Page 58 of Claimed on the Ridge

The light shifts on the snow. I watch it move.

"I've been checking the Sitka obituaries on the satellite connection," I say. "My mother's name was in yesterday's."

Alex doesn't say he's sorry. He turns his head. The look he gives me is steady, full, unflinching.

"She knew," I say. "We both did. The last time I saw her was the last time. She made sure I understood that before I left the room."

His arm tightens around my shoulders. He doesn't fill the silence with words it doesn't need.

"She told me to run and not come back," I say. "She chose my freedom over having me there when she died. I'm not going to waste what that cost her."

Below us, the road curves down the ridge in long switchbacks. The snow on it is packed and rutted from Cameron's truck, the tracks visible from here. Trees line both sides, dark spruce pressing close to the shoulders. The roaddisappears around a bend further down where the tree line thickens.

A vehicle appears at the far end of the visible stretch. Small with distance. Dark colored. Moving slowly up the road toward the ridge.

The world contracts.

My hand goes to my wrist. The grip is automatic, fingers closing over the bones until the pressure registers as something to focus on instead of the surge building in my chest. I squeeze until the ache replaces the panic, an old trick, a bad one, the kind of coping mechanism Amberly would tell me to unlearn.

"Kendall." Alex's voice. Low. Close.

I can't look away from the road. The vehicle moves through the visible stretch, dark against the white, and I track it the way I tracked Gary's footsteps on the stairs of our home in Anchorage. Counting the distance. Measuring the speed. Calculating how long before it reaches the place I am.

The lodge is behind me. The porch steps are to my left. My truck is in the shed behind the workshop. The cash is in the bag upstairs. The exits map themselves in my head. They always do. Gary trained me well.

The vehicle is still moving. Still climbing. The dark shape of it against the snow is too far away to make out a model or a plate, but the pace is wrong. Too slow for someone who knows the road. Too steady for someone exploring.

It disappears behind the tree line.

My lungs remember how to work. The breath I take is shallow, but it comes.

Alex pulls me tighter against his side. The solidity of him is the only thing keeping my feet where they are. His body has gone still in a way I recognize from the brothers. He has shifted from resting to operational without moving a muscle.

"Could be anyone," I say. My voice is steady. My hand is white on my wrist.

"Could be."

"Lot of people use this road."

"They do."

The tree line holds. The vehicle doesn't reappear. It turned off somewhere below, or it's still climbing where the road bends out of sight. I watch the gap in the trees where it disappeared. I count my breathing the way I used to count it in the closet of our home when Gary's voice changed pitch in the next room.

Alex is beside me, arm around me, eyes on the road. He watches the same tree line I'm watching, and the fact that he's watching too is the most honest comfort anyone has given me in years.

My fingers loosen on my wrist. The ache from the grip stays.

"Come inside," he says.

I look at the tree line one more time. The road is empty. The snow is bright. The ridge is quiet, and I know better than to trust quiet.

14

ALEX

The tree line where the vehicle disappeared is still empty when I steer Kendall through the door. Her wrist is white where her fingers dug in, the marks already fading. I memorize the shape of them. I pull the door shut and turn the deadbolt, hand flat against the frame. The sound of the lock carries through the mudroom. She hears it. She doesn't comment.

In the main room, the fire has burned low. Embers glow in the stone hearth, throwing copper light across the floor. Kendall crosses to the kitchen and pours coffee with the focused steadiness of someone who needs something to do with her hands. She sets the pot down, pulls a notepad from the counter drawer, and starts writing. Her handwriting is fast and tight. She's making a list before I can ask what kind.