Waves splashed onto the rocky coast of the remote Alaskan coastline that Elsie Montgomery called home, their predictable pattern usually able to ease her mind. No matter what, the waves rolled in and out, soothing in their regularity, something she desperately needed today. Elsie hated days that didn’t go as planned, when she wasn’t enough. Instead of tearstained faces mixed with smiles, there would be eyes avoiding glances, hushed words. Spoken and unspoken apologies for something out of all of their control.
Today’s search and rescue mission had turned into a recovery. It always felt like a personal defeat.
But Elsie had dealt with them before, she reminded herself as she dug her hands into her husky Willow’s fur. She needed the softness of it between her fingers, something to ground herself in this moment as her heartbeat pounded and she started to fight against the tightness in her chest. She hated failure, hated to lose...
Was it worse on the heels of yesterday’s success? She didn’t know. She sat by the shore until the sunshine faded into late summer night. A glance at her watch showed ten o’clock, time for her to go inside. Her body needed to rest, even if her mind refused to shut down. It might be another long night of crossword puzzles and a mug full of hot Tang.
Elsie eased open the door of her cabin, loving the low creak it made. Partially because it was nostalgic, old-fashioned and made her feel connected to the cabin, which had been built well over fifty years ago. And partially because, practically speaking, it made it difficult for someone to break in without her hearing them. Not that that was a major concern, but Elsie lived alone and liked to be prepared for all contingencies, so she couldn’t help but think it.
She walked to the kitchen, pausing to pour a glass of water, and glanced down at today’s newspaper while she took a long sip. “Local Woman and Dog Rescue Missing Five-Year-Old.” In the photo, her smiling face was pressed against Willow’s. She hated the publicity, but her best friend, Lindsay, a journalist for the local newspaper, had reminded her that the family wanted to celebrate, and she was allowing them to do so when she gave the interview and permission for a picture.
She poured Willow a bowl of dog food and watched, her mind wandering, while the dog ate her well-deserved meal.
Elsie had consented to the article, but it didn’t mean she liked the spotlight. Something in her almost recoiled from the attention. It was enough to know that what she did mattered, that she and Willow had helped find someone else who had been lost. Because if there was anything Elsie understood, it was being lost.
Of course, that had been years ago...being abandoned on an island many nautical miles away from here, closer to Kodiak Island than Homer, found almost coincidentally, because someone had happened to be fishing in a remote area. By all logic, she should have died when she was three years old, wearing her too-big purple rain jacket, alone in the Alaskan wilderness. But someone had found her. Maybe that was why Elsie had decided to dedicate her life to rescuing others who were lost. She knew, with all that was within her, what that was like.
If only she understood the concept of being found as easily...
Desperate to put her thoughts anywhere besides today’s failed rescue mission and her own past, she walked to her bedroom. She’d skipped dinner, but the protein bar she’d eaten earlier had quelled her hunger. Besides, the unease inside her wouldn’t let her eat.
She could call Lindsay. Her best friend since childhood, Lindsay lived on the other side of the bay, where the town was. Most people lived there, though Elsie and a few others had cabins or houses in this more remote area. Her friend had questioned her when she’d decided to buy her small cabin after high school graduation with money she’d saved working in the summers, rather than stay in town. Elsie hadn’t had a good answer for why she craved the space. She simply knew that the cabin was the only home she could afford—it had needed significant repairs but she’d been able to accomplish those over time—and that ultimately she felt safer outside, among the tall spruce trees and wilderness, than she did in a town, even a small one. It bothered her in some ways that she felt like this. And she wondered, as she did with most things that she didn’t understand, if it was tied to her past. To her time on the remote island. And what had come before.
Elsie climbed into bed and reached for the novel that sat on her bedside table. Agatha Christie. Somehow an old mystery on a day like today made everything make more sense.
Prayer probably would, too... She could practically hear Lindsay’s voice saying it, not with judgment but with a smile. A reminder intended to help. After Elsie had been rescued from the island and had been hauled from Children’s Services office to Children’s Services office, she’d gone into foster care in town, Destruction Point, Alaska. The small town was a boat or plane ride from Homer, Alaska, just beyond the town of Seldovia. Her foster parents had lived next door to a family with two kids close to Elsie’s age, Lindsay and her insufferable older brother, Wyatt. She’d spent enough time with their family to be exposed to their faith, something that was important to Lindsay and her parents, though maybe not Wyatt.
Elsie had always tried to be polite about their faith, though she didn’t understand it. She knew it concerned her friend, though she couldn’t quite understand why. She was respectful of Lindsay’s beliefs. Lindsay never seemed judgmental about it, only...sad?
Another topic she didn’t want to think about tonight. She flipped onto her side and turned the book’s pages until she reached her spot.
Usually she could lose herself in a book, but Elsie struggled to focus. Beside her, Willow wasn’t as relaxed as usual, either, periodically raising her head to look around the room as though she were expecting something to happen.
“You can’t wind down, either, huh? You’re okay, girl. Go to sleep.” She reached down and ruffled the fur on the dog’s neck, but the husky didn’t relax into the mattress as she usually would have. Instead her muscles felt tense under Elsie’s hands, as though she was ready to spring into action.
“What is it?” Elsie whispered, feeling her own muscles tense in response. This dog was more than a pet or even a work partner. Willow was her lifeline in the wilderness, her eyes and ears. Elsie herself was not unskilled in tracking or wilderness survival skills, but it was Willow’s senses and perception that made them an incredible team, well-known for their track record of finding people during those golden hours when survival was still likely. Elsie, like most human searchers, had too many thoughts during a search, the clock ticking from the moment someone disappeared. Three weeks without food, three days without water, three hours without shelter in extreme weather conditions. Willow didn’t have to worry about that, didn’t have that kind of noise crowding her brain. In essence, dogs didn’t overthink. They used their noses, their senses, their training, and they did their job nearly flawlessly. In all her years of K-9 search and rescue—a decade at this point—Elsie had never seen a dog make a wrong decision. Their instincts, especially Willow’s instincts, were dependable.
Which was why when Willow stood and started to growl, chills chased down Elsie’s spine. Then the low, slow creak of the heavy wooden door confirmed it.
Someone was inside her cabin.
Elsie swallowed hard against the pounding of her heart, made herself breathe deeply. Slow everything down. Painstakingly, conscious of every shift of her body, every movement that could potentially make noise and alert someone to her presence, she set her book on the nightstand, then reached to turn off the bedside table lamp. Willow’s eyes were just as effective in the dark as the light, and Elsie hoped it might put whoever was inside her house at a disadvantage.
She herself preferred the darkness also. It was so much easier to hide.
Flashes of something stirred in her mind. A memory of a memory of a dream? More like a nightmare. It was like an impression of darkness. A closet? Gnawing hunger in her stomach. Hiding. Hoping no one would find her.
The thought—memory?—distressed her. Elsie had always wanted to be found...hadn’t she? Didn’t everyone?
She slipped off the bed onto the floor, feeling her way along the wall, debating whether to wait here or move toward the hallway.
Willow had stopped growling. She had positioned herself between Elsie and the door. To move anywhere else in the house would put them both in even more danger. So she waited.
A creak on the floorboards, and Elsie was certain the sound was moving away from her. She risked tiptoeing back toward the bedside table and grabbed her phone. Shielding the brightness of the screen from the doorway, she texted Lindsay.
Someone’s inside my house. Going to try to call 911.
Then she pressed the numbers 9-1—
Creaking. Closer.
She pressed another 1, then set the phone facedown.
“911, what’s your emergency?...911...what’s...?” The voice was muffled by the carpet, then by the pillow Elsie dropped on top of it.
“Stop hiding, Elsie. We were always going to find you. You were never supposed to survive. It’s time to stop hiding now.” The voice was a man’s. Low, rough, nondescript.
No one she recognized.
Willow leaned forward in the darkness, and when Elsie reached out a hand, she could feel the dog’s body begin to shake.
Elsie took a slow breath in. Let it out.
Willow yelped.
Elsie tried to run, but it was too late. Hands clasped her face. She fought, struggled, until they moved to her neck, started to tighten. She let out a scream.
Snarling. Growling.
This time it was the intruder who yelped, his hands coming loose from Elsie’s neck. Willow, trained in protection as well as search and rescue, was doing well.
But Elsie’s neck throbbed and panic nearly paralyzed her. Willow might be trained for this, but she wasn’t.
Please let 911 have sent someone on the way... She prayed, for the first time she could remember, and continued to fight against the darkness, scrambling away from the intruder and hoping she’d be able to hide from him until help arrived.
Wyatt listened to the dispatcher’s voice on the radio as he finished off a bowl of after-dinner cereal. Working as a contract pilot for the Alaska State Troopers and several other organizations meant that it was useful to know what was happening in the area. Besides, it wasn’t like he had anything else going on. It was listen to the radio or sit on the couch doing nothing. Eat. Sleep. Work. He needed to get a life. At least, that was what his sister told him every time they talked. She didn’t understand that he couldn’t risk going back to his old life, partying, only caring about himself. It was easier to just...be alone.
“But maybe I need a few friends or a hobby or something,” he said as he carried his bowl to the sink. There had to be a balance between who he’d been in high school and the decade beyond and...this. He was thirty-one and living like an eighty-year-old hermit.
Sven, his massive brown malamute, groaned from his place on the couch.
“Yeah, you’re my friend, I know.”
He could have sworn the dog rolled his eyes as he flopped onto his other side, leaving another patch of dog hair on the couch. Eat. Sleep. Work. Clean up after his dog. That was a more accurate summary of Wyatt’s life.
The radio crackled again.
Female resident reporting distress. West side of the bay, Destruction Point...
Wyatt sat up straighter.
Elsie.
Surely not, he tried to tell himself as he hurried from the couch to pull on his boots and jacket. Behind him, Sven grumbled with interest.
“You have to stay. I’ll be back soon.” His first thought had been for Elsie, but it could just as likely be one of the older retirees who lived out that way. Still, his sister’s friendship with Elsie made her come to mind first. No matter who was in trouble, Wyatt knew it was likely he could beat the police there. Besides, if there was some kind of scale, Wyatt could use as many good deeds tipping out his previous bad ones as possible.
He was out the door and to his dock in seconds. The boat roared to life without issue—something that couldn’t always be said for it—and he started off across the bay. It wasn’t a wide body of water, just enough to be separated from the main part of town, functionally speaking. He tried to breathe deeply as he navigated the waves. The ocean wasn’t too rough tonight, but the spray drenched the bow of his boat as he cut across the water as fast as he dared in the growing darkness.
Elsie’s cabin stood just at the edge of the woods, close enough to have an unobstructed view of the ocean, but far enough away that even the most dramatic tides didn’t reach it. He thought he remembered Lindsay telling him once that the cabin was a century old. He couldn’t imagine building something, doing something, that would last that long. Her cabin was someone’s legacy, tangible and still standing. Did anything in his life have half a chance of outliving him, besides maybe the terrible reputation he’d worked to earn in his younger years for going through women and alcohol like a chain-smoker went through cigarettes?
Forcing himself away from that thought spiral, he beached the boat, tied it down and hurried to her cabin.
The front door was ajar. He crept inside, wishing he’d taken time to grab a weapon, but he hadn’t been thinking clearly when he left. Hopefully the years he’d spent in outdoor pursuits had honed his muscles enough that he could still hold his own in a fight. He hadn’t been in one in half a decade and had never thought he’d need the skills again. Wyatt sure hoped they’d show up for him if he needed them now.
Indecision gripped him as he stood still, letting his eyes adjust to the darkness. Should he call out to her? Or try to surprise whoever was in the house?
Because the fact that 911 had been called for someone in this area, added to the fact that her door had been opened... Wyatt no longer thought he was overreacting. Making a split-second decision, he went with this second option, moving forward slowly, conscious of how easy it would be to step in such a way that the old wooden floor creaked under his steps.
“Where are you?” a voice called out, drawing out the vowels in a way that put Wyatt in mind of childhood nightmares.
Shivers chased down his spine. This was more than a random occurrence, and that thought caused the terror in his stomach to turn cold and icy.
Rather than focus on how it made him feel, he moved toward the voice. The cabin didn’t look big from the outside, but the layout made the most of the space, rooms connecting to each other in a way that older settlers in Alaska had been fond of. Many of these cabins had loft areas, too—was that where Elsie’s bedroom would be? Chances were good she’d been asleep when someone broke in...
He moved into another room, movement up ahead catching his attention. A silhouette that sent shivers up his spine. Someone was stalking her, hunting her in her own house.
Why? Who?
No time. He had to stop them.
He heard a dog’s low growl and then a snarl.
Wyatt ran forward in time to see the silhouette drop. He launched himself on top of the man, letting his fists fly, relishing the pain in his knuckles as they connected with the other man’s jaw.
He caught movement out of the corner of his eye and thought it might be another assailant, but quickly realized it was Elsie. “Elsie, run!” he yelled at her.
“Wyatt?” Her voice was perplexed, shaking and colored with fear.
The attacker chose that moment, when Wyatt was distracted by her voice, to hit hard—hard enough to stun Wyatt momentarily. The man rolled out from under him and started to run.
The dog growled.
“Willow, stay.”
Wyatt took off after the man through the maze of the cabin and out the front door. The attacker had a head start and seemed to know where he was going. He peeled off into the woods. Wyatt followed for as long as he could, feet pounding the earth, until he finally had to admit he’d lost the trail. His breathing ragged, he forced himself to admit what he knew to be true.
The man was gone.
He kicked the ground and bit back a word he hadn’t used in years.
Noise behind him made him swivel his head to look up. It was Elsie and her dog.
“Wyatt?” So many questions in her voice and in the way she said his name.
He didn’t have answers. Instead he said, “I’m sorry I lost him.”
“It’s okay. It wasn’t... It’s not your problem.”
“Do you know who it was?”
She hesitated. He saw her face, as though she were debating her answer, but then she slowly shook her head. It was odd. He almost felt like she was lying. But she’d have no reason to, right? Especially not about something like this, with her safety on the line. Still...
“You sure you don’t?” He pushed anyway, wanting the truth.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him before. Not that I remember, anyway.”
There was something odd in that statement that he wanted to come back to, but now wasn’t the time.
His gaze had moved to Willow. “Your dog tracks people, correct? Lost people?” He thought he’d heard something like that.
She nodded.
“Technically I lost the trail. Could she...?”
“She could. But I don’t want to ask her to. It’s too dangerous for her.”
“Dangerous for her? Someone attacked you tonight. We have to find out who.”
“We don’t have to do anything,” she said firmly, more so than he was used to hearing her talk. He’d always thought of Elsie as his sister’s delicate little friend. She was petite, barely came to his shoulders, and slight enough that it seemed if the wind kicked up too hard, it could probably blow her away.
Her voice was anything but delicate right now.
“Elsie, please.”
She sighed deeply, then bent toward the dog. She leaned close, buried her hands in the dog’s fur and pressed their foreheads together, then stood up slowly.
He didn’t think she’d said anything out loud to the dog, but Willow took off.
“If my dog gets hurt, I’m holding you responsible.”
Yeah, because it was his fault he could have gotten his own self killed trying to protect her from whoever had been trying to attack her.
She didn’t exactly seem grateful. Of course, to be fair, she hadn’t invited him here. He’d headed over himself with hardly thinking it through.
They hurried through the woods after the dog. She stayed in their line of sight, but it was still exhausting trying to keep up with the husky, who ran over roots and obstacles with grace while Wyatt found himself stumbling, exhaustion making him clumsier than usual.
Finally, the dog let out a howl, one that reverberated with a melancholy that reminded Wyatt more of a wolf than a dog.
“She lost the trail, too,” Elsie translated.
They hurried to her side, emerging from the shadows of the woods onto the beach that made up the other side of Destruction Point.
Wyatt moved closer to the water and thought he could make out marks in the beach. Footprints or boat prints—it was impossible to say with the texture of the sand. “He may have had a boat waiting. So he intentionally targeted you. This wasn’t a crime of opportunity or he’d have had a boat in front of your house somewhere.”
“It looks like that.” Her voice was flat. Frustrated. Fearful but not surprised.
That was what had caught him off guard earlier. With all the emotions he was picking up on, surprise wasn’t one of them.
Shouldn’t it be?
“Were you expecting someone to come after you?”
She was looking off into the mist, into the darkness. Somehow it seemed to him as if she was part of the darkness. Wyatt felt a shiver run down his spine.
“I don’t know that I’d say I was expecting it...”
“That’s the second time you’ve talked to me in riddles tonight, Montgomery.” In high school, he’d called her by her last name because it seemed to annoy her. It did the trick and got her attention now. She turned to him with a frown, stormy gray-green eyes flashing.
At least he’d drawn some kind of anger out of her. Someone who was attacked in her own home with no warning should be angry. Wyatt was angry. Elsie seemed afraid, sure, but mostly she seemed resigned.
Like it was inevitable. He didn’t understand.
She let out a breath. “Come on. Let’s go back to my cabin. If you want, I’ll make you a cup of coffee and give you the best explanation I’ve got. Seems like the least I can do.”
It wasn’t quite a heartfelt declaration of thanks for coming to her rescue, but it was something. Considering their relationship had never been smooth, normal or one of mutual caring, it was probably the best Wyatt could hope for.
“Sounds good. Lead the way.”
She turned and headed back into the woods, seeming to be more at home in the dark on these trails than most people would have been in the day.
She feared the person who’d come after her, but not the dark. Not the wilderness.
Elsie Montgomery was stronger than he’d realized. She may not be the person he’d thought she was after all.
He’d complained his whole life that people judged him without knowing him. At some point, he’d gotten tired of trying to be better and let himself become the person they imagined. It was who he was even now, when he knew this wasn’t who he wanted to be.
What about Elsie? Who was she?