Northern Exposure

“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 were 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—

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