Play With Fire (27 page)

Somebody had to.

"There are twenty-seven known species of mosquitoes in Alaska, did I tell you that?" Dinah said, looking out across the valley. "They've been known to kill dogs, they even go for bears, for the eyes and the nose because the bear's pelt is so thick, and the mucous membranes swell up and the bear dies of asphyxiation."

"That's an apocryphal story," Bobby said.

"Then why is it in my book?" Dinah demanded.

"The better to suck you in with, my dear."

"I bet the Native Americans who live out here wouldn't say that," she said, determined to defend her illusions to the death. "I bet it has, too, happened."

They both looked at Kate, hands clenched on the straps of her pack, eyes staring at nothing.

"You know, Kate," Bobby said, locking the lid of the cooler down, "it's like the song says."

She blinked, shook her head and looked at him, confused. "What?"

"Sometimes you're the windshield." He reached for his jacket.

"Sometimes you're the bug."

The wry smile on his face clearly invited a similar response. She didn't have one left in her, but there was really nothing more here for them to do, and she knew it. Dinah had picked up the last two crates of Bobby's essential back-country supplies and was already starting down the hill.

Bobby lifted the cooler into his lap and paused, watching her. Mutt stood at the edge of the clearing, yellow eyes expectant, straining for home.

She rose to her feet, shouldered her pack and picked up the tent bag.

The little glade, stripped of their belongings, looked empty and a little forlorn. The sun was teasing the horizon, just brushing the tops of the trees with pale fingers, gilding the surface of the Kanuyaq and its thousand tributaries, outlining only the very tips of violet peaks.

As heart stopping as the view was, she knew a sudden, intense longing for her own roof, her own trees, her own creek, her own mountains, her own sky.

"All right then," she said.

"Scrape me off and take me home."

Dana Stabenow is the author of the Kate Shugak mystery series--A Cold Day for Murder, A Fatal Thaw, Dead in the Water, A Cold-Blooded Business, Play with Fire, Blood Will Tell, Breakup, Killing Grounds, and Hunter's Moon--each of which brings to life a different aspect of the Alaskan experience. She lives in Anchorage, Alaska.