Deadly Fate

And now here she lay, a beauty like Snow White. But no kiss would awaken her.

He turned to Jackson, who was kicking the gun from the killer’s grip, checking to see if he was dead; he was not. He was still breathing.

“Saved my life—and his,” Jackson said.

Thor was vaguely aware of Jackson getting on his phone, calling for medical assistance and backup.

Then the whole scene began to fog up and fade.

It was a dream that came to him again and again; a memory that played itself out in his mind when he was sleeping, when he was vulnerable. Over time it had come less and less, but sometimes, like now, it would return like the blade of a knife, digging into his mind as if piercing his flesh.

Tonight, however, Mandy’s eyes opened. And she looked at him with that beautiful and tremulous smile of hers. “Thor,” she said.

“Mandy!”

She reached up and touched his cheek. “You mustn’t let it happen again,” she told him softly.

He was dreaming; he knew that he was dreaming. He’d relived the scene a thousand times over.

And he’d wondered every time how he and Jackson and a slew of techs had managed to be just that little bit too far behind the killer...

No, he blamed it on himself. And maybe Jackson, just a little. Mostly it was his own fault. He should have known. They should have known. They shared a strange sense of...intuition, and they should have realized from the descriptions they’d received, from their gut sense of the past and time and purpose and...

Mandy had died anyway.

In his dream, he said, “Every day, Mandy, every day of my life, I still try to catch the killers, the bad guys, the sick, the evil... I am so sorry...”

She pressed a finger to his lips and sat up, then said softly, “No fault, Thor, no fault on your part. You two...you believed me, you investigated, you discovered the truth. No fault. But it’s happening again. This time, Thor...this time, you must stop him.”

She stroked his cheek; her eyes were immense on his...

And then his alarm went off with a jarring sense of reality and he woke up, bolting to a sitting position, reaching for the offending noise box to silence it.

He lay there for a moment; the dream had been so real he felt as if he could still smell the scent of Mandy’s perfume on the air.

But, of course, he could not. He glanced at the other side of the bed. It was empty. As always. He and Janet had split up months ago and since then, he’d never brought anyone home.

He rose and headed to the kitchen of his Anchorage apartment, poured a cup of coffee from the brewer that was set for 6:30 a.m. every morning and walked out to the living room. Large windows all across the far wall gave him great views of the city.

People had a tendency to think of Alaska as the frozen frontier.

Sometimes, he wished it was nothing but a frontier filled with ice.

But Anchorage was a large, sprawling metropolis—perhaps not on the same level as NYC or Chicago, but it was still a thriving city with well over three hundred thousand residents, almost half the population of the entire state. The great thing about the apartment was it offered him a place to stay in the city—and have this incredible and majestic view of the white-tipped Chugach Mountains rising in the distance—without having to live here full-time.

Thanks to his enterprising antecedents, his family owned a sprawl of property between Anchorage and Seward, a vast tangle of family homes, a horse farm and a sled dog–breeding facility. His sister and her husband managed the estate, so he could live in both worlds—he even had a pair of the best dogs anyone could ask for.

He was, he knew, a damned lucky man.

Albeit a haunted one, because he could never shake certain images...

Lucky, he told himself firmly. Every man out there, every woman, too, lived with things that tore at them.

He shook off the feelings the dream had wrapped around him.

In his free time, he could head out to what was still pristine wilderness. He could spend countless hours in the national parks and encounter wildlife like he could in few other places.

He wasn’t a hunter. The only way he shot things in his spare time was with a camera. His day-to-day life had enough to do with violence.

He heard his cell phone ringing and headed back into the bedroom to snatch it up off his bedside table. His partner, Mike Aklaq, was on the other line.

“You ready, friend?”

“If you call standing in my shorts, drinking coffee and looking out windows ready, then I’m ready.”

“Cool. You’re always Mr. Early. Today I’m on the move. Coming to get you—got a call to rush it this morning.”

“Oh?”

“Just hop in the shower quick. We’re wanted down the road in Seward.”

“What’s going on?”

“Quit talking and shower. Put on something more than your briefs—Special Director Enfield will meet us at the airport.”

“Airport? Seward isn’t even a three-hour drive and only private—”

“Helicopter is waiting for us. I’m almost there. Hey, I’m pretty sure I’m along for the ride on this. Enfield thinks you’re the man for this situation.”

“What the hell is the situation?”

“I don’t even know yet. Just get cracking, eh?”

Thor didn’t say anything more; he hung up and hurried to get ready.

He managed a shave and shower in less than ten minutes. When he emerged—in his blue suit, Glock in the little leather holster at the back of his waistband—Mike was in his apartment.

“Hell, you must have been downstairs when you called,” Thor said.

Mike grinned. “I was. I figured you had coffee—you always have coffee.”

Mike was a big guy with broad shoulders and cheekbones to match. His dad was Native American; his mom had come up to Alaska with her father when he’d worked the pipeline. Mike was one of ten kids, all of them tall and good-looking. Thor and he made a good, colorful team, Thor often thought. He actually had Aleut blood himself. It was from a great-grandmother, while the rest of his family had hailed from Norway and it showed. He was bronzed just because he loved the sun; his hair was lighter than flax and his eyes were a blue only a little darker than ice.

They’d been partners three years in Alaska. Thor had done time in both the New York City and Miami offices while Mike had worked in Chicago and DC. Both of them had asked for the Alaska assignment—a different kind of job, for the most part. They were members of the criminal task division; in the three years they’d been working, most of their cases had been a matter of doggedly following clues and collaborating with Canadian and other US agents.

They headed downstairs. Thor knew that Mike was going to drive—he had the official car and the keys. They both preferred their own driving.

“What time did Enfield call you?” Thor asked when they were on the road.