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"Hey, when I spoke to Pop Toms yesterday, he told me he'd just smoked a big batch of moose meat. You want me to see if I can sweet-talk him into sending me back with some extra jerky for you?" Jenna laughed, but she sounded as though her thoughts were a million miles away. "Sure. If you think Luna will let you get away with it, then yeah, I'd like that."
"You got it. The only thing better than Pop's moose jerky is his biscuits and gravy. Lucky me, I get some of both."
Breakfast at Pop Toms's place in exchange for semimonthly supply drops had been a tradition started by Alex's father. It was one she enjoyed maintaining, even if the price of aviation gas well outweighed the price of Pop's simple meals. But Alex liked the old guy and his family. They were good, basic folks living authentically off the same rugged land that had sustained generations of their stalwart kin. The idea of sitting down for a hot, homemade breakfast and catching up on the week's events with Pop Toms made every bump and dip in the flight out to the remote settlement worthwhile. As she crested the final ridge and began her descent toward the makeshift landing strip behind Pop's store, Alex imagined the salty-sweet smell of smoked meat and buttermilk biscuits that would already be warming on the woodstove when she arrived.
"Listen, I'd better go," she told Jenna. "I'm going to need both hands to land this thing, and I--" The words caught in her throat. On the ground below, something odd caught Alex's eye. In the dark of the winter morning, she couldn't quite make out the bulky, snow-covered form lying in the center of the settlement, but whatever it was made the hair at the back of her neck prickle to attention.
"Alex?"
She couldn't answer at first, all of her focus rooted on the strange object below. Dread crawled up her spine, as cold as the wind battering the windscreen.
"Alex, are you still there?"
"I'm, uh ... yeah, I'm here."
"What's going on?"
"I'm not sure. I'm looking at Pop's place just ahead, but something's not right down there."
"What do you mean?"
"I can't say exactly." Alex peered out the window of the cockpit as she brought the plane closer, preparing to land. "There's something in the snow. It's not moving. Oh, my God ... I think it's a person."
"Are you sure?"
"I don't know," Alex murmured into the cell phone, but the way her pulse was hammering, she had no doubt that she was looking at a human being lying underneath a fresh cover of snow. A dead human being, if whoever it was had been lying there unnoticed for anything longer than a few hours in this punishing cold.
But how could that be? It was almost nine in the morning. Even though daybreak wouldn't come until close to noon this far north, Pop would have been awake for hours by now. The other folks in the settlement--his sister and her family--would have had to be blind to miss the fact that one of them was not only unaccounted for but sprawled in a frozen heap right outside their doors.
"Talk to me, Alex," Jenna was saying now, using her cop voice, the one that demanded to be obeyed.
"Tell me what's going on."
As she descended to begin her landing, Alex noticed another worrisome form on the ground below-this one lying between Pop Toms's house and the tree line of the surrounding woods. The snow around the body was blood-soaked, dark stains seeping up through the blanket of fresh white in horrific intensity.
"Oh, Jesus," she hissed under her breath. "This is bad, Jenna. Something awful has happened here. There's more than one person out there. They've been ... hurt somehow."
"Hurt as in wounded?"
"Dead," Alex murmured, her mouth gone suddenly dry with the certainty of what she was seeing.
"Oh, God, Jenna ... there's blood. A lot of blood."
"Shit," Jenna whispered. "Okay, listen to me, Alex, I want you to stay on the phone with me now. Turn around and come back into town. I'm going to call Zach on the radio while I have you on the phone with me, all right? Whatever's happened, I think we should let Zach handle it. Don't you go near--"
"I can't leave them alone," Alex blurted. "People have been hurt down there. They might need help. I can't just turn away and leave them now. Oh, God. I have to go down and see if I can do something."
"Alex, dammit, don't you--"
"I have to go," she said. "I'm about to land." Ignoring Jenna's continued orders to leave the situation to Zach Tucker, Jenna's brother and the sole police officer in a hundred-mile radius, Alex cut off the call and eased the plane down onto its skis on the short landing strip. She brought the Beaver to an abrupt stop in the fresh powder, not the most graceful landing but good enough, considering that every nerve ending in her body was screaming in rising panic. She killed the engine and no sooner had she opened the cockpit door did Luna leap over her lap to bolt from the plane and run toward the center of the cluster of homes.
"Luna!"
Alex's voice echoed in the eerie quiet of the place. The wolf dog was out of sight now. Alex climbed out of the plane and called for Luna once more, but only silence answered. No one came out of the nearby houses to greet her. No sign of Pop Toms at the log-cabin store just a hundred feet away. No sign of Teddy, who, despite his teenage front of indifference, adored Luna as much as the dog loved him. There was no sign of Pop's sister, Ruthanne, either, nor her husband and grown sons, who were usually up well before the late daybreak of November and taking care of things around the settlement. The entire place was still and soundless, utterly lifeless.
"Shit," Alex whispered, her heart jackhammering in her breast. What the hell had happened here? What kind of dangerous situation might she be walking into when she got out of her plane?
As she reached back into the cargo hold to grab her loaded rifle, Alex's mind latched onto the grimmest possibility. Middle of winter in the interior, it wasn't unheard of for someone to go stir-crazy and attack his neighbor or do serious harm to himself, maybe both in short order. She didn't want to think it-couldn't picture anyone in this close-knit group of people snapping like that, not even sullen Teddy, whom Pop was worried had recently fallen in with a bad crowd.
