The crack of rifle fire startled her back into her own body.
She jumped with both feet onto her brake, casting up a rooster tail of snow behind the sled. The rig and team slowed. She stood straighter atop the runners.
Again an echoing blast of a rifle split the quiet of the morning.
Her experienced ears told her the direction from which the gunfire had come—her cabin!
Fear for her father flamed through her. “Eyah!” she yelled, and snapped the line.
Horrible scenarios played out in her head. Bears were out and about already, though they rarely ventured so low. But moose were often just as dangerous, and the cabin was near the river, where the thick willow browses attracted the yearling bulls. And then there were the predators that walked on two legs: poachers and thieves that raided outlying cabins. As a sheriff, she had seen enough tragedy in the wilds of the Alaskan backcountry.
Panic made her desperate, reckless.
She dug around a sharp bend in the river. Ahead, a narrow pinch squeezed between a cliff of granite and the rocky stream. She realized she was speeding too fast. She tried the brake, but a patch of ice betrayed her. The sled fishtailed toward the cliff.
There was no avoiding it.
She hopped to the runner farthest from the cliff and used all her weight and the momentum of the too-sharp turn to tilt the sled up on one runner. The underside of her rig struck the icy cliff face. Steel screeched across rock.
Clutching and praying the sled didn’t tumble on top of her, she clung tight to her handles, giving up the dogs’ snub line. With the line loosened, the dogs took off at a full sprint. The sled dragged behind the furious team.
Jenny held in a scream—then it was over.
The cliff fell away and the sled landed hard on both runners, almost throwing her off. She scrambled to maintain her perch. The dogs continued their relentless charge for home. They knew the cabin was only a couple hundred yards off.
She made no attempt to slow them.
Gasping, Jenny listened for gunfire, but all she heard was the blood pounding in her ears. She feared what she would find at her cabin. One hand unsnapped her pistol holster. She left the gun in the holster, not trusting herself to run the rig and hold a weapon.
The sled raced alongside the river. She was now following the same track upon which she had left yesterday. A final wide bend and her cabin suddenly appeared ahead. It was built in a meadow where the stream swung around and emptied into a swollen river. Beyond the cabin, her sheriff’s plane floated at the end of a stout dock.
She quickly spotted her father standing before the cabin’s doorway. He was dressed in traditional Inuit clothes: fur parka, fur pants, and mukluk boots. He clutched an old Winchester hunting rifle across his chest. Even from here she could see the angry spark in his eyes.
“Dad!”
He turned toward her, startled. She urged her dogs on, now kicking with one leg to keep the sled careening toward the cabin.
Once clear of the forest and sailing into the open, sunlit meadow, she yanked out her pistol and hopped off the rig, running to keep her momentum and her legs under her. She raced toward her father. Behind her, the unguided sled glanced over a boulder and toppled. She ignored the splintering crash and searched for danger, her eyes darting all around.
Then it lunged at her. A large black shape leaped toward her from the shadows of the porch.
Wolf, her mind screamed. She swung her pistol.
“No!” The shout was a bark of command from behind her.
Her eyes adjusted, changing focus. The large dark shape dissolved into the familiar.
“Bane,” she cried with relief.
She lowered her weapon and dropped to one knee, accepting the exuberant attention and hot tongue of the huge dog. After being thoroughly slicked with saliva, she twisted around. Two men stood ten yards away in the fringe of the forest. Nearby, a horse chewed leaves from a low-slung branch of an alder.
Her father spoke from the doorway, harsh and angry. “I warned the bastard to get away from here. He’s not welcome around these parts.” He lifted his rifle for emphasis.
Jenny stared over at her former husband. Matthew Pike smiled back at her, but a trace of nervousness shone behind his white teeth. She glanced over to her ruined rig, then back to her father.
She stood up. “Go ahead and shoot him.”
11:54 A.M.
Matt knew his ex-wife was only venting, but he still kept his post at the forest’s edge. The two stared at each other for a long breath. Then she shook her head in disgust and crossed to her father. She took the rifle from him and spoke softly but sternly in Inuktitut. “Papa, you know better than to shoot a gun into the air. Even out here.”
Matt studied her, unable to look away. Because of her mother’s French-Canadian blood, Jenny was tall for an Inuit, almost six feet. But like her father, she was as lean as a willow switch. Her skin was the color of creamed coffee, soft, inviting to the touch, and she had the most expressive eyes of any woman. They could dance, spark, or smolder. He had fallen in love with those eyes.
Now, three years after their divorce, those same eyes stared at him with bald anger…and something deeper, something more painful. “What are you doing here, Matt?”
He couldn’t find his tongue fast enough, so Craig spoke. “We’re sorry to disturb you, ma’am. But there was a plane crash.” He fingered the fresh wrap that Matt had applied to his scalp wound. “We’ve spent the past two days hiking out from it. Matt here rescued me.”
Jenny glanced back to him.
“It was Brent Cumming’s plane,” Matt added, finally finding his tongue. He paused as understanding slowly hardened Jenny’s face. Brent was not standing with them. He answered the question that now shone in her eyes. “He’s dead.”
“Oh my God…” She raised a hand to her forehead, sagging as she stood. “Cheryl…what am I going to tell her?”
Matt tentatively walked forward, leading Mariah. “You’ll tell her it wasn’t an accident.”
The lost look in her eyes sharpened. “What do you mean?”
“It’s a long story.” Matt glanced to the smoke rising from the chimney of the cabin. He had helped build the homestead ten years ago. It was constructed of unpeeled, green-cut logs and a sod roof. He had followed a traditional design. There was even a small lagyaq, or meat storehouse, out back. But to aid in heating the main dwelling, he had modernized the cabin’s design with a propane tank and triple-paned windows.
As he stood, old memories superimposed over the present. He had spent many a happy time here…and one awful winter.