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“Thank you.” Ellis tied the sheath to his belt, then grabbed the sled’s handlebar. “Okay, Norte. Find Bree. Go find your mama. Hike!”
33
The plane.
Oh, thank God. She made it!
Hands shaking and fingers numb, Bree reached for the door, desperate for a reprieve from the unforgiving wind.
It didn’t budge. The storm had iced it shut.
No.
No, no, no.
She sank to her knees, then fell back on her butt. She glanced around in a daze, searching for… she didn’t know what. Something to help her pry open the door? A weapon? A get-out-of-jail-free card? She could really use that last one.
But she was alone, save for the snow-crusted body of Jim Hopkins slumped beside the plane.
“I’m sorry.” Ice had scraped her throat raw and her voice was little more than a hoarse whisper. Tears froze on her face. “I’m so sorry.”
She wasn’t surprised at the crunch of a footstep close by. She’d known coming back was a risk. She’d known he’d be close. Watching. Waiting.
“I’m disappointed you came back,” he said. His voice was shockingly familiar.
She squinted up at him but could only make out his dark outline in the blowing snow. “You knew I would. I didn’t have a choice.”
“I know. Still disappointed. I’d hoped for more of a chase.”
And it clicked. His voice. She couldn’t place it at first, because she was used to hearing him mutter. Betrayal sliced through her, as sharp and cold as the wind. “Following me across the state wasn’t enough of a chase for you, Bones?”
He laughed and met her gaze directly, no shying away. “That’s one of my names. My employers know me as Krane. The good people of Solitaire know me as Larson.”
He had been stalking her from the beginning… which meant there was nobody back at her house to care for her dogs. Fear constricted her throat. “What did you do to my kennel?”
He leveled his rifle on her. At this distance, the bullet would shred her insides to pieces. “They were all fine when I left, but…” He shrugged. “That was a while ago.”
“Those animals trusted you.Itrusted you.” She squeezed her eyes shut against the pain of it. She’d put every single one of her dogs in danger by coming out here. Her newest puppies, the National Park litter, were only a couple weeks old. She was sure their mom, Juno, was taking care of them, but if Juno had no food, the pups wouldn’t get milk. “You could’ve just killed me at home.”
“Nah. I was hired to make it look like an accident. Too many people around to ask questions back in Anchorage.” He nudged her with the rifle’s barrel. “Get up.”
She opened her eyes. Now that he was closer, she could see more than his outline. The ends of his dark hair were crusted with snow, but it wasn’t unkempt and greasy like it usually was. She could see the bump on the bridge of his nose, the thin scar along the line of his jaw. He’d told Dr. Will he’d gotten it in a bar fight back when he was still drinking. She wondered now if that was true.
Strange how someone could be so familiar and yet, at the same time, look like a complete stranger. “Were you hired to kill Dr. Will too?”
“Why do you think I became his friend? I was hired to spy on him and, when it became obvious he was trying to fuck over his business partners, kill him.”
So Ellis and his brothers had been right all along. Dr. Will had gotten involved in something dangerous and probably illegal. It wasn’t just a drinking problem. And maybe he was beyond saving. “But why kill me?”
“You ask too many questions.” He again shoved the rifle barrel into her chest. “Get up.”
She scrambled backward. If she went with him, she’d never return. He’d kill her and nobody would ever know what happened to her. Ellis would never know.
But what else could she do? She didn’t have a weapon and—
Her hand hit something metal buried in the snow. The snow hook. She’d forgotten about it. She closed her hand around the bar running across the top of the hook, the part she usually stomped on to secure it in the ground.
Bones lunged at her, catching her boot. She swung the snow hook toward his head as hard as she could. The edge caught below his eye and ripped a bloody gash across his cheek and nose. He screamed and clutched his eye and she swung again, this time catching him in the side, ripping through his anorak and sticking. She didn’t know if she hit flesh and didn’t hang around to find out. As he dropped to his knees, she ran.
