"Except when he died," Johnny said.

"Except when he died," Kate said.

"Can you tell me now?" Johnny said in a low voice. "Can you tell me what happened?"

"I told you what happened, Johnny. Those hunters we were guiding started shooting at each other, and we got in the way."

"All of it, this time," Johnny said.

She met the blue eyes fixed so determinedly on her face, saw the pleading look in them. His whole body was tensed with the need to know of his father's last hours on earth. It wasn't that she hadn't meant to tell him the whole story one day, when he was older and could handle it. And she could handle telling it.

"Can you? Please, Kate?"

It seemed, after all, that she could.

She followed Johnny into town the next morning, waving good-bye as he took the turn for the school gym, where Billy was having his new baby party. Johnny wanted to learn to dance, and Park Air had announced there might be dancing. Besides, he liked Billy, and he thought it was cool that he had a new baby all the way from Korea. He'd looked up Korea on Kate's atlas, so he felt ready.

Kate's first stop was the Step. She walked into Dan's office, Mutt at her heels, to find the ranger with his feet propped on the sill of the window and his hands laced behind his head. He had a moody expression on his face. "Hey," she said.

He dropped his feet but not his hands, until Mutt insisted on a head scratch. "Hey."

Kate sat down opposite him. "I heard."

"I figured."

"You okay?"

"I been suspended."

"What?"

He tossed her a sheet of paper with the National Park Service letterhead; it was addressed to the chief ranger and placed him on suspension indefinitely, pending the outcome of the criminal investigation into the death of Dina Willner. Kate looked up. "I thought Jim had a suspect in custody."

"He does."

"Then what's this crap?"

"Any stick'll do to beat a dog with, Kate." He looked at Mutt. "Sorry, babe. They want to get rid of me. It's probably enough that I stumbled into the middle of a murder. Guilt by association."

Kate tossed the paper into the garbage can. "You're not going to put up with this shit, are you?"

"Well," Dan said, shifting his gaze from the window to Kate, "there's not a whole hell of a lot I can do about it. Of course, I'm the only one on duty at this time of year, and it'll take a while before they find someone qualified to take over. I doubt that any of the suits in Anchorage are going to want to leave the bright lights and the big city to baby-sit in the wilderness."

"Dan."

"Kate—"

"You may be going to put up with this, but I'm not."

He drew a deep breath and expelled it slowly. "I went there to ask Dina and Ruthe for their help in keeping this job. You got me so fired up last time we talked that I figured you were right, that I ought to fight for it, not just sit back and let my friends carry the weight. But now I don't know. Dina's dead, Kate, and Ruthe might die. Two great old broads, one gone, one maybe gone. Nothing else seems all that important right now."