Alaskan Ambush. Sarah Varland

Kate was exactly the kind of person he needed on his team. Already she’d saved him from finding his way down the mountain in the dark, and her determined attitude was infectious too. He could use some more of it right now.

      “I’ve got to stop soon.”

      Kate slowed her pace, came back to where he was, looked around as though Micah himself hadn’t been keeping himself highly aware of their surroundings and looked at his arm. “Pain getting worse?”

      “No but the bleeding keeps starting up again.”

      She wrinkled her nose.

      “You don’t do blood?”

      “It’s not my favorite, but I can handle it.” She looked to the right, then behind them. “We are about half a mile from where I’d wanted to stop. Can you make it that far?”

      “Yes.” Especially when he was looking at a pair of dark hazel green eyes practically daring him, challenging him.

      He hadn’t been fair to her earlier, when he’d thought about her as a kid. She’d always done more than keep up, just like now. She was the one who set the pace.

      The half mile to Kate’s planned stopping place was slower going than the trail had been earlier, and more than once a spruce branch that Kate had pushed back without holding it slapped Micah.

      “I’m sorry. I’m usually alone—I’m not used to thinking about someone behind me.”

      “You just go. I’m fine. I can handle it.”

      So she’d listened. The trees were thicker here, and he suspected Kate wanted to make sure their trail was as difficult to find and follow as possible since they’d soon be stopping to rest.

      Micah was already making plans for that—one of them would be awake at all times. Unless the situation changed for the worst, he might even take a quick nap. He’d seen the way Kate handled that .44. She could more than handle protecting them for a short time; that was how confident she’d seemed with her weapon. And it was a good thing because he needed a nap, at least half an hour. He’d lost count now of how many hours he’d been awake but it had to be edging toward or past the twenty-four-hour mark.

      Just as he was starting to question how well Kate measured distance, the woods cleared. Something ahead of them made a hill in the snow, but he couldn’t quite tell what. He looked around the clearing, but didn’t see anywhere that seemed like a good place to stop. It would be difficult to find where someone would start attempting to track them from, with all the tight trails through the trees Kate had taken, but they also needed shelter. He didn’t see anything that fit the bill.

      “Where were you planning...” Micah trailed off as he watched Kate walk over to the mound and a grin spread across his face. A cabin. She’d found them an old cabin, sunken down into the earth and now covered with snow. They’d be protected, sheltered because no one who wasn’t looking for this would see it, and warm. A good thing since they couldn’t risk starting a fire for fear of being detected.

      He glanced back at their tracks, noting how fast the still-falling snow was covering them. Another hour or so and all evidence of them being here would be erased.

      “How did you know about this?” He didn’t even try to keep the admiration out of his voice and Kate could tell too—he knew from the way she smiled back at him, obviously proud of herself.

      “I’ve hiked all over this mountain, on every marked trail I’ve found and some unmarked ones.” She shrugged.

      “Why?”

      Another shrug. “I like it out here. Life makes more sense.”

      Interesting. He’d love to follow up on that later. The Dawsons lived a charmed life—cozy lodge, warm family. Even though their parents had died, the siblings’ bond remained strong and it seemed they’d all worked through their grief and were living pretty happy lives. Not like Micah. His parents had given him everything he needed in the physical sense, but their preoccupation with their jobs had kept them from spending time with him. As an adult he saw them maybe once a year. They always sent a Christmas card, though.

      No, not like the charmed life the Dawsons lived at all.

      What about Kate’s life could she not make sense of unless she was in the woods?

      He followed Kate’s tracks to the cabin and helped her dig out the snow in front of the door enough that they could open it without letting a pile of snow into the structure, but not so much that it would make an obvious entrance to the snow covered mound if trouble did happen to follow them here.

      “We should be safe here.” She nodded, looked around one more time, then climbed down into the cabin.

      Micah followed, closing the door behind him and looking around. There was a stove in the corner. The cabin itself was decades old and in disrepair, but there was a box of blankets in the corner that looked like someone had put them there recently, at least in the last few years.

      Kate didn’t seem surprised by the box.

      “Did you put that there?”

      She nodded. “I don’t know how many other people know this place is here, but I figured if anyone got into trouble they could use some supplies. Not everyone is as prepared as they should be out here.”

      “Is that something your parents taught you? I don’t remember them spending too much time in the woods.”

      Kate seemed to consider the question and finally nodded. “In some ways, yes. You know they loved it up here, but they didn’t venture into the woods often, so they didn’t teach us everything we would eventually need to know. I sort of just learned from experience.”

      Her tone said there was a lot behind the word experience, but she didn’t owe him stories of her high school years and later. He’d been the one to leave town and no, he hadn’t had a choice about that, but in an age of internet and social media, it wouldn’t have been hard to keep in touch. He’d been the one to choose not to. He hadn’t wanted to watch her grow up into the woman he’d already been able to tell she was becoming when he left. While they’d only been friends, his feelings toward her had started shifting just before he left in a way that made him resist the idea of watching her fall in love with someone, get married, raise babies.

      And know that it wasn’t him.

      He swallowed hard, the truth about his past feelings for Kate something he hadn’t wanted to deal with then, and still didn’t want to deal with now. It was better if he kept her at a distance, though being back in her town and in such close proximity was making that a challenge.

      Kate spoke up, saved him from his own mind. “Some of my experience has come through search-and-rescue work. That takes up most of my time.” It was like she’d read his mind and decided to answer at least one of the questions he hadn’t asked. Micah was grateful. She spoke up again. “Tell me a little more about who these men are and why they’re after me.”

      “I wish I could do the second, but I have no idea. You’ve never met the Delaneys before? Either of the brothers?”

      “Not that I know of.”

      “Tell me everything about today, what happened before you were shot at.”

      She met his eyes, seemed to be considering whether she was ready to talk.

      Micah clenched his jaw. Did his best to wait. Someone was after her specifically, but he didn’t know why the Delaneys could possibly have something against her. From the investigating he’d done, it was clear they didn’t spend much time in Moose Haven, so they couldn’t have interacted with Kate, at least not often.

      So why target her?

      He’d thought earlier that his day couldn’t have gotten much worse, with the case in a tangled mess he didn’t know if he could untwist and his partner dead. But he couldn’t have imagined someone after Kate, a woman he cared about more than he should.