"That's Kate Shugak."

"What?"

The other man nodded at Kate. "That's Kate Shugak."

"Oh." Russ gulped. "And that must be—"

"Mutt."

Mutt had perfected the art of the unblinking stare. It could be unnerving.

"Oh." Russ gulped again. "Actually, we were just leavin g."

"That we were," the second man said, and beat him out the door.

Mutt looked up at Kate and raised an eyebrow. Kate shook her head. "Not worth it." Mutt gave an almost-perceptible shrug. "Find Gal," Kate said. Mutt looked disgusted and stalked out, disapproval evident in the slightly backward set of her ears.

The room looked as if it had been hit by a chinook, one of the spring storms that roared up out of the Gulf like a lion and proceeded to blow everything in front of it out of the way. There wasn't really any good place to start. Kate shed parka, bib, and boots and rolled up her sleeves. Finding that someone had banked the embers in the woodstove, she loaded it with wood, and waded in.

The bookshelves were freestanding and had been pulled down, but they'd been emptied of books and so were easy enough to stand back up. She began putting books in at random, figuring they could be organized later. She righted furniture, replaced the canned goods and pots, pans, and dishes—plastic, a good thing—in the cupboards, and cleaned up those supplies that had been spilled, mostly flour—both wheat and white, it looked like. Most of a forty-eight-ounce bag of chocolate chips was spilled across the floor, too. She swept it all up and into a garbage bag, which she tied off and put on the porch. The bears were asleep, and she'd get the bag to the dump before they woke up again in the spring.

A lone bunny slipper, one of its ears lopsided, was sitting on its side under the woodstove. Kate fished it out and put it on a shelf, unable to stop the tears from welling in her eyes. She conducted a search but couldn't find the other one. Maybe it was with Dina's body.

There didn't seem to be a dish towel to be found, or a towel of any kind, and then she remembered. Ruthe had been hurt, and transported to the hospital. Someone had probably used them for bandages. She climbed the ladder to the loft and discovered, somewhat to her surprise, that the chinook had hit here, as well. The two beds were off their stands, a pillow leaked feathers, and clothes had been emptied from closets and drawers and were strewn all over the floor. The blankets were gone. Ruthe again, she figured. She got the beds back on their stands, the clothes back into place, and as much of the leaky pillow and its errant feathers as possible into another garbage bag.

When Ruthe got better, Kate didn't want her coming home to a destroyed house. If she didn't get better . . . No, she would.