Mysteries in Our National Parks: Buried Alive: A Mystery in Denali National Park. Gloria Skurzynski

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      “I already told you, I’ll take care of it!” the man barked. He took a final drag from his cigarette and crushed it in the ashtray so hard the tip splayed like a firecracker. “It’s bad when the mark is a kid. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s business, but I’m telling you, this is it, just one more time. You’re costing me, man. I had my own game going, and now I’ll have to end it. After this job, I’m through—you got that? Through. Do your own dirty work.”

      Slamming the phone into its cradle, he stared out the window at the setting sun. It was low in the west, and it edged the clouds with a ring of brilliant gold. So they’d found him. He’d come all the way to Alaska to get away from his old life, but the hooks ran deep. Even in the vast wilderness, he couldn’t disappear, not from them. Well, after this job, he’d take his money and leave. This time he’d go to Mexico. There was a chance he could really vanish in Mexico.

      The man walked to a drawer and opened it. Carefully, he pulled out a nickel-plated revolver and rubbed it on his sleeve until the light played along the barrel like a liquid bead. Then he jammed it into his belt and shrugged on his jacket. They’d told him this would be it. They said they’d never call him again. So what if it was a kid? He had a job to do.

      Just one more time.

      CHAPTER ONE

      The lights of the aurora borealis flashed across the Alaskan sky in sheets of color: bright, dancing curtains of pale green and crimson that took Jack’s breath away. Every few seconds the aurora shimmered with new brilliance, its hues shifting from incandescent greens to soft pinks to blues to luminous white, as though a giant kaleidoscope had been set among the stars. He stood in awe in Denali’s frigid stillness. There was no way he could capture this with his simple camera, no way to reduce this magic onto photo paper. It was as if he were watching the heavens being painted by the hand of God.

      “Awhooo!” Thirteen-year-old Nicky Milano, the Landons’ newest temporary foster child, threw back his head and howled at the northern lights. His breath made a steady stream of frost as he danced backward on his left leg, his right boot pumping the air furiously when he hopped along the pristine snow. “I’m seeing it, I’m feeling it, I’m loving it, I’m digging it,” he cried while somehow managing to shift his backside beneath his parka. “Oh yeah. Yip, yip, yip, awhoooo!”

      Ashley, Jack’s 11-year-old sister, doubled over with laughter, but Jack could only shake his head in disbelief. His parents stood less than 20 feet away, too engrossed in setting up a photograph to do more than give Nicky a quick nod. Steven Landon struggled with a tripod, while Olivia held her husband’s expensive wide-angle camera close to her chest, careful not to drop it in the snow.

      “Awhooo.”

      “Nicky, what the heck are you doing, anyway?” Jack demanded.

      “Howling!” Nicky cried. He stopped dancing and turned to Jack, cinching his hood tight. With the hood pulled almost to the bridge of his nose and his stiff parka collar zipped up so far it skimmed the bottom of his ears, Nicky’s face had been reduced to the size of a fist. Jack could no longer see Nicky’s slicked-back copper hair and the real diamond stud that pierced his right ear, but he could still hear his wise-guy accent. Nicky sounded as though he should be prowling the streets of New York instead of the wilds of Denali National Park in Alaska.

      “I heard that true Alaskans bay like wolves when they see the northern lights,” Nicky explained. “I’m trying to be—you know—authentic. Yo, Ashley, why don’t you give it a try?”

      Ashley threw back her head and let loose a thin, high-pitched yowl. The jingle bells on her hat rang merrily as she tipped her head farther back, wailing at the flashing night sky. Jack had to laugh. She sounded more like a coyote.

      “Do it, Jack,” Ashley begged.

      Shaking his head again, Jack said, “No thanks. You guys are completely crazy.”

      “Yeah?” Nicky clapped his gloved hands together to warm them. They made cracking sounds that echoed across the tundra like gunshots. “You think so?” When he smiled, his teeth flashed white in СКАЧАТЬ