KS13.5 - Wreck Rights

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by Dana Stabenow


  He pulled himself together. “John Barton brief you on the post?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “It’s Liam. Call me Trooper Campbell in front of civilians.”

  “All right, s— Liam. I’m Diana.”

  She smiled, and it was a revelation, a broad, thousand-watt beam that lit her eyes and transformed her face into that of a little girl’s — enthusiastic, energetic, optimistic, all illusions intact and trumpeting a touching allegiance to truth, justice and the American way. She probably still believed in honor. She was undoubtedly willing to lay down her life for duty. “When did you graduate from the academy?” Liam said.

  “Last year,” Diana Prince said promptly.

  How the hell did you get a seven-step posting? Liam wondered, and knew without having to ask. Newenham was a Bush posting, which meant troopers assigned to it received a seven-step pay increase in recognition of the fact that they were living and working in the back of beyond. Because of the high pay, and because retirement was calculated on the last years you worked, these posts were competed for fiercely by troopers with enough seniority to make it stick.

  Newenham was an exception. The previous first sergeant assigned to the post had publicly screwed up a very high profile case, and then capped his activities in the area by impregnating the trooper also assigned there. He should have been removed from his posting immediately; that he was not was due to favoritism within the good-old-boy trooper hierarchy. Corcoran had lasted ten years in Newenham, to the outrage of the community and the detriment of the troopers. By the time he left, the sour smell of the posting was evident as far away as Juneau.

  At minimum staffing, a post this size should have had a first sergeant and two troopers assigned to it. In the three months since Liam’s arrival, Liam had been it.

  No, Newenham was not the usual seven-step plum. Nobody wanted to take it on. The more superstitious among the force might even have said it was bad luck to be posted there. His boss, Lieutenant John Dillinger Barton, supervisor of Section E and Liam’s boss both in Glennallen and Newenham, had sent Liam to Newenham for two reasons: one, to tuck him safely out of sight until the fallout from the Denali debacle had deteriorated to a less toxic level, and two, in John’s words, “to take the fucking hoodoo off that posting.”

  And now here was Trooper Diana Prince, John’s latest exorcist, all fresh-faced and newly minted and ready to go out and be a hero. Liam made a mental resolve to go through any doors second. “How’d you get here?”

  “I flew.”

  “Commercial?”

  She shook her head. “I brought in one of the new Cessnas.”

  His gaze sharpened. “Floats or wheels?”

  “Floats. The gear’s coming on Alaska Airlines.”

  Shit, Liam thought. No need to call Wy now. A couple of hours alone in a plane in the middle of nowhere promoted personal intercourse. A flight to — where had it been? that murder-suicide in Dot Lake? — was how they had first met. “Good,” he said, tearing himself from that memory as well. He resettled his cap on his head and sternly quelled the rumble of queasiness that always precipitated his reluctant rise to any altitude above sea level. “Let’s go.”

  “Where?” she said, following him out the door.

  “Kulukak.”

  “What’s there?”

  “Bodies.”

  Biography

  Dana Stabenow was born in Anchorage and raised on 75-foot fish tender in the Gulf of Alaska. She knew there was a warmer, drier job out there somewhere and after having a grand old time working in the Prudhoe Bay oilfields on the North Slope of Alaska, making an obscene amount of money and going to Hawaii a lot, found it in writing.

  Her first crime fiction novel, A Cold Day for Murder, won an Edgar award, her first thriller, Blindfold Game, hit the New York Times bestseller list, and her twenty-eighth novel and nineteenth Kate Shugak novel, Restless in the Grave, will be released in February 2012.

  Find her on the web at stabenow.com.

  Bibliography

  Kate Shugak Mysteries

  A Cold Day for Murder

  A Fatal Thaw

  Dead in the Water

  A Cold-Blooded Business

  Play with Fire

  Blood Will Tell

  Breakup

  Killing Grounds

  Hunter’s Moon

  Midnight Come Again

  The Singing of the Dead

  A Fine and Bitter Snow

  A Grave Denied

  A Taint in the Blood

  A Deeper Sleep

  Whisper to the Blood

  A Night Too Dark

  Though Not Dead

  Restless in the Grave (2012)

  Liam Campbell Mysteries

  Fire and Ice

  So Sure of Death

  Nothing Gold Can Stay

  Better to Rest

  Star Svensdotter Series

  Second Star

  A Handful of Stars

  Red Planet Run

  Other Novels

  Blindfold Game

  Prepared for Rage

  Copyright

  If you downloaded this book from a filesharing network, either individually or as part of a larger torrent, the author has received no compensation. Please consider purchasing a legitimate copy. They are reasonably priced and available from all major outlets. Your author thanks you.

  This digital edition (v1.0) of “Wreck Rights” was published by Gere Donovan Press in 2011.

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Errata

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