The air smelled of woodsmoke, pine, and a deepening chill. The sun had climbed high—he’d put the time near noon.

A gunshot cracked the air, and in a second he jumped off, crouching down behind his tundra wheel.

What?

“Barry! Sheesh—didn’t you see the flag?”

Dodge glanced over the tire to see Spike Farley running down the slope in his green Army-issued parka, red thermals, a pair of boots, and a fur hat. He was carrying his 12-gauge Remington 870.

Dodge put his hands in the air, just in case Spike had a case of cabin fever. “It’s me. Dodge Kingston—”

“Dodge?” Spike stopped in the snow, peering against the sun as if trying to recognize him. “What are you doing here?” He didn’t cross the beach.

Dodge kept his hands up. “I have mail. And some supplies from Gigi’s.” He went to open the back door.

“Don’t move!”

He stilled. Turned.

“He’s still around here, somewheres.”

Dodge considered the man. He’d lost weight, but most of the homesteaders did in the winter, especially when they got to the end of their supply of moose, caribou, elk, or even salmon. But Spike bore a strange, almost feral look about him.

“Spike. Everybody okay at the house?”

Spike started creeping across the beach toward Dodge, his back to him, facing the woods. “He’s out here. He’s been watching us for nearly a week. Every time we go out—”

A crack sounded in the woods, up near the house, and Spike lowered his gun. “You stay there!”

Dodge reached in the plane and pulled his .357 Taurus from its holster behind his seat. Wouldn’t be the first time some homesteader lost it and did something terrible to his family. “Spike? Who are you—”

Then he saw it, and Dodge’s blood went cold.

Nine-hundred-plus pounds of enraged grizzly, thundering through the woods out onto the beach. Dodge could practically smell the beast from here, feral and rank, his claws digging up the snow as he charged them.

Don’t. Run. Somewhere in the back of his head, Echo was screaming.

No, that was him screaming, inside, at least. He leaped for the plane.

Crazy Spike just stood his ground and fired. The animal kept coming.

A bear could clear fifty yards in ten seconds. “Spike!”

Spike’s second shot might have clipped his shoulder, because the beast stumbled.

“Get in the plane!” Dodge shouted. Spike turned, glanced at the angry bear, then took off for Dodge.

He leaped inside the opened back compartment, squeezing himself in and closing the door as Dodge fired up the engine. “Hold on!”

He throttled the plane forward just as the bear found its feet.

“C’mon, sweetheart!”

The grizzly took off again toward them, loping, roaring, a medieval beast ready to tear the plane from the sky.

Dodge bumped along the beach, the throttle all the way forward, urging speed. “Faster!”