Page 121 of Backtrack

“I forgot my water in my room.”

Cutter nodded to the minifridge. “There’s some in there.”

“You know,” Joellen said, stooping in front of the cabinet. “Maybe if you woulda tried a little harder to get home and make gravy backin the day, you and me … I don’t know, maybe we would have worked out.”

Cutter groaned, too exhausted to argue.

“Maybe so,” he said.

“It ain’t about the gravy,” Lola said, appearing like a genie out of thin air. Cutter was used to it, but Joellen jumped like she’d just been goosed. “It’s who you’re making the gravy for.”

Joellen stood, water bottle in hand, and locked eyes with Lola. “I want to say you’re adorable,” she said. “But I just can’t.”

“No worries.” Lola grinned. “Just doing my part for the boss.”

Cutter closed his eyes. “Don’t each of you ladies have your own room?”

“She’s got two,” Lola said.

“Good night, Lola,” Cutter said.

“Night, Boss!” Lola beamed. “I reckon I’m gonna dream about Russian slavers and severed dog heads.”

Cutter sighed.

“Same.”

Joellen took a long drink from the water bottle.

“You people are insane.”

CHAPTER 54

Cutter woke to the sound of a distant whistle. Sleeping on a ship could feel like being inside a massive cocoon. Surrounded by steel, systems, and the ocean, it took him a moment to get his bearings.ThePolar Starwas stopped. He could tell that much.

The horn sounded again, far away up Gastineau Channel. Cutter rolled out of his blanket and arched his back, stretching out the inevitable kinks that came from sleeping on a sofa. A wall of heavy fog met him at the veranda door. Mount Roberts, which rose directly out of the sea and should have been visible across from the Franklin Docks, was lost in a cloud. Of course it was foggy. This was Juneau.

Cutter eased open the sliding door and stepped out on the balcony in his bare feet. The air was wet and fresh, incredibly welcome. Cutter was always happier in open spaces. He peered through the fog, catching fleeting images of green and a flash of dull red—the Mount Roberts aerial tram. To his left was Mount Juneau—under which ran miles and miles of mine tunnels whose guts provided the stony base for this city. He shivered at the memory of his time in those tunnels.

He glanced at his watch: 6:35.

Lola and Joellen were quiet, apparently still sleeping. The sun had been up over an hour and a half. He kicked himself for sleeping in, especially when Mim had to get up with the twins in her condition while he got to lounge around on a cruise ship. He supposed that was one reason he took the couch—to punish himself for having it so good.

He’d stayed up late making notes on his most pressing cases. Lola’s determination was contagious, and he’d spent an inordinate amount of time on the Branded Ones, though most everything new they had was conjecture. Sexy conjecture, to be sure, and probably enough to get Lola’s dream multiagency task force off the ground, but there were more gaps than substance. At any given moment, the Alaska Fugitive Task Force carried well over one hundred and fifty active warrants. Every day more warrants ended up on Cutter’s desk—some federal, others from the Alaska State Troopers or Anchorage PD. Leads dried up, moving the file to the Check-in-Sixty-Days folder. Some fugitives were believed to be out of Alaska. These earned collateral leads to other districts or agencies. Some got tired of constantly looking over their shoulder and turned themselves in. Others were arrested on new charges or swept up asbycatch, when their associates were arrested. Barring special circumstances—like murder suspects or outlaws who had harmed children—six months of no leads got the case stamped INACTIVE. Still, federal warrants never went away.

The stack grew larger by the week. There was rarely enough breathing room to focus long on a particular fugitive. Most days each team left the office with a stack of seven or eight warrants and pinged all over Anchorage and the Matsu Valley like pinballs, interviewing relatives, surveilling funerals, following old girlfriends. … They dragged a fast net. When a lead didn’t pan out quickly, they moved down the list. Focus was primarily on the most violent—the worst of the worst or, as often happened, the most politically expedient in the eyes of headquarters.

Sometimes, a turd floated to the top while they were working on someone else—like Leo Bouchard, Malosi’s presumed killer.

On the docks below, the crew were still in the process of running lines to secure the ship. Passengers were up stirring, many of them at the buffet, filling up on free food before they disembarked for their misty Juneau adventures in a little over an hour. Special Agent Nguyen with the FBI would arrive soon. Cutter was eager to hand over the homicide investigation and focus on the hunt for Bouchard—not an easy task on a thousand-foot ship among four thousand people and no cameras.

Seagulls squabbled along the docks. The muffled voices ofdockworkers and crew were suddenly eclipsed by a loud splash. The voices below immediately rose in volume and timbre.

Twenty seconds after the splash, the captain gave three long blasts onThe Polar Star’s horn, followed by a Code Oscar announcement over the intercom.Man overboard. Someone had fallen in.

Or jumped.

Cutter leaned over the balcony rail as far as he dared, searching the surface of dark water, barely visible through the fog.