Читать книгу Manhunter - Лорет Энн Уайт, Loreth White Anne - Страница 11

Gabe’s head began to buzz. His fist tightened around the handset.

“How?” he said, barely audibly. “How in hell did he get out?”

“Floodwater was seeping into the underground electrical systems at Kent Institution with this deluge we’ve been having,” said Tom. “Correctional services was sandbagging like crazy while putting together contingency plans to transfer inmates to the Mountain Institution if things got worse.”

Gabe could picture it. Kent was in the low-lying area of the Agassiz delta. The neighboring Mountain Institution was on slightly higher ground.

“The water levels rose too fast. Power shorted, backup generator blew as they were trying to switch over. Wardens had to hustle inmates out in the dark.”

Gabe’s knuckles turned bone-white as he struggled to grasp what he was hearing. Steiger was being held in that institution while lawyers wrangled over his extradition and jurisdictional issues. He vaguely noted Donovan staring at him through the glass. “Go on,” Gabe said, words like gravel in his throat.

“Steiger took advantage of the outage, stabbed an inmate with a spoon, it looks like. Sparked a riot in pitch blackness. Two wardens are dead, several others in critical condition. The bastard actually stripped one, put on his uniform, and drove the prison van right out of the main gates of the pen. No one saw it coming—they thought he was one of their own. Steiger dumped the van off the highway near Manning Park. Looks like he ducked into wilderness there, heading south for the U.S. border.”

“With a U.S. court martial hanging over his head?”

“Borders don’t matter to that guy.”

No. Everything mattered to Kurtz Steiger. Gabe knew him too well now. He’d studied—memorized—everything the RCMP criminal investigative analysts had come up with. He’d looked right into the monster’s eyes himself that snowy night in the woods. He’d almost taken his life. Gabe pinched the bridge of his nose.

“It’s all over the news,” said Tom. “I…thought you might have heard.”

“I’m in the bush, Thomas. North of bloody nowhere.”

“The CBC is working up a feature that will air during their regular news slot tonight. I…I wanted to be sure you knew. They’ll probably bring up…Gia, and all that.”

An inexplicable emotion welled up through Gabe’s chest and burned into his eyes. He felt so damn defeated.

Having Steiger behind bars was his way of rationalizing Gia’s murder. And the loss of those officers’ lives. It was his sole foundation for going forward.

Now it was gone.

He sank down, leaning against his tiny new desk. “Where are they looking for him?” he asked quietly.

“They’ve got a major manhunt going down in Manning Park along the U.S. border. Dogs, choppers, military, the works. They’re expanding the search over the border into Washington state with the cooperation of U.S. authorities.”

“Why?”

A puzzled silence hung for a moment. “That’s where his trail leads.”

“Steiger doesn’t leave a trail,” Gabe said even more quietly. “Not unless he wants you to find it.”

Tom paused. “They’ve got him this time, Caruso. He was shot in the prison riot. He left a ton of blood in that van. He’s injured and on the run. The dogs are on him.”

“Right,” said Gabe. Kurtz Steiger could survive anything. It’s what he did. Survive. And kill.

“The guy is not superhuman, Gabe. They figure they’ll have him in a matter of hours.”

“Right,” he said again.

Silence hung for several beats. “Is everything okay up there?”

Up there.

It sounded like something Gabe’s Roman Catholic mother would say in reference to limbo—that peculiar place where doomed souls were destined to hang between hell and heaven for eternity.

“I’m fine,” Gabe lied. “You’ll keep me updated, Tom? I…I’m kind of out of the loop right now, and…I’d like to know.”

“Hey, it’s why I called, buddy.”

Gabe hung up, his knuckles bloodless. He flexed his fingers, stared at his hands, then looked up at Donovan who’d moved into the doorway.

“He got out,” said Gabe. “The Bush Man.”

Donovan’s features were grave. “I gathered.”

Gabe launched to his feet suddenly, pushing off his desk. “Is there a television set anywhere in this town?”

Donovan eyed him steadily. “We have Internet. You can get the news on—”

“I want a television. I want to see the CBC feature airing on Steiger tonight.”

And he wanted a beer. No, a couple of beers. He wanted to drown himself in whiskey—and this was a dry town.

“Mae Anne’s diner has TV. She gets the two Yukon channels. There are satellite systems in private homes and one at the Old Moose Hunting Lodge, which is outside the town boundary. They serve a pretty decent meal there, too.”

Gabe checked his watch as he stalked through the reception area. Shoving the door open, he stepped out onto the small log porch that fronted the detachment building. He needed air. What he got was a surprise.

The sinking sun had brushed the rugged, snow-capped massifs with a soft peach alpenglow, and the air had turned heavy and cool. Gabe drank it down hungrily as he braced his hands on the wood balcony, heart thudding in his chest. It was so beautiful it had shocked his mind clean for a moment.

“Sergeant?” Donovan said from just inside the door.

Gabe tightened his hands on the balustrade. “What is it, Donovan?” he said quietly, without looking at the man.

“I know you’re technically not on duty until tomorrow, but Chief Peters at the band office is expecting you, and I…uh…mentioned you might come around and meet with him this evening.”

Black Arrow Nation Chief Harry Peters functioned as a small-town mayor would. His band had contracted the RCMP to police their community, and, as the new sergeant in town, Gabe would need to liaise with Peters in the same way a top cop would work with any local mayor and council.

“Not right now,” said Gabe, trying to control the rage mushrooming steadily through him. His short fuse, the murderous impulse that could fill him instantaneously, had become his weakness, a black cancer he couldn’t cut out. And he felt it now.

Taking life went against everything that had defined Gabe as an officer of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police force. But if his corporal hadn’t arrived when he had the night Gabe had chased Steiger, Gabe knew he would have killed Steiger.

He’d have ripped out the bastard’s sick throat with his bare, bloodied hands.

And now he wished he had.

The violent strength that had coursed through Gabe’s veins that night had startled him. The sheer power was almost intoxicating.

Locking eyes with Steiger in the woods on that snowy night in Williams Lake just over a year ago had unearthed something dark and atavistic in Gabe.

Because he still wanted to kill him.

It was this that made him question whether he really was still fit to wear his red serge and carry a gun.

“I’ll see him tomorrow,” he said coolly without looking at Donovan. He didn’t want to talk to anybody right now. What he needed right now was to find his cabin, get out of his uniform, and find a television and a beer.

He cursed to himself.

They’d locked Steiger in prison, but Steiger had locked him in one, too. Now the bastard was free.

But Gabe was still trapped behind his own damn bars.

In the general store Silver bought rounds for her rifles, a new skinning knife, and she picked up the mail Edith Josie, the owner, was holding for Old Crow. She’d take it out to his camp in a day or so.

Old Crow was a Black Arrow elder and Silver’s tracking mentor. She had no idea how old he was—older than time, older than the river, Edith had told her. And Edith was no spring chicken herself.

Whatever his age, to Silver, Old Crow was eternal. A part of her felt he’d always be there for her and that she’d never stop learning from him. It was an education that had begun after her mother had died when Silver was nine. She stopped going to the small Black Arrow school, and her father had been too grief-stricken to make her do otherwise.

Her dad had eventually gotten done with mourning and shacked up with a cheechako nurse who took it upon herself to try and homeschool Silver. But during the summers of endless sun Silver would go prospecting in the wilds with her father.

And from time to time she and Finn, as everyone called her father, would run into Old Crow working his traplines, and they’d spend the night in his camp listening to his stories, their campfire shooting orange sparks into the pale sky.

Old Crow could paint pictures in the air with his gnarled brown hands. With a deft sweep of his arm he could show weather patterns, or the animation of a small forest animal. He could tell chapters of a lynx’s life from a single footprint in mud, even tell you how to find that lynx—just from the clues in that one track. To a young Silver he was fascinating, a wilderness detective, and she’d started following him around like a lost little bear cub soaking up any stray bit of information she could.

Old Crow had finally, officially, taken Silver under his wing, teaching her how to read the wilderness like an ordinary child might learn to read a book, but he never gave her the information straight. He’d point the way with a riddle, conning her into using her innate curiosity to unravel mysteries with her own effort and skill.

Her own discoveries had thrilled her, and in this way Silver had learned to speak another language, one written right into the fabric of nature. Over time she’d become one of the best trackers in the country, all because of Old Crow. And she’d learned everything else she’d needed to know about life from nature’s classroom.

But a good tracker never stops learning, and Silver still thoroughly enjoyed her visits to Old Crow’s camp where he lived up on a remote plateau in his teepee, in the old way.

She smiled inwardly as she thanked Edith, tucking his wad of mail into the leather pouch hanging from her shoulder. Old Crow might prefer living in the traditional way, but he still liked to get his mail from Whitehorse, via plane.

“Massi Cho,” she said in the Gwitchin language of the Black Arrow Nation. “Gwiinzii Edik’anaantii. Take good care of yourself, Edith.”

Edith smiled, her eyes disappearing into brown folds of skin behind her thick glasses as she waved Silver on.

Descending the stairs of the Northern Store, Silver whistled for her dogs as she swung her rifle to a more comfortable position at the centre of her back. But just as she was about to stride up Black Arrow Falls’ main road, she caught sight of the new cop standing on the detachment porch, the Canadian flag with its symbolic red maple leaf snapping up over his head against a clear violet sky.

Her heart fluttered awkwardly—and annoyingly—in her chest.

She should have kept right on walking, and she’d have been okay. But she felt him watching, and she made the mistake of looking up at him. Instantly she was snared by the intensity of his gaze.

Silver suddenly forgot how to breathe, a tumult growing inside her coupled with an overwhelming urge to flee. “Hey,” she said, stopping instead.

“Any word on that grizz?” His muscled arms braced wide and solid on his detachment banister as his eyes bored down into hers. The posture was proprietary, almost aggressive. Something seemed to have changed in him since she’d met him at the airstrip.

She squinted up at him, disadvantaged by the backlight of the evening sky.

“What about the grizz?” she asked.

“I hear he got a taste of human blood. Donovan tells me you’re hunting him.”

“The bear’s a she, not a he,” she said, her voice husky to her own ears. Damn, how could one man have an effect like this on her body, and so quickly? It was beyond her control. And Silver liked—needed—to be in control. “Besides, it’s not police business.”

“Sure it is.”

She bristled. “The other officers were content to let the conservation office handle this. And the CO contracted me to take care if it. So it’s my business.”

“I’m not the other cops, Silver.”

“Sergeant—” she stepped closer, which further disadvantaged her because now she had to angle her head to look up at him. “The sow was defending her dead cub’s body. She was stressed and threatened. Her attack was not predatory. It was in self-defense, so I let her be.” Even though she spoke softly, she made sure her words were delivered with authority. Whoever this Caruso was, she was not going to let him go after her bear. That really was her territory, and she couldn’t back down.

“She won’t become a problem?”

Me or the bear?

The way he said it, the way he was looking at her, she couldn’t be sure.

Silver repositioned her rifle and squared her shoulders. “The attack could affect her interaction with humans down the road, so, yes, she could become a problem, but we should give her the winter. Time has a strange way of healing things out here, Sergeant.”

His arms tensed, eyes narrowing sharply onto her.

She turned to go, finding her legs like water as she tried to walk up the road, feeling his eyes burning hot into her back.

“Any place a man can get beer round here?” he called out after her.

Silver stilled.

She turned slowly to face him, irony tempting the corners of her mouth into a wry smile. “This is a dry town, officer. I believe it’s your job to make sure it stays that way.”

“I hear the Old Moose Lodge is out of town limits, and it has a television. I need to watch the news tonight.”

She studied him, trying to weigh the paradox that was this man. “It’s a public place, Sergeant.” She hesitated. “But I’d leave that uniform at home if you plan on drinking in my bar. Wouldn’t want Chief Peters and the band council thinking you were officially trying to undermine his efforts to keep our people dry.”

Sergeant Gabe Caruso stared at her with a directness that sent another hot tingle into her belly. She turned quickly, calling her dogs to heel.

She concentrated on walking smoothly and calmly down the street. She felt anything but.

The cop was coming to her lodge. Tonight.

He was making her feel things she didn’t know she was capable of feeling anymore. That scared her. Because like Broken Claw, Silver was a bereft and wounded mother.

But unlike the grizzly, Silver had actually killed a man.

And if the cop found out, he had the power to put her away for it. For good.