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

man who was after them was a capable tracker.

They’d been running for well over a mile in difficult terrain, Summer would guess more like two or three, when Clay finally said they should stop.

“I think we’ve lost him.” He glanced at his watch. “And it’s getting later. I would be surprised if he searched all night.”

“So we stop, then?” She shivered. As it got closer to nighttime, the daylight didn’t change much, but the temperature started to drop even in the early evening, hours before.

“We stop. I’m going to build a fire to warm us up some.”

“But the smoke?”

“We’ll be careful. I’m not going to let it get very big so the smoke shouldn’t be visible.” He didn’t say anything more, but somehow Summer got the idea that the reason he wasn’t concerned about the smoke might be a little disconcerting to know.

“You think if he’s going to find us he’ll do that whether there’s smoke or not.”

He met her eyes and nodded slowly. “You’d make an excellent police officer, do you know that?”

She laughed. “Not my kind of danger. But thanks.”

They hiked in silence for another few miles before they came to where Six Mile Creek made a large canyon lined with huge masses of rock. They were on the far side. Whether their shooter would expect that was still unknown. They had chosen to cross immediately, but there was a slight chance, Summer assumed, that he might wonder if they’d just stayed close to the road and followed it along the perimeter of the woods rather than cross the creek at all. He almost certainly wouldn’t guess they’d crossed here because the rapids where the canyon walls enclosed the creek were some of the best in Alaska.

“We should stop here.” Summer turned to Clay. “It’s the location with the best options for places we can sort of tuck back into, and the noise of the creek will cover the noise we make moving around.”

“You know best here.”

They stopped running and Clay gathered what they needed to make a small fire. They would need to warm up, especially if they needed to run again.

Once he’d gotten the fire started, Clay turned to Summer. She almost looked away, but something in his expression made her meet his eyes. Wait for whatever he had to say.

“What did you mean earlier about ‘your kind of danger’?”

“What?” Summer only vaguely remembered what he was talking about.

“When I said you’d make a good cop.”

“Oh.” She nodded once, remembering now. The words had slipped out and she wasn’t sure now, in retrospect, that she’d meant to reveal so much of herself.

She considered brushing him off, dodging the question. Then again, what was the worst that could happen? Usually she’d say looks of judgment. But while Clay was a man whose character made him seem almost too good to be true, she suspected he wasn’t the kind to judge other people harshly. He didn’t seem critical.

“I guess I meant...” She shrugged and laughed a little. “Exactly what I said. It’s not my kind of danger.”

“So you have a kind?”

“I’m pretty sure you’ve figured out by now the whole mountain running thing isn’t just a hobby for me. Or if you haven’t figured it out, you’ve looked up my background online.”

“I don’t look up other people unless it’s someone I’m investigating.”

Summer hadn’t seen that one coming. “Why not?”

“It’s not fair to them. The internet is changing how relationships work. Have you realized that? Once upon a time you got to know someone little by little, with what they chose to reveal to you at each step, and now you can go on their Facebook, see their hobbies, interests, favorite music, learn about that time they went to Peru on a mission trip and got lost in the jungle, all of that is right there, from the start.”

She settled back against the fallen log she’d been using as a backrest and thought for a minute before responding. Finally, she nodded. “You’re right. I hadn’t thought of that.” She winced a little. “I looked you up a little. Just enough to see you were an officer and see what happened in what looks like your last case.”

Clay nodded, like he’d been prepared for that, although she did notice his shoulders went back a little, and Summer could almost sense an invisible wall between them that hadn’t been there five minutes ago. What Clay had said about the internet and friendships made even more sense now. Like her, it seemed that he had things in his past that he didn’t want to share online with the whole world. She could respect that. She’d taken his chance to talk about that in real time, as their friendship grew.

Odd she’d never thought about that before.

“I’m sorry.” She blew out a breath. “I do see what you mean now.”

He shrugged. “It is what it is. Technology changes things. So tell me about you and mountain running. I’d figured out it had to be more than a casual interest.”

“How?”

Clay laughed as he worked on the fire, placing more medium weight logs on it. “Today was the giveaway. You spent forty-five dollars on a T-shirt.”

“Hey, that was the clearance price too, and totally worth it. It’s not just a T-shirt. It’s an Arc’teryx that’s moisture wicking and technical so that it—” His expression looked remarkably like Kate’s anytime Summer tried to talk about clothes, outdoor gear or not. She laughed too. “Okay, fine, so the gear gives me away.”

“And your dedication,” he continued. “Not to mention the way your face looks when you’re running up a mountain.”

She tilted her head to the side, unsure what he meant. So she sat, listening to the creek and the small crackle of the fire and waited for him to explain.

“You look like you’re somewhere else, almost. It looks a lot like worship.”

Summer was already shaking her head. “Worship?”

“Thanking God. Praising.”

“I know what it is. I’m just curious why you think I would.”

“Your brother’s faith is one of the