Chapter Five
We bury the backpack. We’ve been walking for about ten minutes when I check my watch.
It’s barely nine. That’s the advantage to getting an early start—I’ll be back in time for Rory’s morning nap.
I might even be able to feed her, if she hasn’t fussed enough for Yolanda to do it.
We’ve just started giving her cereal midmorning, and Dalton and I usually do it together, both for the novelty and the amusement. We can—
“Hello!” someone calls, and we all stop short. The voice is distant enough that even Storm hadn’t heard anyone out there, but Dalton and Anders were talking, which meant someone heard us.
It’s a male voice. Our injured hiker?
“Hello!” Anders calls back. “Who’s there?”
“We are from the mining camp. Please state your location.”
Anders rolls his eyes hard enough to strain them.
The mining camp keeps security guards, who both watch the settlement and accompany the miners.
They’re all paramilitary types—well-built guys, mostly white, buzz-cut hair—and we joke about not being able to tell them apart.
We also joke about the military affectations, like that “state your location.” That part amuses Anders most of all.
He served in the US Army and now he’s serving as law enforcement, but weirdly, he doesn’t go around talking like that.
“The forest!” Anders shouts back. “The Yukon? Maybe Alaska? I can’t tell. But there are a lot of trees.”
“You can hear our fucking voices,” Dalton says. “Follow them.”
“Please identify yourselves.”
“Fuck you,” Dalton says. “Good enough?”
“Are you alone?”
Anders puts his hand to his forehead and shakes his head.
“Guys? Cut the shit, please. You know who it is. You can tell where we are. You can tell there are at least two of us. There’s also a third person and a dog, both of whom are retaining their dignity by not joining this nonsense, okay?
We have guns, as we always do. We are not taking them out unless you approach us with yours in hand.
If you intend to do so, please warn us in advance.
You know the drill by now. You really do. ”
We keep walking. Within twenty steps, the guards appear.
Two men, both white. We recognize the older guy—he’s the only guard over thirty-five.
The other is maybe mid-twenties, dark-haired.
Have we seen him before? Like I said, we really can’t tell.
They don’t give us names, and they all dress in quasi-military gear.
What matters is that we’ve finally broken their habit of approaching with their guns out.
My heart still picks up as soon as I see them. At first, the mining camp had been an inconvenience and an exposure threat. Soon, between the military bullshit and the patronizing boss, it became an annoyance. But then we had an incident last fall, and since then, we’ve been on high alert.
We tell ourselves that the heavy security presence is understandable, considering they’re mining gold, but we’re in the middle of nowhere, and no one from Haven’s Rock has shown the least interest in their claim, yet they have not relaxed one bit.
Something is up with this mining camp. Maybe that seems like a mystery I should solve, but we’ve decided it’s too dangerous.
We’ve looked for answers online when we’re in Dawson—anything about gold mining in our area.
We even broke down and had émilie’s investigator check into it.
But we’ve found nothing, which would be suspicious except, again, it’s gold mining.
The company isn’t exactly going to be podcasting about their efforts and rewards.
For now, we’ve achieved an uneasy truce. They don’t bother us, and we don’t bother them.
“For the record,” the younger one says, “we would like to state that we are on neutral ground.”
“Uh, yeah,” Dalton says. “Otherwise, either you’d be giving us shit for trespassing or we’d be giving you shit.”
“We acknowledge this is neutral ground,” I say. “Are you guys out here for something? Or just taking a hike?”
“Classified information, ma’am.”
The older man gives his partner a look and then says, “Ignore him. He’s new.
We’re following up on a report of campfire smoke out this way.
We know your people sometimes pitch a tent for a night, so we were just confirming that’s what it was.
Can you tell us how long you’ll be out here?
So if we spot smoke, we know it’s you guys? ”
Anders and I say nothing. We might teasingly call Dalton the boss, a holdover from Rockton, when he was in charge.
But both Anders and I come from backgrounds where someone is in charge, and we acknowledge the value of that, at least if it’s someone we trust to make decisions for the group.
So we really will stand down here and let Dalton make the call, which he knows also means neither of us has a strong opinion either way.
“We aren’t camping,” Dalton says.
“I knew it,” the dark-haired one mutters, like a little kid sulking over being called out for bad behavior. “They don’t have the baby.”
We’d have rather the camp didn’t know we had a baby, but that would mean never going anywhere near their territory—or neutral territory—with Rory.
We’d decided to let it play out, and this summer, sure enough, we were hiking and passed close enough for someone to come running, wondering what dangerous animal was wailing.
“They could have left their baby in camp,” the older man says.
Now his partner is giving him a look. “It’s a baby. There are bears around. And wolves.”
I clear my throat. “We actually saw smoke last night. That’s why we came out. Did you say you saw it this morning?”
The older guard answers. “No, it was last night. Smelled it mostly. Boss didn’t want us investigating after dark, so we went into lockdown and came out first thing. There are a few teams looking around.”
“On neutral territory,” the younger one says.
“That’s fine.” I glance at Dalton, lobbing the next decision to say more his way.
“We found traces of a camp,” Dalton says. “Ash was still warm, but not hot. Signs of a tent being pitched. We had the dog follow the trail. It headed west, so we aren’t too concerned.”
“That’s a tracking dog?” The younger one eyes Storm skeptically.
“She can track,” I say. “Most dogs can with proper training. The point is that the campers went west. We followed for maybe a kilometer and turned back.”
The younger one looks at his partner. “How far’s that?”
“About a half mile, I think?”
“Point six of a mile,” Anders says.
We’ve long speculated that the camp originates in the States, and this seems to confirm it. That’s also why Anders joked about us being the Yukon or Alaska. Covering all the bases.
When Yolanda’s team built Haven’s Rock, the crew was told they were in Alaska. It was a useful fiction for security, and we have no idea where these guys think they are. Once you get this far north, it’s easy to substitute in one region for another, especially deep in the boreal forest.
“Would you mind showing us the camp?” the older guard asks.
Dalton shrugs. “Sure. You walked right past it.”
He backs them up to the campsite. We don’t mention that we also use it—and we probably won’t after this.
We also apparently aren’t mentioning that we met the hikers yesterday.
Dalton has been careful to leave us that wiggle room, though, in case it ever comes up.
Need-to-know basis, as these guys would say.
They check out the camp and pretend to know what they’re doing.
We help, since they’re being decent about it, having dropped the military shtick.
The older guy has always been one of the few guards I’m comfortable around—an old dog long past bothering with that military nonsense, relaxed and friendly enough.
Dalton shows them how to dig in the campfire pit and find warmth, which suggests it’s the one they smelled last night. I show them where the tent was pitched. We say nothing about finding the backpack, and I’m glad we reburied it and replaced that bough over it.
I’m hoping they’ll drop it at that. They don’t, and I have to admit I’d have been surprised if they did.
Strangers were camping in the region where they’re mining for gold.
They’re going to be just as suspicious as we are, and it doesn’t help us here that we can’t tell them who we saw and possibly soothe their paranoia.
I’m not sure it would help anyway. Yes, a couple in these woods is less suspicious than a group or a lone person.
Yes, one of them was injured. But we’d still been suspicious, so they would, too.
And one reason we aren’t telling them is because we don’t want them running off after what seem to be innocent hikers.
That encounter between our groups that went bad ended with them sharpshooting one of their own guards. Oh, they had their reasons, but it still means we are not putting them on Gretchen and Blake’s trail.
They ask a bunch of questions, mostly about where the trail led, in which direction and where did we think they might be headed. Dalton bullshits his way through it while I sit with Storm and Anders pokes about the clearing as if checking for more clues.
Finally, Dalton sighs. “Would you like us to have the dog follow the trail farther?”
“If you don’t mind,” the older guard says.
“Then head back and tell Mr. Rogers that we’ll swing by and update him.”
“Mr. Rogers?” the younger one says.
The older one grins. “That’s what they call the boss. Because he’s such a friendly neighbor.”
His partner frowns, as if too young to get the reference.
After a moment, the younger man says, “One other thing. Do you guys have another dog in town?”
“Yes…” Dalton says slowly.
“Looks like a wolf?”
Dalton makes a noncommittal noise. We do have a second dog—Raoul—and he is half wolf. But he’s also half Australian shepherd, and looks like it, which is why Dalton would suspect that’s not who they mean.