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.
TWO
A sudden, earsplitting explosion made Seth jump, shift his weight on the sled and almost cause them to tip. He had to throw his weight to the other side to correct, steeling himself against the sharp stabs of pain in his side where he’d been wounded. He gritted his teeth and did his best to ignore the pain. Several of his dogs reacted, too, ears perking up, looking around even as they kept running.
“Gunshot.” Ellie’s voice was still quiet, but also steady, bored almost. He would have expected most women, most people, to dive off the sled for cover, but she was looking around now more than ever. “Did you see where it came from?” she a
sked. “I didn’t notice muzzle flash.”
He’d loop back to that curiosity about her being a cop later, because the idea was seeming less crazy the more he thought about it. For now, he was glad she was the one he was left with.
Wait.
Cop. Familiar voice.
His heart skipped, squeezed, and he looked at her again.
Of course. Yes, he knew who this woman was. Once upon a time, she’d been the one who knew him better than anyone in the world, and he’d have said the same for her. And then tragedy had struck, she’d left with little explanation and he’d been left with a broken heart and more questions than answers.
And here she was. Close enough to touch. To hold.
And not his anymore.
How had he not realized who she was earlier? She looked different and was bundled in so much gear he could only see about half of her face, but this was a woman he once would have said he knew better than he knew anyone else. He blinked, shock still rippling through him, desperate for a chance to slow down. Process. Think about the fact that she was here. With him.
But he couldn’t figure out how he felt about any of that right now, not when the situation demanded his focus. Their safety, as well as the safety of the dogs, depended on it. He looked at his dogs again. God keep them, and us, safe.
“We’ve got to get out of the open.” They were mushing through a swampy area, one dotted with some trees, but not many, where there were not many obvious places to take cover.
While Seth wouldn’t judge Ellie—he’d known her as Ellerie back then, but she apparently now used a nickname and had dyed her hair—for diving behind a spruce tree right about now, he wasn’t going to leave his dogs as potential targets.
Even with the hair dye and the name change, she was still the same, though. He’d have recognized her sooner were it not for the aftereffects of the attack. He likely had a mild concussion.
Still, he knew who she was now. And was even more determined to keep her safe.
“Haw.” He tried to keep his voice as calm and self-assured as he could. The dogs could sense a lack of confidence, and it made them slower to respond. In this situation, which had the potential to cost all of them their lives, it was even more important than usual.
The dogs responded to his instruction to veer left, and he leaned his weight into the turn.
“What’s your plan?” Ellie asked, her voice carrying more tension than it had earlier.
“Still working on that.”
She said nothing. Likely she’d been hoping for a more encouraging response from him, but it was the best he had.
The dogs raced down the trail, and he kept his eyes open and ready to notice any potential threats.
Another gunshot rang out, this one even louder. Either the shooter had changed position and had gotten closer to them, or their aim was better this time.
They hadn’t had guns, or hadn’t used them, when they attacked him before.
“If you could work on the plan a little faster, I’d appreciate it.”
They were midway through the swamp by now, and his house was still ten miles away. He needed to get to a hospital, but taking care of his dogs had to be his first priority. Home was close, but not close enough when his dogs were only traveling ten miles an hour and someone was shooting at them.
Sixty more minutes of this was unacceptable.
If he turned left again up ahead, the trail would double back a little, but half a mile ahead or so was an old public-use cabin that the state had stopped keeping up. It should be empty this time of year, as winter camping wasn’t very popular in this area.
It would fit both of them and all the dogs. The biggest struggle would be having to let Ellie help him unharness the dogs and get them inside. He knew she could be counted on in a crisis. Or at least he knew that used to be true of her. Then again, when their worlds had crashed down and she’d disappeared, she hadn’t been the person he’d thought he’d known at all.
Dogs could sense emotion. If Ellie was too stressed, they were liable to be harder to handle.
He had no choice but to trust her.
“Haw!” he called again when they reached the crossroad and he stepped a little closer to Ellie on the runners, leaving little space between them, trying to ignore the now-obvious remnants of familiarity. How tall she was compared to him, the smell of her shampoo that was some mix of fruity and flowery—all of it.
“What are you doing?”
Another shot, and he stepped even closer. He wasn’t going to let her get shot on a mission she had been on to rescue him.
“Trying not to let you get hurt.”
She didn’t argue.
“There’s a cabin up here. I think that’s our best chance.” Seth looked around but still saw nothing that could be a sniper. Of course, he also saw half a dozen places a sniper could easily be hidden. Especially with the way the trees clumped together in parts, casting shadows a man could easily hide in. None of them provided enough cover for him, Ellie and the dogs to shelter behind, but one man with a gun could be easily hidden.
They weren’t safe here. Not against a threat he couldn’t see.
“And the dogs?”
“We will need to unhook them from the gangline and bring them into the cabin with us. I need you to help me do that. Can you do that?”
“Yes.”
No hesitation. He appreciated that.
The cabin came into view, and he urged his dogs on. They picked up speed, sensing their run was almost over.
Whoever was shooting at them should be out of view right now, unless they’d followed them. That was the other benefit of this trail. It had taken them out of the direct area where the shots had been fired, whereas continuing on to his house would have kept them in open swamp for another mile or two.
As they pulled in front of the cabin, he pressed his foot on the brake, called whoa, and his dogs responded and slowed to a stop.
“Start with the ones in the back,” he told her as he set his hook in the snow and stomped it down.
“Got it.”
She worked to unhook Vinson as he did Jarvis.
“Just put them in the cabin and shut the door?” she asked, looking up at him.
Her eyes were dark. Deep.
If it had been daylight when she’d found him, he’d have known who she was immediately, even with his possible head injury. It was clear she’d gone to decent lengths to transform herself. Different hair color, different style, shortened name.
But it was her.
He nodded and finally answered her question. “Yes.”
They unhooked the rest of the dogs, then took shelter in the cabin.
Ellie slid down against the wall and sat, immediately surrounded by dogs wanting attention. She petted Waffle behind the ears. “So...” She looked up at Seth. “What now?”
The window behind her suddenly shattered, glass raining down on the wooden floor.
“Get down!” he yelled, but she’d already pressed her body against the floor and on top of Waffle.
“We shouldn’t have come in here. Now we’re at a disadvantage. Whoever is shooting at us knows we are pinned here, and we can’t see anything.”
“Just wait,” Seth said between breaths. He was breathing like he’d just been running, the stress overwhelming him. She had a point, they were vulnerable here. But not any more than they’d been out in the open.
The walls of the public-use cabin were rough-hewn, solid logs. Likely Sitka spruce. They would slow a bullet, in some calibers. Maybe stop one in others.
And in some of the bigger calibers, they’d offer no protection at all.
God, please make this go away, Seth prayed.
Minutes passed. No more shots.
Had the last shot, through the window, been a warning? Or was someone out th
ere waiting? It was impossible to say. But all they could do was wait. Seth crossed his arms. It was colder inside the cabin than it was outside. Even the rough plywood floor felt cold beneath him.
“What now?” Ellie asked.
Seth shook his head. “Now, we just wait.”
“Defend our position?” She seemed to consider it, then nodded. “All right.” He studied her face, and she looked away.
So she still thought he hadn’t recognized her. She had to know who he was, right?
A few minutes went by. No more gunshots. Seth wanted to ask her to radio in to SAR or the police department and update them on their situation, but he also didn’t want to risk giving their position away if the shooter was in the swamp somewhere, trying to find their trail.
It hadn’t snowed in a few days, which meant there was no powder, and the dogs’ paw prints would be less noticeable, blending in with many other tracks. Even someone who knew what they were doing would have a difficult time tracking under these conditions, and that was exactly how they needed it to be. This was their safest option at the moment.
Almost enough to make a guy believe God hadn’t forgotten him.
But not quite. Seth had way more standing between him and faith than one good turn of events could make up for.
His sister’s death.
His subsequent struggle to continue on with his life, the way the people who he’d have thought would have helped him through the depression had abandoned him.
Like Ellerie—Ellie. He had to remember that was the name she was going by now, had to change how he thought of her. No longer the woman he had loved, now a woman he didn’t even know.
Where had God been then?
And why had Ellie left him?
He studied her. Waited.
She sighed. “You know, don’t you?” Her eyes flickered with sadness and a hint of something that might have been regret.
Alaska Secrets Page 2
