Page 94 of Backtrack

She walked on, stopping long enough to take a selfie with theWELCOME TOKETCHIKANsign that arched across Mission Street.

She felt the eyes again about the time the three-story Chief Johnson’s totem pole hove into view at the end of the block. She wasn’t afraid of someone attacking her. There were too many people around for that. But then, she’d sat through enough court hearings to know crazies attacked people all the time in public.

Ahead, the loudmouth explainer told his wife about the Kadjuk—a mythical bird carved atop the fifty-five-foot red cedar totem pole. …

Joellen threw periodic glances over her shoulder as she walked. Arliss always said you could tell a lot from the whites of a man’s eyes even from a distance. A muscular guy in a black polo shirt turned away quickly when she looked at him. He stood directly across the street at the corner of a blocky building that was only slightly less pink than Pepto-Bismol. The federal building.

A chill ran down her spine. Panic gripped her throat. She’d been right. Someone was following her. But why? She’d seen this guy before. He’d been loitering on the deck the night Minnesota Steve disappeared.

Joellen ducked into a little bookstore on the corner of Totem Way to gather her thoughts. The sign on the door said the place was called Parnassus. The mountain where the Greek Muses lived. Perfect. She could use a little inspiration about now.

She had a fleeting thought about calling Arliss but cursed herself for being so dense. Arliss was a thousand-some miles away in Anchorage. What the hell was he supposed to do?

No. Joellen would pull up her big-girl shorts and go talk to the guy. They were in the middle of town. He wasn’t going to do anything.

It seemed like a good plan, but when she came out of the bookstore, the man in the black polo was gone.

Joellen cursed again, face flushed as pink as her stupid hat. Thisguy probably just recognized her from walking past on the top deck last night. That didn’t mean he was following her.

Determined to see her waterfall, she fell in with a dozen Red Hat Ladies walking toward Creek Street. Her pink ballcap drew nods of approval from the silver-haired women. She was, after all, still under fifty.

Of the nearly million and a half tourists who visited Ketchikan each year, almost all of them found their way to Creek Street. The historic boardwalk that ran from the city’s small boat harbor inland alongside Ketchikan Creek housed restaurants and curio shops. No coffee table book about Alaska would be complete without a shot of the brightly colored buildings perched over the quiet little salmon stream. Family friendly now, Creek Street was at one time home to bars, card houses, and brothels. The sign in front of Dolly’s, a two-story frame house the color of key lime pie, proclaimed it a place where more men than fish came upstream to spawn.

A collective gasp carried through the crowd along the boardwalk. Joellen followed their gaze over the wooden railing to the pool below. It was low tide, crowding hundreds of dog salmon, making them easy prey for two fat harbor seals that slid gracefully through the dark water. Already full to bursting, the seals nibbled and toyed with the flashing silver bodies, bumping them like a cat might bump a mouse, forcing the shoals to turn back and forth, glinting in the sunlight. The natural show alone was worth the price of the cruise. With this many salmon, the falls were bound to be as packed with fish as the boardwalk was packed with tourists.

Joellen could only watch seals chase fish for so long. She turned to move on and caught a glimpse of the guy in the black polo loitering by the T-shirt shop in the next building up the boardwalk.

This time she didn’t hesitate.

The man looked casually away, toying with some kind of branch or stick a child had probably left behind. Nothing to see here.

She pushed her way through the crowds, calling out when she was still ten feet away.

“Hey!” she barked. “Don’t you move!”

The man smirked and hooked a thumb toward his own chest. “Me?”

“Yes, you,” Joellen said, close enough that the overpowering smellof AXE body spray nearly felled her. She’d been around middle schoolers who were more self-aware.

The milling crowd shoved her toe to toe with the guy. Too late to back down now. “You were on the top deck of the ship last night!” she snapped. “Why are you following me?”

She stepped sideways as another flock of tourists jostled their way past, this time pushing her against the wooden rail rather than her stalker. Ketchikan Creek flowed between scattered boulders fifteen feet below.

“You got a pretty inflated opinion of yourself, lady,” the man said. Brave words, but he bounced the piece of stick on the railing like a club. His eyes shifted right and left. Was he looking to escape or on the verge of braining her? It was bigger now that she was close.

The man sneered. “I got better things to do than follow your fat ass around.”

“Oh, you’re following me,” she said. “I know it and you know it.” Seething now, she decided to go for the jugular. “And I am absolutely positive you know exactly what happened to my date last night.”

All the color drained from the man’s face. He swallowed hard, shifting on his feet. “You don’t know shit.” Still holding the club, his free hand shot out, snakelike, grabbing her around the shoulders and drawing her in tight against his chest. Joellen squirmed and struggled to get away, but he was too strong. She’d not expected him to get physical in the middle of a crowd. To passersby, they probably looked like a couple—maybe in an argument, maybe goofing around.

“You bitch!” The whispered hiss came across as that of a terrified child—all the more dangerous.

Regaining her senses, Joellen stomped hard, sliding the edge of her shoe down the man’s shin to connect with his instep. She swung her fist at the same time, backward into the man’s unprotected groin. Yowling in pain, he dropped the stick, loosening his grip long enough to slap her hard across the face. Her ballcap fell to the boardwalk. Rattled, she tried to jerk away, attempting to gain some distance. It was no use. This guy was just too strong.Somewhere on the boardwalk, a woman screamed. A male voice barked a warning, but the man in the black polo shook her like a rag doll.

Joellen hit the rail hard with the point of her hip. Off balance, she thought she was going over the edge—but a strong hand grabbed her by the arm and hauled her back. She screamed, striking blindly.

“Jo! Stop!” a familiar voice said.