Page 69 of Thunder Pass

Except he could see exactly three letters on one side of the fold. T-h-u.

The only place around here that began with those letters was Thunder Pass.

After the man had left—his camouflage baseball cap hiding his face—Gunnar set the opened mini-donuts on the counter and dug out some change from his pocket. A condom almost came with it, but he shoved it back down. “Who was that?” he asked Kathy.

“Customer,” she answered in her blunt, all-business way.

“New in town?”

She shrugged, but he thought there was a “no” behind her stoic expression. She’d seen the man before. He tried a long-shot. “I think I ran into him out in Thunder Pass.”

Her lips thinned. Her eyebrows came together ever so slightly. She knew something about Thunder Pass. As the owner of the only general store in town, she got orders from all sorts of people for all sorts of things. She never shared the details with anyone else. If you ever wanted information about anyone or anything, Kathy would be the last person you would go to.

Which was why the next thing she did shocked him to his core.

She leaned over the counter and whispered, “Don’t go near Thunder Pass.”

“What?” He wasn’t sure he’d heard correctly at first.

“You heard me. You’re a sweet kid. I watched you grow up. You fixed my freezer. Stay away from Thunder Pass.” Kathy was Filipino, but she spoke English perfectly. The fact that she was speaking in staccato sentences with more of an accent than he’d heard from her before, that was a red flag. Clearly something was upsetting her.

“Can you tell me anything more than that? What do you know?”

A flash of fear came over her face. “Nothing. I know nothing.”

“Come on, Kathy. That’s obviously not completely true. There’s something you’ve seen or heard that set off some alarm bells. If you aren’t going to tell me, you should tell someone. Maybe Bear?”

Bear was everyone’s first choice when it came to anything threatening the community.

He watched her wrestle with her innate urge to keep things to herself. Finally she gave in. “They order too many things. So many cans of food. At first I think no problem, money is good. But then I hear one man say to the other, ‘after Thunder Pass, we’ll be home free.’ What do they mean? I don’t know. But you should stay away.”

Gunnar didn’t have any time to ask Kathy more questions about Thunder Pass. Before either of them could say another word, Lila came bursting through the door.

“Gunnar, I had a feeling you’d be here. Ruth needs you.” He caught the suppressed panic in her voice, and immediately forgot everything else. Kathy had already turned back to her cash register, determined, as always, to mind her own business.

“Sarah’s gone,” Lila told him as they hurried out of the store. The late-summer nasturtiums spilled over the rims of the clay planters on either side of the door, the hum of busy bees rising from the blooms. They must be Eve Dotterkind’s, he thought, randomly. No one else around here kept bees.

Strange, the thoughts that passed through your head in a moment of crisis.

“Where’s Ruth?”

“She’s at The Fang. Martha came in looking for Sarah, but no one’s seen her.”

“Did you already ask Kathy?” He made a move to go back inside.

“Martha did earlier. She’s really worried. She said Sarah was supposed to help her with a wool delivery, and never showed up for breakfast. Martha went to look for her, and her bunk hadn’t been slept in. The other woofers had a goodbye party last night, so none of them had seen her.”

Gunnar realized he was walking so fast that Lila was having to practically jog to keep up with him. He slowed his pace, though everything in him wanted to get to Ruth as soon as possible. “Is there any chance there’s a boy in the picture? I don’t know Sarah well, but she is sixteen.”

Lila shook her head. Her eyes darkened with worry, turning them an even deeper purple than usual. “I don’t think that’s it.”

He glanced at her curiously. “What do you mean?”

“I…sense things. And sometimes I see things, like images of something that happened or maybe will happen. Enhanced intuition, basically. I don’t always know what they mean, but I’ve learned to take them seriously and I trust them. I saw something about Sarah, but I want to wait until we get to the Fang to talk about it. Ruth should hear it too.”

“Of course. Ruth must be losing her mind right about now.”

“Yes. She blames herself for leaving Sarah here while you guys went to Anchorage. That woman takes too much responsibility for things that aren’t her fault!”

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