“I’m Doctor Madison. I operated on your father. He’s going to be pretty sore, and we’re going to keep him here for another day or two, but he’s a tough one. He’ll be okay.”

Dodge’s throat thickened with her words.

“Thanks, Doc,” Larke said for them both. “Can we see him?”

Doc Madison nodded, and Larke headed for the door.

Dodge didn’t move.

Larke stopped, turned. “Really?”

“It’s been ten years, Larke. I know you weren’t around, but . . . it was bad. He doesn’t want to see me.”

Her mouth tightened around the edges. “Don’t be stupid. You’re here. Come in with me.”

He held up his hand. “He’s wounded. Maybe now’s not the time to—”

“See his oldest son? Confirm that you’re not dead in some Taliban-occupied valley in Afghanistan? Yeah, you’re probably right. He wouldn’t want to know that you’re okay and standing in the hallway afraid to walk in and say hi to your father.”

Oh, she could light him up. He clenched his jaw.

Riley looked away and shoved his hands in his pockets.

“What are you afraid of, Dodge?”

“I’m not afraid, Larke.”

She met his gaze, and in hers he saw a woman who’d been through her own trauma and survived. So not the girl who needed to be protected, not anymore.

Fine. “I left for a reason, and that reason hasn’t changed.”

“Hasn’t it?”

A beat passed, and he still didn’t move.

She opened the door and went inside.

Riley gave him a thin-lipped smile and followed.

Dodge walked to the end of the hallway and stared out the window.

With the break in the freeze, blackened snowdrifts edged the parking lot, muddy with thawing rivers of ice. Cars splashed mud, and ice floated in the Knik Arm waterway. The view looked out over Merrill Airfield and the hundred or so parked Beavers, Otters, Cessnas, and Piper Cubs that roamed the skies, then extended past the airfield to Joint Base Elmendorf–Richardson, to the north. Beyond it, the ridge back of the Alaskan range razored across the sun-soaked blue sky, bold and white and impressive. Denali and Huntington, Foraker and Russell, were tucked in there, each glacial runnel and granite ridge imprinted in him like the lines of his palm.

The mountains called to him like an old familiar song, a tune embedded in his bones.

One he was trying to forget.

Though he couldn’t see it from here, Sky King Ranch was nestled in the foothills of the range, perched on a lake that hosted cabins and a lodge for the family.

They also ran thirty or so head of cattle and a handful of horses.

Barry Kingston, his father, was one of few remaining born and bred Alaskans in Copper Mountain. And his sons were supposed to carry on the legacy.