The driveway was so steep it almost disappeared in front of him, a single lane dirt road that followed the narrow creek he had crossed. He passed several smaller driveways to the left and right. Just before the driveway ended there was another driveway off to the right. This driveway was in infinitely better condition, wide enough for two cars to pass and maintained to an excellence seen only on the other side of the Alaska-Canada border. It turned after fifteen feet, losing itself in the alders clustered thickly on either side, but there was a large roof with a handsome rock chimney looming up over the foliage.

Past the driveway the lane became even steeper with ruts that went so deep Liam feared even the Silverado would high center. After two switchbacks thrown in just to slow down the traffic, the dirt road mercifully ended in a small turnaround about a hundred feet off the beach. The beater Erik Berglund had been driving was parked far too close to the edge. A weathered post indicated where there might be a trail down, if one were suicidally inclined.

Well. God hates a coward. He parked and got out. He stood for a moment, looking out at the Bay. The blue expanse seemed to stretch out even farther the more he looked at it, though he knew it was only twenty-five miles wide and forty miles long. Distance over water, like sound, was deceiving. The fact that he was law and order for everything he saw that wasn’t muni meant he’d be flying a lot. Joy.

He walked over to the post stuck in the dirt. Sure enough, it indicated the top of what could only in jest be called a trail. Pushki, that tall, noxious Alaskan weed whose juice could blister the skin right off your body, crowded a steep gravel slide interrupted by needle-sharp black rock outcroppings and ending in a small but murderous ridge of that same rock thrusting out onto the beach itself. For a brief moment Liam debated just how badly he wanted to see Erik’s dig. He sighed and shrugged. He was here, Wy wasn’t due in for another hour. What the hell.

He inched forward, almost immediately lost whatever traction he started out with, and began to slide. He hit the first outcropping of rock, tripped, barely caught himself before what would have been a truly epic face plant, skittered over the gravel rolling beneath his soles, hit the second outcropping, and flailed his arms trying to regain his balance. Failing, his feet slid out from beneath him and he sat down hard on the trail, which wasn’t any kinder to his jeans than it had been to the soles of his shoes. He might have yelled. He certainly didn’t scream like a little girl. He slid down the rest of the way on his butt, working up enough velocity that he only narrowly avoided impaling himself on a sliver of rock extended invitingly from the ridge that protruded onto the beach.