Northern Exposure

by Debra Lee Brown

Joe snatched the phone on the fourth ring. “Peterson.” He’d been outside fixing a broken water pipe that ran from the spring up the hill into the cabin.

  “Hey, it’s me.” Barb’s normally cheerful voice had an edge to it he didn’t like.

  “What’s up?”

  “Wendy Walters. I just thought you’d want to know.”

  Joe pulled the phone onto his lap and slung a hip on the edge of the desk. “Know what?”

  “She’s planning on hiking in over the east ridge after those caribou. That gun-sight pass—you know the one.”

  “Son of a bitch!”

  “I know, I know. Don’t kill the messenger. The whole first hour in the pickup I tried to talk her out of it, but she’s dead set on it.”

  “How long ago’d you drop her?”

  “’Bout two hours ago. My radio’s on the blink. Had to wait till I got back to headquarters to call you.”

  There wasn’t any cell coverage in the area. Hell, the closest town was 150 miles away.

  “All right, all right. I gotta go.” He started to put the handset down.

  “Goin’ after her?”

  He put the receiver back to his ear. “What do you think?”

  The last thing Joe heard before he slammed the phone down on the desk was Barb Maguire’s trademark titter.

  Chapter 4

  It took him six hours to catch up to her.

  And when he did, Joe realized his temper had ratcheted to dangerous proportions. “Get a grip, Peterson,” he cautioned himself. He was determined to handle this like a professional.

  By the time he was able to gather his gear, get his truck out of the shop and break just about every traffic law on the books racing to the eastern edge of the reserve, Wendy Walters had gained a huge head start on him.

  Still, he would have bet his next paycheck that he would have overtaken her miles ago, that she would never have made it as far as the steep, glacier-cut canyon he was now traversing. He would have lost that bet, he realized, as he caught a flash of movement on the sheer rock face a quarter of a mile ahead of him.

  Instinctively he reached for the pair of Austrian-made binoculars secured to his chest by a well-worn leather harness. “I’ll be a son of a—” He bit off the curse as he peered through the field glasses.

  Wendy Walters, wannabe wildlife photographer, trudged up the steep, rocky trail toward the narrow gun-sight pass marking the little-used eastern entrance to the reserve. Joe checked his watch. 7:00 p.m. She’d made damned good time. The woman was fit, he’d give her that.

  But he was fitter, and right now he was fit to be tied.

  He secured the binoculars, hunched his department-issue backpack high on his hips, recinching the padded belt, and took off at a jog. The weather looked iffy. Another storm was moving in from the west, coming right at them. Dark clouds massed overhead, obscuring a late-summer sun that had already dipped well below the jagged, snowcapped peaks surrounding the canyon.

  Now that he’d found her, he didn’t intend to let her out of his sight, even for a second. He’d parked his truck next to her rented SUV at the end of the gravel road, miles behind them, and had spotted her small boot prints the moment he’d started up the muddy trail toward the reserve.

  What bothered him was that two miles back he’d picked up another set of boot prints, twice as large as Wendy’s and leaving deep impressions in the soft earth. They definitely weren’t alone out here.

  There hadn’t been another vehicle parked near Wendy’s Explorer, or anywhere along the gravel road, but that didn’t mean anything. There were dozens of spur roads, and twenty different ways to intersect the trail they were on, if one was prepared to hike cross-country.

  Remembering yesterday’s glimpse of Camo Man, Joe scanned the shadowed crevices of the canyon, then picked up the pace, fixing his gaze on the petite woman ahead of him, trudging steadily upward toward the pass, dwarfed by the bright-blue pack on her back.

  “What are you doing here?” Wendy said, when he finally caught up with her.

  “That’s my line.” He grabbed her arm and jerked her toward him.

  “Hey!”

  He eyed her up and down, inspecting her for signs of injury or fatigue. He saw neither. In fact, he noticed she’d barely broken a sweat, which was nothing short of amazing, given the steep climb. She was breathing hard, but he suspected it was because she was angry, not winded.

  Her cheeks were flushed with color, her eyes ice-blue darts that, because they reminded him a little of Cat’s, pierced him right through the heart.

  “Come on,” he said, crushing the impression, replacing it with memorized snippets from the tabloid article he’d read describing the police investigation into Willa Walters’s drug habits. “You’re outta here.”

  “The hell I am.” She wrestled out of his grasp. “This is state land, open to hikers and overnight backpackers.”

  “Yeah, backpackers with a permit. Got one?” He smirked at her, feeling good all of a sudden, strong, in control of the situation, professional all the way. He knew it would be dark by the time they got back to their vehicles, but that was fine with him, he had a flashlight and—

  “Right here.” She whipped a folded yellow receipt out of the breast pocket of her long-sleeved shirt. “See for yourself. I’m every bit as entitled to be here as you are.”

  For a long second he just stood there, mute, looking at the folded yellow paper flapping in the wind. He snatched it out of her hand. Only local DF&G or Fish and Wildlife officials could issue permits for the reserve, and he sure as hell hadn’t issued her one. The only other officer in the vicinity was—

  “Barb wrote it up for me.”

  He swore under his breath, mentally counting to ten. The next time he saw Barb Maguire he was going to drag her by that kinky black hair of hers down to the creek behind the station and drown her. He checked the dates and the signature on the receipt, confirming the worst, then slapped it back into Wendy’s waiting hand.

  “You can’t stop me, you know. I’m going to find those caribou, and when I do find them, I’m going to photograph them. And then I’m going to get out of here.” She glared up at him, her lips pressed seductively into a tight little rose.

  He didn’t want to admit it, but she was right. He couldn’t stop her. This was state land, and she had a valid access permit. The only way to stop her now would be to judge her incompetent or unprepared. He had the authority to do it, against her will, if it came to that.

  “Why did you come after me?”

  The question caught him off guard. He ignored it. He’d been thinking about just how competent and prepared she actually seemed to be.

  An old but expensive compass hung from her neck by a nylon cord. Her topographic map was expertly folded into the kind of configuration a seasoned hiker would use and was protected by a plastic cover, peeking out from an easily reachable overhead pocket on her pack.

  Though the backpack itself was a blinding electric blue—that’s how he’d spotted her so easily—and was ridiculously big for her petite frame, it was high quality, as was her down sleeping bag, her tent and the short ice ax hanging from a loop near her liter-size water bottle.

  “You’re probably not going to need that,” he said, nodding toward the ax.

  “It’s August,” she shot back. “And this is Alaska. You have to be prepared for everything.”

  He shrugged but had to hand it to her. She was in good shape, was well equipped and had managed, so far, not to get herself lost or killed.

  “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “Hmm?” He caught himself staring at her mouth. Her lips had relaxed again, and she’d wet them unconsciously with her tongue.

  “Why…are…you…here?” Enunciating each word, Wendy pantomimed sign language in his face.

  He snapped to attention, irritated at himself for noticing her mouth at all, and her eyes, not to mention those cute little feet encased in top-grain leather. He wondered how her blisters w
ere doing. “I…I’m here because you can’t go in there alone, permit or no permit.”

  “Why not?” She stiffened, every muscle in her face taut, daring him to come up with a reason that would hold water.

  He couldn’t. At least not any reason that wouldn’t sound stupid or steeped in emotion. Like the fact that she was a woman, alone. Whether a person was well equipped or not, the reserve was one of the wildest, most rugged places on the planet. There were animals, bears—

  “You don’t have a firearm,” he said suddenly, remembering that grizzlies might have wandered into the northern tracts, where fishing for late-season salmon was good.

  She glanced at the forty-five holstered at his hip, then rolled her eyes. “When was the last time you shot an attacking bear?”

  “Never.” He didn’t even have to think about it. “It’s never been necessary.”

  “Exactly,” she said. “And you live here. I’ll only be here five or six days.”

  Again he couldn’t argue, but that was beside the point. He didn’t like the thought of her out here alone. What if she got hurt? What if something happened? It would be his fault because he didn’t stop her. Ultimately he was responsible.

  He thought bitterly of Cat, and how insistent she’d been on going to New York alone last year. He’d wanted to go with her, but she’d argued against it, saying he always treated her like a baby. He should have taken charge. He should have gone with her. If he’d only been there…

  The sound of loose rocks above them snapped Joe back to the moment. He’d buried his sister, but not the memories. Never the memories. He would never let himself forget. Or forgive.

  “Gotta keep moving,” he said. “We can’t stay under the pass like this. Rock slides happen all the time up here. That shale is unstable.”

  “Fine.” Wendy started up the trail.

  “Whoa!”

  She turned and arched a neatly plucked brow at him. “Yes?”

  “You’re hell-bent on this, aren’t you?”

  “I am.”

  He held his temper in check. The sky, along with his mood, was growing darker by the minute. Given the weather, what little light there was wasn’t going to last much longer. He tried a different tactic.

  “Fine. Have a nice trip.”

  Surprise registered on her face. Bingo. Maybe she’d figured all along he’d come after her. But the surprise lasted only a second, not long enough for him to bask in the momentary triumph he felt. She replaced it with a smug smile.

  “You, too,” she said cheerily. “Take care going back. It’ll be dark soon.”

  The little minx! She turned to continue her climb, and it was all he could do not to grab her and…hell, he didn’t know what to do with her. If she wanted to risk hypothermia, injury or worse, fine. It was her choice.

  Joe spun one-eighty, nearly losing his balance on the narrow trail, and started back down the mountainside at breakneck pace. It wasn’t until he’d made it all the way back down the steep approach to the pass that he saw it—a big boot print smeared across a thin streak of mud-covered rock. It hadn’t been there twenty minutes ago when he’d made the climb up. He was positive.

  Their mystery escort was somewhere close by. Scanning the trees below him and the rock above him, he flipped the leather trigger guard open on his revolver. Just in case.

  The second time Joe caught up with her, she looked relieved.

  “You’re back?” Wendy said.

  “Yeah. Changed my mind. I’m going with you.”

  “What?”

  “Save it. This is my reserve, my turf. It’s like you said, each of us has as much right to be here as—”

  “I don’t need you to baby-sit me.” She did an about-face and continued up the trail.

  Joe figured three days in, snap a few pictures, three days out—if she could keep up the pace. He didn’t like it, not one bit, but he was resigned to it. As long as she was in his reserve, she was his responsibility.

  The small, U-shaped pass, a tiny chink in the saw-toothed armor of the mountain range, was just above them now. Wendy was moving fast, too fast, and reached it a split second before he did. She let out a strangled sort of squeak.

  Joe grabbed her to steady her, then eased her, backpack and all, down onto the impossibly small piece of real estate that was the pass. He sat cross-legged alongside her. “This is why it’s called a ‘gun-sight’.” There was barely enough space for two of them in the narrow notch. “Get it?”

  “Yeah,” she breathed. “I do.” Together they looked out over the sheer drop-off, at the densely forested valley and majestic peaks on the other side. “I had no idea it was so beautiful.”

  “I had no idea you were thinking of taking another swan dive into thin air.” He nodded at the ground, a dizzying couple of hundred feet below them. “Lucky for you, I was here.”

  He expected a pithy comeback, and was surprised when her face softened. “Look, I really appreciate it, okay, but honestly, I don’t need your help. I don’t need anyone’s help. I have an assignment, I know what I’m doing and I’m going to do it. Period.”

  “Don’t let me stop you.”

  She made a huffy little sound in the back of her throat. “I don’t intend to.”

  “Good.”

  “So…how do I get down?”

  “You mean we.” No way was he letting her go on alone. Not now. He was sure someone was following them, the same someone who had followed them yesterday, and who’d crept around outside the cabin last night.

  Maybe he was overreacting. Maybe it was just another hiker. No. Intuition told him otherwise. Damn! He didn’t need this. He didn’t need her lousing up the quiet week he’d planned for himself.

  Leashing his irritation, he pointed to a narrow cut in the rock to their left that angled down the cliff face to the forested valley below. “The footing’s good, but you have to watch out for slides. Lots of loose rock up here.” He nodded toward the craggy, snow-dusted ridge above the ledgelike trail.

  Wendy stared at it for a long time, as if she were deciding whether or not to go on. He was angry, but not surprised, when she pulled out her map, flattened it on her lap and positioned her compass directly over the pass on which they perched. She moved the bezel, drew a couple of transecting lines onto the map with a mechanical pencil she fished out of her pocket, then scribbled down a heading.

  Joe was impressed. “You didn’t learn that in Manhattan.”

  “No,” she said. “I didn’t.” They stared at each other for a drawn-out moment, and he found himself wondering what she was wearing under that long-sleeved shirt. “Michigan,” she said, snapping him out of his momentary lapse into insanity. “The north woods. I was raised there.”

  On impulse he reached out and plucked a stray twig from her hair, his gaze fixed intently on hers. She didn’t flinch, nor did she break eye contact until he did.

  “You’re full of surprises, aren’t you?”

  In a voice so soft, almost as if she were talking to herself, she said, “You don’t know the half of it.”

  Wendy argued with him as she wolfed down a Power Bar.

  The battle escalated between gulps of water she felt obliged to share with him, since, in his haste to catch her, he’d forgotten his own bottle. It peaked during the risky process of shimmying into her waterproof anorak without pitching headlong into the valley below. But it was no use. Joe Peterson was as immovable as the mountain they were roosted on.

  “Okay, fine. Let’s go, then.”

  He stood and offered her a hand. “I’ll help you.”

  She would have rather burned in hell.

  “I’m fine,” she managed through gritted teeth, as she struggled to her feet, her heavy pack throwing her dangerously off balance and making her feel like a pregnant turtle in a bright-blue shell.

  Joe gripped her upper arm to steady her, and before she knew what she was doing she’d grabbed on to him for support. Their gazes locked, and for the barest second she thought
of him sitting, bare-chested in the Adirondack chair in his bedroom, staring at the photo of his dead sister.

  “Thanks,” she said quietly.

  “No problem.” He let go of her, then motioned her out onto the ledgelike trail leading down into the wildlife reserve.

  There was loose rock everywhere; the footing was precarious, at best. “Is this trail used often?” Wendy had done a lot of backpacking when she was a kid, but mostly in Michigan over flat terrain that was nothing like this.

  “By animals, mostly. It’s really just a game trail. Not too many people come in this way.”

  “I can see why.” She tried not to look down as she placed one foot carefully in front of the other and made her way down the steep route.

  Two switchbacks later it dawned on her. “My compass!” She stopped short, and Joe nearly ran into her.

  “Whoa! What about it?”

  “I left it on top, on the pass. I took it off for a minute to—”

  “We’ll snag it on the way back. It’ll still be there.”

  Taking care with her footing, she turned toward him. “You don’t understand. My dad gave me that compass. It’s the one thing that wasn’t stolen along with the rest of my stuff. I had it in my camera bag. It’s important to me. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to it.”

  Joe swore, then glanced at the sky, which looked as if it was about to explode. “We’re almost out of daylight, and I don’t like the looks of those clouds. Stay here.”

  Wendy grabbed his arm. “No, I’ll go.” It was her compass, and she was the one who’d left it behind.

  “No, I’ll go. Like I said, stay here.”

  Before she could argue, he turned and started back up the trail. “Tyrant,” she said to his back, knowing he couldn’t hear her.

  A moment later, a spray of small rocks rained down from the jagged ridge line above, peppering the space Joe had just occupied. Wendy flattened herself against the rock face and protected her head with her hands. Sheesh. He wasn’t kidding about those rock slides.

  After a moment it stopped, and she cautiously looked up, expecting to see a marmot or maybe a bird, but saw neither. She also didn’t see Joe. The trail was empty, and the notch in the rocks he’d called a pass was empty, too.