Alaska Secrets

by Sarah Varland

“I’m going to investigate on my own. Take a leave of absense.”

  She hadn’t fully decided till she said the words aloud. She knew Seth wanted to find out who was behind this, also, but she had police connections she could use, maybe, and if not she still had her training.

  Seth was a capable Alaskan, with talents that ranged from backcountry navigation to dog mushing to hunting. Back when Liz had been alive, he’d worked at a local outdoor company, guiding fishing and hunting trips. Nothing specifically qualified him to do something this close to police work.

  But Ellie? She was qualified. And she was tired of letting this go unsolved. Tired of blaming herself for Liz’s death. This wouldn’t bring Liz back, but it would be doing something.

  “El, I think we should—”

  “What? Wait for the troopers?” She shook her head. “You heard them. They aren’t going to be able to do anything. If I start looking into it myself, maybe more comes up.”

  “Let me help you.”

  Even though they’d discussed as much earlier, working together to figure this out, the idea made her recoil now. She trusted him, but he wasn’t trained for this. She could ask him to put himself in danger.

  “No,” she said, already shaking her head, ready to list her reasons.

  “Why?”

  “Too dangerous. You’re a civilian.”

  “As are you.”

  “With training.” She frowned as she shot the words back at him.

  Now he was the one shaking his head. “It’s not your job to protect me from danger. Worst case scenario, I’m attacked again, but we get actual evidence.”

  Hearing him even put forth the idea of being used as bait made her feel like someone had stabbed her in the chest. “You can’t do that.”

  “I can and I will. I want to help.” She knew that voice. He was committed to this, and nothing she said was going to talk him out of it.

  He unlocked the truck, and they both climbed in. When they’d shut the doors and Seth had started the engine, Ellie turned to him.

  “Do you at least have a concrete plan to contribute to my investigation?”

  He shook his head, grinned that sideways grin at her, and her heart skipped like it always used to. Ellie did her best to ignore her racing pulse. “No plan,” he admitted. “Why, did you have ideas you wanted to share? I’d be willing to let you in on this investigation.”

  “My investigation,” she insisted.

  Just the word investigation made her heart beat in a way it shouldn’t have. She shouldn’t miss her old job this much. She had a fulfilling life, even now. There wasn’t anything she was missing out on, careerwise. She wasn’t defined by a job.

  Right?

  And yet, she couldn’t talk herself out of trying to solve this case, go back to who she used to be, just for little while. Not because she wanted to investigate that badly—walking back into their past, thinking about Liz, all of that sounded hard. But if she was helping him, she’d be close to him. Able to keep him safe.

  And yes, hopefully able to bring Liz’s killers to justice.

  No, she had to be honest with herself. It wasn’t just about Seth. It was about her, too, about wanting back into her old life, her old job, even if just in this little way that couldn’t last.

  “So both of us? Working together? We’re going to do this?” He was still grinning, and first thing she’d do in this investigation was lecture him on taking things more seriously.

  But for now she nodded, her own face void of a smile, and said the words aloud. “Yes. We’re doing this.”

  FIVE

  The drive back to Seth’s house was full of logistical discussions.

  “Did you know Aaron well? The guy Liz was dating who was involved in whatever this was?”

  Seth shook his head. “I met him once and didn’t like him. Liz kept him away from me after that.”

  “Same.” Ellie nodded. She pulled out her phone and googled his name. Aaron Richards.

  “What are you doing?” Seth glanced over at her. She looked up.

  “You’re supposed to be driving. I’m googling Aaron since we know next to nothing about him. Not that there’s much on Google. The guy has no social media. It looks like he works...for a home improvement store in Anchorage.”

  “Nothing else interesting?”

  “Let me check another site. No court cases against him. Huh.” She set the phone down. “Aaron Richards is extremely boring.”

  “If Liz suspected him, I still do,” Seth insisted.

  “I agree,” Ellie found herself saying. “But I think we’re going to have to come at this from another angle to investigate.”

  Ellie kept going, asking him more questions she wanted his opinion on. Where would they start? Did they work under the assumption that the expedition company was involved in the smuggling or drug running or whatever it was, or did they keep open minds?

  Seth didn’t have answers for every question she asked, but his respect for her rose with each one she raised. He’d always known her mind worked a mile a minute, but it was still interesting to hear her talk it all out aloud, to see how she worked. She had been a good cop.

  “I think,” he said in answer to the most recent question she’d asked, “that we should start with Raven Pass Expeditions.”

  “You think Liz was right, and they’re the ones doing something shady?”

  He shook his head. “No.” He said it aloud in case she wasn’t looking at him. He glanced in her direction every now and then. “I don’t think we can know that for sure. She had good reasons to think they were, and they may have been then. But three years is a lot of time. An employee could have been up to no good and left since then. But if we start with them, we can talk to them, see what they’ve seen, maybe even go on the route Liz thought was being used for drug smuggling.”

  This time he glanced her way a couple seconds.

  She looked interested in the idea, something he took as a good sign. Seth chose to stay quiet and waited for her to respond.

  “How would we go on the route? Do you mean ask for a tour, or sign up for one like we’re undercover, or...”

  Seth shook his head. “Not quite.” He pulled into his driveway, waited until he’d put the truck in Park and then shifted in the seat to face her. “But you were right about the undercover part.”

  Her gaze didn’t flinch, and he could almost see her thought process in her dark eyes, but she didn’t say anything; she waited for him to go on. She’d never been one to jump to conclusions or demand explanations.

  “I think we should apply for jobs at Raven Pass Expeditions.”

  “Doing what?”

  He pulled out his phone. “I brought up the website earlier, just glanced at it for a minute.”

  “And what did you find?”

  She was getting more curious.

  “They’re hiring dog mushers right now for an upcoming expedition. It starts in just under a week.”

  “So you think you have a chance of getting hired? But what about me? I don’t like the idea of you doing that on your own while I work some other angle. It’s too dangerous, even if we bring weapons, I don’t want to be in a position to need to use them, and I’m the one with experience, and...”

  This rant was an uncharacteristic-for-Ellie kind of speech, and Seth didn’t know what to do with that. Why was she so passionate about him not going alone? Even if they managed to be friends, and this was strictly about Liz, he wouldn’t have expected her to care that much.

  Almost immediately, he realized he’d been wrong to think that way. If the shoe were on the other foot, wouldn’t he be devastated if anything happened to her and encourage her not to take unnecessary risks?

  “I think you should come with me.”

  Her eyes widened.

  Seth took a breath, decided h
e’d try to lay it all out at once. “Yes. I think you should come with me,” he continued. “We’ll both apply for jobs as mushers after I teach you how. That will enable to us keep an eye on their operations just in case anyone is still involved or ever was, and it will give us a chance to talk to people there, see the route Liz described. You don’t have to decide yet if you want to do it, but we need to take a break because I’m starving. Do you want waffles?” He reached for the door of the truck and climbed out.

  If RPE didn’t have anything to do with the drug running, if it was another business in that shopping complex as Liz had said it could be or if whoever had been involved had moved on in the three years since she’d written that letter, then they weren’t risking too much. A week lost for the expedition, a few days lost before that training Ellie to mush...

  Although that wouldn’t be time wasted. He tried not to think too hard about how it had felt for her to stand in front of him on the runners of the dogsled, his arms on either side of her holding on to the handlebar of the sled. Their bodies close together. Spending time with her wouldn’t be a problem, except that he’d have to keep reminding himself that what they’d had was over, and they didn’t have a future.

  “Go undercover as dog mushers,” she stated from somewhere behind him as he unlocked the door to the house and they both went back inside.

  “Yes.” He set his keys down on the table near the front door and moved to the kitchen, where he began pulling out ingredients. Flour. Sugar.

  “You think I can pull that off?”

  Seth opened the fridge. Butter. Milk. Eggs. He shut the fridge door and turned to face Ellie. “Yes. I do.”

  She blinked a few times and then nodded. “Okay. Well, you’re the one who’d have to teach me everything I’d need to know. If you think it can be done, I’m game.”

  That was what she was worried about? Whether or not she could learn enough to handle the job of being a musher guiding on the adventure? He’d have thought she’d have needed to consider the danger a bit more, but what had he been thinking? This was Ellie. She wasn’t scared of anything.

  * * *

  Ellie watched Seth watch her and exhaled a breath of relief when he turned back to preparing the waffle ingredients.

  This was a crazy plan he was concocting, just crazy enough that it might work, but full of more risk than she was comfortable with. For him, not her. No, she didn’t know how to mush, and she was under no illusion that it would be easy. But the danger of going undercover...

  In a way, she’d almost welcome it. She could well remember the way her body and mind had responded in the thick of an investigation when she’d been a police officer. She was ready for the sense of being one footstep away from the edge of a precipice, the way her heart raced and she fought to keep her breath steady when an investigation was going well. The way interrogating a suspect both invigorated and enlightened her as she got closer to the truth.

  But the idea of Seth being in the line of fire was too much to consider. Her mind didn’t even want to go there, but she forced it to. Every cost should be considered if they were going to do this.

  She watched him as he worked, tried to reconcile the man she’d known with the idea that soon he might be acting in that undercover capacity. It was hard to imagine as he moved with ease through the kitchen, cooking her food like they were the picture of that domestic bliss. His hands were careful, gentle as he measured flour and added it to the bowl.

  But she’d known him long enough to know that he wasn’t all careful movements and methodical steps. She’d seen him blaze a trail through the wilderness, bold steps leading the way, watching him stand down a grizzly bear on a hike once and not even flinch while she’d been shaking in her hiking boots.

  Seth could handle this just fine. The undercover work, the danger, all of it.

  She was the one who was going to have a hard time.

  “You’re sure about this?” she asked, stepping closer almost without realizing it and then tensing up. The last thing they needed right now was to complicate this plan by adding any kid of romantic entanglement between the two of them. The kiss was a one-off thing. Well, not technically, since they’d kissed in the past. But for the present, it was an isolated incident, something that couldn’t happen again. They needed to be alert in order to figure out who had been behind Liz’s murder.

  “I think it’s our only option.” He said it with a straight face, not in a dramatic manner at all, but Ellie still felt it like a punch to the stomach. She hadn’t considered the idea that they didn’t have other options. In her mind, it was still something they were choosing to do on purpose, to hopefully solve Liz’s murder. But Seth had a point. If they didn’t start being proactive and trying to figure out who had been behind all of it, then it was possible the attacks against Seth would continue. And it was also possible they’d start to target her, as well. This was what they had to do.

  Her chest tightened a little at the idea, the enormity of it. What they were attempting was risky in a way that few things in her life had been. Ellie knew that, but still, she felt settled, and determination seemed to flow through every muscle group and fill her with a certainty that reassured her. “Okay,” she said, agreeing again to help.

  This time, though, Seth really seemed to hear her. He looked at her, like he was looking for something, his gaze curious. Searching. “So we’ll eat and then get started?”

  Learning to dog mush. Yesterday she’d been a search and rescue worker. Then, she’d rescued her ex-fiancé. Been shot at. Taken shelter in a cabin. Gone to the police. Asked for a leave of absence from her job. Decided to investigate. Agreed to make a plan to bring down murderers. Now, she would learn to mush.

  The last twenty-four hours had been too overwhelming to put into words, but what else could she do but the right thing?

  “I’m ready. Whatever you’ve got to teach me about dogs and mushing, I’m ready to learn. We also need a more solid plan.”

  “But first, waffles.” He grinned at her, removed the first waffle from the iron, put it on a plate and handed it to her.

  The food he’d made was delicious, and she enjoyed every bite, savoring the way he’d made them just the way she remembered: not too sweet, so she could flood them with syrup without being overwhelmed by sugar.

  They ate in silence, and it felt right to Ellie. Familiar. It also gave her some mental space to process all the changes that had happened in such a short time span, which she appreciated. She’d always been an internal processor. Later, she was sure, he’d want to talk things out, and she would do her best to respect the fact that he needed that, but right now she was thankful for the quiet.

  “As far as the plan,” Ellie started, “how are we going to pull this off? I haven’t mushed before so I don’t have a résumé or anything. How am I going to get hired?”

  “Just put normal references down that they can about work ethic and all of that. As far as mushing experience, a lot of mushers get jobs up here from recommendations. They won’t question your qualifications if you seem like you know what you’re doing.”

  She nodded, still thinking through everything else they’d needed. Liz had thought someone was smuggling drugs. Ellie had spent some time while she waited for Seth at the doctor researching the area, the companies in the strip mall she’d pointed out, and that research had turned up nothing. Even if it felt like they were flying blind, going undercover was their best way forward to gather more information, since what they were looking for was so vague.

  “Okay, if that will work, then...let’s get started.” Ellie smiled.

  “First things first, you need some gear,” Seth said as he stood, pushing his chair back from the table. “And maybe more coffee. Would you like more coffee? I have travel mugs.”

  “Please.” She didn’t know how she was going to mush and drink coffee, but she’d only had half a cup so far. S
he was definitely going to need more if crazy things were going to keep happening like they had yesterday.

  She took the travel mug when he offered it. “As far as gear, I’ve got all this.” She motioned down to her snow pants and fleece sweater she had on.

  He looked at her boots where they sat by the door and raised his eyebrows. “It’s those I’ve got a problem with.”

  “What is wrong with my boots?” They were from a high-end outdoor brand, black synthetic material and rated to a trillion degrees below zero.

  Not that far, obviously, but certainly they were made well enough he couldn’t find fault with them.

  “Nothing if you want to freeze an hour out on our run.”

  “You wouldn’t let me freeze.” She said it with a laugh, meaning it as a joke.

  “I sure wouldn’t.” But Seth’s voice was serious. His eyebrows were raised. Their eyes met and Ellie’s breath caught in her chest. Somehow her teasing hadn’t been met with the same. It felt like he’d taken what could have been casual flirtation and amped it up.

  Seth cleared his throat. “Boots. Wait here. I’ve got some you can borrow.”

  “Our feet are not the same size,” she said dubiously as she waited for him to return.

  He came back carrying a pair of boots that looked like nothing she’d seen before. The bottoms were some kind of leather, the tops canvas, maybe, and long leather straps hung from them, but there were no holes for laces.

  “And these are better than my REI boots, guaranteed to a thousand degrees below zero?” she asked him, eyebrows raised.

  “For dog mushing, yes. If you try to wear those—” he jerked his head toward her boots “—you’re going to freeze. Starting with your feet.”

  “Okay, fine, I will wear your strange boots. But what are you going to wear? And again, I’m not sure how I’m going to move in boots that are too big for me.”

  “I put some extra liners in them. The way they’re made, you’ll be fine.”

  “I’m going to look ridiculous.”

  “You could never look ridiculous to me.”