Alaskan Sanctuary (16 page)

Tate sank into the hotel room’s lone armchair. “Yep. And might I add that it’s the first time anyone’s called in because they were worried about their ‘stalker.’”

“I was
not
stalking her. I was doing my job.”

“
Was
doing your job
?
” Tate frowned. “What’s exactly going on here, friend?”

Ethan blew out a breath. “Nothing. I’m quitting. That’s all.”

“You’re quitting your job? Does this mean you got the position at the paper in Seattle?”

Did they have to do this right now? Ethan had never been less in the mood for a heart-to-heart. “Not my job. Just my column. And Lou doesn’t know I’m giving it up yet, so I’d be grateful if you could keep a lid on it.”

“You’re quitting your column? The one on the
front page
of the newspaper?” Tate shook his head. “I was less worried when I thought you were a missing person who’d also been accused of stalking.”

“I’m fine. It just got...”

Tate raised his brows.

“...personal.” Ethan picked up the duffel bag and hauled it onto his shoulder. “And that’s all I’m going to say about it.”

Tate stood. “Okay. But give Piper a call, would you? So she knows you’re alive and well.”

Alive and well.

Ethan didn’t feel either.

“Fine.” Piper deserved an explanation, and the news would probably be better coming from him than from Lou.

She’d be hurt. And angry. But she’d have to agree that this was better for both of them. Maybe Lou would keep the column going. Maybe he’d send another reporter to the sanctuary, one more sympathetic to her cause. That’s what she’d wanted all along. She’d definitely be happier if someone different was assigned to the story.

The idea didn’t sit well with Ethan.

Before he could process a feeling that felt altogether too much like jealousy, the portable radio in Tate’s holster buzzed to life.

“Dispatch to Captain Hudson. Nine-one-one. Are you in? Over.”

“What now?” Tate shot a worried glance at Ethan and reached for the radio. “This is Hudson. Go ahead.”

“We’ve got a possible hostage situation just outside the town limits. Repeat, a possible hostage situation. Over.”

A hostage situation?

Aurora had never experienced anything remotely as dangerous as a hostage crisis. Surely there’d been a mistake. Some kind of misunderstanding.

Ethan tossed his duffel on the bed. He’d follow Tate to wherever the thing was going down. Maybe he’d get a big enough scoop for the newspaper that Lou would keep him onboard.

“I copy. On my way. What’s the 20?” Tate was already out the door, halfway down the hall, before he even knew where he was headed.

Ethan matched his stride, step for step. Everything was happening in a blurry rush of alarm.

Then the dispatcher spoke again, and the world came to a screeching halt. “One-eleven Chugach Scenic Road. Do you copy?”

Piper’s address.

Tate barked something into the radio, but Ethan didn’t make out the words. His head buzzed with white noise. Sickness rose to the back of his throat.

How had this happened?

He should have been there. He was
supposed
to be there right now. Was this some kind of cosmic joke? He couldn’t be responsible for losing someone. Not again.

And not Piper.

“Ethan!” Tate snapped.

Ethan had almost forgotten Tate was even there. He’d been concentrating on nothing but running. Moving. Getting to Piper as fast as he could. Before it was too late.

They pushed through the revolving door of the inn, out into the snow and cold. Ethan’s SUV was parked close by, but Tate rapped on the hood of the police cruiser that occupied the spot nearest the hotel.

“Get in. You can ride in the squad car with me.”

Ethan swung open the door and climbed into the passenger seat. Tate pulled out of the parking space, sirens blaring, before Ethan even had his seat belt buckled.

He was grateful for the ride, grateful for Tate’s siren and flashing red lights. But the wolf sanctuary was halfway up the mountain, a fact that had nagged at Ethan since the moment he’d first set foot on Piper’s property. The trip up the mountainous winding road would take a minimum of fifteen minutes, regardless of how fast Tate drove or how loud his sirens blared. It was a simple matter of physics. And that was the absolute best-case scenario. Ethan didn’t want to contemplate the worst.

A lot could happen in fifteen minutes. A life could be lost in half as much time.

The bear attack had occurred in under six minutes. He’d made a call on his radio at 7:02 p.m., the moment he’d spotted the missing girl. By 7:08 p.m., she was gone. Those had been the longest six minutes of Ethan’s life. Until now.

Tate handed Ethan his cell phone. “Why don’t you dial Dispatch on speaker, and see if they can give us any additional information?”

Ethan had the dispatch officer on the line in less than ten seconds. “Tate? Are you on your way up to the wolf sanctuary?”

“Yes, and I’ve got Ethan here with me.” The tires screeched as he maneuvered the car around a bend in the road. “Can you give us a rundown of the call?”

“Sure. Piper called in and asked for you at exactly 10:28 a.m.” Ten minutes ago. Ethan closed his eyes, but all he could see was the word
Killers
painted on the side of her cabin. He opened his eyes and blinked a few times, but could no longer seem to see anything else. How could he have left her there alone? She’d been threatened, and he’d turned his back on the vow he’d made to himself to keep her safe.

The dispatcher continued. “She asked for you, Tate, and said she was trapped inside her cabin because someone was holding her hostage. She mentioned a name, but it was unintelligible. When I asked her to repeat it, the line went dead. I’ve tried calling back multiple times, but her number goes straight to voice mail.”

Ethan and Tate exchanged a glance. This didn’t sound good. Not at all.

“The strange thing about the call was how calm she sounded. Very composed in light of the circumstances.”

Ethan wished he could take solace in this news, but he couldn’t. Every one of Piper’s wolves outweighed her, and she let them crawl all over her every day. Sometimes he wondered if the woman had the good sense to know when to be afraid.

Tate gunned the accelerator as the cruiser headed up a steep incline. “Thanks. We’re turning off the main road and should be there in an under a minute. Send for backup if you haven’t already.”

“All cars are already en route.”

“Excellent.” Tate nodded, and Ethan ended the call.

Every state trooper in the vicinity was on his or her way to Piper’s property. Outside the police cruiser, the snow was coming down so thick and white that it looked like the end of the world was at hand. This wasn’t a nightmare. It wasn’t a product of Ethan’s overactive imagination. This was real.

God, not again. Please not again.

He would have promised everything. Anything. Just please not again.

* * *

“Seriously? You’re just going to stand there in my doorway and keep me trapped in here?” Piper sighed.

She was beginning to warm up to her captor. Sure, she’d been startled at first. Maybe even a little afraid. But once she’d had a chance to catch her breath and assess the situation, she realized he wasn’t so bad. He was actually kinda cute.

In a Rudolph sort of way.

“So you’re the infamous Palmer.” She inched closer to the massive reindeer looming in the entryway to her cabin. When she’d opened the front door, oblivious to what waited for her on the other side, he’d taken the liberty of walking right up to her. Apparently, he was an in-your-face sort of reindeer. Now here he stood, halfway in and halfway out of her home. He’d nearly toppled the vase of flowers that Caleb had picked for her.

He wasn’t wearing a name tag or anything, but it had to be him. Palmer. The reindeer she’d heard so much about who had a penchant for escaping the confines of the neighboring reindeer farm. The reindeer that Ethan had been so worried about becoming snack food for her wolves. Well, the wolves were all exactly where they were supposed to be at the moment, weren’t they? It was Palmer’s behavior that bordered on assault.

Oh, the irony.

“Has anyone ever told you that you’re rather forward?”

Palmer grunted in response. He was awfully cute for a criminal—with long, fluttering eyelashes and a cute white ring around one of his dark eyes. But goodness, he was big. If he managed to force his way completely inside the cabin, she’d have an enormous mess on her hands.

She stood her ground, less than a foot away from his colossal caribou face, and prayed he would just stay there until help arrived.

Zoey had been the first person that Piper called. Palmer belonged to her, after all. Apparently, she was accustomed to getting these sorts of calls. When her number rolled straight to voice mail, Piper remembered that Zoey was scheduled to fly up to Anchorage on a mail run in her plane today. In addition to running the reindeer farm with her husband, she was also Aurora’s chief charter pilot.

With Zoey unavailable, Piper wasn’t quite sure what to do. So she’d called 911. Because she was pretty sure being pinned inside your home by a reindeer was an actual emergency, albeit a uniquely Alaskan one.

At least she’d managed to get her information rattled off to the police dispatcher before her cell phone had died. She wasn’t about to turn her back on Palmer long enough to carry her phone to its charger in the kitchen. By the time she got it plugged in, he probably would have stomped all the way to her bedroom and tucked himself into her feather bed.

“The police are on their way, so now’s the time to make a break for it if you don’t want another infraction on your already notorious arrest record.”

Palmer lowered his head and let out a throaty rattling noise. Piper had no idea whether or not such reindeer behavior was normal, or what it meant. She’d been a little too busy communing with wolves for the past ten years to brush up on reindeer vocalizations.

She glanced at the bucket at her feet. Maybe she should offer him one of the chicken-broth ice cubes. Or were reindeer vegetarian? She was pretty sure they were.

She sighed. Again.

When would the police arrive, and what was she supposed to do in the meantime with a reindeer halfway in her living room?

* * *

It took Ethan a minute to make sense of what he saw when the cruiser barreled onto Piper’s property. Through the blinding snow, all he could make out was something dark in the doorway to the cabin. Much to Tate’s annoyance, Ethan jumped out of the car before it came to a complete stop. Once outside, he recognized that the bulky thing obstructing Piper’s door was an animal. His heart stopped beating as a series of horrific pictures flashed in his head. Wolves. Blood. Piper’s lifeless body.

Then he got closer and realized he wasn’t gazing at a wolf at all.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Tate muttered as he reached his side. “Palmer.”

“Looks that way.” Ethan allowed himself to breathe again. He inhaled a shaky breath and tried to still the tremble in his hands.

It took a minute for his body to catch up with his mind. Piper wasn’t being held captive by a dangerous criminal, after all. Nor was she being torn limb from limb by one of her precious wolves. The source of her trouble was just a silly reindeer. This kind of thing happened all the time. It did in Palmer’s stomping ground, anyway.

Everything was okay.

Tate gave him a nudge. “You all right, man? You’re white as a sheet.”

“Fine.” Ethan’s throat closed like a fist. “I’m fine.”

“I need to radio this in, so Dispatch can cancel the call for backup. And I’ll go grab the carrots out of my trunk. See if you can check on Piper, okay?”

“You keep carrots in the trunk of your squad car?” This struck Ethan as particularly absurd. He probably would have laughed if he wasn’t still shaking off the physical effects of panic.

“They’re regulation now for every officer in Aurora, thanks to the town wanderer over there.” Tate nodded toward Palmer’s massive backside protruding from the entrance to Piper’s cabin. “I’ve got a whole bag of them. Be right back.”

Ethan shook his head and gave in to the smile working its way to his mouth. Hostage-taking reindeer. Carrot-wielding law enforcement officers.

Only in Alaska.

He’d miss things like these once he moved to Seattle, he realized. Alaska was like no place else on the planet. Peculiar. Wild. Free. Which was why he’d wanted to come here in the first place. Ultimately, though, Alaska’s adventuresome spirit was precisely why he wanted to leave. The police in the Lower 48 didn’t carry carrots. But grizzly bears didn’t walk down the sidewalks, either.

That mattered. Didn’t it?

Ethan trudged toward Piper’s cabin through the shin-deep snow. He was getting ahead of himself. Just because he was scheduled to fly down to Seattle the day after tomorrow didn’t mean he was moving there permanently. He didn’t even have the job at
The Seattle Tribune.
Yet.

“Hey there, you mischief maker.” Ethan didn’t want to startle the reindeer, so he rested a calming hand on the animal’s flank.

Palmer’s hide quivered under the touch. Beneath its fine dusting of snow, the reindeer’s body was warm, soft, pulsing with life. Ethan had a memory of feeding caribou apples from the palms of his hands back in Denali. Of the velvety softness of their antlers in springtime. Their soft footfalls in the snow.

“Hello? Is someone there?” Piper called from inside the cabin.

She sounded perfectly fine. Unharmed. Safe. But for some odd reason, hearing her voice caused Ethan’s chest to tighten into a raw, aching knot. “It’s me.”

“Ethan!” The relief in her tone did nothing to lessen the ache. “You’re okay. Good.”

“
I’m
okay?” He couldn’t help but laugh. “You called 911, yet you were worried about
my
safety? Might I remind you that there’s a reindeer protruding from your house?”

“Ha. Ha.” He could practically hear her eyes rolling. “Wait a minute. Why are you here? Now? I expected you hours ago.”