Alaskan Hideout. Sarah Varland
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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 he’d been going over. He winced at the first bill he looked at, cringed at the second and by the third was ready to close the books and give up on bills for the day.
However he looked at it, Moose Haven Lodge was in trouble. He’d taken over from his parents not quite eight years ago and at first it had gone well. Then the recession that had hit the Lower 48 had finally made its way to Alaska and the lodge had started to feel the strain. Their returning clients weren’t able to keep vacationing the way they had been in the past.
Tyler knew what the problem was—they needed more clients—so he’d trimmed expenses where he needed to and the lodge ran well. He was good at his job.
He just wasn’t as good at getting the word out and, with the competition bigger lodges brought in, he was struggling.
If you’re interested in a struggling mountain lodge, God, I could use some help.
Tyler meant the prayer, meant it with every fiber of his being this morning, amid the bills. However, at the same time, he had to wonder to what degree God was invested in those kinds of details. Had God created him? Yes. Did He care about him? Yes.
But about details like this?
Tyler didn’t know. The last time he’d expected God to intervene in the day-to-day details of his life was when he’d prayed he and his college girlfriend could reconcile somehow.
Eight years this spring and they’d never spoken again.
Tyler’s phone beeped and he glanced at the message. Noah needed help at the wreck. It was just about two miles from the lodge.
He left a note on the front desk for the tourists he expected to have checking in soon and headed out to his car. In small-town Alaska, communities had to pull together and help each other.
Two miles later Tyler winced at the damage to the small white car—a rental, he guessed from the fact that besides having its back end smashed in, it looked like hordes of others that invaded the Kenai Peninsula area every summer. He prayed again for whoever was inside, then parked his car.
“Female, late twenties, early thirties maybe,” Noah said as he approached. “She’s in bad shape, but the fire department already has her on the way to the hospital. What I need your help with most is the kid. He needs to be checked out by a doctor, though thankfully he looks okay. But the poor boy’s terrified.”
“Got it.”