Alaska Wild

by Helena Newbury

  Alaska Wild

  Helena Newbury

  Foster & Black

  Contents

  Copyright

  1. Kate

  2. Kate

  3. Kate

  4. Boone

  5. Kate

  6. Kate

  7. Kate

  8. Boone

  9. Kate

  10. Boone

  11. Kate

  12. Boone

  13. Weiss

  14. Kate

  15. Boone

  16. Kate

  17. Kate

  18. Boone

  19. Kate

  20. Boone

  21. Kate

  22. Kate

  23. Kate

  24. Weiss

  25. Kate

  26. Kate

  27. Boone

  28. Kate

  29. Kate

  30. Boone

  31. Boone

  32. Boone

  33. Kate

  34. Kate

  35. Boone

  36. Kate

  37. Boone

  38. Boone

  39. Kate

  40. Boone

  41. Kate

  42. Kate

  43. Kate

  44. Boone

  45. Kate

  46. Kate

  47. Kate

  48. Boone

  49. Kate

  50. Kate

  51. Boone

  52. Kate

  53. Kate

  54. Kate

  55. Boone

  56. Boone

  57. Kate

  58. Boone

  59. Kate

  60. Boone

  61. Kate

  62. Boone

  63. Boone

  64. Kate

  65. Boone

  66. Kate

  67. Boone

  68. Kate

  69. Kate

  Epilogue

  © Copyright Helena Newbury 2016

  The right of Helena Newbury to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988

  This book is entirely a work of fiction. All characters, companies, organizations, products and events in this book, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious or are used fictitiously and any resemblance to any real persons, living or dead, events, companies, organizations or products is purely coincidental.

  First Edition. This book contains adult scenes and is intended for readers 18+.

  Cover by Mayhem Cover Creations

  Main cover model image licensed from (and copyright remains with) Wander Aguiar Photography.

  Dedicated to Tracy, who named the character of Megan, and to all my readers. Thank you for letting me do what I love.

  1

  Kate

  I met him at the edge of the world.

  I’d flown from New York to Seattle, then from Seattle to Anchorage and finally from Anchorage to Nome, the planes getting smaller each time. I’d been in continuous motion for twelve hours. But when I climbed out of the plane and set foot in Alaska, I stopped dead and just stared.

  The tiny town of Nome is right on Alaska’s Western tip...but I wasn’t ready for how that felt. I turned in a slow circle as the chill spring wind tugged at my coat. To the south and west lay dark sea that looked so cold, I was sure my hand would instantly freeze solid if I dipped it in. Overhead, the sky was so brutally blue it was almost painful, so huge it made me feel like an insignificant speck. To the east and north was open country: towering mountains and thick forest. No skyscrapers. No highways. Nothing normal.

  New York, seen from space, is a cluster of lights so dense that it becomes one throbbing mass. I’d spent my whole life there. Alaska is a dark void, the points of light so small and so far apart they almost disappear.

  What the hell are you doing here, Kate?

  I realized I was flipping my phone over and over in my fingers inside my purse, drawing reassurance from its smooth, man-made lines. I headed for the tiny terminal building as fast as I could.

  Inside, I could smell coffee and that calmed me a little. Okay, it was nothing at all like an airport back in civilization, but there were things I recognized: an information desk, a couple of screens showing the handful of flights due that day, and a sign pointing to the restrooms. I followed the arrow, relieved myself and emerged from the restroom staring down at the single, forlorn bar of signal on my phone. That’s how I walked right into him.

  My face whumped right into the valley between the big, hard mountains of his pecs. My thighs slammed one-two into his, except his were as solid and unyielding as a rock face. One foot wound up between his boots, my groin perilously close to his. I bounced back a little but he didn’t move at all, as if he was part of the landscape.

  I’m five-two, so I instinctively looked up. That wasn’t nearly enough. I had to tilt my head right back.

  He was staring back down at me and I just froze because….

  Because suddenly, all of that wild that had made me so nervous outside was standing right in front of me, distilled into six feet plus of muscle and stubble. His eyes were the same brutal, frozen blue as the sky outside. Alaskan blue.

  I’d never thought about what my exact opposite would be like. Now I knew. Huge, where I’m tiny. Rough where I’m smooth. Everything, from his battered boots to his wide, muscled shoulders were built for work: grunting, rock-smashing, tree-chopping work. I stood there in my suit, clutching my laptop bag, and it was as if I was from a different world. He belonged in this place as much as I didn’t. I knew, straightaway, that he was born here.

  And yet while the landscape outside unnerved me, this man triggered something completely different, an awakening that started at every millimeter of my skin that touched his but rippled in until it hit me soul-deep. There was something about him: animal and raw. Not just wild but Alaska wild. It was new and intoxicating, ripping through me like a hurricane and leaving behind a scalding heat. It was so strong, it was almost frightening.

  But somehow, touching him felt...right. Like some tiny piece of technology, all brushed aluminum and glossy screen, slotting into a crack in a granite cliff face...and discovering it fits perfectly.

  I took a deep breath...and, as my chest lifted, I felt my breasts pillow against the hard ridges of his stomach. I was wearing bra, blouse, suit jacket and a tightly-belted coat and not one of those layers meant a damn thing. I could feel the animal heat of him throbbing straight into me, could actually feel my nipples pull and tighten—

  I stepped back. “Sorry.” I tried to get myself together but, as soon as I met his eyes again, it was as if every thread of my clothing had been reduced to ash, the particles blasted aside by a scorching wind that seemed to slam me back against the restroom door. I tried to take a breath and found I couldn’t. My chest was tight, my eyes wide. The heat inside me went lava-hot, a crashing, scorching waterfall that slammed straight down to my groin. I’d never in my life felt such want.

  He wanted me.

  I looked deliberately away and then back. I tried to reduce him to something ordered, to a description. Six-four. Dark hair. Blue eyes—

  It didn’t work. The words were boxes into which this man refused to be stuffed. He wasn’t six-four. He was just big, big like the mountains outside were big. His hair wasn’t dark, it wasn’t some color you could pick off a chart. It was as thick and lushly black as an animal’s, and grown long and loose enough to brush his collar. He had a couple of days’ worth of stubble but it wasn’t carefully shaped and precisely trimmed, like the guys back in New York wore it, the artfully rough look. This was just a guy who hadn’t come near a razor in a few days because he’d been out in the wilds.

  He was gorgeous, those blue e
yes eating me up from a face that could have been carved from rock, all hard jaw and strong cheekbones. And he was so big. If he was heading somewhere and I literally threw myself at him to stop him, my small body hitting his in the chest, he’d just walk on unimpeded with me clinging to him.

  It hit me that he still hadn’t spoken. I took another half step back. But this time, he didn’t let me open up the distance between us. This time, he took a step forward, bringing us even closer. I caught my breath as his broad chest pressed up against me and his blue eyes filled my vision. I could smell icy, fresh water, moss and forests. And beneath it, a scent I knew was him, the smell of warm skin and taut muscle with just a hint of something hard and ready and primal.

  Every guy at the FBI—which was virtually every guy I knew—wore precisely the same suit in filing-cabinet gray and smelled the same: ozone from the printer, dry-cleaning chemicals and shoe polish. I’d been around indoor guys my whole life. I’d just met my first true outdoor guy.

  And as we stared at each other, I saw something else in his eyes, wrapped up together with the lust. Puzzlement. As if this wasn’t normal for him. As if he didn’t understand why he was so drawn to me and didn’t trust it.

  And still he didn’t say anything.

  “He doesn’t talk,” said a voice to my left.

  My head snapped around. I saw a guy in his late twenties, not much older than me, a holster on his hip and a big, gold US Marshals badge pinned to his shirt.

  And that’s when I realized that the guy I was pressed up against had his hands behind his back. And then I saw the cuffs and understood why.

  I slipped sideways and, this time, the big guy didn’t follow me. My legs felt like wet paper: I had to focus just to stay upright. A prisoner?! A criminal?! And I’d been getting all melty about him. What the hell was wrong with me?

  I took a big pace away to put myself at a safe distance. Except, this isn’t really a safe distance, is it? The cuffs drew his arms back and together, making his biceps and the powerful muscles of his back bulge even through his jacket. He could just run at me, slam me up against the wall and—

  Stop it!

  “You’re transporting him?” I asked, trying to make my voice coolly neutral.

  The young marshal grinned. He swung a huge, dull green army holdall down off his shoulder and dropped it to the floor with a wumf. He had tight curls of sandy-blond hair and looked as if he should be playing bass in a band, not wrangling prisoners. He looked too young. And he was big but the prisoner was huge.

  I glanced down at my own petite frame. Not like I can talk.

  “Boone here won’t give me any trouble,” said the marshal. “Will you, Boone?”

  The prisoner—Boone—had finally stopped looking at me and was gazing impassively at the restroom door. It was a relief...and yet, some traitorous little part of me wanted those blue eyes back on me again, no matter what crime he’d committed.

  “Local cops picked up Boone last night,” said the marshal, talking about the guy as if he wasn’t there. “In a little town called Koyuk. Found out there was a warrant out for him and they knew we were flying another prisoner out of here today, so they drove him over and handed him off to us.”

  I nodded dumbly. It was gradually dawning on me that the marshal was trying to flirt with me. I hadn’t picked up on the vibe at first because...well, it’s not something that happens to me a lot. And now that it was, I had no idea what to do. I had no procedure for flirting. And I’m not good with things I don’t have a procedure for.

  And it wasn’t just me being weird or frosty or all the other things guys at the agency have called me. I wasn’t interested, which made no sense at all. The marshal had a nice smile and he was friendly enough. He was exactly the sort of guy I should be dating: we even had something in common, him being a marshal and me being FBI. This was exactly the sort of random encounter that leads to romance, a chance meeting at an airport in the middle of nowhere. And yet something about him left me cold.

  And I kept finding my eyes being drawn back to Boone.

  “Who is he?” I asked. It felt wrong, talking about him that way, but Boone was staring so resolutely away from me that it didn’t feel like I could talk to him directly.

  The marshal shrugged. “Just some loser. Vagrant, really. Lives up in the mountains. Hunts for his food. Only comes down into town once every few months and he doesn’t speak to anyone when he does. Been around these parts for years, cops had no idea he was wanted until they picked him up for brawling with some guy in a bar and ran his prints.”

  Brawling. The word fitted Boone. He looked as if he could wrestle a bear. My eyes ran over his broad back, down to his tight waist and hard ass—

  I tore my eyes away and shook myself. “Well. Nice to meet you.” And turned and headed back out into the airport before anything else could go wrong.

  I had a job to do. I’d traveled almost four thousand miles to do it.

  I headed straight for the hangers. I didn’t even stop as I passed the coffee stand, despite the fact it was mid-morning and I hadn’t had my morning cup yet. I’m a New York gal: I need my coffee, especially when I’ve been traveling all night. But this couldn’t wait.

  I searched hanger after hanger, finding nothing but male maintenance workers. I needed the one female one. I needed Michelle Grigoli.

  Five years ago, she’d filed a police report after being attacked on her way home from work. Attacked in a very specific way, with very specific threats made and a distinctive knife used.

  In New York, Chicago and most recently Boston, some bastard had been attacking women in the exact same way. Ten so far, starting eight months ago. I had a suspect and I knew he was the one but I couldn’t make it stick because there were no witnesses. He’d always come from behind and blindfolded his victims. He knew I couldn’t touch him: he’d smirked his way through his interrogation. The DA had ordered me to drop the case unless I could bring him something new in the next twenty-four hours.

  That’s when I’d thought to check my suspect’s home town of Nome, Alaska. I’d turned up Michelle’s spookily similar police report: my working theory was that she’d been the very first victim, while he was still perfecting his technique. And she’d said in her statement that she’d gotten a good look at him. She was the one person who could tie everything together. That’s why I’d flown all the way up here, on my own dime and in my vacation time. The bureau chief thought I was crazy. But I wasn’t going to let that son of a bitch hurt anyone else.

  I rounded an aircraft fuselage and saw a worker in blue coveralls, half-inside an inspection hatch. The head was hidden but the body looked female. “Ms. Grigoli?” I called over the blaring rock music, my heart thumping.

  A hand reached out and fumbled for the radio. A small, slender, feminine hand. My heart lifted. I’d been waiting twelve solid hours for this moment. “Can I speak with you a moment?”

  The woman clicked the radio off and hauled herself out of the fuselage. She had long black hair pulled back in a ponytail and oil stains on one cheek. I wanted to punch the air. Yes!

  And then my world fell apart.

  “Michelle transferred out of here,” the woman told me. “I’m Nicole.”

  I had to force myself not to yell. “When?!”

  “Yesterday.”

  No! Five years since she’d made her statement, two years of investigation and I’d missed her by one day. My chest contracted as if someone was squeezing my heart in an icy fist. If I didn’t get to see her today, the whole case was blown. “Which airport did she transfer to?” Please let it be close. Please let it be close.

  “Fairbanks.” When I looked blank, she sighed and took pity on me. “It’s a city. East of here.”

  I thanked her and sprinted back inside the terminal. A few minutes studying route maps gave me a tiny shred of hope. There were flights from Nome to Fairbanks and from there to Seattle. If Michelle made a positive ID, I could be back in New York to slap it on the DA’s d
esk just in time. As long as I got a flight to Fairbanks right now.

  I ran over to the airline desk. The woman behind it perked up, as if glad of some activity. Even for a tiny airport, I realized, the place was a ghost town. “Hi!” I said breathlessly. “I need a ticket for the next flight to Fairbanks, please. When is it?”

  She tapped at her keyboard and chewed on a pencil. “Tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Normally there are a few flights a day. But one plane hit bad weather and had to divert and the other was grounded with engine trouble. There’s nothing now until tomorrow.”

  That explained the empty airport. I thought of my suspect, back in New York. Now he knew we were onto him, he’d slip away, change his name...it might be years before someone pinned him down again. How many more women would he attack in the meantime? “Please!” I begged. “I’ll take anything. A mail flight. A cargo flight. I don’t care.”

  She saw something on her screen and her face lit up. “Oh!” Then her smile crumbled. “Oh.”

  “What?”

  She shook her head. “Thought there was a flight, but it’s a charter. US Marshals.”

  I remembered the young marshal by the restrooms. Yes! “When’s it leaving?”

  “Now. They’re waiting for take-off clearance.” I ran for the door. She shouted after me. “Wait, you can’t just—”

  “Sorry!” I yelled and threw open the door to the runway. I managed to flash my badge at a security guy just in time to stop him body-tackling me. Gasping from the shock of the freezing air, I searched for—

  There. There was only one plane on the runway. Even smaller than the one that had brought me to Nome. It was turning around, lining up to take off. Shit! And it was a good few hundred yards away across the windswept concrete. This is nuts….

  Then I thought of the photos of the most recent victim. No way was I letting him get away with it. No way.

  Thanking God I wasn’t wearing heels, I sprinted. As I got closer, I started waving my arms in the air. “Hey! HEY!” I yelled. But the plane continued its turn until it was pointing straight down the runway, ready to go.