Page 22 of Thunder Pass

“You could say that. When I got back into my rental car, I found a man inside. He told me he was our father’s colleague, and he was helping clean up loose ends. I thought he might kill me, so I told him who I was. He knew all about me. It turned out that he hadn’t been planning on killing me, just warning me off.”

“Why would he do that? And what did he mean, ‘colleague’? What kind of colleague?”

“He wouldn’t say. He didn’t say much, to be honest. Just that I should go home and stop being nosy.”

Gunnar took a long sip from the bottle of ale. “Nelson said you think Dad was—is—a CIA agent.”

Bridget’s bright blue eyes narrowed. “That kid…where did he get that? Did he eavesdrop on me?”

Gunnar threw up his hands. “Not getting in the middle of that.”

She shook her head ruefully. “Nelson is too damn smart for his own good. Anyway, it might not be CIA. Maybe special forces, something super-secretive like that. Black Ops. I don’t know. But I know this. There’s more to Anthony Amundsen than he ever told us, or his first wife, or his second wife. Rest in peace,” she added quickly.

Gunnar shrugged it off; his mother had died when he was too young to have any memories of her. “I can’t believe we’re even talking about this. It sounds so crazy. CIA? Black Ops?”

“Right? Anyway, I begged that guy for something, some little crumb of information. Here’s what I said. I was like, I left my son in Alaska so I could find out what’s going on. And you know what he said? That’s the place you should be looking for answers, Alaska. And I said, Alaska’s a big state, man. Come on, give me something.”

She paused for dramatic effect.

“And?” Gunnar asked impatiently. Was this a story or real life?

“And he said, there’s some weird cult family with a funny name. Chill something.”

“Chill something. Chilkoot?”

Talk about chills.

Did Anthony Amundsen have some connection with the Chilkoots?

Those questions and more kept him up at night, even after Bridget had left, promising to come back in August to pick up Nelson.

As the summer weeks went by, Gunnar was happy to have the kid around. Sometimes he filled in at the pumps. Occasionally, he even agreed to go canoeing or four-wheeling. But Alaskan summers always passed so quickly, and he was so busy he didn’t have much free time for things like investigations into missing fathers.

Besides, something was different this summer. A strange, almost ominous atmosphere took hold of the town. A rock climber fell to his death in Thunder Pass, causing it to be shut down. It wasn’t the first time an accident had happened there, and it had never been closed before.

Strange.

And then there were the military-looking types who kept showing up in town. They never stayed long, but no one seemed to know what they were doing in Firelight Ridge, or where they were going.

As for Ruth, he only caught a glimpse of her now and then, zipping through town in Martha’s truck. She was just as busy as he was, so he figured she was doing just fine. He thought about asking her for help figuring out his father’s secret connection to the Chilkoots.

But she was trying to put distance between herself and her family. So, every time he spotted her, he just watched her drive past. How happy and free she looked in her sleeveless T, showing more skin than he’d ever seen the formerly shy Ruth reveal, with her red braid shining in the summer sun. Was this Ruth Chilkoot, unleashed? If so, he was all for it.

11

Ruth pulled up outside the Caribou Grill in Martha’s old Saab, which was her “nice” car, the one she used when she wasn’t delivering wool or picking up supplies from the airstrip. Martha had insisted that Ruth take the Saab for this momentous event.

A date.

With a stranger.

An out-of-town stranger who had no idea that Ruth wasn’t someone who “dated.”

She knew by now what lesbians were, of course. Instead of asking Gunnar, she’d asked Maura how to use the Internet at the general store. Maura had very kindly given her an iPad that she claimed she didn’t use anymore, and guided Ruth in its mysterious ways. For the last few weeks, Ruth had spent every spare moment exploring the world beyond that screen. Maura had warned her about misinformation and catfishing and scams and misleading videos. So she took it in small doses, little baby Internet steps.

Even so, at times she left the store in tears, wondering what was wrong with the world and the human beings lucky enough to inhabit it. Sometimes she thought it would simpler to be back at the compound. Then she remembered all the things that Luke was responsible for, the ignorance he’d manipulated for his own ends, and she decided there was no safe space, not really. It could only be genuinely safe if things were open and free and transparent—the opposite of what Luke and Naomi had created.

Even after all this time, nearly the entire summer, she hadn’t seen or heard a peep from any of the Chilkoots since their big escape. Luke apparently had bigger things to worry about than two runaways. It surprised Ruth, to be honest. She’d never known her family—her clan—to be this quiet. Whatever they were up to, maybe they were happy she was out of their way.

---