Alaskan Ambush. Sarah Varland

breathe, but it sharpened his focus, made him want to do a better job on this case.

      He had to because her safety depended on it. And he wouldn’t let her down.

       THREE

      Kate pulled a blanket tighter around herself and leaned against the cabin wall. She didn’t remember the last time she’d pushed herself that hard physically and it felt good. No wonder her sister ran around mountain trails for fun. Today was almost enough to convince Kate to take it up herself.

      If only she’d been doing it for fun, and not to save her own life. She shuddered, tried to push the past twenty-four hours out of her mind, but she knew she shouldn’t bother. Micah needed to know what had happened, for the sake of his investigation, and she was the only one who could tell him.

      Time to admit defeat and do it. Almost. “I’ll tell you as soon as I call Noah.”

      She’d just reached her backpack when Micah stopped her, his hands coming down on hers. “Stop.”

      “I need to tell him where I am.” She stared at him, trying to figure out why he wouldn’t let her... “Oh. Right.”

      “Your satphone will give the Delaneys something to trace.”

      In all her efforts to make sure they weren’t tracked, she hadn’t thought of electronic issues. Micah had mentioned it earlier but she’d forgotten.

      Micah seemed to read the look on her face. “Is it on?”

      Kate shook her head. She was thankful for that at least. She’d been in too big of a hurry when she packed her bag to power the phone on. Her siblings would have said God was taking care of her. Kate didn’t know. “No, it’s off.”

      “We should be okay, then, but don’t use it.”

      “My siblings will worry.”

      “Better that they worry tonight and have you get back safely tomorrow than make them feel better now and tell the Delaneys our exact location.”

      She nodded and pulled the blanket tighter around herself. Her hands had started to shake slightly. She gripped the blanket and took a deep breath, willing her body to calm down. “Everything about today was normal until lunchtime.”

      “What happened then?”

      “I’d been out this morning, at the lodge taking some pictures to include in the new brochure Tyler and Emma made up to advertise the lodge. I went home to get lunch and my house had been torn apart. Drawers open, mess everywhere and furniture cushions slashed, just like at the cabin here.”

      It had been jarring, helping her brother and new sister-in-law, seeing their excitement over the shots she’d gotten, and then finding the destruction at her house.

      “Someone trying to threaten you? Warn you away from something?” Micah asked.

      She shrugged. “Could be, but it looked more like they were searching for something. Any idea what?”

      She studied his face, but he gave nothing away with his expressions. Something he’d probably learned from being a cop, because when he was a kid Kate had been able to read practically every thought on his face. She’d never told him that, but apparently someone had pointed out his lack of poker face and he’d fixed it at some point in the last few years. It disappointed her, and then surprised her that it had.

      “Did I tell you what the Delaneys are accused of doing?”

      “Yes. You didn’t mention any violent crimes, though. Do they have a history of assault? Or murder?”

      “Not until today.” This time she could read his face. His partner. She winced, almost feeling his pain for herself, shutting out the memories that threatened to overtake her. They were always there, waiting in the edges of her mind, no matter how high she climbed, how many rivers she white-watered down, how many ocean passages she kayaked.

      But she’d probably never give up trying to outrun them.

      “They do kill people that get in their way, though.” Kate said the words to ground them both, focus them both back on the present.

      Micah nodded slowly.

      “How did I get in the way?” She tried to wrap her mind around it, come up with some kind of working theory, but couldn’t settle on anything. She’d had a low-key week, besides more rescues than usual due to the avalanche conditions. Four backcountry skiers had needed to be rescued within the span of five days and two had died from injuries suffered in the avalanches they’d been caught in.

      Every single loss hurt. Kate took every one personally, despite the fact that she told the new SAR recruits to never do that. Mountains and avalanches weren’t sentient, weren’t out to get anyone.

      But when it came down to it?

      It sometimes seemed that was the truth.

      Micah hadn’t offered any new thoughts, yet, so Kate used the silence to go back over her week again, see what she could be missing. Had she acquired something they needed to search for? Had she talked to one of them unknowingly? The avalanche rescues did tend to attract crowds and one of the Delaneys could easily have been in one of them.

      But that didn’t give them any motive to kill her.

      Unless... She wondered...“Do you know all of the people involved in whatever kind of criminal group this is?”

      “We don’t. We’re missing quite a few people.”

      “I’m going to give you two names. Both of them area skiers I tried to rescue last week and both died. Different avalanches. Gabriel Hernandez and Jay Twindley.”

      “You think they might be connected?” He’d taken a seat beside her but he sat up a little straighter now. Kate nodded.

      “I don’t know how but...it’s the only explanation for how I could have gotten on anyone’s radar, at least that I can think of.” She felt her eyes narrow. “Gabriel. Look him up first because we know how the avalanche that killed Jay Twindley broke loose but the one Gabriel was caught in was remotely triggered and something about it felt...off to me.”

      “That would be unusual, wouldn’t it? For an avalanche to be used as a way to intentionally kill someone?” Micah asked. She appreciated that he was able to follow her train of thought without long explanations, because she wasn’t good at those. Didn’t enjoy them.

      “Extremely.” She shook her head. “I don’t know if it’s likely at all. But it’s all I’ve got. I don’t have anything of anyone’s. I know that much.” She looked over at Micah, met his eyes and found so much familiarity there, even after all these years, that she looked away. She hadn’t let a friend get as close to her as Micah since Drew.

      And Drew had died. She hadn’t been able to save him.

      Making friends had been harder since then.

      She looked away from Micah’s eyes, from the gut-wrenching, heart-cleansing kind of honesty she was tempted to proclaim when she looked there. She wanted to tell him everything that had happened since he’d left, how it made her feel, all the things her siblings had asked that she hadn’t been able to articulate, things the counselor she’d seen exactly once had mentioned but she’d not been interested in discussing.

      In her struggle to avoid Micah’s eyes, his arm caught her eye. They’d both forgotten about it, though she didn’t know how Micah had; it must be hurting intensely.

      “Let me see what we can do for your arm, okay?”

      Before he could answer she’d already pushed the blanket off herself and moved to a kneeling position. Her backpack had some basic first-aid supplies in it and she should be able to do a better job with it than what had been done so far—not a difficult proposition, since