Chapter 11
11
In this part of the wilderness, no one locked their places when they weren’t home. Since no one would bother coming all the way out here to rob—the juice wouldn’t be worth the squeeze—anyone stumbling onto the place would likely be in an emergency situation. The attitude out here was, if you didn’t help each other, the ruthless Alaskan conditions would win. Even the most crusty off-grid hermit would grudgingly extend a hand of survival to someone in need.
The owners of the only other cabin still standing along Smoky Lake had inherited it from exactly such a man. He’d died last year, and no one had been out here since. Gil had met the crotchety old Bob Banks several times, and knew that he would have no problem with them taking shelter in his cabin.
“Bob used to row all the way across this lake when he went in for supplies,” Gil told Ani as they approached the trapper’s cabin. “He had arms like Popeye.”
Bob had made it himself from logs he’d floated across the lake from a cedar grove. Its roof was thick with moss, and spruce needles had accumulated on the lower frames of the windows. An air of neglect clung to it, which Gil found reassuring. No one else had been anywhere near here lately.
“Are you sure it’s okay to go in there?” Ani surveyed it dubiously.
“He wouldn’t mind. Also, he’s dead.”
“Somehow that doesn’t make me feel any better about it.”
“I promise you it’s not haunted. Bob always used to say that he intended to haunt his ex-wife when he died. I’m sure he’s a ferocious ghost.”
She shot him a nervous look. “Still not helping. I’m feeling a little like Hansel and Gretel right now, and that’s the witch’s cabin. Does he have an oven in there?”
“No oven, I can promise you that. He did all his cooking with a little camp stove, except when he roasted game in his fire pit.” He gestured at the old steel ring embedded in the ground. “I listened to some wild stories over that fire pit. Come on. We don’t have to stay, but I wouldn’t mind making a fire and warming up.”
She nodded at that reminder that he was still soaking wet and shivering. On the way inside, he made a quick detour to the woodshed, which was simply a few pieces of plywood nailed together, and grabbed an armful of firewood.
The space was so small—barely enough room for a table, rocking chair, and the cast iron stove—that hopefully it would warm up quickly once he got the fire going. The cabin had a dank smell from sitting empty so long. A fire would help with that too.
But first, he had to get rid of the cold weight of his pants.
“I’m going to take my pants off,” he warned Ani. She politely turned toward the window and gazed out the ancient dusty glass at the woodlands outside.
He didn’t have the luxury of being self-conscious, since his wet clothes were sapping the BTUs from his body. Clumsy from the cold, he got his boots off his feet, then his soaking-wet socks. Next came his canvas trousers, which were quite possibly the worst fabric to wear into a lake.
By the time all that was done, he was trembling with the effort. His body was so chilled that he moved stiffly toward his duffel bag. He’d thrown a few changes of clothing in there. Too bad he hadn’t thought of a towel. He’d just have to sacrifice one of his t-shirts. But as he rummaged for one, he cursed under his breath. Damnit, he couldn’t get his fingers to function. They were chilled to the bone.
“Let me help.” Ani spoke calmly at his elbow. “You don’t have to be shy. I’m a doctor, remember.” She crouched next to him and plucked a plain white t-shirt from the bag. “Will this do?”
He nodded. She was so close to him that his throat had closed up from sheer…awareness? Overwhelm? Lust?
“I’m going to rub your legs to get the blood circulating,” she told him. “It might be a little painful if your toes have gone numb.”
“They have,” he admitted.
“I’m not surprised. Just tell me if it hurts.”
Briskly but somehow also gently, she got to work with his t-shirt. She started with one foot, where prickles of sensation made him grit his teeth.
“One more minute in that water and I’m pretty sure you would have gotten hypothermia,” she murmured. “How’d you even manage to walk up here?”
“Determination. Gotta keep you safe.” His tongue felt clumsy. She moved up to his calf. Next would come his knee, then his thigh, which was so very close to his… Shit. A new worry surfaced. What if he got an erection from her hands on him?
He closed his eyes so he couldn’t see her glossy dark head so close to his legs. At least there was no skin-to-skin contact. Only his t-shirt was touching him, not her hands.
The t-shirt slipped and her warm hand wrapped around his calf. A surge of heat rushed into his groin. Damn it.
He yanked himself away from her. “I can take it from here, thanks. Just find me a pair of sweatpants.”
Quickly, he rubbed his own legs, afraid to look her direction. Either she would be hurt by his sudden rejection, or she’d have seen his erection and understood. Rejection or erection. Would she reject his erection?
His nonsensical thoughts made him laugh to himself. Then he sobered. Maybe the cold had affected his cognition too. He was rambling like Victor.
“What’s this?” Ani handed him a pair of fleece pants, then held up the soft-sided leather binder in her other hand.
His head cleared instantly. “I found that at the Institute. Victor had buried it in the garden.”
“That explains the dirt stains. He must have been hiding it from someone. Maybe the people who launched the missile?”
“I think we shouldn’t jump to any conclusions yet.” He pulled on his pants, and instantly felt more like himself. “Let me get a fire going first, then we’ll look through it.”
He squatted next to the old Jotul stove and got to work with kindling and an old lighter sitting on the cast iron top. It took some coaxing because so much cold air filled the stovepipe, but eventually the fire caught.
As he worked, Ani watched the process with fascination. “Did you grow up in Alaska?” she asked him. “Or did you learn all that in Boy Scouts?”
“Neither. I grew up on a farm in Minnesota. We didn’t have much money and some winters we ran out of heating fuel and had to rely on wood fires.”
He closed and latched the stove door and stood up to stretch. The cabin was so small his fingertips brushed the ceiling. His body felt close to normal by now, but his thoughts were still a little fuzzy.
Why had he told her about their days of having no heating fuel? That was part of a mortifying past neither he nor Lachlan liked to talk about. They’d both come so far since then. They’d joined forces to buy their parents a nice condo in St. Paul a few years ago. No more hauling wood for the McGowans.
Ani set the pouch on the card table by the window and pulled up two folding chairs for them. He felt warmth in his cheeks; embarrassment that he’d let something so personal slip out. “Come on, let’s take a look at what Victor was so worried about that he buried it under a kale plant.”
He sat down, wincing at the feel of the cold metal through his fleece pants.
She stayed standing, her head cocked, gazing at him with a quizzical expression that made him even more embarrassed. “I know what it feels like to be on the outside, you know.”
“You do?” Astonished, he shook his head. “How could that be, a beautiful woman like you?”
“Thanks, but you’ve seen me walk. I have a bad limp, and anything that sets you apart like that in school can make you a misfit. I was teased quite a bit, especially when I still had my leg brace. If it wasn’t for Molly and Lila and Charlie, I would have spent my high school years reading under the covers of my bed. Of course my mother wouldn’t have allowed that. She’s a ‘no time for self-pity’ kind of mom.”
He was still stuck on her being teased in school. The very idea filled him with hot rage. “Who?” His voice dropped an entire register, to a range between furious and lethal. “Where? How dare they?”
She glanced at him in astonishment. “It was years ago. I’m a grown woman now. You don’t have to avenge me. Even if you did, it wouldn’t be them…are you okay?”
With an effort, he shook himself back to real life, away from the Avengers fantasy that had flashed through his mind. His reaction to Ani…Jesus. He really needed to get a grip on it. He wasn’t her personal protection detail. He’d only met her yesterday.
But he couldn’t let it go, not just yet.
“What do you mean it wouldn’t be them?”
Her face flamed. “That’s a story for another day. Shall I open up this pouch?”
Wrestling with his overactive protective urges, he gave her a go-ahead nod, and watched her slim fingers slide open the zipper.
The pouch was stuffed with pieces of notepaper filled with Victor’s writing, along with a few sealed plastic bags that appeared to be plant samples. She turned over one sample, front and back, and showed it to Gil. It was labeled, but the notations made no sense to him. Maybe it was some kind of code.
Ani spilled all the notes onto the table and they poked through them.
“It looks like more of the same kind of thing he put in my pocket,” Ani murmured. “Maybe he was writing an epic dream poem.”
“In the deep of night, they whisper to me. Who’s there? Leave me, spirits. Let me be. Let me root in the ground and wave in the sun. I’ll drown myself in their blood,” he read aloud. “This doesn’t sound like the Victor I know.”
“When was the last time you saw him? Did he sound like that then?” Ani asked.
“I saw him a few weeks before he left, and no, he seemed normal then.” He thought about it some more. “Preoccupied, maybe. Tired. As if he wasn’t getting enough sleep. One other strange thing. Kathy at the general store told me he bought her entire stock of lemons.”
“Lemons? Why lemons?”
“Apparently, Kathy asked if he was doing a cleanse, and he kind of nodded, but didn’t answer.”
“Maybe the mystery drug gave him a craving for citrus.”
He looked down at the scraps of paper again. They didn’t all match. Some were blue-lined notepaper, some had no lines, some were from a yellow pad. The handwriting was all the same, but color of the ink varied. Some of them were written in ballpoint pen, some in fine-tip marker.
“These weren’t all written at the same time or in the same place,” he said slowly. “So maybe they weren’t all his words.”
“How do you mean?”
“Victor’s an ethnobotanist. He studies indigenous knowledge about local plants and their medicinal and spiritual uses, right?”
“I didn’t know that, but go on.” Her dark eyes on him nearly made him lose his train of thought.
“So maybe he was documenting the effects of these plants--” he waved at the samples—“on people’s cognition. These could be the notes from that research.”
Her eyes lit up. “So it wasn’t a drug, it was these plants. Maybe he tried it himself to see what it did to him.”
He was nodding along. “Except he couldn’t tolerate it the way the locals could, and it made him sick.”
“Which was why he was such a mess when I ran into him at the airport.” Ani raised her hand for a high-five. He slapped his palm against hers and they grinned at each other. A chime seemed to sound deep in his being, as a perfect connection clicked into place.
If Victor hadn’t disappeared and someone hadn’t blown up the Smoky Lake Institute, this whole crazy episode would have been worth seeing that light in Ani’s eyes. Had he ever thought she looked sad? Not anymore.
Then her smiled disappeared as a frown pulled together her dark eyebrows. “That doesn’t explain why people are after him, does it? What could be so important about a plant?”
“Tell that to hemp,” he said dryly. “Or the coca plant.”
“Okay, good point. Maybe we don’t have to abandon our hallucinogenic drug theory after all.” She yawned, then looked around the tiny cabin. “All this brainstorming is making me hungry. Any chance Bob’s canned goods are still…good?”
That damn Igloo…he’d been so close. But the flow of water from a creek feeding into the lake had washed it out of reach. He’d used the creek as an exit point, and mentally wished whatever bear found that cooler good luck with opening it.
“Dinner’s on me,” he said as he climbed to his feet, feeling comforting waves of warmth radiating from the stove. “It’s the least I could do after losing that damn cooler. Get ready for MacGyver in action.”