at the body.

As she neared, she caught the slightest rise of his chest. He was alive.

Not murder, then. Attempted murder? Assault?

His face was swollen. He’d taken several blows in addition to the gash on his temple that bled profusely. She dropped to her knees at his side. She had no choice but to holster the pistol to check his vital signs.

His pulse was solid even though his breathing was shallow. It was likely a blessing that he was unconscious, because if he were awake she’d bet his head would hurt like a sonofabitch.

What to do? Whoever had done this to him could return. But if she left him here, unconscious, vulnerable, he could die. No.
Would
die. There were too many scavengers and predators in the area to believe he could survive, bleeding, unconscious, and alone.

But then, he could be the villain in this. Drug dealer. Poacher. Criminal on the run. This could be his just reward. She searched his pockets for a wallet with ID, but came up empty. His clothing didn’t argue for poacher. His clothing—business casual slacks and a blood-saturated button-down shirt—didn’t belong in these woods at all.

She checked his mouth, looking for rotting teeth, signs of drug use, anything that would indicate she had something to fear from helping him. But his teeth’s perfect alignment could only be attributed to orthodontia. Bright white and nary a silver filling.

She opened his shirt, searching for other causes for his blood-soaked clothing besides the gash on his temple. All she found was hard muscle. Whoever this man was, he took good care of himself.
 

Given his build, in spite of his city clothes, he could be a Raptor operative who’d strayed from the compound. That thought had her considering leaving him. The bears and wolves could have him. Or whoever had done this to him could come back and finish the job.

She shook her head, knowing her thoughts were unfair. Not all the operatives on the Raptor compound were rotten. She got along with most of them and was even drinking buddies with Nicole. But she knew without a doubt a few operatives were up to no good, and she had a serious problem with their boss. But then, it was hard to have kind feelings for the person who might have covered up her brother’s murder, especially when yesterday would have been that brother’s thirty-fourth birthday.

She had to assume, given this guy’s condition, he could be one of the operatives involved in dirty deals. The fact that she didn’t recognize him only made him more suspicious.

She stood and slowly turned in a circle, scanning the woods. What should she do?

It was a five-mile hike—at least half of that uphill—to her truck. No way could she carry an unconscious man that far. Hell, there was no way she could carry him thirty feet.

She pulled out her first aid kit and dropped to his side again. She’d tend the head wound while she decided what to do. Using precious water from her water bottle, she dampened a pack towel and cleaned the gash on his temple. Given the blood, bruises, and welts, she’d have trouble recognizing him even if he were a regular at the Roadhouse, but she was fairly certain she’d never seen him in town, nor was he one of the operatives she’d met when she’d interrupted the live-fire training exercise and been arrested.

Her hands shook as she cleaned the gash, and she paused to steady her breathing and get the trembling under control. She scanned the woods, wondering if this man’s attackers lurked nearby. Every instinct said to flee, but she couldn’t abandon him.

He couldn’t be a soldier attending a Raptor training, because after months of effort, she’d successfully gotten the government to shut down the compound’s military training program while they investigated the company’s safety measures. The weekly influx of soldiers had halted two months ago. But still, to be certain, she checked for dog tags and confirmed he wasn’t wearing any.

Breathing under control, she swabbed his cut with alcohol again and applied antibiotic ointment. She closed the gash with three butterfly bandages.

Unless he had internal injuries she wasn’t aware of, he’d probably be okay—as long as he wasn’t left to die unconscious and alone.
 

She considered her options. She had plenty of parachute cord and a small but sturdy tarp in her backpack. With long, strong branches, she could build a travois-type stretcher and drag him to shelter.

But still…five-miles, much of it uphill. She closed her eyes, thinking of the surrounding area. After surveying this parcel of woods for the last four days, she knew this section of forest. Where could she take him?

There were a few very old caches, but she could no more haul him up into a cache than drag him five miles to her truck. However…Raptor land abutted the state forest about a half mile away.

She pulled out her USGS quadrangle map of the survey area and studied it. She’d checked the state database for historic and prehistoric sites on Raptor land as part of her search for Vincent’s cave and had recorded all known sites—of which there were pathetic few—on her field maps, including this quad.

According to her map, there was a 1906 settler’s cabin about a mile away.

She’d never been to that part of the compound; the closest she’d come was about a mile west. She couldn’t be certain the cabin was still there, but she’d managed to find a few previously recorded sites in the parts of the compound she had explored, giving her hope that the historic cabin would also be extant.

After the live-fire training incident, the company CEO, Alec Ravissant, had acquired a restraining order to prevent her from stepping on Raptor land. But surely she wouldn’t get in trouble for bringing an injured Raptor operative to the cabin, especially if the action saved his life? Of course, she couldn’t admit how she knew the cabin existed, but she’d deal with that little problem if the time came.

But what if this man’s attackers were in the cabin?
 

She didn’t really have a choice. The cabin was his best hope. There was no cell coverage out here, and satellite phones were so horrifically expensive, she couldn’t afford one. The hike to her truck plus the drive to where she could get a signal would take more than two hours. Help, in the form of emergency responders, would take another two hours to return. She had a feeling this guy didn’t have that sort of time. Especially given his head wound and the evening wind, which was just beginning to kick up.
 

She dropped her hand to the gun at her hip. If there were men in the cabin, she wouldn’t be helpless.

Before she could drag him a mile, she needed a travois. She set to work building it. Because she had a tarp, she didn’t need most of the crosspieces; she could get by with one near the top and one at the bottom.
 

First, she used her knife to strip two six-foot-long branches, then she rolled the prepared branches into the opposite sides of the tarp at an angle, so it flared out, making it wider at the bottom, like a traditional travois. With the parachute cord, she lashed a short crosspiece to the top and a much longer one at the bottom, stretching the tarp tight in both places. The process took far too long for her peace of mind, but in the end she’d created something between a travois and a litter and could only pray the contraption would work.

She muttered an apology to the unconscious man as she rolled him onto the makeshift stretcher and strapped him between the poles using more rope, running it under his arms and over his shoulders. It would pinch and probably hurt like hell, but it was better than being left for dead, so he’d have to forgive her.