Winter Study

“It was mine,” Gavin admitted. “I forgot I had the canisters of lure in it when I left it with Katherine. I only meant her to have food and water while she waited for help.”

“‘HELP ME,’” A

“Ski wax,” Gavin said. “It grows opaque as it cools.”

A

Gavin read the thoughts she chose not to express in words. “Katherine said she’d phoned Bob and he was arranging the rescue. She promised to keep our secret. She wanted Bob to look the fool, be discredited. I didn’t think anyone was still at the bunkhouse. It seemed a good time to further the hoax,” he said.

A

A

“Ask Ridley what’s kept him,” Gavin said.

Gavin heard A

Undamaged, A

“Ridley and Jonah are just leaving Feldtma

“I’ll go,” Gavin said.

“I’m faster,” Robin said.

To A

“It’s too far,” A

Robin smiled. Ten miles on easy trails had probably not been “too far” since she was nine years old. “I won’t be long,” she said and pushed off with the sudden grace of a bird taking flight.

“I’m guessing an hour or a little more. Downhill with no pack, she’ll make good time. Coming back with the gas can will take longer, but she doesn’t need to bring more than a gallon at the most. Eight pounds. That’s nothing for Robin,” Gavin said reassuringly.

The blanket and tarp A

Gavin looked alarmed, and she knew he was remembering the tales of finding people naked and dead of the cold. A rare but not too rare hypothermic reaction was to feel hot. In late stages, victims would sometimes take off their clothes and lie naked in the snow.

“I’m okay,” A

“I’ve never done it,” Gavin admitted.

“Me neither. I learned it in EMT training. It looked easy enough. Align the arm, pull, snick back into place. One… two… three.”

“Two sounds like it would be pretty painful,” Gavin said.

“We’ll numb the shoulder with ice first,” A

Gavin laughed.

Unwrapping her was more of a job than she’d anticipated. Expecting to stay in her blue-and-brown cocoon for the foreseeable future, A

“Help me stand,” she said, pushing away the last of the tarp. “I have to get up. Help me. Then we can reduce the shoulder.”

Gavin put one arm around her back and gave her his other to brace herself against, so she could control how much pressure was on her shoulder and ankle, and began to draw her to a standing position beside the snowmobile. “A

“No,” A

“A

“No. Why would I?” Confusion was clouding A

“I couldn’t see what I was doing. Where the lump was. Which way to pull to make it go back into the socket,” Gavin said.

“I’ll take the damn thing off,” A

“You’d lose too much body heat, and it would hurt you too much unless we cut the coat off. It won’t be long. Robin’s fast.”

Hysteria. Most of A

“I can wait,” A

“Let’s keep you warm,” he said kindly. He helped her to the seat of the Bearcat and wrapped her legs in the army blanket, then sat behind her and put his long arms around her. “Lean back,” he said.

“Consider me your sofa.”

Menechi

37

Gavin stayed at the bunkhouse. Crude as it was, it had amenities that put his camp in the abandoned fire tower to shame. He’d come to the island from Grand Portage, seventeen miles in a kayak, and had been living at Feldtma

They had stolen scent lure from a team of martin researchers to effect the wolves’ movements. The props, the black silhouette of the gigantic wolf, the moose and wolf prosthetics to make prints in the snow, had been created by Gavin. The alien DNA was procured by Robin. A friend and fellow researcher in Canada had mailed her a box of wolf scat. Robin simply bagged it up with the ISRO samples and delivered it to Katherine.

The simplicity of the plan impressed A

Ridley had known nothing of the plot, a fact A