Alaskan Hideout. Sarah Varland

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СКАЧАТЬ get engaged, take some time to get to know the area and his family and then eventually get married.

      Instead, every picture of the mountains towering over his ocean-side town had made her shiver a little. There was something so wild about Alaska still. Untamed. Unpredictable.

      Emma was a fan of predictable.

      Then again, maybe it hadn’t been any of that. Emma might like routine, but she was an adventurer, too, in some ways.

      Sighing, she glanced in the rearview mirror and smiled at her seven-year-old’s face. Maybe the truth was that she’d taken a pregnancy test the morning of their graduation—and it was positive. And somehow, maybe in a swirl of stress and emotions and being overwhelmed by how her life was changing so quickly, she’d said stupid things to Tyler, things she hadn’t been able to take back.

      He’d simply walked away. No, that wasn’t true. She’d panicked, realized she didn’t deserve him and practically chased him away. But he hadn’t come back. And Emma hadn’t been able to handle the idea that he’d marry her only because he felt obligated, didn’t want his future decided for him just because someone had decided hers.

      So years had passed. She’d said nothing to Tyler. Every single night as she’d lain in bed, trying to fall asleep, desperately trying to convince her mind to stop, she regretted her silence. But every day it became a little harder to break.

      Life, ready or not, was about to do it for her.

      She’d known when Luke had told her he’d felt like someone was watching him that they were in trouble. Emma had hoped, foolishly, for the first few hours after she’d escaped the crime scene, that maybe she’d be safe. She’d given her report to the police, answered their questions and thought that might actually be the end of it. But if both she and Luke felt like they were being watched, someone was stalking her, most likely the person who’d killed her boss. And the police department’s hands were tied. They were good, she respected them. But they weren’t a bodyguard service and without solid proof she was in danger, they’d told her all she could do was file a report.

      Which wouldn’t exactly keep either her or Luke safe.

      Emma needed to run and Alaska had seemed like the best option. For one thing, the distance from Dallas made it ideal, especially since it was so far removed from the rest of the United States. Also, Emma figured, a bunch of outdoorsmen carrying guns to protect themselves against bears was about the safest place she could be. Besides—and maybe the most important reason—she’d promised herself if she made it out of the building that night she’d make things right with Tyler. He deserved to know about his son.

      Movement behind her caught her attention. The car that seemed to have been following her had edged closer. Emma tensed. She couldn’t see the driver well in the rearview mirror and part of her doubted it was anything to worry about. After all, according to what Tyler had told her, this was the only road to several towns. Traffic tended to clump together and travel together.

      Right?

      Emma glanced back again, tension tightening her shoulders. She exhaled slowly and stole another glance at her sleeping son. He was okay.

      She accelerated a bit, anxious to get to Moose Haven Lodge, an irony that wasn’t lost on her as the lodge itself had been part of the reason everything had ended so badly for her and Tyler. He’d talked their entire college career about opening his own inn, maybe on a beach somewhere, starting fresh, and she’d loved the dream almost as much as she’d loved him.

      And then out of the blue he’d announced he was returning to Alaska. To his parents’ lodge.

      Emma couldn’t handle the lack of civilization, the dark winters. The cold. The wildlife. The idea that she’d be raising a kid in a place she didn’t know, far from everything she understood and all the people she cared about. So she’d told him so. Broken his heart.

      It was too late to believe she could restore that relationship. It had been destroyed beyond repair. What she hoped for right now was that she could keep her son safe—and Alaska was the best place she knew of to do that—and, also, maybe that Luke could get to know his dad.

      Tyler as a dad.

      She shook her head, old feelings churning in her stomach. She’d never stopped loving him, really. There’d just come a point when she’d decided she wasn’t going to give up everything she’d ever dreamed of for love.

      The car behind her inched closer again and Emma pressed her foot even further on the gas. Was there anywhere she could pull off, like one of those turnouts she’d seen on the highway earlier for slow vehicles? Maybe the car behind her was just in a hurry. It could be as simple and innocuous as that, couldn’t it?

      She’d just passed the Welcome to Moose Haven sign when everything happened at once. A squeal of tires, the sickening sound of metal on metal, the crunching of her car intermingled with her own screams as the impact pulled her backward and then threw her forward with enough force to smash her head on the steering wheel. Pain exploded behind her left eye and the edges of her vision went dark.

      “Mom!” Luke cried, sounding so much younger than seven.

       Please, God, keep him safe.

      Out of the corner of her eye, Emma saw the car that had hit her speed away in the opposite direction of Moose Haven. Meanwhile her car was still skidding across the road, careering toward the edge of the road and the ravine below.

      Emma fumbled for her phone, wishing she could dial 9-1-1, but knowing she didn’t have enough time. She hit the brakes, but her tires caught on gravel, sliding off the asphalt too fast for her to correct.

      They were going to go over the edge and into the woods below the road.

      “Hang on, baby!”

      The car tumbled down the side of the road, hitting trees on the way, some of them small enough that the car crushed them. The last one finally was big enough to bring them to a shuddering halt.

      Emma felt them stop, heard the reassuring sounds of Luke asking what was going on.

      And then everything went black.

      * * *

      Sirens whirred in the distance and, from the sound of it, they were passing right by the lodge, tearing down the Moose Haven cut-off in the direction of the Seward Highway. As Moose Haven wasn’t a big city, sirens weren’t an everyday occurrence but accidents happened on the highway often enough that Tyler Dawson wasn’t surprised by the sound.

      Out of habit, he checked his phone for text messages he might have missed. Due to the lodge’s proximity to some of the common accident sites and Tyler’s basic EMT certification, his brother, Noah, the police chief of Moose Haven, would sometimes ask for his help. He expected that would be even more true now that he’d graduated from the police academy in Sitka and was technically a Moose Haven Reserve officer. Not a title he’d have ever expected from himself, or one he’d particularly wanted, but when family asked you to do something, you did it. At least Tyler did. And Noah had asked him to do it.

      He looked at the phone’s screen.

      Nothing.

      Instead of heading out to help, he said a quick prayer for whoever was involved then went back to the financial statements СКАЧАТЬ