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“Yep.”
“She’s a tracking dog,” I say.
Yolanda’s look says this is a very fine excuse. We don’t argue, because she’s fifty percent right. Newfoundlands are water-rescue dogs. Dalton used the tracking-dog justification as an excuse for buying me my dream breed and pretending it was a practical choice.
“May we go into town and talk?” I ask.
“No.”
My head jerks up. “Excuse me?”
“I said ‘no,’ because once you’re in town, you’re going to want to look around, and I need my people back.”
Dalton’s jaw tenses, and his gaze shifts my way, lobbing this grenade in my direction.
“While we are certainly interested in seeing the town you built for us,” I say, trying hard not to emphasize those last four words, “the missing people are our priority, and we’re quite capable of focusing on that.”
“Not being easily distracted children,” Dalton mutters.
Yolanda turns to him. “You built a town in the middle of the Yukon wilderness for people in need of sanctuary, and you’re convinced it’ll work out, despite it failing spectacularly the last time.”
“Rockton didn’t fail,” I say, as evenly as I can manage. “It saved hundreds, thousands even. Which you well know, being the descendant of some of the people it saved. Your grandparents believed in it enough to devote themselves to keeping it alive for as long as possible.”
“And all it got them was heartache and disappointment. No, you aren’t children. You’re something worse. You’re idealists.” She waves away any protest. “Which is none of my business. It’s your money and Gran’s. My concern is my missing people, and I need you out there now, looking for them.”
I glance at Dalton. His expression is dark, but he says nothing. My call.
“I’ll need scent markers,” I say. “Recently worn clothing for both your architect and your engineer.”
“I’ll bring it.”
“Once we find your missing people, we will do a site visit. Then we’re staying.”
“We’re not—”
“Ready for that? We accept that our home may not be ready, and we’ve brought supplies to avoid using yours. We need to stay and get things ready, since we apparently have residents moving in next month, a year ahead of schedule.”
Yolanda grumbles under her breath. For once, those grumbles aren’t directed at us. They’re for her grandmother, the one pushing the timeline forward. She’s found people in urgent need and convinced us to open our doors right away, rather than living in the town for a year on our own, as planned.
“We’re staying,” I say. “After we find your missing crew members.”
Dalton mutters, “Who failed to obey the first fucking rule of this town.”
“Rules one through three, I think,” I say to Dalton. “Stayout of the forest. Stay out of the damn forest. Goddamn it, what part of ‘stay out of the forest’ did you not understand?”
Yolanda stares as if we’re speaking a foreign language. We are, in a way, though it’s one anyone who spent a week in Rockton would have understood.
Finally, she says, “I did not fail to impart that rule. Imparted it, reinforced it, andenforced it. But short of an electric fence, you can’t keep people from sneaking out.”
“Electric fences don’t work either,” Dalton drawls. “We tried that. Course, they probably work better if you have electricity.”
I snort a laugh. Yolanda doesn’t crack a smile.
“We know exactly how hard it is to keep people in,” I say. “Especially if they’re the outdoorsy type, surrounded by the fabled wilderness of the north. So tell us a bit more about who we’re looking for. Your engineer and architect. A man and a woman who went missing at night. The obvious answer is that they were hooking up. Any sense of that?”
“I would have no idea,” she says. “My crew’s social lives are their own.”
“All right,” I say. “Then I’m going to need to talk to someone who actually knew them. There are a dozen possible scenarios here and knowing which is most likely will help us find them.”
