Read Copper River for Free Online Page B

attractive. He felt afraid and excited at the same time. He pulled on his pants and a hooded sweatshirt, slipped into socks and his sneakers. As a last thought, he grabbed the baseball bat from his closet.
    In the kitchen, he took the Coleman flashlight from its charging cradle, then he stepped outside.
    A clear fall night. Breathing the air was like sucking frost. The careless hand of the wind off Lake Superior brushed the tops of the pines, which rocked back and forth easily. Ren held the flashlight in his left hand, the beam turned off. In his right, he gripped the bat. He crept to the side of the cabin, pressed against the sturdy logs, and peered around the corner. He scanned the clear area with the chopping block in the center where his father used to split wood for the cabins’ stoves.
    Quiet as a spider, he stole along the wall to the back. He poked his head around that corner, too, and saw no more than he’d seen from his window: the woods empty except for all that silver light and shadow. He held his breath and listened. He thought of turning on the flashlight, but if there was something there, something magnificent and cautious, he didn’t want to scare it away.
    A thump on the ground behind him made him spin. In the dark, his eyes darted around desperately. He edged backward, finally hit the switch on the flashlight, illuminating a big pinecone the wind had nudged loose from a branch.
    He padded to his bedroom window and ran the beam of the flashlight along the wall. Beneath his window frame, long scratches cut parallel lines down the logs. Ren had never seen those marks before. He knelt and brushed his hand over one of the gouges. From the exposed bone-white wood at the heart and from the curl of the shavings along the edges, he knew they were new. Very new.
    A low growl preceded the impact. Ren was slammed against the cabin wall. He didn’t even have time to scream before he hit the ground with the animal on top of him.
    Then the animal laughed and said, “You’re dead meat, dude.”
    “Get the hell off me, Charlie. Goddamn it, get off.”
    He struggled, awash in adrenaline and a killing rage. Charlie, usually about as sensitive as a brick, seemed to realize the depth of his anger. She jumped off him and stepped back.
    “Dude, I’m sorry. I was just joking with you.”
    Ren bounded to his feet, his hands fisted. He was on the verge of laying into her, held back from throwing blows by the thinnest of threads.
    Charlie had been in more fights than she could probably remember, but she didn’t lift a finger to defend herself. “Ren, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”
    In the moonlight, her face became a silver mask of pain and Ren was caught by surprise, as startling in its way as Charlie’s ambush had been. She was the most fearless, pigheaded person he knew, and she never apologized.
    “Come on, Ren. Please don’t be mad at me.”
    He understood that it wasn’t just an apology. It was a plea. Charlie needed him. His anger vanished and he lowered his hands.
    “Your old man on a bender?” he asked.
    “No worse than usual. He’ll drink himself to sleep in a while.”
    “Want to sleep here?”
    “Naw. I’m going to look for Stash’s dead body.”
    “The one he saw in the river?”
    “You catch on quick, Einstein.”
    “You told him you didn’t think there even was a body.”
    “You coming or not?”
    He was so wide awake now, it would take him forever to get back to sleep. Besides, the truth was that the idea of looking for a dead body in the middle of the night appealed to him.
    “All right, sure.” He bent and picked up the flashlight and the baseball bat. When he straightened up, Charlie was grinning at him.
    “What?” he asked.
    “You were going to try to kill me with that bat? Dude, I’ve played baseball with you. You’ve got the lamest swing in the whole world.”
    She turned from him, laughing, and led the way through the dark.
     
    From the shed where the now unused resort