Alanna stared through dense woods at the house where she’d grown up. She’d helped build it on this mountaintop, dragging wood alongside her “siblings” and helping her “parents” lift the framework into place. All those months of hard labor, of watching the house slowly take shape. When it was finally finished, she’d been proud of her home.
Now it looked derelict and empty, snow covering the driveway that no one had bothered to shovel. Likely no one wanted to buy a house built by a pair of kidnappers, once home to five stolen kids.
Once upon a time, she’d stared at it with happiness and love. Now, there was bitterness, too, with the memory of her “mother” and “older brother” firing weapons at Kensie as she risked her life to bring Alanna home.
Alanna swallowed hard as she stepped out of the truck she’d parked at the end of the gravel driveway. Chance bounded out after her, quick despite his size, loving the heavy snowfall in Alaska. He stuck close to her, a faithful companion who needed no leash.
She’d come here straight from the police station, not even bothering to check in to her hotel yet. Now, she wondered if she should have taken a break, given herself a chance to emotionally acclimate to being back here.
Her attention snagged on broken bits of scattered wood. The sign with her “family’s” name and a No Trespassing warning had been smashed to pieces.
She bent down and picked up the largest piece, a splintered slab of wood that read Altier. She ran her gloved fingertips over the hand-carved lettering, remembering when Darcy had made it. The urge to take it with her was strong, but what if her family in Chicago saw it? They’d be hurt and full of questions she didn’t know how to answer any better now than she had five years ago, despite the degree in psychology she’d earned since coming home. So, instead, she set it carefully back on the snow, tucked her hands in her pockets and strode toward the house. Chance walked beside her, comfortable in the frigid weather that made Chicago seem mild.
It would be foolish for Darcy to come here. But she and Julian had spent so many years running from state to state, never staying long in one place, afraid to draw any attention. In this remote patch of Alaskan wilderness, they’d finally felt like they weren’t being chased. They’d been willing to put down roots, trusted that the children they’d raised wouldn’t turn them in for kidnapping them from families they either barely remembered or, in the case of Alanna’s youngest “siblings,” didn’t remember at all.
Walking around the edge of the house, her feet sank into deeper snow that dampened her pants just below the knees, where her boots ended. She peered through each of the windows on the ground floor. Nothing. No sign that anyone was inside, no sign that anyone had been here in a long time.
The furniture they’d picked out or built had been moved around—chairs knocked over, drawers hanging open with the contents spilled. All the things she and her “family” had left behind, had never been able to come back to claim. Alanna rubbed the bare finger where she used to wear a worn ruby ring, an Altier family heirloom that was the only thing she’d taken with her back to Chicago. She’d stopped wearing it when she’d noticed her parents and siblings constantly eyeing it, though they’d never actually come out and asked what it meant to her.
Focusing on the house again, Alanna leaned closer, peering through the windows into the living room, looking for any sign that Darcy had been here recently. The dirt on the wooden floors had faded to a light gray with no new tracks in the dust. It was clearly old, from when a slew of police officers had traipsed through, looking for her “family” five years ago. Back then, they’d already fled, but not far enough, not fast enough. The police had caught up to them.
Alanna squeezed her eyes closed against the memory of a circle of officers training weapons on her “parents” and screaming at them to get down. Of watching Julian and Darcy be flattened to the ground in deep snow, officers’ knees pressing hard into their backs as they were cuffed. Of her youngest “siblings” crying and clinging to her. Of her older “brother” scowling, the tension in his body telling her he might do something stupid.
Chance nudged his big head against her thigh, hard enough to almost make her stumble. Her eyes opened, a laugh breaking free despite the pain in her heart. “I know, boy. You don’t understand what we’re doing here.” She sighed, stroking her gloved hand over his soft head. “I used to live here.” Her attention drifted to the dense woods behind the house, the steep slope of a mountain that dropped off suddenly. Protection from fears she hadn’t totally understood as a child. “I used to be happy here.”
The rumble of an engine nearby made Chance’s head swivel. Alanna peered around the edge of the house, toward the street. This part of Desparre wasn’t on many maps. Houses were set apart by miles, far from the road and hard to find if you didn’t know where you were going. They were up higher in the mountains, in an area more prone to avalanches and deeper snow. Even locals didn’t often come this way without a reason.
Her heart rate picked up as she squinted at the street for any sign of life beyond the thick trees. Could it be Darcy? If it was, how would she react to Alanna’s presence?
Five years ago, Alanna’s older “brother” Johnny had started talking about wanting to get married. It had put an ache in Alanna’s heart with the realization that she’d never have any memories with the family she’d tried for fourteen years to remember. Not unless she acted.
So, she had. When Julian had taken her into some stores on the outskirts of town, she’d slipped a note into the stack of bills they’d used to pay. She’d been so afraid Julian would notice. She hadn’t been afraid he’d hurt her—she’d stopped fearing that long ago. But she had been scared of how he’d react if he found it.
Yes, he’d kidnapped her. There was no way to spin that; it was just wrong. But he’d loved her. He and Darcy had raised her; they’d homeschooled her in every subject so well that when she’d returned and taken her GED, it had been ridiculously easy. She’d sailed through college, too. But it hadn’t just been academics. They’d taught her to be self-reliant in the dangerous wilderness, taught her skills that Kensie and Flynn still shook their heads at with awe. They’d raised her with love and, as the years went by, she couldn’t stop herself from loving them, too.
Back then, she had been so focused on seeing her birth family again. She hadn’t let herself consider the possible consequences for the people who’d raised her, or for the kids she’d called brothers and sisters, who she still missed desperately. She knew if she’d paused to think about all of that, she never would have done it.
The sound of the vehicle reached her ears again, this time the slow grind of tires over snow that hadn’t been packed down yet. Was it Darcy, noticing the unfamiliar truck in the driveway, afraid to approach?
Alanna stepped out from behind the house, hurrying toward the street with Chance bounding after her. He loved the snow, thought it was a game, but she was too anxious to pay much attention. Would Darcy stop if she saw Alanna now? Or would she speed away?
When Alanna reached the street, a dark SUV backed quickly out of view. It was too quickly to decipher who was in the vehicle, but there were two people in the front seat. One thing Alanna knew for sure: it wasn’t a child in the passenger seat. It looked like there were two men in the car.
Pinpricks of awareness swept across her arms. The Altiers had built this home in as secluded a spot as they could find. But that seclusion worked both ways. Right now, it meant no one would hear her cry for help.
Back in Chicago, the news stories had called her a hero, had highlighted how it all ended, with her leaving a note for her family to find her. But in Alaska, it was different. In Desparre, she wasn’t the girl who’d helped five kids go home to families who missed them. She was the girl who’d put their sleepy, intentionally below-the-radar town on a national stage. She was the girl who’d been hiding in the woods for years, never reaching out for help. Because while the locals might have a live-and-let-live attitude about someone else’s business, they also protected their own. If she’d asked, they’d all said, they would have helped her.
In all the years she’d lived in Desparre, she’d never asked. It was pretty clear some of them hated her for it.
“Chance, come on.” She tapped her thigh twice, then ran for her truck, the dog close on her heels.
They hopped into the vehicle and then Alanna was speeding in the other direction, away from the strange SUV, away from the downtown. Deeper into the mountains.
“WE SCARED HER off.” Tate stated the obvious as Alanna and her St. Bernard jumped into their truck and took off at a speed that would normally get them pulled over.
Silently, Peter cursed himself for getting too anxious, getting too close. But he’d been intrigued by the house deep in the wilderness where five kids had been hidden away for years. Like a lot of Alaska, Desparre was known for being a place where people could get lost. Most people were here for legitimate reasons—wanting to run from some tragedy in their life, wanting to recharge in Alaska’s wild beauty or even wanting to hide from someone who meant them harm. But Alaska sometimes attracted people for the wrong kind of reasons, too... People like the Altiers.
The house wasn’t what he’d been expecting. It was pretty, a log cabin set back in the woods at the crest of a mountain. The isolated location was particularly creepy, though, as he considered the dangerous drop he knew was right behind the house and the dense woods where a family could hide with shotguns. That last part had actually happened when Alanna’s real sister had come searching for her and almost died in the process.
When police and the FBI had gone through the house after the Altiers had been arrested, they’d found a stash of forged documents. They’d also found years’ worth of family pictures. According to police gossip, the earliest pictures showed obviously distraught kids, but as time went by, that changed. The pictures started to show what looked like a happy family. The most disturbing thing of all, according to one of the Desparre police department’s veterans, was how much they’d all looked like a real family. Apparently the Altiers had grabbed kids who looked like they were related. The veteran had confided in Peter that what haunted him most was that if Alanna hadn’t left the note, no one would ever look at the seven people living in this house and think for a second they weren’t a legitimate family.
To Peter, the scariest part was how that lie still seemed lodged in the mind of the person who had been the least brainwashed, the one who’d ultimately turned the kidnappers in.
Still, rumor had it that the Altiers had learned from their mistakes—when two of the kids they’d kidnapped couldn’t forget their real families, they had started abducting younger children. It appeared that Darcy was sticking to that pattern, because police believed she’d grabbed a three-year-old boy not long after she’d escaped custody.
“Let’s see where Alanna is headed next,” Peter muttered. He was normally good at stakeouts, at making sure no one spotted him or his vehicle in a town full of naturally suspicious residents. It was a skill he’d learned as a reporter, when he’d sometimes go on scouting missions with soldiers. When he’d needed to keep up and keep quiet. But apparently the Altiers had taught Alanna to be hypervigilant and wary of strangers, and to run at the first indication someone might have noticed her.
It was ironic, really, that she still lived by that credo. After being plucked out of her front yard by a stranger as a kid, she should have been hypervigilant in a totally different way. Crowds should have been a source of comfort—more people to notice if something went wrong. Instead, she was still following what she’d been taught by the couple who’d kidnapped her and hidden her away from the world.
All of those things told Peter where her allegiance still lay. It was obvious to him that when it came to a choice between helping bring Darcy in—the line she’d given the police—and helping her escape, she’d choose the latter. Most likely, she’d do it regardless of the cost to others.
His hand was halfway to his left ear before he realized and yanked it back down.
“We need to be objective here,” Tate said, somehow sensing what Peter was thinking.
Peter hadn’t told Tate about his experiences overseas, but his last assignment as a war reporter was something few people in and around his hometown had missed. It had made national papers—along with a picture of him, blood dripping from his head, a cloud of dust covering his entire body and a stunned look on his face. The cameraman who’d caught the shot had done so seconds before the horrific aftermath of what Peter had just seen, what he’d just experienced. Only later would Peter realize most of the hearing in his left ear was never going to return.
“What we need to do is keep her in our sight,” Peter grumbled, following the tire tracks in the loose snow. This far on the outskirts of Desparre, the roads saw minimal traffic. People who lived out this way all had snowmobiles for days when the snow got too deep for driving.
“It didn’t look like anyone had been at the Altier house in a long time,” Tate continued, unperturbed or indifferent that Peter was annoyed. “Don’t you think if Darcy and Alanna had been in touch, Alanna would have known where to go? It seems like she’s guessing as much as we are.”
“Well, maybe they haven’t been in touch. Or maybe they have and all Alanna knows is that Darcy is coming back to Desparre.”
“If Alanna really wanted to help Darcy, why would she stop by the police station and offer us her help? Until she did that, no one was looking for Darcy here.”
Peter let up on the gas slightly as Tate’s words sank in. The search for the kidnapped boy—and escaped felon Darcy Altier—was making national news, but the search itself was centralized in Oregon. If anyone in law enforcement had reason to think Darcy was coming here, no one at their station seemed to know it.
Peter frowned and pressed down on the gas pedal again, hoping he was still following the right tire tracks but not willing to get within visual distance of Alanna’s vehicle. Not willing to risk scaring her off again. She might have left five years ago, but when it came to the most remote part of Desparre, she definitely knew it better than he did.
“Where’s she going?” Tate asked, his quiet tone suggesting he was talking to himself more than Peter.
“No idea,” Peter answered anyway. “A second meetup point maybe?”
Tate shook his head and Peter could sense he was rolling his eyes. “I know Desparre isn’t exactly a hotbed of crime and no one is likely to be missing us right now, but I seriously doubt Alanna Morgan came all this way, knocked on the police’s door and gave us a heads-up she thinks Darcy is here, then headed right to her.”
“Maybe not,” Peter conceded. “But she’s obviously searching for Darcy. And no one in Desparre knows her better.”
“Okay,” Tate agreed. “It still seems unlikely that Darcy would run back to Desparre, but if she is here, Alanna has a better shot at finding her than any of us.”
“Glad you’re seeing it my way,” Peter said with a grin as he wound around another steep bend, taking them farther up the mountain. He cranked up the heater, feeling the temperature dropping as they climbed.
“If Alanna actually does find Darcy, she might need our help,” Tate said.
“Why’s that?”
“She’s the reason Darcy Altier spent the last five years in prison. She’s the reason Julian Altier died in prison.”
“I don’t think we can pin all of that on Alanna.” Despite his suspicions about her motives now, she wasn’t responsible for their actions or what had happened to them. It must have taken enormous fortitude to eventually turn them in. He had to give her that.
“I’m talking about Darcy’s perspective, Peter. Alanna might think the woman who raised her will be happy to see her and will hand over this kid, but honestly? I think she’s just as likely to take a shot at Alanna like she did at her sister five years ago.”
Peter frowned, the idea of Alanna Morgan facing down a shotgun making him push the gas pedal harder. But when he rounded another bend, the road ended. A big wooden sign half-buried in snow announced it a dead end.
He hit the brakes hard and the SUV skidded to a stop, the four-wheel drive groaning. He glanced around, searching for a trail that snaked off somewhere, but saw nothing. “Where did she go?”
Tate shook his head, a hint of a smile on his lips. “I think she’s a lot savvier than we gave her credit for. We lost her.”