The night had been impossibly long, and she’d spent most of it explaining to the police what she had witnessed. Maybe her brain was fuzzy. Had she stopped by the wrong room? She double-checked the door number. No, this was Chase’s room. But his name had been erased from the board.

  What the—? No. Sam clapped a hand over her mouth. She’d watched this scene in countless movies, the horrible twist where the main character believes her lover is going to be fine, but then something god-awful happens while she isn’t there—a blood clot, a stroke, a heart attack—and he’s suddenly gone.

  The last words Chase had uttered before falling back to sleep had been, “Gotta go now. Sorry.” A lump formed in her throat. Had Chase known he was dying?

  The Lummi aide, Warbass, now in green scrubs, passed in the hall. Did the man never sleep? Spying her inside the doorway, he halted with a squeak of rubber soles on the tile floor, and actually backed up three paces instead of turning. “Chase has been transferred to rehab. Northern Rehabilitation Center, Sedro Woolley.”

  She let her hand drop back to her side. “Thank God! I thought—”

  He smiled. “I could see what you thought by the expression on your face. A transport was going this morning for another patient. But then that patient wasn’t released, and they decided to take Chase instead. Someone should have called you.”

  Got that right, she thought. Way to put a woman into cardiac arrest. She wasn’t sure her heart had yet returned to its normal rhythm.

  Warbass opened the drawer on the bedside table. “He had my uncle carve this for you.” After pulling a sticky note from the object, he dropped a small wooden carving into her hands.

  A wolverine.

  “Good luck.” He continued down the hallway.

  The wolverine was carved of red cedar, its body and thick tail held low to the ground in hunting mode, its ears pricked and head thrust out, one paw outstretched as it moved intently forward.

  So it was true, what they said. Even unconscious, Chase had heard her stories.

  Chapter 46

  From afar, Sam found it easy to be angry about Jackson Latham and Alexis Eckhardt trapping and killing a wolverine. Now, in the sorrowful atmosphere of the Latham home, she was finding it difficult to maintain her righteous indignation. Jackson’s sister Sonya was there as well as his parents. To make the situation doubly uncomfortable, the parents of Jackson’s girlfriend, Alexis, were also present.

  The house was clean but smelled a bit gamey. A cat had vanished around a corner as soon as they’d walked in, and Sam recognized the telltale scratches of dog toenails on the oak floor. If she wasn’t imagining the sound, there were birds in a back room somewhere. Not squawking like Zeke, but softly chirruping. Maybe parakeets.

  Jackson’s father faced Adam as he said, “I just don’t understand. As far as we knew, Jackson and Alexis were both on the spring break ski trip in Idaho with the rest of the high school kids. They were taking a few extra days, and we allowed that because, see, they were good students, seniors, and they were in love . . .” He shook his head and then put both his hands on his temples as if he had a massive headache.

  From flanking easy chairs Tanner and Claire Eckhardt nodded sadly but said nothing. Claire sniffed and held a tissue to her eyes.

  Adam, out of consideration for the grieving parents, was only doing an audio recording of the conversation at the time, but a video camera waited by his side on the couch. After seeming nonplussed for only a minute or two, Adam diplomatically replied, “Teenagers can be very secretive.”

  “The police said they weren’t even at the ski resort. How did you know where to find them?” Cassandra Latham asked Sam for the second time. Clearly the distraught mother was having difficulty absorbing the information.

  Sam explained again about the signal from the wolverine’s radio collar and how she and Gina had gone to the camera location.

  The mother wiped a tear from her cheek. “But how is that relevant? To anything? Jackson didn’t care anything about wolves!”

  “Wolverines,” Sam corrected. “Actually, just one wolverine.” She was irritated that neither the sheriff nor the forest service rangers had told the parents of the deceased what their kids had been up to. “She died, too, that wolverine.”

  “I just don’t understand,” Claire Eckhardt said. “None of this makes any sense.”

  “Does the name Anton Priest mean anything to any of you?” Sam asked.

  Blank looks all around.

  “Who is he?” asked Tanner Eckhardt.

  “A taxidermist. He sells wolverine skins and uh, . . . preserved specimens of all types of animals,” Sam explained, seeing jars of glass eyes in her memory.

  Sonya, Jackson’s sister, violently shook her head. “Jack would never hurt an animal. And he certainly would never kill one.”

  A dog, some sort of springer mix, came over to Sam and rested its head on her thigh, its soulful eyes searching her face. She stroked a hand over its forehead.

  “Rolf misses Jackson,” Cassandra told Sam. “So does Midnight. And all his other animals. I don’t know what we’re going to do with all of them.”

  Oh God. Sam regarded the Lathams. “Do you know a boy named Colin Neufeld?”

  From her position on a stool in back of the couch, Jackson’s older sister Sonya volunteered, “That’s my boyfriend.”

  Sam turned to look at her. “He’s a geek type, isn’t he?”

  “Yeah, he likes to fool around with electronics.”

  “Well, he apparently wired this wildlife camera to a solar panel, so he knew about its location.”

  “Oh.”

  “And I guess Jackson must have gotten the location from Colin somehow.”

  Sonya squirmed. “Colin’s sort of Jack’s hero.” Then she crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Was.”

  “And so he and Alexis went to that location to set up a trap and catch a wolverine,” Sam concluded. “One detail I haven’t worked out is how that trap got there, and when.”

  “I never saw Jackson with a trap,” his father said. “He would think traps were cruel.”

  “So would Alexis,” her father added.

  “It wasn’t one of those horrible steel-tooth traps,” Sam told them. “It was more like a very small log cabin with a hinged lid.”

  Sonya clapped a hand to her mouth. Everyone pivoted to watch her. “Colin and Jack were building something like that a couple of weeks ago. They told me it was a house for some orphaned wolf pups at the wildlife rehab.”

  Gary exchanged glances with his wife. “Didn’t Jackson go hiking with a couple of friends two weeks ago?”

  She nodded. “I think that’s right.”

  “Those were strong kids,” Sam noted. “The site is miles from the parking lot, and they would have been carrying heavy loads.” The phrase “premeditated murder” sprang into her mind. But that thought was way too harsh to even ponder in front of these grieving families.

  “The police are sure that it was them? Absolutely sure?” This came from Tanner Eckhardt.

  “Yes,” Sam answered. “The car left in the lot was registered to Gary Latham. And you identified them, correct?” She was careful not to say the word “body.” Everyone in the room seemed to be avoiding that. She gazed from parent to parent. “And you were sure, right?”

  Tanner Eckhardt glanced sideways at his wife. Tears dripped into her lap as she softly murmured, “I’m sure.”

  “Well, the public deserves to know about your children. We don’t want them to be forgotten.” Addressing Gary, Adam said, “I’d like you to tell me about Jackson. And you”—he turned to the Eckhardts—“about Alexis.”

  “Can we do Jackson first?” Again, Gary Latham addressed Adam. When Adam nodded, Jackson’s father stood up and strode out of the room. In a moment, he was back, a scrapbook in his hands. He stepped between Sam and Adam. They made room for him to sit on the couch.

  “Jackson was a good boy.” The father flipped open the scrapbook, thumbed through a series of baby and little-kid photos to the pages near the end. “Here’s Jackson. And that’s Alexis.” He pointed to a photo of the teens dressed in formal wear, Jackson in a blue tux, Alexis in a short purple dress. They each had one arm clasped around the other’s waist. In their free hands were face masks that matched their clothes. “They were going to the Christmas Ball.”

  Clearing his throat, Adam picked up the video camera and flicked it on. “May I?”

  The father nodded, and Adam focused the camera on the scrapbook. “Is this a photo from this year?”

  “Yeah, last December.”

  “That was a little crazy,” Cassandra added. “The couples had to dance six feet apart from the others. They had their own little circles taped out on the floor.” Then she glanced worriedly up at the camera. “And of course, they shouldn’t have been together at all.”

  “The COVID restrictions were problematic for kids of all ages,” Adam reassured them, standing up so he could more easily film.

  “Nobody got sick.” Claire Eckhardt sounded defensive. Adam raised the camera to film her face for a few seconds.

  “Jackson has always loved animals of all kinds,” his mother said.

  “That’s a bond he shared with Alexis.” That came from Claire. “She has three cats at home.” Her voice wobbled on the last word, and she sniffed.

  “They both loved to be outdoors,” Alexis’s father said. “They hiked and snowshoed, canoed, skied . . .” He broke down at that point, no doubt remembering that they’d thought their daughter was still on a ski trip when she’d been dead for days.

  “Alexis was working as a vet tech,” her mother said.

  If they’d used a tranquilizer on Feisty, that might explain where the drug had come from. Would a dart gun or a jab stick be revealed when the snow melted?

  “Jackson wanted to study biology,” his sister Sonya told Adam, staring straight at his camera lens. “He had every book ever written by an animal researcher. He was especially interested in animal intelligence.” She inhaled shakily and continued, “My brother wanted to be an animal trainer. He taught his dogs and cats all kinds of tricks. And Alexis helped.”

  The black dog that had been lying in its bed in the corner padded around the couch to nudge Sonya with its nose. “How tall are you, Midnight?” she asked the dog.

  With one piercing bark, the black dog rose to its hind legs and briefly pawed the air, then barked again before he sank back down onto all fours.

  “See? Jack taught him that.” Sonya rested her hand on the dog’s head as she glanced at Sam and Adam, her eyes swimming with tears.

  Sam nodded. She found it painful to be in the room with so much grief, especially since the dead kids might have been kindred spirits of hers if they’d lived. Adam was quietly filming all their tears and sobs.

  Gary flipped through a few more pages of the album, and as Adam filmed, Sam witnessed photos of Jackson tying his shoes at a track meet, Jackson washing his car, Jackson dressed in uniform for a football game, his helmet under his arm. Then the father flipped to the last page, a photo of his son in ski gear. “This was the last one . . .”

  Gary’s voice broke, and his wife stood up and moved behind the couch to lay her hand on his back.

  The father lifted both hands to cover his face. Sam took the scrapbook from his lap. She flipped back a page to the football photo. The team stood behind a kneeling group of girls in cheerleading uniforms.

  “Alexis was a cheerleader,” Claire commented. “The one in the center.”

  “The prettiest one.” Sam hovered a finger above the girl’s photo and nodded at her mother.

  Jackson’s uniform was red and gray. Embroidered across the front of the jersey was the word “Chiefs.” An unusual team name these days. Sam asked, “So, the name of the football team was the Chiefs?”

  “Yeah,” the father murmured from behind his hands, inhaling jerkily. “Chiefs. Jackson was going to be quarterback next season. The “chief Chief,” we used to joke.”

  “Except they weren’t going to be the Chiefs next year,” Cassandra told them. “They were changing the names, even though that meant we’d all have to spring for new uniforms.”

  A bell dinged in Sam’s head. She looked up at Adam. After a brief dip of his chin in acknowledgement, he stepped back to focus the camera on both parents.

  “What did the school pick as the new name for the football team?” Sam asked quietly, fearing that both she and Adam already knew the answer.

  “They decided on the Wolverines,” Cassandra said. “Even though it was a challenge to get so many letters on the shirts, and they were having problems finding a wolverine costume for the mascot.”

  She held up her hands. “Who makes wolverine costumes? I’m not even sure what a wolverine looks like.”

  “The Chiefs” biggest rivals are the Badgers, and that team actually has a live badger mascot that waddles out onto the field every game,” Tanner Eckhardt contributed.

  Jackson’s father dropped his hands to his lap to grip both thighs. “Oh, my God.” He grabbed the scrapbook from Sam, staring hard at the football photo. “Oh, son. You stupid boy, how could you?”

  Chapter 47

  “The evidence was all there. Jackson had a book written by a wolverine researcher. It even had a diagram of the log trap he and Colin built, and they set it up there a week before the avalanche. Jackson apparently got the coordinates of the camera from Colin, and Alexis got the tranquilizer from the vet she worked for. Maybe a dart pistol or a jab stick, too. Unfortunately, their timing was perfect to trap Feisty. The young idiots planned to capture a wolverine and train it to be a mascot for their football team.”

  Sam had already told all this to Gina and Blake, and now she repeated the story for Chase.

  “Unbelievable,” he replied. He was sitting propped up in a reclining chair in his room at the rehab facility, a white blanket over his legs. His hair was combed and he was clean-shaven; he already appeared 500 percent better than he had when she’d seen him last in the Bellingham hospital. The orchid she’d bought for him sat on his bedside table between the whale sculpture and the miniature totem pole.

  She’d decided to surprise him with this visit, and had washed and brushed her long blonde hair, put on her most flattering sweater and silver earrings that Chase had given her. But instead of being happy to see her, he seemed uncomfortable with her presence.

  “They didn’t just capture Feisty, they killed her,” she continued. “And if she had kits like the researchers thought, they probably died, too. Stupid kids.” Sam knew she was chattering, but she couldn’t seem to stop. She wasn’t comfortable in this environment, either. The hospital bed behind her had a trapeze device suspended from the ceiling over it, and a wheelchair lurked in the corner. A white folded cloth failed to disguise a bedpan on the table to the side. But Chase looked so much healthier, surely he wouldn’t require any of this for very long.

  “The last episode will be about the last two victims of the earthquake, a special feature after the news tonight. Adam is relishing the spotlight again. And he’s including my discussion of wolverines and how they need to be protected.” At least he’d said that he would; she hadn’t seen the final edit.

  Chase made a sour face. “Adam. Of course.”

  She had no idea what he meant by that, and for a second, considered throwing Nicole’s name back in the same manner. She had a past with Adam; he had a past with Nicole. Not the same past, but—

  “Well, it’s done now,” Chase said. “You can move on.”

  “I plan to hike up there again soon, destroy what’s left of that trap.”

  “Please don’t go up there alone, Summer.”

  That was a bit annoying, but she knew that her solitary hikes could be risky, especially this time of year with the lingering snow in the mountains, so she simply said, “Okay.”

  A beefy guy in scrubs walked in and announced to Chase, “Time for therapy.”

  “Querida,” Chase said to Sam, “You’ve got to go.”

  She hadn’t even been there half an hour, but Chase’s tone insisted that she leave. She stood up. “When do you think you can come back home? I can either move in with you at your cabin, or you can move into mine.”

  His brow creased.

  “Just temporarily, of course,” she hastily added. “Just while you need help. While you’re recovering.”

  Chase lifted his gaze from her to the worker. “Give us a moment, Grant?”

  “Back in ten.” Grant exited the room.

  “Summer,” Chase began, “You don’t—”

  She didn’t want to hear about her deficiencies. “Chase, I mean it; you can stay with me. I’ll take care of you.” She tried not to focus on the details of what that actually meant—cooking and feeding him, helping him to the bathroom, taking him to physical therapy, helping him dress—and then, of course, she couldn’t focus on anything else. Blake normally did most of the shopping and nearly all the cooking, but he’d just announced he was going to be gone for a month. How would she find time to travel to events and work and cook and take care of Chase?

  Do you love him? She heard her father’s voice in her head. Then you’ll do what you need to do. That’s the way it works.

  Somehow, she’d make it work.

  Chase shook his head. “I wouldn’t do that to you.”

  Sam put a hand on his arm. “But I want to. I’m willing, Chase.”

  He regarded her, his brown eyes solemn. “I know you, Summer. I know all about your mother.” He exhaled heavily. “I’d never do that to you, unless there was no other recourse.” After another pause, he told her, “For now, I don’t want you to come here unless I ask you to.”

  Her heart did a somersault in her chest. He didn’t want to see her? Why would Chase say that? She searched his eyes, uncertain of the emotion there. Regret? Embarrassment? Was this goodbye? Was he finished with her? Finally, she dropped her gaze to the floor, uncertain of what to do next.