Manhunter. Loreth White Anne
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running both hands over his hair, trembling slightly. He continued along the grassy track, a sudden lightness in his chest.
Yeah, he was still jumpy. But he hadn’t shot the damn deer. He still had the jockey of logic to control his quick impulse to shoot.
Looking into the big innocent brown eyes of that doe, feeling a rush of adrenaline in his body that wasn’t spawned by malicious human intent, had shifted something fundamental inside Gabe.
Maybe there was hope for him after all.
A split cedar fence lined the approach to the Old Moose Hunting Lodge, a large log structure that hunkered on the shores of the clearest aquamarine lake Gabe had ever seen, a few outbuildings standing off to the side.
A fish eagle circled up high, feathers ruffling on air currents as it craned its neck for prey. Small bats were beginning to flit after mosquitoes just above the water, competing with fish that sent concentric circles rippling through mercurial reflections as they broke the lake surface. The air was heavy and cool, redolent with the scent of pine and the spice of juniper.
Gabe stopped a moment to drink it all in.
Then he saw Silver, leading three horses to a paddock near the shore. There was a wild abandon in her stride, her heavy hair swaying across her back, and she was laughing as her dogs cavorted with a puppy at her side.
Everything inside Gabe quieted.
She looked so free.
It was clear she hadn’t realized he was there and that she was being watched. And with mild shock, Gabe realized he wanted to watch, quietly, without announcing his presence. There was something about the way she moved that grabbed him by the throat. He was jealous of her freedom, her spirit. It made him feel furtive. Hungry.
But she saw him, and stiffened instantly. He raised his hand to greet her, but she simply pointed toward the main building before continuing down to the paddock with her horses.
Gabe climbed the big log stairs onto a veranda that ran the length of the lodge. Massive bleached moose antlers hung over a heavy double door. He scuffed his boots on the mat and entered the lodge.
A fire crackled in the stone hearth, and two men and a woman chatted at the bar as an Indian barman with a sleek black ponytail down the centre of his back filled a bowl with peanuts. The television set was mounted behind him, a hockey game playing.
Gabe grabbed a stool and bellied up to the bar. He asked for a Molson, and if he could switch to the CBC news channel.
“You the new cop?” asked the barkeep as he slid a cold beer along the counter to Gabe. He was a young and strong man with copper skin and a small silver earring in his left ear.
“Sergeant Gabriel Caruso,” Gabe said, holding out his hand.
The trio at the other end of the bar glanced up. Gabe nodded at them, and they tipped their glasses slightly. Not exactly smiles of welcome, thought Gabe. It was the same with Silver. Beneath surface civility he could detect simmering hostility.
“Jake Onefeather,” said the barkeep as he flipped to the news channel and handed Gabe the remote.
There was a commercial on. Gabe checked his watch, and tensed. He’d made it just in time. The CBC news logo flashed across the screen, and he bumped up the volume, his mouth already dry, his pulse accelerating. He knew he’d see Steiger’s photo. And most likely his own.
And Gia’s.
If Tom was correct—that CBC had prepared a news feature—Gabe would likely see file footage from the RCMP funeral where thousands of mourners had come to pay their respects to his colleagues gunned down in the line of duty. Mounties from across the country had stood shoulder to shoulder in a sea of red serge far exceeding the capacity of the Notre Dame Basilica cathedral in Ottawa as the coffins were carried in—one of them holding the body of the woman he’d planned to marry.
The anchor began to speak. But before Gabe could catch a word, a soft and husky female voice brushed like velvet over his skin.
“You’d make a better impression visiting the chief and council than sitting here drinking beer on your first night, you know?” Silver said quietly as she came up behind him.
Abruptly, the competition for Gabe’s attention was cleft in two—the sensually beautiful tracker at his side and the image of Steiger’s rugged face filling the screen, pale ice-blue eyes staring coldly at the camera. Steiger’s hair was pale, too. Ash blond, shaved short and spiky. By contrast, his skin was olive-toned, his features angular, strong. Handsome, even. Almost mesmerizingly so. And the psychopath knew it.
Gabe’s heart began to thud. He felt dizzy. He held up his hand, quieting her, and he made the sound louder. Everyone in the bar looked up in surprise, then fell dead silent as they watched.
Silver stared at the screen in shock as the anchor announced the escape of the Bush Man, and then footage segued to file images of the dead Mounties, and Gabe—the cop who had led the Williams Lake takedown. The cop who had lost his fiancée to a monster.
As a tracker, Silver had been interested in Steiger’s story, in how the killer had managed to evade law enforcement for almost three years, but she hadn’t put two and two together with the new cop.
Her eyes shot to Gabe.
Suddenly he made sense. She now understood what she’d glimpsed in his eyes.
She’d been right. He was damaged goods. Badly damaged.
Silver listened to the news, but she watched him. She was a veteran observer of creatures, human and otherwise. She instinctively noted the way they moved, talked, how their emotions translated into body position, how it made them plant their feet, leave trace. It was in this way that she could often tell the prints of one villager from another without even analyzing why. And more often than not she could tell what they’d been doing, even thinking, at the time they’d left prints.
Right now, in his leather bomber jacket and faded jeans, Gabe Caruso didn’t look like a cop. His hair was roughed up, a five o’clock shadow darkened his angled jaw, and his neck muscles corded with aggression. Strong neck. Strong man. She liked what she saw—too much. And again she felt the disturbing warmth spread through her stomach. She didn’t feel safe around this man—not at all.
She swallowed the shimmer of anxiety in her chest and pulled up a stool beside him. Closer than was necessary, close enough to feel the tension radiating from him like heat from a desert tarmac. She noted the way he fisted the TV remote in one hand, knuckles white, his beer glass in the other. She thought he might just crush it and wondered if she should remove it or remind him that he was holding glass in his fist.
She slanted her eyes up to the television as another image of Gabe filled the screen. It was a shot taken a year ago of him standing alongside one of the coffins. Propped up by crutches he was dressed in formal RCMP red serge, Stetson at a slight angle atop short-shaved hair, no expression on his face. Just hollow, dark eyes.
The anchor reminded viewers of how the sergeant had pursued Steiger on a snowmobile, racing after him into the teeth of a blizzard on that fateful night. A gunfight and hand-to-hand combat had ensued, seriously injuring Gabe before he’d managed to subdue Steiger using a taser.
And given what they were saying on the news about Gabe having been a fast-climbing career cop who’d taken the sergeant’s job in Williams Lake to be with his now-deceased fiancée, Gabe must be seething about this Black Arrow Falls posting. It was a dead end for him.
Silver guessed everything that meant anything to Gabe lay in that coffin in that image. The news feature cut back to the presenter, and Silver felt anger burn through her veins. She knew what that kind of emptiness felt like.
Everything that had meant anything to her was buried under a small cairn of river rocks northwest of town, at Wolverine Gorge. Rocks she’d stacked with her own bloodied hands.
Silver was torn between resentment that the RCMP had sent