Page 2 of Taming Her Bears

The captain was already starting the swing, his brow pressing into a tight furrow. “The rain would have put out the fire by now, but I want to know what caused it. That’s a lot of smoke.”

Captain Josh is a lunatic. The more adverse the weather, the better he likes it. We’re the first responders’ first respondents to the worst crises on the ocean. He swung about so sharply, Darkhorse had to pull himself in with a “whoop!” to keep from flying out the door.

“Damn, Josh,” he chided. “Don’t be so eager for my baptism.”

The captain answered back, “Quit riding the skids like a horse.”

“Can’t help myself.”

It was probably the truth. Darkhorse was the same way on the cutter. He would lean over the bow as far as his balance would allow and grin right into the face of old man wind. He rode the boats the way a cowboy rides his horse.

The island was primarily one dense growth of trees, with two or three seasonal shacks built close to the shore on the east side and a boat harbor to the south. The smoke was coming from the far western end. Josh eased the chopper until it was breezing just over the trees, with a clear view of the landscape below the cloud cover. There it was—a fried-out patch sitting next to a stream about a half-mile inland.

Darkhorse scanned it quickly with his binoculars. “Looks like someone’s lodge burned down. Just an all-around bad luck day.”

“We’ll call it in,” said Josh, picking up altitude and heading toward the main shore.

What happened next seemed to occur in slow motion, but felt lightning fast when thinking back to it afterward. We all heard a loud “ping” coming from the tail. Darkhorse half-stood and shouted, “What the fuck? Did we get shot at?” At the same time, Josh was fighting for control over the craft which began lurching and circling, nose to tail.

The copter tipped dangerously to its side and the ocean reared up, spinning drunkenly. We were about to do a nosedive. “Jump!” commanded Captain Josh. “Everybody, jump.”

I didn’t need any more persuasion. I jumped.

Natalia

Itold Rhoda not to trust the bikers. They weren’t the kind that usually hung around—road warriors on the weekends, working a nine-to-six job during the week, just using the wilderness as a playground for their bikes. There was something harder, more intense about these guys when they showed up at Pioneer Pete’s, the lodge all the locals went to on the weekends to let their hair down and try again at relationships that didn’t work the first time around.

Rhoda couldn’t resist. The dudes had money. They had good drugs. They had kick-ass bikes that could follow a mountain goat’s trail. Rhoda had short-circuit attractions when it came to men. She liked men that drove big cars and big bikes. She liked men with money. The more they flashed, the better she liked them. When the bikers asked if we wanted to take a spin, I went along, hoping to keep her out of trouble.

I cursed under my breath. I was a state trooper; I should have at least been carrying a gun. I didn’t think about it at the time. I was off-duty, ready to hook up with a good-looking hunk of muscle and bone. They had all kinds in Valdez—the brawling fishermen that couldn’t wait to spend their money after three months at sea; the pipeline workers with arms of steel; construction workers; fish and game. Valdez wasn’t really on my beat, just a nice place to drop in on when traveling from Haines to the South Central.

What really pissed me off was that I hadn’t seen this coming. I was prepared for trouble along the trail. The dudes weren’t really that bad looking, they just had a way of looking narrowly at each other. They were speaking with their eyes, and it made me uneasy. My trusty Buck knife was tucked inside my boot, where it always was, and there were only two of them. I could take them both on. My dad didn’t raise a wimp—he raised a ball-busting officer of the law.

But our chaperones didn’t stop along the trail. They arrived at what looked like an ordinary biker’s club. Several other bikes were parked in the yard, and live music was jamming inside. I thought I knew our bikers well, but apparently, they still had a few surprises for us. This spot was popular. The club was rocking like I hadn’t seen since the last time I went to a Talkeetna festival.

I didn’t recognize anybody there, although the girls all seemed to be from the villages. They all had that village-girl look to them: wide-eyed, overly excited, their complexions too healthy to be biker whores. That should have tipped me off, right there. The bikers always had a handful of worn-out, drug-addicted fans lurking around their clubs, willing to do anything they were asked. These girls were just innocents taking a ride in the fast lane.

I let my guard down. I mingled. I downed a couple of beers. I was beginning to enjoy myself. As a group, I’ve seen worse, like the fat, balding types that don’t realize they no longer look twenty and the ones that forgot their toothbrushes. These guys were a little seedy, a little too cold around the edges, but the big guns were in all the right places. I started getting into the scene.

The last thing I remember was leaning against a wooden supporting beam, talking with one who seemed mildly better-looking than the others. His eyes seemed kinder, his smile more sincere. Then, I was out. Just like that.

I cursed again, struggling with the ropes. They had slipped something into my drink, just like I was a rookie. Pathetic. “We’ve got a lively one!” announced someone. I tried to peek through the blindfold. I knew I was on a boat. I could feel the ocean waves under me, hear the whine of the engine.

A voice answered back in Russian, then said in heavily accented English, “Take the blindfolds off. We’re almost there.”

Daylight streamed into my eyes and I squinted them shut. When I opened them again, I saw that we were in a large speedboat, zipping between a cluster of islands. I wasn’t very familiar with the island chains. They followed the entire mainland, from the Panhandle to the Aleutians. I could be anywhere. I was sitting in the bottom of the boat, bound and gagged, with Rhoda and two other women.

“Take the rag out of their mouths, too,” instructed the Russian pilot. “They can scream now. Scream all they want. Nobody will hear.”

I squirmed backward as far as I could when the crewman bent over to release the gag. If only I could reach my boot, but my arms and wrists were bound too tightly. “Scream now,” sneered the crewman, untying the gag. I cursed and spat in his face. He backhanded me hard enough to crack my forehead against the side of the boat.

“Not too much!” ordered the pilot. He was steering the boat toward shore, shouting over his shoulder. I saw a hand-hewn wooden pier bobbing in the water and a small fisherman’s cabin. He slowed down until the engine was only a quiet mutter. In a more controlled voice, he added firmly, “No damage. We want no damage. We want perfect.”

One of the girls was screaming. Rhoda and the other one were both crying in deep, despairing sobs. I blinked back tears of my own. I wasn’t giving these slimeballs the satisfaction. “She thinks she’s a tough girl, a real bad ass,” the crewman remarked with a grin. “She’ll break. They all break.”

“But not for you.” The pilot pulled up alongside the pier. Two men dressed much like the bikers, in leather jackets and jeans fitted tightly around the butt, came out of the cabin and rushed down to the pier to help with the tie-off. With the boat secure, the pilot picked me up and threw me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. “Tough girl, eh?” He made a signal with his free hand. “Let’s bring them in.”

There were three other girls already in the cabin, all from the party. They were also bound, hand and feet, and left discarded on the floor. The four men apparently intended to burrow in for a couple of days. A stack of firewood was piled near the door, and the pot-bellied stove in the middle of the room was crackling and pouring out heat. On top of it was a tea kettle and a pot of beans. A table in one corner was littered with junk food wrappers, fast food leftovers, and paper plates. The men wandered in and out, taking turns guarding us and eating whenever they pleased.

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