“Nearest settlement is Needle Village,” Adam said. “Not quite thirty miles up the Kobuk. If they go downriver they’ll be out on their own for a couple of days and neither one of them look like they were dressed for a night in the bush. The weather’s supposed to do nothing but get shittier.”
“They might not even know where they’re going,” Beaudine offered.
“They know,” Corey said. “They told me. And I’ll tell you, but you have to let me fly you. Have you looked at that storm coming in from the north? I don’t want Lovita out in it in her condition. Let me fly you, and I’ll tell you where they went.”
“Oh, hell no.” Beaudine walked up to the boy with a swagger to match her Texas accent. She thumped him in the forehead with her index finger. “We got no time for games, son.” She hooked her thumb toward Quinn. “Do either of us look like we bargain much?”
“Okay.” Corey rubbed his head, shying away as if he were afraid she might thump him again. “The girl said her friend worked here at the lodge. Said they wanted to surprise her.”
Esther Henderson looked at her husband. “She had to be talking about Polina.”
“Polina?” Quinn said.
“A Russian girl,” Esther Henderson said.
“One of those mail-order brides,” Adam Henderson said.
“We don’t know that,” Esther chided her husband. “Married to a school teacher upriver in Ambler. She comes out and does deep cleaning for us a couple of times a month.”
“When was Polina here last?” Beaudine asked.
“Two weeks ago,” Mrs. Henderson said. “She was supposed to be back next week but she’s having some troubles with her pregnancy.”
“Where does she stay when she’s here?” Quinn asked.
“Usually in one of the cabins,” Henderson said. “But she’s six months along. Esther insisted she stay here in the main lodge the last couple of times — so she could be closer to the radio.” He walked to a knotty-pine door off the back corner of the lodge’s great room, opposite the fireplace, and pushed it open. “This is where we’ve been putting her.”
“Does she leave anything here?” Quinn said. “In between visits, I mean.” He stepped past Henderson, scanning the room. It was rustic but cozy with pictures of loons on everything from the duvet to the hand towels outside the private bathroom.
Henderson shrugged. “A few toiletries and some rain gear I think so she doesn’t have to haul it back and forth from Ambler. She got a package last week.” He stopped short, pointing to a short table at the end of the varnished log bed frame. “I’ll be damned,” he said. “It’s gone.”
“What’s gone?” Quinn asked, though he already knew the answer.
“The box,” Henderson said. “I left it right there.”
Beaudine stood in the doorway, keeping an eye on the wounded Russian. “What was in this box?”
“Polina sometimes had packages delivered here,” Henderson said. “She told us they were her special cleaning supplies from Russia, but I’m guessing that’s not the case.”
“Not likely,” Beaudine said. “Did Polina take it the last time she was here?”
Henderson shook his head. “It came last week. She hasn’t been out here yet. Come to think of it, that girl was puttering around back here. She must have taken it.”
“It’s been a while since I’ve been out this way,” Quinn said. “Ambler is up river past Needle, right?”
“Another forty miles or so,” Henderson said.
“That puts it what, seventy miles from here by water?” Quinn said, picturing the winding Kobuk River. He’d taken a three-week fishing trip from the headwaters to Kotzebue with his brother, Bo, and their Aunt Abbey when he was in high school.
Henderson gave a non-committal nod. “Closer eighty by airplane. Over a hundred by river because of the oxbows.”
Quinn remembered the Kobuk’s meandering path very well. In some places the river turned back on itself so sharply, he had Bo had been able to scramble up one bank and look over the top to see the portion of the river they’d be paddling on two hours later.
Quinn looked at his Aquaracer. “Fiver hours of daylight,” he said. “Plenty of time to fly ahead to Needle and then on to Ambler.”
Lovita squealed, uncharacteristically giddy. She jumped up and down like a schoolgirl, causing a thin trickle of blood to weep from her crooked nose. “I wanna be where you are if Worst of the Moon is comin’ after us.” She grinned at Quinn around a chipped tooth he hadn’t noticed before. “You won’t regret this, Jericho.”
“Worst of the Moon,” Quinn muttered, pulling the straps on the drag-bag containing the sniper rifle tighter onto his shoulder. He regretted his decision the moment he opened the door. A bank of thick clouds rolled in from the north, black with trailing green edges that meant hail. Lovita marched past toward her airplane, seeming not to notice the storm moving directly into their path.
Chapter 24
August Bowen chewed on the inside of his cheek and thought of angry nuns, dead kittens, anything to try to keep his brain in focus while Ronnie Garcia climbed the narrow wooden steps. It didn’t help.
The sultry Cuban took the stage like she owned it. Her back to the audience, she moved only her hips and arms at first, starting slowly, and half a beat off the music. It didn’t matter. Bowen doubted anyone in the club could hear anything but the sound of their own throbbing pulse. Far from tentative, Garcia’s every movement was relaxed and natural, as if she were dancing alone and for herself rather than the pitiful audience. Somehow, she had the uncanny ability to make the men in the room believe she was actually enjoying herself, a fantasy they all gripped as fast as their beers.
Bowen folded his arms across his chest and leaned back against the edge of the padded leather booth next to Gug’s table. A cold surge of empathetic embarrassment for Garcia washed over him when he thought she might actually take off her clothes. Then he realized it made no difference. Veronica Garcia didn’t need to strip to send every jaw in the room dropping to the floor. The sad-eyed waif who had held the stage before her even stopped to watch, bony arms dangling, head shaking in disbelief that this fully clothed woman had stolen the eyes of what had been her small audience.
The younger girl’s head snapped up suddenly, looking offstage. She peered through the darkness behind Ronnie for a moment, then down at her own bare feet. Something had startled her, and that something was walking toward Garcia.
A tall woman wearing a gauzy red robe and matching princess slippers stopped next to the gleaming stripper pole on the far right of the stage. Blessed with the same curvy body type as Garcia, this new woman walked with a heavy, cowlike gait, unable to carry the thickness around her hips and chest with the same ease and grace. She stopped for a moment, folded arms pushing up an ample chest, with her hips and a single knee cocked to one side. Her black hair was cut in a twenties-style bob — short in the back and slightly longer in the front. It shimmered under the glaring stage lights as if it had been combed with oil. Pink blotches of skin covered her neck and chest, making her look like she’d just run a mile. Her face was flushed as red as her robe.
Her hair was different from any of the booking photos, but there was no doubt that this was Nikka Minchkhi.
“And who ith thith?” the woman bellowed, pointing at Ronnie with a forefinger that bore a costume-jewelry ring the size of an apricot.
Bowen shot a quick glance at Thibodaux, nodding toward the woman in red.