Edge of Survival (2 page)

“There’s a d-d-dead woman.”

He maneuvered her back into the restroom, propped her against a sink, untangling her fingers from their death grip across his spine. He needed to assess the situation but he hesitated when he saw the expression on the Doc’s face—he’d forgotten what true innocence looked like.

Huge sea-green eyes rose to meet his. She pointed at the cubicle door. The only unknown in the room.

Whoa
, that smell…blood and bowels and violent death. He checked beneath the stall, careful not to touch anything because he did not want to get on the radar of a criminal investigation. Sylvie Watson. Throat cut. Dead as a doornail. It felt like one of his more vivid flashbacks, but without the pounding heart or cold sweat.

Poor Sylvie.

Daniel swore.

He looked at the Doc. She was shaking violently, her hand covering her mouth as if fighting the urge to throw up.

“D-did you know her?” she asked.

He didn’t
know
anyone. Not anymore. And they didn’t know him. That was the way he liked it.

“Her name was Sylvie Watson.” He waited for some form of emotion—sadness, regret, guilt—but all he got was numbness. Death didn’t feel real anymore. Maybe the problem was that death had never felt real.

The sound of the Doc’s breathing was harsh, matching the hiss of the light strip above his head. The nearest she’d been to a dead body was probably curled up on the sofa watching
CSI.
Her chest hitched repeatedly as she started to hyperventilate. Shit. He wanted to turn on his heel and walk away, leave her and her friend to maneuver this minefield on their own. He didn’t want to rescue her. He didn’t save people. Not anymore.

But these women were his job, and his job was the only thing that stopped him from stepping out of an aircraft at ten thousand feet without a chute.

“We have to call the cops.” Her voice was hoarse with strain.

“We’ll radio RCMP from the aircraft.”

“We can’t just leave her here!” she shrieked.

He grabbed her shoulders and shook her hard enough that her gaze snapped to his. Close protection training kicking in after a two-year void. “She’s dead and I have no clue who killed her.” He hated the way his instincts took over. A cop would have protected the scene but he wasn’t a cop. “They could be in the bar just waiting to pick out their next victim.”

Her face lost the last vestige of color.

“Let’s get you to the ship.” He took her arm, pushed her out the door and down the corridor so fast she tripped and he had to catch her under the arms to support her. “Stay here.” He left her by the door. He didn’t want to be anywhere near Frenchmans Bight when the Mounties discovered this mess. He’d had enough notoriety to last him ten lifetimes.

The Doc clung to the doorjamb while he marched over and hoisted her rucksack onto his back.

“Time to go,” he told the blonde. He glanced around the bar, looking for anyone paying them too much attention. But no one was giving themselves away except Dwight glaring at him with his usual bulldog scowl.

Daniel had already squared his tab with the barman. He gave the guy a nod, and he knew he should tell him about Sylvie. But his priority, whether he liked it or not, was getting these two women out of harm’s way. He turned and headed to where the Doc was still hanging onto the doorframe like a drunk on a rough sea.

She was shaking uncontrollably, so he put his arm around her waist and half carried her out of the bar. She wasn’t delicate or weak, thank God. She felt strong and supple beneath his fingers, but she was in danger of slipping into a state of shock that would slow him down. He wasn’t being nice. He was being efficient.

Moving fast, he propelled her over the wooden boardwalks and scanned the nearby black spruce forest. If the killer wasn’t in the bar, he was in those woods watching the action. Awareness prickled as unseen eyes followed their progress.

Daniel quick-marched the Doc to the landing pads on the outskirts of the mining camp. The blonde was right behind them, heels tapping, mouth bitching every step of the way. She wouldn’t last a week in Labrador’s bug-infested country. He glanced down at her high-heeled open-toed sandals. Make that five days.

He let go of the Doc’s arm and shoved her rucksack into the outer compartment of the blue-and-red Bell 206B.
Blood and death.
His gut cramped. Jesus, he thought he’d left all that behind years ago.

“What’s going on?” Vikki swatted a mosquito that had landed on the exposed skin of her arm.

“There was a dead woman in the restroom.” The Doc sobbed and covered her mouth with her hand. “Murdered.” She swallowed repeatedly, looking as if she was going to hurl.

Great.

“Are you kidding me?” Vikki gasped.

Yeah. Big fucking joke.

Her eyes were wide with curiosity. “How do you know she was murdered?”

“From the extra smile on her face,” he cut in. “Get in the machine.” He loaded the suitcase into the backseat. He’d already packed as much of their equipment as the helicopter could carry before he’d gone to the bar to fetch them. The rest could wait until tomorrow. His intuition screamed to get them out of there, ASAP.

“Shouldn’t we wait for the cops?” Vikki asked, looking nervous.

“You want to wait for the Mounties to turn up?” he bit out impatiently. “Because that means we’re stuck here all night. We’re not allowed to fly after dark, and there’s only a thirty-minute window left before sunset.”

They all turned toward the temporary huts and cabins. The bar, a former trading post and the only permanent building in the makeshift mining town, was roughly constructed and desperately in need of new shingles. Sinister shadows gave the shanty town an even grimmer aspect. He’d rather take his chances with the wolves than with Dwight Wineberg’s cronies. He pointed at the bar. “Any
one
of those guys could have slit her throat—or they could all be involved.”

The Doc’s eyes flashed.

“Do you really want to wait for law enforcement?” he pushed.

She bit her lower lip, looked back at him, then shook her head.

Good choice.
Not that he’d have stayed anyway, but people needed the illusion of control.

Vikki was already climbing into the back of the chopper, her lean body put together with all the lush curves of a Playboy Bunny. Pity he didn’t have time to stand back and enjoy the view. He turned to the Doc. “If you’re going to puke, do it now, not inside the aircraft.”

Vivid anger widened her eyes. She swallowed and angled her chin. Her skin was pasty, tinged with gray, a sheen of sweat riding her brow. He fought the urge to comfort her. He didn’t have time, and the itch at the back of his neck was so intense, he couldn’t ignore it—all those years of training kicking in after a twenty-three-month void.

The Doc moved to follow her assistant but he tapped her arm, quickly dropping his hand. “Front seat.” He nodded to the passenger side. He wanted her where he could see her. She looked shocky and the last thing he needed was an emergency run to the clinic in Nain—the nearest community of any size.

He shut the compartment doors and grabbed a blanket off the backseat. The blonde crossed her skinny legs and adjusted the harness across her chest with a saucy wiggle of her hips. If he hadn’t been in a hurry, with the image of a dead woman stuck in his brain, he might have adjusted that seatbelt for her. Instead, he passed her a pair of green ear protectors and she slipped them on, holding his gaze with a look that burned across his groin like the stroke of a hand.

Christ.
He shifted uncomfortably. He hadn’t had sex in weeks and he didn’t want to think about what had happened to the last woman he’d slept with. Sweat prickled across his skin and he wiped his brow. What he really needed was a beer.

Tough shit, Danny boy. Get on with the job.

Voices from the past echoed through his mind as he closed the rear door and moved to the front. Doc Young still hadn’t put on her harness, she just sat there staring into space. He’d seen that look before, the civilian version of the thousand-yard stare, where mind and emotion revisited the dark places. He stood on the runner and leaned over, grabbed the strap, pulled it tight across the Doc’s chest and pretended those weren’t breasts beneath his fingers. He looked up and found her watching him with jewel-bright eyes.

“I can do it.” Her fingers fumbled with his, but he shook her off.

“It’ll be quicker if you just let me finish.” He softened the words with a smile.

He pulled the ear protectors off a hook, leaning heavily against the Doc’s thigh, pretending not to notice the way her cheeks glowed at the proximity. He was intimately aware of the way their breath mingled in the rapidly cooling air. At least she didn’t have that glassy-eyed stare anymore. Gently he placed the cups over her ears and made sure she was secure, then he covered her lap with the blanket.

A whiskey jack burst out of the nearby forest in a scream of feathers as Daniel stood back and closed the door. He squinted, trying to penetrate the dense spruce, but saw nothing except thickening shadow. He walked around the machine, doing a quick visual on the outer skin of the aircraft and climbed in. Checked the doors were closed. Then he started her up. Throttle closed, all switches in pre-start position. Battery on. He felt exposed, vulnerable sitting out here on the landing site. But they weren’t in a war zone, just a small mining community where a woman had been brutally slain.

Check fuel load.

He’d refueled on the way over, which was why he’d been delayed. All good. Boost pumps, check fuel pressure. The routine settled him. He lived to fly. He pressed the start button. The temperature rose as he opened the throttle. And while he was waiting, he radioed the closest RCMP detail on the emergency channel.

“Nain RCMP, this is Bell Foxtrot Delta Charlie Tango, over.”

“Foxtrot Delta Charlie Tango, Nain RCMP, over.”

“Nain RCMP, Delta Charlie Tango. There is a dead woman in the bathroom stalls of Bear’s Bar, Frenchmans Bight. Over.”

The comms crackled with urgent static. “Charlie Tango. Repeat, over.”

“Charlie Tango. I’m reporting a dead body at Bear’s Bar, Frenchmans Bight. Acknowledge, over.” He turned on the generator and the navigational instruments spooled up.

“What is your position, Charlie Tango? Over.” The dispatcher was Tina
something.
He frowned, but couldn’t remember her surname. She was
kablunângajuit
—half white, half Inuit. Nice girl, married to a local trader named Ollie.

Daniel brought the engines up to operating speed. “Charlie Tango, I’m currently five miles northwest of Frenchmans Bight. The woman who discovered the body went into shock at the scene and I’m flying her to the
Imaviaq
to be checked out. Over.”

“Charlie Tango. Roger that.”

The Doc cocked her head to one side to look at him, her face half-hidden by the bill of that cap. She’d caught him bending the truth and didn’t approve.

He did a thorough visual check of the uncontrolled airspace before taking off. He didn’t announce his intentions because he didn’t want the RCMP to catch him in a lie. He rose into the air, exhilaration punching his gut as he flew. There was nothing like flying. Nothing else had ever satisfied this one corner of his soul.

He flew fast and low over valleys strewn with massive boulders and ribboned with silver streams. It was beautiful land. Unspoiled. Untouched. Almost uninhabited. The irony that the mining operation would change all that wasn’t lost on him and he told himself not to care.

The radio squawked. “Foxtrot Delta Charlie Tango, Nain RCMP. We’ll need to interview you and the woman who found the body as soon as possible. Over.”

Daniel keyed the radio. “Charlie Tango. Roger that. The lady’s name is Dr. Cameran Young. We’re both quartered on the
Imaviaq
and will await your instruction. Over and out.” He snapped off the radio.

The ship was a retired coastguard icebreaker, refitted as a research vessel. It was prime accommodation for bush work. He looked at the Doc and she gave him a wobbly smile.

“Thanks for getting me out of there,” she said.

Her eyes shone and dimples made a brief appearance. Despite the utter lack of makeup and the lingering trace of shock, she was beautiful.

Shit
.

He gave her his trademark grin. “Anyway, we’re the only ones we know who
didn’t
murder Sylvie Watson.”

Her brows slid together, a tiny crinkle denting her forehead, no doubt recalling Sylvie’s blood-soaked corpse. Then she opened her mouth as though she was going to say something but changed her mind.

“What?” he asked impatiently, knowing he wasn’t going to like what she had to say, but unable to keep his mouth shut.

“How do I know you didn’t kill her?” Her words sliced like razorblades across his skin and he flinched.

Murderer
.
Assassin
. The taunts and accusations from the British media flashed through his mind, and for a moment he couldn’t see where he was going. He blinked rapidly to clear his focus.
This
was why he preferred numbness over feeling;
this
was why he did not get involved. The breath in his lungs struggled to get past the wave of anger that locked down his teeth. Heat surged through his body and evaporated off his skin like steam. He forced himself to breathe tactically because being accused of murder shouldn’t be a problem.

He should be used to it by now.

And it was a smart question, he conceded after a few breaths. Why the hell should she be stupid enough to trust him?

You always need to be the hero
, Maggie’s voice sang in his head. Well, he sure as hell wasn’t a hero anymore. He wasn’t anything except a helicopter pilot trying to do his job.

He narrowed his eyes against the glare of the setting sun. “I could have snuck around the back of the bar, slit Sylvie’s throat and left via the back door before coming in the front to pick up you and Vikki.” He kept his tone moderate. “But one, I’m not covered in blood and
that
was not a clean or easy kill, and two, I’ve been flying nonstop since dawn, slinging equipment to a new drill site. I didn’t have time to murder anyone today.” His fingers tightened on the cyclic. “Check the logs if you need to verify that.”

He could have easily accused her of malleting Sylvie, but that was rubbish because she wasn’t covered in blood, and he doubted she’d ever killed anything outside a laboratory.

Lucky bloody her.

Doc Young looked like a poster girl for VSO, the antithesis of warfare, the converse of evil. That sort of bone-deep innocence was rare and underrated. A lone caribou crossed barren tundra below but the Doc didn’t even see it. She just watched him with eyes the color of sage.

A muscle ticked in his jaw and he concentrated on the scenery. “I guess you’ll just have to trust me.”

She looked away. He focused on flying, trying to get back the buzz of racing high above the world. Over brooks that snaked across the valley floors, over the three-billion-year-old Laurentian Shield, the oldest rock in the world. Over ponds as deep and blue as the ocean. But excitement eluded him. Right now he was remembering how it felt to have everything ripped away—his career, his life, his honor. How suspicion tainted the air until you choked on every breath. Desperate to forget, he increased speed until they were rushing over the barren country, the boom of the rotors punching the atmosphere. But you couldn’t outrun memories and no one knew that better than him.

It took another ten minutes to navigate the puzzle of islands, inlets and fjords, to the sheltered bay where the
Imaviaq
was anchored. They arrived just as the sun dipped below the horizon.

“There she is.” Daniel couldn’t wait to ditch his passengers. He radioed ahead for permission to land. The first mate waved them in as a crew member, decked out in yellow protective gear, manned the emergency fire-hoses. They got final clearance and Daniel lowered the aircraft gently into the wind, onto the painted yellow circle on the deck. He started the shutdown process, keyed in the speakers so both women could hear him.

“You can get out now. The first mate over there will show you where you’re quartered and fetch your gear down later.” He heard metallic clinks as both women unbuckled their seatbelts. “Keep your heads down and don’t go around the back of the aircraft. The tail rotor will take your head off.”

The Doc started to get out, but her headphones were still attached to her head. He caught them as she slipped out of her seat. Her hands went up as her ball cap flew off and whipped out to sea. A mass of shoulder-length curly brown hair exploded around her face, and Daniel got slammed in the gut by something other than flying.

She swore. He read the unexpected word on her lips as he leaned over and grabbed her wrist. Her bones felt delicate within his grasp.

“The rotors,” he repeated and jerked his head to the rear of the bird. “Be careful of the rotors.” He maintained eye contact until he was sure she fully understood the danger. She was still spaced from finding Sylvie’s body, and the death toll was high enough for one day. He didn’t want anyone sliced and diced on his watch.

“Right. Got it. Thanks,” she shouted.

He let her go.

She rubbed her wrist as she headed around the nose of the aircraft, and he purposely turned to watch Vikki Salinger sashay her ass across the deck. And though he stared at the motion, enjoyed the synchronicity of perfect female body parts bouncing with each step, he found himself watching Cameran Young out of the corner of his eye. Just as carefully. Just as avidly.

***

Who the hell did she think she was?

His back ached from carrying her scrawny frame, and his feet ached from the long walk.

Little bitch. Blaming
him
for her shitty life. Blaming him for her weaknesses and addictions as if she hadn’t happily jumped on his cock and rode him a thousand times. He plunged the cloth into the freezing lake and scrubbed with vigor.