Alaskan Ambush. Sarah Varland

faced in your past, you come to see how God can use it for good and that it brings you closer to Him.

      I love hearing from readers! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had a challenging writing week and then opened my computer to find an encouraging letter from a reader. You can email me at [email protected], or you can find me online at facebook.com/sarahvarlandauthor, where I post writing news and a lot of Alaska photos.

       Sara Varland

      Being confident of this very thing, that he which hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ.

      —Philippians 1:6

      To my grandmother Kate Bryan. I borrowed your name for this book heroine, and maybe a tiny bit of your spunk, too. You’ve been in heaven for years, but it didn’t seem right to dedicate this one to anyone else. Thanks for all you taught me.

       Acknowledgments

      To my family, THANK YOU for everything you do, book related and not. I love you all. Thanks to my friends for being supportive. Special thanks also to Mark and Penny Agnew for that talk over brownies that helped lead to this book. Mark, thanks for the information about trackers—I tried to capture their spirit with Kate’s character, but any mistakes are mine.

      Contents

       Cover

       Back Cover Text

       About the Author

       Booklist

       Title Page

       Copyright

       Introduction

       Dear Reader

       Bible Verse

       Dedication

       Acknowledgments

       ONE

       TWO

       THREE

       FOUR

       FIVE

       SIX

       SEVEN

       EIGHT

       NINE

       TEN

       ELEVEN

       TWELVE

       THIRTEEN

       FOURTEEN

       FIFTEEN

       SIXTEEN

       SEVENTEEN

       EIGHTEEN

       NINETEEN

       EPILOGUE

       Extract

       About the Publisher

       ONE

      The gunshot cracked loud in the snowy silence, confirming Kate Dawson’s worst fear: someone wanted her dead.

      So she ran. She didn’t look around, didn’t try to identify where it had come from, because it would almost be impossible to tell in the winter darkness with trees surrounding her, and if she didn’t run, she might get hit.

      Dying wasn’t an option for her, especially on someone else’s terms. No, if Kate died young, it would be from her taking her outdoor adventures one step too far, not from whatever it was she’d stumbled into when she’d gone home tonight. Whoever was after her had been in her house in town, had ransacked it completely, like they were looking for something. Kate didn’t have what they wanted, didn’t have a clue what it might be, but knew she needed to get out of there fast. Shivers had run up and down her spine on the walk from her house to her car; she’d known even then she was being watched.

      She ran faster, legs burning as she powered through the powdery snow toward her cabin, the one place she might have a chance to escape. Kate dodged another birch tree and powered up the last hill before her cabin. Less than a quarter of a mile. She could do it, even with the backpack on her back. She’d never been so thankful to be in good shape.

      As the bag slammed in rhythm against her back, she called herself every kind of fool for not mentioning to her brother Noah that she’d felt like she was being followed. She knew he was already worried enough that her home had been broken into. As chief of the Moose Haven police, he would have known what to do and would have mobilized the entire department to help her. Except she hadn’t known what kind of trouble she was in, hadn’t been sure if he could help and hadn’t wanted to bring danger to her family’s doorstep by going to their lodge.

      So instead she’d driven around town, trying to lose whatever tail she had, and finally parked her car at the Hope Mountain Trailhead