Her ears were ringing from the cold by the time she went back in to warm up. Blowing on her hands, which felt like blocks of ice, she checked the front window. Still no sign of the men, and the sky was growing ever darker.
They were in for a big one. She could feel it in her bones. When they’d been gathering up all the gear they needed for the hunt, the locals in Anchorage had told them that winter was coming early this year and to be careful. They’d mentioned having their “termination dust,” or the first snowstorm signaling the end of the summer working season, on the tenth of September, an entire month before it usually came. She hoped her brother was thinking about that right now and getting himself back to the truck …
“What should I do?” she asked herself. She got out all the food, water and candles they had left, in case the generator failed or they ran out of propane, and set it on the counter. There wasn’t a lot, but they could stretch their supplies for a day or two.
Maybe the storm would blow over quickly.
Either way, they’d need more wood. So how would she get it?
She’d have to break the shed door.
She went back out to the shed, where she shoved, pulled and yanked, even rammed her shoulder into the panel, hoping to make the latch give way. But it was too sturdy; she didn’t have the strength. She was walking around the small building, looking for any loose boards she might be able to pry away, when she remembered the ax hanging on the wall of the mudroom.
Although she’d been hoping to keep any damage to a minimum, she’d exhausted her other options. It wasn’t her fault they hadn’t been given the correct combination to the lock! That wood could be a matter of life and death; in her mind, she had every right to go after it.
Once she got the ax and returned, she swung it as hard as she could. The wind was nearly blowing her down, so it wasn’t easy to wield such a heavy object, especially since she’d never used one before. The blade landed with a satisfying thwack, but the metal head bit so deep, she broke several fingernails trying to get it out, and she still couldn’t manage.
For a moment she feared that would be the end of this idea. But after considerable effort, she managed to dislodge it. Then she swung again and again, until she’d completely destroyed the door.
If the storm didn’t turn out to be a bad one and she was doing this for nothing, her brother wouldn’t be happy if they got stuck paying for the damage. But she wasn’t willing to take the chance of freezing to death when there was wood in this shed.
Once she formed a hole large enough to step through, she dropped the ax and went inside. The sunlight, already nearly obliterated by the roiling clouds outside, could scarcely penetrate the cracks between the slats. Even the big opening she’d made afforded almost no light. But she found wood. Plenty of it. Although she could barely make out the dimly lit pile, she could smell the sap.
“Thank God.” Relief swept through her as she bent to pick up an armful. It wasn’t until she stood and turned to go that she glanced anywhere else, but when she did she saw a shape that caused her to scream and drop the logs she’d gathered.
She wasn’t alone. Unless her eyes deceived her, someone else was curled up in the corner—naked.
*
“Are you sure you want a baby?”
Now that the doctor had finished her pelvic exam, Evelyn Talbot sat up and straightened the lap covering she’d been given, along with the paper gown she was wearing. She and her boyfriend, Amarok, a nickname that meant “wolf” in the language of the native Inuit people around whom he’d grown up, had been sleeping together without birth control for the past eight months. Yet nothing had come of it. She was beginning to think nothing ever would. “I’m approaching forty, Dr. Fielding. If I’m going to have a child, it should happen soon, wouldn’t you say?”
He peeled off his latex gloves. “I agree with you from a timing standpoint.”
“But … I’m not physically capable? Is that what you’re saying?” During the hour-long drive from Hilltop, where she both lived and worked, she’d worried about the news she might get today. She hadn’t even told Amarok she’d made this appointment. If she couldn’t have kids, she wanted a chance to absorb the blow before having that talk with him. He knew about her back ground, understood there was a possibility she might be sterile, of course. Since she’d been kidnapped and tortured—by her own boyfriend—when she was only sixteen, she hadn’t had regular periods. But she and Amarok had been holding out hope that she might be able to conceive in spite of that. The doctors she’d seen before leaving Boston had indicated children were still a possibility.
“There’s some scar tissue from … from before.” He stepped on the pedal that opened the trash can and tossed his gloves inside. “It could cause problems.”
She let her breath seep out. “You don’t sound optimistic.”
He rested a hand on the counter. “I wouldn’t go that far, Dr. Talbot. You went through medical school before becoming a psychiatrist. You know human bodies are amazingly resilient, sometimes more resilient than human minds.”
“You could make a case for that in certain situations,” she agreed.
“Your body seems to have healed well.”
Given his reticent manner, she felt a moment’s confusion. “That’s good, isn’t it?”
“Perhaps. But may I speak frankly?”
“Of course.”
“I admit I wouldn’t have this conversation with just any patient. It might be going too far, even for someone I consider a colleague of sorts. But I respect who you are, what you’ve been through and what you’ve done as a result. So I’d advise you to think carefully about this. You study—interact with—psychopaths on a daily basis. From what I heard and saw of you on TV when you were lobbying for Hanover House to be built a few years ago, you’re incredibly dedicated to your work.”
“I am. There’s no question about that.” She had to be. Psychopathy was on the rise. Someone had to figure out why—and how to stop those who preyed on the innocent. After what she’d endured, she’d made it her life’s work.
“You’re still that committed?” he asked. “Even after so many close calls?”
She assumed he was talking primarily about what had happened with Lyman Bishop last winter, since that incident had been highly publicized in Alaska. “What happened with Bishop won’t happen again. He had a brain hemorrhage while he was in the hospital trying to recover from … that night. These days he’s in an institution. He can hardly speak.”
“But you deal with hundreds of psychopaths, many of them extremely dangerous. Men who kill for pleasure. There could be another Lyman Bishop.”
Or Jasper Moore could show up. Fielding didn’t mention that, but she was always wondering when her former boyfriend might strike again.
“You’re a bright, well-educated, attractive woman, and an authority figure, in a prison with an entirely male population—”
“A lot of people become infatuated with their doctor, preacher, teacher, et cetera,” she broke in. “That’s not unusual, even outside prison. Granted, with the men I study, it’d be more of a fixation than a true infatuation. But I’m well aware of the dynamic.”