Northern Exposure by Debra Lee Brown Read Free Book Online Page B

wasn’t Joe’s wife,” Barb said. “She was his kid sister.”
    Â 
    Joe snatched the phone on the fourth ring. “Peterson.” He’d been outside fixing a broken water pipe that ran from the spring up the hill into the cabin.
    â€œHey, it’s me.” Barb’s normally cheerful voice had an edge to it he didn’t like.
    â€œWhat’s up?”
    â€œWendy Walters. I just thought you’d want to know.”
    Joe pulled the phone onto his lap and slung a hip on the edge of the desk. “Know what?”
    â€œShe’s planning on hiking in over the east ridge after those caribou. That gun-sight pass—you know the one.”
    â€œSon of a bitch!”
    â€œI know, I know. Don’t kill the messenger. The whole first hour in the pickup I tried to talk her out of it, but she’s dead set on it.”
    â€œHow long ago’d you drop her?”
    â€œâ€™Bout two hours ago. My radio’s on the blink. Had to wait till I got back to headquarters to call you.”
    There wasn’t any cell coverage in the area. Hell, the closest town was 150 miles away.
    â€œAll right, all right. I gotta go.” He started to put the handset down.
    â€œGoin’ after her?”
    He put the receiver back to his ear. “What do you think?”
    The last thing Joe heard before he slammed the phone down on the desk was Barb Maguire’s trademark titter.

Chapter 4
    I t took him six hours to catch up to her.
    And when he did, Joe realized his temper had ratcheted to dangerous proportions. “Get a grip, Peterson,” he cautioned himself. He was determined to handle this like a professional.
    By the time he was able to gather his gear, get his truck out of the shop and break just about every traffic law on the books racing to the eastern edge of the reserve, Wendy Walters had gained a huge head start on him.
    Still, he would have bet his next paycheck that he would have overtaken her miles ago, that she would never have made it as far as the steep, glacier-cut canyon he was now traversing. He would have lost that bet, he realized, as he caught a flash of movement on the sheer rock face a quarter of a mile ahead of him.
    Instinctively he reached for the pair of Austrian-made binoculars secured to his chest by a well-worn leather harness. “I’ll be a son of a—” He bit off the curse as he peered through the field glasses.
    Wendy Walters, wannabe wildlife photographer, trudged up the steep, rocky trail toward the narrow gun-sight pass marking the little-used eastern entrance to the reserve. Joe checked his watch. 7:00 p.m. She’d made damned good time. The woman was fit, he’d give her that.
    But he was fitter, and right now he was fit to be tied.
    He secured the binoculars, hunched his department-issue backpack high on his hips, recinching the padded belt, and took off at a jog. The weather looked iffy. Another storm was moving in from the west, coming right at them. Dark clouds massed overhead, obscuring a late-summer sun that had already dipped well below the jagged, snowcapped peaks surrounding the canyon.
    Now that he’d found her, he didn’t intend to let her out of his sight, even for a second. He’d parked his truck next to her rented SUV at the end of the gravel road, miles behind them, and had spotted her small boot prints the moment he’d started up the muddy trail toward the reserve.
    What bothered him was that two miles back he’d picked up another set of boot prints, twice as large as Wendy’s and leaving deep impressions in the soft earth. They definitely weren’t alone out here.
    There hadn’t been another vehicle parked near Wendy’s Explorer, or anywhere along the gravel road, but that didn’t mean anything. There were dozens of spur roads, and twenty different ways tointersect the trail they were on, if one was prepared to hike cross-country.
    Remembering yesterday’s