Chapter 16
16
Naomi was notorious for never leaving the Chilkoot compound, so the only time Gunnar had seen her before was once when he’d delivered a new carburetor for their Nissan Frontier. She looked older than he remembered, with threads of silver in her deep-red hair. Her resemblance to Ruth lay in her hair and her cheekbones, high and striking, but their eyes were completely different, Naomi’s green as a blade of grass, Ruth’s gray as morning mist.
They sat at a table facing her, surrounded by other visitors and inmates at other tables, with guards keeping a careful eye on everything. If anyone was trying to deliver contraband, they’d have to pick their moment.
The guard warned them that no physical contact was allowed, but that didn’t bother Ruth or Naomi, since neither showed any inclination to hug. How had such a compassionate human being as Ruth come from such a cold woman? Gunnar didn’t understand it, but he was glad Ruth had turned out the way she had. The world did not need another mini-Naomi like Soraya.
“How are things for you here, Naomi?” Ruth asked before anything else.
“I’m working with it.” Naomi held her head high, like a proud empress surrounded by her minions. “I won’t be here for much longer.”
That was another odd thing, Gunnar thought. Clearly Ruth was used to calling her mother “Naomi” instead of “Mom” or “Mama” or any other variation.
“What are your plans when you get out? Will you come back to Firelight Ridge?” Ruth asked carefully. Gunnar couldn’t tell what answer she was hoping for.
“No.” Her jaw tightened. “Luke and I are divorcing.”
Ruth released a soft gasp. “Divorce?” She said the word as if she’d barely heard of it.
“Oh please. We never had a traditional marriage anyway. We had a plan, and that plan didn’t work out, and now it’s time to try something else.”
Cold. So cold that Gunnar actually shivered, drawing a curious glance from Naomi. “What are you doing here, Gunnar Amundsen?”
“I—”
But Ruth interrupted before he could explain. “Did you know that Luke is back home? They let him out. I heard he’s trying to get others out too.”
Naomi’s expression turned blank, and now Gunnar saw that behind the coldness was fury. “He’s perfectly happy to leave me where I am.”
“That doesn’t seem fair, does it?”
Gunnar realized that Ruth was trying to drive a wedge between Luke and Naomi. Good strategy.
Except it didn’t really work—Naomi narrowed her eyes at her.
“Why are you here, Ruth? Who’s watching the little ones?”
Ruth didn’t answer that question. “I was wondering if you’d even ask about them.”
“Don’t try to guilt me,” Naomi said sharply. “I was defending those kids from the authoritarian jackboots. Only in a corrupt society would I be put in prison for doing that.” Color rose in her cheeks, and now all that suppressed fury was right out in the open.
Ruth flinched back in her chair.
A guard came a step closer. “Everything all right over here?” she asked gruffly.
“Don’t know yet,” Naomi said imperiously. “Check back in a few.”
Interesting how with just a few words she established the dominant position over the woman with the firearm. That was Naomi’s superpower, he realized. She was always the one on top. Always, in any situation.
“I have a question, Naomi. Did you know my father?”
“Of course I knew Anthony,” she snapped.
His heart rate sped up. The fact that she’d known his father well enough to call him Anthony in such a casual way must mean something. “Right. We’re actually here because I’m looking into some information about my father.”
She froze, her eyes narrowing. “What kind of information?”
“Well…” How to ask if there was some secret connection between the Chilkoots and his father? “How well did you know him?”
“Not well. He was a good mechanic. He came out to the property a few times to fix some equipment for us. He was willing to trade and he kept his rates reasonable. He didn’t ask questions. Luke and the others thought highly of him. That’s all I know. We were sad when he disappeared. I can’t be more help than that, sorry.”
The perfect cover, Gunnar thought. Very few people, if any, were invited out to the compound. But his father had been there a few times. Taking notes? Tracking something in that database of his?
“When was the last time he came to your place?” he asked.
“Oh lord, that was so long ago. I have no idea.” But then her expression shifted as she remembered something. “Actually, I think it was right before he left town. I remember hearing the news and being surprised because we had just seen him.”
Gunnar’s pulse picked up a notch. What if something had happened during that visit that prompted him to leave town? “What did he come out for? A repair job?”
“Yes, of course. What was it?” She tapped her fingers against her jaw. “The forklift broke down. Yes, that was it. Right in the middle of unloading some…supplies.” She glanced obliquely at the guard.
So…not supplies. Weapons? Explosives?
He couldn’t ask that, so he tried something else. “Did he get it running again?”
“He must have. We certainly used it plenty of times after that.”
“Did anything else happen when he was there?”
Naomi shrugged. “It was very cold, twenty below zero or so. He came inside to warm up and I gave him a glass of water. He asked to use the bathroom, so I told him where it was. He must have run into someone on the way there because I heard voices. It was probably someone surprised to see a stranger in the longhouse. We didn’t usually allow that. Then he came back into the kitchen and said ‘thank you for the water. Better get home before the snow starts up again.’ And he left. Quickly. I remember being surprised at how quickly.”
“Do you have any idea who he was talking to?”
“It was probably Luke, because he was the next person to come into the kitchen. But he was in one of his grim moods, and he didn’t say anything about Anthony.” She looked from Gunnar to Ruth, and then back again. “Is that why you two are here, to hear about a boring conversation from over ten years ago?”
Gunnar looked down at the table, at his fisted hands, and forced them to relax. What else could he ask? Was my father a CIA agent? If so, why would a CIA agent spy on you and your family?
Ruth nudged him, but he shook his head, at a loss for what to ask next.
“Are you trying to figure out what happened to Anthony?” Naomi asked. “Is that what this is about? Luke told me one thing about that.”
Gunnar looked up eagerly. Her green eyes were hard and sharp on his. “Don’t get your hopes up. All he said was, ‘we won’t see him around here again.’ It sounded like a threat. I got the impression he knew more than he was saying.” One corner of her mouth drew up in a mocking smile and she turned to Ruth. “You could always ask him. It could be worth a trip to the potato cellar.”
Potato cellar? Gunnar had no idea what that meant.
Ruth cleared her throat. “I left the compound. I don’t live there anymore.”
Finally, Naomi seemed genuinely surprised. “They let you leave?”
“Seems like they have. No one’s come after me.”
“Well, you watch your back. I know Luke and he likes to pick his moment. Or maybe…” She narrowed her eyes, looking troubled.
“What are you thinking?”
“I’m thinking…things are changing there. The idea that Luke would leave me in here to rot…after all we went through establishing our perfect utopia…do you think it was easy, creating that community? I was there every step of the way, ever since he came to me with the deed for a faraway bit of land locked up in ice half the year.”
Ruth straightened up, as if something had snagged her attention. “So Luke bought the land on his own? How did he find it?”
Naomi gave an almost invisible flinch, and Gunnar realized that Ruth’s question had hit a sensitive spot. “I don’t know. He bought it from some old guy who didn’t want to pay the land taxes anymore.”
She was lying. Gunnar could tell. But why? Property transactions were public record. All they had to do was look it up. Why would she bother lying about it?
Ruth pressed on. “Where did you move to Alaska from? Was it another state, or another city, or maybe another country?”
“Where are all these questions coming from? What does any of that matter? My advice to you, since you’re out of the compound, is to stay out of their business.”
“Why? What’s going on there?” When Naomi didn’t answer, Ruth slumped back in disappointment. “You don’t know anything, do you?”
That hit a nerve. “I know that Luke blames me for the FBI raid. I know he’s shutting me out. Me, a direct descendant of the legendary Boadicea. Me, the goddess of the Chilkoot family. He’s nothing without me. That means…”
“What?” Ruth urged. “What does that mean?”
“It means he’s working with someone else,” Naomi snapped. “He doesn’t have the brains to pull off anything on his own. And don’t bother to ask if I know who it is, because I don’t. Are we done now?” Naomi glanced around for the guard and gave her a hand signal. They both watched as she wrestled her temper back under control, and produced a mocking smile. “Unless you want to hear about that time in two thousand and four when Anthony helped me put snow tires on?”
Gunnar shook his head as they all rose to their feet. “Thanks for taking the time, Naomi. I really appreciate it.” He gave her his best puppy dog smile, the one that worked on most women he’d encountered.
It worked on her too. Her expression softened. “I assume you’ve already gone out to Thunder Pass, right?”
“Thunder Pass?” Gunnar and Ruth shared a confused glance. “Why would we go there?”
“I thought you were looking for information about your father.”
“I am,” he said impatiently. “What does Thunder Pass have to do with him?”
“His cabin, obviously.” Naomi blinked her green eyes at him. “You didn’t know he had a cabin out there? I thought you two were pretty close.”
“There aren’t any cabins in Thunder Pass.” His brain felt like it was moving too slowly and asking the wrong questions, but he couldn’t manage to spur it into action.
“You’re right. There aren’t cabins, there’s only one, and it belonged to your father. It’s an old hunter’s cabin, probably falling apart at the seams by now.”
“A hunter’s cabin,” he said blankly. “Is it good hunting out there?”
“Yes. Our hunters spent quite a bit of time in Thunder Pass. When the storms came through, they’d take shelter in that cabin. Your father offered it up.”
Ruth’s hand was wrapped around his arm, he realized, as if she was trying to keep him from falling apart. His father had owned a secret cabin? Seventeen years, and he’d never mentioned a cabin?
“Don’t look so shocked,” Naomi said. “You came to the Chilkoot goddess for information, after all. Maybe you should be careful what you wish for.”
“Does she really think of herself as a goddess?” Gunnar muttered to Ruth as they settled back into his truck.
“She probably does. She was like the goddess of the compound, and Luke was the god. People have asked me if we were brought up religious, based on our names being sort of biblical. But we weren’t. We were taught to put the family and the community first, and because Luke and Naomi were at the top, they were the ones to worship and to follow.”
“Wow.” Gunnar shook his head, then his whole body, as if trying to free himself from the effects of that visit. “That’s pretty…fucked up, sorry.”
“Don’t apologize. I know it is. I mean, I know it now. And part of me knew it then. I think that’s why they never let me into the inner circle. They knew I wasn’t a true believer.”
She noticed that his hand was gripped into a fist, and touched it lightly. “Are you okay? I guess that was quite a bombshell right at the end.”
“It was.” He drew in a long breath. “Sorry, I just need a moment.”
She gave it to him, gave him all the time he needed to collect himself. Strange that he was more affected by that encounter than she was. Seeing Naomi in a prison jumpsuit, in a correctional facility watched over by guards, was surreal. It was literally the first time she’d seen her mother in a situation that she didn’t completely control. And even there, by the sheer force of her presence and personality, she was able to exert some control over the guards. It was impressive, really.
And yet, she’d held her own. She’d asked questions, and she’d pinpointed Naomi’s soft spot—the fact that Luke was shutting her out. She’d gleaned a few interesting nuggets of information, like the suspicion that Luke was working with someone, and sketchiness around the purchase of the Chilkoot property.
Despite the training she’d grown up with, she knew now that Naomi wasn’t all-powerful. Neither was Luke. Over the past few months, she’d stood up to both of them.
The world truly had turned upside down.