Page 26 of Thunder Pass

Gunnar was starting to wish he could sink into a hole in the ground.

“On top of that, our dad warned Gunnar never to trust a Chilkoot. That’s why it’s so important that we are deciding to trust you with this.”

At the mention of her last name, Ruth’s face tightened. Gunnar decided it was time to step in. “Lighten up, Bridget. You’ll scare her away.”

“No, I won’t. Ruth doesn’t scare easy. I can see it in her eyes.”

Ruth’s eyes looked soft and gray and lovely to him, but Bridget’s words seem to mean something to her. She relaxed and gave his sister a smile. “This is quite a build-up. When am I going to get the whole story?”

“That’s up to you two. Just keep it clean.” Bridget winked at them. “Gotta go party with my kid now.”

She whisked herself off, leaving Ruth and Gunnar alone in the fall sunshine. “Sorry,” he muttered. “I know that was weird. You can leave and forget this conversation ever happened if you want.”

She cocked her head. “I don’t think that’s the kind of conversation I could easily forget. Besides, I’m now Bridget’s official successor and no one can take that away from me.”

He eyed her with amusement. “Funny. You know, sometimes I get the feeling that all those years with Luke and the others, you were just silently mocking them the whole time.”

13

“Maybe.” Ruth allowed a smile to spread across her face. “Just don’t tell anyone.”

“You know your secrets are always safe with me.” Gunnar’s glance dropped to her lips for a quick micro-second, and her face warmed at the memory.

At least he wasn’t the only man she’d kissed anymore. Over the summer, she’d tried it again three times with three other men, all summer travelers. Sadly, none of those kisses had measured up to the one with Gunnar. She had no real explanation for that.

He glanced back into the garage, where everyone was munching on cake and drinking soda out of Mason jars. “Come on,” he murmured. “Let’s go for a little walk. There’s a trail behind the house that goes to a field where the cranes nest.”

She followed him around the house, which was set back about a hundred yards from the auto shop. She’d never been inside, and she couldn’t help wondering what Gunnar’s private space was like.

The field he took her to was filled with late-summer wildflowers—the last of the fireweed, chocolate lilies, tall leafy pushki. She’d never seen this trail before either; most likely because it ended at Gunnar’s house and never made it to the road.

She tilted her head back and breathed in the sun-warmed fragrance of the field. “So pretty,” she murmured.

“Yes. But do you know where this trail ends up?” His voice was so serious that she looked away from the flowers and back at him. His hands were stuffed in his pockets, a frown shadowing his face.

“I have no idea.”

“I never did either. But I remembered that my father used to spend time back here. The trail’s so overgrown it took me weeks to retrace it. It dead-ends at the edge of Chilkoot property.”

“Really?” She frowned, looking puzzled. “I didn’t know there was a trail like that. It must be fifteen miles long, at least. Where does it lead?”

“You know that massive spruce grove on the east side of your land?”

“Sure. Every other winter, one of them gets knocked down by the winds.”

“That’s where this trail goes. I’ve been out there over twenty times now, hunting around. I finally found this in one of the trees.” He pulled his hand from his pocket and revealed a tiny mechanism of some kind. “It’s a camera,” he explained. “Extremely high-tech. It can take high-res pictures at up to half a mile. It was aimed at one of your outbuildings.”

“Not mine,” she said automatically. “I don’t live there anymore. And they were never ‘mine.’”

“You know what I mean. This camera feeds into a server, but that part’s gone. I don’t know what it recorded. But I think I know who put it there.”

“Your father?” she whispered, as she put all these weird conversations together. “He was spying on us? I mean, them? Us?” She had been living there up until this summer, after all.

“I think he might have been. I just don’t know why. We think, me and Bridget, we think that he might have been,” he lowered his voice, “a CIA agent.”

She stared at him blankly, since she barely knew what that was.

“Someone who gathers information for our country. A spy, basically. But they’re supposed to spy on foreign nations, not on Americans. So I can’t figure out why he would have been focused on the Chilkoot property.”

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