As he approached the rear of the stockade, Harley could hear the cawing of crows and noticed that a pair of red hawks were circling lazily in the sky. If he could have avoided cutting through the colony again, he would have, but the wind on the cliffs was so strong—and his memories of the specter he’d seen there so fresh—he felt the risks were better just scuttling across the campground and out through the main gates. Despite the bitter cold, he was sweating inside his parka.
There were even more birds circling in the sky above the side of the old church, and a whole flock of them on the ground strutting and pecking around a spot close to a jagged hole in the foundation. A snowdrift had been blown up against one wall, but just as Harley crept past, the birds reluctantly took flight, and he could see that there was something lying there, mostly hidden under the crust of snow. It appeared that other animals had been burrowing into the drift, too, and he could see that the snow had a faintly pinkish cast … and that what he’d thought was a twig sticking up was actually the toe of a boot. He moved a little closer, and with the tips of his glove brushed some snow away. He didn’t need to see anything more than the torn shreds of a propane company work shirt to know that these were the remains of Russell, and that the local critters had been heartily chowing down.
Just as the crabs had probably made the most of Eddie by now.
It wasn’t that he was completely heartless—after all, he’d known these guys a long time—but it couldn’t help but occur to him that whatever the diamonds in the icon were worth (and it had to be plenty), he’d now be splitting the money only two ways, instead of four. Charlie would probably claim it was all the hand of God at work.
Staying low to the ground, he hurried past the colony tents, through the main gates, and over to the side of the cliff. The mist that clung to St. Peter’s Island was lying a hundred yards offshore, but on the beach below he could still see the yellow RHI, firmly tied and clamped between makeshift davits made out of driftwood logs. It was just about the first piece of luck he’d had since this whole damn nightmare had begun, he thought.
The steps that some crazy Russian must have carved into the cliff a hundred years ago were only a few inches wide at most, and zigged and zagged their way down to the waterline. Even if he hadn’t been feeling peaked, the descent would have been a bitch. The wind, skirling off the Bering Strait, forced him to flatten himself against the rock and shimmy his way down, putting out one foot at a time and nudging it around until he had cleared the snow and scree—and sometimes the birds—from the lower perch, then gingerly placing his weight there. More than once, the birds came back, flitting around his head, defending their turf, but he didn’t even bother to bat them away. He needed both hands to cling to the slippery rock.
The backpack, even with its contents stripped down, was more of a burden than he expected, and the weight of it kept threatening to throw him off-balance. He tried to control his breathing and not to look down any more than he had to; if he panicked, he was a goner. His arms ached from embracing the rocky walls and his knees started to quiver from the strain, but eventually he could hear the waves sloshing on the sand and pebbles, and he could feel the ocean spray blowing onto his face. When the stone steps gave out, and he felt his boots crunching on the hardscrabble beach, he collapsed in a heap, his head down, his hands splayed on either side.
Never again, he told himself, never again was he going to get involved in something this stupid.
Still conserving what little strength was left in his legs, he crawled, breathing heavily, across the gravel and sand. The fog had drifted in, which was going to make it that much harder to steer a course through the rocks and shoals that rimmed the shoreline. But then that figured—this island had been bad luck from start to finish, and he couldn’t wait to get off it.
Slapping a hand on the firmly inflated side of the RHI, he hoisted himself up onto his knees, enough to groggily assess the craft. A waterproof and heavy-duty black tarp had been tightly sealed across the interior, but as he fumbled at the snaps and knots that kept it in place, he had the discomfiting feeling that there was something under it. Once or twice, under the rumble of the crashing waves, he thought he heard a furtive noise, the sound of something scuttling for cover. He shook his head, trying to clear his thoughts, and focused on loosening the rest of the stays. Once, he even thought he heard the crunch of a boot on the sand behind him, and whirled around groping for his gun, but all he saw was a rolling column of fog … and no one in it.
Eddie was gone, he reminded himself. Splattered on the rocks on the other side of the damn island.
And Russell … well, Russell was just that lump under the snowdrift.
He untied the last of the straps holding the tarp down, and yanked it back.
Two startled eyes were staring back at him, and before he could even register his shock, the creature flew past him, a blaze of wet brown fur and black claws.