Merlin jumped on the fencing, and Echo shooed her away as she entered. She harnessed Merlin, then Goose and Jester, and hooked them up to the gangline before clipping their tug lines and neck lines.

Although a team dog, Merlin was snapped in next to Granite at lead, and Goose and Jester at wheel positions. She dearly missed Iceman, Maverick, and Jester in the team dog positions, but these four could easily pull her tiny sled.

She strapped in her gear—dog food, a sleeping bag, a tent, a bag of dried chili, an axe, a cook pot and stove, extra fuel, snowshoes.

The dogs were jerking at the sled, launching themselves in the air. The power of the animals filled up the brittle exhausted places inside her that said, “Stay inside, it’s futile.”

As Echo affixed booties onto the dogs’ feet, she mentally retraced the map on her father’s desk. The area he’d circled was west of here, maybe thirty miles, and ten miles west of the cabin at Peters Lake.

Peyton kept one more camera at a former hunter’s cabin near there, aimed at a den of younger wolves. When they checked it last fall, the den had been abandoned, but it was possible that Peyton had been heading that direction. It was rough country—more ridges, canyons, foothills, cliffs, and ledges to get thrown from.

Echo would swing by Dodge’s place, check on Iceman, and, okay, talk to Dodge, maybe apologize about . . . well, she knew she’d hurt him.

“I won’t be okay.” His words, torn from a place inside, had emerged soft but a little broken. And they’d sat in her heart all night.

Because maybe she wouldn’t be okay either.

In fact, their entire conversation had unspooled as she watched the moon wax her floor, as she worried about her father and Peyton.

“I’m not going to lose you again.”

Maybe she’d been tired and had jumped to conclusions about his words to Moose. Because those words didn’t sound like they came from a man who planned on walking out of her life, did they?

Granite turned, barking, as if to say, “Let’s go already!”

She pulled down her goggles, then untied the quick knot. “We’re going to Sky King Ranch,” she said to Granite, as if he could understand. Maybe. The dog seemed to read her mind.

Then she lifted the brake. “Hike! Hike!”

The dogs shot off, and had she not been hanging on, she would have tumbled right off the sled, for the power. She adjusted her feet on the runners and settled into the familiar rhythm of the sled, the peaceful hush over the snow.