Alaskan Mountain Pursuit

by Elizabeth Goddard

  Yeah, it wasn’t him.

  She kept thinking. If this option was right though, it had to be someone. She went to the post office often. Anchorage Outdoor Gear. A local knife shop that carried her favorite kind of custom knives, which she carried with her on hikes when she took tourists, because they were so useful to have in the woods.

  The last one caught her attention the most. She tapped out a quick text to Noah, hoping it would send when they came back into service. For now they were entering the longest dead zone of the trip. Summer shuddered. The word dead wasn’t her favorite lately.

  She looked over at Clay, who had kept quiet, giving her space to think. She almost said something but then she closed her eyes again and pretended to sleep.

  It was probably better for both of them if she kept pretending. Not just to sleep—but not to care about this intriguing man next to her who fascinated her more than she wanted to admit.

  ELEVEN

  Clay gripped the steering wheel as he took the hill up into Turnagain Pass. They’d been back on the Kenai Peninsula for less than half an hour, and still had well over an hour to go before they made it back to Moose Haven. Clay wished he could teleport them there—his nerves were shot after the day they’d had.

  He turned the CD up—neither the radio nor streamed music on his phone worked there, he’d discovered the first time he’d driven through the massive dead zone extended from the start of the Kenai all the way to Moose Pass, the tiny town just before the turnoff to Moose Haven.

  Five or ten minutes after Turnagain Pass—he hadn’t been keeping track of time but it hadn’t been long—he spotted upcoming construction, dropping his speed as the signs dictated. He didn’t remember it being there this morning, but he’d heard orange construction cones bloomed in Alaska like the state flower in the summer so it shouldn’t be surprising.

  He took advantage of the break from driving fast to look around. The scenery was some of the most gorgeous he’d ever seen, vast wilderness covered by spruce trees. On the right side of the road was a creek, with a hill behind it that gradually climbed toward the mountains.

  Gorgeous. But also desolate.

  Clay shivered as he looked around. He saw no other vehicles on the road. He looked at the construction cones, narrowed his eyes.

  It could be legitimate construction. But if so, he was going to have to make some apologies to whoever caught him doing this.

  He hit the gas, unable to shake the unease he felt slowing down in this isolated area.

  The first bang told him he was too late. The front left tire blew. The shooter was on Clay’s side of the car, hidden somewhere in the woods.

  Summer’s head snapped up. “What was that?”

  Another shot.

  “We’ve got to ditch the car. Summer, when I stop, open your door, jump out and run into the woods. I’m right behind you.” Clay had spent a lot of time in the woods hunting deer and knew more about long-range rifle shots than most people, law enforcement or not. The shooter wasn’t particularly close—which was good because it gave them a better chance to escape from him personally, but bad because if he was this accurate a shot from far away, they were in a huge amount of danger.

  Clay hit the breaks.

  “Run?”

  “Now! Run!”

  Clay searched the woods to his left for anything that would give away the shooter’s location—maybe a reflection of the scope in the sun, anything. He saw nothing but heard Summer’s door.

  She was out and he needed to be with her.

  He opened his door, ran for the back of the car. One more shot—this one took out the back tire. Clay heard it explode just as he made it past, running for the other side of the car and sprinting off the road, into the thick woods.

  “Summer?” he shouted, hating to give away her position but knowing that whoever was shooting at them already knew they were together, and that it was worth the risk to get back to where she was so he could protect her.

  “Right here!”

  Ahead of him, slightly to the right. He dodged a spruce branch, rounded that tree and saw a game trail. “Game trail?”

  “I saw it. To your left. Don’t take it, it’s the first thing he’ll check.”

  She was right but he wouldn’t have realized she’d know that.

  “How’d you know?”

  “My sister, Kate. She’s the best tracker. She’s taught me a few things. I figured some of it could come in handy if we use it backward. I’ve already made a couple false trail starts.”

  She might be the most amazing woman he’d ever met.

  “Is he following us?” she asked, not slowing down as she ran. Clay ran too but struggled to keep up—Summer’s strides were that effortless. Then again, she did this often for fun, didn’t she?

  He resolved again to make running part of his daily routine. Assuming they both lived through this to have a daily routine again.

  “No way of knowing.”

  Clay glanced backward though, just in case. This time he caught the sun reflecting off something that looked to be about seven hundred yards away.

  Clay guessed he’d made the shot from about five hundred yards, somewhere up there on that mountainside. A shot not every accomplished marksman could make when they were shooting at a moving target the size of his tires.

  The big question was, was he moving? Clay still couldn’t tell but knew he had to assume the answer was yes—which meant they couldn’t stop or they’d risk being targeted again. He kept running.

  Turned around again. Nothing.

  “Clay?” Summer’s voice was desperate. She’d stopped running.

  “Keep going. I’ll catch up to you.” He needed to know.

  Long seconds stretched into almost a minute before he caught another flash.

  Fifty yards closer.

  He was coming for them.

  Clay sprinted up the hill, following Summer’s footsteps.

  She exhaled. Blew out a breath. “We can’t just keep sprinting. We have to be smarter.”

  “Where are we?” Clay hated that he was reliant on someone else’s knowledge, but he just didn’t have the backcountry familiarity that Summer did.

  All the sudden he was struck by how much he needed her. Here this whole time he’d been thinking of himself as her rescuer, her protector, but she’d brought him back into law enforcement, given him daily purpose again when he’d been struggling and now was half the reason they weren’t in more danger than they already were.

  Summer Dawson was not just another woman to protect.

  “We should be crossing a creek soon.”

  “You can tell that?”

  She smiled. “I’ve studied maps. I’ve hiked fairly near here. Not precisely here,” she warned. “So I don’t know exactly what we’re getting into, but I may know enough that we have a chance.”

  “Okay, which creek?”

  Summer shook her head. “I’m not sure, especially since I was asleep, so I’m not positive of our exact location. Either Silvertip Creek or Six Mile Creek. If we follow Six Mile we’ll end up at a rest stop, near the Hope Cutoff.”

  Clay remembered that road, one that led to the small town of Hope. “So we have options for contacting civilization if we can get to either of those locations.”

  “It’ll be a long hike. But yes. The rest stop has an emergency phone.”

  “I hear the creek.”

  It was wide enough to give Clay some pause, especially as it ran cold and fast like most creeks in Alaska. A slip in one of those could be deadly.

  “Let’s go.” Clay broke his hesitation and stepped in. Summer followed.

  “He’s coming, isn’t he?”

  “Why?”

  “You’ve gotten faster.”

  “Maybe I just wanted to keep up with you.”

 
“Nah. You’re running like it matters.” Summer made her way across the creek with the calm aplomb of an Alaskan woman who’d done this many times before. Clay was still dealing with the shock the cold water was to his legs but continued on.

  Then they were out.

  “Up?” Summer asked.

  The landscape in front of them rose dramatically to a lower mountain ridge that connected to a bigger mountain that loomed in front of them.

  “Yes. Let’s go.”

  They ran without talking anymore, both of them sweating at this point even in the mild temperatures.

  “I really hope we don’t startle a bear. We should be making noise.”

  “It’s a risk we have to take. I’d rather meet a bear than whoever’s at the other end of that gun.”

  Summer turned and met his eyes before she kept running. “I don’t want to meet either.”

  * * *

  Summer ran like she was in the World Mountain Running Championships and victory was on the line. But there was so much more at stake than that here. The adrenaline coursing through her, it was all wrong. Running had never been a method of escape for her, she’d never run from anything. Always to something. Like her dreams.

  Then again, hadn’t she been running from her past for years? Running from the memories of when her dream career almost came true?

  She stopped when she noticed something in the trees. The light was changing, getting brighter. She turned to Clay, who was keeping pace well, even if he did seem winded.

  “We’re almost out of the tree line. We need to head one direction or another along the edge of it or we’ll be back in plain sight again.”

  “We need to stay out of his sight, that’s what’s most important right now.”

  “That’s what I figured. So left or right?”

  She waited for him to decide. Left took them toward Moose Haven; right took them back toward Anchorage. Neither place was close enough to walk to. On one hand, she guessed the killer might expect them to head toward the Hope Cutoff on the left, but then again it was impossible to know for sure what he’d be expecting. It wasn’t worth making a bad choice just to try to throw him off.

  She looked left, thought about Silvertip Creek and Six Mile Creek. They widened toward the Hope Cutoff, near the Canyon Creek rest stop, and the land around the creek became steeper.

  Summer glanced at Clay. Should she offer her opinion, treat him like they were some kind of team, them against a serial killer? Or wait and let him do the protecting?

  “What do you think?” He turned to her.

  Summer smiled. She should have known he’d ask for her input. Clay Hitchcock may have drifted into Moose Haven like so many loners who came to Alaska to work short-term jobs, but he wasn’t the same as they were. He was a team player, something she assumed had served him well in law enforcement.

  “We need to go left, toward the cutoff.”

  “Left it is, then. Keep going.”

  Summer kept moving, careful not to trip on the roots that tangled on the forest floor. Her muscles were handling the climb fine, but her heart rate was pounding—mostly, she assumed, from the certainty that their lives were in danger.

  “Where are we headed, specifically?” Clay asked after a minute.

  “Do you want to keep going until we can’t run anymore? Or take shelter somewhere?”

  “I think we’re better off taking shelter to rest after we’ve gone a decent distance. The town of Hope is within range of us technically but I don’t know if there’s a way for us to pick our way there on trails.”

  “I’m not sure, either. I know we are headed that way but I don’t know how realistic it is to make it all the way to Hope.” Summer winced. “There’s bound to be a trail near the creek, at least a game trail, but that’s not very sheltered and I’m hesitant to stick next to a creek when it’s summer.”

  “Bears?”

  She nodded. “And of course neither of us has bear spray.”

  “I’ve got my weapon.” He patted his side.

  “What is that, a .45?” She raised her eyebrows. “So if we need something noisy to try to scare the bear away we’re set, but I’m afraid it’s not going to help with much more than that.”

  “Okay, so we’ll take the route you mentioned. We’ll go as far as we can, take a rest and then decide where we should hike out.”

  “You think he’ll track us for long?”

  “I have no idea. I do know that as well as you know these woods we have a fighting chance. I’m not sure we would without you.”

  Summer loved the way he smiled at her just then, like she mattered, like she was important. “Thanks, Clay.”

  And just that fast, the moment was over. He nodded to the left, where they’d planned to go. “Let’s go, okay. He’s probably still back there.”

  Summer was careful not to leave much of a trace as she picked her way through the spruce trees, between them, sometimes doubling back to mess up the trail, and showing Clay how to do the same, but never straying too far because time was still important and she couldn’t afford to waste too much of it on deception when they didn’t even know if the man who was after them was a capable tracker.

  They’d been running for well over a mile in difficult terrain, Summer would guess more like two or three, when Clay finally said they should stop.

  “I think we’ve lost him.” He glanced at his watch. “And it’s getting later. I would be surprised if he searched all night.”

  “So we stop, then?” She shivered. As it got closer to nighttime, the daylight didn’t change much, but the temperature started to drop even in the early evening, hours before.

  “We stop. I’m going to build a fire to warm us up some.”

  “But the smoke?”

  “We’ll be careful. I’m not going to let it get very big so the smoke shouldn’t be visible.” He didn’t say anything more, but somehow Summer got the idea that the reason he wasn’t concerned about the smoke might be a little disconcerting to know.

  “You think if he’s going to find us he’ll do that whether there’s smoke or not.”

  He met her eyes and nodded slowly. “You’d make an excellent police officer, do you know that?”

  She laughed. “Not my kind of danger. But thanks.”

  They hiked in silence for another few miles before they came to where Six Mile Creek made a large canyon lined with huge masses of rock. They were on the far side. Whether their shooter would expect that was still unknown. They had chosen to cross immediately, but there was a slight chance, Summer assumed, that he might wonder if they’d just stayed close to the road and followed it along the perimeter of the woods rather than cross the creek at all. He almost certainly wouldn’t guess they’d crossed here because the rapids where the canyon walls enclosed the creek were some of the best in Alaska.

  “We should stop here.” Summer turned to Clay. “It’s the location with the best options for places we can sort of tuck back into, and the noise of the creek will cover the noise we make moving around.”

  “You know best here.”

  They stopped running and Clay gathered what they needed to make a small fire. They would need to warm up, especially if they needed to run again.

  Once he’d gotten the fire started, Clay turned to Summer. She almost looked away, but something in his expression made her meet his eyes. Wait for whatever he had to say.

  “What did you mean earlier about ‘your kind of danger’?”

  “What?” Summer only vaguely remembered what he was talking about.

  “When I said you’d make a good cop.”

  “Oh.” She nodded once, remembering now. The words had slipped out and she wasn’t sure now, in retrospect, that she’d meant to reveal so much of herself.

  She considered brushing him off, dodging the question. Then again, what
was the worst that could happen? Usually she’d say looks of judgment. But while Clay was a man whose character made him seem almost too good to be true, she suspected he wasn’t the kind to judge other people harshly. He didn’t seem critical.

  “I guess I meant...” She shrugged and laughed a little. “Exactly what I said. It’s not my kind of danger.”

  “So you have a kind?”

  “I’m pretty sure you’ve figured out by now the whole mountain running thing isn’t just a hobby for me. Or if you haven’t figured it out, you’ve looked up my background online.”

  “I don’t look up other people unless it’s someone I’m investigating.”

  Summer hadn’t seen that one coming. “Why not?”

  “It’s not fair to them. The internet is changing how relationships work. Have you realized that? Once upon a time you got to know someone little by little, with what they chose to reveal to you at each step, and now you can go on their Facebook, see their hobbies, interests, favorite music, learn about that time they went to Peru on a mission trip and got lost in the jungle, all of that is right there, from the start.”

  She settled back against the fallen log she’d been using as a backrest and thought for a minute before responding. Finally, she nodded. “You’re right. I hadn’t thought of that.” She winced a little. “I looked you up a little. Just enough to see you were an officer and see what happened in what looks like your last case.”

  Clay nodded, like he’d been prepared for that, although she did notice his shoulders went back a little, and Summer could almost sense an invisible wall between them that hadn’t been there five minutes ago. What Clay had said about the internet and friendships made even more sense now. Like her, it seemed that he had things in his past that he didn’t want to share online with the whole world. She could respect that. She’d taken his chance to talk about that in real time, as their friendship grew.