Tundra Threat

by Sarah Varland

  Of course, she might not be letting him know those things anymore. After all, she was in charge of this investigation and could handle it herself.

  The words she’d thrown at him yesterday still burned, despite the revelations he’d had last night. He was sorry he’d called her Rachael. But if she’d only been in his head, she’d understand why the situations had seemed so similar, why the wrong name had slipped even though he knew full well which woman he was with.

  He’d originally taken today off work to help McKenna. But he doubted she’d welcome his help after yesterday.

  Actually, he was sure of it. She’d made it clear she didn’t need him.

  He’d probably be better off if he could get used to that idea. And in the process somehow convince his heart he didn’t need her either.

  He was still staring at the phone when it rang, showing Matt’s number. He answered immediately. “Hey, what’s up? Everything all right with Anna?”

  “Yeah, she’s doing great. That’s why I’m calling. We’ve decided Lexi’s going to stay here with her and I’m coming back to Barrow.”

  “You’re sure that’s a good idea?” Since no further attempts had been made on Anna’s life while she’d been hospitalized, he was less worried about her than he’d been initially, but it had still made sense for Matt to stay with his sister-in-law, offer some level of protection.

  “Lexi insists. And you know her—she can handle anything. She just lets me pretend to be the protector.” He laughed.

  Will knew his friend was probably right. His own heart clenched as he thought about the similarities in Lexi and McKenna’s personalities. He knew, somewhere deep in his heart, that McKenna was capable. Would it hurt for her to humor him and let him feel as if he was helping her somehow?

  Or maybe he was being overly protective. Behaving more like a brother than a man who was in love with her, treating her like a child instead of acknowledging her as a smart, competent woman. After all, her fiercely independent streak was one of the reasons she’d stolen his heart in the first place.

  He shrugged away the thoughts of McKenna. He’d had enough introspection for the day. “I’ll be glad when you’re back. It’s not the same here without you to talk to after work.”

  “My flight lands late this afternoon. Think you can pick me up at the airport?”

  “Yeah. But we need to talk about your house.”

  “McKenna already called last night and told Lexi about the fire.”

  “You’re okay?”

  “It’s just a house. Seeing Anna hurt like she was really put things in perspective. We’ll build another one. For now, just pick me up at the airport and let me know what I can do to help with the case.”

  “You’re not exactly the top pick on the troopers’ list of people to confide in.” He laughed as he said the words, knowing Matt was able to handle a little ribbing.

  “That life feels like a thousand years ago. Besides, you wouldn’t believe some of the people I know and things I’ve learned from them. Maybe I can figure out how this guy thinks, help you and McKenna catch him somehow.”

  “Yeah, we should talk about McKenna, too.”

  “The fact that you’re in love with her? Figured that out about two weeks ago.”

  “About the fact that she’s not talking to me after I said the wrong thing last night.”

  “Double murders, woman troubles... You do have a mess on your hands. Just lay low for today. Give her some space. I’ll do whatever I can to help you get her back, man. I haven’t seen you so...alive since you got to Barrow.”

  Will knew he was right. The truth was that he hadn’t felt so alive since he moved here. “Lay low?” He felt uneasy at the idea of leaving her alone when someone was after her, but hadn’t she asked for that? If him showing up to talk to her would make her angry or distracted then it could put her off her game at a time when she badly needed to stay focused.

  “Look, you don’t sound as if you like the idea. Maybe I’m the wrong person to talk to. What would Luke tell you to do?”

  “Lay low.”

  “Maybe it’s not a bad idea then.”

  Will knew it wasn’t. He’d take his friend’s advice and leave her alone, at least for today. Although he’d probably drive by her office later, just to make sure she was there and everything seemed normal. Sometime tomorrow, he’d be on her doorstep, ready to plead his case. Because he wasn’t letting her go without at least trying.

  * * *

  He wasn’t two hours into his day at work when Will finally admitted to himself that putting McKenna out of his thoughts—even for a day—was never going to work.

  Everything about her was ingrained in his life. Her laugh. The way the sun glinted off her shiny red hair. The stubborn lift of her chin.

  He’d give anything to pawn off this latest batch of clients to someone else and get back to her. She was invading his mind even more than usual and he couldn’t shake the feeling he’d made the wrong choice going in to work today.

  “How many caribou do you think we’ll get today?” one of the clients asked from behind him.

  “It depends,” Will answered without taking his eyes from the plane’s dash. Rick had loaned him a plane since Will’s had been unfixable and he hadn’t gotten insurance money to replace it yet.

  “You like the taste of ʼem?” another man asked the first.

  He laughed. “Nah. Just need another trophy for my wall.”

  Will bristled. McKenna was right about men like these. The local wildlife needed protection from them.

  He hated to tell her about days like this, though, because it reflected badly on hunters in general. And plenty of men, himself and Matt included, liked to hunt and did so responsibly.

  Unfortunately the clients at Truman Hunting Expeditions who respected the wildlife and the land were few and far between these days. The situation had only been getting worse in the past couple of months.

  Will was beginning to think the business was in trouble. Rick used to have higher standards for screening clients, always making sure they were capable and had received some instruction before heading out on a hunting trip. He’d also heard Rick on the phone recently talking about money in a low, tense voice. Maybe that was what was driving him to be less choosy about the clients he signed up for packages.

  Not that it was really any of Will’s business.

  “Wait while I get us set up,” he instructed the men, eyeing one of them who seemed to be having a little trouble with his muzzle control. When he’d exited the plane, he’d been a little too relaxed in his handling of the rifle. And as he talked to one of the other guys in the group, he’d swept the front of the gun across several people. Will had cringed at the violation of basic gun safety—never point a gun at anything you don’t mean to shoot, and treat every gun as if it was loaded.

  Thankfully, that one wasn’t. Yet. Will rubbed at his temples, feeling a headache coming on. This was going to be a long day. He glanced up at the herd of caribou in the distance. Not close enough yet, but maybe in a few minutes.

  He laid his pack across the ground as a rifle rest and waited.

  “I see them right there!” one of the men exclaimed, gesturing with the business end of his rifle.

  “Keep that pointed at the ground until we’re ready to shoot,” Will directed him. The man scowled but did as instructed.

  He really needed to start his business. And soon. Maybe sooner than he’d thought.

  Will watched the herd for another minute. Several of the caribou wandered close enough that they might have had a shot, but they were turned the wrong way, facing away from them. While it might be possible to get one at this range, a clean shot through the heart wasn’t likely, and nothing else would be a humane kill.

  “I’m beginning to think you didn’t b
ring us out here to get anything, after all,” one of the men said in an angry tone.

  “I’m gonna get one anyway,” his friend announced, kneeling down to use the rest Will had set up.

  “Not yet. We don’t have a good shot.”

  The man loaded and chambered the rifle. Will told him again to take the gun out of shooting position and wait, but he didn’t listen, so Will used his foot to nudge the rest away so the man had nothing to balance his rifle on.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he growled at Will. “Fine.” He stood and before Will could react, he aimed his rifle and took a cheap shot. Will cringed, knowing what that shot would do to an animal if it hit. It was an inhumane shot, that was all there was to it. Fortunately, the man had terrible aim and didn’t manage to hit anything at all.

  Will watched as the caribou herd started to run, startled by the clap of gunfire.

  “None of you has a good enough shot. Put the guns down or I will get in that plane and leave all three of you for the bears.”

  “We have guns.”

  “Loaded with a round that may or may not be heavy enough to stop a grizzly.” Will shrugged and turned to the plane. “Your choice.”

  In his peripheral vision, he saw them look at one another and then reluctantly lower their weapons.

  “We’ll shoot when we have a good opportunity. A humane one,” Will said, his voice firm. No wonder McKenna viewed some hunters the way she did. The way this group had been acting, he didn’t feel like any of them deserved a chance to bag a caribou today. But for the sake of his job, he’d give it one more try. Then he could legitimately call their day over, to give them enough time to get back to Barrow.

  Three hours later, Will drove away from Truman Hunting Expeditions, his pesky cargo finally no longer his responsibility. He let out a deep breath, trying to calm the pounding of his heart. It could have been a lot worse. At least no one had gotten hurt with the sloppy way they’d handled those guns. Any of them could easily have killed one of their hunting partners.

  The scene on the tundra that McKenna had described popped into his mind. Two dead. He’d have to ask her if it was possible that it could have been a hunting trip gone wrong, maybe not murder, after all.

  Though that didn’t explain why someone was after McKenna for investigating it.

  Will let out a deep breath, the stress of both the case and the day pressing on him with a weight almost too heavy to handle. He couldn’t take any more of this. He was close enough to the amount in savings he’d wanted to have before he started his business. Will would call Rick as soon as he got home and ask for a meeting, maybe even for the next day.

  He couldn’t leave this company soon enough.

  * * *

  McKenna hadn’t expected to sleep, being back in the house where Anna had been shot, but exhaustion had overcome her and she’d slept all the way through the night.

  She’d called Lexi the night before to let her know about the fire. Lexi hadn’t seemed as concerned about the house as she had been about McKenna’s safety. She could hear Matt in the background, sounding as if he felt the same way.

  McKenna hadn’t known what to say or do, other than to apologize profusely for her part in their house’s destruction, and to try to reassure them she’d be as careful as she could. They’d told her that Anna was improving and should be out of the hospital within a week.

  That gave her a week to get this case wrapped up. There was no way her friend needed to come back to a town where the person who had tried to kill her was still at large. As McKenna drained a cup of strong coffee and looked out into the clear fall day, she didn’t feel as if she’d need a week. She had almost everything she needed.

  McKenna pulled out the notes she’d been taking on the case, lingering for a long time on the ones she’d taken after she and Will talked about the profile of a hunter.

  She frowned.

  Flipped back a couple of pages in the notebook, to the night Anna had brought her to the murder scene on the beach—Seth Davison.

  She’d jotted down descriptions of everything she’d seen. Even the fact that the camo pants and jacket Seth was wearing had looked brand-new. McKenna flipped back to the notes from her conversation with Will, reliving what he’d said again in her mind. Would an experienced hunter wear brand-new gear on a hunt? Maybe....

  But something else struck her. Only his wallet and a cell phone had been recovered from the scene of the crime, and when she’d checked with the hotel he’d been checked into, the room where he’d stayed was empty.

  If he was in town to hunt...where was his rifle?

  What if he hadn’t been there to hunt at all?

  The thought morphed from a tickle in the back of her mind, to a clear thought, to a solid suspicion. Seth Davison hadn’t been in Barrow to hunt. He’d been in Barrow to investigate the deaths of his friends.

  If that was true—if—it told her several things. First, he’d thought the hunting industry had been connected to the deaths somehow, a hunch that may or may not be true. Second, he’d believed his friends’ deaths to be the result of foul play. Third, he didn’t trust anyone else to investigate the murders. It was a lot of trouble to fly up and investigate on his own, especially if McKenna’s hunch was correct and Seth wasn’t a hunter himself.

  McKenna almost had it. She was sure of it. She just needed to think through everything and connect the dots. A shiver of anticipation went up her arms as she realized that this really could be the day this nightmare ended.

  She jotted down her thoughts in the notebook, then flipped it back to the first page. She rose from her seat, put her used coffee mug in the sink, motioned to Mollie to stay and headed outside to her vehicle with a copy of her case notes. At the last minute, she decided she didn’t want to have the notes on her, just in case whoever had been following her chose today to try to take them from her. No, she’d just take a fresh notebook and a pen, and work from memory and from the notes she hoped to collect today from Chris. Instead, she put the notes back inside the house, shoving them inside a cereal box in the pantry in case anyone decided to break in and search for them.

  Her thoughts ventured back to Chris. He’d seemed surprised when she’d called last night to ask to talk to him. Of course, it had been late. Or was he surprised because he’d set the fire and expected her to be dead?

  Too much had happened to her and to those around her in the past week or so. McKenna could hardly separate her worthwhile thoughts from paranoia.

  She drove to Bear’s Tooth Pub and Pizzeria, where they’d agreed to meet, and hoped the churning in her stomach wasn’t some kind of survival instinct telling her to ditch this meeting and hole up somewhere safe. It better not be; she couldn’t afford to do that. One way or another, this had to end.

  And maybe talking to Chris was the key.

  She exited the car, careful to lock it behind her. She’d parked in a location where she could keep an eye on it from inside the pizza place, so she thankfully wouldn’t have to worry about the possibility of anyone tampering with it.

  Chris was already waiting for her. And he’d taken her seat.

  Every trooper, police officer and law enforcement worker she’d ever known always chose the same seat. Back to the wall, facing the door. Chris had picked the right booth, but he was on the wrong side.

  “Any chance you’d want to switch seats?” She forced herself to keep the question casual, her tone light.

  “Law enforcement. I forgot.” He shrugged and switched sides, surprising her with his willingness to accommodate her. “What did you want to talk about?”

  “Those bodies we found on the tundra that first day I was in town.”

  Had he flinched, or had she imagined it?

  Chris leaned back in his chair. “Getting right to it, I guess. No pizza first? No, I guess
this isn’t really a pizza kind of conversation.”

  “You’re not answering my question.”

  “Look, I’ve been doing this a long time. I’ve never seen anything like that and no, I wasn’t responsible. Are we done here?”

  “No, we’re not.”

  “I have questions, too, as long as we’re asking. Like, why would you have a hunting guide serve as your pilot? Isn’t that a conflict of interest? Especially when another pilot is available.”

  Would he be questioning her, implying that maybe she had something to do with the murders if he was guilty? It was either a brilliant ploy to throw her off, or he really did suspect her. Which would make him innocent.

  She wanted to say it was none of his business, but that would end this conversation, leaving her no better off than before she’d come in.

  “I’ve known Will all my life. We grew up together. After showing up new in town, and getting thrown right into a murder investigation, I felt more comfortable working with someone familiar. I’m sorry you’re offended that I’ve been using another pilot.”

  He shrugged. McKenna decided to try again to see if she could startle him into giving away any useful information.

  “I’m being followed.” She decided she might as well go for broke. “I’ve felt it for weeks. But it’s funny, I didn’t feel like anyone was following me on my way here. Any idea why that is?” She locked her gaze with his. He said nothing.

  Suspicion crawled up her arms. “No comment?”

  “Look. I don’t have to explain myself to you. Anything I’ve done has been legal and fully justified.” He shoved his chair back. “We’re done here. Somehow I thought you might have decided you needed my help, but it’s clear that’s not the case.” He reached for his back pocket and McKenna jerked, hand hovering near her weapon.

  He glared at her as he slowly pulled out a wallet and grabbed a five. “Calm down, Trooper Clark. Just thought I’d pay my bill. Like the law-abiding citizen I am, despite what you think.” He snatched the bill sitting on the table from the cola he’d been drinking and slammed it and the money on the front counter on his way out.