Chapter 4 #2
Sully had already eased himself down on a long bench that ran the length of the entrance wall. Jackets hung from pegs, boots neatly tucked under the bench.
A man walked up, dressed in a wool sweater and pants, felt boots. “Sully, sit tight. I’ll get River, and she’ll take a look at that leg.”
“It’s really more blood than hurt, Abe. I’m fine. Just need some duct tape.” He made a wry face. “But this is a gunshot. And I don’t think they mistook me for a deer.”
“We’ll keep watch,” Abe said.
Dawson eased her down next to Sully. “Let’s take a look at that ankle.”
Keely stopped him as he reached for her boot. “I can do it.”
He looked up, then nodded, and lowered himself onto the bench next to her.
“Where am I? Castle Black?”
Dawson frowned.
“The Night’s Watch? Game of Thrones?”
“Welcome to Woodcrest.” Griffin hung his coat on a nearby peg and stomped his boots on the massive woven mat. “But yes, we’re the keepers of the wall.” He winked.
She didn’t want to ask about any more terrors in the woods.
“Our community isn’t large—this is all of us. Seven families, some with kids, some without. The Barrows have a small army.” He pointed to a family playing a board game.
Donald came in, pulling the door closed behind him. One of the two kids petting Caspian ran to him, hugged him. She seemed about five or six, with long braided hair, wearing long johns under a knitted wool dress.
A woman came out of the kitchen and hugged Griffin. Petite and pretty, she had auburn hair and wore it down, along with a pair of leggings, wool slippers, and a knitted cable sweater. Clearly, the attire of choice in Woodcrest.
She came over to Sully. “What happened to your leg?”
“I was shot,” he said, meeting her gaze.
She didn’t flinch, just frowned. “Okay. Let’s take a look and get you patched up.” A glance at Griffin had him reaching for Sully, but he shook his head.
“I need to get back to my place before the storm. Kennedy is there alone.”
She deduced that Kennedy might be his girlfriend, or maybe wife, and something strained on his face with his words.
“What you need is for River to take a look, get you stitched up.” He hauled him up, and Sully limped toward a room near the kitchen.
The woman turned to Keely. “I’m River. Can I take a look at your ankle?”
Keely had worked off her boot, gritting her teeth, and now got a good look. Fat, for sure, but she flexed her toes and even moved her ankle a little.
River crouched in front of her and gently felt around the swollen flesh. “Can I move it?”
Keely nodded, and River eased it to one side, then the other.
“I don’t think it’s broken. But you probably need to stay off it. We’ll get you some snow to ice it.”
She left, and Keely leaned her head back, closed her eyes, listened to the chatter in the room.
It felt like family here, the smells, the laughter. Or as if she had traveled back in time and was now in an episode of Little House on the Prairie, Alaska style.
“Sully, really!”
She opened her eyes to see the man limping out of the room. River stood at the door. “Tape is not the answer here.”
“Too late. Can I borrow a snow machine?”
A man looked up from where he sat with some kids. “Sure. All the snow machines are in the machine garage. Take one of the single seaters.”
Griffin came out behind him. “I should go with you.”
Sully shook his head and headed over to Dawson. From the looks of his ripped pants, he had duct-taped his wound. And his pants. “The blizzard is closing in fast. I need to go.” He glanced at Keely, back at Dawson. “You’ll be okay here until it passes. I’ll let Moose know.”
Wait—wait! Keely summoned her voice. “Sully!” He stopped, maybe startled at her outburst, but—“You’re leaving us here?”
“You’re in safe hands. Wait it out.”
But . . . oh, Goldie was going to completely freak out.
She must have worn panic in her face because Dawson cut his voice down. “I promise. I’ll keep you safe and get you back to civilization.”
And again, those eyes sort of reached in, held her.
He’s a cop. The thought pulsed in her brain, then vanished, replaced with Don’t cry. She managed a nod and a tight smile.
“Maybe another day in Alaska won’t kill me.”
He frowned at that. “Hopefully not.”
She might have appreciated a more confident response.
“You did the right thing, coming here.”
Dawson turned from where he sat with a cup of coffee, leg extended, staring out into the darkness as the fire flickered in the hearth, listening to the wind howl outside the massive lodge.
Truthfully, he’d been trying to sort that out for an hour or more, as darkness descended, wondering, hoping he hadn’t somehow put them in danger, bringing a shooter to their doorstep.
Caspian sat, his back to him, leaning on him just a little, and he didn’t realize he had run his hand into the dog’s fur until Griffin Talon came up and Caspian’s body tensed, just for a second.
“Sully’s idea,” Dawson said. “Trying to outrun the storm.”
The man pulled up a chair, then straddled it, holding a cup of hot cocoa.
Dawson put him in his late twenties, but with a seasoned look in his eyes.
Brown hair, cut short in the back, a bit of scruff on his face, he wore a green canvas shirt, a thermal shirt under it, and black canvas pants. And a ring on his left hand.
“You would have gone through the ice without Fido here, scratching at our door.” Griffin dropped a hand onto Caspian and scratched his back. Caspian didn’t move from his perch at Dawson’s feet.
“He probably smelled the stew, wanted inside,” Dawson said.
One side of Griffin’s mouth lifted. “Maybe. Good dog.”
“He’s a stray. My buddy took him in, but he travels a lot, so I inherited him. A little bit needy, if you ask me. And has a mind of his own. Won’t fetch, but you want someone to take up all the room on the sofa? Caspian is your buddy.”
Griffin considered the dog, frowned. “Interesting. Well, good thing Donny spotted you on the lake, headed for disaster. No one knows about the ice hole unless you see it from this direction.” He leaned back, took a sip of the cocoa. “Wanna talk about that gunshot?”
Dawson glanced at him. “You a cop?”
“Nope. But I’ve seen gunshots before.” He took another sip of cocoa. “And I sort of manage security around here. Just wondering what you brought to our doorstep.”
Right. “That’s fair.” He ran a hand across his face. “I dunno, actually. I was flying up to Copper Mountain with my cousin Moose Mulligan when we spotted the plane. When we put down, we found Cade Maverick dead.”
Griffin drew in a breath, then shook his head. “Oh no. I liked Mack. He dropped off supplies for us sometimes.”
Dawson took a sip of coffee. His knee had stopped aching, although it still felt fat. He left his leg extended. “He was shot in the head.”
Quiet. He looked over and Griffin’s mouth made a grim line. “You don’t say.”
“Yeah.”
“Any idea by who?”
“Nope. My dog took off into the woods and after about an hour or less, I came across Sully and Keely—the woman with us. She was a passenger, but I haven’t gotten much from her except that apparently someone else on the plane was trying to shoot her.”
“And Sully somehow got in the middle?”
“Let’s just say that, for simplicity.”
“You think the shooter is someone from the plane? The manifest might shed some light.”
Griffin thought like a cop.
“We tried to find it, but the wreckage was scattered everywhere.”
“Mack would have filed something from where he took off.”
“My guess too. Sully had Kennedy get ahold of Moose, told him to take off. The investigation will have to wait. But as for bringing the shooter here . . . I don’t know. I hope not. Sorry.”
“Me too.” He took another sip of cocoa. “We can defend ourselves, but I like to avoid trouble.”
“We’ll be out of your hair as soon as the blizzard passes.”
Griffin nodded. “You’re welcome here. I just need to know what might be out there.” He glanced toward the black window panes. Sighed. “The woman looks familiar. Who is she?”
“Keely? Just . . . a passenger.”
Griffin stayed silent. Took a breath, then, “You think she knows something about it?”
“Maybe. I want to talk to her, but your wife took her away to doctor her ankle.”
“Yeah, River has some doctor in her. She and I got married a few months ago. She’s from here. I’m not, but I like it.”
“Where’d you meet?”
“River is a Certified Direct-Entry Midwife. She was apprenticing on Kodiak Island when we got together.”
“And you are—”
“Jack-of-all-trades.” He smiled. “Mostly I work with Don, helping him keep this place running. We just finished stocking the barn with firewood for the winter.”
“It’s a big barn.”
“Holds all our animals—a few milk cows, goats, a handful of beef cows we’re raising. Horses. Cats, sheep for our wool—we even have a llama.” He laughed. “I call her Woolly Bully. She’s got issues.”
“I hate drama. Even in a llama.”
“Look at you, a poet.” Griffin raised his mug. “You’ll fit right in.”
Dawson laughed. “I’ve heard about this place, but I’ve never been here.”
“Yeah, apparently for a while, people thought this might be a hippie commune or something. It was started by a few artists who wanted to live off the land. We’re not a cult or some weird commune.
Just a bunch of people of faith, trying to raise our families in community.
It’s not mandatory, but we do have a service on Sunday.
A couple of the men take turns preaching.
We have a charter, a sort of government, but everyone is here voluntarily, owns their own home, and pays into a kind of HOA to fund the animals and main buildings. ”
“This lodge is huge.”
“We use it for big events, and there are rooms—like a hotel—although they’re assigned to each family in case of emergency.”
“Like a blizzard.”
“It saves resources to hunker down together during a crisis. The original founders built this lodge first, and then the homes. Not everyone is here, but most of the families show up. Like a big family reunion.”