Backfire. Elizabeth Goddard

       EIGHTEEN

       NINETEEN

       TWENTY

       TWENTY-ONE

       Dear Reader

       Extract

       Copyright

       ONE

      Mountain Cove, Alaska

      Tracy Murray knew she had little time. A storm brewed in the distance.

      But Solomon’s urgent bark pulled her up the rising trail, indicating that there was someone in danger.

      She sucked more air into her lungs that were already screaming from her workout.

      Any other season on this trail—spring, winter, fall—she’d have to be concerned about the avalanche danger. But not during the summer, and because the season was so brief in Alaska, Tracy had every intention of enjoying the outdoors. Out for a run with her search-and-rescue golden retriever, summer abounded around her in the form of wildflowers and sundry small wildlife scurrying in and out of the flora.

      Tracy had been heading for Keller Falls, four miles up the trail, until Solomon had taken off. She’d let him run free and hoped to practice a few commands. Up until a moment ago he’d run beside Tracy, surprisingly ignoring his natural instinct to chase forest animals, but then he’d taken off. With his continued excited and urgent barks, she knew that he had caught a human scent and was sending his vocal cue to alert Tracy that something was wrong.

      Dread replaced the serenity she’d found on the trail.

      Solomon was an air-scent search dog, wilderness search-and-rescue certified, and Tracy was still training him for both cadaver and avalanche certification. They’d already participated in several searches in the region as part of the North Face Mountain Rescue team. But Tracy hadn’t taken her dog out looking for trouble today. No. She’d been looking for peace.

      Instead her much-loved pet had likely found something. Or rather, someone.

      Avoiding the steep and hazardous drop on the right side of the trail, Tracy kept running toward Solomon’s sound-off. It surprised Tracy how far Solomon had gone on his own in the wilderness, but he’d obviously picked up a human scent that he intended to follow.

      Though certified, Solomon was often eager to conduct a search even when he wasn’t tasked with one, which frequently ended in false alarms—finding someone who wasn’t lost. But if this was something more this time, at least she wasn’t alone if she needed to call for help. She wasn’t the only one who enjoyed an early morning run on this trail. Another runner had taken off on the trail ahead of her, and she’d run into David Warren heading the opposite direction on the trail, too.

      He’d nodded and she’d nodded and they’d both given each other wide berth. Kind of funny now that she considered it. Living in Mountain Cove for two years, Tracy had worked with the firefighter on several search-and-rescue missions, but he seemed aloof. A few years older than Tracy in his late thirties, the man still attracted plenty of female attention with his rugged appearance and strong, lean body. His smile was the kind that turned heads and could make a woman weak in the knees.

      Despite all that, he wasn’t married, didn’t have a girlfriend, and Tracy knew why—he was too cold on the inside. Even if he wasn’t, she’d have kept her distance because of his profession. Tracy wanted to avoid any reminders of the night that had changed her life forever. Any reminders of what had sent her into hiding.

      Make that who.

      And that was one reason she’d chosen to live in Mountain Cove. Surrounded by temperate rain forest in Southeast Alaska, the chances of seeing a wildfire were next to zero.

      She shook off the unwelcome thoughts and focused in on Solomon’s alerts. His barks came from the area to her right, which was nothing but a steep ridge. Her heart sank. She’d purposefully avoided that ledge. How had Solomon found his way down? Or had he fallen?

       God, please, no.

      “Solomon!” Tracy crept to the edge and peered out over the rocky, jagged escarpment, part of the gorge that originated at Keller Falls. Where was he?

      The drop was steep, terraced with granite or bedrock in places, and it was on one of those natural terraces that Solomon stood barking. Fear gripped Tracy. How could she bring Solomon back up?

      “Solomon! Come,” she called.

      The position of his ears and tail signaled that he’d found someone who was injured or scared. Solomon peered up, his brown eyes somber, and when he saw her, he lay on the small space—a signal to mark the spot. But where was the injured person?

      Then, just beyond a bush growing from the ridge, she spotted a body. Tracy’s pulse thundered in her ears. The breath rushed from her—it was the man who’d run ahead of her. But Solomon hadn’t signaled that he was dead.

      And then the man lifted a hand and called out to her. He wasn’t dead after all, but he’d taken a fall. How had he survived?

      Tracy could barely hear his cry for help.

      “I’m calling for assistance,” she yelled down to him. “Just hang in there!”

      A chill slid down her spine. The sense that someone watched crawled over her. Phone in hand, she called for help for the fallen jogger while she scanned the woods behind and around her.

      A man stepped out of nowhere and Tracy gasped—then let out a sigh of relief when she saw it was David.

      But the sense of unease didn’t disappear.

      And she still had a feeling she was being watched.

      * * *

      Breathing hard, David bent over his thighs before gasping out, “I heard the dog, wanted to see if there was a problem.” David wiped the sweat from his eyes, sucked in a few breaths to slow his breathing after he’d sprinted up the trail then cut through the woods.

      Phone to her ear, Tracy stared at him with those big silvery-blue eyes of hers, the terror slowly fading away to shock and concern. What was going on?

      Scrunching her freckled nose, she glared at her phone. “Lost the signal. Oh, I don’t have time for this.”

      “What’s wrong?”

      A deep frown crossed her features as she shoved the thick red hair from her face. “I’m so glad you’re here. A runner fell. He’s down there.” Urgency in her voice, Tracy paced as she pointed to the steep, rocky drop. “He needs our help.”

      David peered over the edge and spotted Solomon—how had the dog made it down there?—and just beyond he saw the hiker. The man was still alive? Apprehension lodged in David’s gut. How long had he been there?

      Pulling his own phone out, he looked for the bars. “Got ’em. Use my phone to call for help. I’ll climb down to him.” David was assistant chief of the Mountain Cove Fire Department and a paramedic. He spent most of his time as a firefighter answering EMS calls rather than fires, and he had too many SAR certifications to count. He was well qualified—he just wished he was better inventoried. Out on his morning run, he had no medical equipment or emergency supplies. All he could do was assess the man’s injuries and reassure him while they waited for help to