Inside, Echo had packed up their gear, the woman wrapped tight in her sleeping bag. Jude and Dodge carried her out, and Jude held her as Dodge drove them back down to the plane.

Then, while Dodge settled the woman into the plane, Jude picked up Echo and brought her down. “What do I do with the dog?”

Goose stood on the ridge, barking.

Echo stood on the skis of the plane. “He’s coming with us.” She whistled, and Goose ran through the snow, kicking up a plume of spray behind him. He scampered inside the plane, and she closed the door behind him.

“I’ll take the sled and get it back to you next time we come into town,” Jude said. He sped up to the cabin to put out the stove and close it up.

Dodge got in and turned on the prop. “Buckle in, Echo. We’re going all the way to Anchorage.”

They took off in a spray of glistening, crystalline powder, striations of thick clouds hanging over the mountains in the robin’s-egg blue sky.

He rose over the ridges. Pine trees covered the foothills in deep green fir, and the flat white plain of the river cut through the landscape. He followed the river south, the white-peaked mountains to his back.

The lower trees were frosted white, like cotton swabs, with cutouts for houses and vehicles.

The clutter of the engine noise made talking difficult, but he reached out and squeezed Echo’s hand.

Wow, it felt right to be here, right here, right now, with her, doing what he loved to do.

Destiny.

Yes.

The Lewis and Clark Wilderness Preserve rose, tough and bold, to the west, the creeks and rivers starting to flow free as he flew them the one-hundred-plus miles south. It wouldn’t be long before the sun would awaken the north and set them free of the grasp of winter.

His gaze fell on the temperature gauge. It had started to fall.

He pushed the plane higher and felt a sluggishness.

“I think the fuel is running rich,” he said, and glanced at Echo. She was wearing headphones also, but he hadn’t clicked the mic. Now, she looked out the window.

In the brisk air of the cockpit, he thought he could smell the acrid base of the engine fuel.

He adjusted the fuel air mixture, trying to make the engine run better.

That helped.

See, they were fine—

The engine misfired and Echo jumped. She looked at him, her eyes wide.

And then the engine died.

The sound of it was so abrupt, just a cutting out of the hum, that he heard the tail end of Echo’s scream.

“I got this!” He’d just flooded the engine, was all. He glided for a bit, glanced at Echo. “It’s okay. Just breathe.”

Then he restarted the engine.