Thirty Below. Harry Groome
I thought if I told you that I’m divorced you’d never have agreed to meet me. Have I screwed this up before we even got started?”
Carrie looked into his gray eyes, eyes that made her think that maybe she could dream a little, and thought, not by a long shot, but didn’t tell him so. “Not yet,” she said and asked him what else he hadn’t told her.
“Okay. Full disclosure,” Bart said. “Married at thirty, divorced by thirty-three.”
“Kids?”
Bart looked away again. “Nope. One of the reasons we split.” He looked back at her. “How am I doing so far?”
“Not too bad,” Carrie said. “But another thing you never made clear: what is it, exactly, that you do for a living?”
“I used to teach. Now I’m kind of a …I don’t know…some say I’m a fugitive from society; others say I’m running away from a bad marriage and some other stuff. I’d just say I’m a self-styled adventurer who spends most of his time in Alaska.” They walked in silence for a moment when Bart said, “Well, how do you feel about Alaska?”
“What about it?” she said.
He shrugged. “It’s the place I call home, Carrie. I only come back here on occasion to tidy up loose ends. Alaska’s what I love. Where I’m at peace, where I’m headed in a few weeks.”
“And you think I should go with you? Just run off to Alaska, just like that?”
“I’m only asking you to think about it,” he said. “From your e-mails I think you’d love it. Besides it would get you away from that Jake guy and it might be the solution to all your other problems.”
“All my problems?” Carrie hadn’t expected the invitation to be focused on what was best for her. It caught her off guard and scared her. She had been so open with Bart in their e-mails about her dead-end situation, and now she was being asked to put her money where her mouth was. Was it just idle chatter or was she really ready for a change—an adventure, a mystery—and a dramatic one at that? She needed time to gather her thoughts, time for the vodka and the gin to loosen their grip. “Problems?” she said again. “What problems?”
Bart hooked his arm around her waist and kept walking. “I know this is scary stuff and will take a lot of guts…” Carrie didn’t hear what he said next for again she wondered how this stranger seemed to know what she was thinking and feeling almost before she did. “But I can promise you that living in the Alaska outback will be new as new can be and far from boring. It may not lead anywhere, but it may help you discover where you want to go. That’s one of the beauties of living off the grid. It clears your mind and can cleanse your soul as well.” For a second he tightened his grip on her waist. “Worse comes to worse, Carrie, it’s only for a few months.”
The fact that it would only be for a little while gave her comfort, and the idea of spending time with this gentle, gorgeous man who seemed to put her needs and feelings before all else led her to believe that maybe—just maybe—she’d finally got it right.
“Well?” he said. “What do you think?”
“We’ll see,” Carrie said. “We’ll see. I need to know lots more about it, and you, and time to think it over.”
THEY SAID GOODNIGHT at the foot of her apartment steps standing like two awkward teenagers and looking at one another for a long while without speaking. Carrie could feel her heart beating until Bart finally took her face in his hands and kissed her. When they parted, he asked if he could come in.
Carrie quickly raised her hands to hold him in place and said, “Not tonight,” and then softened her tone. “I know I’m giving you a mixed message but at times I get confused about what’s right and what’s wrong, and this is one of those times. I need some time to pull myself together. It’s not you. Please try to understand. It’s been a really bad day—a really bad day—and I’m confused about a lot of things, including Alaska.”
Bart smiled down at her, took her by her shoulders and said he understood; that it was okay, that everybody has bad days and that he hoped she’d give Alaska serious thought.
She scolded herself to be careful—to take it slow—but as Bart walked away she could still imagine his gray eyes and gentle smile, feel his strong hands and taste his kiss. “Bart, wait,” she called out.
Bart stopped and turned. He shook his head as though he knew what she was about to say. “Not to worry, I’ll call tomorrow.”
“Promise?”
He smiled. “Promise. Now, get a good night’s sleep. It’ll do you good.”
The calm, kind manner in which he answered told her that he was a man of his word, that he had everything in order while she was spinning out of control; that he might be just right for her, that maybe they could be fugitives from society for a while. But Alaska? Why Alaska? And then she thought, Why not? Maybe he’s right. Maybe it would solve all her problems. Clear her mind. Cleanse her soul. Be an adventure. Be what she needed.
3
THE WOLF SET OUT ALONE with nothing to remind him of his origins and his crowded natal pack but the tracking collar he had worn ever since researchers from The Department of Fish and Game had drugged him with a dart shot from a helicopter, studied him and entered him on their capture data sheet as GW027, Gulkana wolf #27. He was recorded as a 105-pound, black and buff canis lupus, measuring six feet from the tip of his nose to the base of his tail. His age, based on the whiteness and slight wear of his teeth, was estimated at two years. But now, two months after his profile had been programmed into Fish and Game’s database in Anchorage, the file on GW027—nicknamed Daredevil by the wildlife biologists who had captured and eventually released him—was being closed out because the mortality sensor on his radio tracking collar indicated that, in all likelihood, GW027 had been killed.
Daredevil had begun his dispersal seventy miles northwest of the town of Gulkana and worked his way south, keeping the snow-covered peak of Mount Wrangell at his left shoulder. The afternoon he crossed Route Four near Glennallen would be the last time he would cross a road with the sun high above him. It was then that he learned to be wary of the trucks that carried fresh-hewn, sweet-smelling spruce and cedar logs south to Valdez and west to Anchorage, at first hearing the hissing and barking of airbrakes and then the report of a high-powered rifle as the gravel by his muzzle sprayed in front of him.
He leapt to the thick undercover, running from a second loud crack, covering ten yards with each bound; running and running to the edge of the Copper River where he splashed in its shallows until the water flowed above his long forelegs. There he stopped in a small, clear backwater, pricked his ears and worked his leathery black nostrils. Minutes passed before he was satisfied that danger was not following him or about him. He lowered his head and drank from the river and, when his heart had slowed to its normal rate, waded from the water and investigated an abandoned den that had been dug out of a low rise overlooking the river, its entrance littered with wolf scat and gnawed sticks and the bleached bones of beavers, snowshoe hares and caribou calves. He crawled to the back of the flea-infested shelter and crouched most of the night without sleep, watching and scenting for his mysterious new enemy.
TWO DAYS LATER, Daredevil worked his way southeast toward the town of Chitina and the junction of the Copper and Chitina Rivers when he was stopped by a curious scent. He stood hidden in a stand of spruces, searching, listening and scenting for trouble until the June sun slipped behind the mountains, throwing its soft nighttime glow across the lowland grasses and waving spikes of reddish-pink fireweed. He could not wait for darkness to continue his hunt, for this time of year darkness never came. He could only rely on the shadows of the low sun and his keen senses of hearing and smell. He dropped his body flat to the ground and crawled into the open, stopping every few yards and raising his head. Finally, he stood, the fresh scent still beckoning. He sensed no danger.
He crept through the tall grass when suddenly something foreign to him clenched his right foreleg