He secured the ground-handling wheel, then Dodge went around to the tail, grabbed the stinger and the gearbox, levered the chopper back on the wheels, and pushed it into the hangar, making sure the rotor blades didn’t hit.

“It’s low on fuel and needs a wash,” Dodge said when they got it inside. “Nola nearly had her baby on the deck.”

“Oh boy.” His father grinned. “That wouldn’t be the first close call. We barely made it to Anchorage before you boys were born.”

“Yeah, this was her third. I think she went early. By the way, what did Echo want?” He kept his voice casual, no panic at all.

And most definitely he wouldn’t do something impulsive and race over to her house demanding answers.

They walked back to the house. “She stopped by to check on her dog. She’s headed back into the bush to find her friend.”

He stilled. “Alone?”

His father nodded.

Perfect.

“She said she was just fine on her own.”

“I’ll bet she did.” But Dodge turned to look out over the hills, the sun sending long shadows into the valley, and a chill, the fingers of the pervading cold, sneaked through him.

For some reason, the memory of Jane Doe, quiet, asleep in her bed, alone and trapped inside her head, settled into his brain.

Dodge couldn’t shake a sense of doom, deep in his bones.

fourteen

Peyton was out here, somewhere, hopefully alive, and Echo planned on finding her. And maybe, please, she’d find her father along the way.

Because it was easier for the dogs, Echo kept to the riverbanks, the frozen lakes, and the trails cut by caribou, deer, and moose.

She and the team wove through thick forests on paths between bushy, snow-laden spruce and tall, silent birch trees that stood sentry over the breaths of her dogs and the whoosh of the sled as it glided over the snow.

She lunched near the cabin at Moose Lake, feeding the dogs a snack and water, then headed in a straight line for Cache Mountain, crossing Peters Creek to the north of cabin 63, and down a frozen tributary. She found the track of a snowmobile on the river, crusted into the ice, and followed it up onto a ridge, skirting the river, then back into the forest.

Overhead, the sky was a quiet, easy blue, the wind only occasionally whipping up and pebbling them with snow.

The dogs ran silently, with Jester occasionally nipping at Goose in his excitement. She whistled to them and shouted encouragement as they settled into a trot. Through the cutout of trees, a mountain ascended, bold and beautiful, hidden deep in no-man’s-land.

“We don’t know how God protects us.”