Alaska Secrets

by Sarah Varland

  “The guest room is this way.” He led her down the narrow hallway, the floor creaking beneath their feet. He’d laughed at himself when he’d gotten this room ready because no one was likely to visit him. His parents were still living but had moved back to the East Coast after his sister had been killed. It was almost like they held it personally against Alaska that they’d lost a child there and had wanted nothing to do with the state ever since.

  Now, here Ellie was, and he had a bed, fresh sheets on it like his mom had drilled into his head when he was younger, and he felt proud of himself, even though nothing was objectively impressive about the old creaky house, the room with the quilt on the bed or his life in the woods and running sled dogs.

  But Ellie didn’t say anything about the room or anything else. By the time they reached it, just a few steps down the hall, she was almost shaking with her adrenaline crash.

  “When should I set my alarm for?” she asked as she climbed under the covers.

  Seth blinked and looked away. She looked like she belonged here, in his house, and every feeling he’d thought he could ignore came back to the surface again like no time had passed.

  “Don’t worry about an alarm,” he told her. “I’ll wake you up. Just get some rest.”

  She was asleep before he finished talking. With a final look at her and a double check to confirm that the windows were securely locked, he stepped out of the room and into the hallway to give her some privacy, leaving the door open in case she needed anything.

  They were in enough danger due to the people who were after them. And seeing Ellie sleeping in a house he’d more than once imagined her in, in daydreams where they’d gotten married and lived happily-ever-after, now Seth feared his heart was in danger, as well.

  * * *

  When Ellie opened her eyes, she took a minute to figure out where she was. Over the last three years, she’d slept in all kinds of places around her house, including the kitchen floor, because she’d developed a bit of insomnia and couldn’t always fall asleep in her room. She wasn’t completely disoriented, but she was puzzled about where she was.

  Seth’s house.

  She remembered now. All of it.

  Including how they hadn’t ever actually talked about that kiss.

  She threw back the covers, trying to finish waking up, blinking the sleep from her eyes. Not that they needed to discuss it. But shouldn’t they have at least agreed it shouldn’t have happened? No, it was better this way, to let it go. Move on.

  They were moving on, right? Something in Seth’s gaze when he’d told her to go to sleep had been too tender to be friendship. It made her feel like someone had tucked her in with her favorite blanket on the couch to watch one of her favorite Christmas movies.

  She didn’t dislike it. Or wouldn’t if they were different people in another place. Yes, the feeling was nice; she could admit that to herself.

  But she didn’t deserve him. He liked this life—she could see that and appreciated it—but everything had changed, and it was because of her. Liz’s death had wrecked her, wrecked all of them. And she was never going to be rid of the guilt from that.

  A creak in the hallway alerted her to Seth’s presence a second before she saw his head and shoulders around the door frame. “You’re awake. Great, I just made moose stew if you want some.”

  He was taking care of her again, and Ellie didn’t know if it was just because he was that kind of guy—nice, always looking out for others—or if...

  Well, surely, he’d moved on. Forgotten about her in the years since. The kiss had been a fluke.

  She needed to forget about that and focus on this undercover operation they’d gotten themselves into, or she was going to get one or both of them killed. In a time when distraction could be fatal, this was the last thing she needed.

  “Um, yeah.” She cleared her throat. “I am really hungry, so that would be great. I didn’t meant to sleep so long.” Her watch said it was after nine. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept so late.

  He nodded toward the kitchen and turned in that direction. She followed him, grateful he wasn’t watching her. She was afraid all of her confused emotions were in her eyes right now and needed a minute to collect herself. He’d teasingly referred to her blank expression as her game face back when she was a police officer. Her friends at the department had teased her for the ability to completely mask her emotions, too, but she knew they had been impressed by it. It was a handy skill to have.

  “You’re sure your leg is okay?” he asked.

  “It’s fine.” She hadn’t even noticed it until he’d asked, and even now it was just a dull pain, nothing too distracting.

  “I’ve been thinking about our trip up to Wasilla. You’re sure you’re up for it? I don’t want to push you, El. Someone just shot at you this morning.”

  “Believe me, I do remember,” she said as she took a seat at the table and he slid a bowl toward her. It looked like some kind of vegetable beef stew, and it smelled amazing.

  She closed her eyes, prayed and then took a bite. “Mmm, what is this?”

  “Moose and vegetables I grew in my garden last summer.”

  Her eyebrows rose. “Look at you turning into some kind of self-sufficient mountain man.” She said it with a smile, hoped he knew it was a compliment.

  “Thank you. But I’m not going to be distracted that easily from the question I asked.”

  “About if I’m up for the trip?” She shook her head dismissively and took another bite of stew. “I have to be. We don’t have much time. Today is the last day I can learn anything before the expedition leaves tomorrow.”

  “Exactly.”

  Something in his voice.

  She looked up at him. “Are you saying you don’t want me with you?”

  “No, that’s not what I’m saying at all.”

  There was that look again, almost unreadable and yet somehow telling. Vulnerable. The fact that he didn’t want her hurt wasn’t surprising. He was a decent guy, and they’d been close, once.

  But this seemed like more.

  She’d hurt him too badly for a second chance, she reminded herself. And she’d left for good reasons. She kept her expression blank and did her best to maintain emotional distance.

  “We have to solve this, Seth. And this is the only way.”

  He met her eyes, and this time she knew what she saw.

  It was the only way. He knew it, too.

  She took another bite of stew. “Let’s eat and then let’s go. I want to learn all I can before tomorrow.”

  For once, he didn’t argue.

  When they went outside, being in the open made her nervous at first. Her shoulders were unnaturally tense, and her gaze kept going to the woods without her meaning it to.

  “You okay?” Seth asked. He’d noticed. She looked down, embarrassed.

  “Yeah. Fine.”

  Was that what they called it? When fear felt like it had a tight grip on your throat and every move was distracted by a sense of overwhelming panic, when you couldn’t forget about the scary thing that had happened once and your whole life was defined by it? Was that fine?

  Ellie was pretty sure it wasn’t. But she was equally sure she didn’t know how to fix it; she could only push past it as best she could.

  Was this the kind of thing Liz would have prayed about? Ellie never knew what to ask God for. She’d never felt like she understood how that was supposed to work. Liz had prayed often and casually, just little sentences here and there, but sincerely. Ellie?

  She...

  Didn’t. At least not very often. She’d prayed lately here and there, asking God to keep Seth safe. And she believed in God. After talking to Liz she believed in the salvation God offered through Jesus. But she just...didn’t quite know how to talk to God on a regular basis.

  “
You don’t seem fine,” he said as he laid out harnesses on the snow, making a sort of line.

  “Do you put those on the dogs? I mean, do you want me to?”

  “Let’s just go slow here. No need to rush, okay?” His voice was easy and kind, the way it always was. Why couldn’t they have lived happily-ever-after? Why couldn’t Liz have lived?

  Ellie took a breath, reminded herself that both reasons were the same. She raised her gaze uneasily to the trees, to the darkness of the woods. She’d let everyone down, and guilt had haunted her ever since.

  Now someone out there wanted to end her life. And Ellie was left wondering how much of a life she still had. And desperately wanting a second chance to live it to the fullest again.

  I don’t want to die, God. Please help me, she prayed, then took a breath.

  “Really. I’m fine. Now tell me how to dog mush.” She looked at him with a small smile.

  But she saw the concern in his eyes. She wasn’t the only one who was afraid.

  And maybe that scared her more.

  NINE

  Ellie was a natural; there was no other way to phrase it. The way he would have preferred to teach someone would have taken weeks, maybe months, of shadowing him, watching, just the way that Seth himself had learned. With that option not a possibility, they were rushed, and today he’d let her drive her own sled.

  She’d been shaky at the start, pulling the quick release and then almost losing her balance as the team jerked forward, faster than she had probably expected. Her hands were tight around the handlebar, though, and she’d managed to keep the sled upright. He pulled his own quick release, then let the dogs have their way, as they ran behind her. He kept his heels turned in slightly, let his weight settle on the drag mat, the rubber rectangle that sat between the runners, dragging the snow. When he didn’t need to slow the team down, he could take his weight off it, and it didn’t create much resistance.

  They’d parked in a little neighborhood at the edge of Wasilla, in a town called Knik, and now they were going down a groomed trail into the woods that was part of the historic Iditarod Trail. They’d mush for a few hours, then come back to where he’d left his truck, load the dogs and drive back to Raven Pass. It had been the best way Seth could think of to remove them from danger—to get out of town. That the Iditarod Trail was one of his favorite places to run dogs and train was just a bonus. That race—the Iditarod—started farther north these days, due to the unpredictable weather farther south, but it still made him happy to know they were mushing on a piece of that storied history. Running the Iditarod was a dream of his, one he didn’t know if he’d ever attain, and somehow this made him feel closer to reaching it.

  “I have no idea where I’m going!” Ellie yelled over her shoulder, her face a bit panicked. He’d told her to go first because he’d wanted to make sure she got started okay, but he’d known he’d need to pass her on the trail early on so he could lead the way. He tried to stop the smile at the corners of his mouth because she wouldn’t appreciate being teased for being a little nervous, and honestly, she didn’t deserve to be. She was impressive. He hadn’t counted on how it would feel to be doing what he loved with the woman he loved. Seth felt happy, maybe for the first time fully since Ellie had left him.

  “I’m going to pass.”

  “How does that work?”

  “You’ve got to learn sometime. Just keep them on one side of the trail. They know how.”

  The pass went smoothly, and now Seth was in front. “Slowing down,” he called over his shoulder to Ellie just as they reached a clearing.

  “So hit my brakes?”

  “Drag and then brake.”

  He came to a stop, and Ellie stopped behind him. When he needed to slow them down without using the metal brake, which cut into the snow and made driving the sled a little more awkward, he could control their speed by putting his weight on the drag mat. Her lead dogs were a little closer to him than he’d have preferred, but it was pretty good for a first solo stop.

  “So I’ll stay in front to show you the trail,” he said. “How does it feel?”

  “Terrifying. Fun. Overwhelming.” She shook her head. “I’ve got to be honest, when you said six dogs, I really didn’t expect...” She trailed off.

  “So much power?”

  She nodded.

  “It’s a lot to learn at once.” For the expedition, she’d start with ten or twelve, but he didn’t feel the need to break that to her yet. She’d figure it out tomorrow.

  “Ready to go again?”

  “I’m ready.” She grinned at him, like the brave woman she was, and Seth felt a rush of adrenaline.

  And an overwhelming amount of love for this amazing woman who’d walked back into his life so unexpectedly.

  They mushed across a power line, followed the woodsy trail down to a creek and skittered across on the ice. Behind him, he heard Ellie yell something that sounded a lot like woo-hoo!

  He laughed and turned around.

  “Did you feel that ice? It was like waterskiing!” she yelled over the noise of the swish of the snow on the runners. Seth laughed and kept going.

  The trail took them into a swamp, partway between Knik and Big Lake, and it was some of the most gorgeous land Seth had ever seen. He didn’t know if it would look this pretty on a regular hike, or if it was seeing it from the back of a dog sled that made it so special, but he loved it. Sharing it with Ellie was something else entirely.

  Although he couldn’t quite shake the sense of unease that had pressed against him for the last several days since all of this had started. He felt fairly confident they couldn’t have been followed—this time, anyway. He’d been careful on the two-hour drive up to watch his rearview mirror for cars that he saw a little too often or that followed too close, but he’d noticed nothing. It was why he’d insisted they come up here to a trail so far from his home trails, but he couldn’t help still feeling some of the anxiety over knowing that the safety of all his dogs and Ellie depended on him. He could still hear the gunshots reverberating in his memory, and the knowledge that they’d been directed at Ellie kept him focused on her safety at all costs.

  Yet, at the same time, their safety required that they take this trip. He couldn’t have let Ellie do the expedition tomorrow without this day of practice, not safely, anyway.

  The woods looked and felt clear. His shoulders were more relaxed than they had been in days, and even though these weren’t his woods or his trails, he was still out here with his dogs, in a place that soothed his soul, with a woman he...

  Analyzing his feelings for her, or naming them, wasn’t going to do either one of them any good, so he hit the brakes on that train of thought.

  “Having fun?” he called behind him.

  Her wide grin was answer enough. He turned back around and kept mushing.

  If only this didn’t feel eerily like the calm before the storm...

  “That was amazing,” Ellie said as she finally pulled up later, looking up at him, eyes shining and her cheeks flushed with windburn and sunshine.

  The last half hour had only gotten better and better. Seth knew better than to let his guard down, but he’d still seen no signs of anything wrong. They’d passed no other people on the trail. No one was parked near their truck, here on the side of the little residential road, and while he was still watching, he still didn’t see anything wrong...but that niggling feeling of danger still hadn’t gone away.

  Maybe this was going to work out. Maybe Ellie would do fantastic at the expedition, they’d figure out who had been behind his sister’s murder and then...

  What, live happily-ever-after?

  It might be crazy, but right now it didn’t seem entirely impossible.

  “You were amazing,” he let himself admit to her, even though it felt like opening his heart a little. He stepped closer, and she didn’t move
away. Instead, she blinked. Two times. Three. Her eyelashes were impossibly dark and long, and her lips were full.

  She looked away and cleared her throat. “How do we, uh, how do we put them away into the truck so we can drive back to your house? That’s probably something I should learn, too, huh?” She looked back at him and met his eyes with a small smile.

  She wasn’t pulling away, not entirely. Just redirecting their attention away from this particular moment.

  “Yes, you need to learn. But it’s really not difficult. Unharness the dog, rub them down a bit and then put them back in one of the boxes in the dog trailer.”

  She was looking at the dog trailer. “I mean, I’ve seen them around, driving around Alaska for as long as I have, but I’m still impressed.”

  He tried to see the contraption he’d made with his own hands through her eyes. Some people had dog boxes on trailers, some put them in the bed of a truck. His was the trailer variety and looked kind of like a wooden horse trailer, but with twenty-four individual boxes. It had taken many hours of hard work, but he was proud of the end result. Working with his hands on something like this was something he’d discovered after Liz’s death that he liked doing, and it wasn’t just a passive joy. It seemed absolutely vital to his mental health to create things, and so he kept finding ways to do it that also benefited his life. The dog trailer was a prime example.

  “Thanks. I’m happy with how it turned out.”

  She smiled up at him, and for half a second he let himself admit how much he loved that smile.

  Yeah...loved...

  This time he was the one who looked away and started boxing up dogs. The routine was so familiar to him that he was able to do it almost without thinking. He saw Ellie doing the same thing out of the corner of his eye, though it was taking her longer. She was handling it well, though, he noted as he moved to the next dog.