Chapter 22
22
Of course, Gunnar didn’t have any condoms with him. Why would he have brought such a thing on a trip to see Ruth’s mother in prison? It had never occurred to him that things would go this direction. Maybe it was better if they just left things right where they were…with Ruth all pink and satisfied and happy, but still a virgin, and him gritting his teeth and picturing unsexy things like carburetors to make his erection go down.
Except that carburetors were pretty damn sexy, and it wasn’t working, and Ruth’s soft hand was now touching his cock and…fuck.
His thoughts scattered as she lifted herself up on one elbow and explored him by hand and by eye. The sensation was excruciatingly arousing; he felt he might burst at any moment. “So that’s the famous ‘manhood,’” she said softly.
“Manhood? I usually just call it my dick. Or my cock. Or my penis.”
“I’ve seen farm animals get aroused, but never a man.” She stroked her fingers down his length.
He clenched his jaw tight. “Not even Daniel?”
“Not even Daniel. I think he was afraid that Luke would show up with a shotgun if he so much as unzipped his pants.”
The mention of Luke made his erection flag a bit, but it came roaring back when Ruth experimentally touched it with her tongue. “It’s so warm,” she said in surprise, and licked him again.
“Girl, you are killing me.”
“In a good way?” Her smile held more wickedness than innocence, but the combination was lethal.
“Good, yes, but also bad because I don’t have any condoms with me. Birth control,” he added. “And protection.”
“I know about condoms. They came up in my research.”
She put her lips around his tip and he groaned loudly. “I think I need to know more about your research.”
“It’s a secret,” she murmured. “But I feel so good right now I don’t mind telling you, if you really want to know.” Her warm breath against his shaft added to the sensations he was experiencing.
“Oh I really, absolutely want to know.”
“‘Okay. I have a secret collection of books that I found at the summer flea market.” She swirled her tongue around his tip.
He fisted the sheets next to him, wild with lust—but also curiosity. What books had Ruth been reading all this time?
In between strokes of her tongue, she explained. “I keep them in a hiding place in the chicken coop, because I’m the one who takes care of the chickens the most. It’s private there and no one’s ever found them. They’re all about lords and ladies in England, and in some of them they have sex. A lot of sex, and it’s very, very fascinating and…arousing.”
Okay, that was it. The word “arousing” in Ruth’s gentle, husky voice, her red hair cascading over her naked shoulders and brushing against his skin, her tongue on his “manhood,” then her mouth, sucking…He turned his body just in time to explode into his hand instead of all over her face.
When he came back to himself, he found Ruth kneeling next to him, stroking his sweaty chest. “Thank you,” she said simply.
“You’re welcome. Wait, what are you thanking me for?”
“Now I know how it all works better. The only missing piece is the part where you go inside me. I won’t be nervous about it now.”
She sounded like that was definitely something that was going to happen. “We don’t have to go any further, you know,” he told her. “That was awesome, just that. What we just did.”
“Of course we don’t have to. But I want to.” Her eyes widened. “Don’t you? It’s okay if you don’t. I understand if it seems too…complicated.”
“Oh, I do, woman. I definitely do.” With his free hand, he tugged her head toward him so they could kiss. Her lips were lush under his, her hair fragrant with hotel shampoo, and he engraved this moment in his memory forever. “Now I have to take care of this, and then fill you in on my phone call.”
After he’d cleaned his hand and hopped in the shower for a brief rinse-off, he came back to the room and told her what he’d learned from Wild North Adventures. With a sheet wrapped around her bare shoulders, her gray eyes still a little hazy, Ruth listened closely.
“They had a Dan Bradford working for them, but he just disappeared one day and they never heard from him again. I asked what his last guiding trip was, and it was the one when I met him, when he came to Firelight Ridge. That can’t be a coincidence.”
“I suppose not, but what do you think happened to him? Did they say anything else?”
“She said they actually sent someone to his apartment to check on him, but he’d moved out. No notice, no forwarding address, nothing like that. They didn’t know where to send his last paycheck. They said everyone else got paid by direct deposit, but he always wanted a paper check.”
“Direct deposit?”
“That’s when they put the money directly into your bank account.”
“Oh.” She shrugged. “I know nothing about banks, or paychecks, for that matter. The Chilkoots have always avoided the banking system.”
“I think Dan Bradford did the same thing. I’m not sure what his reasons were, though.”
“Luke always called banks ‘the evil money leeches,’ if that helps.”
He laughed as he searched his duffel bag for a clean pair of briefs. “He sure has opinions, doesn’t he?”
“A million of them.” She wrapped her arms around her knees. “I used to tune him out, but now I wish I’d paid more attention. Maybe he did say something that would explain his connection to your father.”
Gunnar snorted. “My father had seventeen years to explain that, if he cared to.”
“It sounded like he couldn’t. Maybe he didn’t want to put you in danger by giving you that knowledge. That’s another thing Luke used to say. ‘Knowledge is dangerous.’ I never knew what he meant by that, because we had to know all kinds of things to live the way we did.”
“I think he probably wanted to scare you into not trying to learn about the rest of the world.”
“That’s true. They created their own world, him and Naomi. And they wanted all their children, whether by blood or not, to believe in that world.” Ruth turned her head to gaze out the window at the cityscape of Anchorage. “But can you really just pretend the real world doesn’t exist?”
“Oh, he knew about the real world.” Gunnar pulled on his jeans and fastened them. Hunger was gnawing at his belly, and he remembered a small sandwich shop right around the corner. “How else do you think he recruited supporters, shipped in a massive amount of munitions, and found all those kids?”
“You’re right.” Ruth closed her eyes, shaking her head. “All that time, he was doing stuff in the real world while refusing to let us know a single thing about it. Wait.” Her eyes snapped open. “I did just remember something. I had a stomachache one night and I went downstairs, which you’re not supposed to do at night. I heard Luke’s voice. He was in the kitchen talking to a man I’d never seen before. I stopped and listened, hoping they’d leave so I could get some vinegar. But I couldn’t understand anything they said.”
He paused in the midst of pulling on his hoodie. “Were they speaking a different language?”
“They must have been, but at that point I didn’t know other languages existed. I just figured they were talking about things I didn’t understand, grown-up things. I never thought about it again until now.”
That could be significant, or it could mean nothing. Gunnar finished getting dressed, turning it over in his head. “How long did they talk?”
“A long time. I gave up and went back to bed.”
“Have you ever heard that language again? Could you identify it?”
“It’s hard to say. I think I might have heard it a few other times, when Luke would talk to an ornery cow or a horse he was trying to break.”
“Like what would he say? Can you recreate it?”
She closed her eyes again, summoning the memory. “Sort of like…” And she made a sound both guttural and lilting, and not anything he recognized.
If only he had a smartphone with a translation app.
He checked his phone, and realized it was time for them to head out for their meeting with Renata McBurney, with barely enough time to grab some food first.
“Come on, let’s go get some breakfast, or lunch, or whatever it is.” He reached a hand to her and when she grabbed it, hauled her out of bed. She was just as curvy and luscious as when she’d shocked him by stepping out of the shower stark naked; he hadn’t imagined it. He grinned at her. “Better get dressed quick or we won’t even make it to her office.”
She skipped into the bathroom, where she’d left her clothes, twitching her rear end at him, and he could hardly believe this was the same Ruth who’d barely met his eyes when she was younger.
Leaving that compound was the best thing she’d ever done, in his opinion.
On their way to Renata McBurney’s downtown office, where she now worked as a public interest lawyer, they picked up bagels and coffee at a drive-through kiosk. Ruth’s first bagel with cream cheese drew an ecstatic reaction from her.
“I don’t understand,” she kept saying. “It’s so simple, but it’s so good. It’s not just bread. It’s better than that. How? How do they make them so good?”
“You know something? We need to get a smartphone. I can’t keep up with all your questions.”
“What’s a smartphone?”
He was still chuckling at that when they walked into Renata McBurney’s office. She was a Native Alaskan woman in her late fifties, with stunning dark eyes and a gracefully rounded face. She ushered them into the seating area of her office, where they sat side by side on a low couch that made Gunnar feel like an oversized ogre. A delicate ivory carving of dancing cranes sat on her desk.
“Walrus tusk,” she explained, seeing the direction of his gaze. “Inupiat.”
“Beautiful.”
“Thanks, I’ll tell my grandfather.” She offered them both a welcoming smile. “How can I help you?”
Ruth pulled out the Post-It note. “We were sent to you by Ben Whistler. It’s about a piece of land near Firelight Ridge. The Chilkoot family lives there. He said you might have been investigating…”
She trailed off because Renata was already shaking her head, her friendly smile gone. “I’m sorry, but I can’t help you with that one. I had just started to dig into that plat formation when I was pulled off the corruption investigation. It was always a dicey project, since it implicated a lot of Alaska power brokers, as you can imagine. No one was immune. I wasn’t surprised when they decided it wasn’t worth the heat.”
Ruth’s face fell as she listened. “Did you find out anything at all before you stopped?”
“Enough to know that huge sums of money were involved.”
“How huge?” Gunnar asked.
“Millions. Many millions. Much of it came from offshore banking accounts that were nearly untraceable. It would have taken me weeks to track down the source, and I never managed it.”
Gunnar exchanged a glance with Ruth. So much for “evil money leeches.” Luke was nothing if not a hypocrite.
But maybe he hadn’t made the purchase himself. “Did you find out anything about Luke Chilkoot?”
“Who?”
“My father,” Ruth said. “Luke Chilkoot. LLC.”
“Ohh.” Recognition dawned on her face. “Chilkoot LLC bought the property. Not an individual. Chilkoot LLC is a business entity.”
“What business?” Ruth asked, looking bewildered.
Renata stood up and went around her desk to access her computer. “Let me look it up. It’s been a while, so I don’t remember off the top of my head.” After a few keystrokes, she murmured, “that’s weird.”
“What? What’s weird?” Both he and Ruth were on the edge of their seats; he backed up so they wouldn’t topple the couch.
“There’s no record of a Chilkoot LLC. It no longer exists. And according to this, it never did. But that’s impossible. You saw it too, right?”
“Yes, it was in the property purchase record. Ben Whistler looked it up.”
“Hang on a minute.” She sat down and did some more clicking of keys. “Wow. Maybe it was there before, but it’s gone now. According to this, the name Chilkoot doesn’t appear in any property purchase. Do you know the plat number?”
“Yes. He wrote it down for us.” Ruth pulled the Post-It from her pocket and handed it to Renata. “Along with your name,” she explained.
Renata punched in the plat number. “Well, according to this, that property is owned by B.K. Off.”
“Who’s that?” Ruth asked in confusion, while Gunnar sounded out the letters.
“Back off?”
“That’s what I hear.” She closed out her search and set her elbows on her desk. “You might want to follow that advice. You’re dealing with someone who can access state databases and alter them. That’s serious business. Backing off might be your best option.”