Page 5 of Smoky Lake

Was the bangle-train going to die out with her?

Molly nudged her with an elbow. “Go ahead with the challenge. What were you about to say before you embraced life and chose the waffles?”

Ani laughed a little, although “embracing life” might be a stretch. “Surviving life” felt a little closer to reality right now. “Right, the random stranger. Whether or not we have a connection yet to be discovered. Have any of you heard the name Gil before?”

“Was that the stranger’s name?”

“No, that was Victor Canseco. Do any of you know either of those names?”

They all shook their heads.

“I can ask Sam,” Molly offered. “He knows most people around here.” She picked up her phone to text her man.

“So does Bear,” said Lila. “He knows everyone, and I mean, everyone, at least for the past fifteen years.” Bear owned The Fang, the local dive where Lila tended bar, so of course he would be a good bet for finding this “Gil.”

“As long as we’re boasting about our guys, Nick could find him in a flash,” Charlie boasted. “His investigative skills are second to none.”

“How did we stumble into some kind of boyfriend competition?” Ani wondered.

“Oh no, Bear isn’t my boy—” Lila was interrupted by Molly thrusting her phone into the air in a gesture of triumph.

“Wait, I’ve got it. Sam Coburn for the win. Gil McGowan is the brother of Lachlan McGowan, a glacier scientist who comes here in the spring to study the jökulhlaup. Gil is probably staying with his brother. Sam says they’re twins.”

That must be them.

Ani’s sourdough waffles arrived, and the heavenly aroma of maple syrup and butter sent everything else out of her mind. “Maybe I’ll happen to run into him after I head back to town.”

“You can’t leave yet,” said Charlie. “The kids need you, and by kids, of course I mean me.”

Ani smiled, beyond touched by her friend’s affection. It felt so good after everything she’d been through with John.

Charlie caught sight of someone and jumped to her feet. Ani turned to see a group of hoodie-wearing teenagers crowding into the restaurant.

“This is so fantastic,” Charlie said. “That’s a group of Ahtna teenagers heading off for a survival skills campout. Fire Peak Lodge is sponsoring the trip—my idea, of course. The sponsorship, not the campout. That’s their idea, and I sure hope they know what they’re doing.” She hurried off to greet them.

Molly was still scanning her phone. “Sam knows where the McGowan brothers live. He’s drawing a map.”

A map…how old-school. Ani had to laugh. Only in Firelight Ridge.

3

As he jogged up the steep trail behind his brother’s house, Gil McGowan welcomed the burn of pure mountain air pumping through his lungs. It chased away the irritation of being interrogated by a state trooper first thing in the morning. The man hadn’t even had the courtesy to wait until Gil had made coffee.

His brother was already out of the house, checking ground temperature readings on his latest experiment. Good thing, too—Lachlan didn’t handle disruptions well, especially if they wore official uniforms and seemed to imply wrongdoing. He would have been so nervous he might have confessed to murdering Victor, instead of simply being his colleague. That was Gil’s role—shield, protector, handler of the world.

Gil had spent ten minutes smiling pleasantly at the trooper, giving him absolutely no information beyond the basics about Victor. As a member of the Diplomatic Security Service, though currently on leave, his automatic protective impulses had kicked in as soon as Victor’s name came up.

With the state trooper finally out of his hair, Gil had gone for his run. Coffee when he got back, he’d decided. He needed the pounding of his feet against the forest floor, the flutter-whisper of the cottonwood leaves, the pure air pumping in and out of his lungs.

Was Victor in trouble?

When he reached a spot where he could pick up a consistent Wi-Fi signal from a nearby lodge, he called Victor. He was probably back in Fairbanks by now after his summer research stint out at Smoky Lake.

“Why did a state trooper just interrogate me about you, dude?”

“Oh fuck. I knew this was coming. I knew it, I knew it. They’re after me. They’ll do anything to stop me.”

Good lord. Victor sounded as if he hadn’t slept in weeks.

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