Jak bent down and scooped up some water from a puddle on the ground where some snow had melted. He held it up to the wolf’s mouth and the wolf stuck his tongue out, lapping at the water like he hadn’t had a thing to drink forever, his eyes not leaving Jak’s face.
“That’s better, right?” Jak asked. He kept on feeding the wolf water until he seemed to have enough.
They both sat there for a long time, Jak’s clothes drying, his soreness getting better, and the wolf’s fur growing warm under the pale yellow winter sun. There was a spiderweb stretched between two dead plants sticking out of the snow. It sparkled, moving slowly in the cold breeze. It reminded him of his baka’s lace. His chest hurt.
He petted the tiny wolf. “I’m going to call you Pup,” Jak whispered, afraid each time he reached over to touch him, that he would find him cold as well. Stiff. Gone to heaven, a place someone never came back from even if they wanted to.
And then Jak would be alone again. Lost and alone.
Suddenly in the distance, a helicopter moved across the sky. Jak sucked in a breath, jumping to his feet and waving his arms in the air. “Here!” he called. “I’m here!” He jumped up and down, yelling, running back and forth, until his voice was gone and his muscles were screaming with hurt again. The helicopter circled and circled but was too far away to see him. After what seemed like hours, it turned and disappeared out of sight.
Jak picked up a rock and threw it at the empty sky, crying out, his voice nothing more than a broken croak of sound. He returned to the rock where he’d been sitting when he spotted the helicopter and sat on it. Pup looked up at him sleepily and then lowered his head once more, closing his eyes. Were the helicopters looking for Jak? Had his baka sent them to find him in the middle of this wilderness? They’d be back then. They had to come back.
The sky turned orange, then a swirly purple, and then the sun hid behind a mountain. Jak was so tired. His hunger grew and grew, and he didn’t know what to do. The night got colder and Jak started to shiver. He realized he needed to find a place for Pup and him to sleep where they could keep each other warm.
And if no one found him by morning, if the helicopters didn’t come back, he’d have to try to find something for them to eat. Pup let out a tiny whimper sound and curled into Jak’s thigh like he agreed with the thought.
“I won’t let you down, Pup,” Jak said, and it felt good. But it felt bad that he had no idea how to start or what to do. Jak put his hands in his pockets, lowering his head against the cold, almost-night air, and startling when he touched something solid and smooth in his pocket.
The thing the dark-haired boy had passed to him before they’d fallen.
He pulled it from his pocket and looked at it. It was shiny and he ran his thumb over it.
A pocketknife.
Jak’s heart jumped. Live! he’d told the other boy, and maybe . . . maybe this had been that other boy’s way of telling Jak to do the same.
CHAPTER NINE
The cabin was small, dim, and somewhat shabby, with dirty wood planked floors and a few pieces of worn, mismatched furniture. Definitely not the rustic getaway Mark had pictured when he’d learned that Isaac Driscoll had taken early retirement and moved out there immediately afterward. Mark flipped the overhead light switch and then stood just beyond the doorway and gave the room a once-over before stepping inside, Harper entering behind him.
She pulled her jacket around herself and moved to the right of the door as she put her hands in her pockets. “Is it okay that I’m in here?” she asked, her breath emerging as white vapor in the chilled room. “I could wait in the truck—"
“It’s fine. The crime scene techs have already completed their work. And I might have a question or two.” He smiled back at her. “This isn’t exactly what I’m used to, location wise. You might see something I don’t. If some item or another seems strange or out of place, don’t hesitate to mention it.” He walked to the table next to the kitchen area—really just a counter and sink with a two-burner hotplate and a mini fridge. Just like at the first crime scene, there was fingerprint dust everywhere.
“I hear you’re from California.”
“Born and raised,” Mark answered.
“What brought you to Montana?”
“Just looking for a change. My wife’s sister lives in Butte and when I saw the opening at the Montana Department of Justice, I applied.” He looked back at her and she was watching him with a small skeptical look on her face that told him she knew he was leaving something out. He almost smiled at the way it was so obvious when her wheels were turning. He’d only known her for an hour, but he could already tell she questioned a lot and didn’t quite know if it was insight or her brain running wild. He could r
elate. That inquisitiveness had turned out to be a good quality for him as far as the job he did. He hoped she’d figure out where to apply it as well, instead of allowing it to run amok. She was young. Very young. She had time.
Then again, his daughter had been young, too, and she hadn’t had nearly enough time. Not nearly enough. He shut those thoughts down, picking up a notebook on top of a short stack of other notebooks in various colors on the table and leafed through it. It appeared to be a field journal of some sort, with observations about possums and . . . he turned the page . . . deer . . . wolves. Different sections were labeled with chapter headings as though he was outlining a book. Mark flipped through the rest of the notebook quickly and then checked briefly inside the others. Why had Isaac Driscoll taken special interest in those three specific animals, and no others?
He gave the cabin another once-over. Was that the reason the guy had been out here? To write a nature book? “Harper, you’re a wildlife expert of sorts,” he said, and she opened her mouth as if to disagree with the statement, but he went on before she could. “If you were going to observe animals and say, write a book on their behaviors, would you want to live among them?”
Harper furrowed her brow. “I mean . . . yeah, maybe. But I can’t think of any animal that hasn’t already been highly observed in its natural habitat, especially around here . . . a hundred books written, etcetera. It wouldn’t be new material.”
“That’s what I was thinking too,” he murmured, slipping the notebooks into a folded paper evidence bag he removed from his pocket. The techs hadn’t deemed them important, but something told Mark he might want to look through them later.
“Unless,” she said, stepping into the room, “the animal or animals were being observed under very specific circumstances that were different in some way.” She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth in thought for a moment. “Like if the data being recorded was about how an animal would react to something it hadn’t previously been exposed to? Like what they do in labs.”
“Yes. Only, Isaac Driscoll was a researcher with a doctorate at Rayform Laboratories. He took early retirement sixteen years ago and moved here. He left the lab for the wilderness.” Albeit, not the kind of lab that studied animals from what Mark gathered.
Harper shook her head. “I don’t know what to make of that. Unless he was just observing animals for his own interest.”