A Stolen Season Read Online Free PDF

her Jeep and start it. She looked at me for a long time. I thought she was going to roll down her window, but then she seemed to change her mind. She pulled down the driveway and turned onto the main road.
    I got in my truck and followed her. I never caught up to her. She was driving too fast.
    It was a beautiful day in May. It was beautiful enough to make you believe that summer was right around the corner. That was the promise.
    That was the hope.
     
     
    She called me that night, as soon as she hit Toronto. She was lonely already, she said. She had no idea what she was doing there. She called me again the next night, after reporting in to the station. Things were a lot different. Toronto’s a real city, after all. There’s traffic, and noise, and tall buildings. Like any other city, there are good parts and bad, the streets with good food and music and everything you could want, and the streets you don’t walk down alone after dark. Coming from Blind River, it must have felt like a different world.
    She wanted me to come out to see her. I said I would. Eventually. My gut told me I should wait a little while, let her get settled, let her find her own place before I came and made things more complicated.
    But God I wanted to see her.
    I talked to her every single night for a month straight. She was working the day shift in the center of the city, right next to Chinatown. The precinct was right on Queen Street. She was doing foot patrol, getting to know the place.
    Then June 21, the first official night of summer. The sun hadn’t shone in Paradise yet. The temperature hadn’t even cracked sixty yet. But it was early still. There was plenty of time for summer to arrive. At least that’s how it felt then.
    No, it wasn’t the weather that got to me that night. It was the fact that she didn’t call, for the first time since moving to Toronto.
    I called her number. The phone rang a few times. I hung up and went to bed.
    The next day, I was surprised by how bad I felt. I didn’t want to admit that the phone calls were so important to me. I didn’t want to feel like I was depending on them. That they were the only part of the day that really mattered to me. I was starting to think, maybe it’s time to go pay her a visit.
    She called that night.
    “Alex.”
    “Natalie, what happened? Are you okay?” The words coming out too strong, before I could stop them.
    “I’m fine, I’m fine. I’m sorry about last night. A bunch of us, we went out for drinks, and it got kinda late.”
    “I understand,” I said. “It’s no big deal.” I was starting to feel a little off balance. I held on to the phone tight, listening to her quiet voice from five hundred miles away.
    “We got talking about what kind of work we’d all done before. I had a couple of beers in me, you’ve got to understand.”
    “Yeah?”
    “Normally I don’t make a big deal about it, but I started telling everyone about the undercover work I did up in Hearst.”
    “You never told me you did undercover work.”
    “It was just the one time. This was years ago, when I could still pass for young.”
    “Oh, come on, Natalie.”
    “I’m serious. On this assignment, I had to be a biker chick.”
    “You’re kidding me.”
    “No, I’m not. There was a gang I tried to get close to.”
    “A Canadian biker gang?”
    “Yeah, why not?”
    “I’m picturing a really polite version of the Hell’s Angels.”
    “Alex—”
    “With mufflers on their bikes so they don’t make too much noise.”
    “How about making crystal meth in a bathtub and selling it to teenagers? Is that polite enough for you? How about beating the hell out of people with metal pipes?”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “You guys in the States,” she said. At least she was starting to sound a little more like herself again.
    “Go on with your story.”
    “There was this woman, she was riding with the leader of the gang. They called him rabbit or weasel or something. Some kind of rodent.