K-9 Defence. Elizabeth Heiter

plan to move for a few hours.

      Between the heater kicking on and the fireplace warming the cabin even more, Colter’s stiff muscles slowly started to relax. An hour later, his leg was still throbbing unhappily, but the pain was a lot more manageable.

      With the fire roaring away on one side of him, the view of the valley covered in snow through a thick-paned window on the other and Rebel at his side, Colter felt complete. This was why he’d come to Alaska. Yes, his parents’ claim was true—he was hiding here. But he was hiding from all the well-meaning but clueless people—them included—who wanted to fix him. Who had no idea what it meant to survive an ambush when all of his brothers had died.

      Rebel whimpered and when Colter glanced at her, he could swear she knew what he was thinking. “It’s okay, girl.”

      But instead of calming down, she stood, went to the window and started barking.

      Someone was here. And since there was no one in Alaska he knew well enough to visit his house, it wasn’t a guest.

      He’d come to Alaska to hide from what was left of his life. Yeah, he could admit that. But there were plenty of other people who saw Alaska as the final frontier: a place to hide away from something they’d done, to run from the law.

      Colter winced as he swung his injured leg to the ground, then hobbled over to the cabinet against the far wall and grabbed his pistol. He’d stopped carrying it into town, but right now he was happy he hadn’t given it up altogether.

      “Rebel, quiet,” he commanded. In her three years as a Military Working Dog, never once had she disobeyed a command from him.

      But today she just barked louder.

      Colter released the safety on his pistol and eased toward the door, preparing himself for trouble.

      * * *

      KENSIE GRIPPED THE steering wheel until her knuckles hurt, stomping her foot on the brake. But it didn’t help. Her rental truck still slid backward, angling toward the edge of the road, toward the drop-off beside the steep hill she was trying to climb.

      Why did Colter Hayes have to live in the middle of nowhere?

      According to the few locals who would talk to her, he was an ex-Marine hiding from the world after being badly injured. No one seemed to know how he’d been injured or why exactly he wanted to hide. In fact, none of them seemed to know much more about him than the few details he’d shared with her on the street. And yet he’d lived in Desparre for almost a year.

      “People come this far into the Alaskan wilderness for three reasons, honey,” the grocery store owner had told her, then ticked off those reasons on gnarled fingers. “Either they love a good adventure, the kind that’s as likely to get them killed as not. Or they want the entire world to leave them the heck alone. Or they’ve done something they don’t want anyone to know about—probably something illegal—and they figure no one will ever track them down here.”

      Then she’d narrowed her eyes at Kensie. “We all assume Colter is the middle one. But you’ve got to be careful who you trust.”

      Her words echoed in Kensie’s brain as her truck finally stopped its dangerous backward descent. She kept her foot wedged down hard on the brake, her hands locked tight on the wheel, afraid to move. Should she keep pushing forward or turn back?

      She leaned forward, craning her head up at the hill in front of her. Snow was still falling on it, obscuring what was little more than a dirt trail. She had one more crest to go and she wasn’t sure if her truck would make it. But she wasn’t sure she could turn it around, either.

      Now it was her brother Flynn’s voice she heard in her head. “You’re going to Alaska, Kens? Are you crazy? People venture out into the woods there and never come out again. You could die up there and we’d never even know where to start looking.”

      At the time, she’d thought he was overreacting. He always had when it came to her, even now that they were both adults. He’d already lost his little sister and she knew, somewhere deep down that he’d never admit, he was afraid of losing his big sister, too.

      She realized now how ill-prepared she’d been for this trip. Desparre was insular. People here already distrusted each other, but they distrusted her double for being an outsider. Some of them had been nice but ultimately dismissive. Others had just eyed her suspiciously and refused to talk. Questioning as many people in town as she could had told her that either no one knew anything about Alanna other than what they’d read in the news, or they just weren’t going to tell her.

      But Colter understood this place. And regardless of what he’d said about his tracking skills, she knew one thing. Trackers found people. Whether it was someone who’d set a bomb or someone who’d been kidnapped, she had to believe he could help her.

      And she might not be prepared, but she was determined. If Alanna was really here, Kensie wasn’t leaving without her.

      Assuming she could get up this mountain.

      Gritting her teeth, Kensie switched her foot from the brake to the gas as fast as she could, not wanting to lose traction. The truck’s wheels spun, spraying snow at a crazy angle, and then it shot forward, up the hill.

      Kensie grappled to keep control of the wheel, her muscles aching. The truck veered left, then right, but it kept moving upward until she could see the top of the hill. She was going to make it.

      As if thinking those words had been bad luck, the truck veered right again, straight off the side of the road. It sank down several feet, jolting her forward as the front end planted itself in a snowbank.

      Kensie swore, tears of frustration pricking her eyes. For fourteen years, leads on Alanna had come and gone like rabbits in a magician’s disappearing act. One minute promising and solid and right in front of them. The next minute poof! Like they’d never even existed.

      This time might be no different. Her family didn’t think it was. But they’d come to accept years ago what statistics said was a near certainty: Alanna was gone. She was never coming home.

      Kensie had never been able to do that. And she didn’t think it was guilt eating at her gut this time, telling her something was here. She had to believe that this time, if she looked hard enough, maybe the magic trick would become real.

      Colter could help her. She knew he could. If she could find him. If she could convince him.

      Was she even close to where he lived? She had no idea. She assumed she’d followed the directions properly, but what if there’d been a turnoff she’d missed? She could be miles from his cabin.

      She peered through the windshield at the snowflakes, falling faster and thicker from the sky. It had been cold when she’d arrived, but temperatures had dropped to near zero in the hours since. And that was down in the main part of town, not up in the mountains where Colter lived.

      Fear settled low in her belly as she zipped her coat up to her chin and slid her hood over her head, fastening it tightly. She didn’t need to gun the engine to know there was no way she was getting her truck out of this snowbank.

      She was walking from here. She just had to pray Colter’s cabin was nearby and she wouldn’t walk right by it in this snowstorm and then freeze to death.

       Chapter Three

      The moment she stepped out of the truck, Kensie wondered if she’d made a mistake. Her whole body seemed to ice over as her feet sank into a pile of snow, rising over the tops of her boots. The cold seeped through them, too, soaking her up to midcalf. She had to hold the tops of her boots to make sure they came with her as she climbed out of the snowbank and then her hands were soaked through her gloves.

      Enormous snowflakes plopped on her head, sliding down the side of her hood, where some dropped off. The wind sent others flying into her face, where they