His conversation with Kensie felt like the longest sustained chat he’d had with anyone in a year. He knew it wasn’t, but maybe she was just the first person he’d felt connected to in all that time. The first person he’d actually wanted to stay and talk to longer. And that was dangerous territory.
Cowardly or not, he was finished with human connection. He had Rebel; he had the sheer, uncomplicated beauty of Alaska. That was enough for him.
Rebel didn’t mind the nightmares. She probably had them too, poor girl. And now that they’d both been cut loose from the service, she wasn’t going to go and die on him anytime soon. As long as she stopped saving people’s lives.
She nudged her head between the front seats, resting her chin on his arm as he maneuvered up the winding, unpaved road toward his cabin. It was up high, which made the trek tricky during the worst of winter, but the view was worth it.
Staring out over miles of nothing but snow-topped trees and breathing in the crisp, cold air, so unlike the deserts where he’d served, brought him as close to peace as he figured he’d ever get. And once a military man, always a military man. There was just something about having the high ground that helped him relax.
His closest neighbor was miles away, down in the valley. He rarely saw other vehicles on his ride out of town, and never in the last few miles. A vehicle coming up the final hill meant someone was coming to see him. And no one came to see him.
His parents still called him regularly, certain he had to be lonely. But they’d been afraid of the trip to Desparre, of the wild animals they were certain roamed everywhere and the thick, heavy winters that sometimes prevented travel in or out until spring came around again. They couldn’t understand why he’d come here. But then, they’d never really understood him. Not when he’d joined the military right out of high school and not a decade later when he’d been forced to leave it.
They loved him, but they didn’t realize what he’d been looking for or what he’d lost. Brotherhood. A bond he shared with no one but Rebel these days, because she’d been in the thick of it with him.
As he slowed the truck to a stop in front of his cabin, his breathing evened out. All the open space did that for him. Beside him, Rebel seemed to relax, too.
He opened the driver’s side door, telling Rebel to stay as he hobbled around to the back. Normally she hopped into the front and climbed out after him, but he knew her injury almost as well as he knew his own. She might not be showing it, but she was in pain, too.
“Come on, girl,” he urged, watching as she stepped gingerly to the ground. She led the way up to the cabin, favoring her back left leg.
“We’ll sit by the fire and take it easy tonight,” he promised her, earning a half-hearted tail wag.
As soon as he opened the door, she walked straight over and claimed a spot in front of the fireplace.
“Greedy,” he teased her, and she gave him a look as if to say, Get a move on. It’s cold in here.
He’d had the heat set too low, not expecting the cold to come so soon, although he should have been used to it. By the time he’d moved out here last October, the snow had been so high the real estate agent had needed his help clearing it away so they could even open the door.
He cranked the heat up now, then got to work building a fire. He poured Rebel some dog food and dragged it over to her. He was hungry, too, now that dinnertime was approaching, but his leg was more demanding than his stomach. So, instead of cooking, he settled in his recliner, gingerly lifting his right leg and wishing he’d grabbed some ice for it first. But now that he was settled, he didn’t plan to move for a few hours.
Between the heater kicking on and the fireplace warming the cabin even more, Colter’s stiff muscles slowly started to relax. An hour later, his leg was still throbbing unhappily, but the pain was a lot more manageable.
With the fire roaring away on one side of him, the view of the valley covered in snow through a thick-paned window on the other and Rebel at his side, Colter felt complete. This was why he’d come to Alaska. Yes, his parents’ claim was true—he was hiding here. But he was hiding from all the well-meaning but clueless people—them included—who wanted to fix him. Who had no idea what it meant to survive an ambush when all of his brothers had died.
Rebel whimpered and when Colter glanced at her, he could swear she knew what he was thinking. “It’s okay, girl.”
But instead of calming down, she stood, went to the window and started barking.
Someone was here. And since there was no one in Alaska he knew well enough to visit his house, it wasn’t a guest.
He’d come to Alaska to hide from what was left of his life. Yeah, he could admit that. But there were plenty of other people who saw Alaska as the final frontier: a place to hide away from something they’d done, to run from the law.
Colter winced as he swung his injured leg to the ground, then hobbled over to the cabinet against the far wall and grabbed his pistol. He’d stopped carrying it into town, but right now he was happy he hadn’t given it up altogether.
“Rebel, quiet,” he commanded. In her three years as a Military Working Dog, never once had she disobeyed a command from him.
But today she just barked louder.
Colter released the safety on his pistol and eased toward the door, preparing himself for trouble.
* * *
KENSIE GRIPPED THE steering wheel until her knuckles hurt, stomping her foot on the brake. But it didn’t help. Her rental truck still slid backward, angling toward the edge of the road, toward the drop-off beside the steep hill she was trying to climb.
Why did Colter Hayes have to live in the middle of nowhere?
According to the few locals who would talk to her, he was an ex-Marine hiding from the world after being badly injured. No one seemed to know how he’d been injured or why exactly he wanted to hide. In fact, none of them seemed to know much more about him than the few details he’d shared with her on the street. And yet he’d lived in Desparre for almost a year.
“People come this far into the Alaskan wilderness for three reasons, honey,” the grocery store owner had told her, then ticked off those reasons on gnarled fingers. “Either they love a good adventure, the kind that’s as likely to get them killed as not. Or they want the entire world to leave them the heck alone. Or they’ve done something they don’t want anyone to know about—probably something illegal—and they figure no one will ever track them down here.”
Then she’d narrowed her eyes at Kensie. “We all assume Colter is the middle one. But you’ve got to be careful who you trust.”
Her words echoed in Kensie’s brain as her truck finally stopped its dangerous backward descent. She kept her foot wedged down hard on the brake, her hands locked tight on the wheel, afraid to move. Should she keep pushing forward or turn back?
She leaned forward, craning her head up at the hill in front of her. Snow was still falling on it, obscuring what was little more than a dirt trail. She had one more crest to go and she wasn’t sure if her truck would make it. But she wasn’t sure she could turn it around, either.
Now it was her brother
