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The earth in front of his humble abode had been freshly tilled, a vegetable garden put to bed for the winter. Gabe could imagine the previous RCMP officer’s wife planting food for their table. He could picture the couple using the red canoe that had been pulled up onto the bank and tied under a trembling aspen down near the water. Crisp gold leaves covered the canoe now, a few left clinging at the topmost branches of the tree. One lost its grip and rustled softly to the ground as Gabe watched.
He jacked his shearling collar up around his neck, shoved his hands deep into his pockets, and began the trudge to Old Moose Lodge, wondering how in hell he was actually going to survive six long snowbound months in that little wooden box on the lake, buried under drifts.
Who would care if he didn’t?
And he’d still have another winter to endure after this one coming. Where would they send him then?
There wasn’t even anywhere else he wanted to go.
Time stretched interminably before him as he crunched along the narrow rutted path, dense spruce and berry scrub closing in on either side, shadows dark in the undergrowth.
He could have taken the ATV, but the lodge was only about six miles from his new home, and he needed to do something physical, or he was going to go insane. But as he walked, a very real sense of being watched crept stealthily over his skin.
He stopped, listened. He couldn’t pinpoint why, but something didn’t feel right. A slight crunch in the woods sounded suddenly to his right.
He spun, pulse quickening.
Gabe concentrated on the ambient noise of the bush, trying to identify anomalies of sound. Then he heard it again—a crack. Sweat prickled across his brow.
Slowly drawing his weapon, he peered into the arachnid-like shadows of dry willow scrub, twilight toying with definition between shadow and form.
Something rustled sharply again in the dry leaves, and twigs crunched. His pulse kicked up, and his throat turned dry. He removed his flashlight with his free hand, directing the beam into the dense willows, the barrel of his weapon following.
His flashlight caught the quick glint of eyes, then the shape of a large animal seemed to quietly separate itself out from the background, and he found himself gazing into the liquid eyes of a doe, standing still as stone in the shadows.
Gabe’s breath whooshed out of him.
Laughing lightly, he reholstered his weapon. The deer skittered back into cover, white tail bobbing, and Gabe laughed again, running both hands over his hair, trembling slightly. He continued along the grassy track, a sudden lightness in his chest.
Yeah, he was still jumpy. But he hadn’t shot the damn deer. He still had the jockey of logic to control his quick impulse to shoot.
Looking into the big innocent brown eyes of that doe, feeling a rush of adrenaline in his body that wasn’t spawned by malicious human intent, had shifted something fundamental inside Gabe.
Maybe there was hope for him after all.
A split cedar fence lined the approach to the Old Moose Hunting Lodge, a large log structure that hunkered on the shores of the clearest aquamarine lake Gabe had ever seen, a few outbuildings standing off to the side.
A fish eagle circled up high, feathers ruffling on air currents as it craned its neck for prey. Small bats were beginning to flit after mosquitoes just above the water, competing with fish that sent concentric circles rippling through mercurial reflections as they broke the lake surface. The air was heavy and cool, redolent with the scent of pine and the spice of juniper.
Gabe stopped a moment to drink it all in.
Then he saw Silver, leading three horses to a paddock near the shore. There was a wild abandon in her stride, her heavy hair swaying across her back, and she was laughing as her dogs cavorted with a puppy at her side.
Everything inside Gabe quieted.
She looked so free.
It was clear she hadn’t realized he was there and that she was being watched. And with mild shock, Gabe realized he wanted to watch, quietly, without announcing his presence. There was something about the way she moved that grabbed him by the throat. He was jealous of her freedom, her spirit. It made him feel furtive. Hungry.
But she saw him, and stiffened instantly. He raised his hand to greet her, but she simply pointed toward the main building before continuing down to the paddock with her horses.
Gabe climbed the big log stairs onto a veranda that ran the length of the lodge. Massive bleached moose antlers hung over a heavy double door. He scuffed his boots on the mat and entered the lodge.
A fire crackled in the stone hearth, and two men and a woman chatted at the bar as an Indian barman with a sleek black ponytail down the centre of his back filled a bowl with peanuts. The television set was mounted behind him, a hockey game playing.
Gabe grabbed a stool and bellied up to the bar. He asked for a Molson, and if he could switch to the CBC news channel.
“You the new cop?” asked the barkeep as he slid a cold beer along the counter to Gabe. He was a young and strong man with copper skin and a small silver earring in his left ear.
“Sergeant Gabriel Caruso,” Gabe said, holding out his hand.
The trio at the other end of the bar glanced up. Gabe nodded at them, and they tipped their glasses slightly. Not exactly smiles of welcome, thought Gabe. It was the same with Silver. Beneath surface civility he could detect simmering hostility.
“Jake Onefeather,” said the barkeep as he flipped to the news channel and handed Gabe the remote.
There was a commercial on. Gabe checked his watch, and tensed. He’d made it just in time. The CBC news logo flashed across the screen, and he bumped up the volume, his mouth already dry, his pulse accelerating. He knew he’d see Steiger’s photo. And most likely his own.
And Gia’s.
If Tom was correct—that CBC had prepared a news feature—Gabe would likely see file footage from the RCMP funeral where thousands of mourners had come to pay their respects to his colleagues gunned down in the line of duty. Mounties from across the country had stood shoulder to shoulder in a sea of red serge far exceeding the capacity of the Notre Dame Basilica cathedral in Ottawa as the coffins were carried in—one of them holding the body of the woman he’d planned to marry.
The anchor began to speak. But before Gabe could catch a word, a soft and husky female voice brushed like velvet over his skin.
“You’d make a better impression visiting the chief and council than sitting here drinking beer on your first night, you know?” Silver said quietly as she came up behind him.
Abruptly, the competition for Gabe’s attention was cleft in two—the sensually beautiful tracker at his side and the image of Steiger’s rugged face filling the screen, pale ice-blue eyes staring coldly at the camera. Steiger’s hair was pale, too. Ash blond, shaved short and spiky. By contrast, his skin was olive-toned, his features angular, strong. Handsome, even. Almost mesmerizingly so. And the psychopath knew it.
Gabe’s heart began to thud. He felt dizzy. He held up his hand, quieting her, and he made the sound louder. Everyone in the bar looked up in surprise, then fell dead silent as they watched.
Silver stared at the screen in shock as the anchor announced the escape of the Bush Man, and then footage segued to file images of the dead Mounties, and Gabe—the cop who had led the Williams Lake takedown. The cop who had lost his fiancée to a monster.
As a tracker, Silver had been interested in Steiger’s story, in how the killer had managed to evade law enforcement for almost three years, but she hadn’t put two and two together with the new cop.
Her eyes shot to Gabe.
Suddenly he made sense. She now understood what she’d glimpsed in his eyes.
She’d been right. He was damaged goods. Badly damaged.
Silver listened to the news, but she watched him. She was a veteran observer of creatures, human and otherwise. She instinctively noted the way they moved, talked, how their emotions translated into body position, how it made them plant their feet, leave trace. It was in this way that she could often tell the prints of one villager from another without even analyzing why. And more often than not she could tell what they’d been doing, even thinking, at the time they’d left prints.
Right now, in his leather bomber jacket and faded jeans, Gabe Caruso didn’t look like a cop. His hair was roughed up, a five o’clock shadow darkened his angled jaw, and his neck muscles corded with aggression. Strong neck. Strong man. She liked what she saw—too much. And again she felt the disturbing warmth spread through her stomach. She didn’t feel safe around this man—not at all.
She swallowed the shimmer of anxiety in her chest and pulled up a stool beside him. Closer than was necessary, close enough to feel the tension radiating from him like heat from a desert tarmac. She noted the way he fisted the TV remote in one hand, knuckles white, his beer glass in the other. She thought he might just crush it and wondered if she should remove it or remind him that he was holding glass in his fist.
She slanted her eyes up to the television as another image of Gabe filled the screen. It was a shot taken a year ago of him standing alongside one of the coffins. Propped up by crutches he was dressed in formal RCMP red serge, Stetson at a slight angle atop short-shaved hair, no expression on his face. Just hollow, dark eyes.
The anchor reminded viewers of how the sergeant had pursued Steiger on a snowmobile, racing after him into the teeth of a blizzard on that fateful night. A gunfight and hand-to-hand combat had ensued, seriously injuring Gabe before he’d managed to subdue Steiger using a taser.
And given what they were saying on the news about Gabe having been a fast-climbing career cop who’d taken the sergeant’s job in Williams Lake to be with his now-deceased fiancée, Gabe must be seething about this Black Arrow Falls posting. It was a dead end for him.
Silver guessed everything that meant anything to Gabe lay in that coffin in that image. The news feature cut back to the presenter, and Silver felt anger burn through her veins. She knew what that kind of emptiness felt like.
Everything that had meant anything to her was buried under a small cairn of river rocks northwest of town, at Wolverine Gorge. Rocks she’d stacked with her own bloodied hands.
Silver was torn between resentment that the RCMP had sent them someone who didn’t want to be here and compassion for a man tormented over the loss of his fiancée and his career. His life. Black Arrow Falls deserved better treatment.
But so did Sergeant Gabriel Caruso.
The RCMP had clearly washed their hands of a dedicated cop, given the résumé they’d just flashed on screen. It sure didn’t endear the federal force further to Silver, but suddenly this man wasn’t overtly her enemy.
Or was he?
She slanted her eyes back to study his jagged profile. A man like him would now have something to prove. And if the big city homicide detective had nothing better to do in Black Arrow Falls, he just might go sifting through the cold case files.
He might come after her.
The news feature was over, but he sat staring blankly at the television screen. Silver didn’t know why she did it, but she reached over and quietly pried the remote from his clenched hand.
“They’re tracking him wrong,” she said as she bumped down the sound, and set the remote on the bar counter.
Gabe’s eyes whipped to hers. “What?”
“The Bush Man. They won’t get him like that.”
He leaned forward suddenly, intense interest narrowing his eyes, energy crackling around him. “Why do you say that?”
“They’re combat tracking. It’s how you chase down a fugitive on the run.”
“That’s what he is.”
“No,” she said softly. “That man is not a fugitive. He’s not running. He’s a predator. He’s hunting again.”
“How do you know that?”
“It’s what natural-born predators do. They hunt. And when they’re injured and backed into a corner, they don’t flee. They just become more dangerous. They come at you—attack.”
A muscle began to pulse at his jaw. “And how would you track him?”
“The same way I track any animal predator.”
Gabe shook his head. “No. No way. Steiger is a borderline genius, a strategic combatant. This guy is not an animal. He’s a psychopath.”
“Which is exactly what makes him like an animal. A very smart and very dangerous one.”
Gabe swigged back the rest of his beer, plunked the glass down hard onto the counter, and surged to his feet. “Don’t kid yourself, Silver.” He pointed to the TV screen. “You could never track that man. Our force hunted him for months. I saw the profilers’ reports. I studied every goddamn word. I got inside his sick head.” His eyes bored down into hers, giving Silver that strange zing in the base of her spine again. “You’d be dead before you knew it. You may be a good tracker, Silver, but you’re no match for Kurtz Steiger. You’re not a man hunter.”
Her mouth flattened, and her eyes narrowed. “Don’t presume to know anything about me, Sergeant,” she said very quietly as she got to her own feet, meeting his aggressive posture toe to toe, her pulse accelerating. “Do you even know where the word ‘game’ comes from?”
Uncertainty flickered briefly in his eyes. She held his gaze, well aware of what her blue-eyed stare could do to a man. “Some say,” she continued, “that it was derived from the ancient Greek word gamos, meaning a ‘marriage,’ or ‘joining,’ as in a special kindred relationship between hunter and prey. And yes, when I hunt, Detective, that’s my game. A relationship, an emotional connection with my quarry. It’s the way things are done out here. We are all connected. And it’s the same game Kurtz Steiger plays.”
“What makes you think you know anything at all about this man?”
“Because I saw right there on that newscast that the Bush Man doesn’t use humans for simple target practice. That would be too easy. He flushes them out, strips them down to their most basic, atavistic impulses, then he puts them on the run, chases them for days sometimes, toying with their minds, playing on their mental weaknesses. He needs them to know he is out there, watching them, hunting them with an expectation of kill. He wants this relationship, and he wants it up close and personal, because he feeds off the smell of human fear.”
“And you think you’re telling me something new?”
She was angering him, but she was not going to back down and concede defeat now. “Yeah, I do think so,” she said. “It’s a small matter of perspective, Sergeant. It makes a huge difference.”
He exhaled angrily, dragging his hand over his hair. “Will you please just call me Gabe?”
Surprise rippled through Silver, and a smile tempted her lips. She almost gave in to it, but didn’t. “You need to see the wilds differently before you can ‘see’ Steiger,” she said. “Some of those law enforcement and military trackers might know how to cut from one footprint to the next, but the ones who can really ‘see’ know where to find their quarry without even looking, just from one track. Like an archaeologist can reconstruct an entire animal using a single bone, a good tracker can use one print to piece together an elaborate story of interlocking events. And that can lead him right to the source without taking a step.”
“That’s psychic bull.” He leaned closer, his mouth coming near hers, and her blood warmed. A tiny warning bell began to clang in the back of Silver’s brain, but she couldn’t stand down. She stared him straight in the eye instead.
“And a woman like you shouldn’t even begin to think of messing with a monster like Steiger.” His voice was low, gravelly.
“Why? Because I’m female?” she asked softly.
“Because I’ve seen what that man does to women. You may be good, Silver, but you’re not that good. You’re no match for him. I know this.”
“Maybe where you come from, Gabe, but out here, things are different. We know that the wolf, while strong, can still be outwitted by the hare.”
Silver turned and walked away, her pulse racing much too fast, her palms clammy, her mouth dry. She hadn’t meant to press him like that. God knew she should have let him be.
She was only making trouble for herself.
She sucked air in deeply, conscious once again of the tight ragged scar pulling across her chest—a reminder of just how carefully she needed to tread with Sergeant Gabriel Caruso.
He trekked down the hill toward Dawson City, late-morning mist shrouding the old gold rush boomtown that lay at the confluence of the Klondike and Yukon Rivers. It was almost three days since his escape, and his face had been plastered all over the news. He needed to be careful.
In the town’s small library, he pulled the flaps of his fur-lined hunting cap down low, shading his profile as he began searching the Internet for information on Black Arrow Falls.
He’d taken the cap and some clothes from the small cabin by the river where he’d sewn up his leg. At a gas station a few miles out from the cabin, he’d crawled from the shadows and strapped himself under a logging rig. He’d heard the driver say he was heading north. He’d then liberated weapons from a hunting camp outside Whitehorse, busted into another remote cabin farther up the Klondike Highway, and found food and antiseptic for the leg wound still troubling him.
He’d cleaned up thoroughly each time, leaving no trace. He didn’t want to telegraph his actions to Caruso.
He wanted to surprise him.
And he felt controlled, the steady, throbbing pain in his leg keeping him on a keen edge. Pain was his friend. Patience the art of the predator.
Scrolling through the Yukon newspaper online archives, his attention was instantly snared by a Whitehorse Star online report about Silver Karvonen, a tracker who’d located an eleven-year-old boy north of Whitehorse last month, after everyone else had given up hope. He leaned closer. The story said she possessed a tracking skill bordering on psychic. But it was what the next line said that made the blood in his groin grow hot—Silver Karvonen was from Black Arrow Falls.
He quickly punched her name into a search engine.
Almost immediately he came across several articles dating back five years—Karvonen had been a person of interest in an RCMP homicide investigation into the death of an Alaskan bootlegger named David Radkin.
That man had been the father of Karvonen’s seven-year-old son, Johnny, who’d been found drowned and buried under a cairn of rocks near the remains of Radkin’s body in remote bush northwest of Black Arrow Falls near an abandoned gold mine.
