Read Online A fine and bitter snow by Dana Stabenow - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Dana Stabenow
Tags: Fiction, General, detective, Suspense, Mystery & Detective, American Mystery & Suspense Fiction, Women Sleuths, Mystery, Detective and Mystery Stories, Mystery Fiction, Mystery & Detective - Women Sleuths, Women Private Investigators, Fiction - Mystery, Crime & mystery, alaska, Mystery & Detective - Series, Crime thriller, Detective and Mystery Stories; American, Shugak; Kate (Fictitious character), Shugak; Kate (Fictitious chara, Women private investigators - Alaska - Fiction., Alaska - Fiction., Shugak; Kate (Fictitious character) - Fiction., Women private investigators - Alaska, Nature conservation
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saved her life at the expense of his own. "I love you, Shugak" had very nearly been his last words to her, and it was only after his death that she realized what they had meant.
She ached for him, suddenly, fiercely. They had been well matched sexually, coming together like thunder and lightning. She ran her hands down her body, remembering.
No. There was a perfectly good man not ten miles away. Why was she hesitating? Jack was dead, she was needy, and Ethan was eager. Love would never come again unless she gave it a chance. Wasn't that the way it worked? What was the matter with her?
She gave up on sleep, got up and dressed again, and crept down the ladder. Johnny didn't move. Mutt was waiting for her. She opened the door and slipped outside, catching it before the spring slammed it shut.
The trail around the cabin led to the A-shaped stack of six fuel drums. A fainter trail branched off from it and led through the trees, emerging at a cliffs edge. The boulder at the edge was as high as her waist, with a cleared spot on it worn smooth, just the size of someone's butt. Mutt sat at its foot, her shoulder at Kate's knee.
Below the snow-covered landscape was a crystalline palace, and above the stars seemed even brighter than they had before. The moon had a big smudged white ring around it that filled up half the sky. The northern lights were out, though only faintly and without much movement or color to them, long pale streaks across the northern horizon.
She'd turned thirty-five in October, and had been a sovereign nation unto herself pretty much from the age of six. It wasn't like she needed a man in her life. It was a matter of simple biology. And after all, she was Kate Shugak—she recognized no rules but her own. She could be chaste. Chaste by choice, by god, even Chaste by Choice—she could start a movement. Everything she wanted, everything she needed, it was all right here on this homestead. She had even, she reminded herself with awful sarcasm, managed to have a child without ever having given birth or having changed a single diaper. Now there was a miracle of modern parenting for you.
She could still feel the imprint of Ethan's mouth, hand, body. She could still taste him. How long had it been?
Somewhere very far away, or perhaps quite close, a songbird gave forth with three pure descending notes. Kate's laugh was half sob. "Oh, Emaa," she whispered, leaning her head on her knees, "these white boys are going to be the death of me. Where have all the Aleut boys gone, long time passing?"
Unbidden, the memory of those few moments in that bunk in Bering in July flashed into her head, and Jim Chopin's muffled curse rang in her ears. And later, the gentleness of his hands and lips and the—she could only call it the kindness in his eyes, the comfort of his arms just before he flew back to the Park.
"No," she said, jumping to her feet. Mutt, ears tuned to the rustle of a ptarmigan beneath a spruce tree thirty feet east, leapt up and barked an inquiry.
"No, no, no" Kate said, and marched back to the cabin.
4
Jim Chopin had been an Alaskan state trooper for almost twenty years, most of it posted in Tok, a town of twelve hundred, which sat on pretty much the northern limit of the Park and sixty-odd miles short of the Canadian border. The Tok trooper post, consisting of one sergeant and two corporals, constituted the sum of state law enforcement for the entire Park, a vast area occupied by less than fourteen thousand people—Park rats and Park rangers, hunters and trappers and fishermen, homesteaders, a few farmers, pilots, miners. They were elders and babies, housewives and career women, doctors, lawyers, and thirty-four Indian chiefs. They were white and Athabascan and Aleut and Tlin-git and Eyak. They were Latino and Russian and Japanese and Korean. There was even one lone Frenchman from Toulouse, who had emigrated twenty years before and now had a cushy job
She ached for him, suddenly, fiercely. They had been well matched sexually, coming together like thunder and lightning. She ran her hands down her body, remembering.
No. There was a perfectly good man not ten miles away. Why was she hesitating? Jack was dead, she was needy, and Ethan was eager. Love would never come again unless she gave it a chance. Wasn't that the way it worked? What was the matter with her?
She gave up on sleep, got up and dressed again, and crept down the ladder. Johnny didn't move. Mutt was waiting for her. She opened the door and slipped outside, catching it before the spring slammed it shut.
The trail around the cabin led to the A-shaped stack of six fuel drums. A fainter trail branched off from it and led through the trees, emerging at a cliffs edge. The boulder at the edge was as high as her waist, with a cleared spot on it worn smooth, just the size of someone's butt. Mutt sat at its foot, her shoulder at Kate's knee.
Below the snow-covered landscape was a crystalline palace, and above the stars seemed even brighter than they had before. The moon had a big smudged white ring around it that filled up half the sky. The northern lights were out, though only faintly and without much movement or color to them, long pale streaks across the northern horizon.
She'd turned thirty-five in October, and had been a sovereign nation unto herself pretty much from the age of six. It wasn't like she needed a man in her life. It was a matter of simple biology. And after all, she was Kate Shugak—she recognized no rules but her own. She could be chaste. Chaste by choice, by god, even Chaste by Choice—she could start a movement. Everything she wanted, everything she needed, it was all right here on this homestead. She had even, she reminded herself with awful sarcasm, managed to have a child without ever having given birth or having changed a single diaper. Now there was a miracle of modern parenting for you.
She could still feel the imprint of Ethan's mouth, hand, body. She could still taste him. How long had it been?
Somewhere very far away, or perhaps quite close, a songbird gave forth with three pure descending notes. Kate's laugh was half sob. "Oh, Emaa," she whispered, leaning her head on her knees, "these white boys are going to be the death of me. Where have all the Aleut boys gone, long time passing?"
Unbidden, the memory of those few moments in that bunk in Bering in July flashed into her head, and Jim Chopin's muffled curse rang in her ears. And later, the gentleness of his hands and lips and the—she could only call it the kindness in his eyes, the comfort of his arms just before he flew back to the Park.
"No," she said, jumping to her feet. Mutt, ears tuned to the rustle of a ptarmigan beneath a spruce tree thirty feet east, leapt up and barked an inquiry.
"No, no, no" Kate said, and marched back to the cabin.
4
Jim Chopin had been an Alaskan state trooper for almost twenty years, most of it posted in Tok, a town of twelve hundred, which sat on pretty much the northern limit of the Park and sixty-odd miles short of the Canadian border. The Tok trooper post, consisting of one sergeant and two corporals, constituted the sum of state law enforcement for the entire Park, a vast area occupied by less than fourteen thousand people—Park rats and Park rangers, hunters and trappers and fishermen, homesteaders, a few farmers, pilots, miners. They were elders and babies, housewives and career women, doctors, lawyers, and thirty-four Indian chiefs. They were white and Athabascan and Aleut and Tlin-git and Eyak. They were Latino and Russian and Japanese and Korean. There was even one lone Frenchman from Toulouse, who had emigrated twenty years before and now had a cushy job
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