William Krueger - Copper River

Ren took a chance. “Did it hurt when they shot you?”

Cork closed the phone and put it in his lap. “Not at first. At first, I was too scared.”

“Scared?”

“Somebody shoots at you, Ren, believe me, you’re scared. You know about adrenaline, right?”

“Sure.”

“One of the effects of adrenaline is to mask pain.”

“So, did it hurt later?”

“A lot. What scared me most was losing blood and the chance of going into shock.” He waited, but at the moment Ren didn’t have anything more to ask. “Mind if I make my call?”

“Oh, sure. Go ahead.”

Ren went back to his sketch pad on the table and pretended to be drawing while Cork talked.

“Dina? It’s Cork.” He closed his eyes. “Safe at the moment. I screwed up, though. Somebody almost collected on that bounty. They put a bullet in my leg before I got away.” He shook his head. “No, no hospital. I don’t want to be a sitting duck. Look, is there any chance your phone’s been tapped? You’re absolutely certain? Okay, I’m in Bodine, Michigan, forty miles northwest of Marquette. I’m staying with my cousin and her son. A resort called Copper Country Cabins, about a mile west of town on County Road Eighteen.” He laughed quietly. “God was smiling on me. Jewell’s a veterinarian. Patched me up, gave me some painkillers, and put her son, Ren, to work as my personal assistant and bodyguard.” He winked at Ren, who’d looked up at the mention of his name, then turned serious again. “No, don’t call Jo. I’m sure her line’s been tapped. They may even have bugged the duplex. I don’t want her or the kids or anyone else down there jeopardized.” He gave a final nod. “Fine. I’ll see you in the morning. And, Dina? Thanks.”

He broke the connection and laid his head back against his pillow in a tired way.

“Dina?” Ren asked.

“A friend. She’s saved my life on a couple of occasions.”

“You could have used her yesterday.”

Cork grinned. “I’m all right, Ren. You don’t have to stay. I have my bedpan. And the walkie-talkie if I need you.”

“Mom asked me to stay. I don’t mind.”

“Suit yourself.”

Ren went back to his sketching. He was working on White Eagle, but he hadn’t been able to get the features to his liking. The guy was supposed to be Indian, yet every time Ren tried for that look, he failed. White Eagle had all the muscle you’d expect on a superhero, but his face looked too, well, white. When he forced himself consciously to draw Indian, it felt exaggerated and artificial.

His father had taught him to draw from life. Looking around him, Ren saw no model. As far as Indians went, in Bodine he and his mother were it. And his mother had never been big on being Indian.

He heard Cork snoring softly and he considered him. There didn’t seem anything imposing about the guy, especially laid out on the bunk with a bedpan in easy reach.

A cop in the family.

Who would have thought?

H e wasn’t given to nightmares, but this night he dreamed a doozy.

His father with his head split open, scratching at the window.

Ren jerked awake. Although sleep still dragged at his senses, he was certain something had been there. He sat upright and glanced toward the window glass that glowed with moonlight. An eerie evanescence invaded his room. It gave the familiar contours-his desk, chair and computer, his shelves of books, his plaster castings and plastic models and wall poster of Spider-Man-an unfamiliar sense of menace. He listened, heard nothing for a full minute. Thought wind. Thought branches. Thought nightmare. Still, there was a nudging certainty behind his thinking that told him something.

He didn’t think of himself as brave. His fifth-grade teacher had once told him that he was bright and reasonable, and that had sounded fine to Ren, though he hoped brave might be added someday. He was curious, however, and finally his curiosity overwhelmed his fear. He inched the covers back and slid his bare feet onto the cool floorboards. He crept to the window, stepped into the spill of moonlight, and peered out.

His room was at the back of Thor’s Lodge and the windows opened toward the forest that ran almost unbroken from the old resort all the way to the Huron Mountains in the west. Tall hemlocks shattered the fall of moonlight, and a quilt of silver splashes spread over the deep bed of evergreen needles that covered the ground. On that soft bed, anything could approach without a sound.

He pressed his nose to the cold glass. His eyes shifted left, right, trying to pierce the night and the shadows. The fog of his breath obscured the windowpane for a moment. He drew back, wiped the glass with the arm of his pajama top.

In that instant, he caught a glimpse of motion, a blur among the trees. He leaned forward so quickly his nose bumped the glass and his eyes blinked shut. When he opened them, the blur was gone.

It was an animal, he was sure. A coyote, maybe even a wolf. Yet, there was something about it that was not like any coyote or wolf he’d ever seen. The swiftness. There, gone. And a sense-okay, maybe he was imagining this, he admitted-of power barely contained.

The cougar?

He stood at the window for a few minutes more, but nothing moved.

Ren knew he should go back to bed, and he knew he would not. The thrill of the possibility of what was out there was far too attractive. He felt afraid and excited at the same time. He pulled on his pants and a hooded sweatshirt, slipped into socks and his sneakers. As a last thought, he grabbed the baseball bat from his closet.

In the kitchen, he took the Coleman flashlight from its charging cradle, then he stepped outside.

A clear fall night. Breathing the air was like sucking frost. The careless hand of the wind off Lake Superior brushed the tops of the pines, which rocked back and forth easily. Ren held the flashlight in his left hand, the beam turned off. In his right, he gripped the bat. He crept to the side of the cabin, pressed against the sturdy logs, and peered around the corner. He scanned the clear area with the chopping block in the center where his father used to split wood for the cabins’ stoves.

Quiet as a spider, he stole along the wall to the back. He poked his head around that corner, too, and saw no more than he’d seen from his window: the woods empty except for all that silver light and shadow. He held his breath and listened. He thought of turning on the flashlight, but if there was something there, something magnificent and cautious, he didn’t want to scare it away.

A thump on the ground behind him made him spin. In the dark, his eyes darted around desperately. He edged backward, finally hit the switch on the flashlight, illuminating a big pinecone the wind had nudged loose from a branch.

He padded to his bedroom window and ran the beam of the flashlight along the wall. Beneath his window frame, long scratches cut parallel lines down the logs. Ren had never seen those marks before. He knelt and brushed his hand over one of the gouges. From the exposed bone-white wood at the heart and from the curl of the shavings along the edges, he knew they were new. Very new.

A low growl preceded the impact. Ren was slammed against the cabin wall. He didn’t even have time to scream before he hit the ground with the animal on top of him.

Then the animal laughed and said, “You’re dead meat, dude.”

“Get the hell off me, Charlie. Goddamn it, get off.”

He struggled, awash in adrenaline and a killing rage. Charlie, usually about as sensitive as a brick, seemed to realize the depth of his anger. She jumped off him and stepped back.

“Dude, I’m sorry. I was just joking with you.”

Ren bounded to his feet, his hands fisted. He was on the verge of laying into her, held back from throwing blows by the thinnest of threads.