Buch lesen: «Alaskan Hideout»

ONE

Five miles to go. Only five miles.

Emma Bass gripped the steering wheel tighter and checked the rearview mirror one more time, panic rising in her that she might see the car following her—again—even though it had been four thousand miles and over a week since she’d last seen it.

Fifteen days since she’d witnessed the murder of her company’s CEO. Fourteen days since she’d started to feel like she was being observed. All the time. Twelve days since her son, Luke, mentioned offhandedly that sometimes he felt like someone was watching him.

Twelve days since she’d realized there was nothing the police there could do to protect her since no one could prove they were in danger. Eleven days since she’d left Dallas. Nobody messed with her kid. She’d done plenty of looking back, but only for her and Luke’s safety. Emma knew by now that it was better to let the past be the past and to keep moving forward. At whatever cost. Always. Moving. Forward.

Except now, when she voluntarily blasted herself back eight years to college graduation and her ultimatum to her then boyfriend that she never should have given. Her or his family’s lodge.

Emma didn’t know why she’d done it. Maybe it had been because the thought of Alaska scared her. She wasn’t inept in the country, but there was a difference between the Georgia countryside—lazy, muddy rivers and gently rolling hills—and the rugged Alaskan wilderness Tyler had showed her pictures of. He’d done so eagerly, like he’d thought the picturesque scenery of his beloved Alaska would be enough to convince her to move there with him, get engaged, take some time to get to know the area and his family and then eventually get married.

Instead, every picture of the mountains towering over his ocean-side town had made her shiver a little. There was something so wild about Alaska still. Untamed. Unpredictable.

Emma was a fan of predictable.

Then again, maybe it hadn’t been any of that. Emma might like routine, but she was an adventurer, too, in some ways.

Sighing, she glanced in the rearview mirror and smiled at her seven-year-old’s face. Maybe the truth was that she’d taken a pregnancy test the morning of their graduation—and it was positive. And somehow, maybe in a swirl of stress and emotions and being overwhelmed by how her life was changing so quickly, she’d said stupid things to Tyler, things she hadn’t been able to take back.

He’d simply walked away. No, that wasn’t true. She’d panicked, realized she didn’t deserve him and practically chased him away. But he hadn’t come back. And Emma hadn’t been able to handle the idea that he’d marry her only because he felt obligated, didn’t want his future decided for him just because someone had decided hers.

So years had passed. She’d said nothing to Tyler. Every single night as she’d lain in bed, trying to fall asleep, desperately trying to convince her mind to stop, she regretted her silence. But every day it became a little harder to break.

Life, ready or not, was about to do it for her.

She’d known when Luke had told her he’d felt like someone was watching him that they were in trouble. Emma had hoped, foolishly, for the first few hours after she’d escaped the crime scene, that maybe she’d be safe. She’d given her report to the police, answered their questions and thought that might actually be the end of it. But if both she and Luke felt like they were being watched, someone was stalking her, most likely the person who’d killed her boss. And the police department’s hands were tied. They were good, she respected them. But they weren’t a bodyguard service and without solid proof she was in danger, they’d told her all she could do was file a report.

Which wouldn’t exactly keep either her or Luke safe.

Emma needed to run and Alaska had seemed like the best option. For one thing, the distance from Dallas made it ideal, especially since it was so far removed from the rest of the United States. Also, Emma figured, a bunch of outdoorsmen carrying guns to protect themselves against bears was about the safest place she could be. Besides—and maybe the most important reason—she’d promised herself if she made it out of the building that night she’d make things right with Tyler. He deserved to know about his son.

Movement behind her caught her attention. The car that seemed to have been following her had edged closer. Emma tensed. She couldn’t see the driver well in the rearview mirror and part of her doubted it was anything to worry about. After all, according to what Tyler had told her, this was the only road to several towns. Traffic tended to clump together and travel together.

Right?

Emma glanced back again, tension tightening her shoulders. She exhaled slowly and stole another glance at her sleeping son. He was okay.

She accelerated a bit, anxious to get to Moose Haven Lodge, an irony that wasn’t lost on her as the lodge itself had been part of the reason everything had ended so badly for her and Tyler. He’d talked their entire college career about opening his own inn, maybe on a beach somewhere, starting fresh, and she’d loved the dream almost as much as she’d loved him.

And then out of the blue he’d announced he was returning to Alaska. To his parents’ lodge.

Emma couldn’t handle the lack of civilization, the dark winters. The cold. The wildlife. The idea that she’d be raising a kid in a place she didn’t know, far from everything she understood and all the people she cared about. So she’d told him so. Broken his heart.

It was too late to believe she could restore that relationship. It had been destroyed beyond repair. What she hoped for right now was that she could keep her son safe—and Alaska was the best place she knew of to do that—and, also, maybe that Luke could get to know his dad.

Tyler as a dad.

She shook her head, old feelings churning in her stomach. She’d never stopped loving him, really. There’d just come a point when she’d decided she wasn’t going to give up everything she’d ever dreamed of for love.

The car behind her inched closer again and Emma pressed her foot even further on the gas. Was there anywhere she could pull off, like one of those turnouts she’d seen on the highway earlier for slow vehicles? Maybe the car behind her was just in a hurry. It could be as simple and innocuous as that, couldn’t it?

She’d just passed the Welcome to Moose Haven sign when everything happened at once. A squeal of tires, the sickening sound of metal on metal, the crunching of her car intermingled with her own screams as the impact pulled her backward and then threw her forward with enough force to smash her head on the steering wheel. Pain exploded behind her left eye and the edges of her vision went dark.

“Mom!” Luke cried, sounding so much younger than seven.

Please, God, keep him safe.

Out of the corner of her eye, Emma saw the car that had hit her speed away in the opposite direction of Moose Haven. Meanwhile her car was still skidding across the road, careering toward the edge of the road and the ravine below.

Emma fumbled for her phone, wishing she could dial 9-1-1, but knowing she didn’t have enough time. She hit the brakes, but her tires caught on gravel, sliding off the asphalt too fast for her to correct.

They were going to go over the edge and into the woods below the road.

“Hang on, baby!”

The car tumbled down the side of the road, hitting trees on the way, some of them small enough that the car crushed them. The last one finally was big enough to bring them to a shuddering halt.

Emma felt them stop, heard the reassuring sounds of Luke asking what was going on.

And then everything went black.

* * *

Sirens whirred in the distance and, from the sound of it, they were passing right by the lodge, tearing down the Moose Haven cut-off in the direction of the Seward Highway. As Moose Haven wasn’t a big city, sirens weren’t an everyday occurrence but accidents happened on the highway often enough that Tyler Dawson wasn’t surprised by the sound.

Out of habit, he checked his phone for text messages he might have missed. Due to the lodge’s proximity to some of the common accident sites and Tyler’s basic EMT certification, his brother, Noah, the police chief of Moose Haven, would sometimes ask for his help. He expected that would be even more true now that he’d graduated from the police academy in Sitka and was technically a Moose Haven Reserve officer. Not a title he’d have ever expected from himself, or one he’d particularly wanted, but when family asked you to do something, you did it. At least Tyler did. And Noah had asked him to do it.

He looked at the phone’s screen.

Nothing.

Instead of heading out to help, he said a quick prayer for whoever was involved then went back to the financial statements he’d been going over. He winced at the first bill he looked at, cringed at the second and by the third was ready to close the books and give up on bills for the day.

However he looked at it, Moose Haven Lodge was in trouble. He’d taken over from his parents not quite eight years ago and at first it had gone well. Then the recession that had hit the Lower 48 had finally made its way to Alaska and the lodge had started to feel the strain. Their returning clients weren’t able to keep vacationing the way they had been in the past.

Tyler knew what the problem was—they needed more clients—so he’d trimmed expenses where he needed to and the lodge ran well. He was good at his job.

He just wasn’t as good at getting the word out and, with the competition bigger lodges brought in, he was struggling.

If you’re interested in a struggling mountain lodge, God, I could use some help.

Tyler meant the prayer, meant it with every fiber of his being this morning, amid the bills. However, at the same time, he had to wonder to what degree God was invested in those kinds of details. Had God created him? Yes. Did He care about him? Yes.

But about details like this?

Tyler didn’t know. The last time he’d expected God to intervene in the day-to-day details of his life was when he’d prayed he and his college girlfriend could reconcile somehow.

Eight years this spring and they’d never spoken again.

Tyler’s phone beeped and he glanced at the message. Noah needed help at the wreck. It was just about two miles from the lodge.

He left a note on the front desk for the tourists he expected to have checking in soon and headed out to his car. In small-town Alaska, communities had to pull together and help each other.

Two miles later Tyler winced at the damage to the small white car—a rental, he guessed from the fact that besides having its back end smashed in, it looked like hordes of others that invaded the Kenai Peninsula area every summer. He prayed again for whoever was inside, then parked his car.

“Female, late twenties, early thirties maybe,” Noah said as he approached. “She’s in bad shape, but the fire department already has her on the way to the hospital. What I need your help with most is the kid. He needs to be checked out by a doctor, though thankfully he looks okay. But the poor boy’s terrified.”

“Got it.”

Tyler stepped toward the wreckage.

Noah put a hand on his arm, stopping him.

He looked up at his brother, not bothering to hide his annoyance. Did he want his help or not?

“Tyler...the woman...”

“Yes?”

Noah exhaled. “I looked at her license for ID. It’s Emma Bass.”

Tyler thought he might have stopped breathing. Never mind his own certification, he needed an EMT to look at him right now. Spasms in his chest, palms sweaty. What was she doing in Alaska, near his lodge? She’d broken up with him with little explanation when everything had been going well...too well for their own good at one point...

Kid. Noah had said there was a kid in the car. Now Tyler knew he’d stopped breathing.

He was a smart guy. It didn’t take long for shock to turn to full-blown panic as other pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place.

He was just about to ask how old the boy was when Noah said, “He says he’s seven.”

Tyler would guess he’d be eight in—he did some quick figuring from the worst mistake he’d ever made, the one time he hadn’t acted honorably, the way he’d been taught was right—December.

“Wait.” Noah gave him a sharp look. “When did you graduate college and break up with Emma?”

“She broke up with me.”

“When, Tyler?”

“Eight years ago last spring.” He met his brother’s eyes, squaring his shoulders, ready for whatever his sibling was going to dish out. He deserved it.

Noah still didn’t say anything, so Tyler lowered his voice and muttered, “Yes, okay? Yes, he could be mine.” Could be? More like probably was, hard as it was to wrap his mind around. He knew Emma wasn’t the kind of woman who’d have been unfaithful. This was Tyler’s kid, he knew it as certainly as he knew just about anything else in life.

Tyler moved closer to the boy.

“When’s your birthday?” He tried to keep his voice light so it would sound like he was just making casual conversation.

“December 17.”

Tyler blinked as the kid watched him with eyes he knew looked remarkably like his own. Green. Mossy green.

This was his kid.

And Emma hadn’t told him.

He swallowed hard. “I’m just going to check you out and make sure you’re okay and then we’ll take you to the hospital to wait on your mom.”

The boy nodded, eyes wide. “Okay.”

Tyler went through the motions of a typical post-car-crash checkup, doing his best as he heard the words echoing in his mind over and over. His son. His son. His son.

“Is my mom going to be okay?”

“They’re taking great care of her.” Tyler hadn’t been able to focus his mind enough to consider whether or not Emma was seriously injured. Surely, Noah would have said...

Still he didn’t want to lie to the boy.

But hope won out. “I think she’ll be okay.” She had to be. Tyler needed to talk to her. The questions he needed to ask her were only growing by the minute.

Only then did he realize he’d never asked the kid his name. He’d been so focused on learning his birthday to confirm what he already knew in his mind.

“What’s your name, buddy?”

“I’m Luke Dawson.”

Tyler needed to talk to Emma.

Right now.

He took a deep breath and tried to stay calm for the kid, who he’d decided wasn’t going to sit in some cold hospital waiting room. So Emma hadn’t told him about Luke. A huge deal, one he’d have to sort through in his mind, but he had other things to worry about right now. Like why the damage to the car looked like another vehicle had been involved. The back end of the Toyota was smashed in and some kind of dark paint, black or blue, had left streaks on the side.

“I’ll be right back, okay, Luke?”

He stepped away from the car and walked toward his brother. “Where’s the other car?”

“Hit and run.”

“Is something going to be done about that?”

Noah raised his eyebrows and Tyler checked himself. It wasn’t the best idea for him to be telling his brother how to do his job. He held up his hands in surrender. “Sorry. I just want this dealt with.” Uneasiness churned in his stomach along with no fewer than ten other emotions he couldn’t name at the moment. Emma. A son. Car wreck.

Something about it didn’t sit right.

A cell phone rang in the front of the car and both brothers turned to look at it.

Noah gave him a look of warning. “There’s no protocol that says you should answer that.” He’d read the look on Tyler’s face well. Back in his life, not even in it technically, for ten minutes, and Emma was already making him do things that weren’t like him. She’d loosened him up in college, taught him that having friends was sometimes more important than studying for an exam, and in turn he’d taught her the value of lists, planning, stability.

He moved to the car and answered the call on the unlocked phone before Noah could try to stop him. Because technically there was no protocol that said he shouldn’t.

It was an unknown number. His curiosity piqued. “Hello?”

Whoever was on the other end hung up.

“Who was it?” Noah asked.

“No idea.”

His questions for Emma, about Emma, were only growing and Tyler’s mind was consumed with her presence, even though she wasn’t physically there but a few miles away at the Moose Haven Hospital. This was what this woman did to him, made it impossible for him to think, made him feel too much.

What’s going on, God? Why is she here? And do You really think I can handle this?

It was that last question Tyler would really like an answer to. Because he wasn’t sure he was up to whatever this challenge was. When it came to Emma, with how thoroughly she’d broken his heart, he’d wound up the loser.