Stone Cross (Arliss Cutter #2) - Marc Cameron Page 0,27

in to help. Maybe Birdie wasn’t doing such a bad job after all.

Vitus pushed a row of chairs past, causing a small group of milling people to open up and give way, giving Birdie an unobstructed view of Sascha Green’s face as he peered around the bleachers by the back door. He just stood there, staring at Jolene.

Birdie had to clutch the chairs to keep from falling. She had to remind herself to breathe. He wasn’t supposed to have contact with Jolene. Ever. It was court ordered. She would have laughed at that had she not been so scared, so angry. He’d never come to the school before. Which meant he was getting bolder. The Troopers would never get here in time when he did decide to make a move. The village public safety officer was new. He was a hard worker, but he was too diplomatic, too kind. He had no idea what kind of person he was dealing with. It would take more than a Taser to deal with this problem.

Sascha turned without acknowledging her, which made sense since she’d nearly killed him once before. He’d be back. Someday soon, she was going to have to finish the job.

CHAPTER 9

Aften Brooks walked straight to the kitchen as soon as she walked in the door. For the past hour and a half, she’d been trapped in the community meeting, unable to think of anything but calling Sarah Mead on the VHF radio. Attendance was mandatory and excruciating. Birdie decreed it. It was the right thing to do, Aften knew that, but like her grandad always said, it took a mighty fine meeting to beat no meeting at all. These village get-togethers were just so long, mostly because Yup’ik people were just so damned polite. Everyone who wanted to talk got the floor for as long as they wanted, and there were always those who wanted to talk . . . on and on and on. Aften usually loved it—or at least she didn’t mind. The way these people switched so naturally back and forth between English and their back-of-the-throat, wet-mouthed Native language was pleasant to her ears. She understood a few words, and spoke fewer still without bringing giggles from her students, but loved the way it sounded.

She hadn’t heard much of anything today. Her mind was too busy worrying about her friend.

There was nothing but static on the VHF, so Aften hung the mic on the clip attached to her cupboard. Groaning with pent-up frustration, she leaned both hands on the lip of her sink. Snow whirled and looped in the wind outside the kitchen window, already piling up in drifts along the weathered siding of the neighboring duplex—more teacher housing—thirty feet away. A frozen caribou hide hung across the porch rail like an old and matted rug, flapping in the wind, rapidly covering with snow. The decapitated head from the same caribou stared back at her from under the porch.

Aften looked at the radio again. Sarah hadn’t answered her all day. She couldn’t reach David or Rolf either. Everyone at Chaga had gone radio silent. The lodge had a satellite phone, but it was a handheld unit that had to be powered up with the antenna oriented in order to receive a call. Bush Alaska could be an awfully lonesome place and Sarah was new. Aften made it a point to talk to her every day, if only to say hello, to let her hear another feminine voice.

Living in the bush gave you a sense of the flow of things. Disruptions to that flow seemed much starker than they did when you had more resources, more safety nets. Something was wrong. Aften could feel it.

She was tall, slender, athletic. A streak of silver ran from her temple through dark, shoulder-length hair. It was a beauty mark she’d acquired in childhood when she’d fallen out of an apple tree and landed on her head. At twenty-seven, she already had three years teaching high school in Stone Cross under her belt. To her, teaching was more of a calling than a job. In the bush it was doubly so. She loved her students, the raw challenge of living in such a remote spot—but she had to admit it would probably account for more gray hair. The recruiter for the school district had found her at a job fair. He’d made it sound like a grand adventure—come north, teach some math, coach some basketball, discover yourself. Bobby was an outdoorsman