Elizabeth Heiter - K-9 Defence

Assuming she could get up this mountain.

Gritting her teeth, Kensie switched her foot from the brake to the gas as fast as she could, not wanting to lose traction. The truck’s wheels spun, spraying snow at a crazy angle, and then it shot forward, up the hill.

Kensie grappled to keep control of the wheel, her muscles aching. The truck veered left, then right, but it kept moving upward until she could see the top of the hill. She was going to make it.

As if thinking those words had been bad luck, the truck veered right again, straight off the side of the road. It sank down several feet, jolting her forward as the front end planted itself in a snowbank.

Kensie swore, tears of frustration pricking her eyes. For fourteen years, leads on Alanna had come and gone like rabbits in a magician’s disappearing act. One minute promising and solid and right in front of them. The next minute poof! Like they’d never even existed.

This time might be no different. Her family didn’t think it was. But they’d come to accept years ago what statistics said was a near certainty: Alanna was gone. She was never coming home.

Kensie had never been able to do that. And she didn’t think it was guilt eating at her gut this time, telling her something was here. She had to believe that this time, if she looked hard enough, maybe the magic trick would become real.

Colter could help her. She knew he could. If she could find him. If she could convince him.

Was she even close to where he lived? She had no idea. She assumed she’d followed the directions properly, but what if there’d been a turnoff she’d missed? She could be miles from his cabin.

She peered through the windshield at the snowflakes, falling faster and thicker from the sky. It had been cold when she’d arrived, but temperatures had dropped to near zero in the hours since. And that was down in the main part of town, not up in the mountains where Colter lived.

Fear settled low in her belly as she zipped her coat up to her chin and slid her hood over her head, fastening it tightly. She didn’t need to gun the engine to know there was no way she was getting her truck out of this snowbank.

She was walking from here. She just had to pray Colter’s cabin was nearby and she wouldn’t walk right by it in this snowstorm and then freeze to death.

The moment she stepped out of the truck, Kensie wondered if she’d made a mistake. Her whole body seemed to ice over as her feet sank into a pile of snow, rising over the tops of her boots. The cold seeped through them, too, soaking her up to midcalf. She had to hold the tops of her boots to make sure they came with her as she climbed out of the snowbank and then her hands were soaked through her gloves.

Enormous snowflakes plopped on her head, sliding down the side of her hood, where some dropped off. The wind sent others flying into her face, where they left a watery trail down her neck and then slipped inside her coat.

She was going to die out here. She could already feel the icy cold in her lungs with every breath. What had she read about extreme cold bursting your lungs?

Calm down , she told herself. Colter’s place had to be close. The grocery store owner had said the top of the final hill. There were no more hills to climb. And yet, no cabin.

There were a lot of trees, though, more than she’d expected this high up. She thought she could see a road marker ahead, leading a winding path through them. Colter’s cabin could be behind the trees somewhere. But so could bears. Or she could get lost and not be able to find her way back to the truck. Every few steps, she glanced backward.

Soon she could no longer see the truck. Panic built inside her and she paused. Keep moving forward or turn back?

Then she heard it. Or maybe hypothermia had already started to set in and she was imagining the barking.

Kensie started to run. Her lungs protested every breath, painful from the cold, but as she rounded another copse of trees, there it was. A beautiful little cabin with a clear, perfect view of the valley below. She could even see a glacier from here. In other circumstances, she would have paused and soaked in the amazing vista.

Tears of relief spilled over and instantly froze on her cheeks and then Colter was there, his strong arm around her shoulders, leading her into his home.

She didn’t even pause at the doorway, wondering if it was really a good idea to trust a man she’d just met. She simply let him help her inside.

As soon as she was through the doorway, Rebel pressed up against her side. The dog stayed with her until Colter pushed her into a big recliner near the fire. Then Rebel sat primly next to her, soft brown eyes full of worry.

The heat from the fireplace made Kensie shiver. It didn’t make any sense, but she couldn’t seem to stop as Colter bent down with a pained grunt. He pulled the sopping wet boots from her feet and propped her legs up near the fireplace. Then he peeled the gloves from her hands, rubbing them between his own big, calloused palms until the warmth finally penetrated.

And so did his words. “What are you doing here? Wandering around in this weather is dangerous. Do you have some kind of death wish?”

Before she could bristle, he let out a heavy sigh and stopped rubbing her hands. “Hold them by the fire. I’ll make you some cocoa.”

“My truck hit a snowbank,” she managed through chattering teeth.

“But why were you up here to begin with?” he asked, looking like he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer as he walked into the connecting kitchen.

“I came to see you. I need your help. No one here will talk to me. But you know them. You know the area. You know how to track—”

“I told you, Kensie, Rebel and I don’t do that anymore. And the kind of tracking you’re talking about, we never did. It’s not the same thing. Dogs are trained to do one thing. You can’t just switch them over, make a drug-sniffing dog an explosives one. Doesn’t work like that. And finding people without a direct trail? Even if we had a scent to work from, we wouldn’t be able to do that.”

Kensie felt her shoulders drop. She’d come all this way. This couldn’t be the end of it.

Colter kept talking as he put a pot on the little stove and poured in milk and cocoa. She barely heard his words as she thought about the note that had been found. Thought about Alanna, somewhere in the Alaskan wilderness with her kidnapper.

“...Military Police don’t do that. In a war zone—”

Kensie’s head snapped up. “What did you say?”

“That kind of tracking work,” Colter said, as the scent of cocoa filled Kensie’s nostrils. “We don’t—”

“No, not that. You said you were Military Police?”

“Yeah.” The word was full of wariness.

“So, you know how to run an investigation.”

“So do the civilian police. And they actually have authority here,” Colter said as he handed her a steaming mug of cocoa.

The heat felt wonderful in her hands, the scent tempting her. But she just clutched it and stared up at him. “They don’t want to help me.”

He frowned as he lowered himself stiffly onto the chair on the other side of the fireplace. “Why not?”

Internally, she cursed her stupidity. If he knew the truth about what the FBI thought, he’d call her crazy, too. He’d probably join the chorus of people trying to get her to return home.

She postponed answering him by taking a gulp of the cocoa. It burned its way down her throat, making her eyes water, but it also seemed to warm her from the inside, so she took another sip and then another. When the mug was almost empty, she lowered it to her lap, realizing her teeth had finally stopped chattering.