Somebody's Secrets Read online

  “I don’t know, Elizabeth,” he said somberly. “I don’t know.”

  Chapter 5

  (Over the Tongass National Forest, somewhere. Present day. Almost Tuesday.)

  Dace didn’t know where she was. She regained consciousness to the loud sounds of a rotary motor. She was lying on the floor, her hands tied behind her back. She stayed still. She was used to being prey with large predators around. Stillness was always her only defense. Her head hurt and her arms were protesting being cuffed, but other than that she was fine. Except that she didn’t know where she was. It didn’t sound like a plane. A boat? No, there was no rocking from waves. She thought about what had happened, and it came to her. She was on a helicopter. Where were they taking her? Taking them, she assumed.

  Without moving, she opened her eyes. It was dark in the helicopter, but as her eyes adjusted, she could see two other lumps on the floor — Paul and Jonas? They seemed to be still unconscious. Probably got whacked on the head harder than she did, she guessed. What she could see of the helicopter indicated it was a large one, without any amenities. Military? Government, for sure. Where would their attackers get a military helicopter?

  She could just make out two men sitting on the jump seat behind Paul and Jonas. Including the two she assumed were up front, that made four abductors. Better odds than at the police station. But the odds weren’t going to do them any good if the Kitka brothers stayed unconscious.

  She felt the sound of the helicopter blades change. Going down, she decided. They must be setting down somewhere. Were they just going to dump them? Why go to all this trouble? If they were going to kill them, why haul them out into the wilderness first? She’d seen some of the Tongass National Forest when she’d flown in. Rugged mountain terrain where only mountain goats could go. Snow-tipped peaks and forests of spruce and fir covered slopes that looked steep, almost straight up. No easy trails there. Some of that land had never been seen by mankind. Dropping them there would be a death sentence.

  She felt the helicopter touch down. The pilot didn’t turn it off. Instead, the two men in the back jumped up and opened the side door. They grabbed Paul and Jonas and dumped them on the ground. Neither moved. One of the men came back for Dace. She stayed still and limp.

  “This isn’t right,” the young man muttered as he hoisted her up. “I know you’re faking it, so listen up. I’m going to cut your bonds loose and then drop my knife nearby. Wish I could do more, but that’s not going to be possible. They might leave me here, too, and then where would we be?” He grunted a bit as he brought her out of the copter. “There wasn’t supposed to be innocents involved. Most certainly not a woman. Just a cop killer and the man who broke him out of jail. Just justice. Mike said he’d get off because he’s Native. Can’t let cop killers go free.”

  Dace wanted to argue with him about the breaking out of jail bit, but wisdom kept her mouth shut. He carried her over and set her carefully on the ground. She felt the ropes on her hands give, and then he was walking away.

  “Let’s go,” shouted the pilot. “Got to be back by sunrise!” The others ran at the helicopter, jumping in as he lifted off. Dace waited until the sounds faded away before she moved.

  Her hands were free, and the knife was right there just as the man promised. She sliced through the ropes on her feet. A good knife, she thought with approval. A nice six-inch blade. Sharp. She struggled to her feet, made her way over to the two men, knelt between them, and began working on their ropes. Paul groaned when his hands came free. He opened his eyes.

  “You OK?” she asked, while cutting the ropes binding his feet.

  He stretched and rotated his shoulders. “Head hurts,” he said briefly. “You?”

  “They didn’t hit me as hard as they did you two,” she said as the last rope fell away. She turned to Jonas. He was also beginning to move. She touched his shoulder gently.

  “Hold still,” she said, her voice soothing. He quieted under her touch, and she sliced through the rope at his wrists. She really did like this knife, she thought. She cut his feet loose.

  Paul was up and moving around when she turned back to check on him. Jonas sat up, rubbing his wrists and then his ankles where the ropes had been bound. Dace sat quietly watching them both.

  Paul broke the silence. “Well? Jonas, do you have any idea where we are?”

  Jonas snorted. “Somewhere in the Tongass. Not that it matters.”

  “What’s that mean?” Paul asked.

  Jonas rolled his shoulders. “It’s April. We have no coats, no gear, no food, no water. No weapons.”

  He looked around. It was all rock and lichen. “We’re above the tree line — mountain goats live up here, not much else. They can eat the lichen for water. We’re not going to be able to do that. We’ve got hours to walk before we even get to the tree zone. Maybe we’ll last one night, maybe two. But we’re not going to walk out of this one.”

  “Gotta try,” Paul said. “Can’t just sit here and wait for a bear to come by.”

  Jonas laughed, nodded in agreement. “Yeah, we’re not even likely to see bear up this high. But even once we’re into the trees, we still have to make it to the shore. Do you know how many miles of shore there are? Eleven thousand miles. We may not even be on Baranof Island. Chances aren’t good that anyone will find us.”

  “Will they even know where to begin looking?” Dace asked. What had he said? Eleven thousand miles of coastline? That seemed impossible.

  “Mom will be tearing up that town,” Paul said. “She’ll have a search underway.”

  “But will they be on our side if they find us?” Dace asked. She held up the knife. “The guy who carried me out of the helicopter said he hadn’t signed up for something involving innocents. Just a cop killer and the man who was breaking him out of jail.”

  Paul grunted. “So that’s the story they’re using.”

  “He mentioned someone named Mike,” Dace added.

  Jonas sighed. “That figures. Mike Anderson. That’s the asshole who was giving us shit at the jail. He was Coast Guard until last year. Mustered out here and got married — married the Police Chief’s daughter — and went to work as a patrol officer. Those were Coasties who grabbed us. Just doing Mike a favor.”

  “So even if someone does find us, we don’t know if they’re going to help us or put a bullet in our brains,” Paul finished.

  “That about sums it up,” Jonas agreed.

  Dace sighed. The three of them sat silently, shoulders touching, waiting for the sun to come up. Sunup was at 4:30 a.m. this time of the year. When the sun finally rose, she gasped at the sight revealed. Jonas wasn’t lying about where they were. They were high up, sitting on a rock escarpment, and she could see for miles. It was stunning. But it didn’t inspire her to want to move. Moving looked dangerous. How had they even put a helicopter down here? How did they know this was here?

  All questions that would wait, she told herself.

  And at least it wasn’t raining, Dace thought, although she knew the rain would come sooner than later. Actually, if she had to play Robinson Crusoe, she couldn’t ask for two better companions. After all, this was what Jonas did for a living — with a bit more gear — and Paul could always be counted on when things were tough. She just hoped she wouldn’t drag them down. She determined to keep up, no matter what. At least she was dressed for it — jeans, a sweatshirt under a jacket, and good boots. It was what she always wore, and it wasn’t much different than what Paul had on. Jonas was missing a coat. That was going to be a problem soon.

  As the sunlight brightened the rocky clearing, Jonas was laying out some sticks and measuring angles. Dace looked on curiously.

  “He’s trying to get a better sense of direction,” Paul explained, watching him. “I mean, sun rises in the east, right? But not really. More the southeast. It changes with the seasons.”

  “So, we don’t just put the sun to our backs and head downhill?” she said, smiling.

  “Well, close. Bu
t it would be nice to know which hill to head down.” Paul added, “A GPS unit would be nice about now.”

  “How about an emergency beacon, while we’re at it?” Dace said.

  Jonas sat down beside them. “Well, I have a direction,” he said. “I’m not sure what do with it.”

  Paul raised one eyebrow.

  Jonas pointed to the rock-crevassed mountain that towered in front of them. “That’s west.”

  They stared at the mountain. “Well we aren’t going over that,” Paul said. “So what’s Plan B? And...Do we have a Plan B?”

  Jonas snorted. “Well, we don’t have to get to the coastline facing the ocean, just any coastline for a start. So, I suggest we head due east and keep that peak to our back. The good news is I think I know that peak. If it’s the one I think it is, we’re about 200 miles north, northeast of Sitka. Does that seem possible? Could we have been in the air for three hours?”

  “Must have been close to that,” Paul said, calculating it out. “We got to the jail at midnight. We were here maybe 40 minutes before sunup. “

  Jonas nodded. “The irony, then, is that if we make it down to the shore, we’re going to be close to where I came out last Friday, and close to where Petras went missing. Coincidence?”

  “I don’t believe in coincidence,” Paul said. “But I have no clue what it means.”

  “How did the Coasties even know enough about this place to land here?” Dace asked, using Jonas’s term for the young men.

  “Part of what they do,” Jonas replied. “They fly out, look around. And being young guys, they like to buzz mountain goats. Hence they’ve seen places like this a lot.”

  Dace looked at Paul to see if Jonas was joking. He half-laughed and shrugged. Dace took that to mean that he didn’t think Jonas was wrong about what 20-something men did when they were told to surveil the coastline.

  “Although,” Paul said, “coincidence again?”

  Jonas just nodded, and then he looked at Dace. “You look reasonably fit,” he observed. “And you’ve got decent boots. You’re going to set the pace, ‘cause if you get too tired or you fall because we’re going too fast, then we’re all in trouble. Don’t be too proud. If you need a rest or you need a break, say so. If you need to go slower, speak up. We’re not trying to set a speed record, here.”

  Dace nodded, although she knew that the fewer nights they spent out here the better their chances of making it.

  “How far to the shoreline if we’re where you think we are?” she asked.

  Jonas looked at the peak and then consulted some inner source. He sighed. “It took me three days to hike out from the area that they dropped me last week. And the peak is a good deal closer now than it was then. It may take us two-three days of pretty hard hiking.”

  He shrugged. “Then again, maybe not. It’s not like an island is a uniform shape. I can tell you it’s going to be a steep downhill trek.”

  Silence. “Do you think we should make for the lake and your original camp site?” Paul asked.

  Jonas thought that over. “Maybe. When we get closer, I’ll see if I can locate it. But the shoreline’s a big target. My camp isn’t. If I had GPS,” he trailed off with a shrug.

  “What did people do before GPS?” Paul asked as he got up. He held out a hand and pulled Dace to her feet.

  “Well they didn’t get dumped out of helicopters 200 miles from home, for one thing,” Jonas said as he took one last look at the mountain peak and then set out in the opposite direction. Dace followed him, and Paul brought up the rear.

  Paul worried. Mostly he worried about the woman walking in front of him with her hair still in a braid — although messier than he’d ever seen it — that bounced against her back as she walked. This was no hike like she’d ever done. He knew she was fit — she hiked around Talkeetna a lot. But there was no trail here.

  He wished he had a rope.

  The downward climb was slow. Jonas was doing a good job of picking his way down, avoiding the slick lichen-covered rock for the crevices that allowed them to use hands and feet to move slowly down the mountain. But the footing was still treacherous with shale that could slide out from under your feet when least expected.

  “Slow down a bit, Jonas,” he warned. Jonas didn’t reply, but he stopped. Looked around. Dace leaned against a boulder to catch her breath. She rubbed her calves to get rid of the cramps.

  Paul met Jonas’s eyes. He nodded. Slower. They would need to go slower. Paul looked down the slope, estimating — guesstimating really — and decided it would take them most of the day to get to the tree line. And then what?

  He was thirsty. Dace didn’t complain — she never complained — but she had to be thirsty too. Thank God for that big meal they’d had for supper. It was going to have to last them for a while yet. But it was water that worried him.

  Apparently, it worried Jonas too. He scraped up some of the lichen off the large boulders and handed it to Dace. “Chew it slowly,” he said. “It’s loaded with water. It’s what the goats live on.”

  She did as she was told, grimacing a bit at the taste. “Will we see mountain goats?” she asked eagerly.

  “If we look up instead of at our feet? Maybe. But they’re shy,” he said. “We’d need binoculars if we wanted to spot them.”

  Dace looked around. The large boulders were covered with the green film of lichen. Warped spruce grew in the crevices, slowly creating soil pockets out of solid basalt. “You’d think they’d find a more hospitable environment,” she said.

  “It’s amazing how animals — and plants — adapt to places,” Jonas agreed. “It’s an endless cycle. Fewer predators up this high. They adapt to a place, then they change the place to be more hospitable.”

  Dace nodded. She pushed herself away from the boulder she’d been leaning against. “OK, let’s find our more hospitable place,” she said.

  Later, Paul touched Dace’s shoulder gently. When she looked back at him, he pointed. A mountain goat with two young ones still wobbly on their feet were poised on a rock outcropping above them. Dace grinned and gave a thumbs up. Then she started her careful slide, half-glissade, half traverse, down the steep rock face.

  By the time they hit the old growth forest, Dace’s thighs burned, and her calves were spasming. She knew she needed water. And a flat trail. She stopped just above the grove of spruce and hemlock and looked back the way they’d come.

  “My God,” she said hoarsely.

  Jonas looked at her and grinned. “Wasn’t sure you’d be able to do it,” he said, and tapped his hand against her shoulder. “Wasn’t sure any of us could.”

  Paul grunted. “Speak for yourself,” he said. And then grinned.

  An eagle glided across the horizon. Another. Dace followed their path to a tall broken tree, dead and damaged in some storm, where the mating pair had built a nest. She smiled and sighed. She saw eagles around Talkeetna, but they never failed to amaze her. She took one last look at the rock face they’d spent the day coming down then turned toward the dark forest ahead.

  “Water?” She asked hopefully.

  The underbrush was heavy, and the footing could be treacherous. Hell, it had been a long time since he’d tried hiking in something this — Paul searched for the right word — primeval? It would do. Untouched by humans. Not even a goat trail. He’d like a goat or deer trail right now — it would lead them to water. Neither he nor Jonas had brought it up, but water was going to be a real concern. The undergrowth was wet, the ground damp, but that would be hard to convert to drinkable water.

  Undergrowth. He snorted. That word implied some shrubs at the feet of majestic pines. In reality? These trees were huge, not just in height but in girth. Many, if not most, he would not be able to get his arms around. Some, the three of them wouldn’t be able to circle together.

  There were downed trees, killed by lightning or storms, covered with slippery moss that made climbing over them treacherous. They were in various stages of decay, so that a log migh
t appear to be solid was actually only a shell of a tree. Jonas crashed through one of those, buried nearly to his hips in wet, decaying cedar, and had to be pulled out.

  Dead limbs fell on top of each other, created treacherous pockets as good as any snare Paul had ever set. Step in one, sink to your ankle, and it could hold you fast until you pried your leg free. He was already limping from one such encounter. Dace had been light enough to walk over it, or maybe she was just lucky in where she stepped. He had crashed through it, and now he was limping. Bleeding, he was afraid. Leaving blood scent was not good, but there was nothing he could do about it.

  Huckleberry, salmonberry, Oregon grape mingled with plants with names like Devil’s Club and poison ivy. They slapped back as you pushed through, or at the person behind you. Dace was shorter than he was, and she ducked under limbs that then smacked him in the face.

  There was nothing soft about getting hit in the face with Sitka spruce needles.

  It was beautiful but it was deadly.

  For the first time in a very long time, Paul was glad his brother was along and taking charge. Jonas had grown up while he wasn’t looking, he thought with some amusement. And this was his environment. If anyone could survive out here with nothing but a knife, it would be Jonas Kitka. And Paul knew without having to say it that Jonas would see to it that he and Dace survived as well or die trying. Both of them had that protective instinct. They were raised to have it.

  It brought back memories to be out here. He remembered his father and grandfather taking them out with their cousins. Learning to hunt, to find their way in the land, to fish. Learning more than that — how to be men. Men of the tribe. And taking care of the younger, the weaker, and the women was a part of that. A strong man used his strength to protect. He could hear his father say that. He’d said it a lot, especially to Paul who needed to protect his younger siblings.

  Funny. He hadn’t thought about his father except as a drunk in years. Mostly he tried not to think about his youth at all. But now he knew he needed those lessons. If they were to survive out here, he needed to remember.