Knights of the North
Bobby Hutchinson
Author Bio
Bobby Hutchinson was born in small-town interior British Columbia. Learning to read was the most significant event of her early life. Bobby married young and had three sons. Her middle boy was deaf. He taught her patience. The other two were rambunctious. They taught her forbearance. After twelve years of marriage she divorced and worked at various odd jobs: directing traffic around construction sites, caring for challenged children and selling fabric by the pound at a remnant store. Eventually, she mortgaged her house and bought the store. Accompanied by her sewing machine, she began to sew one dress a day. The dresses sold, the fabric didn’t, so she hired four seamstresses and turned the store into a boutique. After twelve successful years, Bobby sold the business and decided to run a marathon. Training was a huge bore, so she made up a story about Pheiddipides, the first marathoner, as she ran. She copied it down, sent it to Chatelaine short story contest and won first prize. Presto, she became a writer. She married again, divorced again, writing all the while. She published about fifty-five books for major publishers and is always writing more, ebooks now. After many adventures and many moves, she came home to Sparwood, the coal mining town where she was born. She lives alone, except for two rabbits. She has two of her six grandchildren living just down the street. She walks, reads, writes and likes this quote:
“When you change the way you look at a thing, the thing you look at changes.”
Description
MYSTERY, ADVENTURE AND ROMANCE IN THE YUKON!
HIS RIGHT HAND MAN TURNED OUT TO BE A WOMAN
Constable Christine Johnstone joined the Royal Canadian Mounted Police looking for travel, adventure and promotion. But working undercover has put her life in danger, and the best way to protect her is to hide her in plain sight–as a working constable in Dawson City, Yukon.
Corporal Michael Quinn doesn’t consider himself a chauvanist, but he needs a tough young policeman to help him uphold law and order in what is still in many ways a frontier town. He can’t believe they’ve sent him a female constable. Quinn is a renegade cop, a still young, old fashioned, disillusioned Mountie whose career is at a standstill. He’s the law in Dawson, and he’ll be there upholding it until he retires. He knows his town and all the people in it, and he has no illusions about love, marriage and happily ever after–or about the ability of his new constable to subdue drunken miners.
But Chris knows that brains can outdo brawn. What she doesn’t know is how to deal with the sizzling attraction between her and Quinn. How can they resist passion when winter is one long, dark, cold night?
Book excerpt
The phone rang shrilly, and Quinn glanced at the old fashioned face of the watch on his arm. It was seven-fifteen in the morning, and he’d just flipped his eggs on the plate with his bacon. His toast was hot and the first steaming cup of the day’s gallon of coffee gave forth its rich aroma.
Where the hell was Maisie? It was Tuesday, Quinn reflected, and she ought to be at work by now. What did the RCMP hire a clerk typist for if not to answer the phone?
Quinn swallowed a mouthful of breakfast, and then paused with a loaded fork poised between mouth and plate.
The ringing continued unabated.
“Maisie,” he roared at the top of his lungs. There was no answer, and the phone rang again.
That was the trouble with living across the hall from the damned office, he raged silently. When would the RCMP realize that even its bachelor members needed a separate residence, living quarters completely away from the office, the jail, the job?
The relentless summons went on and on, and with a muffled curse, he snatched up the extension.
“Dawson Police Office Quinn here,” he growled, running the words together.
“Whitehorse RCMP, Staff Sergeant Billings speaking.” After four years of frequent phone calls between Dawson and Whitehorse, Staff Billings still announced himself in the same strictly regulation manner, and followed with predictable heavy handed humor. “Haven’t the mosquitoes and black flies packed you away yet, Quinn?”
God, at seven in the morning!
“Afraid they don’t get up this early, Staff. Busy up here, we’re a major Yukon tourist center now, not a quiet residential area like Whitehorse.”
It was a moldy joke, but Billing’s dry chuckle rustled over the three hundred odd miles separating the towns. “Well, Quinn, that’s why I’m calling so early. You’ll be happy to know you’re getting another constable up there to lighten the load. Constable Johnstone, Chris Johnstone, should be arriving by police plane about ten this morning. You won’t have the paper on the transfer yet, I only heard yesterday myself.”
Quinn’s mouth twisted cynically under his mustache.
“Constable Chris Johnstone, huh? Is this another one of those boys with fancy degrees and wet palms that Depot’s turning out like sausages these days, Staff? I hope Mrs. Johnstone’s little boy Chris has more going for him than that last young whelp they shipped up here.”
Billings’ martyred sigh echoed over the crackling connection. The sergeant probably felt that years of dealing with Michael Quinn by rights should have qualified him for hardship allowance.
Quinn knew he was a thorn in the old man’s side.
“Well, it’s not like it used to be in the old days when you and I went through Depot, Quinn,” Billings said. “You’ve got to keep an open mind with young recruits, y’know. Young Kramer wasn’t emotionally suited to the territories. It’s a different world up here in Rory Borealis land.”
Quinn rolled his eyes to the fly-flecked ceiling and gave a silent groan. Who the hell was writing Staff’s lines these days, anyhow? “Can Chris handle himself physically? Is he a good big brawny lad, this Johnstone?” he queried hopefully.
The connection was getting worse. There was dead silence for a moment, and Quinn hollered impatiently, “Hello? Hello? You there, Staff Billings?”
At last, the familiar scratchy voice sounded in Quinn’s ear.
“This is going to be a new experience for you and for Constable Johnstone. Eh, I should add its Ms Constable Johnstone. Chris is, eh, of the female gender.”
Quinn slowly removed the receiver from his ear and stared down at it as if it had bitten him.
“A woman? A female constable? They’re sending me a woman constable?” he queried.
From the earpiece came the faint dry crackle of traitor Billings, being a determined optimist as he plotted a hasty exit. “Now, don’t get excited, Quinn. Let’s just play this by ear, no nasty preconceptions. Remember, the force has to learn to change with the times, and us along with it, even here in the outposts of civilization. Women have been members of the force for more than thirty years already. Plane will be there at ten. Keep a stiff upper lip, upward and on and all that. Goodbye, Quinn.”
Stunned, Quinn replaced the receiver. He slumped at the battered wooden table under the window, staring out at the blue and gold world he’d been mindlessly enjoying just moments before.
It was June fourteenth in Dawson city, Yukon Territory. It was late spring, a season that Quinn gloried in, a heady season in the far north where dusk falls at midnight and the sun is bright and hot again by 3:00 am….the season when residents are able to recognize one another by their facial features instead of the color of their parkas. The season when tourists pour into town, visitors with lunatic notions of life north of the sixtieth parallel, many of whom would need not so gentle reminders that law and order were alive and well in Dawson, enforced by none other than Corporal Quinn of the RCMP. And, if Quinn was lucky, by a tough and brawny young recruit fresh out of training and eager to learn.
A tough and brawny young male recruit. Quinn had nothing against women in the Force. It was purely a matter of physical strength.
Staffing was about to make a mockery of what Quinn had worked four long years to establish. What the hell did they think a woman could do with drunken prospectors determined to kill one another with broken beer bottles, especially if a crazed eccentric was on the scene, eager to help by shooting them down with his loaded shotgun?
Well, the woman couldn’t stay, and that was that. He’d put her on the next plane out and deal with Staffing later.
Ten, Billings had said. Quinn sighed deeply and sloshed more thick, bitter coffee into his cup.
For a day that had started full of good feelings and sunshine before the phone call, this one was going downhill like a runaway dog sled.
It was actually 10:40 before the Twin Otter with its distinctive blue and yellow stripe and RCMP crest on the side finally whined and bumped to a stop on the tiny airfield two miles outside of town.
Chris smiled down at the admiring young man who’d piloted her and stepped lithely to the tarmac a second before he could gallantly take her arm.
“Thanks, Sarge. I really enjoyed the flight,” she complimented him, and he beamed.
“My pleasure, Constable, believe me,” he assured her.
She stood beside the plane and looked around curiously, filling her lungs with the smell of fresh, unadulterated northern air.
Mmmm.
Her lungs were going to like it here, at any rate. She was going to like it here, she corrected herself firmly, despite the misgivings she’d had about coming north and being a uniformed policewoman once again.
The undercover work she’d been doing for Commercial Crime section these past few months was undoubtedly far more exotic than anything she’d be called on to do here in sleepy little Dawson City, of course. And she couldn’t help feeling just a tiny bit let down about being back in uniform again, because working undercover had been the very thing she’d longed to do in the Force; it had been a romantic job, full of the high adventure and the excitement she’d always wanted in her career.
She and her partners had infiltrated the largest car theft ring on the Niagara peninsula, a complex organization run by the notorious Andollini family, and had brought its members to trial.
If that trial had taken some of the shine off the assignment, well, Chris supposed, that was only natural.
She suppressed a shudder even now, standing here in the warm sunshine, remembering the three long weeks of sordid and endless detail, the strain of being a witness for the crown against vicious and angry underworld figures who felt she’d tricked them.
She had, of course. It was the job she’d been trained to do. But facing Louis and Frank Andollini, the kingpins of the operation, day after day in court, enduring their malevolent stares and not so veiled threats, was a sobering and exhausting experience, one she’d just as soon forget.
She’d felt disappointment and righteous anger when the third brother, Angelo, managed to get off, despite the fact that he was as guilty as the others.
“I’ll get you, bitch,” he’d snarled at her evilly after the trial.
The RCMP had taken his threat seriously, which was exactly why Chris had come to be here in Dawson.
“You’ve done a commendable job, Constable, but we feel it would be risky to leave you undercover at this point,” her commanding officer had told her. “You’ve attracted heat. Because we were unable to convict Angelo Andollini, we feel you may be in danger until all this blows over. Therefore, we’re putting you back in uniform and sending you somewhere quiet for a spell.”
Somewhere quiet immediately suggested interior B.C. to Chris, some tiny town close enough to the sunny Okanagan that she could visit her parents once in a while.
Then she was shipped off peremptorily for northern familiarization training, and her hopes of being posted to interior B.C. evaporated.
When the RCMP decided to put one of its members on ice, the organization did a thorough job. She soon learned that she wouldn’t even be able to write to her family directly, nor they to her. All communications were to be funneled through Ottawa while she was here, and phone calls were definitely out.
Well, she’d simply make the best of it. She started walking briskly toward the patrol car she could see parked near the buildings.
A figure in navy trousers and an open-necked short-sleeve service-issue shirt—undoubtedly the formidable Corporal Michael Quinn she’d heard so much about in the past few weeks—was lounging on the vehicle, one arm bent across the hood. When he saw her coming, he straightened and came striding across the landing field, silhouetted against the brilliant morning light.
Chris couldn’t see his face or features as she walked eagerly toward him, but she wanted to make a good impression, so she pressed her shoulders back and lifted her head, smiling bravely to hide the sudden nervous queasiness in her stomach.
It was exciting, but it was scary as well, meeting this man she’d partner for however long they left her in Dawson. He was something of a legend, Corporal Quinn, one of the old guard in the RCMP, the type who still maintained the law with an iron fist in a velvet glove.
Was there a warm and welcoming man behind the myths? She really hoped so.
He drew nearer, and her head tilted still farther back and up, trying to see what he looked like.
Heavens, he was tall. And broad. The closer he came, the bigger he seemed to be.
Intimidating, a man this big. Chris felt her throat close, and she gulped faintly.
Then her training took over. She drew up smartly, gave her widest grin and held out a hand to the scowling giant with the tumbled dark hair spilling from under his hat. He was now only an arm’s length away, six foot four at least of overwhelming manhood, positively dwarfing her five and a half feet.
“How do you do, Corporal,” she said smartly. “I’m Constable Chris Johnstone.”
The intense heat of the sun was the last thing she’d expected of the Arctic, and she felt a drop of moisture trickle between her breasts, and then another.
Damn! There came several drops down her temples as well, just when she most wanted to appear cool and collected. Chris wasn’t used to being back in uniform yet, and the service-order khaki shirt, and the blue patrol jacket with navy blue tailored trousers, was stifling. She could feel her short crop of thick curls turning into tightly coiled wire under the brimmed regulation hat.
And her hand hung on and on between them like an appendage neither of them knew what to do with. She finally withdrew it, and a wave of heat that had nothing to do with the sun rolled up to her scalp. What kind of corporal had she drawn in this lottery, anyhow? Didn’t he know about handshakes?
A deep bass voice rumbled from the man in front of her, the words spaced at one-second intervals.
“Constable Johnstone, I don’t know what the hell they’re thinking of down at HQ, but I’m telling you right off the bat this is no place for a woman.”
The testiness of his tone and the blatant chauvinism set Chris’s temper flaring in an instant.
“I’m a police officer first and foremost, and yes, I happen to be female. Just what’s wrong with that, Corporal?”
Quinn’s eyes took inventory before he could stop them, looking up and down the slender, curvaceous lines of the woman standing stiffly in front of him. Tilted forward at a cocky angle toward her small nose, her hat covered her forehead and most of her red-gold hair. The eyes spitting sparks at him were wide and deeply set, the shiny deep black-brown of a chestnut, and the black curling lashes surrounding them were outrageously long. She was pretty, no argument there.
But it wasn’t her eyes or the ridiculously innocent heart shaped face that made him swallow.
It was the rest of her. Even the no-nonsense female version of the police uniform couldn’t begin to hide the lushness of her, the swelling breasts thrusting out at the tunic, the long legs and gracefully rounded hips sheathed in tailored police trousers.
There wasn’t a single thing wrong with her that he could see. She was cute, and small, and stacked, and spirited too. Which was perfect in a lady, except that this lady was supposed to be his constable, his partner, his trusted right-hand man. Who the hell needed a partner who made embarrassing things start happening in his groin?
The young pilot had appeared beside them with her suitcases.
“Shall I put these in the cruiser, Corporal?” he inquired diffidently. He glanced regretfully at Chris. “I’m due to head straight back to Whitehorse within the hour.”
Quinn glowered at him, and the boy flinched. What he ought to tell the kid to do was load Johnstone and her luggage both back in the plane this instant and send them straight back to headquarters where they belonged. Except while he’d been waiting here, he’d also been thinking about that.
He’d finally had to admit that he had no reason the force would recognize as valid for sending her back on the same flight she’d arrived on. But he’d think of something, by God. He just needed a bit more time, that was all.
“Stow them in the trunk of the cruiser over there, its not locked,” he finally snarled, and then turned again to his new constable.
Her face was flushed, and she was still glaring up at him, chin tilted and eyes narrowed for battle. He noticed she had a sprinkling of freckles across her nose and cheeks, and something about those innocent brown flecks against the cream of her skin made him soften inside.
What the hell, it wasn’t her fault. Somebody at Staffing had screwed up, and they’d just have to straighten it out. In the meantime, he could at least be civil to the kid.
“I’m Quinn,” he belatedly remembered to say to her, gesturing to the dusty blue and white patrol car parked on the edge of the tarmac. “Might as well get going. C’mon, Ms. Constable,” he remarked in an attempt at jocularity.
Chris felt rooted to the spot with fury at the insulting label. Ms Constable indeed.
He strode around the car and opened the passenger door for her, not waiting for her to get in before he walked around and slid behind the wheel. He had the motor running before she’d made a move. Well, his manners stank, she already knew that, she fumed.
“My name is Johnstone, Constable Johnstone, and I’d prefer you call me that.” Chris’s anger made her voice tremble.
He just nodded amiably, as if he were humoring her, and there was little to do except climb in beside him and rebelliously slam the door as hard as she could.
He paid no attention.
The wheels screeched as he turned the car around and aimed it down the narrow road, and she braced her shiny boots firmly on the floorboards to keep herself in place while hurriedly fastening her seat belt. The way he drove, a seat belt was a blessing.
She noticed that the windshield of the cruiser was badly cracked in several places, making it tricky to get a clear view of the road. The upholstery was torn as well. In fact, the car was a disgrace, and the narrow, potholed road they were bouncing along was worse. She could only hope Quinn knew their path by heart. They were winding close beside a wide, fast flowing river, and he didn’t believe in slowing down for curves.
Once Quinn motioned toward the river with a desultory gesture, making Chris gulp audibly. She wished to heaven he’d keep both hands on the wheel.
“That’s the Yukon. Used to be the major highway to Dawson and the goldfield,” he commented, and then lapsed into preoccupied silence again. He’d taken his hat off and dropped it between them on the seat, and now she could see the ebony tangle of thick wavy hair springing up where his hat had flattened it, curling down much too far over the tops of his ears and down his neck. Obviously he ignored the strict RCMP dictum of short back and sides. The weather beaten dusky skin above the audacious bushwhacker’s mustache looked slightly raw and freshly shaved, and his shirt was clean but rumpled. He looked tough, and she searched for a word to describe him. Untamed? Savage?
He was both less and more than those.
Dangerous?
She finally stared at him openly because he didn’t seem to notice her watching him at all. He was frowning, engrossed in either his thoughts or the alarmingly rough road they were bouncing along. His was a proud and intimidating profile: bushy eyebrows shielding narrowed obsidian eyes, a high arched nose balanced by a stubborn, strong chin. Handsome. Rugged.
Even up close he looked larger than life. Every part of him was massive: his head, his neck, his chest, his hands and arms. Chris knew he had to be at least forty, but his shirt fitted easily, no straining of buttons over a paunch, and the side arm in its holster rested on flat stomach and narrow hips. He seemed all hard muscle, and she suddenly had a clear vision of him, wearing the red serge of the early Northwest Mounted Police, seated on a wild eyed lunging black horse, leading a cavalry charge, saber in one hand and reins in the other.
With, of course, a troop of men behind him.
Men. Not women.
Women were undoubtedly safe at home where they belonged, weeping and waiting and yearning over their heroes while they did the laundry, cared for the kids and cooked massive meals for boarders to earn enough to live on.
Corporal Quinn, she concluded succinctly, swinging her gaze away from him and back to the broken windshield, you are a mastodon, an all but extinct relic of an earlier age. It’s time someone took you in hand, my friend, and brought you up to date on what’s going on out there in the real world.
The problem was, Chris wasn’t at all sure she wanted the job. It would undoubtedly mean conflict, and she hated to admit it, but she was tired, mentally and physically exhausted from the past months of constantly playing a part and of often being in physical danger. She couldn’t even get used to the fact that she was free to be herself again. At the moment, it was hard to remember who that self was.
She still wasn’t sure how she felt about being this far north, either.
“They call that stretch of road down there the Top of the World highway when it gets a little closer to Inuvik,” the pilot had told her, pointing down at the narrow and deserted ribbon of land below them. Dawson felt enough like the top of the world to Chris, never mind going any farther north.
And now here was Corporal Quinn, making ugly chauvinist noises. Maybe she didn’t want to stay in Dawson any more than he wanted her to, she pondered. Still, usually she welcomed a challenge, and working with him would be a challenge, all right.
“Dawson.”
Quinn’s terse announcement came as they rounded a corner, and when the first buildings of the town appeared he jutted his chin at the collection of ramshackle wooden structures.
“Here we are. This is Front Street, Dawson City. That’s the police office. Single man’s quarters and cells are in the back of the building.” He nodded toward a nondescript two story wooden building on what proved to be the main street.
“I’ll drive around a bit, give you an idea what the town looks like, seeing as you won’t be staying long.”
Chris had been curiously peering at the old wooden buildings they were passing, many of them propped up on what looked to be new wooden pilings, others tilting at odd angles to the ground.
She whipped around, and she narrowed her eyes at Quinn’s profile as his laconic words penetrated.
“Exactly what do you mean by that? I’ve been transferred here, Corporal. Most transfers last a good six months or a year. Unless I give you very good reason, there’s absolutely no grounds for refusing to work with me.”
He shook his head stubbornly, still squinting out the windshield.
“No point even unpacking your bags. I’ll have the whole mess straightened out in a couple of days. There’s no way I’d let a lady like you do town patrol alone here on a wild Saturday night, and I’ve already got a clerk typist in the office for the paperwork and the radio, so it would be a waste of my time and yours to let you stay.”