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“No, no. Uh, your dad— he isn’t—” She drew a breath, released it slowly. “Let me start over. My name is Brielle Ives. Dr. Will— uh, your dad— has helped care for my sled dogs for the past several years and we’ve become friends.”
“Be careful. Dad has a bad habit of bleeding his so-called friends dry then tossing them away when they’re no longer useful.”
“He’s not like that anymore.”
“You’re a musher? Then you know better than anyone you can’t teach a stubborn old dog new tricks.”
She made an exasperated sound. “We’re getting off track. Listen, he called me late last night and said he had something important to show me. He said he was up by Nome and he’d be flying back as soon as we got off the phone. He wanted to meet first thing this morning…” She trailed off.
Ellis waited one impatient beat for her to continue. “And?”
“And he never showed up. It’s not like him.”
“Are we talking about the same William Hunter? Because that sounds exactly like him. He’s awesome at breaking promises. It’s his superpower.”
She ignored that. “He should be here by now. I got worried and called the FAA. He never filed a flight plan.”
“Still not surprised.”
“He told me he was going to refuel in Solitaire, but he didn’t land there—”
“So, he refueled somewhere else.”
“In a storm? In that clunky old plane of his? Solitaire was his best bet.” When he said nothing in response, she added, “And even if he had refueled elsewhere, wouldn’t he be here by now? It doesn’t take that long to fly from Nome to Anchorage. And his flight tracker stopped transmitting.”
He heard the worry in Brielle Ives’s voice. Some of the sneaky stuff even stole into him through the phone’s connection and knotted his gut. He didn’t want to care about his father, but he also didn’t want to think about the possibilities of a crash in the bush in winter. Yeah, he wasn’t his dad’s number one fan, but he didn’t want the man dead. After all, who would he hate if William Hunter died?
He pushed out a long breath. “What do you want from me, Ms. Ives?”
“I thought—” She broke off, hesitated. “I thought you’d want to know he’s missing. I thought you’d want to contact the authorities. I tried, but they wouldn’t listen. Maybe if you come home and—”
He laughed at that. “Hard pass. Thanks.”
“Wait. So, you won’t come back?”
“Nope.”
“But he’s your father.”
“And?”
Silence stretched on the other end for several long beats and he found himself wondering what this Brielle Ives looked like. Her voice was smooth, like chocolate, but also had a bite. Chipotle chocolate, he decided. Was she as dark and spicy as her voice suggested? He was half-tempted to go back to Anchorage just to find out—
Jesus, no. What was he thinking? He wasn’t interested in his father’s sloppy seconds. He wasn’t interested in anything about William Hunter’s life. Or possible death. He’d put that man and that place in his rearview mirror at age eighteen and left skid marks on the ice-crusted road in his haste to escape.
He wasn’t going back. Not for his father. And not for the woman with the chipotle chocolate voice.
“You really don’t care,” she finally said with a note of awe. “Everyone said you were a stubborn, selfish—” She broke off. “But I didn’t believe them.”
“You should’ve.”
“Guess so.” There was another pause. Long enough that he thought she had hung up, but then she added, “You know, people change.”
“Not William Hunter.”
“And not you,” she said, each word coated in venom. “Asshole.”
This time there was no mistaking that she’d hung up. The definitive silence of the line going dead was like a slap. He pulled the phone away from his ear and stared at the screen for a moment, then shifted his gaze over to Peanut the Purse Pooch, still tucked under his other arm like a football.
