Stabenow, Dana - Shugak 09 - Hunter's Moon Read online

  Kate motioned at the trail. "Walk."

  Senta walked.

  EIGHTEEN.

  Leave her be.

  BY MORNING THE RAIN HAD STOPPED, THE FOG HAD VANished and the clouds had dissipated into the west and south, and hard on their heels came the sound of two engines. First a Super Cub landed, and then a helicopter.

  George had come back, finally, and he had brought Alaska state trooper Jim Chopin with him, brave and immaculate in his blue and gold.

  The first thing they saw was Old Sam, bloody but unbowed.

  "Took you long enough to get back," Old Sam said. "I suppose you both had a girl in Mccarthy who just couldn't wait?"

  The old man sat propped against the tire of a four wheeler, rifle held loosely in the crook of one arm. Two other people lay bundled into sleeping bags nearby. One was Demetri, the other Hubert. Both were unconscious but breathing.

  Senta and Berg had been duct taped to chairs from the lodge and were sitting next to each other. Berg had lost his glasses and messed in his pants, and the bandage wrapped around his middle was red and sodden.

  At the edge of the trees there was a fire, and at its side sat Kate, hair cropped, face and hands cut and bruised, shirt stained with blood gone brown with age. Her eyes were dark and staring, lacking soul or spirit. An endless, keening sound came from her throat as she rocked, back and forth, back and forth, cradling the lifeless body of her lover in her arms.

  Next to her on the bare patch of ground lay the great gray halfbreed, coat encrusted with blood, panting in short, labored breaths, raising her voice now and then in a frail accompaniment. One voice was strong, one weak, the two united in sorrow and rage and protest and lamentation.

  "Christ," Jim breathed.

  "Kate," George said, starting forward. "Kate, what happened? Let me--"

  "No," Jim said, holding up an arm to block his way.

  "Jim, come on, that's Jack. We've got to help, we can't--" "No," Jim said, voice as stony as his face.

  "Leave her be," Old Sam growled.

  Jim passed a shaking hand over his eyes and turned away as if he could no longer bear to look, which indeed he could not.

  The tuneless lament drifted up like smoke and hung there like a grieving wraith in the clear autumn air.

  It was a sound none of the men would ever forget, no matter how hard they tried.

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  Subscribe to Penguin Putnam News at http://www. penguinputnam. com/newsletters Dana Stabenow is the author of the Kate Shugak mystery series--A Cold Day for Murder, A Fatal Thaw, Dead in the Water, A

  Cold-Blooded Business, Play with Fire, Blood Will Tell, Breakup, and Killing Grounds-each of which brings to life a different aspect of the Alaska experience. She lives in Anchorage, Alaska.