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“The Lamplight. Good. That’s where I’m staying.” Whether they knew it or not, she was staying there, especially now that she knew about the Wi-Fi situation. “Will you take me there?”
“You sure?” He glanced at her sideways. “It’s probably not up to your standards.”
“Unless you have an extra room and Wi-Fi and don’t mind driving me wherever I need to go, I’m sure.”
“I’ll take you to the Lamplight,” he said quickly. “Wait in that blue truck while I tie down Rover.”
She nodded and grabbed the handle of her rolling suitcase. “If you call your plane Rover, what would you name your dog?”
“My dog is named Buttercup, and leave her out of this.”
6
As soon as Sam dropped Molly off at the Lamplight Motel—making sure that Bethie Lund unglued herself from her Real Housewives binge long enough to check her in—he drove out to the old logging road where he’d arranged to meet Soraya Chilkoot.
She was waiting behind a big Douglas fir, her brown coat barely indistinguishable from the trunk of the tree. All the Chilkoot women, at least the ones he’d seen, wore muted colors, because they wove and dyed their own clothes with the materials at hand, and apparently it was difficult to intensify the shades.
“Did Luke find you?” she asked nervously as she skied from behind the tree. She was mid-twenties, bright-eyed and quick-moving, quite athletic under her layers of homespun. It was a trek out to the Chilkoot place, and she’d done it on skis. Impressive.
“He was waiting for me at the airstrip, but it’s all good.” He closed the door of his truck carefully, not wanting to make a sound that might reverberate in the deep quiet of the snowy forest.
“He’s getting suspicious.”
Sam believed it. He didn’t particularly want to end his life as a frozen corpse in the endless wilderness of the Wrangells. It wouldn’t be the first time that had happened.
“I figured. I think I managed to throw him off the scent. I roped a passenger into pretending we were a couple.”
Soraya’s face lit up with delight. “Good thinking.”
“He wants us to come out to the property. Any idea what that’s about? Is it some kind of trap?”
He watched her closely as she thought about it. Getting information from Soraya was a challenge, but it also happened to be his mission. She sure didn’t make it easy.
“He almost never invites people out except for work purposes. I don’t know why he wants you to come. Do you have it?”
He dug into his rucksack for the package of pills he’d buried deep at the bottom, hidden inside his sunglasses case.
“Thank you, Sam Coburn. I knew I could trust you.”
Then why didn’t she start trusting him with a few more Chilkoot-related details?
He just nodded. It never worked to tell someone you were trustworthy. That might make them think you weren’t.
She took the package from him and tucked it into her coat pocket. He wondered if she hid her birth control from her husband, too. He had no idea who he was; she never mentioned his name.
“See you next month?” she asked.
Another month. Jesus. He was getting nowhere with this process. “Need anything else?”
“This is good.” She patted her coat pocket. “One of these days I might be ready for another baby. Just…not yet, you know?”
“You don’t have to explain to me.” Soraya had told him she had three kids already, one after the other, with barely a year separating them. Who could blame her for wanting a break? Even if he hadn’t been trying to earn her trust, he would have helped her.
“Maybe when Josiah turns four. He’s such a ball of fire, that one. Never stops. Sometimes at the end of the day I just want to walk off into the—” She shook herself, as if trying to break out of a trance. “Don’t listen to me, I’m just complaining. I love my babies. I love being a mother.”
Do you? Sam wanted to ask. Do you love all of it? Or is your weird family pushing you into a certain kind of life? But of course he didn’t. It wasn’t his business. But he couldn’t help sympathizing with her. “Like I said, you don’t have to explain anything to me, Soraya. I don’t get involved.”
“Well,” she cocked her head, “you are involved because you’re bringing me birth control.”
