“And a ravine that runs from Peters Creek to the cabin. It’s rough ground around there. Easy to turn over a dogsled.”

“Okay.” He glanced at the cabin. “You don’t think she was here and . . . something else happened to her?”

She didn’t want to think it, but she was still shaking a little, her adrenaline dipping, leaving only the what-ifs. “I don’t think Idaho is a murderer, despite his faults.”

Still, the question lingered . . . What if Dodge hadn’t come along?

Nope, not going there. She grabbed her helmet and climbed back on her sled. Dodge did the same.

She fired up her snowmobile and lit out toward the deepening shadows.

What was Dodge supposed to do—leave her out in the wilderness?

Besides, he had a clench in his gut at what almost went down in the cabin, and he just couldn’t live with himself if anything happened to Echo.

So, of course he followed her through the thick snow. He stayed just far enough out of the spray of powder as she wove in and out of the forest on her way to cabin 63.

In his gut he knew—just a rundown of the facts would confirm it—Peyton was dead. She may have been thrown and was suffering from a broken leg or arm or even ribs. And she might have survived the cold, but with the storm . . .

But Echo had looked at him with such hope, and frankly it had dredged up so many memories—

The loss of his mother, and hers. Summers spent training her dogs, winters spent mushing. Flying with her under the shadow of Denali, through canyons, along rivers, over mountain peaks. Winter nights watching old movies, driving her home in the truck, the heater blasting, her sitting under a blanket, them singing to some country song.

But it wasn’t just the memories. No, as he’d held her, he felt her tremble, and his brain went to what he’d seen in the cabin. No, what he’d felt.

Idaho wore a look in his eyes that suggested Dodge had interrupted something, and maybe just in the nick of time. Dodge had very much wanted to go back in that cabin then and put a little fear in him about how to treat women.

And sure, Echo could take care of herself. But frankly, the entire package—the memories, the look of both relief and fear on Echo’s face when he’d walked in, and even her dragging up the terrible accident with her father—conspired to ignite something inside him that he’d never been able to escape. Protect Echo.

Which was how, like an old habit, he ended up in her wake, snow hitting his helmet.

She glanced behind her and waved her arm for him to come up next to her. He pulled up, still standing on his sled. He sat as he cut the throttle.