Page 25 of Ice Falls

Even though he’d bought the house to make this mission easier, he’d grown to appreciate it over the past year. The view was incredible, and he got a lot of joy from seeing what his three wildlife cameras captured. Lynx, black bears, moose, the occasional great horned owl.

And sure, he might be licking his wounds from his broken marriage, but that was okay too. Better than sobbing into a whiskey at The Fang.

In his favorite easy chair, with his yellow bearded collie Buttercup sprawled across his feet, he waited out the storm while sipping endless cups of coffee and jotted down notes and speculations about the Chilkoot case, and the family itself.

He’d been working on a family tree, but it had big gaps. He didn’t even know exactly how many members the family had, or how they were related. He knew Luke Chilkoot had several brothers, but they rarely came to town. The next generation included Soraya and her sister Ruth, and an unknown number of cousins and their children. To all appearances, they were an extended family clan who liked to live off-grid and keep their distance from everyone else.

Which was fine, until reports filtered back to the state troopers that an unusual number of dead bodies were turning up in the Wrangells, most with connections to Firelight Ridge.

Then a propane delivery driver reported seeing a crate of weapons on the Chilkoot property. He’d left the Chilkoot property and gone straight to the police. While he’d been filling their enormous tanks, a tarp had come loose and revealed a massive pile of ammunition. “Cases and cases of ammo,” he’d said in his videotaped testimony. “A shit ton of it. Way more than they need for hunting moose and such.”

An ATF agent had paid the Chilkoots a visit, and been chased away by a demand for a search warrant and a highly-trained pack of dogs.

At that point, a case had been opened.

But Sam hadn’t gotten dragged into it until two years later, after all other attempts to infiltrate the Chilkoots had failed—fatally, in one case. At that point, the agent-in-charge had happened to hire Fangtooth Air Service for a flyover. Sam had just moved to Alaska. He’d been coming up in the summers to help fight wildfires, and that summer, his wife had told him not to come back. He’d taken her suggestion to heart and stayed in Alaska, and discovered that the lonely winter and freewheeling lifestyle suited him just fine. So long as he didn’t attempt another relationship, life was good up here.

He and the agent-in-charge had hit it off, and a few months later the guy had presented him with an offer.

Using Fangtooth as a cover, he could work under the radar for the FBI—purely freelance—surveilling the tight-knit Chilkoot clan. It was a delicate situation, since being isolated and homeschooling your children and stockpiling weapons wasn’t necessarily against the law. But they wanted to know as much as they could in case more was going on out there, so far from any kind of law enforcement.

They needed eyes and ears in the community. As much as Firelight Ridge residents claimed to mind their own business, this place was much like any small town. People noticed things. They talked. There was gossip. When there was trouble, people looked out for each other. When there was danger, they came together.

By now, Firelight Ridge felt like home.

There was no more beautiful place in the northern hemisphere, in his opinion. On some winter nights, he’d watch the aurora for hours and almost…almost…believe in magic or love or other such fantasies.

Sam closed up his notebook and snagged his laptop, dislodging Buttercup in the process. His dog heaved himself to his feet and wandered toward the kitchen.

Time to find out more about the new women in town. Whenever someone new came, he checked them out for hidden connections to the Chilkoots. He already knew the basics about Lila “Bessie” Romanoff. She was from Indiana by way of New York, and she was terrible at holding down a job. She tended to move a lot too. She’d never been married and had a minimal social media profile, but he’d seen no indication of any link to the Chilkoots.

Now for Molly Evans.

A few Google searches told him she was a highly successful lawyer working for one of the top firms in New York, at least up until a week ago. Going further back to her high school years, she competed in long-distance track events. An athletic scholarship had gotten her through college, which she’d finished in three years. So she was smart, but he’d known that already.

The name of her high school seemed familiar, but it wasn’t until he read the next story that he knew why.

Student opens fire at high school track meet. Ten dead, more injured.

He scanned the names of the injured, but didn’t see Molly’s. The next story clarified why. Did some students have advance warning? Sources say police have questioned a group of friends who missed the track meet. Other parents express outrage that some might have gotten a heads up.

Even though Molly’s name wasn’t listed, he had to wonder if she was one of those students. She was on the track team and not listed as an injured victim. Were she and Lila in the group of friends who’d stayed home that day?

A low roaring sound had his head jerking up. It grew louder, a distant thunder, except it wasn’t thunder and not especially distant.

Avalanche.

He listened, trying to locate where the sound came from. Somewhere toward the Ice Falls, perhaps. A one-lane road led out that way. Luckily, no one lived there in the winter. Avalanches were common enough out here, but most happened deep in the mountains where they did no harm. This one had sounded close. He hoped no one happened to be in its path.

Sam ran into Molly at The Fang a couple of days later. She was hanging out at the bar helping Lila get ready for the dinner rush. In other words, she was putting out bowls of stale peanuts.

He propped one elbow on the bar next to her. “Still here, huh? Good thing I didn’t take that bet that you’d be gone by the end of the week.”

“Who offered a bet like that?”

“No one, which is a good thing for my wallet.”

She gave him a cool stare as she shook peanuts into a bowl. “Was there something you needed? Because you’re interrupting a very important conversation.”