Alaskan Mountain Pursuit Elizabeth Goddard (best short novels .TXT) 📖

almost everyone I know who hikes, random people I’ve seen often on the trail who might fit the build, on Facebook groups. I’ve got nothing.”

Noah blew out a breath, slowly. “Okay. If that’s true, and I think you have a good reason for believing that it is, how does this change our investigation? Where should we be looking differently?”

“I’m not sure it gives us any clues in that direction but it does give us some ideas about how he might continue to operate,” Clay offered.

“How?”

“He’s going to hit hard and he’s not going to stop until either he is captured or Summer is dead. Because at this point, he believes he has nothing to lose.”

FIFTEEN

Past one in the morning and Clay couldn’t sleep. The sky outside had finally darkened to something that resembled nighttime, but still he couldn’t shut off his thoughts. His body was exhausted despite the rest he’d gotten earlier in the day, but his mind refused to follow suit.

He turned over again. Glanced at the clock one more time only to find less than one minute had passed. Noah was on watch now, since Clay had agreed to take the first sleeping shift. They were switching at two.

An hour to sleep.

He turned over again and closed his eyes. They snapped open and he threw back the covers. Gas. He smelled gas.

He grabbed his jacket on the way out of the door of his room, thankful he’d slept in all his clothes.

Noah met him in the hallway. “I smell gas downstairs.”

“I just smelled it too. Where’s Summer?”

“Her room. I’ll get her.” Noah threw the door open and ran inside. Clay waited in the hall but was ready to take Summer’s hand as soon as she came out. Noah hurried ahead of the two of them. “Get Summer outside!”

“What if it’s a trap?”

“It’s a risk we have to take.” The other man’s expression was grim. Clay ducked back into his room, grabbed his handgun from the bedside table drawer and tucked it into the side of his waistband, then took Summer’s hand again.

He and Summer ran outside, the cold wrapping like an unwelcome blanket around them. He felt Summer shiver and wished he’d taken the time to grab his jacket so he could offer it to her.

Tyler and Kate both ran out only a minute later. Kate was carrying an extra jacket. “I wasn’t sure you’d have gotten yours,” she said to Summer as she handed her one.

Summer smiled, something that surprised Clay a little. “That’s my always-prepared sister.”

“How are you smiling?” Kate shook her head, looked at Clay. “Does she not get it?”

“Get what?” Summer asked.

Clay didn’t know. She didn’t seem nearly scared enough to understand the full range of danger they could be facing even now.

Worst-case scenario now that they were outside and presumably safe was that the gas smell was some kind of trap to get them outside so the killer could pick Summer off. It wasn’t a scenario Clay wanted to consider but it had the potential to be the very one they were facing, so he made sure he stayed on alert, looking in multiple directions. There was enough light to make out shapes, a dim sort of twilight, but so far nothing looked out of place to him.

“You don’t get that this is really bad!” Kate frowned, her frustration obviously overcoming her vocabulary in Clay’s opinion because bad didn’t begin to cover it.

“I haven’t exactly thought a guy after me was good. Ever.”

“No, but you’re not taking it seriously. I heard Noah talking last night, again, about how you’d be better off in a safe house.” Kate threw her hands up. “What else needs to happen to convince you to listen to him? He’s not just your brother, he’s the chief of police here and if I were you I’d do what he says.”

“I don’t want to leave you guys, leave the lodge with no one to lead the hikes.”

“Someone’s trying to kill you and you’re worried about leading hikes?” Kate didn’t bother to hide her disbelief.

“I don’t want to hurt the lodge.”

“We don’t want you hurt. That’s what matters most.” Kate glanced back at the building. “But if you don’t want to hurt the lodge, consider what happened tonight. That’s certainly not helping it.”

Summer’s smile fell from her face, her shoulders slouched as the reality of the danger sunk in. Clay wished Kate had been more careful with her words—Summer already carried so much guilt. But gentle or not, she was right.

Summer looked at Clay. Then back at Kate. “Alright. I’ll do it.”

Kate nodded once. “Tell Noah when he gets out here.”

No one said anything after that. Kate had killed any kind of optimism Summer had been showing. While Clay wished he could see her smile again, he knew that right now she needed the reminder of the seriousness of the situation.

If they’d been trapped inside, if the gas had kept leaking, they could have succumbed to carbon monoxide poisoning. It was also possible that whoever caused the leak had intended to set off an explosion.

That scenario was probably the deadliest. Thankfully it hadn’t happened.

But it could have.

The building alarm went off. Clay wondered if the CO detectors hadn’t detected a problem until then or if Noah had had to set them off manually.

It didn’t take long for the guests who were staying at the lodge to start filing out, most in what looked like pajamas and bathrobes. All of them looking understandably upset.

Clay hated to admit it but the safe house was looking like the best option to him too. Not just for Summer’s safety, although that was his top priority, but for the safety of those around her, like Kate had pointed out. If the worst had happened tonight, the death toll would have been extreme, and would have included far too many innocent people who had no involvement in this case at all. This wasn’t something they could handle in the same way they’d been trying to. It