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“We’ll get through this, Amelia. We’ll find our way and we’ll be happy.”
She laughed quietly. “I may be crazy, but I believe you. Fated mates, huh?”
“Yep. How else would you explain it?”
“Do me one favor,” she said, fear rearing its ugly head. “Don’t promise what you don’t mean to deliver. If this is just for the duration of whatever it is that’s going on, I can be okay with that.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Amelia. Not without you.”
She nodded, not totally convinced, but wanting to believe. She snuggled down and pulled the covers up over them both. They woke and made love twice more. Amelia worried that a long trek on a couple of snowmobiles was not going to be fun, but she’d do it and offer him no complaint. Being with Carson, being held by him… making love with him… it was worth it.
The morning dawned bright and clear, and the cabin was lit by the sun streaming through the windows. She reached for Carson, but he wasn’t there. His side of the bed was cold. She looked toward the kitchen. No Carson. She looked in the bath. No Carson. She ran to the bed, intending to pick up the sweater she’d had on, but it wasn’t there, nor were his jeans. She looked at the front door and noticed his boots were missing. She pulled open a drawer and grabbed a pair of sweatpants and a tee shirt. She ran to the front door and flung it open. No Carson.
She was alone.
CHAPTER14
CARSON
Amelia was sleeping so soundly he couldn’t bring himself to wake her. Besides, she needed to rest and to wake her would be to invite an argument Carson wasn’t sure he could win. If someone had gone to the trouble to hire a bush pilot to make a dead drop, the information in that package had to be important. Given that it was in an area populated almost exclusively by shifters meant it needed to be retrieved.
Three times they’d made love the night before. He had yet to introduce her to the exquisite, pleasured pain of his barbs, but that would come in time. Carson was still in awe of how well she seemed to have accepted that she was no longer human, at least not wholly. It shouldn’t really surprise him—not because she had no other choice, but because she had recognized his sincerity in the fact that he’d had no other choice, and Amelia was immensely practical. He was going to count on that to be able to reason with her anger upon his return, and he had no doubt there would be anger to spare.
Carson and Mason had learned to SCUBA together in their teens. They had dived into the lake in which Amelia’s plane now rested more than once. It was not an easy dive and had claimed the life of more than one unsuspecting diver. Most people considered freshwater dives to be safer, but that wasn’t necessarily true. Low visibility and extreme cold could be just as deadly as a great white shark, and often killed with a threat not as easily recognized.
The lake had been formed in the same way as many others in the ‘Ring of Fire’—a string of volcanic mountain ranges that formed an arc that included Alaska. The lake had been born from the violent eruption of the volcano that had once stood there. It had blown, belching fire and rock before collapsing into a caldera, which over thousands of years had filled to become a deep lake of extreme temperature and low visibility.
He knew that Mason kept diving suits, tanks and other necessary diving gear in the same small hangar at the abandoned landing strip that he did the snowmobiles and SUVs. Carson’s plan was to shift and get to the gear, load what he needed onto a snowmobile, get to the lake and retrieve that package. It sounded simple enough, but Carson wasn’t so naive as to believe it would be that easy.
For one thing it was difficult to know how deep the plane had sunk or at what angle it might be. The lake had seen its share of debris from avalanches and landslides. Carson hoped the damn thing wasn’t sitting at the bottom of the lake upside down. If luck was with him, it would be in a vertical position, tail down, but he’d be happy if it was just vertical.
Carson thought about digging out the snowmobile that was in the outbuilding at the cabin, but he wanted to have two snowmobiles for them to use. They could carry more supplies and make better time. Calling forth his snow leopard, he bounded away from the cabin, intent on making it to the lake before nightfall. He didn’t believe he could make it to the hangar, collect what he needed, get to the lake, retrieve the package, and make it back to the cabin in one day. That wasn’t necessarily true. He might, if luck was with him and he pushed, be able to do it in a twenty-four hour period, but it would mean completing the journey in the dark after a very long day. The promise of being reunited with his mate would make the additional effort worth it.
Several hours later he was galloping along and heard a plane overhead. Keeping to the tree line and knowing his spotted coat would camouflage him and make him difficult to spot, he looked up to watch the plane. The plane seemed to be flying in a search grid pattern. Who was it looking for? Him? Amelia? Mason? All of them? There was no way to know, and it didn’t really matter. Knowing someone was looking for one or all of them meant he had to push. He thought briefly about turning back, but he wanted that second snowmobile and if he was that close, it would be foolish not to try for the package.
One of his concerns was who had hired Amelia in the first place. Whose side were they on? He wanted desperately to believe it had been someone who opposed the Shadow League and was trying to get vital information to others who opposed them. Even in Iceland he’d heard rumors about a growing resistance group forming in the wilds of Alaska. Given what he’d learned from Zach and Deke, he suspected that was either Otter Cove or Mystic River. As Mystic River was on Kodiak Island, that would be his pick. One thing was for sure; before they turned over the package, they were going to be damn certain they knew who it was going to.
He arrived at the abandoned landing strip, shifted, and pulled on the dive suit. Loading the snowmobile with other supplies they might need, he made short work of reaching the lake. He parked the snowmobile where it wouldn’t be easily spotted. The plane he’d seen earlier hadn’t appeared to be searching the lake area, but there was reason to be cautious. He walked to the lake’s edge, pulled on his fins and the hood of the suit and donned his goggles. Taking a deep breath, he walked into the water, hoping the suit would keep him warm enough to get the package and get out.
Diving down, he used a handheld underwater flashlight to try and illuminate the murky waters. The deeper he dove, the quieter the watery world around him became. The only real sound was that which the SCUBA gear made. He smiled as the bubbles it released made their way to the surface. As Jimmy Buffet had sung, ‘bubbles up.’ There was a kind of comfort in knowing you could count on some things.
Up ahead, a looming figure stood as if at attention. The plane had settled at a submerged degree and perhaps even a ledge formed within the caldera, but it was vertical. Reaching it, he was glad he hadn’t closed the passenger door. Opening it at this depth would have been difficult. This way he didn’t have to try to wriggle inside via the destroyed windshield or one of the side windows. It was a tight fit, but he made it inside, and the plane seemed stable.
Not trusting it to remain that way, Carson made his way to the pilot’s seat and found the intact, watertight container right where Amelia had said it would be. Securing the package, he made his way back to the outside of the plane. He paused, using the flashlight to search the surrounding area as he listened for anything other than his own breathing apparatus.
Putting a safe distance between himself and the plane, he completed a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree tour of the outside of the plane, looking carefully at the ruptured hull until he spotted a small diameter hose that he didn’t think had any reason to be there. It disappeared into the internal structure of the plane, but following a hunch, he moved back to the crumpled nose of the aircraft. Sure enough, it appeared that the hose was feeding something into the plane’s engine. He couldn’t be absolutely sure, but Carson guessed that Amelia’s plane had been sabotaged. He could easily see that if someone hadn’t been looking for it, it could have been missed. Even more of a reason to return to the cabin as quickly as he could.
Giving the plane a wide berth, Carson found his bearings by watching the bubbles and then slowly began kicking his fins to take him back to the surface. Once he was just beneath it, he swam underwater to the edge closest to the snowmobile. He had a polar expedition suit to change into so tearing the diving suit was no longer an issue. He climbed out of the water, removed his mask and fins and made his way to the snowmobile. He shimmied out of the diving suit and got into the warm, dry expedition suit and boots, drying off his hair before pulling the hood up and securing it with a ski hat.
He thought about just leaving the diving gear where he’d removed it but thought better of it. Instead, he rolled a good-sized boulder to one side, used the small shovel he’d secured to the snowmobile, dug a hole, and stuffed the diving gear into it, burying it and then rolling the rock back in place. He used his gloved hands and the shovel to try and disguise that anything had happened here. Food for game was scarce, he left some dried meat and fruits around the area, hoping to attract animals whose tracks might cover the traces of his having hidden something.
Gunning the engine, he raced the snowmobile across the open ground toward the trees. Once he was out of sight, he paused and readjusted the load to be more equally balanced. Mounting the snowmobile, he headed toward the cabin. It would be past midnight when he arrived, but at least he would only have left her alone less than a single day—not that he thought that would do much to improve her temper at being left alone. He would need to explain that as he had always planned to return to her, he had not violated his promise.
He split his focus from the trail to get him back to the cabin and all the questions that might be answered by the contents of the pouch. He had left the watertight container in the hole with the diving equipment, but the sealed leather pouch was tucked safely into the saddlebags.
He would need to rest before they continued on, but he couldn’t wait to get it to its rightful owner and see what it was. He would enlist Amelia’s aid in getting them ready. He would dig out the shelter and make a path so she could take what supplies they needed to the outbuilding while he grabbed a few hours’ sleep.
Once he had rested, they would ready themselves and the snowmobiles and head toward Otter Cove. He would have Amelia try the shortwave radio again. It would help to know if the person was friend or foe and if the former, that they had an ally who could give them shelter. He trusted in Deke’s reputation not to betray them, but he had no inkling about the sheriff of Otter Cove. Maybe it would be safer to bypass Otter Cove and try to get to Mystic River. And do what? He didn’t know anybody at all in the small village on Kodiak Island.
