“Not long,” he said, swallowing around the lump in his throat.
She sat up, then stretched and yawned, arching her back as she reached toward the ceiling. “You look tired.”
“I am,” he replied.
His instinct had been to lie. To reassure her that he was fine. That he wasn’t tired. That he was invincible, and it was important that everyone around him know it, as well. Instead, he’d told the truth. That one simple act released something inside him, and he felt lighter.
She touched his cheek, her fingers gliding along the shaggy length of his beard. “You should get some rest.”
The tightness in his chest wasn’t so bad this time around.
He placed his fingers over hers. “All right.”
Though exhausted, he had no plans to rest. Not until the killer was found and Kara was safe. The sooner he got her away from here, the better.
Whether or not she’d ever return was another matter.
TEN
Kara pushed open the door to the kennels and let the familiar sights and smells wash over her like a soothing balm. She never ceased to be amazed by the lavish kennels at the resort. Each individual stall had a flap door leading to the outside. The center aisle was tiled, and the floor was heated. Everything was scrupulously clean and the metal glimmered. Sled dogs were as much of a tourist attraction as the hot springs and the northern lights, which she supposed accounted for their comfortable digs.
She was desperate for a change of scenery. Even the air circulating through the ducts had started to feel stale. She’d also been washing and wearing the same outfit.
Shane had reluctantly agreed to let her visit the kennels, as long as he was allowed to escort her. He was currently prowling the outside of the building to make certain all the doors were locked tight. She appreciated his concern, though she’d be grateful when this was all over.
Her parka was hopelessly ruined from her dousing, and the one the resort had lent her was a size too big.
Finn’s death had shaken her more than she’d realized. She kept flashing back to their conversation in the dining room. He’d been nervous and jittery, but he hadn’t seemed particularly afraid. If she’d done something different, if she’d said something different...would he still be here?
Had someone actually pushed her into the pool, or had she imagined it?
The questions haunted her.
One of the dogs spotted her, and soon all the dogs were barking. The racket drew Trisha from the stall at the far end of the kennels that she’d repurposed for a makeshift office.
Trisha was in her midtwenties with jet-black hair that she wore in a long braid that dusted her belt loops. She’d taken over management of the kennels a few months before, and Kara was pleased with her work. Firm but compassionate, she was ideally suited for the task. If she hadn’t been working here, Kara would have recruited her to work with her at the clinic in town.
When the weather was clear in the winter, the guests took rides through the surrounding woods. In the summer, the dogs were loaded into trucks and transported up to the glacier at Da’nai Pass. Winter or summer, no trip to the hot springs was complete without a sled dog ride.
Trisha smiled in greeting. “I heard you got trapped at the hotel because of the avalanche. Walt’s dogs will be glad to see you.”
Leaning over the enclosure, Kara patted one of her more enthusiastic greeters. “I figured I better check on Zoya’s pups. How are they doing?”
“I’d say they’re doing fantastic considering they’re a winter litter. Zoya is a good mama.”
“And Snowball? He’s the runt.”
“He’s not as active as the others, but I haven’t been overly concerned with his progress. Probably wouldn’t hurt for you to take a look at him.”
“I thought I’d sit with them awhile.”
“Be my guest. I was just locking up.” Trisha extended her hand, passing over the key. “You can shut off the lights and lock the door when you leave.”
“Will do,” Kara replied.
She made her way down the center of the kennels, pausing to pet each dog in turn. The sled dogs were as smart as they were jealous, and she made sure to give each of them equal amounts of time and praise.
While she was uncertain in other areas of her life, she was confident in her ability with animals.
She’d always had a sixth sense where they were concerned, even when she was a kid. Her mom had never allowed her to have a pet. They were too expensive and too much work, she’d insisted. Kara had tended to the neighborhood strays, instead. She prided herself on winning over even the most suspicious of the scruffy mongrels.
Now that she’d greeted all the dogs, the puppies monopolized her attention.
Zoya lifted her head and eyed Kara suspiciously before lying on her side once more. She appeared more than ready for bed, while the five puppies bounded around her and nipped at her ears and tail.
When they caught sight of Kara, they clumsily trotted over, grateful for a new playmate. She left the door to the enclosure open, then tossed the blanket she’d brought onto the tile floor.
Shane stepped through the door and stomped the snow from his feet. Once he’d secured the lock, Kara patted the space on the blanket beside her.
One of the puppies immediately took the invitation and scampered over.
“Come and sit down. You need some puppy therapy.”
He doffed his hat and lowered himself to the ground, stretching out his legs before crossing his ankles.
Kara swept the shaggy hair from his forehead. “You’re starting to look scruffy.”
He self-consciously smoothed the strands. “I know.”
“I like it.”
If she didn’t know better, she’d have thought her comment made him blush.
There was nothing she could do right then about Walt or Finn or anything else beyond the doors, so she decided to enjoy the quiet moment. Walt had been surprised and proud of the unexpected litter. They were mostly cream and brown, some of them already showing the distinct face markings of a malamute.
Snowball toddled over to her on unsteady legs. He looked like he’d been taking a nap and hadn’t fully awakened yet.
“That’s Snowball,” Kara said. “He’s the runt of the litter, the one I’ve been worried about.”
Shane reached out a hand and scratched Snowball behind his ears. “He looks pretty good to me.”
“That little guy is a survivor.”
She had a soft spot in her heart for the little fighter. She’d been there when he first entered the world. He’d been smaller than the rest and weaker. She and Walt had supplemented his feedings when the other puppies were too aggressive, shoving him out of the way.
He was also the only one of the pups who was a pure cream color with no markings. Even with his difficult beginnings, he was curious and friendly.
The puppy sniffed Shane’s boots. Zoya lumbered to the door of the kennel to assess the new person. When she’d investigated Shane, she turned three times in a circle, dropped to the ground and curled into a ball.
Kara chuckled. “These guys are wearing her out.”
The other four puppies, encouraged by Snowball’s bravery, crept into the corridor separating the two rows of enclosures. Curious about their new surroundings, they sniffed and explored, bumping into each other in their excitement.
Shane crossed his arms over his chest. “This is just what the doctor ordered.”
“How are things going?”
News of Finn’s death had inspired a curious mix of reactions in the resort guests. She’d caught snippets of conversation in the dining room. They were mostly treating Finn’s death combined with Walt’s murder as a chance for amateur sleuthing rather than a source of danger. Since no one at the resort seemed to know either of the men, no one seemed particularly
worried that they were in danger.
“Things are quiet at the hotel,” Shane said. “It’s a lot easier to keep track of people when they go to bed. Thankfully, most of the guests here consider eight o’clock bedtime.”
He stifled a yawn behind his fisted hand.
She patted Noelle’s downy fur, one of two females in the litter. “Finn asked if you were trustworthy. I keep circling back to that. Do you think he had trouble with law enforcement before?”
Her own past had made her wary. Not until this weekend had she realized how deeply her distrust ran. Or how unwarranted her feelings had become. Her life before WITSEC was a distorted jumble of emotions and memories. She’d lumped all her insecurities and fears together and had never bothered to sort them out.
Jack’s death had left her feeling helpless and afraid, and she’d applied those feelings to everyone she’d made contact with during that time. She’d felt as though her life and her decisions had been snatched out of her hands. Being at the mercy of others had terrified her.
Looking back, she realized everyone had done the best they could to help her. The marshals had placed her in a state she’d grown to love and in a job helping Walt that had transformed her life for the better. When she thought of the social workers and the police who’d tried to intervene on her behalf, she’d seen them as intruders. The life she’d had with her mother, though often filled with neglect, was the life she’d known—the life she’d understood. The drugs, the neglect, the arguments had felt normal because that’s all she’d ever known.
With a child’s mentality, she’d often assigned the blame for the situation to herself. If she’d washed her hair better, maybe the teacher from school wouldn’t have called. If she’d cleaned up her room better, maybe the social worker wouldn’t be talking to her mom in hushed, urgent tones.
By refusing to revisit her past, she’d let her tangled memories overlap and fester.
“You look good in a uniform,” she blurted.
This time she was certain he blushed.
“Where did that come from?” he asked.
“I don’t know. I guess I was thinking about something you said before. I’ve never had the chance to see you work up close like this.”
“That’s probably good.” He chuckled. “The people who see me at work are generally the ones I’m arresting.”
“Knowing you’re here, seeing the uniform, you make me feel safe.”
“Tomorrow is going to be better. We’ll have more officers. I’ll make sure you’re taken to a secure location until this is all over.”
Noelle gnawed on her cuff, and Kara carefully disengaged the surprisingly sharp little teeth. “We have to be missing something. But what?”
“I’ve been asking myself the same question.” One of the puppies bit Shane’s bootlace and tugged. “I can’t figure out how Finn’s death connects to all this. There was nothing of note in the papers he left in his room. We still haven’t found his phone. The consensus is that it’s at the bottom of the pool. So far, we haven’t come up with anything out of the ordinary. He was taking water samples. Testing them. That’s it.”
“Do you think he found something in the water? Something...I don’t know, dangerous?”
“It seems unlikely. I grew up here. The hot springs have been studied by more than just Finn. Still, it’s worth checking out. I’ll contact his university and see if they have a record of his results.”
“And the phone call? The one he made to me?”
“We may never know,” Shane said. “Red is about the only one I trust around here, so I’m having him track Mark’s movements. That’s all I can do for now.”
One of the puppies brought a length of rope from the kennel, and Kara playfully tugged on the end. “Walt liked to read. He read a lot of nonfiction, but he also read a lot of Westerns and books about the Old West. Zane Grey. That sort of thing. If he’d been born in another time, he’d have been a cowboy.”
Walt’s death was still new and raw, but talking about him helped alleviate the pain. She was grateful that Shane seemed to understand.
“And he never married.” Shane unzipped his parka, leaned forward, then shimmied out of the sleeves. “I don’t know why that surprises me.”
“He had plenty of opportunities, that’s for sure. There were always women making moon eyes at him when we worked at Denali. He said he was set in his ways and genuinely happy. I guess he figured his life was just about perfect, and he didn’t need anything else.” The puppy whipped his rope into the air and trotted off after it. “I envied him that.”
“For being alone?”
“For being alone without being lonely.” She tugged at a loose thread on the cuff of her coat. “I was as close to him as anybody ever was. Even at that, once I went to college, we’d go weeks without talking. Sometimes months. Time didn’t mean much to Walt.”
“Sounds like you were still the most important person in his life. It was you he called after he moved here.”
“That’s true. He was a decade past retirement age already. His mom had been gone for five years before he decided to move back. To be honest, I didn’t even know he owned the property until he called me out of the blue. He never talked about it.”
“I knew his mom, you know. Old Mrs. Tsosie. Everyone knew her.”
Kara twisted toward him. “You did? What was she like?”
Her knowledge of Walt started the day she’d arrived at Denali State Park. Now she wondered what his life had been before that. What had he been like growing up? Had he ever missed his work with the marshals? She’d never asked. Now it was too late.
Shane gazed into the distance, as though he was staring into the past. “I suppose Walt’s mom was a lot like Walt. She kept to herself. Kept to her routine. She went to church every Sunday and did her shopping in town every Wednesday.”
He gave a tight smile. “She drove my dad crazy. Every summer she’d hire a couple of guys from town to clear the trees and brush from the west side of her property, then she’d set up a clothesline and hang her laundry out to dry. I can hear my dad like it was yesterday. My guests are not paying a thousand dollars a night to see someone else’s skivvies flapping in the breeze. They never missed an opportunity to goad each other.”
“What started the feud, anyway? Walt never talked about it.”
“Depends on who you ask, I suppose. When Alaska became a state in fifty-nine, it was still pretty much the Wild West out here.” He smiled. “Walt would have liked it. Not everything was good, mind you. There was a lot going on that wasn’t exactly aboveboard. The same piece of land being sold multiple times. That sort of thing. A lot of people who figured the law didn’t apply to them. You had to be made of iron to survive out here.”
“I can imagine.”
“If you were born into the Taylor family, the story went something like this. Walt’s dad and my grandfather wanted to buy the same plot of land. My grandfather came up with the money first. Out of spite, the Tsosie family bought the land between the hot springs and town. That meant the only way in or out of the resort was through the Da’nai Pass. That meant the resort was only open during the summer months. The weather has gradually been warming up here. Snowfall is less. Avalanches are fewer. About a decade ago, my dad was finally able to open the resort in the winter for northern lights viewing. That increased profits by twenty-five percent. I know, because every time I reminded him about how dangerous it was to drive that road in the winter, that’s what he’d say.”
While all that seemed logical and straightforward, Kara suspected there was more to the story. “And if you were born into the Tsosie family, what story did you hear then?”
“From what I can gather, Walt’s dad said he’d already paid for the land. He said the Taylors had stolen it from him. No one from my family was going to admit to stealing anything, even if they had. Walt’s dad even
went to court and tried to sue. The bank had record of a withdrawal for a large sum of money, but no record of who’d received the payment. Bank records weren’t what they’re like today. The lawyer who brokered the deal claimed ignorance. Walt’s dad produced correspondence indicating his offer to buy had been accepted, but with the broker denying any knowledge, there was no way to prove the papers weren’t forged. Without a deed, he didn’t have a case. Which meant all the Tsosie family could do was block the road and hang out their skivvies to destroy the view.”
“What do you think happened?”
“I think anything is possible. All you’d need is a corrupt broker and someone at the courthouse willing to take a bribe. There’s never a shortage of dishonest people.”
As she considered all the possibilities, her pulse raced. “What if someone found proof that Walt’s dad paid for the land? What then? You said yourself that Finn was doing research on the history of the hot springs. That sounds like something worth killing over.”
Her face blanched. That would place suspicion directly on Shane’s stepbrother.
“Wouldn’t matter.” Shane flipped up his palms. “Alaska has something called an adverse possession law. Comes up so often I’ve memorized the statute.” He cleared his throat. “Anyone openly possessing a parcel of property under color of title for at least seven years, or at least ten years under a good faith, but mistaken, belief that the land was already part of their property, may claim that property.”
Her excitement faded. “Well that doesn’t seem fair. Doesn’t that mean the law is set up to protect squatters?”
“Yes and no. It’s mostly used to decide boundary disputes. Someone builds a fence and maintains it for twenty years, then someone else discovers the fence was two inches over the property line. The first party can argue adverse possession. No one disputed the fence for twenty years, ergo, adverse possession.”
“Still doesn’t seem fair.”
“That’s the law for you.”
“What did you think about the feud growing up?”
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