Legend of the White Wolf

Page 8

Actually, she'd seemed a bit amused. If any guy thought he'd make any moves on her at the camp, he'd let them know just how wrong they were.
She slowed her snowmobile down a little, and he matched her actions. He suspected they were getting close to the resort when he thought something moved again to his right. But when he looked hard in that direc tion, all he saw was blowing snow, snow-laden trees, snow piled against them, nothing but white.
He glanced back at the road and a one-story log lodge appeared up ahead with a majestic prowlike front and covered wraparound veranda. Cedar rocking chairs sat all along the wooden deck, the arrangement welcoming guests to sit and visit while taking in the panoramic mountain and forest view. But the large picture windows were dark, no light filtering through, and the massive stone fireplace was cold, not a trickle of smoke.
Faith drove up to the porch and paused for a minute, not turning off her engine. He parked beside her and saw what it was that had stopped her: a note pasted on one of the windows from the inside.
Closed due to family emergency. Keys in cabins. Be back later. Charles and Elizabeth Roux.
Faith pulled her ski mask down under her chin so she could speak more clearly. "Guess we're on our own."
"Good thing we brought supplies with us and didn't count on eating at the main lodge first thing. So, which cabin do we hole up in for now? White Wolf or Black Bear Den?"
"How good are you at starting fires?"
He smiled. "Eagle Scout. Although, I have to admit I always carried a lighter with me on campouts as a boy."
She laughed and even though her sweet voice was half drowned out by the roaring wind, her laughter warmed him deep inside.
"Come on, boy scout, before we freeze our buns off out here. We'll go to whichever is closest."
"Black Bear Den. Yours."
He hoped she'd be amenable to letting him remain the night. It wasn't that he was so needy, but he didn't like the idea that a woman would be staying alone in a cabin in the wilderness with no one about. Especially in the midst of a blizzard. Well, truth be told, he was feeling a bit needy, too.
They wound their way along a narrow forested trail on their snowmobiles, the trees helping to shield them from the blowing wind, until they reached the first of the small log cabins facing the frozen lake. Through the clearing, bitter cold wind whipped off the ice.
A carving of three whimsical black bears holding a sign that said, Welcome, Black Bear Den, attached to the door of the cabin, indicated they were at the right place.
As he recalled from the map Charles had sent him when Cameron booked the reservation, his own cabin was quite a distance from Faith's. Each of the cabins had a screened view of the lake with plenty of trees in between to provide them enough privacy from their neighbors. Which was another reason he didn't like it that Faith would be alone.
Snowdrifts were piled against the side of the cabin all the way to the windows, at least a foot of accumulation covered the deck, and the roof was bearing a heavy load. Although it was midday, the blizzard made everything look gray, cold, and foreboding.
Which made it imperative he started a fire right away to heat up the place. As soon as she was inside, he hauled in his stuff behind her. No sense in leaving it out to freeze in this weather even if he wasn't staying the night. When he put his bags down on the knotty pinewood floor, she raised her brows and gave a funny little smile.
"Not snowproof," he said, as if answering her unspoken question, then headed back outside before she could retort. When she followed him to get the rest of her stuff, he waved her inside. "Go set up housekeeping, Faith. I'll take care of the rest of your bags. Dressed the way you are, you're way too much of a distraction."
He loved the way the skin underneath her eyes crinkled when she grinned, shook her head, and returned to the cabin. His attention then focused on the skin-tight ski pants hugging her derrière. The thought came to mind how much fun it would be to ski with her in the great Northwest, share a hot toddy at the ski lodge, and snuggle together with her in a spa, the snow piled up around it. And then work out all the kinks from a day on the slopes in a soft bed made for two. He shook his head at himself, grabbed the rest of her bags, and returned to the cabin, shutting the door against the howling wind.
Faith had pulled off her ski hat, mask, goggles, and gloves but was still wearing her jacket as she looked inside the cabinets. The log cabin was ice-cold, with unadorned large picture windows facing out on the frozen lake. The walls were made of logs, but insulated. Cameron didn't feel a bit of wind coming through the walls, which he was grateful for. At least once he had a fire going, the place should warm up pretty quickly.
"Have a fire started in a jiffy. As soon as I can find my lighter."
Faith had already started a tea kettle on the gas stove. "Fire here," she said, pointing to the flame under the kettle. "Did you bring coffee? I've got green tea."
"Coffee." He knew he'd forgotten something. Although he figured he could have gotten some to drink at the main lodge, the thought crossing his mind that cuddling with Faith early in the morning would negate any need to get up to have any for sometime anyway.
"You didn't bring any?"
"No. Forgot all about it."
"How about hot cocoa then?"
"Either is fine." He finally got the fire started in the wood-burning stove, turned on the fan to blow heat into the room, and looked around. One double-sized bed and two twin beds in two bedrooms off the living room. Although a queen-sized suited his height better, a double was better for snuggling with a sweet feminine body on cold winter days. No bedding or linens on the bare mattresses, which is why they had to bring their own sleeping bags, and he considered how well his would fit on her mattress.
She caught him eyeing the bed. His ears burned with chagrin, and he smiled. Hell, he was caught in the act, and he was pretty sure she could read his transparent thoughts. Women often could.
"So, I offered to fix lunch. Or have lunch with you. But since it appears this is where we'll be eating, what appeals?" She took off her jacket and laid it on a chair, then started pulling out cans of spinach, green beans, corn, asparagus, salmon, and the package of tuna.
"How about you pick out the vegetable and we can fix my salmon steaks?"
He looked around the kitchen. Sink, no running water. "Ice box, but no refrigeration. They'll have to supply us with ice, but looks like no one's around to do that today."
"We could gather up some snow and put it in the ice box. But the salmon sounds good to me."
"No breakfast for me, so it sounds fine."
She cast him an annoyed expression.
He smiled. "Yeah, I know that look. You didn't wait too long for me at the restaurant this morning, did you?"
"No, just ate and left." She turned her back on him and emptied the contents of the can of spinach into a saucepan.
"Ah, good." He didn't believe a word of what she said. She'd waited for him. In fact, he suspected, she had gone straight from the restaurant to Back Country Tours. So she must have waited a good half hour for him at least, which made him feel like a cad to an extent. But his partners' welfare, he believed, had been at stake. "I thought I had a lead concerning my friends so I ran out at five thirty this morning. Turned out to be a dead end. I figured by the time I found that out, you'd have left the restaurant, so I headed to Back Country Tours. And lo and behold, here's my favorite lady."
She hmpfed. "Panicking over a dead body."
He moved in closer and with her back still to him, he rubbed her arms, the soft peach sweater sliding a little, her subtle sweet fragrance tantalizing. "You looked a little pale, and you were doing the smart thing by leaving in a hurry when you heard an intruder in the place, but you did it with true grit. Any other woman I've known would have run out of there screaming."
"Not the screaming type. Normally. Although when I found a snake curled up in my wet laundry in the washing machine once…" She pulled out a broiler pan for the salmon. "I'm sure you could have heard me all the way to Seattle."
"Fear of snakes?"
She smiled up at him. "Only when I reach for a handful of wet clothes to put in the dryer and feel something solid, wet, round, and slimy that shouldn't have been there." She sprinkled lemon and pepper seasoning on the salmon. "About the dead guy though, he had a needle mark in his chest. I think you were right in figuring he was injected with something. But there was the oddest thing next to the puncture wound."
Hell, he wished he'd taken a look now, too.
"A drop of what looked like a silver solution," she continued. "I would have loved to have taken a sample of it and analyzed it. But I didn't want to tamper with the evidence, and besides, I don't have any equipment here to do the analysis anyway."
He admired her for having investigated the situation when he left the office. He never suspected she had. "Silver? Mercury, maybe?"
"Hmm, no on the mercury poisoning. A year ago, we had a case of an attempted suicide who unsuccessfully used an intravenous mercury cocktail. It didn't lead to acute systemic toxicity. Or in laymen's terms, it didn't overload his system causing death."
That was a new one on him.
"But silver poisoning?" she said, raising her brows. "Yes. You can find silver remedies that claim all kinds of health cures. So they're not hard to come by either online or in health food stores even. Argyria is the name of the condition when people ingest silver and silver poisoning can turn skin gray. It's permanent. So slow poisoning is visible to the naked eye; not a good way to murder someone on the sly. In high amounts though, it can kill someone also. I investigated a case where the husband injected his wife with 50 mg of silver salts because of the life insurance policy he had on her, and she promptly died. But in another instance, a quack doctor injected a pregnant mother with silver nitrate for an abortion and killed the mother, too."
Cameron was speechless at first. He and his partners could really use someone like her on their team. "You could be handy in an investigation."