Cry of the Wild

  Crysta stared at the calendar picture of Mount McKinley. Perhaps her mother's heart condition had become a sort of leverage she used to manipulate her children, but Crysta loved her mother too much to take that chance.

  A brief silence hummed over the line. Then Eva said, "Crysta, this catastrophe with Derrick isn't your fault, you know. Your voice sounds so strained that I'm beginning to feel more worried about you than I am about him."

  "I'm fine, Aunt Eva."

  "Are you?"

  Crysta shoved her hair from her eyes, acutely aware of the loving censure in the other woman's voice and the static on the phone line. "I'm positive. Listen, Aunt Eva, the rates on this telephone are astronomical. I really should get off. Will you tell Mom I love her?"

  "I'll tell her—as if she could fail to know." Eva sighed. "Don't be too hard on yourself. Do I have your promise on that?"

  Crysta smiled in spite of herself. "I'll do my best."

  Just as Crysta hung up the phone, Sam and Jangles emerged from the kitchen. Jangles stared at Crysta and said, "Sandwiches are on the way."

  "Great. I'm famished," Crysta called to the Indian woman as she and Sam entered his office.

  She took a seat by his desk, watching while Sam poured a pot of water into the automatic coffeemaker. Then, he grasped the waist of his shirt and tugged the tails free of his jeans, unfastening the snaps as he strode toward her. "Hope you don't mind, but I've got to shed a layer."

  "It is warm in here." Averting her gaze from the ripple of chest muscle revealed by his snug T-shirt, she leaned around to open the right drawer of his desk, pulling Derrick's briefcase out. Glancing down at the wastebasket, she frowned. "The salmon is gone."

  "Jangles must have dumped it."

  "Efficient lady, Jangles."

  "Do I detect some animosity?"

  "Did you notice that look she gave me a second ago? She's against my being here, and I can't understand why."

  "Like I said, it could be superstitious nonsense. Don't read too much into it."

  "She didn't even mention the fish. That seems suspi­cious to me."

  Sam smiled. "Crysta, the only place at this lodge where a salmon is out of the ordinary is in my bed. Why would she mention something so commonplace?"

  Crysta realized he was right and sighed. "I guess maybe I'm looking for things because she isn't very friendly."

  Sam nodded, bracing an arm on the desk to lean over her while she began leafing through the papers in Derrick's briefcase. Crysta had seen most of the documents that af­ternoon when she had come in here snooping, and hope­lessness filled her. "Have you any idea what we're supposed to be looking for, Sam?"

  He sighed and eased around her to claim the captain's chair behind the desk. Shuffling through the papers on his blotter, he located the stack of records he had been study­ing earlier when Crysta had burst in so unexpectedly, brandishing the salmon. "I wish I did. Something out of the ordinary."

  She scanned an invoice. An idea struck her. "What if they're buying inferior material? There's big money in that."

  "Skimming from the budget, you mean?" Sam shook his head. "I thought of that and called a contractor friend of mine in Anchorage. I gave him a quick rundown on the purchase orders. He said it sounded as if the company was ordering from reputable firms, up to code and getting more than enough stuff. When skimming occurs, a contractor generally buys from a disreputable outfit, using lower-grade materials or less than is required by law."

  Crysta groaned and tossed down the invoice. "Then what are we looking for, Sam? This isn't a solution, it's a time waster. Wouldn't it be more expedient to return downriver and search the area around the attack site for signs of Der­rick?"

  "Do you think the searchers haven't done that?"

  Crysta knew they must have. "But he can't have gotten far. Not if he was wounded."

  Sam's expression grew grim. "If your dream is an accu­rate account, his attackers must have removed him from the area."

  "You're a good tracker, aren't you?"

  "Jim, the search coordinator, is a far better tracker than I. If there was a trail out there to follow, he would have spotted it. There is no sign, none at all, that anything but a bear was in the vicinity."

  Suddenly it occurred to Crysta just how much faith in her Sam was exercising by even trying to believe in her story. "There has to be something we can do besides this."

  He glanced up from the documents he was scanning. "Maybe, but the briefcase is the most obvious place to start."

  Crysta longed to contradict him, but, remembering the map she had studied, she didn't.

  Within ten minutes, the coffee had finished perking and Jangles had delivered a plate of delicious steak sandwiches.

  After Crysta ate, she began to feel drowsy. Determined to keep working, she poured them each a second mug of cof­fee and sat back down to study more papers.

  She could see what Sam meant about the quantity of merchandise being ordered by Blanchette. She was no ex­pert, but it seemed to her that the construction company bought plenty of everything, especially conduit. And all from reputable firms.

  Exhaustion blurred her vision. She blinked and sat up straighter. Seconds later, she shifted in her seat and stretched, the battle to stay awake growing more difficult.

  Glancing up from his desk, Sam studied Crysta a mo­ment, biting back a smile. Her head was nodding, and her grip on the sheaf of papers in her lap was growing lax. He returned his gaze to the paper work, wishing she'd go down but knowing she'd resist if he suggested it. Because of the long hours of daylight in Alaska during the summer months, Sam was used to operating on little if any sleep. Crysta wasn't, especially not after the strenuous walk she'd just been on.

  Moments later, a soft snore interrupted Sam's concen­tration. He looked up to see that Crysta had slumped side­ways in her chair. Her head lolled on her shoulder. Sam watched her for a moment, smiling each time he heard the purring noise that feathered past her lips. Not exactly a rafter shaker, but definitely a snore. He decided he liked the sound.

  The clock on the wall ticked rhythmically. Every once in a while, the coffeemaker sputtered. Soothed by those sounds and Crysta's soft snore, Sam settled in to work.

  Sweat streamed down Crysta's sides to the waistband of her jeans. Her chest felt as if a red-hot coal was buried in it. With a groan, she struggled to open her eyes, wondering why the soft leather cushion of her chair felt so hard and uneven.

  She stared into thick gloom. She was no longer in Sam's office but sitting on a fireplace hearth, feeble flames flick­ering in the grate to one side of her. The room around her was dark with shadows and smelled of smoke, dampness and dust. At one end was a broken window, the remaining glass filmed with grime and draped with cobwebs. Strug­gling to breathe, she leaned her head back against the rock face of the fireplace and stared at the layers of smoke hov­ering like cumulus clouds below the exposed rafters of the ceiling.

  Sick, so sick. Her body felt afire. She looked down and saw that she held a knife in her hand. Her arm shook as she directed the blade toward the small black hole in her chest. The bullet. If it didn't come out, she'd die of infection.

  Pain lashed Crysta as she pressed the tip of the knife into her flesh. Swirls of red blinded her. It took all her courage to sink the knife deeper, and then she had to call upon sheer desperation to probe for the lead. Her body began to shake more violently. Sweat streamed down her face.

  Please, God.

  The knife tip grated against something metallic, and the pain, already excruciating, amplified, flashing across her left breast. The room began to swirl, slowly at first, then faster. Blackness encroached on her vision until she was seeing the wound in her chest through a tiny peephole that was narrowing at an alarming speed. The lead at last popped free and bounced away across the floor, bloody-black and misshapen.

  So weak. The knife slipped from her hand and clattered onto the stone hearth. She knew she mustn't lose con­sciousness, not yet. Through t
he tiny sphere of her nar­rowed vision, Crysta stared at the blood spurting down her belly, keeping time with her heartbeat. The bleeding was good; it would clean the wound. She groped for the knife, found it. Summoning all her remaining strength, she ex­tended her arm, holding the blade over the flames until the steel turned a muted red.

  Tightening her grip on the knife handle and clenching her teeth, she withdrew the blade from the heat and slapped the red-hot metal over her wound. Body rigid, she hissed, quivering as the stench of searing flesh turned her stomach.

  "Crysta! Crysta, honey, wake up."

  Crysta swam up toward the light and Sam's voice, fran­tic for air, for a release from the pain. His face burst through the swirls of blackness, muscles taut with concern, his eyes frightened. She swallowed down another wave of nausea.

  "It hurts' it hurts, Sam."

  "What, where?"

  ''My chest—my chest.''

  Sam's arm encircled her shoulders. Crysta leaned against him, not caring when she felt his other hand tearing at the top buttons of her shirt. Cool air wafted across her collar­bone. Warm, callused fingers pressed against the side of her throat. She realized he was checking her pulse.

  In one smooth motion, Sam lifted her out of the chair and laid her on the floor. "Be still, honey. Just be still and trust me, okay? I'm trained in first aid. You'll be fine."

  Frantic to somehow rid herself of the pain, Crysta clutched at her chest. He clasped her wrists, forcing her arms to her sides. Another wave of nausea washed over her, and she tried to sit up, gagging.

  Sam cradled Crysta's shoulders, forcing her to lie back against his arm. Fishing his handkerchief from his back pocket, he wiped her pale face, frightened for her yet un­certain precisely what was wrong.

  "It's all right, Crysta. Relax, relax."

  She pressed a shaking hand over her left breast. Sam stared at her colorless skin, at the taut pull of her facial muscles, and listened with half an ear to her babbling de­scription of what could only have been a dream. A bullet? A knife? Derrick, wounded and alone, in a ramshackle cabin? Sam could tell by looking at Crysta, by the way she quivered, that the dream she was recounting had been no ordinary nightmare.

  With an inexplicable feeling of dread, he drew her hand from her chest and stared at the angry red welt rising on her ivory skin, beginning above the cup of her white bra and angling downward under the lacy cloth. Goose bumps rose on the nape of his neck.

  Slowly, she began to quieten. Sam held her, stroking her hair, whispering to her. Her breathing evened out. A quick glance told him that the red imprint on her skin was fading. Questions crowded into his mind. Had she caused the red mark herself, clutching at her chest? Could he have done it while opening her shirt?

  "He's alive, Sam. He's alive!" She arched her neck to look up at him. "We have to find him. Soon!"

  Sam swallowed, uncertain what to say to her. "Calm down, Crysta. It was just a bad dream, a bad dream."

  "No." She shook her head, struggling to escape him. "Not a dream. You have to believe that."

  During his military training years ago, Sam had watched films on torture techniques. He knew how powerful the mind was. There were documented cases in which blind­folded prisoners, expecting to be touched with hot steel, had actually developed burns when touched with harmless, frosted metal. Was it possible that the mark on Crysta's chest had been put there by her absolute belief that Derrick had placed a hot knife against his chest? Or was it true that Crysta and Derrick, so genetically similar, shared some strange and incomprehensible mental link that enabled one to feel what the other suffered?

  "Please, Sam, listen to me. We're wasting precious time! Maybe if we went to the police we could convince them to do something."

  "With what as proof?" he asked gently. "Your dreams, Crysta? Jim Sales is one of the best trackers around. He says Derrick was attacked by a bear, and even I have to admit the evidence points to that. What chance have we of convinc­ing the police otherwise?"

  "What if we did an aerial search? We might spot the cabin he's in."

  As patiently as he could, Sam once again explained to her that the interior was dotted with abandoned cabins. As ver­satile as Todd's float-plane was, it couldn't land unless the conditions were ideal. Even if they narrowed their scope and chose only a few cabins to investigate by foot, it would take days, possibly even weeks, to reach them all.

  "But what about the helicopter you told me about?" she cried. "A helicopter can land almost anywhere."

  "The Huey? Crysta, that was a military chopper, brought in especially for the search." Sam studied her pinched face, wishing that he could make her comprehend how vast Alaska was. "Have you ever seen a map of Alaska super­imposed over a map of the lower forty-eight? It's mind- boggling how large it is."

  "We could rent another helicopter. Surely some pilot would take us up!"

  "That'd cost a fortune. We're not talking a few hours, but possibly days. I have some money in savings, but not nearly enough." Sam sighed, his thoughts straying to Tip and the exorbitant costs for his special schooling during the winter months. "I'm sorry, Crysta. I just don't have the resources for something that expensive."

  "I don't, either," she admitted in a quavery voice. "But, Sam, we can't just poke around in a briefcase!"

  Sam helped her to sit erect. He could see she was becom­ing frantic and that she wouldn't be satisfied with spending any more time going through Derrick's papers. Her pallor alarmed him. It was fast becoming a toss-up what con­cerned him most, trying to find out what had happened to Derrick or playing along with Crysta to make this as pain­less as possible for her. This couldn't be an easy time for her, and with every passing hour Sam's hopes of finding Der­rick, alive or dead, diminished.

  Smoothing her hair, he said, "Okay, I'll admit that the briefcase may be a dead end. The next place to look is in Anchorage." His gaze locked on hers. "You say you dreamed of walking through a warehouse, right? I think we should fly to town with Todd Shriver and get permission to tour the Blanchette warehouses. Maybe we'll find the building you dreamed of."

  "And possibly find a lead?"

  She looked so grateful to him that Sam felt a twinge of guilt. He wanted to believe in her dreams, but his prag­matic side balked. "Possibly," he offered noncommittally. "Before we leave, though, both of us have to get some rest."

  "Rest?"

  Sam feathered his thumb across her cheek. Dark shad­ows formed crescents beneath her eyes, all the more notice­able now because she was so pale. "I'm running on sheer willpower."

  "But Derrick— We can't take time to sleep, Sam! Time is running out. Derrick needs me. Don't you understand?"

  "We have to get some sleep. I've been operating on short naps for five days. I'm beat. My mind is fuzzy. We'll both be better equipped to find and help Derrick if we're re­freshed."

  With obvious reluctance, she acquiesced with a nod, her eyes haunted. Sam pushed to his feet and offered her a hand up. When she stood, he gazed down at her for a long mo­ment, fighting off an almost irresistible urge to draw her into his arms.

  "Why don't you go down to the sauna and freshen up?" he suggested. "It'll relax you and help you sleep. I promise to set the alarm so we don't sleep long."

  Too weary and disheartened to argue, Crysta turned to leave, reasoning that the sooner she got some sleep, the sooner she and Sam could fly into Anchorage. At the door, she stopped and looked back over her shoulder. "You'll tell Todd not to leave without us?"

  "I'll have Tip go down and give him the message."

  En route to the sauna, Crysta noticed Steve Henderson sitting under a cottonwood, back braced against the trunk, one knee bent to support his arm. He looked so desolate that she veered toward him, uncertain what she could say to comfort him but driven to try. It couldn't be easy watching your little boy slip away, especially when all it might take to save him was a donor match. She could only imagine the frustration he must be feeling, his impotent rage at fate.

 
About ten feet from him, she called out a hello.

  He jumped as if she had stung him. His blue gaze rose to her face. She immediately noted how thin he was, almost wasted, as if he were the one stricken with a grave illness.

  "I'm Crysta Meyers, Derrick's sister." Suddenly feeling foolish, Crysta let her gaze trail off into the trees. "I, um, heard about your little boy, Scotty. I just wanted you to know I'll be praying that they line him up with a donor soon."

  When he said nothing, Crysta returned her gaze to his ravaged features. He was staring through her, past her, as if he found eye contact with her disconcerting. Crysta real­ized her arrival was probably an unwelcome intrusion on his solitude, that he had come here to grieve and didn't appre­ciate her company.

  "Why would you care about my son?" he asked in a shaky voice. "Who's he to you?"

  The wind whipped her shirt tightly around her torso. She dragged her hair away from her eyes, wishing she hadn't come. Maybe he saw her as a morbid curiosity seeker; he clearly resented her condolences. "I'm sorry, Mr. Hender­son. I walked up on impulse. I, um, just wanted to—" She shrugged. "You've heard about my brother. Sometimes I feel as if no one cares but me. I know it must be a thousand times worse for you."

  His eyes cleared and seemed to focus on her. "That's life, isn't it? No one else really cares. Your world falls apart, but all around you there's laughter."

  "Yes." Crysta swallowed, her throat suddenly dry and burning. "That's life. It's not true of everyone though. Some people do care. I just wanted you to know that."

  He averted his face and let out a ragged sigh. She noticed that he was clenching and unclenching his fist. She had in­tended to comfort him, not make matters worse.

  "Well..." She gestured at the bundle of clothes she car­ried under one arm. "I was on my way to the sauna. Better get on down there before someone else beats me to it."

  With that, Crysta spun and walked off. She could feel Henderson's eyes boring into her back. His hostility un­nerved her, yet she couldn't condemn him for it. "Your world falls apart, but all around you there's laughter." She knew how the sounds of gaiety hurt when someone you loved might be dying.