Fire and Ice (Buchanan-Renard #7)

Fire and Ice (Buchanan-Renard #7) Page 27

They had reached the shed, and as Jack tried to pry open the door, Sophie pulled the wool scarf over her mouth and nose to warm the air before she inhaled it. Hearing a sound in the distance, she looked up at the heavy clouds hanging over them, expecting to see Chipper’s plane.

“Do you hear—?”

Jack grabbed her and pulled her to the side of the tiny building. “Someone’s coming. Stay here.”

He slowly looked around the corner. Two…no, three lights were coming toward the cabin from the east. Three men on snowmobiles were riding at full speed. It was too dangerous for Jack and Sophie to try to make it back to the cabin, so they waited. The men slowed and fanned out as they got closer. One headed toward the front, halting before he reached the cabin so he couldn’t be seen. The other two circled to the back. When they passed the snowmobile Jack had parked there, they stopped abruptly.

“They found the body,” Jack whispered.

One man motioned to the other, and they turned their machines around and retreated a few hundred feet, pausing to confer. Jack saw one of the men lift a fuel can from the back of his snowmobile. On foot, they crept up to the cabin again. The third man moved closer, drawing a gun and aiming at the front door while the other two bent low and ran under the window. One took a rag from his pocket, dipped it in the can, and set it afire. Giving the signal, he broke the glass and tossed the rag inside just as the man with the fuel threw the open can through the window. The light from the flame flashed across the opening, and the cabin ignited. The men crouched in the snow, waiting for Sophie and Jack to run out the door.

Sophie couldn’t get the gun out of her pocket with her gloves on, so she pulled one off. Flexing her hand for circulation, she wrapped it around the handle with her finger on the trigger.

One of the men turned to the side and saw motion coming from the shed. By the time he raised his gun in their direction, Jack had aimed and fired. Solid hit. The man dropped on the snow facedown.

Jack swung to the left and fired again. He wounded the second man, got him in the shoulder, and fired again. The bullet hit him in the back of the knee as he tried to turn to shoot. Screaming, he went down hard.

The third man disappeared. A second later, they heard a snowmobile revving up. Jack ran toward the bastard writhing on the ground and kicked the gun away from him.

Sophie followed. “This one’s not going anywhere,” she shouted as she pointed the gun at his head. “Go after the other one.”

“If he moves, shoot him,” Jack ordered. Running to a snowmobile, he jumped on and took off. The man he followed headed east, then veered north at full speed. Jack thought he must be disoriented. There was nothing in that direction but the ocean.

The sky had turned dark, and the lights on the snowmobile made it easy to follow him. The light wavered, and Jack heard gunshots. The man was shooting at him. At this speed, it was only a matter of time before he lost control of the snowmobile and killed himself. Jack slowed down, widening the distance between them, and followed as the man zigzagged across the snow, the light on his vehicle bouncing at every bump.

How many miles had they gone? Jack’s face stung from the cold; his eyes burned from the wind. Where did the bastard think he was headed? Had he lost his bearings? They had to be getting close to the ocean.

The guy would have to veer again or turn back in his direction. Keeping him within sight, Jack slowed down even more.

Suddenly, he heard a loud echoing crack. It was followed by a terrified scream, and then a splash. The lights on the snowmobile aimed toward the sky and disappeared. Another scream…then silence.

“Son of a birch,” Jack whispered. “Son of a bitch.”

Jack looked at the ice beneath him. Not a good way to go, he thought. He instantly turned his snowmobile around and sped away from there as fast as he could. As he headed south, he saw a light in the distance. The fire from the burning cabin was his beacon.

Sophie was getting frantic. Jack had been gone too long. When she heard the hum of a snowmobile, she let out a deep breath. It had to be him, she thought. Had to.

The man she was guarding glared at her. “FBI’s on the way,” she told him, as she shifted from one foot to the other. The heat from the fire warmed her face, but her feet were still freezing. Fire and ice, she thought. It seemed so bizarre to be standing there watching the fire burn and the snow melt, and then instantly refreeze. Crazy. Fire and ice.

Sophie had never been so happy to see anyone. When Jack walked toward her, she wanted to run to him and throw her arms around him, but she restrained herself. He was going to have to help her release her grip on the gun first. She thought her finger might be frozen to the trigger.

After Jack took the gun from her hand, he faced the man on the ground. “Who are you?”

“I need medical attention,” the man yelled. He was actually outraged.

“Who are you?” Jack repeated.

“I need medical—”

Jack kicked his leg. “Who are you?”

The man screamed. “Carter. Dr. Eric Carter. Now get me help.”

“You’re a doctor? Fix yourself.”

Eric sneered. “I’m not that kind of doctor. I’m a Ph.D. in biology.”

“You study the wolves?” Sophie asked.

His gaze turned to Sophie. “All ruined. You’ve ruined everything. Why couldn’t you let it go?”

They heard the drone of a plane’s engine.

“Chipper’s here,” Jack said.

“Why wouldn’t I let what go?” she asked Carter.

“Our test subject. Why wouldn’t you leave it alone? You kept pecking away.”

“You’re talking about William Harrington?” she asked.

“Stupid female. You kept pecking away.”

“What were you testing?” she asked. “What did you do to him?”

He didn’t answer.

“Come on, Sophie,” Jack said. “I’ll put you in the plane and come back for him. You need to get warm.”

Dr. Carter wasn’t going anywhere. Jack got on the snowmobile with Sophie behind him. She rested her face against his back. Jack motioned for Chipper to stay where he was as they drove the snowmobile toward him. He opened the plane door for Sophie, and a burst of warm air poured across her face. Once she was seated in the back, Jack climbed in and shut the door. He didn’t give a damn if Eric had to wait for him in the snow while he got warm. A few minutes wouldn’t kill him.

“Radio the police in Barrow,” he told Chipper and then quickly explained what had happened.

Chipper’s brown eyes got so big that, by the time Jack finished explaining, he looked like a cocker spaniel. “What are you going to do with Carter?” he asked.

“Tie him up and put him with the cargo.”

Once he could face the cold again, Jack headed back to where he’d left Eric Carter. Thinking he saw something moving up ahead, he slowed, and then stopped. The light from the snowmobile was being reflected by a pair of tiny circles. Eyes. Glowing red eyes, watching him. He turned the light and saw the others. Four of them. Wolves standing together about twenty feet from Eric.

Jack heard their hungry growls. He concentrated on the biggest one at the front of the pack. He was huge. His white coat was marked with a dark strip across the back. He stared at Jack, and their gazes locked. As Jack reached for his gun, the wolf turned toward Eric and pounced with lightning speed. His fangs punctured the doctor’s throat before Jack could draw his weapon. The others leapt, and it was too late. Too late to save the man. The wolf he had been watching lifted his head and looked at him again, then continued to feed.

Jack got the hell out of there.

Once he was inside the plane, he could breathe again. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” he said.

“Like what?” Sophie asked.

He shook his head.

“Where’s the doctor?”

“He didn’t make it.”

“He must have bled to death,” she guessed.

“Yeah, he definitely bled out.”

The planes engines drowned out the wolves’ howls.

Jack leaned back in the seat and closed his eyes. “Damn,” he whispered. “Damn.”

Sophie tapped his shoulder. “Jack?”

“Hmm?”

“What happened to the man you were chasing?”

He didn’t open his eyes. “He went swimming.”

JOURNAL ENTRY 927

ARCTIC CAMP

William Harrington remained unconscious when we injected the K-74. After placing him in position, we observed off site.

Though confused when he gained consciousness, he was reacting as we had expected: disoriented and frightened.

Our mistake was in failing to factor in all the variables—especially indigenous species.

We observed Harrington’s stress level increase dramatically. He appeared to be terrified, but we could not discern the cause of this reaction because our remote cameras were not picking it up. Harrington’s screams drowned out the sounds. Within minutes a polar bear, the size of which we had never seen, came into view. There was nowhere for him to run or hide. He was no match for the animal.

Test invalidated.

THIRTY-TWO

SOPHIE INSISTED ON GOING BACK TO INOOK THE FOLLOWING morning with Jack. She was determined to look at the scientists’ home away from home and, hopefully, find out what Dr. Eric Carter was doing.

FBI agents were on their way from Anchorage, and the police from Barrow had already made a complete sweep of the property.

The bodies in front of the burned cabin—or what was left of them once the wolves had finished—were on their way to the morgue.

Jack had watched them being put into body bags. Eric Carter was unrecognizable. Identification would be made from his fingerprints. Jack stood over the second body and examined his face. He had seen him before, but where? Replaying the events of the last few days in his memory, he came to it. He and Sophie had walked past him on their way to Chipper’s Charter Service. The man had stood outside their hotel and had almost been hit by a truck as he rushed across the street toward his own vehicle. Okay, so the son of a bitch followed them.

Jack had made sure that Sophie stayed away from the gruesome scene at the cabin. He’d argued that she’d been through enough. She was with the police as they searched the four rooms of the scientists’ quarters, and she walked through each one looking for some clue as to why Harrington had come to Alaska. She knew he had been connected with the Alpha Project. She still didn’t know what that was, but she was positive it had something to do with the scientists who ran this facility. What had Eric Carter been afraid she would discover?

There were notebooks full of data, but they all were about the wolves. There were videos as well. The disks were labeled and numbered. The subject of disk one through disk twenty was the alpha male named Ricky. One of the officers put a disk in the player, and several others gathered around to watch Ricky and his pack attack a caribou.

“How were they able to film this without the wolves coming after them?” he asked.

“Look at the jaws on that beast,” another officer said. “I think he could take down a polar bear all by himself.”

Jack joined the group. He saw the wolf and recognized him immediately. As he watched the video, he felt a strange connection with the animal, probably because he had stared into his eyes and seen the power in him. He also felt a weird sort of fondness for the wolf because he hadn’t attacked him. Scared the hell out of him, but had left him alone.

“He’s magnificent,” an officer remarked. “Think he was one of the wolves that killed the doctor last night?” he asked Jack.

“Yes,” Jack answered but didn’t elaborate. “He was there.”

Sophie sat at the desk in the small room the doctors used as a study, looking through notebooks. Jack checked up on her every few minutes. He’d stop in the doorway and just watch her until she looked up. He’d ask her if she needed anything, and he’d also ask each time if she was ready to go back to Barrow.

She knew he was concerned about her, but couldn’t understand why. She was surrounded by men with guns, and she had her own FBI agent bodyguard.

“Are you worried I’ll read something that will freak me out?” she asked the fourth time he appeared.

“There is that possibility.”

“Oh, please. After yesterday, nothing here will spook me…bore the wool socks off me, but not scare me.”

He smiled. “You don’t like wolves.”

“Yes, I do,” she replied. “But every little detail of their day? Eat, sleep, kill, eat, sleep, kill…repetitious.”

“It’s what they do.”

She nodded. “They were interested in the behavior within the pack. The alpha interested them most, how he controlled the others…family dynamic stuff.” She closed the notebook, put it back on the desk and stood. “I don’t know how these scientists stood it. Day in and day out watching wolves…and in these conditions.” She walked over to him as she asked, “Have they found anything that connects Harrington to the project?”

“Not yet,” he answered. “But they’ve only just started.”

When she looked up at him, he felt a tightness in his chest. She was beautiful, yes, but there was so much more to her. She was loving and trusting and fiercely loyal. He lifted her arms and put them around his neck.

“Guess what I’m gonna do,” he drawled.

She moved into him and pulled his head down toward hers. Then she brushed her lips across his mouth, teasing, tempting. “This?” she asked. She deepened the kiss, rubbing her tongue over his lips. She pulled back and whispered, “Or this?”

Hungry for her now, Jack slanted his mouth over hers and his tongue moved inside. He loved the way she felt pressed against him, and from the way she eagerly responded, he knew she loved it, too. He would have liked nothing better than to rip her clothes off and make love to her now, in this room, but he lifted his head. His breath was shaky.

“This isn’t the time or the place, sweetheart…unless you want to make the six o’clock news.”

One of the officers interrupted. “Your pilot wants to know when—”

Jack didn’t let him finish. “Tell him to start the engines. We’re leaving now.”

A few minutes later, Sophie was all bundled up and heading toward the plane with Jack. The wind had kicked up again, and the short walk was miserable.

“I hate…” Jack began.

She patted his arm. “I know. You hate the cold.”