10. Scent On The Wind
Scent On The Wind
Kai
I see the laundry first.
White sheets move in the wind behind the wire fence, snapping hard enough to be visible between the trees from where Angus, Jax and I lie concealed above the compound.
I raise the binoculars. Seven women are outside.
Two carry baskets between an accommodation building and a smaller structure venting steam into the freezing air. Another pair works along several heavy-duty clotheslines while a guard stands nearby in winter gear, rifle slung across his body.
Laundry day. Except nobody here volunteered for the fucking job.
One woman struggles with a basket loaded with work clothes. Another carries folded towels toward the accommodation block. Through an open doorway, I catch a glimpse of industrial washers before it closes again.
“They've got them working,” Angus murmurs beside me.
“Looks like it.”
Jax studies the compound through his own binoculars. “Cheap labor, nobody can quit.”
Probably more than laundry. Cooking. Cleaning. Bedding. Work clothes. Whatever else the men running this place decide needs doing.
The women do it because they're told.
I move the binoculars slowly across the compound.
Fence. Gate. Two armed guards visible outside. Cameras covering the main approaches. Vehicles parked beside a larger building. Snow cleared from the paths between structures, but piled deep beyond the perimeter.
Then another woman steps out carrying a basket.
My pulse kicks.
Dark braids.
I adjust the focus.
It’s Honor.
Alive.
She's thinner than the photographs Rose circulated, and she's wearing clothes that don't fit properly beneath a heavy coat. But she's upright, walking under her own power.
Twelve days missing, and I'm looking at her.
“I've got Honor.”
Angus shifts closer. “Where?”
“Coming out of the laundry building.”
Jax finds her a second later. “Got her.”
Honor carries the basket toward the lines, then notices an older woman struggling with another load. She changes direction without hesitation, takes one side and helps her carry it.
A guard says something. Honor looks at him.
Even from this distance, I can see the straightening of her spine.
She doesn't challenge him or give him an excuse to hurt her. She simply gets the other woman moving again.
Then she starts directing the work.
Small gestures. A hand toward the accommodation block. A quiet word to another woman. She shifts one of the younger captives closer to the building and takes the exposed position beside the fence herself.
I lower the binoculars briefly.
I'd expected to find a frightened woman surviving captivity. Instead, Honor is organizing the women around her and protecting them where she can.
She's also watching the guards.
Learning the compound.
I know what that looks like.
She's gathering information.
I raise the binoculars again.
Honor turns slightly, her face coming into profile between two sheets whipping in the wind.
Five years I've searched places like this hoping I'd see another familiar face.
Five years of arriving too late, finding nothing or walking away with another family still waiting.
This time, the woman we're hunting is standing behind the fence.
Alive.
And she hasn't stopped fighting.
The sight hits somewhere I don't have a name for.
Honor St. John isn't waiting for us to give her a way out.
She's already looking for one.
We just need to reach her.
Lockhart Mining Compound Perimeter, Northern Manitoba, Canada. 1030 hours.
Once the women are back inside, we start working the perimeter properly.
Seeing Honor alive changes what we're doing out here, but it doesn't change how careful we have to be.
Angus takes the western side with binoculars. Jax works east, watching the gate and vehicle movements. I stay closer to the tree line with Maskwa, using the wind and terrain to work out how close we can safely get without giving Lockhart any reason to start looking harder.
The dogs stay back from the fence. They've already done their job by bringing us here.
Maskwa notices things.
He stops beside a narrow game trail and stares toward a spruce trunk ahead.
I follow his attention. Trail camera. Small, dark casing strapped high enough to catch anyone approaching from the south.
“Nice catch.”
His ears twitch. I mark it on the map and move east.
Twenty minutes later, we find another. Then a third.
They're positioned to watch the approaches between the old mine routes and the compound.
Jax joins me behind a fallen spruce and studies the positions.
“They've covered the obvious ways in.”
“Most of them.”
The cameras overlap across the open approaches, but the terrain creates a narrow pocket behind a stand of dense spruce where one camera loses sight before the next picks up.
Not much. Maybe thirty meters.
Enough.
I mark it.
“There's our gap.”
Jax studies it. “Provided they haven't got another camera we haven't found.”
“Exactly.”
So we keep looking.
By midday, we know more about the compound than Lockhart would want strangers knowing.
The main gate changes guards every four hours. A security pickup makes a perimeter circuit roughly every forty minutes. The generator building sits near the northern service road, with fuel tanks behind it and a maintenance door facing away from the main yard.
Then the generator cuts.
Everything beyond the fence goes quiet.
Only for a few seconds.
The engine auto-start catches again, and the compound returns to life.
Angus looks across at me from our next observation point.
“Fault?”
“Maybe.”
Except it happens again twenty-three minutes later.
Then once more after lunch.
Same brief interruption. Long enough for lights and cameras to drop before the backup systems recover.
Someone inside is testing it.
Honor. I bet.
I can't prove it, but I've already watched her organize seven captive women beneath armed guards without drawing attention.
She'll be learning the place the same way we are. Guard movements. Doors. Vehicles. Generator. Weak points.
I look toward the accommodation building where she disappeared earlier.
She doesn't know I'm here. I don't know what she's planning.
Yet we're both studying the same compound from opposite sides of the fence, looking for the same thing.
A way out.
I check the camera gap again, then the generator building.
The pieces are starting to fit.
We just haven't spoken yet.
Lockhart Mining Compound Perimeter, Northern Manitoba, Canada. 1330 hours.
The generator cuts again at thirteen twenty-seven.
This time, I'm watching Honor.
She's crossing the yard with an empty laundry basket when the compound drops into silence. The exterior lights die, and one of the cameras above the accommodation block goes dark.
Honor doesn't react.
That's what confirms it for me.
Everyone else does.
A guard turns toward the generator building. Another swears and reaches for his radio. One of the women pauses beside the laundry door.
Honor keeps walking.
Three seconds later, the generator catches.
She puts the basket down and disappears inside.
I lower the binoculars.
“She knows exactly when it's happening.”
Jax shifts beside me. “You reckon she's causing it?”
“Don't know yet.”
But she's using it.
The next time it happens, Honor crosses an exposed section of the yard while the camera covering it is dead. Nothing hurried or obvious. She simply moves somewhere she shouldn't be able to move without being recorded, then returns before the system comes back.
Smart woman.
We need to tell her she's not working alone anymore. The problem is doing it without telling Lockhart too.
Angus is farther west watching the road. Jax stays beside me while I study the women moving between the buildings.
Honor comes outside again. I wait until the nearest guard turns away.
Then I make a birdcall. Soft. Two notes, then a third.
Jax looks at me. “What the hell was that?”
“A hunting call my grandfather taught me.”
“Useful?”
“We're about to find out.”
The call comes from Cree hunting country, something I grew up hearing and using with family long before I wore an RCMP uniform. Common enough in the bush that a guard might dismiss it as wildlife.
But Honor isn't a guard.
She's Indigenous, raised here, and if she recognizes what I'm giving her, she'll know somebody outside that fence is trying to reach her.
I wait.
Honor stops beside the clothesline.
Her head lifts, but she doesn't look toward us or make the mistake of searching the tree line. She takes a sheet from another woman and clips it to the line.
Then she answers. Same call. Same pattern.
Quiet enough that I almost miss it beneath the wind.
Yes.
Jax turns his head slowly toward me. “Was that her?”
“Yeah.”
Honor keeps working. I raise the binoculars.
She takes another sheet, shakes snow from one corner and hangs it beside the first. Her movements haven't changed, but now she knows.
I give the call again, changing the final note. A question this time.
Her answer comes several seconds later.
Short. Certain.
I don't need words to understand it.
She knows someone is here. She knows we're watching, and instead of panicking or giving us away, she's answering carefully enough that the men guarding her don't notice a bloody thing.
I watch her through the binoculars as she lifts another basket.
Twelve days behind that fence, surrounded by men who believe they decide where she goes, what she does and whether she ever leaves.
Yet somehow Honor St. John is still fighting them.
I haven't spoken to her or stood within fifty meters of her, but when she answers my call one last time before disappearing into the building, I know exactly what she's telling me.
I'm ready.
So am I.
Lockhart Mining Compound Perimeter, Northern Manitoba, Canada. 1400 hours.
We back away from the compound slowly.
No straight lines through the trees. No broken branches left pointing toward our observation position. Jax circles east to check the trail cameras one last time while Angus collects the gear we'd cached farther back.
I take Maskwa with me.
Honor's answer follows me through the forest.
Three notes. Quiet and certain.
She heard me.
More importantly, she understood.
I've signaled people in the field before, worked searches where one sound or hand movement carried information nobody else could be allowed to understand.
This wasn't like that.
I knew she was alive before I made the call. I'd watched her walking, working and helping the other women.
But hearing her answer affected me in a way I wasn't prepared for.
Five years ago, my sister disappeared and left an empty space nothing has managed to fill. Since then, I've built my life around searching. Dogs. Breeding. Training. Racing. Missing-person cases. Long stretches alone in country where silence suits me better than company.
I've never minded it.
Today, for some strange reason, I find myself wondering what Honor St. John's voice sounds like when she isn't answering me through a fence.
That's ridiculous. I don't know her.
I know she's stubborn enough to stare down armed guards without giving them a reason to punish her, smart enough to study their systems and brave enough to protect women trapped beside her when keeping her head down would probably be safer.
I know she recognized a call my grandfather taught me when I was a boy.
Apparently, that's enough to unsettle me.
Maskwa trots ahead, then stops and looks back when he realizes I'm no longer following.
“What?”
He stares at me.
“Don't start.”
His tail moves once.
Bloody dog.
I catch up and scratch behind his ears before we continue toward the sled.
“We're getting her out.”
Maskwa pushes his head briefly against my hand.
“That woman behind the fence. Honor.”
Saying her name out here feels different now.
I look back through the trees, although the compound disappeared from view several minutes ago.
My job is to bring her home.
To Rose. To her community. To the people who've spent twelve days wondering whether they'll ever see her again.
Anything beyond that belongs somewhere far ahead of us.
But instinct has kept me alive in this country more times than I can count, and right now mine is telling me Honor St. John matters in a way I don't understand yet.
Maybe I'll understand once she's standing on this side of the fence. Maybe she'll take one look at me and wonder why the hell Rose let a scruffy musher anywhere near her rescue.
That thought almost makes me smile.
I crouch beside Maskwa while Angus and Jax approach through the trees.
“We're bringing her home, boy.”
Maskwa leans into me.
I rub the thick fur around his neck.
“And after that?”
His dark eyes stay on mine.
“Yeah. Exactly. None of my business.”
Not yet, anyway.