Chapter 2
2
“Have you heard the big news?”
Gunnar slid the crawler from underneath Martha’s 1999 Ford Ranger, where he’d been replacing the starter. He really should have trained the population of Firelight Ridge better, he grumbled silently as he emerged from the peace and quiet of the undercarriage. Everyone felt they could walk into his garage at any moment and just start talking.
Which didn’t used to be a problem, but for some reason, lately he’d been crabbier than normal. Customer beware.
Old Pinky stood over him, in his stained coveralls and weather-beaten baseball cap. Had his T-100 finally crapped the bed? Or maybe one of his two ancient Saabs? Possibly his four-wheeler, or his vintage ATV, or hell, maybe even the fat-tire bicycle he used to wheel through town in all kinds of weather.
Pinky was a good old guy, so Gunnar wrestled his irritation into a smile. “Hiya, Pinky. Don’t tell me, let me guess. TNG Corp is going to buy up the whole town and turn us into Westworld, Alaska version.”
“Huh? What’s that?”
Too complicated to explain, Gunnar thought. “It’s about Fire Peak Lodge, isn’t it? Is some movie star staying there? Is Julia Ormond back for another face-off with the mosquitoes?”
The entire community had been thrilled to learn they had a celebrity guest in town a few summers ago. Then they’d been equally crushed to hear that she’d cut her visit short after a rare allergic reaction to an excess of mosquito toxin.
Pinky sighed sadly at the reminder. “Them mosquitoes really gotta ruin everything, don’t they. She was the most famous person who ever came here.”
“Many celebrities come incognito, you know.”
“It ain’t a celebrity or nothing like that. Come to think about it, maybe he is, cause his name was in the paper and everyone knows him. It’s not like he’s famous for anything good, though. You gonna try another guess now?”
Gunnar thought back over all the wild things that had happened here over the past year and a half. “Something to do with Adam Hardwell, the one running for Senate?”
“Good guess, but nope. Also, it ain’t anyone dead even though they got their name in the paper.”
“That’s good to know. The zombie apocalypse hasn’t hit Alaska yet.”
Pinky cackled at a reference he finally recognized. “If it does, we’ll be ready. No place I’d rather be for the apocalypse.”
Gunnar got to his feet and reached for a rag to wipe off his hands. While he loved working on engines, the constant smell of motor oil and related fluids got to him after a while, so he was obsessive about clean rags and GoJo. “I give in, Pinky. What’s the big news? Don’t make me wait for the newsletter. I think Frank got bored with that project.”
“It’s Luke,” Pinky blurted out, his watery blue eyes alight with the thrill of gossip.
Gunnar paused in the midst of wiping his hands. “Luke Chilkoot ? Not possible. He’s in prison.”
“Not now, he ain’t. Must have a real good lawyer, or maybe the Feds screwed up. He just got back the other day. Notice how you ain’t seen any of them Chilkoots around town?”
The only Chilkoot Gunnar paid any attention to was Ruth. He’d been keeping an eye out for her out of habit, even though she’d ghosted him without a second thought. Now that Pinky mentioned it, it was true that he hadn’t seen her in town lately.
“So what’s that all about?” he asked Pinky.
“Seems like Luke wants everything to go back to how it was, except even more so. No more contact with the rest of us, except if they really need to, like when they have to fuel up. That’s why I thought you might know already.” He gestured vaguely to the outside, where there were two fuel pumps, one for gas, one for diesel.
“No, I didn’t know.” Gunnar tossed his rag onto a work bench, suddenly in a sour mood. What would this mean for Ruth? In the time since Luke had left, he’d seen more of her—and the other younger Chilkoots—than he had in his entire twenty-seven years. In that short time, she’d gone from so shy she could barely meet his eyes to a poised and mature woman. She was now the one who made decisions for the younger kids, which meant that the others deferred to her and gave her much more respect—grudging, in some cases, but still respect.
She’d even begun dressing differently. Fewer shapeless skirts and more sweaters that actually showed off her slender curves. Ruth had an understated beauty, the kind that seemed to grow the longer you looked at her. Which he’d been doing a lot of every chance he got—until that kiss disaster.
“I wonder if someone should go check on them,” he murmured. By which he meant Ruth, of course, though Pinky didn’t need to know that.
“Go out to the Chilkoots? You won’t catch me out there. The Feds took a whole bunker’s worth of weapons from them, and people say they still got a bunch hidden away. They’re armed up the wazoo.”
Gunnar’s unease grew another notch. Everyone out here had a firearm, it was basic wilderness survival. But the Chilkoots’ arms stash went way past that. As far as he knew, they’d never used all that firepower—they’d been busted before any damage was done. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t. What would happen to a gentle soul like Ruth in the middle of a firefight?
There had to be a way of getting a message to Ruth. A way of checking on her that wouldn’t trigger a gun battle.
“Pinky, remember that old ATV you wanted to sell?”
“Yeah, you said it wasn’t worth more than a dollar.”
It was worth negative dollars, since he’d have to put a new engine in it. “I’ll give you two dollars for it,” Gunnar offered. “And I’ll come and get it off your property.”
“How about a bottle of Jim Beam instead?”
“That stuff will make you ill.”
“It’s treatin’ me good so far. How do you think I lasted this long?”
“How about you keep your Jim Beam and I’ll take the four-by.” Gunnar stuck out his hand.
“Deal.” Pinky shook it vigorously, as if he’d just made the deal of the century.
“I’ll come around in a couple hours.”
After Pinky had gone, Gunnar poked his head into the back office, a tiny room packed full of filing cabinets, paperwork, and a cot where he sometimes spent the night. “How ya doing in there?” he asked the boy sitting at his desk.
What a dumb way to phrase it. For some reason, this boy, Nelson, his nephew, brought out the awkward in him.
Nelson looked up warily, which was the way he did most things. Gunnar couldn’t blame the kid. His mother, Gunnar’s half-sister Bridget, had appeared out of the blue a week ago, parked Nelson with Gunnar, then disappeared, promising to be back soon.
“Okay,” he said. “I think I got your computer to work.”
“You did?”
Gunnar could fix any vehicle he got his hands on, but computers were another matter.
“I found all your old records. I could write you a better program to organize them.”
“You can?” Gunnar shook his head at his moronic two-word responses. “Knock yourself out, but I do everything on paper now. Works for me.”
Nelson shrugged and focused on the screen of Gunnar’s old desktop. With his dark coloring and geeky glasses, he was about as different in appearance from Bridget as he could be. But there was no doubt he was an Amundsen, because he looked eerily like a much smaller version of Gunnar’s father, Anthony. His missing father. The father who’d disappeared when he was seventeen.
That was why every time Gunnar looked at Nelson, his heart twisted. Like now, when Nelson was giving him that pleading look.
“If you don’t use this computer, maybe I could?—”
Gunnar could interpret that hopeful tone just fine. “It’s yours,” he said instantly. “At least as long as you’re here. But you know it can’t connect to the Internet, right?”
“Like, at all?”
“I mean, it could, if there was Internet to connect to. I don’t have Wi-Fi here, and not much cell signal either.”
Nelson didn’t seem concerned. “I’ll figure it out.”
“What are you, some kind of hacker prodigy?”
But Nelson was already immersed in the process of putting the computer back together.
“He’s…an odd duck,” Bridget had told him. “But he won’t give you any trouble. It won’t be for long, I promise. Nelson is wicked smart, he could even be your part-time assistant.” She was ten years older than him—the product of his father’s first marriage, before he came to Firelight Ridge. She’d only been to Firelight Ridge once before. During that first visit, she’d been sweet to Gunnar, letting him show off his favorite place to swim, his favorite tree to climb, that sort of thing.
But to go from that distant memory to babysitting her son for an indefinite amount of time was…a lot. Good thing Nelson didn’t really seem to need much.
Gunnar cleared his throat to get Nelson’s attention again. “I’m going to head out to Pinky’s to pick up an ATV. Do you want to come? Get out of the house for a bit?”
Nelson shook his head, so completely focused on the motherboard of Gunnar’s old Mac that he barely seemed to hear. “No thanks,” he murmured. Gunnar took that to be his standard polite rejection of things his mother wanted him to do.
“You okay here on your own for a while? I’ll put up a closed sign, but sometimes people wander in here anyway.”
That got Nelson’s attention. He looked up in alarm. “What should I do?”
“Just tell them I’ll be back soon. If you can, find out what they’re here for. Usually it’s just to shoot the shit, but if they need something more, write it down.” Nelson’s panicked expression made Gunnar switch gears. “Or you could just lock this door from the inside. No one will know you’re here.”
So much for having an assistant, Gunnar thought as he strode out of the shop to the sound of the office door locking. He never bothered to lock it himself. Most folks in Firelight Ridge didn’t even have locks. But whatever the kid needed to feel safe, he’d do.
Two hours later, he was on the road to the Chilkoots’ place, Pinky’s old ATV and a new engine loaded onto a trailer hitched to his 1999 T100 Toyota truck—his favorite work truck. A few months ago, Jared Chilkoot had asked Gunnar to let him know if he came across any ATVs for sale. Perfectly valid reason to head out there and scope things out.
He rolled down the window to enjoy the fresh air as he passed the first Chilkoot potato fields. The Chilkoots ate a lot of potatoes, Ruth had told him. That was their main source of starch in the winter, especially after half the Chilkoots had been arrested, and there wasn’t enough manpower to manage the wheat fields. Ruth had told him that the first time she’d purchased a sack of flour from the general store, she’d nearly cried.
“Why?” he’d asked blankly, not understanding. “From joy because you didn’t have to do all that work?”
“No, because I felt like I let them down. Everyone worked so hard to plant our fields, to get our mill up and running, all of it. And I couldn’t keep it going.”
Those Chilkoots had really done a number on Ruth. He got angry every time he thought about it. All she did was work and take care of people, and yet she still felt like she’d disappointed “them.” Did “them” mean Luke and Naomi? Or the community in general? He wasn’t sure. But it all pissed him off.
But all that was her problem, not his. She was a Chilkoot, he was a Firelight Ridge guy, and those two groups weren’t supposed to mingle, at least according to the Chilkoots. Their whole thing was keeping to themselves and distrusting everyone else.
Which didn’t leave much room for Gunnar in Ruth’s life.
After cruising past the five—make that six—signs telling him to “keep out,” he braced himself for some kind of confrontation. Maybe Jared and Ted would greet him with locked and loaded shotguns. Maybe Luke himself would be there with a sniper rifle. Or Soraya—was she back too? Her aim was legendary.
He was prepared for all or any of that. But not for what actually came next. As he rolled to a stop in the clearing in front of the Chilkoots’ longhouse, Ruth came marching toward his truck. With her red hair in a thick braid over one shoulder and her blue sweater belted at the waist, she looked good. Really good.
And really mad.
He’d barely swung out of the T100 when her hand made contact with his cheek in a sharp slap.
“How dare you?” she hissed.