In the Barren Ground by Loreth Anne White Read Free Book Online

lake, strangling lights with ghostly halos.
    She gave a thumbs-up sign, got to her feet, hurried over. Strapping her last bag onto the quad, she removed her muskrat hat, tucked it down the front of her jacket, and donned the helmet and goggles Van Bleek had left on her seat. He’d also left the engine warming for her.
    He pulled out ahead of her quad, his headlights bouncing off fog. “Stay right up my ass,” he yelled. “Some tricky navigational shit ahead.”
    They trundled toward the black lake, mist swallowing them. Something made Tana glance back over her shoulder.
    O’Halloran was standing like a ghostly silhouette against the brightly lit maw of the hangar. Hands in pockets. Just watching her.
    Unease feathered into her chest.

    Crash watched the young Constable Tana Larsson disappearing into the fog with Van Bleek and a dark, inky feeling sank through him. With it came tension. Resentment. A strange sense of time running out.
    Van Bleek was dangerous, depending on who was asking, and who was paying. But so far as Crash knew, if his information was correct, the cop should be safe alone with him in the wilderness, at least for tonight. And as long as she wasn’t stepping into Van Bleek’s scummy pond.
    He swore, spun around, and marched back to his plane. Last thing he wanted—needed—was to worry about some rookie cop’s little ass.
    He was long done worrying about people.
    Besides, she was a law enforcement officer. It was her choice. She needed to handle the work that came with the territory. And yeah, sometimes cops lost. And got killed.
    Part of the job.
    Not his problem.

CHAPTER 5
    Tana picked her way carefully up the slick incline that led to the esker’s south ridge. Her breath rasped in her chest and it billowed like smoke in the glow of her headlamp. Temperatures had been falling steadily as she’d followed Van Bleek’s ATV into the silent maw of Headless Man Valley. And they continued to drop as she stepped gingerly into the boot prints left by Van Bleek as he hiked ahead of her through the snow-covered boulders like a silent Cyclopean monster with his head-mounted spotlight leading the way.
    A cliff loomed somewhere in the fog to her right. She couldn’t see it, but felt its skulking presence.
    Despite the cold, sweat pearled and trickled between her breasts. Her pack was heavy. Her regulation flak vest underneath her down jacket, secured tightly with Velcro strips, did not offer good breathability. It had a dense, claylike consistency, and with each step up the hill it pinched the flesh between the bottom edge of the jacket and her gun belt where her stomach was growing chunky. The vest alone added an extra five to ten pounds to the overall weight she was lugging. She’d been fatigued and feeling off-color to start with.
    They’d abandoned the quads down along the shoreline when the trail had narrowed and grown too steep to negotiate with wheels. According to her Garmin, they should be reaching the top of the esker ridge any moment now. From there they should be able to see down into a valley that lay at the base of a cliff where the bodies had been found.
    She stilled suddenly as her hairs prickled up the back of her neck.
    Something was off.
    Then she heard it. A faint, rising howl. Distant. She listened as it rose into the primordial darkness. It was joined by others, escalating in a crescendo. A sound so wild, so haunting, it never failed to ripple chills over Tana’s skin. Especially now, thinking of what they were eating out there. Her pulse quickened as the howls were answered by several yips, then a long, drawn-out moan from the opposite direction. She felt as if they were surrounded by wolves out there in the dark somewhere.
    Van Bleek, up ahead, also stilled to listen.
    “Must be another pack or two, coming in for the kill,” he called down to her.
    Tana turned in a slow circle, her headlight making shadows leap and snowflakes attack out of the dark. There was something else