Primal Obsession (10 page)

TWELVE

Sam found a hollow space below a tangle of roots where he stashed the small corpse. A handful of beach rocks hid it from sight. Not that it mattered to the chipmunk, but Frank wouldn’t happen on it. If only Sam could rid himself as easily of the entire problem.

His return path circled to the rear of the encampment toward the latrine. He tripped and nearly crashed head on into a tree. “Dammit to hell!”

He aimed a kick at the offending object, but stopped when he realized what it was.

A trap.

A crude trap rigged from twigs and fine wire. A simple spring snare. Just the right size to trap a chipmunk. His left hand closed around the rough sticks, tighter, until the bark bit into his palm. This was deliberate.

Deliberately planned. Deliberately cruel.

Like steam in a locomotive, pressure built inside him. What the hell was someone doing this for? For kicks? To screw up his life even more than it was? He discarded that petty notion as soon as his brain conjured it. Nevertheless, if this week went all to hell, he’d have nothing. Not even the Scotch he’d already tried to dive to the bottom of. Lucky he didn’t have a fifth with him. He might be tempted.

Damn, he needed action, not a damned mystery. Generally guides avoided use of the radio except in emergencies. Folks felt more a part of the wilderness that way. But if he figured out who had the sick sense of humor, he’d radio Boomer to come yank the son of a bitch.

He wrestled with the idea of clearing the air, radioing his brother with the problem. What could Ben do? Zip. Until they reached the caretaker, they had no choice but to continue. Hell. He ought to be able to handle the matter. He was the guide. He would prove he could do it. Alone.

He kicked apart the snare, stomped on it, spreading the fresh scent of loam. He stuffed the wire in his pocket and flung the sticks farther into the woods. Shaking his head, he proceeded to the latrine. Who among them but him had a clue how to fashion a spring snare?

On his way back, an outcry in the camp sent him running.

Sam found the others around the coolers. “What’s up?”

“Something got into the food last night.” From the littered ground, Nora picked up a shredded plastic bag.

One of their two coolers lay on its back, the lid a drawbridge for any avaricious invaders wanting to plunder its contents. Hunks of marinated beef formed a lopsided triangle in the middle of milk-soaked grass. Other perishables either were shredded, gnawed or gone. Smells of spoiling food tainted the aroma of coffee.

Earlier, when desperation for sustenance had him pawing through the nearer cooler, he’d been too groggy to notice. Annie hadn’t been close enough to see or smell their new disaster. Then she’d found the headless chipmunk.

“Dumped this and made off with the goods.” Carl righted the emptied cooler. “What do you think? A bear?”

Frank fingered the cooler’s latch. “Raccoons are clever little guys. Raccoons could open this.” Trust in his eyes, he gazed up at Sam. “Couldn’t they, Sam?”

Hell. Everyone was looking to him for answers, for leadership. All this before he was fully awake.

A coffee mug was shoved in his hand. The aroma permeated his fog and he gulped greedily. Damned good. Plenty of sugar. In a minute the caffeine would kick him in the head. “Thanks.”

Annie nodded, her mouth grim. She folded her arms and waited. She was counting on him too. Damn.

He swallowed more coffee, then cleared his throat. “Frank, I agree about raccoons. A bear would’ve torn through the camp like Attila the Hun and all his pillagers.”

Frank straightened his shoulders and basked in the praise.

Practical jokes, mind games, and now the food. The expedition was going down the tubes, but the kid was thriving. The silver fucking lining. “Anybody hear noises during the night?”

Shoulders lifted and voices muttered demurs.

“Yesterday wore everyone out.” Ray pulled a garbage bag from the supplies. “A 747 could have landed beside me and I would’ve slept through it.” He began tossing ruined foodstuffs into the bag. Nora bent to help.

“I’ll see what we have left.” Carl hefted the logs weighing down the other cooler’s lid. He began rummaging through the contents.

Concern knotted Annie’s features. “What does this do to our food supplies?”

Sam injected more coffee into his system. The supplies kit held freeze-dried meals and reconstituted milk that he hadn’t told anybody about. Breakfast was in the other cooler, along with fruit and cheese for sandwiches. The situation wasn’t hopeless.

Was the plundered cooler another prank? Had their saboteur known which cooler was expendable? More mystery with few clues. He pictured himself at bat, blocking out everything but the job at hand.

He set down his mug and rubbed his hands together. He manufactured a jovial expression. “Okay, Frank, you wanted some adventure. You too, Ray. It starts today. When we get to Upper Otter Pond, we’ll be living off the land.”

Frank’s eyes widened like two dinner plates. “Hunting?”

Sam ruffled the boy’s hair. “I should’ve said living off the water. No, sport, I mean fishing. You know how to cast a line?” He heard Annie groan.

“I used to fish with my dad.” Frank’s demeanor morphed from glee to gloom. His shoulders slumped. “Guess I remember something about it.”

Nora placed a hand on her son’s shoulder. “He’ll take you again. He’s still your dad.”

“Whatever.” He dragged his feet toward the shore.

“Nora, the kid’s coming around.” Compassion filled the eyes beneath Ray’s jutting brow. “He’ll be all right.”

She bit her lower lip. “As long as what I said comes true. His dad’s not long on promises.”

“You want to go talk to him?” Ray reached out to take the garbage bag from her.

“No. He has to work it out himself.”

“A guy needs time alone for that,” Sam agreed. He knew first hand the truth of that. He just hoped Frank’s anger and resentment weren’t taking a destructive course. “You’re right to give him space. And Ray’s right. Frank’s a good kid.”

Annie gave Nora’s shoulders a squeeze. “He knows you’re here for him.”

“Thanks for your help, everyone. It means a lot.” Nora went back to helping Ray clean the cooler mess.

“The other cooler’s still right and tight,” Sam said to Carl. “You can whip up those pancakes. Too bad we’re minus the sausages. We’re going to need a hearty breakfast.”

The plastic egg container in her hands, Annie halted. She eyed Sam with suspicion. “Just what do you mean by that?”

He poured himself another cup of coffee. He inhaled the aroma. Took his time stirring in the sugar.

“Sam?”

He grinned. Damn, he loved to get this woman going. Annie, as much as the caffeine, was reviving him, lightening his mood. “After breakfast we’ll have lessons on paddling rapids.”

***

While Sam, Ray, and Frank washed themselves and the emptied cooler, Annie and Nora helped Carl with breakfast.

The simple chores and the scent of the wood fire revived the feeling of normalcy. Nora wiped down the plastic tablecloth with water heated over the fire. Each camper had his own utensils and plate, so setting the table was simple.

Searching for the maple syrup, Annie discovered a tub of margarine in the cooler. “Eureka!” She handed it to Carl and placed the syrup on the table.

“Great,” he said. “This beats salad oil for greasing the griddle. He smeared some across the griddle, heating atop the two-burner camp stove. Carl poured reconstituted milk into the pre-measured pancake mix and stirred.

“Gratifying to see a man who’s competent at a stove.” Nora winked at Annie.

“At least
I’m
competent at something.” Carl jerked his chin toward the others at the shore. “Can’t say as much for our friggin’ Maine Guide. One disaster after another, and I blame them on his incompetence.”

A second before Annie would have exploded with words as hot as the fire, she clamped her mouth tight. Why in the blue-eyed world should
she
defend Sam? He wasn’t her responsibility. There was a certain chemistry between them, and she did like him, but that’s where her involvement with him ended. It had to. He was too much like Ian, a charming jock.

She couldn’t blow up at Carl’s assertion for another reason, a better one. Beside her, no one but Sam—and the saboteur—knew about the altered compass numbers. She couldn’t blurt that out. But she could try to elicit what Carl—and Nora—did know. “We’re in as uncontrolled an environment as you can get. You can’t blame our guide for everything. How do you figure the bushwhack navigation was his fault, Carl? After all, I plotted that course.”

Carl spooned pancake batter onto the sizzling griddle. “He should’ve checked the figures. In my company, it’s my responsibility as the boss to check the specifications for every job we contract for. The success or failure of a project comes back to the boss, every time.”

Whether Sam checked the figures or not mattered little in light of the fact that someone changed them.

“It wasn’t so bad.” Nora was washing containers soiled by the midnight marauder. “No one was hurt or lost.”

“We’ve lost half our food, Pollyanna, and we’ve got more than half the trip left. It’s only Friday, and we have to make it four more days.” Carl flipped the pancakes deftly. His ire and his work over the griddle were deepening his rubescent complexion. “That cooler should’ve had a load of logs on top like every other night. Why the hell didn’t it?”

“Who was camp manager yesterday?” Nora said.

“It was Ray.” Annie shrugged. They rotated daily the responsibility of visually sweeping the campsite morning and evening, ensuring the fire was out, checking for articles left behind. “He might’ve noticed. We can ask him.”

Carl gave a snort of dismissal. Or disgust.

Sniffing the buttery aroma of browning cakes, Annie smiled. “I don’t know about camp manager, but those are some prime pancakes. Your wife’s a lucky woman.”

“Too bad she didn’t see it that way. The bitch divorced me.” Carl’s bland expression never wavered. He might as well have been describing the weather.

No mystery why a divorce. The man’s glass was perpetually half empty. Working for him would be a downer. Annie’s boss at the
Messenger
had exacting standards, but thankfully he wasn’t hypercritical. With a few exceptions, Carl found fault with most aspects of the trip.

Or was this dissension the result of their saboteur’s activities? Was discord the goal?

Suspicions tumbled in her mind like beach pebbles before the waves. She let her gaze drift toward the dark cedars behind the campsite. Was someone out there laughing at them, playing them like puppets? The Hunter, some other nutcase or one of the campers?

Or was she crazy for having such thoughts? Her stomach twisted. Any pancakes she ate now would go down like cement.

***

Sam swished his toothbrush around in the mug, then dumped the water under a bush. Thank God, a moment’s peace. Dark clouds brooded on the southern horizon, but overhead the sky offered only summer blue. Thunderstorms had danced around the canoe expedition for the last few days. He couldn’t count on them holding off much longer.

Ray deposited the dripping cooler at Sam’s feet. He swiped a wet hand through his light hair. “If raccoons dumped the logs and the cooler, they must be into weight training.”

“Yeah, I can just see the furry critters pumping iron.” Frank dropped his towel and contorted himself into a body-builder pose.

“You’re the next champ.” Ray smiled at the slender boy’s less-than-ripped biceps.

“Here,” Frank said, “I’ll help carry the cooler back to camp.”

Sam trailed behind the odd pair, who seemed to have formed a friendship of sorts. If either of them pulled the recent stunts, he was covering his ass with a good act.

As soon as they reached the picnic table, Carl pounced on Ray. “You were camp manager yesterday. Was your head so full of your stupid damned computer games that you forgot to cover the coolers?” Features sunset crimson, the burly contractor confronted the smaller man.

Sam lunged between the two. “Ease up, man. You don’t know that’s what happened.”

Ray held his ground, brow beetled and mouth grim. “I was camp manager yesterday, but I piled logs on both coolers.”

“You can say that now. Who’s to know what you did last night?” Carl backed off to go flip his pancakes, but his grimace said that he’d believe nothing the other man professed. The last cake flopped over so hard it slid onto the ground.

“Maybe somebody wanted a snack later and doesn’t want to admit removing the logs,” Nora suggested, wringing her hands.

Frank shook his head. “Not me. But if Ray says he covered the coolers, he did.”

“There are other possible reasons the cooler was left unsecured.” Sam looked around the tense group. “There’s no point in berating Ray. Let’s get ready to enjoy the adventure of fishing at our next camp. In the meantime, I smell pancakes.”