Dana Stabenow - Whisper to the Blood

"I've heard," he said dryly, and she laughed, a husky, intimate sound. She had moved in kind of close, and she was tall enough that he could feel the exhale of her breath warm on his cheek. It smelled of cinnamon. "How about a cup of coffee at the Riverside Cafe? My treat."

"Why, Ms. Macleod," he said, drawling out the words. "Are you attempting to bribe me?"

"If coffee at the Riverside Cafe will get the job done, you bet," she said promptly. "Global Harvest would probably give me a bonus for getting it done so cheap."

This time he laughed. "Sure, I've got time for coffee."

She fluttered her eyelashes. "I might even have time for lunch."

Mac Devlin was at the Riverside Cafe when they walked in the door, sitting at the counter nursing a cup of coffee and a grudge. The way Jim could tell was that Mac was mouthing off against the proposed Suulutaq Mine, with an occasional slap at the proposed deepwater dock in Katalla. An equal opportunity trasher, that was Mac Devlin these days.

He had an attentive audience, which Jim found interesting. Mac was generally regarded as a blowhard, and as such not necessarily anyone to be taken seriously. Of course, it could be a case of hearing what you want to hear that kept most of them in their seats. They were mostly fishermen-including Eknaty Kvasnikof, who had recently inherited his father's drift permit for Alaganik Bay, Mary Bal-ashoff, who had a set net site there, and assorted Shugaks (including Martin, who gave Jim a wary glance)-and various other Park rats and ratettes.

There was a brief pause when he and Macleod came in. Mac gave Jim a belligerent look. "What, the cops in bed with the mine now?"

Macleod fluttered her eyelashes again. "Not yet," she said, drawling out the words. Everyone laughed.

Mac reddened to the point where it looked like the skin on his face might ignite.

Mac Devlin was a mining engineer, born in Butte, Montana, of another mining engineer who had booted him out of the house when he was eighteen years of age and told him to go find his own mine. He put himself through school digging copper out of the Kennecott Copper Mine in Utah, the world's largest open-pit mine. Upon graduation he'd gone to work for British Petroleum and had literally seen the world on their dime, or at least that portion of it that was a good prospect for oil. He transferred to Prudhoe Bay on the northern Alaska coast just in time for the discovery well to come in on the super-giant Sadlerochit oil field.

When construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline was complete and all the good jobs were moving on to the next big oil field, he sank his savings into the Nabesna Mine in the Park, a small gold dredging concern on Miqlluni Creek that included a bunkhouse, offices, and a selection of heavy equipment, and settled into a marginal existence, producing just enough gold to pay for his attempts to increase and extend his lease. Anybody he hired was called a MacMiner. Rowdy, raunchy roughnecks to a man, they were the inspiration for the baseball bat behind the bar at the Roadhouse.

Mac, in fact, had never been popular in the Park. He wouldn't hire Park rats, he brought his supplies in from Seattle, and he was such an unattractive little shit to boot, a short, heavyset man with the same general build as a culvert, with a red, thinning brush cut, small, mean blue eyes, and a wet mouth that was always flapping. Jim didn't think he'd gotten laid once since he'd moved to the Park, which could account for his cantankerous attitude.

Mac turned pointedly back to his audience. "We're talking three miles wide, five miles long, and two thousand feet deep. That's bigger than the Kennecott Mine in Utah, and that sucker's big enough to be seen from space."

"How big is the Park, Mr. Devlin?" Macleod said.

Mac affected not to hear.

"It's about twenty million acres, isn't it?" Macleod said, raising her voice. "Twenty million?" She emphasized the last word. "Global harvest's leases are on less than sixty thousand." She distributed her charming smile with perceptible effect and predictably the crowd warmed to her. She was a lot prettier than Mac. "I've always been lousy at numbers. What is that as a percentage of the total acreage of the Park? Three percent? Four percent? You'll barely know we're there." She smiled again. "Until you start cashing our paychecks."

She took all the honors, and Jim followed in her triumphant wake to a booth in the corner as a muted buzz of conversation rose behind them. "Nicely done," he said as they seated themselves.

She gave a slight shrug, looking over the rudimentary menu with a meditative frown. "Mr. Devlin is unhappy at the price Global Harvest paid for his mine holdings, especially after we announced our find. He is determined to make a nuisance of himself until we buy him off."

"And will you?"

"The longer we ignore him, the lower his price will go." She put down her menu and smiled at Laurel Meganack, a very pretty thirty-something who arrived pen and pad in hand to take their order.

"Whose call is that?" Jim said.

She turned the smile on him, but this time he could see just how sharp all those beautiful teeth were, and he wasn't surprised at her answer. "Mine."

Snow had came late to the Park that year, but winter had come early, three weeks of consistent below-zero temperatures in early October. The Kanuyaq froze solid practically overnight, and when it snowed twenty inches in twelve hours the first week of November the river promptly took up its winter role of Park Route 1, carrying dog teams, snowmobiles, and pickup trucks between Ahtna and the villages downriver, also known as the 'Burbs. The ice got a little mushy nearer the river's mouth on the Gulf of Alaska, but farther north and certainly as far as Niniltna it made for a fine highway, better, many said, than the actual road into the Park. It was certainly wider, with room for many more vehicles, as well as the occasional race, and its reach was much farther.

Early on the morning after Thanksgiving Johnny hitched the sled to his snow machine and packed it with tent, sleeping bag, two different sets of five layers of clothes, and everything on Bingley Mercantile's shelves with a high percentage of fat content, including two large jars of Skippy peanut butter and two more of strawberry jam.

"If you get in trouble and can't build a fire," Kate said, "you can always use a spoon. Do you have your GPS?"

"For the third time, yes," Johnny said.

Kate tucked in some more fire starters and a second large box of waterproof matches. "Have you got your PLB?"

"For the fifth time, yes," Johnny said.

"You checked the batteries?"

"And I have spares," Johnny said.

"You've got them in an inside pocket."

"Where they'll stay toasty warm and ready to use if I need them."

"Rifle?"

"Gleaned and loaded and strapped to the snow machine."

His patience was monumental and meant to be noticed, but she couldn't help herself. "Extra shells?"

"Two boxes, Kate."

"Good." She prowled around the snow machine. "Have you got that tool kit I put together?"

"In the sled."

"Extra gas?"

"In the sled."

"And Van's riding with you?"

"Yes, Kate."

"And Ruthe's got her own machine."

"Yes, Kate."

"Maybe I'll just ride to Ruthe's with you."

"Maybe you won't," Johnny said. "Maybe I've been driving the snow machine back and forth to Ruthe's cabin for going on three winters now. Maybe I know the way."

He was right. Still, Kate fretted. "You're not going to deviate from your route, are you?"

"No, Kate. We'll be following the Kanuyaq a lot of the way. It's kind of hard to miss." Sheesh. By contrast, Jim this morning had tossed him a casual wave and said only, "Have fun, kid. Yell for help if you need it," before clattering down the steps and heading off to work.