Alaska Secrets
Author
Sarah Varland
Reads
16.3K
Chapters
21
ONE
Ellie Hardison’s cheeks were freezing in the minus-twenty-degree weather, and she was terrified her hands had frozen to the grips of the snow machine miles ago. But while turning back might look appealing, she wasn’t going to let down someone who was counting on her search and rescue team.
She kept her eyes on the horizon, scanning for any shapes that could be a missing musher and his dog team. Apparently the man, Seth, was overdue from a training run, and his neighbor had called in the Raven Pass Police Department. The PD had requested the help of Raven Pass Search and Rescue, as most people who went missing in Alaska’s backcountry were simply victims of the elements, unpreparedness or plain old bad luck.
Whatever the reason this man was missing, Ellie refused to let the weather stop her from doing her duty.
She strained her eyes, still able to see very little in the moonlit Alaskan night. This was one of the coldest nights of the year so far, substantially lower in temperature than the night before, and if the man had already been out for hours longer than planned, he might already need medical attention. They needed to find him fast.
A tap on her back from the second searcher and Ellie’s friend, Piper Adams, drew her attention back, and Ellie glanced back. “What is it?” She yelled the words over the roar of the engine, slowing down slightly to try to quiet the wind. She didn’t want to stop, because if she stopped, she might fully realize how cold she was. Sure, she was uncomfortable, but someone’s life might be hanging in the balance right now.
And Ellie was far too familiar with how fragile life was. If there was a chance the missing man could be saved, she was going to save him.
She was going to save every single person she could—no matter what.
Even though it would never be enough to bring Liz back.
“I see something!” Piper yelled back.
Ellie did slow now, afraid that if she missed whatever Piper had seen, they might not be able to spot it again.
“Where?”
Piper reached her right arm forward and motioned to the right, in front of them. Yes, Ellie could see what her friend had pointed at.
The spruce trees were dark in the moonlight and the snow surrounding them was thick powder. In a small clearing ahead was something that didn’t look like a tree. A black cluster of something in the snow. Could be their missing man and his dogsled. Could be the shadows playing tricks on them, making a fallen tree seem like the person they were so desperately seeking.
It was worth checking. Just in case.
Ellie steered the machine through the snow, off the trail they’d been on. They’d been following the trail system near the missing musher’s house, but whatever Piper had seen was off the trail, so now they were in who knew how many feet of ungroomed snow. The engine was more than able to perform in these conditions, but the handling was different. Ellie had only been driving snow machines for a few years. Her former life, in a small town in western Washington and then in Anchorage, hadn’t lent itself to much of that activity.
As they approached the blurred lumps ahead, the shapes became more recognizable, and yes, it was a turned-over sled and several curled-up, sleeping dogs.
No sign of Seth yet.
Ellie parked her machine. Shivered. It felt like someone was watching her...the missing musher? Someone who’d attacked him?
No, that was unreasonable. They were the only ones out here. And as of right now there was no reason to suspect an attack or any kind of foul play. She was letting her own past crowd in and cloud her judgment. The moonlit shadows on the scrubby spruce trees were playing tricks on her. Her unease was simply a product of her overactive imagination and the vast sense of loneliness the Alaskan wilderness could convey.
Still, she felt watched, no matter how much she tried to talk herself out of it. Every sense was heightened. Her shoulders tensed as she readied herself to react.
Was this PTSD from a time when she’d reacted too slowly, when she’d been too late?
Or could there be a human threat involved in this situation?
Ellie had wanted a fresh start when she came to Alaska. But no, she’d never expected her fresh start to take her to Raven Pass, to Liz’s hometown, a place that reminded Ellie of her best friend every day and tugged her right back into those nightmares.
“There he is.” Piper’s words were slurring slightly in the cold. Ellie hated that feeling, when frigid temperatures started to affect your speech. Ellie needed to get all of them—the musher included—back, as quickly as possible. With that in mind, she climbed from the snow machine and made her way in the direction of what looked like the sled. Reaching up, she clicked her headlamp on and immediately caught the glow of at least half a dozen pairs of eyes in the dark.
She could see the dogs now. They were in harnesses, connected to a main rope—called a gangline, she’d learned on a dog mushing tour once—connected to the sled, by smaller ropes on their harnesses and collars. Some of them were lying down, and Ellie wondered how long they’d been here. The sled should be hooked up behind them. She turned her head that direction and confirmed. Yes, it was there, but on its side; no musher that she could see.
Steeling herself against the discovery no SAR worker wanted to make, she walked closer.
“Seth?” She swallowed hard. “Seth?” The caller who had reported him missing hadn’t given a last name...but the missing musher shared a first name with her former fiancé. They didn’t always even know a first name for the people they were rescuing. All that mattered was that someone was lost and needed SAR to find them.
Ellie saw the sled bag—the fabric compartment that rode on top of the dogsled and gave the musher a place to store gear—which looked torn apart. There was no other evidence of a struggle that she could see to imply it was human-caused, but she didn’t see any terrain here where a crash could have caused that kind of damage, but maybe Seth had hit something farther back on the trail system somewhere.
Or what if her thought earlier hadn’t been way off base? What if he had been attacked?
What if someone was watching, still?
Chills crept up her shoulders, too deep inside to be the cold, as she reached for the sled bag.
Clean slices. Consistent with a knife. Intentional destruction? Possibly, a suspect could have wanted to access the contents of the bag quickly and had foregone the likely frozen zipper in favor of a knife.
Either way, this was starting not to look like an accident to her.
“Seth!”
Ellie heard Piper’s yell and the way her voice changed tenor and hurried toward her as fast as she could.
There, crumpled in the snow behind the sled, was a human form. Ellie swallowed hard, but there was no panic. No, that would have been a welcome reminder of the hopelessness she’d looked in the face before; it would have provided her with some way to feel, to connect to her past.
Instead, since the day her best friend had been taken from her, Ellie had felt nothing.
Well, except regret. And a desperate determination to save every single person she could.
“Is that him? Is he breathing?”
The first question was pointless—neither of them had seen a picture, but the man was dressed for dog mushing and looked like the kind of Alaskan Ellie could picture on the back of a sled. Large parka with a warm ruff around the hood, which was pulled over his head. Strong face with a jawline edged with a five-o’clock shadow. Broad shoulders and arms that should have been strong enough to get himself out of...whatever situation he’d found himself in.
Except...
“He’s bleeding.” Piper was the one who said it first, but Ellie had already noticed the dark stains in the snow.
Ellie was debating whether it was worth the risk of exposing him to the cold to look under his parka and see what kind of damage the wound in his side was. There was a moderate amount of blood. Enough that it was more than a scratch, but not so much that he was in danger of bleeding out.
Shock, maybe. Especially if she risked exposing him to more cold. Better to see about the wound later.
She’d just decided when the man moaned and reached a hand down by his side.
Then his eyes blinked. Opened, and locked with hers.
“Who are you?” he asked, and Ellie couldn’t answer.
Because the bright blue gaze staring back at her had the exact color of her best friend’s eyes.
And the man in front of her was the only man she’d ever loved. Liz’s brother, Seth Connors.
Even though she shouldn’t be so surprised—she’d known that Liz and Seth were from Raven Pass—a shiver still ran down her spine. She’d known he had moved out of Anchorage, as she’d kept an ear out for what was going on with him even after she’d left him. So yes, it wouldn’t have taken too much thought to realize he might have gone back to his hometown.
When the job had opened up in Raven Pass, Liz’s hometown...
Well, Ellie had taken it. She hadn’t thought about Seth, or at least she’d tried not to. Instead, she had kept on living the life her friend should have had.
Because Liz shouldn’t be dead. Wouldn’t be if it weren’t for Ellie. Ellie should have been able to stop it, or she should have at least been able to save her friend’s life.
“Who are you?” the man asked again.
He might not know the answer to that right now. She’d shortened her name, so he wouldn’t recognize that. She’d changed her hairstyle. And she was layered in enough winter gear her mom might not recognize her at the moment.
But she knew exactly who he was. Even in the gear.
And every bit of the safe world she’d carefully built for the last three years was threatening to come apart.
Agony shooting through his head and side fought for attention. And Seth was cold... He opened his eyes and saw a woman kneeling over him.
“My dogs!” He remembered he had his dogs with him. Years of training, care; he couldn’t lose those dogs. Rule number one of mushing was to never let go of your sled, and he’d apparently passed out at some point and lost them.
“Lie down. You’ve lost a lot of blood, and you can’t just get up like nothing—”
He pushed himself up on the snow, just enough to sit and see the dark shapes ahead of him. His sled, on its side.
His dogs?
Yes, there they were. Like she knew he was looking, his lead dog, Spots, lifted her nose and howled in the high-pitched way only she could.
“Your dogs are right here,” a second woman said.
“Are they okay?”
“We haven’t checked on them yet.” The first person, the one with eyes darker than the Alaskan midnight itself and the bossy voice, was talking again. “We were a little busy trying to decide if the man we’d been sent to find was alive.”
Seth blinked and tried to make sense of her words with the timeline in his head as he knew it. He’d left for a training run just as it got dark. It was still dark, so it couldn’t have been too many hours...
Who had reported him missing?
Surely not the men who’d...
More snippets of memory came back. “I was attacked.” He swallowed hard, embarrassed to admit it, since he’d clearly been on the losing end of that, but his rescuers needed to know. “Someone was standing by the trail, next to a snow machine. I assumed they needed help and slowed down.” He shook his head. “And when I did, they hit me over the head with something, I guess...” He trailed off.
Someone was apparently after him. Because the three of them were miles from any other kind of help, and if those men came back, he’d be no match for them wounded. Unless either of these women was packing a bear gun, they probably would not be a lot of help fighting off criminals, either.
“We need to get out of here. We aren’t safe.” What had happened to his sister was never far from his mind. People were capable of all kinds of evil and violence and he had to get these women to safety.
Sure, they were here to rescue him, but he’d been raised to respect others and anyone getting hurt because of him didn’t sit well.
The second woman looked surprised, Seth noted, but the other’s face never changed. Almost like she’d expected that?
The first woman nodded, gestured with her head toward his sled bag. “Your bag is slashed apart. It didn’t look accidental.”
Much as he wanted to sort through that, try to figure out what he thought, he had a different focus right now. He had to take care of his dogs.
“I’ve got to see about my team.” He pushed against the snow, his side screaming at him. He placed a hand against it, brought it away. No fresh blood. But he saw what looked like blood in the snow, the moonlight and the women’s headlamps just enough to give them some light.
He felt his head, came up empty. “I lost my headlamp.” The throbbing in his head intensified. He needed to get them out of here, but right now he was painfully aware he was the weak link in this group. Every extra bit of hurrying only seemed to make him slower in the long run.
The first person reached into her pocket and handed him one. “I’m Ellie Hardison. This is Piper Adams.”
“Seth Connors.” He blew out a breath, frustrated that the woman’s voice was still so calm.
Ellie stepped away, and he saw something pass over her face. They hadn’t met before, had they?
“Your team is this way,” she said and turned around.
“I’ll look for your headlamp,” Piper offered.
“Please be careful.” He didn’t want to be responsible for anyone getting hurt. Life was fragile. Memories of his sister, an EMT in Anchorage who’d been killed here years ago, flashed through his mind. Her loss had left a hole in his life. Of course, when she’d died his life had blown apart in more ways than one. His sister’s best friend, who was also his fiancée, had left soon after. No explanation. Just a hollow I’m sorry and then nothing.
Another thing he couldn’t afford to focus on right now.
The dogs were curled up in the snow, some of them lifted their heads as he walked by. He started by checking the wheel dogs, those closest to the sled. “Vinson, Jarvis.” Next the team dogs, closer to the front. “Riley, Maya.” Part of a litter named after some TV show that his sister used to like. They both seemed okay. “Chaos, Mouse. Havoc, Waffle. Scooby, Shaggy. Emmett, Spots.” He exhaled. All twelve were okay.
At seeing him, standing and seemingly ready to go, they all stood up, and Seth’s eyes widened. “The sled was not hooked in? Unless the hook fell out and caught in the snow and that’s what stopped them...” He hurried as fast as he could in the deep, powdery snow back to the sled. He grabbed the handlebar and righted it in one motion, like he’d done many times before, and pressed down on the brake. It caught against the dogs’ jerking. They were all ready to run, pressing forward in their harnesses.
He remembered now: yes, the snow hook—the specially designed piece of metal that functioned like an anchor, which dug into the snow to keep a team stopped if necessary—had fallen and caught enough to slow the dogs down and convince them to stop. That would explain why his team was still with him.
“We need to get out of here,” he muttered to himself, remembering the heavy weight of the punches his attackers had landed. Mostly unconscious by that point, he hadn’t been able to fight back. He’d heard them rip the fabric of the sled bag, prayed that his dogs would be okay. Thankfully they’d left the animals alone. He didn’t know who was after him or what they wanted, but one thing he was sure of...he wasn’t going to be responsible for anyone getting hurt.
Seth looked ahead at his team, jumping forward in excitement. They’d had a long rest, and they were ready to go.
“I have to go back to town on the sled.” He raised his voice over the excited voices of the dogs. The pain in his side was intense but not bad enough that he couldn’t take care of his own animals. “You guys can follow on the snow machine or go ahead, whichever you prefer.”
Ellie raised her eyes. “You’re injured. You need to be with someone who knows what to do if you go into shock.”
He’d been taking care of himself for quite a few years now. While he didn’t say anything in response to her, his raised eyebrows and set facial expression must have been enough to convey his point, because she shook her head, then followed up with the only thing she could have said to make him consider it.
“What about your dogs? If you do go into shock, you’re right back where you started.” She nodded toward the sled. “And your snow hook might not hold this time.”
She knew enough to call it a snow hook, which was more than most people knew.
“Fine, you can ride with me.” He let go of the sled with one hand, motioned for her to step in front of him on the runners.
She raised her eyebrows and just stared. Something about the way she did it caught his attention, like something so familiar, yet she wasn’t. He hadn’t met her before today.
Had he?
She looked away from him. Too quickly. Yes, the woman was hiding something.
Her friend spoke up. “You’d better go with him, Ellie. Someone needs to make sure he gets all the way home and to the hospital, but another missing person just got called in.”
Seth saw the indecision on Ellie’s face. She was still resisting for some reason. Dislike of dogs? Or was she uncomfortable riding with him in such proximity? They each had on about a foot worth of snow gear, so that shouldn’t be an issue. Though Seth would be lying if he didn’t admit to having his heart skip a beat or two thinking about riding double on the sled. She intrigued him in a way that no woman had since...well, since Ellerie had skipped town. She carried herself in a certain way. Soft, but confident. Strong. Beautiful eyes, full of expressions he couldn’t quite read.
“Fine.” She stepped onto the sled and wrapped her mitten-covered hands around the sled handlebar.
“All right,” he said to the dogs, giving them the command that they knew was permission to run. Some people had the idea that dogs had to be given a sharp signal to go, but with his team, giving them permission to do what they loved best was enough. They didn’t need any extra encouragement. It came naturally to them.
Having someone on the runners in front of him wasn’t a familiar feeling for Seth. The warmth and closeness of Ellie was distracting, but not unpleasant. He was so aware of her, but knew she was just doing a job. This proximity wasn’t intentional. Seth tried his best to ignore it, pretend he was alone. For all the good that would do. He wasn’t sure he was that good at faking. He never took people along with him. For Seth, his time alone with the dogs was when he recharged. Having someone else with him got in the way of that.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” Ellie asked, turning her head slightly so her words wouldn’t get lost in the swish of the runners on the snow.
“I’m fine.” If fine included stab wounds. It hurt to breathe, because of the wounds in his side, under his ribs. He was fairly sure they were shallow because he was still breathing. But they hurt, a deep pain, some of the worst he’d felt in his life, but not the very worst. He was fairly sure he was okay, but he wasn’t going to fight her when Ellie suggested he go to the hospital when they got back to Raven Pass.
She didn’t ask anything else, which was fine with him. He was watching the trail ahead of them, mindful of typical hazards on any run, like moose, but also watching for a sign of the men who had attacked him and left him for dead. There had been more than one of them, Seth knew that. Because one had been hitting while another stabbed. Maybe a third to go through the sled? His memories were fragmented, broken glass that made an incomplete picture. He’d been struggling to keep control of his team, keep them safe, and trying to fight against more than one opponent. The loss of consciousness hadn’t helped sharpen his memory, either.
They mushed along in silence, and he found himself glancing at her. After a little while of reading her body language, he realized he was wrong. She was nervous, she just tried not to show it. Her shoulders were tense, though, her eyes scanning the terrain.
She read more as a cop to him than a search and rescue worker, but his imagination was running overtime right now. Maybe it was wishful thinking, because he could use an officer here.
The run had been going well. What had the men wanted? It still wasn’t clear to him. If they’d wanted to kill him, they could have. But they’d left him alive. Why? His sled bag was slashed. Because they’d been looking for something?
“Do you see this a lot in your SAR work?” he asked Ellie, suddenly wondering what she thought. He didn’t know why. Seth wasn’t usually one to need to bounce his ideas off someone.
“Not often. Most of the rescues we make are pure accidents.”
Her voice was soft. Almost like she was trying to disguise her voice? And her identity?
Seth knew her. He was sure of it. He just didn’t know how.
But before they parted ways tonight, he was going to find that out.
And find out who had been after him. The attack must relate to his sister, because this couldn’t be random. There was no other explanation he could come up with that would account for someone attacking him and acting like they were looking for something. Crime wasn’t high in Raven Pass. They had incidents now and then, like any other town, but assault wasn’t commonplace. Therefore the connection to Liz was his best guess at why someone would be after him now.
If he was right, then it made him even more determined to figure out who was behind it. It had never sat well that Liz’s killer had gone free. If there was a link, Seth would figure out who the attackers were and how to stop them—and get justice for Liz.
