Page 37 of Thunder Pass

“Thunder Pass? I’ve climbed there. Beautiful territory. And absolutely no private property.”

“Are you sure? It would just be a cabin, nothing fancy.”

“There might be some unauthorized cabins up there, but they’d be located on National Park land. Maybe someone got a waiver. Or maybe they just didn’t care about the law. It could be grandfathered in depending on when it was built.” He looked at Gunnar expectantly, but Gunnar just shrugged.

“I honestly don’t know anything about it. Someone told me it existed, so I thought I’d try to locate it.”

Ben Whistler zoomed in on the area of Thunder Pass and switched to a topographical view. “The thing is, people go up there to rock climb, so anything in here would be pretty obvious and we probably would have gotten a report by now.” He pointed to an area to the west. “This is pretty steep and rocky. Unlikely spot for a cabin. My guess would be around here.” He tapped the other side of the pass, where long downslopes led to the feet of another ridge. “If it even exists.”

“Who owns that land?” Gunnar asked.

Ben switched back to the plat map and peered closer at the property lines. “Sheesh.”

“Sheesh? What does that mean?”

“It means they’ve been chipping away at those boundaries too. Someone’s claimed the land around Thunder Pass. Chilkoot LLC, looks like. Sheesh,” he repeated as he shut down the computer and tossed his sandwich wrapper in the trash.

“I don’t understand. Can they just reassign land from the park?”

“No. Not normally. But someone did it. Someone way up there, with a lot more clout than I have.”

“Who? Can you find out? Shouldn’t you report it?”

“These days, I’m just lucky to have a job. Half my department’s been canned.” He got to his feet, brushing crumbs off his pants.

Ruth finally found her voice. “Wait! Isn’t there any way to find out more about Chilkoot LLC?”

“Didn’t you say you’re a Chilkoot?”

She nodded.

“Can’t you just ask your family?” Catching her expression, he shrugged. Then he snapped his fingers. “Wait. Talk to this woman.” He scrawled a name on a yellow Post-It and handed it to Ruth. “She was investigating this type of corruption. She might know something.”

He hurried them out of his office and a few moments later they heard his footsteps rattling down the staircase.

Gunnar and Ruth shared a glance. “Food first, or corruption first?” he asked her.

“Watching him eat that sandwich made my stomach growl. Definitely food.”

They drove back to the library, which had an attached café that served sandwiches and drinks. Ruth ordered two more coffee drinks—a mocha and a caramel latte.

“If I lived in Anchorage I’d never sleep from all the coffee,” she whispered to Gunnar, her face pink from over-caffeination.

“You can order them decaf, did you know that? Decaffeinated?”

“No.” Her eyes opened wide. “That’s genius.”

When they’d wolfed down their grilled cheese sandwiches, they went back to the computers and looked up Renata McBurney, the name on the Post-It, who turned out to be retired from the Attorney General’s office. Using his ancient flip phone, Gunnar called and made an appointment for the next day.

That meant they had an entire night to spend in Anchorage. Exactly what Gunnar had been hoping for.

First they booked a room at a hotel that rose twenty floors high—he chose a room on the fifteenth floor. Ruth had never been in an elevator before; she grabbed the railing and hung on, then immediately wanted to go down again, as if it was a carnival ride.

That was entertaining in and of itself, but then seeing her face as he opened the drapes and revealed the sweeping view of Cook Inlet, with the late-evening sun slanting across the endless glimmering ocean—that was something to savor.

He loved watching her experience so many things for the first time. Ironic, really, because he’d only been to Anchorage a few times himself. He wasn’t exactly a world traveler. But he knew enough to guess what things would be new and fascinating to her.

Like eating dinner at a sushi bar with a conveyor belt that sent new dishes past the tables. Hell, she’d never even had sushi before. The Caribou Grill didn’t serve it, and neither did The Fang, which were basically the only two dinner options in Firelight Ridge, other than the luxury resort Fire Peak Lodge, which Ruth had never been to either.

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