North Country Man

Not this—this barely civilized wilderness.

The pickup sped away, blatting stinky blue smoke from its tailpipe. The rust-eaten muffler drooped dangerously low, hanging on by a few wires.

Claire imagined that these backwoods roads were constantly littered with mufflers, tailpipes and oil pans. The country was supposed to be safe, but the odds of her getting stranded with car trouble out here in the boondocks were probably worse than being mugged on a subway.

“Drat that Drake. This is not what I need right now.” Claire clenched her fingers on the wheel and slowly eased her rental car’s tires away from the crumbling edge of the blacktop. She did not want to wind up in the ditch.

A dense, tangled forest met in a canopy over the narrow road, screening all but the ambient light of the setting sun. The snatches of sky visible through the interlaced treetops looked bruised—purple and dusky blue, faintly tinged with yellow. If she’d known her journey to the hinterlands would end like this, she’d have forgone her habit of arriving the day before a meeting and booked a morning flight. Instead, efficient as ever, she’d chosen to be early. To get the lay of the land.

Never had the phrase been so appropriate. Thus far, it was a wild, rugged, alarmingly unpopulated land. She’d driven a half hour from the airport before she’d reached a town of any consequence, then realized that she still had farther to go. Since Marquette, signs of civilization had diminished. There were no roadside conveniences. Little traffic. No habitation, either, except for the occasional driveways—if such overgrown paths could be called driveways—that led off through the woods.

“To the ends of the earth,” Claire muttered, wishing she hadn’t been quite so open with Drake about her dilemma.

Upon hearing the dubious results of Claire’s annual physical, her boss had promised her a working vacation. “This one’s a slam dunk, Claire. You’ll love Upper Michigan,” Drake the Snake had said, speaking with the usual forked tongue. “One breath of the fresh air will clear your lungs of city pollution. One walk through the woods will soothe that incipient ulcer. You’ll have pure relaxation—no worries and no expectations. We’ve booked you directly into Bay House, so you’ll be on the premises with almost nothing to do. Set your own pace on this one, hon.” Drake had chuckled. “No, that’s not so wise, is it? I want you to take it easy this time out. You’ve earned a gimme assignment.”

Claire nodded. Why hadn’t Drake sent her to Key West or Carmel-by-the-Sea, where she could have relaxed in luxury? Because he was a slithering reptile, that’s why. For months now, he’d been raking in the accolades that were rightfully hers.

The sun had almost set. She frowned at the darkening road. Feeling vaguely like Livingstone hacking through the jungle, she switched the headlights to high beams and pressed on. It took more than a slimy boss and a little bit of wilderness to defeat Claire Levander.

Friends and acquaintances considered her job with the Bel Vista Hotel Corporation a paid vacation. They were dead wrong. She did advance acquisition work for the luxury bed-and-breakfast division, which meant she traveled around the U.S. and Canada and even the occasional foreign port, checking into tourist towns, checking out various charming inns and stately Victorians for potential profitability.

It had seemed like a plum assignment when she’d been awarded the position eighteen months ago. But the nomadic lifestyle, combined with the pressure of recommending acquisitions that could go from black ink to black hole with one unforeseen mechanical failure or plumbing disaster, had wreaked havoc with her nervous system. Even the company’s doctor had advised her to scale back, and he was notoriously more corporate than caring.

To Claire’s surprise, the prospect of slowing her climb to the top had been appealing, even when she tried to remember that it was traitorous to the goals she’d set for herself at sixteen. She’d been with Bel Vista since college, had worked her way up from the most junior of executive assistants. The long hours and hectic schedule had meant postponing her personal life, particularly the romantic side of it. Even her family obligations had suffered. She’d felt guilty about that, but she hadn’t stopped to think that the stress would eventually become physical as well as emotional.

She’d grown up in a small, old-fashioned town where it had sometimes seemed that hairdresser or housewife were the only options for a female. Claire had set her sights…further. Not higher, really, just further.

Early on, she’d realized that a good education and career were her best routes out of Florence, Nebraska. She hadn’t foreseen that she might grow to miss what she’d once been desperate to leave or that settling down did not always mean settling.

Unfortunately, settling down and Bel Vista executive were not synonymous expressions. She had four weeks of vacation coming, but Drake the Snake wasn’t about to clear the way for her to take it. Her present assignment—an unpromising bed-and-breakfast in the dinky backwater town of Alouette, Michigan—was about as generous as Drake Wylie got.

Not even he seemed to expect her to come up with a business plan to buy Bay House cheap and turn it into a thriving Bel Vista operation. Meaning she had an entire week to do her research and produce a complimentary but ultimately negative report that would satisfy the fat-cat executive who’d proposed the idea in the first place.

That also gave her a week to decide which path her life should take. Tough luck for her that she’d have to do it in such an unsettling, bewildering land.

Claire let out a wry chuckle as she peered out the window at the dense forest. She wanted to find her way—not lose all direction.

Just when she’d seriously begun to wonder if she was the last person on earth, a roadside convenience store appeared up ahead. She slowed to look it over as she passed.

The Buck Stop.

Frankly, the place was a dump. Asphalt shingles, worn board siding plastered with faded advertisements. A neon beer sign in the window and one bare lightbulb over the crooked screen door. A nondescript car idled in the small gravel parking lot. Bel Vista’s upscale clientele would sooner go without their frappuccinos than shop at such a shabby joint—and that included the ones who’d read too much Hemingway and fancied themselves backwoods adventurers.

Claire sniffed. So much for civilization!

A minute later, she squinted at the odometer. Before setting off from the airport, she’d studied her map, laid out her route and calculated the mileage. Alouette, with a population of approximately sixteen hundred forsaken souls, wasn’t far now. Electricity and hot water were probably the best she could hope for out of Bay House, but her spirits lifted anyway.

As she settled back in the car seat, a movement at the side of the road caught her eye.

Bear!

The large, furry shape shifted, blending into the shadows as she sped by, but there was no mistaking the small, gamboling creature at its heels. A cub. Fearfully glancing over her shoulder, Claire touched the brake. The underbrush, briefly lit by the car’s taillights, had swallowed the hirsute pair. Slim silvery trunks stood out against the shadowy forest primeval.

“Wild Kingdom,” she whispered, struck by her reaction to the raw nature of it all. Her heart was racing, and blood sang in her ears like a timpani.

Only a second or two had passed, but she returned her attention to the road just in time to glimpse a pair of amber eyes glowing at her directly ahead. She slammed on the brakes as a tawny shape—a deer, she realized—flew across the hood as though it had sprouted wings. A thud shook the car.

Claire wrenched the wheel. The vehicle shot off the road, its rear end slewing. She thought she screamed, although the screeching sound that filled the car might have been the brakes. She’d jammed the pedal to the floorboard.

The dense forest closed around the car. Branches and twigs cracked on all sides. Overhanging boughs whisked the windshield like a perverse rural car wash. The auto slammed into something solid and came to a sudden shuddering halt, front end canted at an awkward downward angle.

Claire pushed herself off the steering wheel and cut the ignition. Her panting filled the terrible silence. “I’m fine, I’m fine,” she said, feeling her face with shaking fingertips. No blood or broken bones. She released the seat belt. “Fine and dandy.”

What about the deer? She remembered the awful thud. It might have been the sound of hooves on the hood. Then again, it might not. Her eyes burned; she squeezed them shut.

“Okay. First things first.” She took a deep breath, trying to ease the tight, panicky feeling in her chest. With so much foliage pressed against the windows, the interior of the car was dark and close, almost claustrophobic. She had to get out. Assess the damage. Look for the deer.

The deer. Oh, please.

“Nothing to be afraid of,” Claire said, falling back on the habit of talking through a difficult situation. It was a technique she’d used on her brother, Max, to get him to the dentist. And on her baby sister, Lyndsay, to distract her from window-rattling thunderstorms.

Once Claire was finally on her own, she’d found that the technique also worked on herself. She’d talked herself into leaving home for college and staying there even when times got tough. She’d talked herself through standing up for herself with Drake and demanding an overdue raise and promotion. Through the horrible night six months ago when word of her father’s death had come while she’d been stranded by a snowstorm in a Vermont inn. The sheer helplessness of not being there for her family had been devastating. The only comfort she’d had was her own voice, repeating into the dark silence of the guest room, “They’ll be okay, be okay, be okay….”

Claire was the oldest child in a family of eight, with one parent unreliable and the other consumed with earning a living. It had always been her job to make sure everything was okay. The house. Meals. Clothes. Appointments. School. And especially her siblings.

“But you’re okay alone,” she said firmly. She opened the door a crack, pushing experimentally at the smothering branches. They were flexible enough to bend out of the way. She poked a leg outside, followed by her head and shoulders. “The deer is okay, too. But I have to make sure.”

Her brave voice was swallowed by the overwhelming silence of a north woods night. She stood, inhaling the clear cold air. The forest was all around her. The scent was impossible to describe—nothing like the little pine-tree air freshener that hung from the rearview mirror. She could only define it as green. Earthy. Alive. But it wasn’t as quiet as she’d first thought. There were all sorts of sounds—rustling and chattering and an eerie creaking that accompanied each gust of the chilly breeze.

She swallowed nervously. “Nothing to be afraid of. Safe as houses.” With a hollow chuckle at the inappropriate expression, she crunched through the brush to check out the front of the car. The bumper was jammed into a huge fallen log. A jagged chunk had been torn out of the mossy bark, revealing a gash of fresh orangy-yellow wood so punky the splinters crumbled at her touch.

A long shallow dent creased the auto’s hood. She ran her hand along it and found a clump of hair caught in the grill. Coarse, reddish-brown hair, the silkier ends tipped in gold.

“But no blood,” she said, her stomach dropping all the same. She’d never forgive herself if—

“Don’t even think it. Just go and look.”

Claire returned to the open car door and reached inside to flick off the headlights, which weren’t illuminating much besides the fallen log. Still, the depth of the blackness increased by another degree. For a few moments, she was nearly blind. Then her eyes began to adjust. Eventually she realized that the moonlight was bright enough for her to readily see the way. Through the tangled underbrush, the road was visible—a black expanse reflecting the silvery moonlight.

She gathered the car keys, the heavy sweater she’d thrown on the passenger seat—it was mid-May, but colder than she’d expected—and her handbag. Her baggage and laptop computer were safely stowed in the trunk. She slammed the door shut and set the locks, briefly considering her cell phone. She could dial 911. But this probably didn’t qualify as an emergency. If she found the deer injured, she’d call. Or she could backtrack a mile to the Buck Stop, probably doing her version of “whistling past the graveyard” the entire way. Someone there would know the procedure.

It wasn’t until she’d hiked a short way along the narrow sand shoulder of the road that she remembered the mother bear and her cub. Dread filled her at the chance they could still be lurking nearby. She froze, fists jammed into the pockets of her sweater, wanting nothing so much as to cut and run. Lock herself inside the car. If it was stuck, she’d call AAA. If there was no AAA, she’d stay right there till morning light.

Logically, she knew that the bears were long gone. Wild animals didn’t stick around to investigate car crashes. And there weren’t grizzlies in Michigan. Even in the Rockies, where they did have them, the odds of a bear attacking a human were greatly exaggerated. On one of her first assignments after the promotion, she’d studied up on grizzlies for a thorough recommendation on a mountain ski lodge that was now a Bel Vista luxury inn frequented by the rich and famous. After all, having a celebrity eaten by a bear would be a publicity nightmare. As an employee, she was more expendable.

Claire tried to laugh. Didn’t work. “No bears,” she said out loud. She knew that the sound of a human voice should scare them away. “No bears,” she repeated, raising the volume.

She took several steps. The noise was minimal in the soft sand, so she moved onto the blacktop, stomping her feet. “Here I am, Mama Bear, heading your way.”