"Then let's go. We're burning daylight."
He straddles the snowmobile. I climb on behind him. The seat is narrow. There's no way to do this without pressing my body against his back.
I wrap my arms around his waist. Through the layers of his parka, I can feel the solid heat of him. I can feel the muscles of his back tense as he grips the handlebars. It feels different now. Yesterday, he was just a driver. Today, after the oatmeal and the scones and May's warning, he feels like … a complication.
"Hold on," he shouts over the engine. "The trail gets rough past the ridge."
He hits the throttle. The machine surges forward, snapping my head back. We fly across the lake, the wind biting at my exposed cheeks, the vibration of the engine rattling my teeth.
As we hit the tree line and start the climb, I tighten my grip on Nash's waist. May's words are still ringing in my ears, louder than the wind.
Scientists migrate.
She's right, of course. I'm leaving in a matter of weeks. I have a tenure clock ticking and a life in Seattle that runs on espresso and indoor plumbing and faculty meetings I take by video, because my department sits two thousand miles north of my apartment. I earned my doctorate up here, under Thaddeus, at the University of Alaska. I do the job from a warmer zip code now. I have a plan. I've always had a plan.
But as I lean into the turn with Nash, matching his movement, feeling the sync of our bodies against the machine,I have a sinking feeling that leaving might be harder than I thought.
And looking at the back of Nash's head, at the stubborn set of his shoulders, I have a feeling that May Sweeney saw right through me—and probably through Nash, too.
Chapter Four
NASH
Two nights in the backcountry,three days out of Misty Meadows—the wilderness stretches endlessly ahead of us as we push deeper, and Dr. Aris Thorne is finally starting to relax behind me. Her grip on the side handles has steadied from yesterday's white-knuckled terror, and when the terrain gets rough, she holds onto my waist without the same resistance she showed before. The contact feels different now, less desperate, more trusting, and she adjusts her weight in the turns without being told, learning to work with the machine rather than fight it.
We'd set up camp twice now—once in the lee of a hillside, once in a spruce grove that broke the wind. The first night I'd had to walk her through every step: stakes angled into the snow, the fly tensioned tight, the two-person shelter pitched because two separate tents would freeze a body faster than one shared one. She picked her side and kept to it. By the second night she had her half up before I'd finished mine. She's a quick learner. She stopped complaining about the sleeping bag the second time too.
She's adapting faster than most academics I've guided, though that's not saying much considering most of themspend the first three days complaining about everything from the cold to the lack of cell service. But Aris is different. She's paying attention, learning, trying to understand rather than just endure.
The snowmobile cuts through powder that reaches my knees in some places, the engine's steady roar the only sound in the vast quiet. Towering spruce and white pine stand sentinel along our route, their branches heavy with snow that hasn't seen sunlight in weeks. The GPS coordinates I've loaded show us tracking toward the basin where Aris believes Waldo might be heading, but out here, technology takes a backseat to instinct and experience.
I ease off the throttle as we approach a steep section, feeling Aris adjust her position without being told. Good. She's starting to read the machine's movements, anticipate the terrain changes. When I glance back, I catch her scanning the tree line the way she scans her data, no longer just hanging on for dear life but actually observing the country we're moving through.
"Fair weather activists," I'd mentioned to a client last winter, talking about the eco-terrorists who'd been sabotaging hunting camps during the warmer months. "They seem to avoid the real cold." The comment had been casual, almost throwaway, but it occurs to me now that Dr. Aris Thorne doesn't fit that category. She's here in January, in conditions that would send most environmental protesters running for heated hotel rooms.
I slow the machine and kill the engine at a natural clearing where animal tracks crisscross through the snow like highways. The sudden silence presses in around us, broken only by the whisper of wind through pine boughs and the distant call of ravens.
Aris climbs off the snowmobile with movements that are steadier than yesterday, though I can see the cold and the ride have taken their toll. She pulls her pack around and retrievesthat expensive-looking tablet, handling it the way someone holds a piece of equipment that cost a year of grant proposals.
"What do you see?" I ask, watching her study the tracks with growing confidence.
She kneels beside a set of prints, her gloved fingers hovering over the impressions without touching them. "Caribou, definitely. These look recent." She glances up at me with excitement bright in her dark green eyes, and my next breath comes in slower than it should. "How recent?"
"Yesterday morning, maybe the night before. You can tell by the way the edges are defined—if they were older, wind and temperature changes would have softened them."
She nods, making notes on her tablet without looking up. I watch her as she catalogs each track, measures stride length, documents everything in clean, ordered notes. Whatever else I might think about Dr. Aris Thorne, she approaches her research with a thoroughness that builds trust. She's not playing at fieldwork; she understands that details matter.
"See how the tracks move through here?" I point to where the trail curves around a stand of birch. "They're not running, not stressed. Moving at a steady pace, probably foraging as they go."
"Which direction?"
"Northwest, toward the higher elevations. Makes sense if they're looking for wind-swept areas where the snow's not as deep."
She captures photos of the tracks from multiple angles, her tablet beeping with each image. The sound seems too loud in the wilderness quiet, but she's so absorbed in her work that I don't think she notices.
"How many animals?" she asks.
I study the overlapping prints, counting distinct patterns. "Four, maybe five. Small group, which could mean they split off from a larger herd, or they're scouts looking for better grazing."
