The main room of the Visitors Center was at least thirty by forty feet. Tall picture windows gave onto a view of Washington Harbor. To the west side of the windows was a skeleton of a mature moose, reassembled and displayed in a glass box. Beside it, trapped in an eternal howl to a mate long dead, was a wolf preserved by the art of taxidermy.
Anna’d seen the displays the first day when she’d looked in the windows. That she could see them now surprised her. Above the level of the trees, the white of the harbor ice and the white of the sky cast a faint silvery light.
“Is anybody there?” Bob’s voice emanated from the offices on the opposite side of the building. He didn’t sound particularly panicked for a man who had been hollering for help moments before. Anna said nothing. Dead, cold air settled more firmly around her.
A minute passed, two: he didn’t call again and didn’t come out. She started across the hardwood floor. Ski-pant legs whistled together, big boots creaked and snuffled.
“Who’s there?” Bob called.
Yeti didn’t sneak, she thought sourly as a beam of yellow light raked down the hall and shot by her.
Anna switched on her light. “Anna Pigeon,” she said, and Bob’s beam blinded her. “Get that damn light out of my eyes. What’s the problem? What are you hollering about?”
The instant he moved his light from her face, she aimed her flashlight at his. His eyes were bright, virtually twinkling, and his skin had a rosy glow. His balaclava was crunched down around his neck, but the hood of his parka was up as if he’d dressed for the cold in a hurry. With those jowls, it couldn’t have been comfortable.
“You look fine to me,” Anna said. A groan and a thump came from down the hall.
“It’s not me; it’s Robin,” Bob said.
Sick fear washed through Anna on a wave of nausea. “Lead me to her,” she said. Bob started to speak, but she cut him off: “Now.” The flashlight beam on his back, she followed him down the short hallway. Years of experience and training told her she should have listened to what he had to say, but Bob managed to tap directly into a deep vein of irritation.
“What happened?” she meant to ask, but it was a demand.
“Robin’s been pretty upset since Katherine’s accident,” Bob replied, his voice warm with concern.
“And?”
At the end of the hallway, he turned right. Anna quickened her steps; she didn’t want him out of her sight. He stopped in the last doorway, the corner office with a view of the lake. A plastic name-plate, printed with DISTRICT RANGER, was in a faux-brass holder to the right of the doorframe.
Blocking the entrance with his bulk, big on a bad day, bigger still with the down coat, he said: “Not everybody can handle violence with your aplomb, Anna.” He used his nice-fellow voice, but the intent to insult was clear. Anna was not insulted. With guys like Menechinn in the world, she was liking the idea of violence better and better.
“Robin,” she called. A retching sound trickled on a moan from the dark room.
“Step away from the door,” Anna said.
“She’s been drinking pretty heavily,” Bob said. “I think she started sneaking it not too long after you left for your ski outing.”
“Move away from the door.”
“Aren’t we the officious little woman,” he said, but he moved.
The office reeked of wine. Robin was on the floor, her long legs curled up, knees under her chin. She was hatless and her hair fanned out around her head. Damp strands stuck to her face.
Half her attention on the young woman, half on Bob’s hulking shadow, glimpsed in stripes and washes as the beams of their lights moved, Anna knelt. “Robin, it’s Anna. Can you talk to me?” she asked gently as she pried open one eyelid, then the other, and shined her light in. Both pupils reacted sluggishly. Dilation could have been caused by drugs or darkness. Robin’s skin was cool to the touch and diaphoretic. Any number of things could account for that.
“I went out for a walk,” Bob said. “When I came by the V.C., I heard noises and came up to see what was going on. I found her back here with a box of the wine she’d taken from the bathroom fridge.” He played his light to the box of merlot on the floor a few feet from Robin. A mason jar was tipped over next to it, a stain spreading on the carpet. “I was trying to get her up and take her back to the bunkhouse, so she wouldn’t freeze to death, when I heard you come in.”
Anna flicked her light to his face. He threw up an arm as if the beam was a blow. With the cut of shadow, she couldn’t read his expression.
“Yeah, well, here’s your chance.”
Between the two of them, they got Robin to her feet and out of the Visitors Center. The trail from the bunkhouse to the V.C. and dock was swampy in summer. A wooden walkway, two planks wide, had been built to keep foot traffic from tearing up the muddy ground. Snow hid the planks, rendering the path tricky in much the same way the downed trees made traversing the cedar swamps tricky.
“Better let me carry her,” Bob said. “You walk ahead with the light.”
Anna hated that idea. Hated the idea of Bob doing a good deed, hated the idea of Bob touching Robin, hated the idea of being helped and hated the idea that she didn’t have the strength to carry the girl herself.
“Thanks,” she said, wondering what it was about Bob – or about having one’s life saved – that was so irritating. “Watch your footing.”
Bob picked Robin up easily. The biotech was tall, but slender as a blade of grass. “Go on ahead. I can light your way better from behind,” Anna told him. This was marginally true; with an effort, she could shine the lights around him.
As she followed in his tracks, the size of the man, the unconscious woman in his arms, the flickering of the two flashlights, brought to mind a dozen derivatives of King Kong and Frankenstein; the beast, lumbering from the torchlight, the damsel clutched to his chest.
Anna opened the door to the bunkhouse and Bob shouldered in with his burden. At the computer on the rear wall of the common room, Adam glanced over his shoulder. Then he was on his feet. Anna didn’t see him gather himself and stand – one moment, he was sitting; the next, standing.
Jonah stood as well. “Ridley,” he called without taking his eyes off them. “Get in here.”
Bob didn’t put Robin down on the couch or move toward her room but stopped a moment to savor the spotlight. “Drunk as a frat boy on Friday night,” he said.
“Robin’s drunk. Passed out. Drunk,” Adam said tonelessly, his face gone the color of ashes, his hands knotted in fists at his sides, knuckles hard-boned and sharp.
“Yep,” Bob said. “I guess this wog business was getting to her. I, for one, will be glad when the Forest Service gets us off this island. Sooner is better.”
To Anna’s amazement, the permafrost that had replaced Adam’s skin melted and his fists uncurled. “I’m glad you were looking after her, Bob. She’s a good kid.” Adam reached to take the unconscious girl. His arms were as stiff as a Hollywood mummy’s.
Bob wasn’t about to have his prize snatched away. Anna stepped in before they started fighting over Robin like dogs over a bone.
“Jonah,” she said as she pried Robin from Bob’s embrace and draped one of the girl’s arms across her shoulders. “Would you mind making a pot of coffee?”
“I’m on it,” he said.
Supporting the younger woman, Anna began their stumbling way to the bedroom. Bob and Adam followed. She stopped, braced Robin against her hip, turned and held them with her gaze for a moment.