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"No," she insisted, pivoting away from Zach's disbelieving look to the rest of the townsfolk. They were all staring at her as if waiting for her to burst into laughter.
Everyone except the black-haired stranger in the back.
His silver eyes bored into her like spears of ice, only the feeling she got the longer she held his gaze was not one of cold but of bone-melting heat. And there was no mockery in his expression. He listened with an intensity that shook her to her core.
He believed her, when every other person in the place was dismissing her with polite--and some not so polite--looks of confusion.
"It's not a joke at all," Alex told the residents of Harmony. "I've never been more serious, I swear to you--"
"I've heard enough," Big Dave announced. He started lumbering toward the door, several other men laughing among themselves as they followed him outside.
"I know it sounds crazy, but you have to listen to me," Alex said, desperate that she be believed, now that she'd laid the truth out for them.
Part of the truth, at least. If they wouldn't take her word about the track she saw in the snow, they would never accept the even more incredible--more terrifying--truth of what she feared was to blame for the murders of Pop Toms and his family.
Even Jenna was gaping at her as if she'd just gone off her rocker. "No one could survive in that cold without proper clothing, Alex. You couldn't have seen a bare footprint out there. You know that, right?"
"I know what I saw."
All around them, the meeting began to disband. Alex craned her neck to try to find the stranger, but she couldn't see him anymore. He was gone. She didn't know why that thought should disappoint her. Nor did she understand why she felt so compelled to search him out. She was impatient with the need, and desperate to get out of there.
"Hey, it's okay." Jenna stood up, giving Alex a sympathetic, if bewildered, smile as she caught her in a tight hug. "You've been through a lot. The past couple of days have been rough for everyone, but I'm sure especially you."
Alex pulled back and gave a vague shake of her head. "I'm fine." The church door opened and closed as another group of people walked out into the brisk night. Was he out there, too? She had to know.
"Did you see that guy in the back of the church tonight?" she asked Jenna. "Black hair, pale gray eyes. He was standing by himself near the door."
Jenna shook her head. "Who are you talking about? I didn't notice anyone--"
"Never mind. Listen, I think I'm going to skip Pete's tonight."
"Good idea," Jenna agreed as Zach stepped down off the raised platform of the pulpit and walked over to join them. "Go home and get some sleep, okay? You're always worrying about me, but right now you need to give yourself a little TLC. Besides, it's been a while since I had a burger and a beer with my old fart of a brother, just the two of us. He's been avoiding me lately, making me wonder if maybe he's got a secret girlfriend or something."
"No girlfriend," Zach said. "Don't have time for that when I'm married to my job. You all right, Alex? That was seriously weird and not like you at all. If you want to talk about what happened, with me or even a professional--"
"I'm fine," she insisted, getting irritated now, and thankful for the anger that was letting her put her troubling past on the back shelf where it belonged. "Look, forget what I said tonight. I didn't mean anything by it, I was just messing with Big Dave."
"Well, he's an asshole and he deserved it," Jenna said, looking more than a little relieved that she wouldn't have to call in the white coats after all.
Alex smiled with a lightness she didn't really feel. "I'm gonna go. Have fun at Pete's, you guys." She hardly waited for them to tell her good-bye. Her rush to the door impeded by a trio of little old ladies talking and walking in slow motion, Alex's pulse was racing by the time she got her first lungful of the frigid night outside. She stood under the snow-laden eaves of the log-cabin church and glanced in all directions, looking for the striking face that had burned itself into her memory that first instant she saw him. He wasn't there.
Whoever he was, whatever had brought him to Harmony when the rest of civilization was barred by bad weather, he'd simply walked out into the darkness and vanished into the thin, cold air.
Chapter Five
Kade trekked deep into the frigid wilderness of the bush, leaving the tiny town of Harmony some forty miles behind him. There were only a handful of winter travel options for humans this far incountry: plane, dogsled, or snow-machine. Kade traveled on foot, his duffel and gear slung onto his back, his snowshoes carrying him over the surface of blowing drifts that could swallow a man to his earlobes. The brittle wind sawed at him as he ran up one steep rise then down through yet another gully, his inhuman speed and endurance all thanks to the part of him that was Breed.
It was his Alaskan heart and soul that relished the cold and the punishing terrain, calling to the wildness inside him--the wildness that was quick to rise again now that he was back on the familiar tundra of his homeland.
Following the frozen KoyukukRiver north toward the general location of the Toms settlement was easy enough. Once he got close to the area where the killings had occurred, his acute sense of smell led him the rest of the way. Despite the thick cover of fresh-fallen snow from the storms of the past couple days, to one of his kind, the taint of spilled blood still carried on the wind like a beacon lighting the path toward the scene of the recent carnage.
What he'd seen on the Web-posted video images Gideon had obtained in Boston had prepared him somewhat for his mission. He'd gone to Harmony's airstrip after the town hall meeting to get a private look at the dead who lay on ice in the yard's sole hangar. The wounds had been grisly on the video. Seeing them up close and personal certainly hadn't been an improvement.
But Kade had studied the lacerations--the near eviscerations--with a cool head and an objective eye. He hadn't found any surprises during his visit to the makeshift morgue. It hadn't been either animal or human that killed the Toms family.
Something else had brutalized them ... just as the young woman, the pretty brown-eyed blonde named Alexandra Maguire, had insisted in the gathering at the town church.
Now, she, on the other hand, had been a surprise.
