Chapter 1
RHYS
Whitewater Junction, Alaska
Present Day
The coffee tastes like ash.
I set the mug down on the scarred wood of my desk and stare at the stack of incident reports that need filing. Noise complaint from the Hendersons about their neighbor's dog. Vandalism at the gas station. Someone's been dumping trash on Old Mill Road again.
Small-town problems. Problems my grandfather handled. Problems my father handled. Problems that used to matter before I learned how easily a black truck can force a car off Mountain Pass Road and disappear into the night.
The beard itches. Reaches halfway down my chest now, tangled and unkempt. Hair brushes my shoulders when I turn my head. Deputy Wells mentioned it yesterday, suggested maybe I should clean up a bit. Present a better image for the town.
I didn't respond. Just looked at him until he shifted his weight and found somewhere else to be.
Emma's wedding ring sits in my pocket. Always there.
Gold band worn smooth from twelve years of her wearing it, of her hands moving through the world, of her touching me.
I roll it between my fingers. The weight familiar.
Three years and two months since I pulled it off her cold hand in the morgue.
Three years and two months since someone took her.
Not the mountain. Someone who's still out there.
The phone rings. Dispatch, probably. Another noise complaint or missing pet or tourist who got lost trying to find the scenic overlook. I let it ring four times before picking up.
"Sheriff Blackwater."
"Rhys." Deputy Wells's voice is tight. "We've got a situation at the old mining road. You need to see this."
Wells doesn't rattle easy. Ten years on the force, former Marine, seen his share of bad. If he's calling it a situation, it's more than a fender bender.
"What kind of situation?"
"The kind you need to see in person."
I'm already standing, reaching for my jacket. "Location?"
"Mile marker twelve, where the mining road branches off toward the old Kaiser site. I'll wait here."
The line goes dead.
The drive takes fifteen minutes up roads I know by heart.
Every curve, every washout. My grandfather taught me these roads when I was eight years old, let me steer his old Bronco while he worked the pedals.
My father reinforced the lessons, added new ones.
Third-generation law enforcement keeping watch over Whitewater Junction and the surrounding territory.
And I'm the first one who failed.
Mile marker twelve appears through the windshield. Wells's cruiser sits angled across the road, lights off. He's standing beside it, arms crossed, jaw tight under his department-issue cap. I pull up behind him and kill the engine.
The cold hits immediate and sharp when I step out. November in Alaska doesn't forgive. The sky is low and gray, threatening snow. Wind cuts through the spruce with a sound like grinding metal.
"Show me," I say.
Wells leads me fifty yards up the mining road. The surface is rutted and broken, barely maintained since Kaiser Mining shut down operations five years ago. Trees press close on both sides, dense and dark. Sound gets swallowed here. Light doesn't penetrate far.
He stops at a wide spot where someone pulled off. Tire tracks are fresh, deep treads that suggest a heavy vehicle. Commercial grade, maybe a pickup or SUV. The tracks lead twenty feet into the trees before stopping at a small clearing.
And there, in the center of the clearing, is a camp.
Not recreational. Not tourists who got lost. This is deliberate.
Tactical. A fire pit dug and lined with rocks.
Scattered food wrappers. Empty water bottles.
Cigarette butts ground into the dirt. And on a flat boulder that serves as a makeshift table, a topographical map of the region marked with routes and waypoints.
My chest tightens.
"Found it an hour ago," Wells says quietly. "Was checking the mining roads like you asked. Saw the tracks, followed them in. Haven't touched anything."
I move closer, careful where I step. The map shows our jurisdiction and beyond. Routes marked in red ink snake through the wilderness, connecting points that don't have names on any official map. Some end at the Canadian border. Others loop back toward the coast.
Trafficking routes.
"Get photos," I tell Wells. "Every angle. Then bag everything for evidence."
"You thinking what I'm thinking?"
"That someone's using our territory to move product, yeah." I squat beside the fire pit, touch the ashes. Still warm. Not hot, but warm enough that whoever was here left recently. Within the last few hours. "Question is what."
Wells doesn't answer. Doesn't need to. We both know there's only one thing that requires this level of planning, this remote location, these carefully marked routes.
People.
The wind picks up, and with it comes a sound. Faint. Almost lost in the trees. Muffled crying. Young. Female. Desperate.
My sidearm clears the holster.
"You hear that?" Wells's voice is barely above a whisper.
I nod once. Point northeast, where the sound came from. We move together, weapons drawn, each step deliberate and silent. The muffled cries come again, clearer now. Panicked.
The trees open onto another small clearing. A girl sits with her back against a spruce, hands zip-tied in front of her, duct tape across her mouth. Blonde hair matted with dirt. Face bruised. When she sees us, her whole body jerks.
She can't be more than seventeen.
I holster my weapon and drop to my knees beside her. "Sheriff Blackwater. You're safe now."
Behind the tape, she makes a sound. Raw. Terrified.
"I'm going to remove the tape," I tell her, keeping my voice low and steady. "It's going to hurt. I'm sorry."
I peel it off as gently as possible. She gasps, coughs, sucks in air like she's been drowning. Words tumble out in a rush. Russian, I think. Or Ukrainian. Something Slavic that I don't understand.
"Do you speak English?" I ask.
She nods, frantic. "Please. They come back. They kill me. They kill you."
"How many?"
"Three men. Maybe four. I don't know. They take turns watching." Her accent is thick but understandable. "They bring me here two days ago. Say they wait for transport. Say I go to Seattle, then somewhere else. They don't say where."
Wells is already on his radio, calling for backup, for an ambulance, for every resource we can get. I cut the zip ties with my knife. Her wrists are raw where the plastic bit into skin.
"What's your name?"
"Oksana. Oksana Melnyk. From Kyiv. They promise me job. Cleaning houses. Good money." Her voice cracks, goes thin. "No job. Just this."
I shrug out of my jacket and wrap it around her shoulders. She's shaking. Shock and cold and three days of hell catching up all at once.
"How long ago did they leave?"
"One hour. Maybe less. They go to meet someone. Bring supplies. They say they come back soon."
Thirty minutes, maybe. Thirty minutes before armed traffickers return to find their product missing and two cops in its place.
"Wells, how far out is backup?"
"Twenty minutes minimum. Sheriff MacAllister in Glacier Hollow has sent support, but they're forty-five minutes away."
Forty-five minutes. Might as well be forty-five hours. If the traffickers come back and see cruisers, they'll scatter. Disappear into the wilderness. We'll lose the best lead we've had in months on the network that's been operating in our territory.
The network that might have killed Emma.
Emma drove the mountain roads every day.
Knew them well. Commuted to Palmer for her nursing shifts.
If she saw something she wasn't supposed to see, if she stumbled onto evidence of trafficking operations, that would explain why someone forced her off the road.
Why someone powerful enough to bury the investigation wanted her silenced.
"Rhys." Wells cuts through my thoughts. "What do you want to do?"
Oksana shivers in my jacket. This girl who believed promises and ended up bound to a tree in the Alaskan wilderness, waiting to be shipped like cargo to God knows where.
Emma's ring burns in my pocket. The badge weighs heavy on my chest. Sometimes doing the right thing means taking risks that would make the insurance adjusters weep.
"Get her to the ambulance when it arrives," I tell Wells. "Full medical workup, protective custody, federal notification. This is bigger than our jurisdiction."
"And you?"
I check my sidearm. Full magazine. One in the chamber. Two spare mags on my belt. Not an arsenal, but enough.
"I'm going to wait for them to come back."
"Alone? Rhys, that's insane. We don't know how many there are, what firepower they're carrying. You can't—"
"I can and I will." I meet his eyes. "Someone's been using our territory to move people. Maybe for months. Maybe for years. That ends today. And if whoever's running this operation had anything to do with Emma's death, I'm going to find out."
Wells opens his mouth to argue, then closes it. He knows me well enough to recognize when a decision is final. Instead, he nods once and helps Oksana to her feet.
"Don't die, Rhys. The town needs you."
"The town needs someone," I correct. "Doesn't have to be me."
They disappear into the trees, Wells supporting Oksana as she stumbles over roots and rocks. I wait until the sound of their footsteps fades completely before moving back to the camp.
The map is still on the boulder. I study it closer now, committing routes to memory. Some lead to the old mining sites. Others follow logging roads that haven't seen traffic in decades. One route is marked with a star near the coast. A pickup point, maybe. Or a distribution hub.
Voices filter through the trees. Male. Casual. Speaking English with faint Eastern European accents. They're not worried. Not expecting trouble. Why would they be? This is remote Alaska. Law enforcement is spread thin. The odds of someone stumbling onto their operation are minimal.