“No. That’s the thing. She has a good head on her shoulders. She’s the one who was worried about coming to Alaska so late in the fall, but”—he shook his head as if he was too anxious to go into any great detail—“we had certain constraints we were working under with our hunting permits.”
The tires struggled to grip the pavement. Ice was forming quickly, and it was so hard the chains could barely bite into it. At some point, the road would simply become impassable. But Amarok managed to keep the vehicle under control and rolling along. “How was she dressed when you saw her last?”
Leland, who’d felt the truck slip, pressed a hand to the door to steady himself. “She was in bed, asleep.”
“She wasn’t interested in going hunting with you?”
“Nope. She was happy to stay where she was. She warned us to be careful and mumbled good-bye before we left. That’s it. What could’ve happened to her? Where could she have gone? There’s nothing but wilderness for miles around that cabin.”
“Maybe the storm frightened her. Maybe she thought you were in trouble and needed her.”
“That’s not it.”
He sounded so certain. “What do you mean?” Amarok asked.
“Something else happened.”
“How do you know?”
“Because of the ax and the woodshed.”
This was the first Amarok had heard of any ax or any woodshed. “Would you mind explaining?”
“I don’t know what to make of it. You’ll see.”
Amarok shot him a meaningful glance, wondering why he hadn’t mentioned this earlier. “We’ve got time to go over it now.”
He sighed. “Someone used the ax to chop down the door to the woodshed.”
“Someone? That had to be your sister, right? She was the only one there.”
“She might’ve done it. The combination to the lock on the door wouldn’t work, so we couldn’t get any wood.”
“Then it makes sense she’d force her way in.”
“Except…”
“What?”
Worry lines creased his forehead. “The back door to the cabin was busted, too.”
Amarok slowed even more as he navigated a particularly tricky turn. His headlights were almost no good; he couldn’t see more than two feet in front of him. “Busted how? You mean it was also chopped down with the ax?”
“Not like the door to the woodshed, no. That was awkward, messy. The cabin door looked like it’d been pried open, probably with the ax, since the ax was lying on the back porch instead of hanging in the mudroom like before.”
Again, his tires scraped and dug into the snowpack as Amarok pushed the truck to keep climbing. “Maybe she went out with the ax to get the wood and managed that, but when she returned to the cabin she realized she’d accidentally locked herself out.”
“Could be.” He acted like he wanted to believe that. “There was some fresh wood inside.”
“There you go.”
“But she packed all our stuff, had our bags waiting by the door. Why would she do that? For one thing, she knew we still had another night. For another, we’re big boys. We can pack our own shit. We packed at home and in Anchorage, for crying out loud.”
“Everything was by the door?”
“Every single thing any of us brought, even the cards and games we played at night. That makes me believe she didn’t plan on going anywhere without us.”
“Maybe she got scared for you, went out to find you.”
“If she’d gone looking for us, she would’ve come out the front. There’d be no reason to go out the back and then have to walk around the cabin. Besides, she left the back door standing wide open. Why would anyone do that in the middle of a terrible storm?”
“Maybe she didn’t. Maybe she didn’t latch it tightly and the wind did the rest.”
An expression of despair distorted Leland’s angular features. “She didn’t come after us, okay? She didn’t even take her coat!”
Amarok felt a chill run down his spine. He’d gone into this assuming some cheechako had done something foolish and gotten herself in trouble. But he was beginning to wonder if he’d jumped to that conclusion prematurely. A woman alone in a remote cabin wouldn’t simply wander away from warmth and safety, and she wouldn’t go out searching for her brother without suiting up.
“Besides you and your sister, the two friends who came to town with you are all the people in your party?”
Leland nodded. “It was only the four of us.”
“And you’ve had no problem with anyone since you arrived? No one could’ve followed you out to the cabin?”
“No. We’ve been there for three days without a moment’s trouble. We haven’t even seen another human being.”
More determined to reach the cabin than ever, Amarok shifted into a lower gear as he headed up the steep grade of the final ascent. He had a bad feeling about this.
4
Leland Yerbowitz hadn’t been exaggerating. His sister was gone, and there wasn’t much to indicate what’d happened to her. The storm had obliterated all footprints and tire tracks. There was no way to tell how many vehicles had approached the cabin or how many people had gone inside, where they might’ve come from or which direction they might’ve traveled when they left. Although the floors were wet, especially near the front and back doors, the fact that Leland and his two friends had come in soaked would be enough to create those puddles, so that didn’t prove much of anything, either.
Amarok found it interesting that she’d packed everyone and piled the luggage by the front door. It didn’t look to him as though she was planning to stay another night. Why would she decide to go early? Was she hoping to beat the storm before they could get snowed in?
Possibly.…
Sierra’s coat and boots were wet, so she’d been out in the elements. But she’d come in and cast her outerwear aside. She’d also stoked the fire. Leland insisted that he and his friends hadn’t bothered with the stove when they returned to find her gone, and yet there were still a few glowing embers. That meant it couldn’t have been more than three or four hours since she was here, depending on how much wood she’d used.
What had she done after she packed up? Why would she go back into the cold without protection?
She wouldn’t. No one with any sense would. He had to find another answer.
He unzipped her suitcase. Some of her clothes were neatly packed. The rest had been tossed into the bag as though she’d been in a hurry to gather up what she’d recently used.
He checked her makeup case. He had no idea what she’d brought with her, of course, but he doubted anything was missing. He saw plenty of makeup, shampoo, hairspray, deodorant—that sort of thing. Although her toothbrush was no longer wet, there’d been plenty of time for it to dry. Her purse was still in the cabin, too, on the floor next to the luggage, and it didn’t appear to have been disturbed.
Whatever this was, it wasn’t a robbery.
Leland followed him from room to room and stood at the bottom of the ladder in the living room as Amarok climbed up to peer into the loft. Using his flashlight, he swept the room.
Nothing. Just a bed, with a blanket folded neatly at the foot of it, and a dresser.
“We didn’t even go up there,” Leland told him. “No one wanted to climb the ladder, so I slept on one of the bunk beds in Peter’s room and Ted slept on the couch.”
That gave Sierra her own room, which seemed polite but didn’t mean anything. Amarok might’ve suspected that her own brother or one of his friends had harmed her and they were pretending she’d gone missing as a way to cover it up. After all, they were the last ones to see her. They were also the ones to discover she was missing. But Leland seemed genuinely distraught. Although he’d been quiet since they arrived, Amarok had seen him, several times, turning away to wipe tears from his eyes. The fact that he wasn’t trying to put on a show lent him credibility.
“Are you sure you haven’t seen anyone out and about in this area since you arrived?” Amarok asked.
Below, Leland cleared his throat. “No. I told you that in the truck. But maybe someone we met in Anchorage followed us out here.”
If so, where would that person have hidden for the past three days? There wasn’t another cabin within five miles. Or did he—or they—leave and come back?